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Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author has this Friday morning counted, upon the fingers of one hand, the number of stories fit to raise a smile – and found herself reaching for a second hand before the ink was dry. The month draws near its close, and the Kingdom has obliged us with a dispatch that ranges from the gravely disturbing to the faintly absurd, with barely a pause for breath between. Shall we proceed directly? We shall.
First, and most soberly, to Southport – where next Wednesday marks two years since the most devastating attack upon innocence this Author has had cause to record. Three children, Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine years of age, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on the 29th of July 2024 by one Axel Rudakubana, now nineteen, and sentenced to a minimum of fifty-two years. One might have supposed that so monstrous a sentence would preclude further drama. One would be mistaken. On Thursday, Rudakubana was transferred from Belmarsh Gaol to Broadmoor, a high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire. The families’ lawyer stated, with commendable restraint, that this was an attempt by Rudakubana to “manipulate the system” – noting, with understandable fury, that the timing, so close to the second anniversary, was itself a cruelty. The War Office for Justice assures us the transfer changes nothing of the sentence. The bereaved families, this Author suspects, are not comforted.
To lighter, though still domestic, matters. Lady Rayner, the Housing Secretary, appeared on the Broadcasting Society’s Morning Programme this Friday to deliver unto tenants everywhere a comprehensive denial: there shall be no rent controls in the Southern Kingdom, not at the moment, not under the new Prime Minister. The new Prime Minister being, of course, Lord Burnham, who in 2023 called for rent freezes with considerable passion and who has since discovered – as politicians so reliably do – that governing is rather different from opining. Sir Polanski of the Verdant Society posted his displeasure upon Elon’s Lair, calling Lord Burnham “continuity Starmer”, which this Author considers a phrase so cutting it ought to require a licence. Meanwhile, the Lord Mayor of the Capital has called for caps. He is, it seems, in good company with himself alone.
The Broadcasting Society has published an investigation of a most grave and distressing character, and this Author shall treat it with the gravity it deserves. Fifty women have come forward to report that they were pressured or coerced by their partners into intimate encounters with strangers – encounters arranged, in most cases, through a website known as FabSwingers. Their accounts speak of fear, manipulation, and trauma that has lasted years. Six women report an assault of the most criminal kind. This is not a tale of unconventional liberty, as certain persons would have the public believe: it is a chronicle of abuse dressed in the language of freedom – a masquerade as old as society itself, and no less ugly for its modern costume. This Author urges every Gentle Reader to attend to the full investigation, and to resist the comfortable fiction that consent requires no more than the absence of the word “no”.
From the grave to the merely theatrical. Lord Burnham, on his very first day as Prime Minister, has elected to govern not from the Prime Minister’s Residence in the Capital but from a new establishment in Manchester – christened, with the inventive flair of a civil servant who has recently discovered bold typography, “No 10 North”. Up to three hundred civil servants are expected to join him there by the end of next year. Lady Rayner, whose constituency is conveniently nearby, shall also be attending. The Grand Chamber of Commerce and the Confederation of British Industry have been summoned to discuss growth and investment. This Author applauds the sentiment – the corridors of power have for too long been rather damp and London-centric – but notes that power relocated to a new postcode has a curious habit of remaining, at its essence, power.
The north of the Principality is on fire – not metaphorically, though one concedes there is material for metaphor – but literally, with satellite images visible from space showing plumes of smoke rising from the Rhinogydd mountains in Gwynedd. An estimated 951 hectares have burned, and Nasa’s fire monitoring system has detected heat in no fewer than four areas of the Principality. A specialist firefighting helicopter has been deployed. Members of the public have, with the traditional British instinct for rubbernecking, been travelling toward the fires, requiring emergency rescue assistance of their own. This Author finds this last detail the most revealing detail of any Friday dispatch in recent memory: the Kingdom is ablaze, and there are citizens packing a picnic to go and have a look. North Wales Police have reminded these intrepid souls that entering restricted areas “may constitute a criminal offence.” This Author recommends they be issued a scorching reminder of a more literal variety.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.