Take a deep breath.
The BBC is encouraging all its staff to be be more sensitive to transgender and non-binary colleagues in emails, and include the pronouns they’d like to be called by in their email signatures.
If I were to email, say, Jeremy Vine, I would stipulate at the end of it that I’d like to be referred to as ‘she or her’.
Jeremy would reply he was comfortable being called ‘he or him’ — or I imagine he would.
The BBC is encouraging all its staff to be be more sensitive to transgender and non-binary colleagues in emails, and include the pronouns they’d like to be called by in their email signatures
Should either Jeremy/he or Amanda/she be transitioning or non-binary, however, each of us should indicate so in the email, the BBC suggests — saying, perhaps, we’d prefer to be called ‘they’ or ‘them’.
What utter navel-gazing, virtue-signalling madness.
We have a BBC facing an existential crisis, threatened by the rise of Netflix, Amazon, Disney and other channels.
A BBC bleating about underfunding, so short of cash it has caused outrage by scrapping free TV licences for more than three million over-75s, many of them poor.
And what appears to be its preoccupation? Not programme quality and cost efficiency — but diversity.
In fact, Auntie has just announced it is to spend £100 million on increasing diversity. Of course that’s a noble aim.
Should either Jeremy Vine (pictured)/he or Amanda/she be transitioning or non-binary, however, each of us should indicate so in the email, the BBC suggests — saying, perhaps, we’d prefer to be called ‘they’ or ‘them’
Of course transgender and non-binary people deserve our respect and acknowledgement.
But is it right to ‘kick over-75s in the teeth’ — Age UK’s words — over the licence fee, while lavishing a fortune on ‘under-represented groups’?
Or to ‘encourage’ all 22,000 BBC employees to declare their preferred pronoun, when just 400 or so of them identify as transgender?
The BBC argues it is just a gesture, not a requirement for staff to sign emails in this way.
We have a BBC facing an existential crisis, threatened by the rise of Netflix, Amazon, Disney and other channels
But we live in a world tyranised by minorities.
A world in which if you don’t bend the knee to BLM you’re decried as a racist; in which, if you question whether someone born female can ever truly be a man, you are labelled transphobic; in which if you don’t declare your pronoun, you could equally be called transphobic.
Most of us don’t give a damn if someone is trans, gay, straight or undecided.
But to try to pressure people into declaring their gender identity is a deeply invasive charter for those nursing grievances to take offence.
Stars sank to new Depp-ths
How creepy that Johnny Depp’s ex-wife Amber Heard compiled a dossier of photographic evidence of his grotesque behaviour even before they wed in 2015.
Exhibit one: a 2014 picture of his table at lunch, with four lines of cocaine, whisky and a newspaper.
Exhibit one: a 2014 picture of Johnny Depp’s table at lunch, with four lines of cocaine, whisky and a newspaper, creepily compiled as photographic evidence by ex-wife Amber Heard
Would any self-respecting addict have left those lines of coke untouched and the whisky undrunk? Did she put a newspaper on the table to prove the date — like the Mafia did to prove their victim was still alive?
Who knows? The only thing that IS clear is how gruesome they both are.
Cheap shoes, Zeta?
Catherine Zeta-Jones has launched a new Goop lifestyle branch offering ‘compassionate’ vegan shoes for £50
Our adorable darling bud Catherine Zeta-Jones launches her new Goop lifestyle brand offering ‘passionate’ make-up, coffee and ‘compassionate’ vegan shoes.
The slip-ons are a snip at £50, made to appeal to the new woke generation who can’t remember her from her hit TV series in the early 1990s.
I guess that’s what you do when you haven’t had a hit movie since 2013.
After 50 years, our most-loved fish fingers have replaced their iconic fisherman Captain Birdseye with, you guessed it, a woman.
Adorable as 24-year-old foster mum Charlotte Carter-Dunn is, I bet a bottle of rum she’s never caught or gutted a fish in her life. What next? KFC’s Colonel Sandra?
Our sins…and wins
Embracing the BLM movement, Harry and Megs said from their grace-and-favour £15 million LA mansion that the Commonwealth can only move forward if we acknowledge the sins of the past.
I concur.
My great grandfather, Isaac, the son of a German refugee, worked his passage on a ship from Liverpool to Australia, aged 14 — that’s slave labour.
Embracing the BLM movement, Harry and Megs said from their grace-and-favour £15 million LA mansion that the Commonwealth can only move forward if we acknowledge the sins of the past
He had five children, who had more than 30 grandchildren — my generation — who became teachers, doctors, plumbers, dentists, pharmacists, hairdressers and me.
While revisiting the sins of the past, perhaps we should also acknowledge the opportunities that the Commonwealth gave to kids like my great grandad Isaac.
I’ve been humming the theme tune to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly since the death of its composer Ennio Morricone.
It was the first movie date I ever went on, aged 15.
Dad, 6ft 1in, told my 5ft 4in suitor Craig: ‘Be good to Mandy or I’ll turn bad and it will be ugly for you.’
Never saw Craig again, wha, wha whawhaaaa . . .
Westminster wars
No wonder Boris sat smugly as Dishy Rishi handed out another windfall, taking the CV bill to £350 billion and our national debt to £2 trillion.
More from Amanda Platell for The Daily Mail…
With the Chancellor way ahead of the PM in the polls, Boris knows that money tree will turn into a cactus when Sunak has to announce crippling tax rises to pay for it all.
The posh boys who run the Government showed their true colours when Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden revealed his £1.5 billion arts bailout.
He’s ruled out Christmas pantos, a lifeblood for regional playhouses, while encouraging opera houses and theatres — so we can enjoy Puccini and Pinter, but not Widow Twankey. As for Olly’s career, I’d humbly suggest it’s behind him.
Theresa May has earned £1 million on the lecture circuit since she stood down as PM a year ago, following a disastrous conference speech when she lost her voice and a letter fell off the slogan on a backdrop.
Are her speeches being sponsored by cough sweets and superglue?
Killing Eve’s bisexual Villanelle was ‘cancelled’ on social media when Jodie Comer started dating Republican James Burke.
Her critics said it was ‘disgusting’ that she plays an LGBT character while consorting with a Trump supporter.
What idiots. Just because he’s a Republican, doesn’t mean he supports Trump — I’m a Conservative yet don’t support Boris.
And how magnificently Villanelle it was that Jodie responded by posting a picture of her and James together. A hairpin in the eyeball for her critics.
Met misses a beat
The Met was happy to handcuff Team GB athlete Bianca Williams and her partner, sprinter Ricardo dos Santos, in front of their three-month-old son during a dubious stop and search
The Met allows angry mobs to run riot in the capital as it turns tail, yet is happy to handcuff Team GB athlete Bianca Williams and her partner, sprinter Ricardo dos Santos, in front of their three-month-old son during a dubious stop and search.
Last word to The Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde, a resident of Maida Vale, North London, where the arrest took place.
She says after a surge of violence in the area when ‘there has been no protection at all, now hordes of police are pulling over innocent citizens.
Can police start patrolling the gangs and leave parents to do their shopping’.