General News: The Rise of Menenism
Actor Laurence Fox has declared that he is a ‘menenist’ and even has a shirt saying so. Fox said: ‘It’s the male version of a feminist. I’m a meninist, which means whatever feminists do for women, I do for men’.
Fox has two sons with his ex-wife Billie Piper and displayed the shirt at a private screening of Rain Stops Play.
He added: ‘I think it’s very uncomfortable being a man in today’s climate and it’s about time we got a fair hearing – especially for white men’.
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Instagram’s Promise
The on-going furore over social media and its use by teenagers has forced Instagram, at the centre of recent controversy, into promising to remove images of self-harm from its platform.
Interviewed on television, Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s boss, referring to the site being blamed for the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, said: ‘Nothing is more important to me than the safety of the people who use Instagram. We are not where we need to be on self-harm and suicide, and we need to do more to protect the most vulnerable in our community’.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: ‘What happened to Molly Russell is every parent’s nightmare. I am glad Instagram have committed to me that they will now take down graphic self-harm and suicide content’.
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TV Licence debate
The latest in the continual demonisation of the the UK’s elderly population is the already widely-reported possibility of the BBC axing free TV licences for those aged 75 and older.
Age UK has warned that four in ten over-75s will have to cut back on food and heating or give up their televisions if the are forced to pay to watch them. The charity said a fifth of those affected would simply be unable to pay the annual charge, set to go up this year, to £154.50, and added that withdrawing the perk would deprive about a million elderly Britons of a key source of comfort. The charity’s director, Caroline Abrahams, called for the Government to pay the bill, saying: ‘[They] created this problem and it is in their power to solve it’.
The possibility of ending free licences has led to renewed calls for the BBC’s monopoly position to end, with increasing numbers of the public now saying that the TV Licence should be abolished and the broadcaster made to stand on its own two feet rather than relying on a tax levied to pay over-generous salaries to star presenters.
The BBC will decide later this year whether or not to continue to provide free licences beyond 2020.
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