spiralfries

You were on the Indianapolis?

[Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins]

Extracts from article in Spectator 16th August by Brendan O’Neill:

Behold the human wreckage of the cult of diversity. The tragedy of Jason Arday is that he was both built up and destroyed by the ruthless machinery of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). The academy made him into the golden boy of its philistine project of ‘decolonisation’ and gave not one thought to what the consequences might be if his thin story unravelled, as it inevitably would. No one can deny it now: wokeness makes false gods and real tragedies. . .

This is the poison chalice of the state religion of diversity. It lays traps for the very people it celebrates. It handpicks members of ‘the oppressed’ for moral anointment and institutional gushing while leaving them open to exposure as others start to query their credentials. That’s the toxic bargain of identity politics: it builds teetering pedestals for ethnic-minority thinkers, meaning their fall from grace is often twice as fatal.

And what a pedestal they made for Arday. They worshipped him as ‘the best in the world’. They beatified him as a black wunderkind whose very presence in a place like Cambridge might help to wash away its sins of whiteness. They canonised him as a living monument to ‘decolonisation’. It was precisely this, their giddy, narcissistic desire to manufacture a kind of black saviour, that made them turn a blind eye to the questionable elements of Arday’s CV and life story. They sacrificed their due diligence to the god of decolonisation.

And Arday suffered. He was both poster boy and sacrificial lamb of the diversity crusade. Even as he gained from it – reaching the dizzying heights of a Cambridge professorship – he was being damned by it. The foundation of myth and sand his starry career was built on was untenable. Its collapse was a given. It is a testament to the ideological blindness of the inhabitants of our ivory towers that none of them foresaw it. . . .

The Faustian ruthlessness of it all is mindblowing.

. . . The media is the only institution in this entire tragic scandal that did its job properly. Journalists found a story and they told it. It was the academy and Arday’s colleagues who failed to do their jobs. Who failed to prize merit over identity, and failed to foresee the public embarrassment that would befall their falsely promoted friend. They ignored the truth – the media found it.

I and others have been arguing for years that the politics of identity is a disaster for all, black and white alike. White kids are overlooked, black kids are patronised. Whites are branded ‘privileged’, blacks ‘oppressed’. Whites are seen as the beneficiaries of historic crimes who must atone for past sins, blacks as history’s perma-victims who require the gracious helping hand of the state. We are demonised or infantilised according to the accident of our race.

Enough. Let our monument to Jason Arday be the restoration of the true ideal of equality. We couldn’t save Jason but we can save merit from the monstrous jaws of identity.

[Ravi @ravimane53]

Greatest village Cricket video of all-time...

There's so much going on here 😭😭

[Graham Linehan @Glinner]

Amazing that arch-handmaiden Zoe Williams thinks she has the right to pass judgment on anyone.

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

This is absolutely brilliant from Laurence Fox

It's a perfect moment to demonstrate not only how intolerant Islam is but also it proves the entire Oxford Union audience know as well despite pretending otherwise

Laurence is about to unveil an image of the Prophet Muhammad, the whole audience are in suspense, there are interruptions, they plead with him, they try to shut him down, the rules come out, there is an intake of breath

You can tell the room is completely on edge from this!

Because they know if he does, his life will be at risk and the Oxford Union may well be at risk too from the supposedly tolerant religion the other side are defending

Proving Laurence's point, that Islam is not compatible with our society at all

I won't ruin what happens you will have to watch for yourselves but Laurence's trick here is absolutely brilliant and well worth 3 minutes of your time

Enjoy

And @LozzaFox take a bow sir 👏

[Hazel Appleyard @HazelAppleyard]

Cats taking baths

The one at 32 seconds had me SCREAMING lmao 🤣🤣

[Mick Ryan, AM @WarintheFuture]

Possibly a training and leadership issue. Whatever it is, let’s hope it is not fixed anytime soon.

[MrMenno 🇳🇱🏳️‍🌈🎶 @MrMennoTweets]

Teenage girls 'identifying' as animals
'Queer' people saying lesbians can have penises ("Hell yeah!")
Fetish pups
Creepy AGPs
Double mastectomy scars on display
Anti-TERF signs...

My London Pride 2026 vid premieres this eve 12th July at 9PM Terf Island o'clock

Link below

#ThisIsPride

[All Fútbol MX 🇲🇽 @AllFutbolMX]

"Gordon, f*** you!". 😂

“I'd just run their full-back down the line, so it was a bit of a compliment from him. He seemed like a funny guy. There was a lot of tension in the game, so I quite liked it.”

- Anthony Gordon on Javier Aguirre. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏆

[TV Football 1968-92 @1968Tv]

BBC Superstars
The hot summer of 1976
The day Kevin Keegan fell off his bike!
#Superstars #KevinKeegan

[Rebel Ada @DearRebelAda]

We are all Julia Hartley-Brewer:

HW: “People like you shouldn’t get too involved in medicine, because of the harm you cause”.

JHB: “People like you, and I mean this very respectfully, should be in prison. Genuinely”.

[Michael Lavelle @mikelavelle93]

This may be the greatest 2 minutes and 44 seconds of television I’ve ever seen

[The Sting @TheStingisBack]

Walter Matthau’s Hilarious Reaction to Victoria Principal’s T-shirt🤣
In '74, Matthau pops up in Earthquake for barely two minutes, as a drunk randomly toasting famous figures, and not noticing the quake. He agreed to do it for free if he was credited as Walter Matuschanskayasky.

[Stu’s Football Flashbacks @stusfootyflash]

On this day in 2006, England kicked off their World Cup campaign against Paraguay.

And in the BBC’s build-up to the match, Ray Stubbs managed to get a few words with Freddie Flintoff and Steve Harmison…

[Historic Cricket Pictures @PictureSporting]

Brian Clough, who loved cricket, bowling at Lord's in a charity match in front of 8000 spectators in August 1975. Clough took 2 for 45 dismissing the great cricketing pair of Geoff Boycott and, er, Clement Freud. With the bat he scored 13. A lover of cricket, he once said he would have prefer to make a Test century at Lord's than to have scored a hat-trick at Wembley

[CricCapsule @Irfanooq]

Bob Willis would have been distinctly unimpressed with Graham Gooch’s clumsy impersonation of him.

Can you guess the batsman and the match? #CricketTwitter #Cricket

[CAMILLE PAGLIA STAN ✨ FAN ACCOUNT @Provokatov]

This is just absolutely brilliant.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

These are cat paw prints preserved in the 12th-century floor tiles at St Peter’s Church, Wormleighton, England.

[Jack @jackunheard]

Tennis player Rafa Jodar SHOVES the ball girl out of the way.

He should never play another tennis match again in his life.

What a loser. https://t.co/h6a3RQ8H0a

[Graham Linehan @Glinner]

This is pretty great and congratulations to everyone involved for teasing out the incoherence of the ideology while maintaining the guy's humanity.

[CricCapsule @Irfanooq]

A young Mike Gatting walks back to this mark, charges in to bowl, and then… EXPLODES! 💣

Can you guess the Test match?
#Cricket #CricketTwitter