You Spelled 'Ethnics' Wrong...

...well, it is the dear old 'Grauniad', I suppose.

The culture minister of Nigeria...

Ha ha ha ha ha! Wait, they really have one of those..? 

...has urged the British Museum to follow the example of the Smithsonian Institution, which on Tuesday returned ownership of 29 Benin bronzes to Nigeria at a celebratory event in Washington.

Why? Reminds me of my mum's favourite saying from mt childhood: 'Well, if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you too?' 

“I told them the last time I was in London: it’s not if, it’s when. They will eventually have to return these because the campaign is gaining strength by the day and, when they look at what other museums are doing, they will be compelled to return them.”

Isn't it about time some of these institutions grew a backbone and started saying 'No' and meaning it? 

She's Clearly Not Chosen Honesty Though...

A Rhodes Scholar who won a coveted scholarship at Oxford after claiming she overcame childhood abuse and grew up in foster care has been accused of lying to officials and is in fact the daughter of a radiologist who went to private school.

Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, describes herself as a 'queer, first generation, low income' student at The University of Pennsylvania. In 2020, she was given a scholarship to go to Oxford after dazzling the Rhodes Trust with her story of how she overcame welfare, an abusive mother and the foster care system.

In other words, she saw the boxes and decided to tick them all. After all, why not? It's not like anyone ever checks, clearly: 

But after a November 2020 Philadelphia Inquirer news article about the scholarship, lauded her as a 'first-generation student' who 'has been low-income throughout her life, and grew up in foster care,' an anonymous tipster contacted the Rhodes Trust and UPenn to report her for being 'blatantly dishonest'.

Ooops! 

Now, she has withdrawn from the Rhodes program and UPenn is withholding her masters degree pending further investigation.

Be sure your sins will find you out...but what does mum - sorry, mom - have to say about this? 

In a statement to The Chronicle in light of the scholarship being revoked, Dr. Morrison said of her daughter: 'Mackenzie is deeply loved by her mom and family.

'Our greatest desire is that Mackenzie chooses to live a happy, healthy, honest, and productive life, using her extraordinary gifts for the highest good.'

She could go into politics or journalism, I guess. She seems eminently qualified.  

How About 'Errr, No, Melanie'..?

The education system needs to be “torn down and rebuilt”...

Amen! 

...so it can better support those who are autistic...

Wait, what? Which wackademic has been spouting this nonsense? 

...the TV presenter Melanie Sykes has said.

Oh... 

Discussing her recent diagnosis at the age of 51, which she announced earlier this week, Sykes reflected on the struggles she has faced throughout her youth and career, some of which she had previously put down to being northern and a “straight talker”.

Most 'straight talking Northerners' that I know wouldn't be whining at the age of 51 about how awful their schooldays were... 

“I left school at 15, and I just thought I was less mature than the others, but I now know the education system wasn’t set up in a way that I was able to function there. It crowbars you into a certain way of thinking and being, and if you don’t fit the bill you get left behind. That’s why we need to tear down the education system and rebuild it, so it suits everyone.”

Which is pretty impossible to ever achieve, as a few seconds thought would have told you. 

She says she’s keen to use her profile to incite change: “My activism has massively kicked in.”

Well, with a stellar profile like that, you're bound to ... err... what have you done, exactly? 

How Are You Enjoying Reaping That Whirlwind, Universities..?

An academic who was sacked after calling a Right-wing commentator a 'house n***o' is suing the university which cut ties with her for...

Breach of contract? Unfair dismissal?

...discrimination against her belief in critical race theory and black radicalism.

Hahahahahaha! 

The case could see black radicalism - an academic movement which argues race is a social construct used to oppress minorities - made into a protected belief system, like religious belief.

Well, they can't say they never saw this coming, can they?  

Ms Khanom is being supported by Professor Kehinde Andrews, who branded Churchill a 'white supremacist', arguing the term 'house n***o' is not a 'racial slur' but a 'concept that come out (sic) of struggles for racial justice'.

