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Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author had barely settled into her Friday morning – the toast grown cold, the news grown hotter – before the dispatches arrived in such a state of combined outrage, absurdity, and genuine sorrow that she was compelled to set down her butter knife and reach instead for her quill. Let us not waste another moment.
To Thetford, first, where the market town has endured three consecutive nights of disorder that would make even the most battle-hardened magistrate reach for smelling salts. Anti-immigration protests drew crowds of up to two hundred souls to Clover Way, where rocks and eggs were hurled at constables with equal enthusiasm. One female officer was, extraordinarily, bitten through the skin. A bitten officer, Gentle Reader. In Norfolk. In August. Asylum seekers were removed from their homes for their own safety, and the chief constable was left reminding the assembled mob that the persons they sought to expel were, in point of fact, human beings. A reminder that should not require stating, yet here we are, on a Friday, stating it.
Meanwhile, the matter of PC Harper‘s killers has resurfaced with a fury that requires no embellishment. Lady Harper, the slain constable’s widow, has long campaigned against early release for those responsible for dragging her husband to his death behind a getaway vehicle in 2019. Now the senior investigating officer – speaking publicly for the first time on the matter – has declared himself “appalled” that Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole may be eligible for early release next year under revised prison overcrowding plans. The sentencing judge had described their manslaughter as “very close to a case of murder in its seriousness.” This Author notes that “very close to murder” and “eligible for early release” are phrases that sit together about as comfortably as a fox at a hen party. The Thames Valley Constabulary‘s former detective superintendent urged the government to have a “long, hard think.” One trusts they shall manage at least a medium-length one.
And now, because no Friday would be complete without a footballer in a magistrate’s dock, This Author turns to the curious case of Ivan Toney – striker, World Cup participant, and now the proud recipient of a charge of assault causing actual bodily harm, arising from an incident on Wardour Street in Soho last December. He is due before the Capital’s Petty Sessions on the twenty-fourth of September. His representative assures us he is “naturally shocked” and looks forward to clearing his name. This Author, who has observed the ton for some years, has noticed that the word “shocked” features with remarkable regularity in the statements of those who have been charged with things. One begins to suspect the shock is less at the charge, and more at being caught.
On the matter of housing, Lady Badenoch‘s Tories have announced with great fanfare that, should they return to power, foreign nationals would be barred from social housing in the Southern Kingdom, thereby freeing an estimated 228,144 homes for British families. The Progressive Assembly promptly declared the proposal “unserious, unworkable, and copied from Reform Society.” Viscount Farage, meanwhile, had already proposed something rather more aggressive back in June. This Author observes that both parties are engaged in a brisk bidding war over who can sound most decisive on a crisis neither actually solved whilst in office. The homes, one suspects, will not notice either policy.
Finally, and This Author asks that you hear this in the spirit of genuine exasperation on behalf of a man who deserves none of this – Stephen Magee of Coleraine has been informed by Translink that his new mobility scooter is precisely ten centimetres too large to board a train. Ten centimetres. He purchased the scooter specifically because it was the same dimensions as his previous one, which had served without incident for five years. He is now unable to take a train or a bus, was forced to abandon a trip to the Fleadh in Belfast due to insufficient disabled parking, and reports feeling “humiliated.” Translink assures us all mobility scooters undergo an independent assessment process. This Author assures Translink that “ten centimetres too large” is not an answer – it is an excuse wearing a clipboard. One trusts the matter shall be resolved with rather more urgency than the Kingdom’s politicians have shown in solving anything else this Friday.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.