BBC Radio 4's The Bottom Line - "Woke or Broke?"

[TheBiologyStupid]

I couldn't see another thread on this, so apologies if I missed one. BBC Radio 4's The Bottom Line was just discussing corporate political positioning, whether it is justifiable, and, if so, under what circumstances.

The issue of Pride came up, including a fairly superficial mention of the recent Halifax pronoun badges debacle. However, there was no mention of the hypocrisy of global brands who stick rainbow versions of their logos in the US and UK etc., but deliberately avoid doing so in the Middle East.

Anyway, here's the link to the programme: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00194h3

However, there was no mention of the hypocrisy of global brands who stick rainbow versions of their logos in the US and UK etc., but deliberately avoid doing so in the Middle East

That is so hypocritical. I don’t suppose they do it China either.

There’s an article in the Spectator today titled Has identity politics had its day?’
saying much the same thing.

It was a bit shallow but I liked the woman from John Lewis and the advertising bloke - they didn’t use the phrase virtue signalling but made distinctions between having values embedded in the way a business runs and simply churning out messages on social media and a useful understanding of what is political and what is social.
Definitely worth a listen despite Evan Davies determinedly keeping it light

Yes, the John Lewis woman, Nina Bhatia, was reasonably good and the journalist Ian Leslie was sound.

Although John bloody Lewis and their mixed sex changing rooms are signalling in another way.

I used to work in a civil service department which won awards for being a good place for gay people to work. And it really was. It was also great for women and (as far as I could tell) people with disabilities. Very fair, flexible, accommodating and transparent, with a fantastic office atmosphere.

The awards were worn lightly, there was no virtue signalling. I presume any effort had actually gone into whatever happens behind the scenes to make a good workplace possible.

There's been some discussion of this programme at the end of the Maya Forstater thread. @Pluvia heard it.

Yes, although it turns out I misheard/ misinterpreted parts of it. Ian Leslie made the point a couple of times that the young, highly educated, progressive people in charge of marketing and comms assume the world believes what they believe and can steer a company into choppy political waters (think Halifax most recently).

It's an interesting programme. The woman who spoke positively about promoting BLM as part of her brand showed the lack of insight that Ian Leslie was warning about. She's under the impression that BLM is a simple 'good' single issue movement and isn't aware of all the social justice/ Antifa / anti-democracy controversy around it.