Don’t make James Bond books woke just for Wussy Galore
IF there’s one person alive who knows a bit about our awful, politically correct cancel culture, it’s the brilliant novelist Salman Rushdie.
He’s been under a sentence of death for 34 years simply because of a book he wrote.
Iran’s Ayatollah decided he didn’t like Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses and the next year issued a fatwa against him.
My usual thing, if I don’t like a book, is to cease reading it. Not seek to kill the author.
But there we are. Maybe that’s why I didn’t make it to the rank of Ayatollah.
Since that death threat, Rushdie has had to live the life of a recluse.
Guarded day and night, forever in danger.
Last summer, a jihadi nutcase savagely attacked him, stabbing him in the face.
Rushdie lost his sight in one eye.
So, when Salman speaks out, we ought to listen.
Well, he has been speaking out about . . . James Bond.
A whole new bunch of Ian Fleming’s famous novels are coming out.
But they have been altered — so they don’t seem to be about James Bond at all.
There are no sexy stripteases and the language has been changed.
The publishers think this fits in better with our current, stupid ideologies.
Maybe. But it ain’t James Bond, is it?
‘Comical’
Here’s what Salman said: “I have to say, the idea that James Bond could be made politically correct is almost comical.”
He added that such changes should be “resisted”.
And he commented: “Books have to come to us from their time and be of their time, and if that’s difficult to take, don’t read them.
“Read another book, but don’t try and remake yesterday’s work in the light of today’s attitudes.”
Exactly right, on every point. You cannot alter history. And nor should we.
If you want to make a book about a politically correct secret agent who is a disabled gay person of colour and drinks only kale juice, then fine, go ahead, write that book.
It might be fun. It might not.
But don’t alter books which have already been written, just so they fit in with your obsessive mindset.
Trouble is, publishers are doing this more and more often.
They have “sensitivity readers” who highlight passages in books which might offend someone. So they get rewritten.
They have done this just recently with Roald Dahl’s classic children’s stories.
Stripped the books of stuff which might trigger a nasty reaction in some snowflake or other who is reading one of them today.
Adding in characters to make sure all genders and races are app-ropriately covered.
Banged up
To my mind, this is an act of cultural vand-alism. But it is also very stupid.
The kind of stuff we read in those Ian Fleming novels are part of history.
They take us right back, 50 and 60 years, to the middle of the Cold War.
We behaved differently then and some of the language people used would probably get them banged up today.
More’s the pity, frankly.
But the point is, that was how we WERE.
And you cannot alter the fact — no matter how many young social-justice warriors you have wielding their blue pens and crying into their almond milk lattes.
Rewriting James Bond is an attack upon freedom of speech, just as Salman Rushdie’s fatwa was an attack upon freedom of speech.
And such attacks are no better coming from a respectable publishing house than they are from a deranged Islamist thug.
Time to change our zerovision entries
OUR Eurovision entry was Mae Muller’s I Wrote A Song.
Most of Europe very much wishes Mae hadn’t bothered.
It was a deeply boring piece of electro-pop performed with a complete lack of verve.
It deserved to come second last.
Last year was the exception, with Sam Ryder.
Usually we are far too conservative in our choice for this competition.
Time to sack the TaP Music management company which picks our entrant?
And get someone in who knows what they’re doing.
Rats to Dai for
OOH-ER. Better watch out if you’re visiting Swansea.
Apparently it’s the UK’s No1 city for “super rats”.
Gigantic rodents “as big as cats” with fearsome yellow teeth.
They are supposedly resistant to poison.
And they gather together on street corners singing Sosban Fach. Probably.
I spoke to one yesterday. He was called Dai the Rat.
He told me: “Super rats? Well, we’re rats and we’re super, obvs. But we’re just the same as we’ve always been.
“You hear this stuff every May – it’s from the pest controllers wanting to ramp up their takings by scaring everyone, look you.
“Tell them to get stuffed, bach.”
AN incredible 2.5million British people are signed off long-term sick.
Many of them have back and neck pains. Caused from working from home.
That is not, in my book, “sickness”.
It is just an annoying inconvenience. And life is full of annoying inconveniences.
When will we start clamping down on the growing number of people in this country swinging the lead?
WELL done to Luton Town for making it to the Championship play-off final.
They beat Sunderland on Tuesday night to win their place at Wembley.
They’ve achieved all this on the lowest attendances in the entire league and one of the smallest budgets.
I dare say, when the awards are handed out at the end of the season, they’ll go to the likes of Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola – who has had an almost infinite amount of money at his disposal.
Isn’t the real managerial achievement that of Luton’s Rob Edwards, above?
THE Government has introduced more new laws affecting landlords and renters.
It will make things worse. I don’t know how many times I have to say this.
If you make life more difficult for landlords, they will move into the Airbnb sector.
That means our housing crisis will become still more severe. And rents will go up.
This has already happened on a massive scale.
If you want more flats and houses available, make it EASIER for landlords to rent, rather than the other way around.
Why can’t this Government look at outcomes and adjust its policies accordingly?
GOOD news! ITV is thinking of sacking Phillip Schofield from This Morning.
I can’t stand the sanctimonious little monkey.
Apparently his rift with Holly Willoughby has left the programme looking a bit awkward.
Tell you what to do, ITV. Get Piers Morgan in.
IT’S supposedly very bad to be a nimby.
To object when houses are about to be built nearby by saying, ‘Not In My Backyard!’.
But if it were not for the good work of nimbys, most of southern England would be paved over by now.
All that beautiful countryside destroyed. So we should thank the nimbys.
And if Labour get into office, let’s hope the nimbys stop their plan to concrete over our green belts.
Step one to solving our housing crisis?
Reduce by 90 per cent the number of people coming into Britain every year.