Praise clever, not cleavage
Can we please all get over the fact women have breasts!
The internet went into meltdown this week over the University Challenge appearance of student Katherine Perry.
Were people impressed by her achievement as captain of the team from one of the world’s top universities?
Or that she’s mastered scary-sounding subjects such as New Testament Greek and cognitive linguistics? Or that she’s studying for a PhD?
No, Twitter was only interested in her cleavage.
I wouldn’t mind if she’d been decked out in a sequinned bra top or nipple tassels. But she was wearing a plain blue dress with a sweetheart neckline.
Yes, it showed a bit of cleavage, but how juvenile and sexist do you need to be to fixate on that? Which is just one more University Challenge question I can’t answer.
You would think this government might have learnt its lesson from the Windrush scandal when our then Home Secretary Amber Rudd was forced to resign over repeated injustices forced on British residents invited to come here from the Caribbean.
Which makes the behaviour of her replacement Sajid Javid all the more shocking.
Because it came to light this week that his Home Office is raking in millions charging the children of immigrants more than £1,000 each to get the citizenship they are entitled to by right.
This blatant profiteering has made the Government a fortune while driving families into debt.
The charity Citizens UK says parents are taking on second jobs and going without food to scrape together the £1,012 fee.
And if parents can’t find the money – a huge bill for many immigrant families – then their children are denied things that should be theirs by right, such as further education, student loans and the chance to travel abroad.
It is almost 10 times what France and Spain charge and represents a profit of more than £600 per child. The actual admin cost is less than £400. These are children born in the UK or who have spent most of their lives here. By any definition, they are British. Citizenship is their right.
OK, it’s fair people should pay something. Public services have been cut to the bone and there isn’t much money in the coffers.
Members of my own family quite rightly forked out citizenship fees to be naturalised after living here for 10 years.
But why would anyone – let alone a Home Secretary who only got his job because his predecessor had to quit over the ill-treatment of immigrants – think it’s acceptable to make £50,000 a day profit out of allowing kids to have their dues?
Now education leaders from universities and schools across the UK have signed a letter urging Mr Javid to sort this injustice out.
They believe the policy is denying higher education to thousands of children who could be the doctors, teachers and business leaders of tomorrow.
This at a time when, post-Brexit, we will need well-qualified professionals more than ever.
The Home Office claims the money it makes from this comes in handy for funding things such as border control.
If it involves pricing children out of their rights then I say that price is too high.
So Mr Javid needs to be careful. Otherwise he might end up paying a high price himself. As I’m sure Mrs Rudd could tell him.