It’s Pride Month once again – a season that, I can only imagine, inspires terror in corporate leaders across the land. For any sizeable company, these are treacherous waters: the Pride flag is becoming increasingly embarrassing and toxic, yet companies still have to publicly ‘celebrate’ Pride, like some kind of Festivus, or face a backlash from Stonewall, a downgrade in their ESG rating, angry articles in the Guardian and minor politicians lamenting things.
This puts company directors in a difficult spot. They have to do something to appear to support drag queen story hour for kids, but not so much as to hack off their ‘bigoted’ customers. Finding that line can be tricky. A year or two back, my bank decided to transform their app icon on my phone into a rainbow flag for the entire month, but possibly in response to a lot of ‘technical feedback’ they haven’t tried it since.
The delivery company DPD came out of the gates a little enthusiastically this year, having decided to bedeck their app with rainbows. Given the economic climate, this could be stunningly brave, but I wouldn’t have noticed it were it not for the fact that Quentin and Boudica’s parcel was two hours late. (Those are our obligatory journalistic pets, who – being respectable obligate carnivores – don’t eat supermarket catfood when they’re not committing ecocide in the garden.)
Anyway, I opened up the app to see where the delivery driver had got to, using their handy GPS map gizmo. The reason for the late arrival of our driver, Peter, became immediately apparent. Rather than the usual van icon, the app was showing that – during this month of celebration – he now bestrode a rainbow unicorn. Daintily, I suppose. And while I was glad to have that information, which additionally allowed me to infer that (in order to have tamed this mythological creature) he must in fact be a trans-male or at least a non-binary asexual whose preferred pronouns I could therefore narrow down a little, nevertheless it was slightly unsettling that my house – which is normally indicated quite conventionally – was now covered by a gigantic pride flag, replete with BLM colours.
Waves of guilt ought to have immediately washed over me. You see, if there were any social justice in the world, I would be triggered by the Pride flag, being heterosexual, white, middle-class (look at the names of our kittens), able-bodied (before around 8pm) and also living in the Lake District – an area notorious for these horrendous traits and therefore indicative of bad character, according to the national park’s chief executive. But instead of writing a cheque to help cover some of the reparations for Peter Rabbit, or repenting that we’ve been misgendering Quentin for months (ever since the vet told us he is, in fact, female), I got in touch with DPD’s customer services and had a polite moan at someone called Prakash, in probably the worst colonialist tradition.
After a tense few moments during which he contacted his supervisor and we wondered if we were going to be blacklisted – sorry, cancelled – Prakash returned with words to the effect of: “No, there is no setting in the app to enable you to turn off the cryptozoological icons and the gay flag.” Of course, being a cryptozoological Anglo-Saxon myself, I had to repress my disappointment that he didn’t automatically address me as sahib, and wept for Empire. But a couple of days later, when I finally came around and started writing this article, I discovered there is now such a setting. They call it “switch to default theme” – but they should really call it “bigotry mode”, because that’s what we are, aren’t we? At least, that’s what Fraser Longden, the COO of Wickes, has said.
Of course, given the backlash, the directors of Wickes can’t have done a proper Pride Month risk assessment before allowing their COO to make that statement; but despite this lapse, Longden may be right to say that people like us shouldn’t be welcome in Wickes’ stores – after all, their ESG rating is languishing at a mere 99.8%. To get that coveted extra 0.2%, they probably need to extend the full diversity, inclusion and equity programme to include the customers, too. Perhaps some kind of social credit system, or at least snobbish staff, would help to ensure their customers don’t undermine the real goal of the company in advancing societal change. Why, for instance, is it still easier for a gender-critical person to get into Wickes than to get a reservation at Dorsia?
Of course, a big problem facing Wickes is that excluding gender-critical customers from their stores (as the COO seems to suggest they would) is illegal – just as excluding black people or Hindus would be. I therefore propose – in addition to boycotting their products – that next weekend, we go to our own local Wickes store, and in a polite and completely non-violent and lawful way express the view that a man can’t be a woman to a member of staff, and ask if they’re going to throw us out of the store because of that. Record everything on camera, of course, and let’s see how that turns out.
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Can we stop with these so-called AI images please. Isn’t the real thing bad enough?
