White Fragility
Amidst everything, some things still have the capacity to shock. According to the National Army Museum, the skin colour of the Unknown Warrior interred in Westminster Abbey may have been white. Troops from across the British Empire fought and died on the Western Front and were officially eligible to become the Unknown Warrior, whose secretly chosen remains were interred at Westminster Abbey in 1920. But the National Army Museum says “unconscious bias” means it’s likely that they were fair skinned. All right-thinking people had assumed up to this point that the body was that of a black trans-woman. Now we know it’s not, is there any point celebrating Remembrance Day? What are we remembering except racism, imperialism and distasteful jokes about German sausages?

Right Whingers
Tampax came under fire from nasty right-wing trolls for pointing out the fact that not all people who have periods are women. Apparently it’s still controversial to say in [current year] that men can get periods. Thankfully Twitter is fighting back against similar bigotry and has suspended an account for saying “only females get cervical cancer”. This is the commitment to reality, and fact-checking, we need from social media giants. Anyone who says anything else is a bigoted Russian bot.

They are not amused
You’ll be forgiven condemned for missing International Pronouns day last week but thankfully the NHS, the Police, and the BBC didn’t forget. It comes but once a year and is there to gently coerce people into abandoning normal outdated English words like “he” or “she”, or to at least instead use them in an affirming way, that makes them seem bizarre inclusive. A Psychology student and the NHS’s “non-binary lead” Eddy (he/they) explained that he/they doesn’t feel safe “bring[ing] my whole self to work” unless he/they’s colleagues “use their pronouns in signatures”, and “when they introduce themselves”. Not to be out-virtue signalled, the BBC’s homework helper service Bitesize also tweeted out a supportive message suggesting to children how they could be an “ally” of somebody who had changed their pronouns but had to delete their tweet after the bigoted majority of people (probably Brexit voters with only ungraduate degrees) replied with hatecrime.

Le Chocolate Teapot
In the midst of lockdown Arts Council England generously chose to give £200,000 out of the Coronavirus recovery fund to a solo drag act from Brighton: Le Gateau Chocolat. Guido Fawkes points out that this is twice the annual turnover of the performer and seven times the average UK salary which not only proves how worthy he is to receive the funds, but also cements the status of Arts Council England as an appropriate deliverer of taxpayer money. I think it’s one of those jokes where if you don’t get it, it’s on you. Presumably in relation to the hand-out the ever-modest Mr. Chocolat tweeted: “The gov have empty the coffers- not to feed poor children or support people in lockdown – but to line the pockets of friends & reward mediocrity.” Some might think this a tad churlish, and that really, one shouldn’t pettishly bat away the hand that supplies your mascara. But those people are prudes and squares and almost certainly subscribers to the TPA newsletter. So we shall think no more about them.

Northern Rock
Sadly it seems only 6% of Leeds residents want the statues of historical figures in the city to be removed after a Labour-run council review into public monuments found no statue with direct links to the slave trade. Would it have killed Leeds council to look a bit harder? Or even poll a bit harder? One must only assume the survey was not restricted to council employees and those who had previously expressed an interest in BLM. Alison Lowe – Leeds’ first black female city councillor and the chairwoman of the review – failed to spot the opportunity to dismantle hegemonic white supremacy and should surely be reviewed for re-education herself.

Entire country furious
If any evidence was needed that the Tories are trying to take over the BBC, one need only look at the evil right-wing commitment to “impartiality” that has been imposed on it from the new Director General. Twitter (which accurately reflects public opinion) was aghast to discover the new rules included things like: “Do not mistake social media networks as accurate reflections of public opinion; your audience is overwhelmingly elsewhere” and “Avoid ‘virtue signaling’ – retweets, likes or joining online campaigns to indicate a personal view, no matter how apparently worthy the cause.”  Both clear indications that our beloved Auntie is being sacrificed on the altar of letting viewers make up their own minds. What next? Letting them decide whether they want to pay for the Corporation? No, someone needs to draw a line somewhere: I want to be told what to think by the brightest and the best, and failing that, Lewis Goodall.