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Picture, if you will, a 15-metre inflatable dinghy heaving through the English Channel, carrying 230 souls towards the white cliffs of the Southern Kingdom. This Author spent a considerable moment simply staring at those numbers before reaching for something stronger than tea. Two hundred and thirty. On an inflatable. One does not know whether to call it a maritime catastrophe or the world’s most desperate bouncy castle.
A Broadcasting Society investigation has revealed that people-smuggling gangs, finding themselves short of small boats, have responded with the sort of lateral thinking one almost wishes they would direct towards legitimate enterprise: they are now piling more bodies onto fewer, larger vessels – hence the mega-dinghy. The gangs have even begun cooperating with rival criminal outfits, which is, this Author supposes, a form of industry consolidation. Meanwhile, Lord Burnham prepares to receive the French President at the Prime Minister’s Residence, where the two governments have announced plans to deploy more police officers on the northern French coast. One notes that on 4th August alone, 170 people required rescuing after their vessel caught fire in the middle of the Channel. The Broadcasting Society‘s crew, for their part, were attacked with stones by the gang members. The situation is, in a word, untenable.
From the gravely alarming to the merely disgraceful: the government has released its latest list of employers who have paid their workers below the minimum wage, and the names make for instructive reading. B&Q’s Grand Home Emporium underpaid 4,530 workers a total of more than £456,000, citing “geographical allowances” – a phrase This Author intends to deploy the next time she is presented with a bill she finds inconvenient. Five Guys, meanwhile, owed more than £54,000 to 3,699 staff, blaming “technical differences in how payroll regulations were applied.” Technical differences! One marvels at the ingenuity. In total, 658 businesses across the Kingdom owe their workers £4 million in back pay, and face £7 million in penalties besides. The minimum wage for adults stands at £12.71 per hour – not, This Author feels compelled to observe, an extravagance.
A new report from the diligent scholars at PwC informs us that nearly half of all households in Britain – some 12.5 million of them, representing 46% of the population – live in areas where economic growth does not translate into any tangible improvement in their daily lives. The North-South divide, that most ancient and dispiriting of the Kingdom’s traditions, persists with all the stubbornness of a bad houseguest. Households in Yorkshire and the Humber find themselves £1,917 per year below the national average in spending power; those in the South East enjoy £2,154 more. Lord Burnham has pledged to address regional inequality, though his room for manoeuvre at October’s Budget is reportedly constrained by surging government borrowing costs. This Author offers no prediction as to the outcome, but notes that pledges and outcomes have, historically, enjoyed only a passing acquaintance.
Now to a matter of considerable historical grandeur, and not a little cross-Channel teasing. His Majesty the King has hailed the arrival of the Bayeux Tapestry at the Grand Repository of Antiquities in the Capital as an “unprecedented loan” and the “best possible symbol” of Anglo-French friendship. His Majesty – who observed, with characteristic aplomb, that he is a direct descendant of William, Duke of Normandy – spoke in both French and English to guests including the French President and Lord Burnham. The French President, viewing the tapestry’s conclusion, remarked cheerfully upon the “happy end, we’re here” – to which Lord Burnham retorted that the tapestry was “made in England” and that the French had been too delicate to show the ending. This Author considers this the finest diplomatic exchange of the calendar year. The 70-metre masterpiece goes on public display next week.
Finally, a story that combines property, mud, and the indomitable spirit of the British birthday. Kirstie Allsopp – presenter of that celebrated programme concerning the eternal national obsession with acquiring houses – marked her 55th birthday in Devon by slipping on a muddy path above Welcombe Mouth beach while walking home from a family picnic. She was airlifted to Barnstaple hospital, underwent surgery upon her leg, and promptly shared photographs of the entire ordeal – breathing tube, bandages, X-ray and all – upon her Portrait Gallery. Her son Oscar, aged 18, ran as fast as his legs would carry him to summon assistance. The RNLI and Cornwall Air Ambulance duly obliged. This Author, who has suffered nothing worse than a damp hem on a Devon coastal path, sends her most sincere wishes for a swift recovery, and notes admiringly that Miss Allsopp reported herself “high as a kite” on painkillers throughout. One could do worse.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.