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Tuesday 25 August 2020

Let’s All Hate The Gay Train

In accordance with the iron rule of the right-wing press and its hopeful allies in the new media, always on the lookout for a column or broadcast appearance, all pundits must be on a perpetual hair trigger, every ready to lay into anything that can be used as a means of confecting outrage, generating clicks and selling more newspapers.

A Pride-liveried train? What's wrong with that? Er ...

And so it came to pass that ITV News told “Avanti West Coast is launching the UK’s first fully wrapped Pride train entirely staffed by an LGBTQ+ crew for its first official service. After Covid-19 forced the cancellation of Pride events across the country, which Avanti West Coast had planned to support, the intercity rail operator has completely wrapped one of its iconic Pendolinos with the progressive Pride flag”. There was more.

The train operator has adopted the most recent iteration of the Pride flag which sees the addition of the colours black, brown, light blue, pink and white to bring people of colour, transgender people and those living with or who have been lost to HIV/AIDS to the forefront highlighting Avanti West Coast’s progressive commitment to diversity and inclusion”. One can almost feel the Gammonati about to blow off steam.

And yet more, as Avanti’s Sarah Copley added “I am so proud to be a part of a business where our people represent the communities we serve. We are always listening to our people and customers to ensure our diversity and inclusion strategy is relevant. Our new train livery is a powerful example of keeping the conversation going”.


And … we have ignition! Cue self-promoting TalkRADIO host Julia Hartley Dooda: “Trains are gay now”. Would Madam care to expand on that dismissive nugget? “This doesn’t bother me BTW. The trains looks [sic] lovely. I just don’t get why trains need to be pro Pride. Can’t they just be pro getting us to our destination on time, preferably with a nice cup of tea & without costing the earth? I don’t really care what they think about gay rights”.


What is her problem with Avanti’s prices, on-board catering and timekeeping? But we don’t get to find out, because that’s not the point. She wants to dismiss the event as some kind of irrelevance, marginalise it. LGBTQ+ is still not mainstream enough for her.


Which explains the premonition expressed by Miffy Buckley: “Give it ten minutes and some shyster from Spiked Online will be writing a huffy article about why this is deeply offensive & discriminatory towards working class straight white guys”. You want it, you got it.


There, with a photo of a Pride pop-up shop, just so readers know the identity of the intended target, was Spiked Online to let us know “Insincere corporate virtue-signalling has reached pandemic levels. McDonald’s is backing BLM. Ben & Jerry’s wants open borders. Every company pretends to ‘care’ about us. We should boycott the lot of these greedy firms, says Patrick West”. Yeah, let’s boycott the gay train! Boo gay train!

The media establishment may not be explicitly homophobic. But you can see it from there.


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13 comments:

Andy McDonald said...

Shades of Colin Poppshed from The Day Today there.

"...and the gay trains are the west coast mainline, the Mauritanian aluminium ore train, and the Trans-Siberian, which is very gay. So, see you there."

Anonymous said...

I remember Ms Dooda derisively commenting 'planes are gammon now' when the fat PM pissed away £900,000 of taxpayers' money repainting a plane, which also ruined it for military use.

But no, the hypocritical meff kept her trap shut then. Just as the cunts from Spiked did. And aren't boycotts a feature of cancel culture, Patrick West, you twat-signalling piece of shit.

Anonymous said...

As a non-philosopher I'd hazard a rough guess that virtue-signalling is much preferable to vice-signalling.

Martin Read said...

"I don’t really care what they think about gay rights”.

For which statement read, "I very much do care what they think about gay rights."

grim northerner said...

The right have always had a problem with gays, "shoving it down their throats".

game_cat said...

I fully embrace the gay train (as a cis hetero male), but its also true that I wont support virtual signalling corporations that dont give a damn about structural inequalities. Thus I wouldn't boycott someone for doing this, but nor would it be a good reason to support them either.

Anonymous said...

It looks terrible, why is it gay people have no taste?

The problem with this and all this pride business is that there is no need for it now. We won't be a truly inclusive society while some people continue to define themselves by their sexuality and/or race and not by our common humanity. I must have worked with what is now termed LGBTQ+ people, but I wouldn't have known who they were and why should I, we were all running a train service, not concerned with our private lives!

I don't care about the diversity, equality, inclusiveness or whatever of train operating companies. In such a safety orientated business I want them to employ the best people regardless. When I was recruiting traincrew for a train company that is what I did, I couldn't possibly have recruited the right staff by having to favour people because of race, sexuality and/or sex. In fact a very diverse staff, all good responsible workers, delivering the service the public expect was the result! A discussion with a union rep who thought the staff not diverse enough ended up with me going through the staff roster to show he was wrong, 49/51 in favour of "minorities" and the managerial staff was 50/50! Admittedly this company was based in North London.

Businesses indulging these people by their virtue signalling deserve all the flak they get, ask Gillette how well their toxic masculinity woke ad did saleswise.

What next? Rainbow flashing multi aspect signalling at Crewe station, the message being more important than running trains!

Andy McDonald said...

@16.26,

While people face ostracism and punishment because of their sexuality, whe people are treated differently because of the colour of their skin, when life chances are seriously affected by factors such as race and gender, it matters.

If you recruited staff regardless of race, sex or whatever, good for you for doing the bare minimum. But until protections were built into the law, plenty of people wouldn't employ a bird or a shirt lifter, or a black person in positions they were perfectly qualified and capable of doing.

As for no need for pride, well, you may as well say that because we no longer send boys up chimneys we don't need trade unions any more.

You don't think there's a problem, because you're not adversely affected. Nobody is forcing you to take part in a pride parade, watch one go past, travel o this train, or anything else. On the flip side nobody is kicking your teeth in for being a bloody poof.

Otherwise, Laurence, stick to the acting.

Anonymous said...

@16:26

"The comments under the @Gillette toxic masculinity ad is a living document of how desperately society needs things like the Gillette toxic masculinity ad.

Seriously: if your masculinity is THAT threatened by an ad that says we should be nicer then you're doing masculinity wrong." Andrew P Street

"Sexual violence doesn't start and end with rape
It starts in our books and behind our school gates
Men are scared women will laugh in their face
Whereas women are scared it's their lives men will take

Mother
Fucker" Joe Talbot (after Margaret Atwood)

Anonymous said...

@ 16:26.

Clean your keyboard. It's full of rabid spittle.

Anonymous said...

@game_cat

And what was your reason for telling us this when Tim's article was actually about media whores crying about any representation of the LGBTQ+ community?

It's not like the left hasn't criticised the 'woke-washing' of brands for at least the last couple of years. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jan/19/gillette-ad-campaign-woke-advertising-salving-consciences https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/10/fellow-kids-woke-washing-cynical-alignment-worthy-causes

AndyC said...

Andy MacDonald said-

'....Otherwise, Laurence, stick to the acting.'

I had the misfortune of seeing him in 'Strangers on a Train' in the West End. I dont think acting is really his 'thing', though were I were looking for someone to play a plank of wood, he'd be a shoo-in.

Anonymous said...

It seems from the twatterati that gay people are embarrassed by this virtue signalling, cringeworthy seems the top word.

I love the presumption that anyone objecting to the Gillette ad must be a threatened male. "Gawd what next" I remember said my female black acquaintance said, "tampons for menstruating men? I want my men to be men!"