First Andrew, now Charles: And now after all that about Prince Andrew, the police have begun an investigation into Prince Charles’s charity over of supporting peerage for a Saudi following receipt of donations. A top aid of Prince Charles has already resigned over this. With a parallel police investigation ongoing into parties at Downing Street where Boris Johnson has been asked to explain his role, a lot of people on the top of the ladder in Britain now face the police.
Image management: Meanwhile other charities supporting children say they do not want charity from Prince Andrew for supporting child victims. Some degree of unspecified donation was announced, no doubt to improve his image. It’s hardly helped his image now that children charities say they do not wish to touch his money. Labor MP Jess Phillips said: “Those who work in sexual violence [and] human trafficking services are certainly not going to have open arms to his allyship…even if it was just finances.”
Inflation bubbles up: It surprises no one that the cost of living in Britain has climbed to its highest in 30 years. No one needs to look at the headlines here, people just need to go to the shop. Inflation is rising faster than wages — unless, of course, you’re a lorry driver. It is expected to hit at least seven per cent this year. Gas and electricity bills have climbed 20 to 30 per cent, and are set to rise much further.
From pillar to ‘post’: Working in the post office was an attractive job for many early Indian immigrants, for which they paid a heavy price. Hundreds were prosecuted by the police for false accounting over the years around 2010. Prosecutions suggested widespread corruption among post office managers, many Indians among them. It later turned out that a new IT system developed by Japanese company Fujitsu that was installed at the post offices was faulty. They were eventually cleared, but after disrupted lives where they were held guilty of crimes they were innocent of. About 700 postmasters were accused of theft, and only 70 have been cleared so far.
New mutant: The number of Covid cases is still low in Britain but signs of a new worry have arisen on the horizon with the discovery of a variant that combines Delta with Omicron. Virologists say there is little to fear here, and that the emergence of such a variant is to be expected. But after two years of reassurances that did not stay, some worry is resurfacing.
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