Is Sophie Edinburgh really such a terrorism target that she needs a huge and costly police entourage?

In 62 years of driving I have had five speeding tickets, one accident, never been breathalysed and never gone through a red light. And, thank God, I have never killed an innocent 81-year-old woman on a pedestrian crossing.

Sadly, PC Christopher Harrison has when his motorcycle hit and fatally injured great-grandmother Helen Holland two years ago while she was attempting to cross West Cromwell Road in Earl’s Court, London. He had been doing between 44 and 58 mph in a 30 limit and, when he collided with Mrs Holland, who was legally 10 feet into the busy carriageway, his speed was between 33 and 38 mph. Last week at the Old Bailey he was found not guilty of careless driving.

Why? Solely, it would seem, because he was one of four motorcycle outriders and two escorting cars of the police Special Escort Group clearing the way for the Duchess of Edinburgh’s journey from a briefing at the Foreign Office to her next appointment, Evensong at the Chapel Royal, Windsor.

Mrs Holland’s family, understandably, are not happy and are suing the Met. I hope they are successful because the idea that the Royals and many senior politicians can be driven at high speed through the capital and elsewhere while the rest of the traffic is stopped, red lights and zebra crossings ignored and high pitched whistles telling the rest of us that some VIP is on their way to Evensong is outrageous. And it is a symptom of a country whose priorities are all over the place.

I have no doubt Sophie Edinburgh does good works for charity but is she really such a target for an assassin that four motorcycle outriders, all of them armed, plus two unmarked police cars containing marksmen, are needed to take her from A to B? And at what cost? We pay between £80 and £100 per hour for these specialist cops depending on whether they are a constable or a sergeant. So the duchess’ round trip would have been in the region of £1,500 for the motorcyclists alone plus the cost of those in the two cars. Maybe a total of £4,000.

But that is for just one official trip. She might well have had more that day as did the rest of the Royals, government ministers and other senior politicians. Every time any one of them steps into their chauffeured car the group proceeds before and aft, halting traffic and jumping red lights. Is this really necessary? 

There are 11 working royals ranging from the King down to Admiral Timothy Laurence, Princess Anne’s husband, and you only have to look at the Court Circular’s list of engagements to know that the cost runs into tens of millions just for the Family. But the cost, which is not disclosed, should be the secondary consideration compared with the issue of safety. I’m not thinking of the safety of pampered royals but of the tax-paying public trying to get about.

If, as we are told, Prince William is determined to overhaul the Monarchy when he succeeds his father, then this should be on his Most Urgent list. It can’t come soon enough.

Footnote: More than 40 years ago I was in the car immediately behind the hearse containing my uncle, a senior church leader in Ulster whose funeral was attended by politicians including Northern Ireland Secretary Jim Prior and two archbishops. The convoy of cars from the service in Belfast to the family burial plot eight miles away down the Co Down coast was driven at a very unfunerial 60 mph. All lights were at green and even at the height of the Troubles it seemed to me to be way OTT. 

*****

Lord Drone has received a letter from Alejandro Brito with an address (appropriately you might think) at 2121 Ponce de Leon, Coral Gables, Florida. Mr Brito claims to act for Donald J Trump who in turn purports to be President of the USA. His lordship passed the letter, marked urgent, to the editor who then shuffled it on to me in his inimitable style with a note: "I can't be arsed — over to you." 

This is the Brito letter:

'This law firm serves as litigation counsel for President Donald J Trump. This correspondence serves as a demand under Florida Statute 9770.011 for you to retract the false, defamatory, damaging and inflammatory statements made over the last year by Alan Frame in his Random Jottings column. He has used words and phrases to describe the President including, but not limited to, the following:

‘Evil, Agent Orange, buffoon, crooked, thick, double bankrupt, felon, serial groper, tasteless, draft dodger, fat waster, pompadoured poltroon, idiot and corrupt.

‘Our client has suffered great personal, reputational and financial harm. Under Florida law, words are defamatory when they tend to subject one to hatred, distrust, ridicule, contempt or disgrace or tend to injure one in one’s profession or business. Failure to issue a full retraction by November 21, 2025 at 5pm EST President Trump will be left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights by filing legal action for no less than ten billion dollars ($10,000,000,000). The Daily Drone is on notice.

‘Please govern yourself accordingly’.

My reply: I am truly sorry I didn’t make myself as clear as one more forthright correspondent in the US did. This was his assessment:

“The sleaze of a con man, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back alley creep, the stupidity of a barstool drunk, the gluttony of a hedge fund ghoul spray-painted orange and paraded like a county fair hog, not a President, not even a man, just the diseased distillation of everything this country isn’t but swears it always has been, arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, corruption worshipped as gospel. It is America’s  shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when the nation kneels before money, power and spite it doesn’t just lose its soul, it shits out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader.”

Back to me: I would add that it is estimated that Trump has made more than $1billion since returning to the White House in January. He runs his presidency not for his country or for the safety of the world (of which he is supposed to be leader) but for the bank balances of his family, his billionaire cronies and himself. Particularly himself. His hobby is suing the media and anyone who dares to disagree with him. He has reduced a great country to one led, not just by a laughing stock which he is, but one led by a villain, dangerously and terminally drunk with vanity and self importance.

Where is the America of Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Ike, JFK, Clinton and Obama? Or even of that old crook Nixon? None of them a saint but compared with Trump they seem it now.  In Stanley Kramer’s 1961 masterpiece Judgment at Nuremberg the defendant Dr Ernst Janning said:“I was content to be silent when there was fear in the land, fear of our neighbours, and Hitler said: ‘Be proud to be Germans but there are enemies within, there are devils, Jews, Communists, liberalists. And that was when the horrors began and I stayed silent’.”

He could have been talking, not of the rise of the Nazis but of the MAGA movement and the madness of Trump.

That is my apology Mr Brito. I hope your client will accept it as true and fair 

*****

AND FINALLY

I was at the leaving do for lovely Jane Warren who had been with the old firm for 34 years and it was good to see old friends like Maureen Paton, Caroline Hendrie, Louise Robinson, Virginia Urquhart-Stewart and Jeremy Gates. But I was shocked when talking to the poor buggers still toiling at the Express to discover that with the departure of Jane, there is now just ONE staff feature writer. Oh, and virtually no budget for freelancers. We really never did have it so good.

ALAN FRAME

18 November 2025