Is there some grift involved, because there usually is? 

On an online fundraising page created to raise £5,000 to cover her legal costs, Ms Khanom claimed she was the victim of a 'network of alt-Right activists'.

Ah. There it is! 

She wrote: 'LBU's conduct towards me suggests that academics should be looking over their shoulder before they make statements about Israel and Palestine, or about critical race theory. That is why this case and LBU's role in it is not just about me and my reputation as an anti-racist.

'Fundamentally, this is an important issue of freedom of speech.'

Oh, you're not wrong there. But not the way you think.... 

Ms Khanom said the tweets were not sent by her, adding: 'No academic should find their contract terminated so publicly in the absence of a fair and thorough investigation.'

I don't recall you being so supportive of Maya Forstater or Dr Binoy Sobnack or Bo Winegard...maybe I missed the press releases? 

The Pace Of Change...

The death knell has been sounded for the traditional landline telephone. From 2025, all households and businesses will need the internet to make calls under a major digital shake-up.

It means millions of customers will be pushed online for the first time or forced to rely on a mobile phone instead.

Can you still call them 'customers' when they've not got a choice? 

Strangly, this isn't being pushed by the Tory government's relentless 'change everything' policies, for once:

Those without internet may need an engineer to visit their home to get them set up and those with older phones could need to buy a new handset.

Industry insiders compared the move to the switch to digital TV in 2012, when broadcasters stopped transmitting traditional analogue signals to household rooftop or indoor aerials. But while that change was led by the Government, the switch to 'digital' calls is being driven by the telecoms industry.

And while it's not going to affect me much, since my landline merely serves to generate spam calls and 'Microsoft engineers' who want me to go online to fix things on my computer (I just laugh and hang up) there are real fears for a lot of customers:

...experts have raised concerns that millions of older and vulnerable households which are not online, do not use a mobile phone or live in a rural area with poor connectivity are at risk of being left behind.

One thing's for sure - this is to benefit the providers of the service, not the consumers of it. 

Is It 'Justice' You Want, Or Someone With Deep Pockets To Blame?

Sonali Bhattacharyya, a volunteer with the Justice for Belly campaign group, said campaigners were calling for an inquest into her death and a public inquiry to determine if GTR was culpable.

She said: “We’re here today on the first anniversary of Belly Mujinga’s death, united in anger and grief.

“A year on, and her family still have no answers. They still wait for justice.”

But they do have answers. They just aren't the ones they want... 

A lawyer for Mrs Mujinga’s family, Lawrence Davies, said the force had refused to disclose the suspect’s name, preventing them from pursuing a private prosecution and further civil claims.

Because there's no evidence that the supposed incident had anything to do with her death, and a lot - specifically, a negative covid test - that it didn't: 

BTP asked the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to review the evidence and look into whether there were any further lines of inquiry, but prosecutors ruled out homicide charges.

CCTV footage of the interaction, which lasted around 15 seconds, was said to not show any conclusive evidence a criminal offence took place, while results from a Covid-19 test on March 25 confirmed the suspect had not been infected with the virus.

DNA evidence from Mrs Mujinga’s clothing was inconclusive, while witness accounts did not provide a consistent enough picture to bring charges, according to the CPS.

So what sort of 'justice' is it that you - or more accurately, the leeches battening on to you - want to see, exactly? 

Well, You've Convinced Me...

Yaa Gyasi, a novelist apparently, and one can only hope she writes more coherently than in this whine for the 'Guardian':

I was thinking about that driver’s words again last summer as news poured in about the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. I was thinking about the way in which white people, in order to justify their own grotesque violence, so often engage in a kind of fiction, an utterly insidious denialism that creates the reality it claims to protest. By which I mean an unwillingness to see the violence that is actually happening before you because of a presumption of violence that might happen, is itself a kind of violence. What exactly can a man with a knee on his neck do, what can a sleeping woman do to deserve their own murder?

Well, on the one hand, be a convicted career criminal who held a gun to a pregnant woman's belly, and on the other, be the ex-girlfriend of a drug dealer and sleeping with a man who shoots at the police when they enter with a warrant.  

