IN recent years we’ve come to know that maths is racist.
And the same goes for climate change, master bedrooms, books, watermelons, swimming, blackboards, fancy dress parties, dogs called Toby, most words, and everyone in Surrey.
And now comes news that the British countryside is racist as well.
And not just ordinarily racist either. Because out here, among the meadows and the babbling brooks and the cows, there is colonial racism. Churchillian racism.
It’s all cotton fields and Roots and Leonardo DiCaprio and Django Unchained. So who’s made this claim then?
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Well it’s an organisation called Wildlife and Countryside Link, which is backed by many worthy organisations, including Froglife, a charity set up to make life better for the nation’s amphibians.
I wish them well with this endeavour but can’t help wondering how a bunch of volunteers gathered round a pond, collecting tadpoles in a net, have managed to deduce that the green bits of Britain are racist.
Another backer is an organisation called British Canoeing.
Right. I see.
So midway through an eskimo roll on the River Wye, members spotted a bit of underwater racism going on. Really?
It’s equally hard to work out how the Bat Conservation Trust is backing the Wildlife and Countryside Link either, because they do most of their batman work at night, when it’s too dark to see all the forest-clearing Klan meetings.
They’re happening though. We know this because some students from the Hate Studies Unit at the University of Leicester have already launched an investigation into rural racism.
Shouting at tractor
And now a Labour MP is preparing a report which is bound to say there aren’t enough Somalians in Fenny Bentley because Mr Bates shooed them all away to make space for his middle-class Post Office meetings.
Preposterous? Apparently not. Because a group called Muslim Hikers has said rural areas feel unwelcoming to its members.
I’m sure this is accurate. But not because you’re Muslims. It’s because you’re hikers.
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People in the countryside can’t abide you with your cagoules and your stupid Theresa May walking poles, and your Kendal mint cake, and your energy drinks, knocking over walls and letting your dogs chase sheep and getting in the way and shouting at tractor drivers and beaters and farmers and all of the people who keep the countryside looking so lovely.
So that’s my conclusion this evening. I don’t think the countryside is racist at all. Or colonial.
We don’t care what colour you are, just so long as you’re not wearing a purple anorak.
SETT UP WITH AN EXCUSE
IT’S terrifying these days when you are accused of something you haven’t done.
Because – and Christian Horner is learning this the hard way – the court of public opinion makes up its mind long before anyone knows all the true facts.
You’re guilty until you are proven innocent. And then you are still guilty.
See Phillip Schofield for details.
Which is why a little bit of poo came out this week when the police came round to say I’d been reported for filling in badger setts.
That is a serious criminal offence which can result in big fines and lengthy prison sentences.
And if word leaked out that I’d been involved in such a thing, I’d be a social outcast.
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Mercifully, however, I had the perfect excuse: “I’ve shot all the badgers on the farm so why would I want to fill in their setts?”
And yes, before you ask, it was all legal.
A FORTUNE teller is claiming £200,000 in compensation after he was “catapulted” from a “defective” seat at his nearby cinema.
He says the incident left him with chronic neck and back pain and impaired hearing and now the case is going to trial.
Where, I hope, someone asks him how, as a fortune teller, he didn’t see all this coming and sit somewhere else.
A REPORT suggests that taking Viagra decreases the chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease by 18 per cent.
So that’s good news, providing, of course, you remember to take one every day. Or what Viagra is. Or where you put it.
Which reminds me of an observation Richard Hammond made when we were filming in Bolivia many years ago.
“I forgot to take my malaria pill again this morning. If I was a girl, I’d be pregnant a lot.”
Time for skiers to slope off
I’M not a bitter man and I don’t revel in the downfall of others.
I’m therefore sad when someone loses a dog, or if their summer holiday is a washout.
But I’m afraid that when I see pictures of the globally warmed Swiss Alps, all covered in grass, I do get a sense of deep joy at the misery this has brought to Britain’s appallingly smug skiing enthusiasts.
LOCALS in a Cheshire village called Wrenbury-cum-Frith are furious because there are now 174 tyre-shredding potholes on a single 200-yard stretch of road.
Naturally, they are waiting for the council to stop worrying about climate change and diversity targets and mend the holes.
But of course, this isn’t going to happen. And actually, that’s not the end of the world.
In an Oxfordshire village near to where I live, the potholes have sort of merged into one long, gravel-filled crater.
And it’s really not so bad, so long as you’re prepared to accept the fact that the road would only be classified as “a road” if we were living in the 14th century.
KNOW YOUR ENEMY?
EVERYWHERE I go, people are saying that soon there will be a war.
There’s talk of conscription, and of how small our Armed Forces have become, and how long we’d be able to hold out.
Everyone is nodding sagely and agreeing that these are worrying times.
And I agree. They are, chiefly because we don’t know who we will be fighting.
Normally, that’s an easy one to answer. It’s Germany. But they seem to be quiet at the moment, so is it Russia, or Iran or Yemen?
Or has America accidentally declared war on us because someone in the Pentagon couldn’t understand what Biden was saying?
Certainly, if I was in the charge of the Army and Rishi Sunak declared war, I wouldn’t have a clue where to send the troops. Moscow? Tehran? The Falklands again?
It would be easy to argue, then, that all this talk of war is a bit premature because we don’t even know who the enemy is.
But that hasn’t stopped us in the past – 110 years ago, millions of British soldiers were shipped over to fight a war in France because a hot-headed Serbian shot an Austrian archduke.
And let’s not forget that we did it all over again just 20 years ago, heading off to fight the Afghans because some Saudi Arabians had flown some aeroplanes into the World Trade Center in New York.
FRENCH FARCE
AFTER announcing the cost of parking an SUV in Paris would rise to £192 for six hours, the city’s socialist elite must have been beaming with joy.
Because not only would they be lining their pockets with all that bourgeoisie cash, they’d be hitting the rich.
It didn’t work. Because all of a sudden, the SUVs stopped coming into the city, along with every other type of car. And lorry. And van.
Nothing’s getting into Paris thanks to the enormous farmer blockade.
