Mark Andrews on Saturday: Woke Tufty Club, a barmy baroness, and Piers the pound-shop Paxman
To those who say International Women's Day is just an excuse to wallow in a bit of self-indulgent virtue signalling, it is great to see how Transport for London has seized the initiative with a meaningful change that will make a huge difference to the lives of millions. It has replaced the little green men on pelican crossings with female figures.
And not just any old female figures. It used a diverse range of different profiles to “challenge the common image of a woman in a dress". Which of course is the first thing that comes into everybody's mind when trying to cross the road.
Felicity Luckett, Transport for London's asset operations performance manager (me neither), is 'excited' by the diverse range of figures used. Easily pleased, isn't she?
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Of course, once these things take hold, it's just the thin end of the wedge. Before you know it gender diversity will be an essential part of the Green Cross Code, and the Tufty Club will be updated to ensure grey squirrels are fairly represented.
But isn't Transport for London just a bit behind the curve with this one? I thought we were all supposed to be 'gender neutral' these days.
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Meanwhile Green Party grandee Baroness Jones proposes new laws banning men from going outdoors after 6pm to 'make women a lot safer' and 'lessen discrimination' in the wake of the suspected murder of Sarah Everard.
Aside from the crass insensitivity of turning a possible murder into a cheap battle of the sexes, why are we paying a supposedly senior politician to come up with such ludicrous ideas?
One presumes that if her house catches fire after 6pm, the baroness would only wish to be rescued by a female firefighter. Or maybe fires only take place when those monstrous male creatures are let loose in the community.
I don't have any great desire to see the House of Lords abolished. But if this is the calibre of those sitting on the red benches, it isn't hard to see why some do.
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Are you Team Meghan or Team Palace? Team Piers or Team Weatherman? Forgive my weariness, but I really can't be bothered any more. On the whole I'm more 'Team Bored-With-All-These-Narcissistic-Egos'.
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And for all the yawn-inspiring talk of 'culture wars', the real reason why I can't get too upset about Morgan's exit from Good Morning Britain is nothing to do with his comments about the Duchess, but rather how the latest furore has shown him to be a bit of a prat.
Morgan might consider himself the great interrogator, but the truth is he was always the poor-quality knock-off, the Ratners Robin Day. While the likes of Paxman and Andrew Neil savage politicians with forensic questioning and detailed research, Morgan just talks over them with opportunistic, headline-grabbing soundbites, one eye firmly on his Twitter account.
Then, after one feeble skirmish with the bloke who reads the weather forecast, he flounced off in a huff. Which makes him not so much a rottweiler, and more a Jack Russell which barks at the postman but runs for cover when the door opens.