You've never heard that expression 'Lie down with dogs, wake up with 9mm bullet holes', Yaa?

So many of the writers of colour that I know have had white people treat their work as though it were a kind of medicine. Something they have to swallow in order to improve their condition, but they don’t really want it, they don’t really enjoy it, and if they’re being totally honest, they don’t actually even take the medicine half the time.

You've convinced me your brand of snake oil isn't worth taking, that's for sure. I won't be buying your opus. Or reading it for free, either.

The Amazonian Supermarket Elephant In The Room...

A petition signed by more than 1,500 people so far, including more than 100 Waterstones workers and backed by names including author Philip Pullman, has been published on Organise.

Addressed to Waterstones managing director James Daunt and chief operating officer Kate Skipper, it says that the majority of Waterstones staff are employed either on or very close to the minimum wage, and that upon being furloughed, they find themselves “plunged beneath this line and into financial uncertainty”.

Like so many in this pointlessly destructive lockdown. What are their demands? 

“We understand the impact that Covid has had on the business and that the high street is in a precarious position. We are not asking for a full top-up, not that we are paid a great deal above minimum wage – simply that incomes are made back up to this safety line,” the bookseller who organised the petition, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Guardian.

More money. From a business that's not making any. Well, that's sensible...not! 

Skipper told the Guardian that “we have great sympathy” with the petition. “Only the extreme circumstances of prolonged, enforced closure of our shops, with no certainty of the timing of their reopening, has caused the furlough of our booksellers in this manner,” she said.

“It would be much better if we were in a position to pay our booksellers their full salaries, even as we keep our shops closed. With no clarity for how long this crisis will last, this would not be prudent. We look forward to reopening and bringing our booksellers back to work. Then we will have certainty and are pleased that we will be able to give well deserved pay rises.”

Couldn't be clearer. After all, lockdown isn't the entire cause of Waterstone's issues. We're still buying books. Indeed, more than ever before. 

Just not from them:

Book sales figures, which include online as well as high-street trade, have remained robust in the face of the pandemic.

Last month, market monitor Nielsen BookScan reported that, despite the series of lockdowns around the UK, the volume of print books sold grew by 5.2% to 202m in 2020.

Demanding more money from a business that's fighting for its own life is the height of folly. You'd think someone at the 'Guardian' would figure that out, even if the staff can't. 

The Art Of The Hustle...

Sturridge and his partner Jamilla Ferreira rented an £18,500-per-month Cheshire mansion from Alan O'Neill and his wife Katie in October 2018, during the footballer's six-year stint at Liverpool.

But, less than two months after they moved in, Sturridge and Ms Ferreira discovered a profile called 'n*****' when they accessed the O'Neills' Netflix app on their Apple TV account.

It belonged to the O'Niell's young son. A fan of rap music, apparently. And O'Neil apologised for any offence (though you'd think a footballer would be able to afford his own Netflix account). 

That should have been the end of it. 

Reader, it wasn't, of course...

Sturridge and Ms Ferreira sent Mr and Mrs O'Neill a letter on December 10, stating that their older children were in the wrong if they had ignored the existence of the account.

The letter, reported in The Times, read: 'Your son can play act this word, but at the end of the day he goes back to his privileged "white skin" existence.'

Because being able to rent a mansion isn't in any way 'privileged'... 

Correspondence between the families became heated when the O'Neills pursued Sturridge in the county court for £67,000 of unpaid rent.

Sturridge paid the rent in July 2019 but then filed a different claim for damages 'in respect of the defendants' discrimination against them and/or harrassment on the grounds of their race'.

Well, of course! But turns out he's a better footballer than he is a gambler: 

Just days before the discovery of the account in November, Sturridge had been charged with allegedly breaching FA betting rules. He was slapped with a £75,000 fine and was banned for six weeks - but four of the weeks were suspended.

And now a judge has dismissed their £100,000 claim for damages and discrimination. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.