Mandy’s Turn On The Cab Rank

The Dacre cab rank features a number of appalling Glendas that should long ago have been sent on their way: Jan Moir, Liz Jones and Melanie Phillips have for some time been no more than caricatures of themselves. But there is one other member of the Glenda club, and today she has pawed her way to the front of the rank: step forward Amanda Platell.

Dacre’s orders for Mandy are to kick transgender people. The reason for the kicking is straightforward: these are not the Mail’s “kind of people”. So they and anyone who has the temerity to speak up for them are to be demonised. The latter, Mandy tells her fearful readership, are “zealots”, which suggests she could be channelling Mad Mel, or equally batshit vicar Peter Mullen.

But she starts with “Our political leaders seem obsessed by the rights of Britain’s transgender population”, so she could be channelling Christopher Booker. And adding “In a world that’s gone mad” there could be Littlejohn in there too. But none of this helps Mandy understand her subject, as she talks of how asking for a “sex change” would secure more favourable treatment before the law.

Her attempt to suggest that those with learning difficulties are less well regarded than transgender people is crass: the law is quite clear on the subject, and both groups now enjoy equality, which is what Mandy claims to want. And her suggestion that someone convicted of killing would get a stiffer sentence if they had targeted a transgender victim is equally crass – and equally wrong.

So her observation on those with learning difficulties – “why is no legislation brought forward to protect them as well?” only shows her ignorance, as does her assertion that such people “are not fashionable victims, and don’t fit into the Coalition’s metrosexual, metropolitan equalities agenda”. Someone at the Mail forgot to change the record after last year’s General Election.

Equally showing ignorance is her conclusion: “so blinded is the Coalition by political correctness that it can’t acknowledge that all people — young and old, handicapped and able, gay, straight and transgender — are equal under law”. They are now, Mandy – that’s the whole point of the legislation. And you’re back to channelling Mad Mel once more.

To many, Mandy makes herself look like a total prat with this ranting, although Mail readers will probably lap it up, which is the whole purpose. It’s another example of a group that Dacre dislikes – and doesn’t understand – being held to be getting something that others are not, rather than no longer suffering discrimination with no means of combating it, which is what is actually happening.

Mandy couldn’t get a berth elsewhere, so does as instructed. No change there, then.