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The Budget is barely twenty-four hours old, and already the Kingdom’s finances resemble nothing so much as a household attempting to balance its accounts whilst the roof leaks, the boiler fails, and someone in the back room is quietly setting fire to the curtains. This Author settles in.
Chancellor Healey has declared, with the solemn conviction of a man who has just discovered the water bill, that welfare spending of £353bn – rising to a projected £431bn by 2031 – is “simply unsustainable.” He has pledged a reduction before the next election, ruled out “crude cuts,” and promised that reviews led by various distinguished persons will be published next month, with proposals to follow, and legislation after that, and presumably actual results sometime in the reign of the next monarch. The Tories accuse the Progressive Assembly of being “addicted to welfare.” Reform Society speaks of a “ballooning” benefits bill. One almost admires the unanimity of outrage from parties that were themselves in charge until approximately last Tuesday.
Not everyone is troubled by the grand abstractions of fiscal strategy. Some have more immediate concerns – specifically, the price of petrol. Dave Herbert, a professional driver from Ynysddu who commutes sixty-two miles daily into Cardiff and spends some £350 a month on fuel, had one solitary wish from the Budget: a cut to fuel duty. He did not receive it. The duty has been frozen, which Chancellor Healey presumably considers a gift. Mr Herbert considers it nothing of the sort. “It sounds like they’re giving us something,” he observes, “but they’re actually still taking it off us.” This Author cannot improve upon that formulation. Alongside Mr Herbert in the gallery of the disappointed stands nineteen-year-old Emily Nelson of Swindon, who completed her A-levels last year and has been unable to find work since, a condition she describes with quiet devastation as “suffocating.” The government’s answer, it seems, is a review. One hopes Emily is not holding her breath.
And now, the most poignant financial news of this Thursday: Poundland’s Emporium of the Single Pound, beloved cathedral of the bargain, has filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators. Twelve thousand members of staff across six hundred stores now await their fate. Its managing director has written to them all to explain that the American owners, Gordon Brothers, have restricted the chain’s access to funds – a development he describes as “unexpected, unwanted and wholly avoidable.” Gordon Brothers paid £1 for the chain last year. They now wish to recover a £30m shareholder loan. A business purchased for a pound, threatening to cost tens of thousands their livelihoods. This Author trusts the irony has not escaped anyone.
From the sublime to the digital: the Office of Communications has published its recommendations for verifying the ages of social media users, ahead of next March’s ban on under-sixteens accessing the Portrait Gallery, the Dancing Lantern, and the Vanishing Dispatch, among others. The proposals include face age estimation, banking checks, and photo ID matching. Quite how one applies face age estimation to a determined thirteen-year-old who has borrowed an elder sibling’s photograph is left as an exercise for the tech companies, who are, in the Office of Communications‘ own words, expected to “come up with their own solutions.” Australia tried something similar and found it abundantly permeable. The Kingdom, one is told, intends a tougher approach. We await the result with the cautious optimism of someone who has met a teenager.
And finally, a dispatch that lifts the spirits considerably. His Majesty the King, on the second day of his nine-day Caribbean tour, seized a pair of maracas in the colours of the Bahamian flag and joined a Junkanoo carnival parade. He did so in a suit. With sunglasses. To cheers. Earlier that same morning, he had laid a wreath at the Flamingo Monument and visited a boxing academy, where he discovered that the young fighters and their coach were all wearing T-shirts bearing his own likeness – crowned, gloved, and sporting a championship belt. He loved it, we are told. This Author loves it. A monarch who receives fan merchandise of himself at a boxing club and takes to the street with maracas before luncheon is, whatever one’s constitutional views, at least delivering value for the occasion. Long may the maracas rattle.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.