In the news

If they're doing yorkies and Cumberland sausages why don't they do toad in the hole? This isn't the brexit I voted for.

Videos doing their round on the internets showing residents of Wuhan shouting support to each other from their balconies. Really uplifting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqXfnN76S-I

Wiki says citizen of Aus and GB. #everydayisaschoolday

lord lucan found !

Does 46 years in Oz count as time served?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/28/oscar-mayer-wienermobile-police-stop-wisconsin

Hard to know where to begin here.... https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jan/29/private-schools-criticise-plans-to-get-more-poor-students-into-university

Leading private schools have challenged plans to widen access to the most selective universities in England, warning they could lead to discrimination against young people “on the basis of the class they were born into”.

Leading private schools have challenged plans to widen access to the most selective universities in England, warning they could lead to discrimination against young people “on the basis of the class they were born into”.

What's particularly weird about that statement is that the argument is made later in the article that not everyone who goes to private school is from a privileged background and vice-versa so, apparently, it's not about class.

I don't use, or understand twitter, but something has obviously kicked off here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51300799

Do we know what?

Don’t know what happened but that is definitely his pre-written obituary they’ve rewritten as ‘he fucked up on social media, so has been sacked’.

It's in the Sun.

Quoted Shakespeare, within which the term "angry ape" was contained, at a black dude during a Twitter spat.

Apparently he'd used the same quote before, possibly not aimed at a black person.

Is he a racialist? Who knows.

https://twitter.com/CraigH0151/status/1222575012437164032?s=09

Is he a racialist? Who knows

Tis possible to say or do a racist thing without being a racist I suppose.

In this circumstance, I ask myself how a career media professional could have been so stupid as to direct that at a black person on the internet but here we are...

The first three lines (before the ape bit) are a pretty much perfect description of someone arguing on the internet. Maybe that's what made him overlook the implications of the last line. (applying Hanlon's Razor here)

This would be a more apt quote for Twitter:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Pier Morgan manager to do well being a racist cunts tho.

applying Hanlon's Razor here

This kind of sympathetic reasoned thinking is not welcome on Twitter

Racists are stupid. But stupid doesn't necessarily mean someone is racist. I agree, I don't understand how someone so experienced could make a mistake like that but likewise, I don't believe that he'd have done it intentionally as it's so blatant and in a public forum.

At a guess, it's because humans tend not to think as much as they should and tend to assume the best of themselves when communicating with people.

I.e a non racist privileged white guy may well not consider for a moment that anything they say might be racist.

What would be nice one in a while, is for one of the guys who do something like this to say "fuck me, what I said was really racist and I'm extremely sorry for saying it" rather than try to claim that it wasn't racist.

I mean look at Danny Baker. He's a man who grew up in a area with big race tension problems,with a lot of media experience and who has spent decades supporting anti racism campaigns. He's not a stupid man and he's not a racist.

He did however do something racist then proceed to fail to apologise for it by explaining why it wasn't racist. It's maddening.

More HS2 stuff https://twitter.com/rail/status/1222812020896141314?s=21

Dead leopard on the A646 turned out to be ‘some tart’s coat’

and more https://twitter.com/NetsNot/status/1222098939375226880?s=19

What would be nice one in a while, is for one of the guys who do something like this to say "fuck me, what I said was really racist and I'm extremely sorry for saying it" rather than try to claim that it wasn't racist.

I dunno. That seems to suggest that the intent of the writer plays absolutely no part in this. It also really worries me that the standard call-out has become "how could a career media professional have been so stupid?" because it completely excuses us from the difficult task of making any judgement on whether the accusation of racism was reasonable. Taken on its own (there may be a history for the conversation) the quote he used seems to me to be a comment the nature of all humans. But now the accusation of racism is taken as a sufficiently serious matter to force someone's resignation. It's a bit like the shitshow around that Dove advert a while back.