The Right Dishonourable

Marchamont got his London election booklet in the post last week, listing the candidates for the mayoral and assembly elections. Unlike general elections, where such lists are hard to come by, London tells every voter who is up for election.

One less democratic aspect is the £10,000 fee charged to mayoral candidates to submit a ‘mini-manifesto’, effectively a one-page advert. This is on top of the £10,000 deposit that candidates must put down just to stand in the election. These elections are open to everyone, just like the Ritz.

Marchamont recently stumbled across an obscure corner of the BBC website: Equality Matters. Although tricky to find from the main menu, the section’s stories appear in the likes of Google News, looking like any other BBC article.

These stories pose as objective features, but read as if the authors are laundering their own opinions. Headlines include “The harmful ableist language you unknowingly use”, “Why getting a name right matters”, and “Why it’s hard for people of colour to be themselves at work”.

Marchamont had to check the date on a Guardian story published just shy of April Fools’ Day. With the container ship Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal, the British left’s flagship paper used to occasion to raise awareness of little-known phobias.

The images of the ship triggered bouts of submechanophobia, the fear of submerged manmade objects; megalophobia, the fear of large objects; naviphobia, the fear of ships and sea wreckage; and cetaphobia, the fear of whales.