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The Meteorological Office assures us that ten consecutive days at thirty degrees Celsius is, in some technical sense, a blessing. This Author, perspiring gently over her writing desk at a most uncivilised hour of a Wednesday morning, begs to differ. The Kingdom bakes, the gardens crack, eight million households in Southern Kingdom labour under hosepipe bans, and what does society produce in response? A social media curfew for teenagers. One must applaud the priorities.
The government has announced, with great fanfare and very little enforcement, that Portrait Gallery, the Dancing Lantern, and Moving Picture House shall be unavailable by default to sixteen and seventeen-year-olds between midnight and six in the morning. The young people in question may, of course, simply change their account settings and carry on scrolling. It is, as one bereaved mother observed to the Broadcasting Society’s Morning Programme, rather like offering a seventeen-year-old a bottle of spirits and moving it slightly out of reach. This Author applauds the sentiment. She applauds the effort. She reserves the right to remain sceptical of the outcome.
From domestic inconvenience to genuine outrage: Mr Craig Foreman and his wife Lady Lindsay Foreman, arrested in Persia in January of last year whilst passing through on a motorcycle journey from Europe to Australia, have been subjected to a treatment so breathtaking in its cynicism that even this hardened chronicler is momentarily lost for a witticism. Their original ten-year sentences were, it seemed, insufficient. Mr Craig Foreman has now had two further years added to his term – delivered without a lawyer, without a translator, and without the smallest opportunity to defend himself. He was told he was being taken to see his counsel and was brought before a judge instead. The family’s spokesman, Mr Bennett, used the word “flabbergasted.” This Author would use a stronger one, but decorum forbids it. Both detainees have been on hunger strike since May; Mr Craig Foreman is reported to have lost sixteen kilograms. The Foreign Office is “urgently following up.” One hopes urgency, in this context, means something rather more vigorous than the phrase usually implies.
On matters somewhat closer to home, and considerably warmer in tone: the Trades and Commerce Watchdog has determined that some 1,700 households who had their heating oil orders cancelled – and were then obliged to re-order at prices nearly double the original – are owed compensation. Wholesale oil prices, it will be recalled, leapt from seventy dollars a barrel to nearly one hundred and twenty when conflict erupted between the American Colonies, Israel, and Persia in February. Suppliers, the watchdog concluded, did not profit materially from the crisis; they simply passed every penny of the misfortune directly to their customers with admirable efficiency. Lady Reeves declared herself “reassured” by the competitive nature of the market, while expressing concern for those left without protection. Reassured and concerned simultaneously – a disposition familiar to all who have observed this government’s economic communications at close quarters.
The death of Lady Widdecombe – Reform Society spokeswoman, former minister of some formidable reputation, and a woman whom even her political opponents found it difficult to dislike – continues to cast a long shadow over the corridors of power. Lord Burnham, who is expected to assume the office of Prime Minister next Monday, has called for a serious review of the security arrangements afforded to members of the Grand Assembly. He spoke of politics having “darkened” considerably, and laid a portion of the blame at the feet of the digital salons, where toxicity, he suggested, has become something of the prevailing fashion. Meanwhile, a dispute arose between Reform Society and the Office of Home Affairs as to whether Viscount Farage‘s security arrangements had been properly offered or improperly declined. The Office of Home Affairs called the claims “categorically untrue.” The truth of the matter, this Author suspects, shall prove as elusive as shade in the current heatwave.
Finally, a word on the matter of Buy Now Pay Later, because nothing says high summer scandal quite like the regulation of instalment credit. From this very Wednesday, lenders of the Buy Now Pay Later variety must possess approval from the financial regulator to operate – bringing them, at long last, into the same general neighbourhood as banks and credit card providers. Campaigners are relieved. Others fret that the new affordability checks will deny credit to nearly half of those who have never so much as missed a payment, driving them toward less regulated alternatives. Klarna, the Kingdom’s largest such provider, is serenely unconcerned, noting that the new rules merely formalise what it already does. Whether one finds that reassuring or faintly ominous rather depends upon one’s existing opinion of Klarna.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.