Regarding Mr Look-At-My-Fabulous-Hair-Extensions, I suppose the obvious issue is the self-absorption of our strapping madam, such that he records and then publicly shares classroom videos of himself faffing about with his wig while expecting applause for his feats of fake-hair management. It does rather speak to his priorities and focus. And that’s before we get to the oddly ample fake bosom.

The other issue, I’d say, is the fact that schools have surrendered to cross-dressing men with a rapidity and full-throatedness that is quite remarkable. The place where cross-dressing men should not be – in positions of intimacy with, and authority over, children – is where they seem to find the most gushing welcome and the most ludicrous indulgence. […]

Supposedly, it’s about making the children feel “comfortable.” Though it occurs to me that the [Transgender Pride] flag’s connotations of coerced pretending, fetishistic mutilation and life-shortening hormone abuse – and generally being subordinate to a cross-dressing man with mental health issues – may have other effects. Say, by transforming a classroom from a place of learning into one of cowed pretension, of deference to the untrue.

And then there’s the not insignificant matter of introducing an element of transvestite farce into the classroom, which may result in children being distracted from the task at hand by the perhaps more immediate question of what the strange man in the wig and padded push-up bra sees when he looks in a mirror.

Quite how those unspecified “white” ideas alter the rules of multiplication, percentages and other simple mathematical operations remains a thing of mystery. Indeed, as so often, the precise nature of this alleged corruption, this all-pervasive and befouling “whiteness” – a term used 157 times – is left to the imagination. Though much is pitched upon that mystery.

Mr Lolkus laments his “positionality” as a structurer of lessons and “knower of… mathematical concepts,” wishing instead to be merely a “community member.” A somewhat fanciful flattening of “hierarchy,” and of values, and an abandonment of the teacher’s customary responsibility.

This is followed by a suggestion that pupils, especially underperforming minority pupils – the party least familiar with the subject matter – should be put in charge of structuring lessons and the broader curriculum. A sure-fire recipe for success. And then there’s the conceit that heroically brown pupils are performing “additional labour” by doing less well in class, or by not doing the work at all.

The uninvited newcomers – chiefly, it seems, men of fighting age and all mysteriously unencumbered by identifying documents – are given helpful pointers on the customary use of pavements and pedestrian crossings, and are warned about the hazards of randomly strolling through moving traffic on busy roads. They are also introduced to the novel concepts of avoiding foul language in public and not abusing animals for amusement purposes.

Other teething problems have, it seems, arisen. As the Telegraph reports: “The initiative by Northamptonshire Police followed community and parental complaints over young male asylum seekers loitering near a primary school in the county, including claims of filming.” Not loitering at the gates of primary schools in order to film small children being another cultural subtlety requiring clarification. […]

One of the consequences of massive, indiscriminate immigration – equivalent to the entire population of Sheffield, every year – is that it radically alters the general mood of those on whom this demographic transformation is being imposed. One might, for instance, aspire to the role of gracious host, as it were, of making newcomers feel welcome. But this ideal presupposes an immigration policy that is limited and selective, and in which newcomers have good reason to feel lucky – and grateful.

The graciousness of the locals, the ideal, depends on the notion that the host country is regarded as something special, a desirable thing, something worthy of respect.

But massive, indiscriminate immigration undermines that ideal. If seemingly anyone can walk in and demand goodies, any ill-mannered flotsam of the world, and if they can do so with no discernible sense of gratitude, or any expectation of such, and with no apparent regard for the norms and values of the host society, as if they were unimportant, then the indigenous population may feel they have little reason to be gracious. Indeed, being gracious may be something of a struggle.

I realise that even the idea that the locals might dare to think in such terms – of being the gracious host – is, for some, anathema, a basis for tutting and scolding. But the sense that the value of one’s society – one’s home – is being pissed away, sold off cheap, is not a promising basis for coexistence.

And yet here we are.

We have, it seems, entered a world in which basic map reading and remembering to take a coat are deemed noteworthy achievements. Of course, it’s not just a matter of waterproofs and picking out suitable footwear. There are other complexities to be navigated: “Taking a selfie for social media… is an important way… to feel represented,” says Ms. Fatinikun.

So far as I can make out, the rules are as follows.

First, you should expect the restaurant’s serving staff to be conveniently categorised by their sexual inclinations or some other “ally” attribute, as if that weren’t presumptuous and intrusive – and, you know, weird. And should a pleasingly downtrodden identity be available – and said person dragged into your luminous presence – then you can bestow upon them your glorious and not-at-all-self-serving affirmation.

Naturally, you should make sure everyone sees. And hey, who wouldn’t want to be wheeled out as a prop, an accessory, for someone else’s attention-seeking project?