Yep! the sort of face you find on an advert for a circus, then I thought, that, perhaps it is.
I admit that probably wasn’t my best effort. Creating good AI images turns out to be harder than it looks.
I enjoy your AI efforts. It’s just freaky how indistinguishable they are from reality!
Which is scary as virtual reality is where the woke live, and virtual reality is not the true reality. Here endeth the umpteenth lesson from the book of life. Nice one Mog’.
Never the less it works, and did its job. Well done
Aye, it’s hard getting other people or things to do the job you want. As an experienced consultant, I can tell you that you’re likely to get what I think you’ve asked for rather than what you actually asked for and definitely not what you think you’ve asked for. Although the invoice value will be the same in all cases.
No pro war pro globalist narrative article today then !
We all need a diversion love.
One of my son’s girlfriends had a ‘clown phobia’ which manifested one Hallowe’en when other son got done up in the garb ahead of a night out on the town. I’d never previously heard of clown phobias but I’m beginning to understand how she felt: I’m getting odd symptoms of unease and nausea (nearly an anagram!) whenever I see such examples of drag ‘Womanface’ like this.
Can we call it bigotry against women yet, or do we have to wait a while? It certainly offends me but that doesn’t seem to matter.
I shall look forward to hearing how further boycotting ( hopefully anyway ) hurts woke Wickes in the future, the same as these other companies in the U.S;
”Grab a Yuengling and join me in a toast to the patriots who have let Target, Anheuser-Busch, and Kohl’s know that “Go woke, go broke” is not just a slogan. The three corporate giants all famously kowtowed to the Leftist agenda over the last few months, and now they’re feeling the pain for having done so: they’ve lost a collective $28.7 billion in market value since the beginning of April, when Bud Light ads featuring the obnoxious fake woman and publicity hound Dylan Mulvaney first appeared.
Axios reported Friday that “Corporate America is finding itself trapped between society’s progressive impulses, and the conservative backlash.” Note how the woke “journalists” try to tilt the playing field in their favor: Axios would have us believe that the “progressive” impulses, by which they mean the Left’s obsession with sexual deviance and perversion, as well as with socialism and internationalism, are coming from “society.” The “conservative backlash,” on the other hand, isn’t coming from “society” at all. So if you want to be on the side of “progress” and of the societal consensus, you should support the Leftist corporations, and not the patriots who are standing up to their efforts to push Leftism upon us instead of just contenting themselves with selling their products.”
https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2023/06/17/celebrate-good-times-come-on-patriotic-boycotts-cost-woke-corporations-28-billion-in-market-value-n1704126
Yuengling has beencorrupted too….
Honestly, listen to this 3min conversation that was covertly recorded at a school between a teacher and pupils. The teacher is trying and failing to brainwash these kids with gender ideology BS and should be sacked, the kids are challenging her blatant attempt at indoctrination and deserve a medal. Kudos to their parents!
https://twitter.com/TPointUK/status/1670145753669410816
Many, many thanks Mogs. There is hope yet. The principal student in this exchange had guts, real guts.
The teacher should of course be sacked.
The teacher resorted to “I’m going to report you to the Indoctrination Head” for wrong-think and wrong-speak.
Absolutely disgraceful that this kind of b0ll0cks is being taught in school.
Most teachers are only following what their Head/Principles are directing them to do. Me I would demand the head and the teacher are sacked – two with one bullet.
From the mouths of babes…
Good on those children determined to recognise the truth.
Shame on the teacher for promoting misinformation and then the subsequent threats of reporting the children if they don’t conform.
What a dishonourable profession teaching has become.
“Shame on the teacher for promoting misinformation”
I am not a fan of using the language of the oppressors such as “misinformation.” The correct words are lies / lying.
The teacher was lying.
I stand corrected. You are right. They are lies.
Cheers.
I tried to listen to that but it was just too repetitive. Gender is a made-up category and obviously doesn’t have any relation to biology because it has been made up in this way. Gender theory is principally based on the idea that humans have no innate behaviour but are just playing arbitrary roles they’ve chosen to play. This is wrong as all animals have innate behaviours, eg, a territorial instinct or belonging to a certain group of people one happens to be related to and not belonging to certain other groups of people. Other innate behaviours relate to bringing up young animals and these tend to be more elaborate when this requires a lot of time and effort.
