What is the purpose of a local newspaper? Time was, it was to stand up for local people against the tyranny of corrupt councils, daft bureaucracies and badly-behaved businesses.
It appears though that the Manchester Evening News has expanded its remit lately: to include tattling on service workers for not toeing the line on identity politics.
In a piece yesterday – originally headlined ‘Alleged “transphobic” conversation heard at hotel hosting Pride accreditation’ – the MEN reported that a burlesque performer was ‘shocked’ to hear a ‘transphobic’ conversation when having a coffee at the Malmaison Hotel in central Manchester last Friday. Dev Mistry, a 30-year-old who was staying in the hotel for Pride weekend, told the paper that:
‘I picked something up and I took my headphones out to confirm that I could understand what I heard over the music…
‘It was [a staff member] talking to others about trans people. It was not necessarily malicious but it was that “men are men” and “women are women” and there’s no in between.’
Heaven forfend! While most people would be supremely unbothered by the fact that someone working at a hotel having a private conversation believed in biological reality, that was clearly not the case for Mistry, who complained to the reception about the conversation.
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