With a mix of archive footage and modern-day interviews, the leftism of the 70s and 80s is captured in all of its staggering glory. For those who haven’t seen the series, it is quite revealing – and often darkly funny. Among the gems to savour are the endless factional disputes over exactly how capitalism should be toppled, an earnest exposition on “penile imperialism,” and interviews with former self-styled radicals, now sitting by private swimming pools, fretting about fridge ownership, or planning to work on llama farms.

Other highlights include the tale of a bewilderingly inept attempt in 1987 to launch a radical left-wing tabloid, fuelled by the fever-dreams of Cambridge Marxists. The project was, unsurprisingly, a disaster, with its failure a direct result of ideological pretension. As illustrated by the scene in which, with the paper’s first edition about to go to press, most of the staff is out of the office on a deafness awareness day.

If you haven’t seen the exchange above, I do recommend watching it, if only as an instructional tale. Or a test of your own self-restraint. In the video, the cyclist, the aptly named Mr Peacock, goes out of his way to generate conflict, repeatedly, then descends into some paranoid fantasy, in which he is somehow both the hero and the victim. His fabulist construals of what is happening are quite remarkable. As I said at the time, someone should write a paper. Or beat him with a stick until the demon leaves.

You see, when your preferred candidate loses an election, what you really need is some channelling of ancestral spirituality. As opposed to say, a sense of proportion. And so, Ms Ixty Quintanilla lists some “spiritual practices” in order to enable fellow feminists to cope with the unutterable trauma that is their lives.

Suggestions include Call On Ancestors – which is to say, the dead – and Burn Herbs Mindfully. The latter is surprisingly fraught with complication, as we’re told, emphatically, that we must avoid setting fire to white sage and various endangered plants, and that it is “vital to recognise and respect the ancestors of the land you stand on.”

Other recommendations are more prosaic – feeling the breeze, watching trees grow, and, er, pushing up against said trees. No, I don’t know either. But apparently, if your psyche has been exploded and rendered unto dust by the election of someone other than Hillary Clinton, you should immediately find a tree and push up against it. It’s the feminist way.

However, if breeze-feeling and tree-pushing should fail you, more drastic measures may be required. And so readers are reminded to Protect Your Energy. Specifically, “Light your candles, burn your sage, charge your crystals.” It’s unclear whether the sage we’re being told to burn is the same sage we’ve just been told not to burn under any circumstances.

It’s once again time to hack our way through the deep artistic underbrush of Sandrine Schaefer. Specifically, her 2012 performance piece Ambulation, in which Ms Schaefer presents her buttocks to the world and shifts her weight from heel to toe, while her shoes emit the sounds of her “travels in Mexico.”

It’s strange just how often this “intersectionality” business looks an awful lot like a caste system, in which a person’s standing and moral significance, and their ability to take part in discussions, is determined entirely by their race and gender, and other attributes over which they have no meaningful control.

Assistant manager Bree Dobler boasted, “We are proud to have a Diversity in Changerooms Policy in our centres,” adding that patrons are welcome to use showers and changing facilities “where they feel most safe.” The ironies of this statement apparently passing undetected. “Everyone’s gender identity and expressions are valid,” Ms Dobler insisted. “Our goal is to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels respected and valued.”

Readers will note that the word everyone is rather heavy with connotations and does not seem to include women and girls who aren’t overly keen on the intimate proximity of big, creepy men. Even if those big, creepy men are wearing sparkly bikinis intended for children.

Ms Dobler was keen to remind the unnerved ladies that the pool does provide the option of “single stall washrooms or changerooms for patrons… [who] want to maintain more privacy.” In other words, women and girls who would rather not shower in front of big, hairy perverts can always retreat and surrender territory to the aforementioned big, hairy perverts.

Women and girls, you see, being a lower priority.

The company in question, Raheem AI, is a chatbot app launched in 2017 with a stated mission to abolish the police and to replace them with “community-based crisis teams” and “liberated dispatchers” – namely, anti-police activists and likeminded social workers – who would respond to emergencies armed with bottles of water and lots of “social justice.”

I know. You’re tempted to invest.

In the comments, Mags notes the claim that Mr Anderson committed “the perfect crime,” on account of those he robbed being much too busy fretting about “the way that police treat masculine-presenting black people.” She adds, not unfairly, a plausible definition of the perfect crime: “Suckering wokies?”

Well, it’s a nonprofit whose employees gratuitously announce their pronouns, and who regard as some kind of injustice the fact that criminal activity often results in arrest, or as they put it, “police terror.” And so, they’re “building a life-affirming world where police are obsolete.” I think it’s fair to assume there’s quite a bit of unrealism and credulity to exploit.

Readers will doubtless recall the Chichester Festival Theatre warning patrons that its production of The Sound of Music, one of the most famous and widely-seen musicals in the world, would contain references to Nazis. Which, for some, would apparently come as a surprise.

