VOTING Tory has never been cool.
Forever tainted by mustard corduroys, braying men on horses gunning down foxes and pearl-wearing women in Viyella shirts, the Right — so we’ve been told — are mean, crusty, intolerant bigots.
The liberal Left, meanwhile, care about everyone, are tolerant and fair, and endlessly obsess over the hashtag #BeKind. Which is ironic, because many aren’t.
When Carrie Johnson revealed over Instagram last weekend she was expecting a “rainbow baby” — a term given to a child following a miscarriage — within minutes, toxic social media had crawled into action, spewing forth its venomous bile.
With the hashtag #BorisBaby, first came endless gags about the Prime Minister and his fondness for procreation.
So far, so relatively tame. Insensitive perhaps, but nothing Boris or Carrie haven’t seen or heard before.
But then the rabid Left started to rear their ugly little heads. (Of course, we couldn’t tell if some of them were ugly because, predictably, they were faceless, hiding behind a made-up name, and no identifying photo.)
Carrie, a 33-year-old woman still grieving the death of her unborn baby, was compared to a Nazi. Adolf Hitler was mentioned. A “comedian” made a “gag” about Jimmy Savile.
An imbecile called James tweeted to his 18 followers: “I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a cynical lie to garner sympathy. Gets a few votes, doesn’t it.”
Another user demanded to know, “What are the Tories trying to slip under the radar?” as if Carrie’s announcement was all one cynical ploy to detract from her husband imminently bombing every hospital in the land, or pressing a big red button under his desk and casually destroying the free world.
The conspiracy theories flooded in, possibly as Carrie was reading her one-year-old son Wilfred a bedtime story (or trying to, without her phone alerting her to a new troll every six minutes).
Shamefully, it wasn’t just men attacking her. Women piled in too, with gleeful jokes about nursery room wallpaper — a reference to John Lewis-gate — and crude remarks about the couple’s sex life.
One quipped: “Carrie is a threat to democracy. Girl, focus on your wallpaper.”
What nearly all of these commentators had in common was a Tory-hating stance in their Twitter blogs, or subtle names like “Tories are killing us”.
In a study published five years ago in the journal Social Psychological & Personality Science, findings linked low intelligence to prejudice.
So that’s something for these cretins to mull over. For years, Conservatives have been branded intolerant . . . in the past, often for good reason.
But times have changed, and so have the Tories. In trying to shut down free speech — readily “cancelling” anyone who disagrees with their ideas of what’s acceptable — the Left is becoming increasingly illiberal.
Kindness goes out the window for the sake of cheap political point-scoring. Tribalism has become toxic. It needn’t be.
Whatever you think of environmentalist Carrie or her politician husband, no one can deny they’ve had it tough over the past 18 months.
Carrie was heavily pregnant while Boris was in hospital fighting for his life with Covid — then she caught the virus in the ninth month of her pregnancy. Wherever you sit on the political fence, it’s indefensible to attack young women over something so heartbreaking and so human.
Of course, many normal, decent Labour supporters sent Carrie heartwarming messages of support. Party leader Sir Keir Starmer tweeted: “I’m very sorry to hear of Carrie’s earlier miscarriage.
“I’m sure that her speaking out will be of comfort to others. Every best wish to them both.”
By speaking out about her miscarriage, Carrie — like Meghan Markle before her — has helped many women experiencing similar grief.
The two women have opened the dialogue around a subject still heavily stigmatised. They should be lauded, not lampooned.
WERE this a Disney movie, Scarlett Johansson would surely be playing the angry, hairy-warted, wispy-haired, toothless old witch.
The American actress’s decision to sue the media conglomerate for breach of contract after it streamed her superhero film, Black Widow, at the same time as its cinema release seems, well, slightly villainous.
In the midst of a global pandemic, when cinemas have been shut for months on end, how else could studio bosses have ensured their picture got seen?
Scarlett, an undeniably talented actress, has already made more than£14million from Black Widow.
But when our front-line doctors and nurses are working all the hours God sends, for a paltry 3 per cent rise of not-very-much – and people are dying – this doesn’t sit well.
WERE this a Disney movie, Scarlett Johansson would surely be playing the angry, hairy-warted, wispy-haired, toothless old witch.
The American actress’s decision to sue the media conglomerate for breach of contract after it streamed her superhero film, Black Widow, at the same time as its cinema release seems, well, slightly villainous.
In the midst of a global pandemic, when cinemas have been shut for months on end, how else could studio bosses have ensured their picture got seen?
Scarlett, an undeniably talented actress, has already made more than£14million from Black Widow.
But when our front-line doctors and nurses are working all the hours God sends, for a paltry 3 per cent rise of not-very-much – and people are dying – this doesn’t sit well.
LAST year, a few months after giving birth, Steph McGovern was asked to host a brand new daytime chatshow at the height of lockdown.
And host it from her kitchen. With her baby doing whatever it is babies do, somewhere upstairs.
Not surprisingly, the Channel 4 show got off to a stuttering start. How quick people were to mock.
Blaming Steph’s accent, her interior design, her colourful jumpers, they just about stopped short of accusing her of nipping to a Chinese lab and releasing some bats.
Sixteen months on, Steph’s Packed Lunch has been recommissioned, and it is flying.
Currently on a summer hiatus, the brilliant Middlesbrough-born star has now been snapped back up by the BBC to front a wholesome new show, Walking With…, starting this autumn.
Take that, you cynics.
WHO’D have thunk it? Coffee gets you going in the mornings.
A paper published in journal Current Biology found “caffeine enables worker bees to form associations between floral odour and food”.
Presumably it took a team of PhD students many years of research to decide that proving bumble bees are partial to an Americano is money well spent.
Which just goes to show how stupid very clever people can be.
LOL of the day from Laurence Fox.
Forget his views on the world, the thesp-turned-political activist tweeted a snap of his three dogs lying casually beside a half-eaten five pound note.
“That’s it, I’m done,” he raged. “Red line crossed. All three of the bastards are for sale.”
As someone whose dog recently ate her credit card, so relatable.
LOL of the day from Laurence Fox.
Forget his views on the world, the thesp-turned-political activist tweeted a snap of his three dogs lying casually beside a half-eaten five pound note.
“That’s it, I’m done,” he raged. “Red line crossed. All three of the bastards are for sale.”
As someone whose dog recently ate her credit card, so relatable.
AND still offices aren’t full, trains aren’t commuted on and people work from home, hosting Zoom meetings in pyjamas from the waist down.
Worryingly, a year and a half of Covid seems to have convinced many – especially millennials – that working from home is now not only preferable, but also their God-given right.
Anecdotally, many of my acquaintances are refusing to travel into their workplace, citing lingering fears over the virus.
The same people who are quite happily going to bars, hugging strangers at midnight and posting drunk photos all over Instagram.
Even more worryingly, many under 35s are displaying signs of Stockholm syndrome – convincing themselves they’re genuinely more content holed up at home, living the life of a zombie-recluse.
The government needs to do more to ease these snowflakes back to work.
THE first modern Olympics were held in Athens, in 1896.
A hundred and 20-odd years later, thanks to modern science, athletes now are veritably swimming in tech and state-of-the-art kit.
So it’s strangely cockle-warming to see high jumpers, long jumpers, hurdlers and sprinters all sporting dog-eared bits of paper, sweetly safety-pinned onto their vests, flapping around aimlessly in the wind.
