Friday, 17 June 2016

Attitude

To the ludicrous claim, in a comment on a previous post, that no one will cover the scandal of the Durham Teaching Assistants because everyone is so engrossed in the EU referendum, the major sites approached have in the last couple of days managed to find room for the wonders of Prince William's appearance on the cover of something called Attitude magazine, for "what gay bars mean to you", for "Is Mark Zuckerberg actually a lizard?", for "Why I hate my summer wardrobe", for "Please, can we stop telling women when to have babies?" (I wasn't. Were you?), for yet more calls to abolish the drug laws, for "Prince William on the cover of Attitude magazine continues the gay media's glorification of white cis males", for "Tom Hiddleston's publicist must be having a field day: Taylor Swift is the fame pimp of the modern British male", and for very much else besides.

Since only 62 per cent of people are certain to vote in the referendum, fewer than voted at the General Election, it is hardly surprising that so much attention is being paid to other things. But is anyone seriously going to argue that this is less of a story than any of the above?

The fact that it is a Labour council is one of the most newsworthy things about this story, and explains all sorts of things about it, such as the fact that the union is refusing to send the Teaching Assistants the forms to stand for stewards' positions.

Some of them have been told that if they so much as join a Facebook Group against this, then they will be denied references for future employment. Consultations are illegally being held outside working hours and with no union representatives or other friends present.

And so it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

Media, do your job and report this.

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