Waitrose wokery and the death of British irony

THE woke brigade featured in the media comment sections after news that Waitrose was renaming Kaffir lime leaves and a channel was criticised for showing old television shows – plus, why the vaccine should not be compulsory.

Daily Mail

Jan Moir said Waitrose claimed to be responding to complaints from customers in renaming Kaffir lime leaves “makrut”.

“I take that to mean someone called Binky who has a PHD in North Korean Studies, a Rebel Princess tattoo on her ankle and a dog on a string, even though her parents own most of Hampshire,” she said.

“If you start on the wokery grocery, there is simply no end to it all. Customers will be taking the knee in aisle three, finding offence in Camp Coffee Essence.”

She believes that, before you know it, shoppers will be objecting to curly parsley, black-eyed peas, coarse salt, French sticks and fancies.

“If this truly is the way forward, if a word used for a niche ingredient, considered racist in some parts of the world but not others, must now be banished, then the shelves will have to be cleared of anything that suggests unearned white privilege or class superiority, particularly in relation to the British monarchy.”

Daily Express

Virginia Blackburn said a family-run television channel called Talking Pictures was coming up against one complaint after another by running films and TV shows from the past.

“You can already guess where some of the moaning is coming from: frail little snowflakes, who get a fit of the heebie jeebies if anyone says anything deemed to be sexist, racist, fattist, ageist, rude to foreigners, rude to anyone else, culturally appropriative. You get the gist,” she said.

“But, equally, if Sarah Cronin-stanley, the station’s managing director and daughter of its founder, actually cuts anything on the grounds the station doesn’t want to offend, that gets a barrage of complaints too.”

She asked when people were going to treat the past with the attitude it deserves, writing, “accepting that matters were different back then.”

“One of the many mysteries about the generation of snowflakes is that they seem to have no sense of irony whatsoever, one of the greatest facets of the British character.”

The Independent

Alexis Paton is a great believer in the need to get vaccinated, she said, but found herself said baulking at the Government’s “audacity as they seek to enshrine this latest vaccine development into law” for care home workers.

“Instead of figuring out how to holistically protect staff and patients, they are hoping a one-jab-cures-all approach, enforced by law, will see the lingering and important consequences of the pandemic disappear into the glow of a Pfizer sunset,” she said. “It is a waste of time and effort.”

She said the Government should be providing adequate PPE and reliable testing as well as financially supporting those who have to self isolate.

“Vaccination alone is not enough to stop the spread.”