Everyone looking at the attached image will immediately recognize this as what it is: A family with father, mother and kids. Forming families is apparently an innate behaviour for swans. But claiming that it’s also an innate behaviour for humans is bordering what the nature-haters like to call hate crime. And that’s simply insane. These people are crazy and everyone else is supposed to suffer because of this.
They are crazy, credulous and the useful idiots of a very evil ,ambitious, control agenda.
Why am I a bigot because I am offended by perverts waving their penises in front of children, mental illness, perverts and perversion, sodomy, AIDs, child porn, child abuse, child sex attacks, and a culture of drugs, poverty and illiteracy? If bigotry is equated to morality, reality, heterosexuality, masculinity and higher IQ than fine call me a bigot, a phobe, an -ist, and all the rest of it. My money will not go to Wickes. F’em all. I am sick of these mentally ill freaks in my face. Just F’off already.
That poor person is obviously overwhelmed in the aisles of Wickes. Smooth, ultra smooth or fine textured masonry paint? Then there are so many colours to decide upon. A veritable nightmare indeed…
This is now my favourite month of the year. Powerful old, straight white men bowing down to this nonsense, revealing the shapeshifting characteristics that got them to the top in the first place. They’re doing this as much for profit, as for anything else. To appear inclusive is to radiate a sense that you’re open to business for all. ‘Don’t go to that other shop down the road, because we’re the ones that truly accept everyone’. But this is a fallacy and a trap that these CEO’s fall into.
The first rule of customer service is that the customer is always right. If you label a customer in a negative manner he/she/it is entitled to take that business elsewhere.
Every time these fools open their mouths it becomes another company to boycott, another company with bad publicity (there is such a thing) and another company that reveals the contempt it holds for the people it serves.
There are possibly businesses in certain sectors catering to a certain market for whom it makes economic sense to profess support for this kind of thing. I don’t think Wickes is one of them.
I appreciate that it’s not always easy being in a senior leadership position in an organisation – especially a large one. But I don’t think enthusiastic support for “Pride” is necessarily the only possibly response. Why can they not just reaffirm that their organisation supports the principle of non-discrimination and equal treatment for all in their dealings with staff, customers and suppliers. At some point if we’re going to win this war, the right for a firm to say “we don’t comment on or have an opinion on political or other matters of possible controversy” has to be recognised.
Indeed and in times gone by that’s exactly what they did. But activists found a way to wriggle a way in, by inventing the myth that silence on a subject was compliance. They decided that beating it out of people would be the only way. When that started becoming accepted and expected, then sports, business and nowadays every branch of culture became exposed. They didn’t just take away the fence that many sat on, the activists created a myth. Quite what a home improvement business has to do with gender ideology is beyond anyone, even I’m sure the deranged activists.
It’s exactly like forcing people to swear an oath of allegiance to a specific religion and ostracising or worse anyone who refuses – standard for tyranny throughout history.
I enjoyed reading this article. More like this, please.
You assume ‘corporate leaders’ aren’t part of the problem – the enablers, endorsers, cheer-leaders, the bigots.
‘… he now bestrode a rainbow unicorn.’
Seated… where?
‘… excluding gender-critical customers from their stores (as the COO seems to suggest they would) is illegal…’
Not if they are any of the following: White, male, Christian.
It is interesting that one of the wishes of Pride month is that people can be themselves – like the gentleman in the mast photo?
One of the professed wishes.
Quentin can be a girl’s name too https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Bryce
I stand corrected. And Quentin thanks you for it — she’s suffered enough.
I gleefully noted that the HSBC in Central Birmingham had no pride colours in the windows. No doubt realising that their empire was built on the back of the 99.7% of normal customers and not the 0.3% weird ones. Meanwhile there was tumbleweed outside the pride festuned Nat West Bank. So funny
Dear Daily Sceptic readers and subscribers,
Please learn something about ESG (Environmental and Social Governance). The Great Reset of capitalism people are trying to impose their disgusting moralities on all corporations and individuals and will cancel and ban you if you are not prepared to comply. You will only be allowed to conduct business if you subscribe to the insidious social justice of the WEF.—-We all need to “Wake up”, not “Woke up”