Londoner’s Diary
Martin Luther King Jr and Mother Teresa would have been labelled as “woke”, according to the BBC’s Clive Myrie. Speaking to Craig Oliver on the Desperately Seeking Wisdom podcast, the presenter said that he “couldn’t imagine anyone” not calling the pair of them woke.
He defines woke people as “simply trying to promote a sense of fairness in what is, on many levels, a world that is unfair”, though he admitted they might sometimes go about it in a “ham-fisted way”.
Myrie agreed that he is “on the side of the woke”, and questioned whether the word is a “pejorative term”, or simply a way to define people who are “aware of life’s issues and problems”.
Myrie’s comments come after footage from 2021 leaked over the weekend in which the BBC’s director general Tim Davie said that “being progressive” is something BBC staff “should be proud of”.
Davie was quick to clarify that this does not mean the corporation is “woke”, but rather that it should “represent views across the board”.
The Foreign Secretary of Facebook
Sir Nick Clegg spent five years malingering in government as David Cameron’s unfortunate deputy prime minister. The role came with little power but a lot of accountability — he became a minor hate figure for going along with austerity and the trebling of tuition fees. But has his career now surpassed Cameron’s? While Lord Dave is serving as a foreign secretary in a collapsing government, Clegg is “the foreign secretary of Facebook”, according to a new investigation into his activities since leaving politics.
As Meta’s president of global affairs, Clegg draws a multi-million-dollar salary, reports directly to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and “spends most of his life on a plane”, UnHerd journalist Tom McTague has found.
Clegg is studiously diplomatic about this recent upturn in fortune. But his wife Miriam González Durántez is not. When Clegg’s old boss Cameron became Foreign Secretary, she quipped on Instagram: “Clearly getting bored at home… and yet home is where he truly belongs.”
Lee in the Doghouse
Former Tory MP Lee Anderson drowned his sorrows in an aptly named pub yesterday: The Dog House. He claims his pint of Birra Moretti lager was paid for by “a random lady called Sue”, who had left a fiver behind the bar for him.
