by Allison Pearson, Telegraph
Every day there is another betrayal of our wartime generation and the values for which they fought
On reflection, I have decided we should just give up and cancel April Fools’ Day. Pranks are an endangered species in the spring of 2025. There’s far too much competition from real life.
Let’s try a little test, folks. Which of these is an April Fool? Four-year-old suspended from nursery for “abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity” at an age when most small boys still happily identify as a tractor. Highly respected professor denounced and cast out by her university for stating biological facts. A family on horseback allegedly menaced by two men and the wife later summoned to the police station for describing the pair who terrified them as “effing pikeys”. A grandmother visited by plain-clothes policemen because she posted a private message criticising a Labour councillor. A builder in Bedfordshire who got a police record for racial hatred after whistling the Bob the Builder theme tune at his neighbours. OK, Bob’s treatment of Wendy could be seen as a tad misogynist, perhaps, but how is it racist? Muck the Digger – is he a member of the traveller community?
Surely, I hear you wail, that last one can’t be true? Amazing to report, but all of them happened. No wonder that when I woke up today, I sleepily assumed the story that Nestlé is renaming Quality Street “E-Quality Street” to mark five years since George Floyd’s death was yet another craven corporate capitulation to identity politics. Yes, I’d been had – more fool me – but it’s easy to be deceived when so much of our national life has turned into a sinister joke.
Read also: The US is right about free speech in Britain by Andrew Tettenborn, Spectator