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Dearest Gentle Reader,
A court system that repeatedly bailed a predator back to the very window from which he preyed upon children in a playground below. This Author does not reach for hyperbole lightly, but when even the police and the prosecuting authorities protested and were overruled, one must ask: whose comfort, precisely, was being centred? Not, it would seem, that of the victims.
Zafer Dogan, 32, of Enfield in the Capital, was this Thursday jailed for two years and four months after pleading guilty to making more than 1,800 indecent images of children, employing artificial intelligence to compound his crimes, and photographing over 5,000 children from his bedroom window overlooking a playground. One family was driven from their home into temporary accommodation while he was returned – repeatedly – to his flat above the very ground he had turned into a hunting ground. The Capital’s victims’ commissioner, Andrea Simon, spoke on the Broadcasting Society’s Morning Programme with commendable plainness: victims and their families were “grossly failed”. The government, for its part, reminded the public that bail “should only be used where necessary and proportionate.” One assumes the irony of that statement has not been lost on the family currently living in temporary accommodation.
This Author turns now to a matter that demands not wit but a moment’s quiet acknowledgement. In the village of Brantham in Suffolk, an inquest heard this Friday how three-year-old Noah Woods left a play area through a gap in a fence, passed through a memorial garden by an open gate, and ran down a path towards the Decoy Pond. He was followed almost immediately by a relative who could not catch him in time. More than 1,300 people searched for twenty-four hours. Divers from the Metropolitan Constabulary found him five metres from the bank, at a depth beneath submerged tree roots. The assistant coroner described it as a “very sad and tragic death,” which is among the truest and most insufficient sentences the law ever produces. There are no villains in this story. There is only a gap in a fence, an open gate, and a small boy who ran.
From grief to something altogether more bracing. Mr Thomas, known to his admirers as “Danny Tommo,” has been charged with criminal damage after video footage – livestreamed, naturally, for the benefit of posterity – appeared to show him slashing at a migrant dinghy in the English Channel. A French coastguard official was aboard the vessel at the time. The fifty migrants who had travelled in the boat had already been transferred to RNLI lifeboats before the theatrical intervention. Mr Thomas has also been charged with failing to disclose the PIN to his telephone, which suggests either deep conviction or a remarkably memorable password. Several hundred supporters gathered outside a police investigation centre in Basingstoke on Thursday evening chanting “free DT,” and dispersed, apparently peacefully, upon learning of the charges. He is due to appear at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court via videolink this very Friday. Drama on the high seas, conducted at sea level and streamed live: truly, the age of the gentleman adventurer has been democratised beyond all recognition.
Now, to a story that restores one’s faith in the ingenuity of the medical arts. The National Health Society has begun piloting a genomic test that can diagnose the precise type of a brain tumour in two hours – reducing what was previously a wait of up to eight weeks to something achievable while the surgeon still has the patient on the table. One Steve Palmer, 55, of Nottingham, had his grade four glioblastoma identified whilst surgeons at Nottingham University Hospitals were still operating. “Getting that quick diagnosis removed weeks of anxiety,” he told the Broadcasting Society. The consultant neurosurgeon responsible called the test “almost magical.” This Author, who regards the replacement of eight weeks of anguished uncertainty with two hours of certainty as one of the more straightforwardly excellent developments the Kingdom has produced in some time, is inclined to agree. Science, when it is not being weaponised or monetised, remains a most agreeable enterprise.
Finally, to Glasgow, where Glasgow City Council has informed more than 23,000 members of staff that they are to be dismissed and rehired on new contracts, having arrived at an impasse in equal pay negotiations with the unions. The council has previously paid over £770 million to 19,000 claimants after it emerged that women in roles such as catering and cleaning were paid less than men in roles such as refuse collection – a disparity that apparently required eight years of negotiation to address. The proposed new system would cut pay for eleven per cent of staff. One worker named Joanne, a support-for-learning worker of twenty-five years’ service, told the Broadcasting Society’s North British programming that she had left work in tears. “I would put it to Glasgow City Council,” she said, “please come and do my job for one day.” This Author suspects the council will not take her up on the invitation, but notes that the offer stands, and the children of Glasgow remain, as ever in the signoff and nowhere else, most deserving of better than this.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.