At times of great stress it is necessary to find your enjoyments where you can. And as I mentioned in the magazine last week there are few joys in the world comparable with that which comes from watching the left eating itself. Which brings me to a small but diverting set of events which are rolling on at the Guardian.
Readers will remember that earlier this month that paper started to devour itself after the admirable columnist Suzanne Moore had the temerity to write a column about trans issues that did not exactly toe today’s leftist line on the issue. Hundreds of Moore’s colleagues signed a letter to the editor condemning Moore. Indeed the signatories comprised around a fifth of the total Guardian workforce. At which point many of you, like me, might be thinking ‘a fifth!’. How many ideological-enforcers does the Guardian need to produce a daily paper? What do these people do all day? Why isn’t the paper better?
Anyhow, the furore has been rumbling on and a justifiably angry Moore has published online the full list of signatories to the neo-Stasi like letter of denunciation.
The list makes fascinating reading. It is rather packed with people from the IT department. But those who signed the letter condemning their colleague’s right to free expression also includes the previously admirable Luke Harding, Ed Pilkington (the paper’s chief US reporter, who I had nevertheless always assumed to be a fictional character). Oh, and Owen Jones.
This last might come as particularly unsurprising news. Nevertheless, since having his name leaked as a signatory to the letter Jones has been trying to weasel out of it, saying his name was only added at the last minute and only digitally etc, as though the other signatories had all signed their names in blood during some late-night coven.
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