Jottings
News from the UK and around the World
. . . the wild , the wacky , the wonderful , the weird and the downright infuriating
Ooops !
Your Jottings team is always keen to highlight silly errors made by those who should know better , and we can ’ t exclude ourselves from such scrutiny . So well done to those who spotted that last month ’ s Jottings was a repeat of a feature printed two years ago ! We can assure you that heads have rolled ...
Masked raiders
We expect that the summer of 2020 will be remembered as part of the Year of The Mask . On one hand , there are the face masks which most of us are wearing to help the fight against Covid-19 , and on the other , there are the snowflakes and agitators who are trying to raid the past and mask history .
Over the last couple of months , apart from the BBC Proms fiasco , the stories have come thick and fast . We learned that NASA is to change the names of some objects in the night sky because of their “ colonial implications ,” so bye-bye to the Eskimo Nebula and the Siamese Twins Galaxy . We note , however , others which remain unchanged include Uranus , black holes , dwarf stars , and dark matter .
Exeter Chiefs Rugby Club have got rid of their Big Chief mascot after 21 years because it is “ disrespectful ” but have retained their name and logo ( a Red Indian head dress ) which are “ highly respectful .” So that ’ s OK then .
The BBC has ousted words and phrases including cakewalk , nitty gritty , sold down the river and uppity as being racially biased . The UK government has paid a consultancy firm thousands to give MPs lessons on woke language and history using a giant blue puppet called UB which apparently is short for Unconscious Bias . We always thought it meant United Biscuits , but we have now been woked .
The University of Gloucestershire dropped the term “ freshers week ” with new students invited instead to an online “ welcome week ,” while Bristol University has banned fitness instructors from telling students to lose weight with phrases such as “ burn those calories ” or “ work off last night ’ s pizza .” These are now regarded as “ fatphobic ” by the
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