And so, instead of all that problematic academic rigour, all those challenging tasks that not everyone can complete, exceptional students will now be obliged to mingle with those less academically inclined, and offered an education “accessible to all,” one “open to the voices of divergent experiences.”

The practised doublethink in play, in which precocious interest in advanced material is actively discouraged, and in which “access” is invoked while gleefully denying it, has been noted here before. Along with educators’ hostility to students and parents who dared to complain about the downgrade, and whose concerns were dismissed as perpetuating “systemic racism.”

As in California, where differences in “school experiences,” i.e., differences in ability and achievement, are something to be eliminated by holding back high-achieving students, with curriculum guidelines based on “social justice,” and educators who are visibly “committed to social justice work.”

And likewise, we have Jennifer Katz, a professor of education at the University of British Columbia, scolding parents who question the conceit that bright children will somehow flourish if taught more slowly and in less detail in a more disruptive environment. While implying, quite strongly, that any parents who complain must be racist.

And then there’s San Diego, another bastion of progress, where teachers are instructed that in order to be “anti-racist,” they must “confront practices” deemed inegalitarian and which result in “racial imbalance” – say, norms of classroom behaviour, a disapproval of tardiness and cheating, and oppressive expectations of “turning work in on time.”

There’s a through-the-looking-glass quality. A fun-house mirror malevolence.

After telling us at length just how terrible and mind-warping these tiny fancies are, at least among women, Mr Seaton adds, “I don’t want to ban cupcakes.” And yet he feels it necessary to say this, as if banning miniature sponges would be an obvious thing to consider, the kind of thing one does. And after banning them in his own office.

A commenter asks, “What is it with people’s inability to ignore the things they don’t like?” Meaning things you don’t like and which have no bearing whatsoever on your everyday life or the turning of the world. Say, “our” alleged “obsession” with cupcakes and their supposedly debilitating effects on helpless, hapless womenfolk. Women being so mentally insubstantial that even a tiny cake can unhinge their minds, apparently.

But fretting ostentatiously about things of no importance has long been a standard template for Guardian articles, especially if you can shoehorn in some sophomoric theorising. It’s something most papers do to some extent, due to the obligation to Fill Space Somehow, but the Guardian is by far the greatest exponent and the most grandiose. Many of its contributors have mastered inadvertent surrealism.

I love it when Guardianistas talk about “our obsession” with something that no-one I know is obsessed with.

Mr Power is upset that some heinous “biological determinism” holds sway in the warm-weather custom of cooking outdoors. A phenomenon that, we learn, “sees women as salad-spinners and men as the keepers of the grill, the tenders of the flame, lords and masters of the meat.” “It’s a sausage-fest out there,” says Mr Power. “And it’s getting ugly.” Because there’s nothing uglier than the sight of menfolk indulging, often knowingly, in a clichéd male behaviour – cooking for friends and family and making sure that everyone is having a good time.

I’ve been to a few barbecues over the years, one or two with female grill-keepers, though most with males wielding the Plastic Spatula of Oppression™. I can’t say I was ever aware of much argument as to roles. It generally seems to depend on who’s in the mood or who’s the better cook, at least of the items in question, or – perhaps more commonly – who’s prepared to spend the day on duty, sweating, while smelling of grease and smoke.

I’ve yet to hear of womenfolk being locked indoors, away from the charcoal and firelighters, by surly, hissing men. And at the barbecue I attended recently, the matriarch of the house had a much more important job than merely cooking sausages. My sister-in-law kept the day lubricated with endless, quite colossal, pitchers of Pimms. Priorities, you see.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Mr Power that quite a few people, male and female, actually enjoy the role-play opportunity of the barbecue – the theatre, the ritual, the fun. Even – heresy! – gendered fun. But hey, the point is that some of you heathens are still arranging your leisure time and social gatherings in a way of which our Guardianista disapproves. Your barbecues aren’t being gender balanced in the way he would like.

Several thousand years have passed since men had to kill our protein, make a fire, cook it and eat it.

You see, Ms Icess Fernandez Rojas has endured this poignant political struggle before – “a lifetime of having my name misspelled and mispronounced.” Which is why you, the public, must be told. What with your dull and obvious names, like Jessica and Angela.

“Angela could get coffee at Starbucks with ease,” says Ms Rojas, “while Icess was still spelling her name out.” Oh, this new realm of suffering: “Jessica was a staple at my local Chinese place even though Icess paid. And even Microsoft Word recognised Jenny as a proper pronoun, a proper person, over me; the red squiggle line was a constant reminder.”

Spellcheck too? Will this oppression never end? And doubtless Ms Rojas is intimately familiar with the spelling and pronunciation of every name of every employee at her local Chinese restaurant.