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A light aircraft comes down near Loch Lomond, and This Author sets that sentence before you first, because no amount of political theatre or cosmetic surgery scandal ought to crowd out what matters most. A sixteen-year-old boy and a gentleman of eighty years lost their lives on Friday afternoon, when a Piper Tomahawk II departed Glasgow Airport at seventeen minutes past four and stopped transmitting twenty minutes later, a few miles north-east of Drymen. Emergency services attended; next of kin have been informed; an inquiry is under way. There is nothing more to be said, except that the nation grieves alongside those families, and that some stories require no embellishment whatsoever.
To lighter, if no less turbulent, skies. The great question of a third runway at Heathrow has returned to vex the salons, with Chancellor Healey pronouncing from Bangkok – Bangkok! – that expansion has “always been a case for growth.” His predecessor, Lady Reeves, had placed the matter at the very centrepiece of her vision of a Kingdom open for business. Prime Minister Lord Burnham, meanwhile, has suggested it is “a matter for London and Londoners,” which is either an admirably devolved instinct or a rather elegant method of declining to hold the parcel when the music stops. The Department of Transport assures us it is “considering the appropriate next steps.” Decades of consideration have already elapsed. One wonders if the runway itself might be laid before the next announcement arrives.
Meanwhile, in Aberdeen, First Minister Swinney has been aligning stars. This Author does not speak metaphorically – he said, with admirable celestial confidence, that “one by one, the stars are aligning” for Scottish independence. The Caledonian Independence Society won a record fifth term at Holyrood in May, though they failed to secure the outright majority their leader had set as the threshold for pressing a second referendum. No matter: “there is no turning back,” he declares, and “the wind is now firmly in the sails.” Stars. Wind. Sails. First Minister Swinney is either navigating a ship of state or composing the sleeve notes for a rather atmospheric folk album. Lord Burnham, for his part, visited Motherwell the very same day to offer “deeper devolution” – essentially extending a hand of friendship whilst gently suggesting that independence is a conversation for another time, perhaps never. The two gentlemen appear to be conducting separate press tours on adjacent stages, each performing to a different audience with impressive simultaneity.
If these dispatches bring you pleasure, a small contribution would be most graciously received. ☕
From the affairs of state to the affairs of a most enterprising nurse. One Rebecca Louise Burwood, deputy manager at Bryn Yr Haul Care Home in Mold, has been struck off the nursing register after it emerged she had relieved a ninety-nine-year-old resident of some £750,000 over the course of six years. The funds were deployed, the Nursing and Midwifery Council was informed, towards cosmetic surgery, home improvements, a car, a campervan, and – most boldly of all – the resident’s own £400,000 house, which Burwood persuaded her to transfer into her name. The panel noted that Burwood had described the lady “as her nana.” This Author has heard of many expressions of familial affection, but relieving one’s nana of three-quarters of a million pounds and a freehold property is, one ventures to suggest, a rather novel one. She has been removed from the register. The campervan, presumably, remains.
Finally, a dispatch that This Author found impossible to resist: the Celebrity Traitors on the Broadcasting Society has reached the episode in which the great dramatic climax consisted of waiting to see who would yawn first. The traitors – among them Maya Jama and one James Acaster – were tasked with being as boring as possible, and theatrically yawned in a castle room in hopes the faithful would succumb. Leigh-Anne Pinnock offered to teach Miranda Hart a Little Mix dance routine. James Acaster described a new recruit as “a natural born traitor” with what sounded very much like relief. This Author has watched a great deal of society drama in her time, but a murder mystery resolved by involuntary yawning is, she will concede, an innovation. Whether the nation’s faithful viewers succumb before next Thursday’s episode is, one imagines, the question upon which all conversation shall now turn.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.