Peter Rhodes on sea views, trans models and the dirty old game of politics
There was a time when estate agents used “sea view” with abandon when selling coastal properties. Today, the rules on sales descriptions are stricter which probably explains the cottage in Devon currently for sale “with estuary glimpses”.
I recall once viewing a rambling old house which, according to the agent's bumf, had a “thoughtful alcove”.
The distinguished columnist Judith Woods confesses: “I don't understand why Nike chose a trans influencer to promote a sports bra.”
No? It's really very simple.
If Nike had used a conventional female model, it might have produced a couple of paragraphs in the national press and a bit of a splash in Bras Weekly. By choosing a trans influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, Nike taps into the Great Trans Debate and gets its name and its new bra splashed over the world's TV channels, glossy magazines and newspapers. Judith Woods gives it an extra 600 words and, I regret to report, it cops a further 111 words in this column. What suckers we are.
The chief purpose of the Royal Air Force is, to use a definition once given to me by an SAS trooper,“to kill the Queen's enemies”. Let us hope, in these dangerous times, that the head of the RAF, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, doesn't lose sight of that in his crusade to test “the limit of the law” to improve diversity in the force. It is good to know that the RAF has the will to become a fully multicultural, gender-blind, fair and compassionate organisation. But does it still have the will to kill?
Dirty game, politics. The latest Labour tweets suggest that Rishi Sunak is soft on child abusers. It's scandalous, of course, but it's not so different from Boris Johnson's spikey suggestion that Keir Starmer was responsible for not prosecuting Jimmy Savile.
The danger for MPs indulging in such personal attacks is that it makes every politician fair game. For example, the anti-Sunak tweet was defended as “a legitimate question" by Labour's shadow attorney general, Emily Thornberry.
Thornberry? Isn't she the one who sneers at people who fly the Union Jack? Legitimate question, innit?
