MENSA Name Change Sparks Fury

MENSA Name Change Sparks Fury

Otto English reveals another controversial branding change in the name of gender equality

There was predictable outrage earlier this week when it was revealed that a pub in Devon had renamed its ‘ploughman’s lunch’ a ‘plough-person’s lunch’ in a welcome nod to gender equality.

“Now the Ploughman’s lunch is cancelled!” Declared the Mail Online and soon readers were frothing angrily about the menu of a pub they had never visited and a lunch they had not bought.

“This pub should be boycotted!” Wrote one commentator called Alan.

“I’ve not been to this pub and now I never will!” Wrote Twitter user @BasilBrawlty7193393.

“A ploughman’s lunch was traditionally cheese, bread and ONIONS which was eaten by MEN who ploughed the fields, which WOMEN didn’t as it was hard labour intensive work!” Senior Squirrel added, in between hitting ‘shift’ on his keyboard “it dates back to the 1850’s! I sincerely hope this.. madness results in a thoroughly deserved drop off in trade.”

Well, I hate to contradict ‘Senior Squirrel’ and Mr. 7193393 but the ploughman’s lunch in its current form is not that old. There is mention of cheese and bread in ‘Pierce the Ploughman’s Creed‘, a 14^th Century alliterative poem, but the term itself was cooked up (or rather fermented) by the Cheese Bureau in the 1950s and later promoted by the Milk Marketing Board as a marketing scheme.  

This is, of course, just another front in the ever more tiresome ‘war on woke’ whose only benefit, as far as I can tell, has been to give column inches and airtime to right-wing journalists and much needed time off for their partners.

The Future of British Broadcasting Insider Spills GB News Beans

Otto English 1 April 2021

Recent months have been a positive boon time for ‘anti-woke crusaders’ and angry people on GB News. Earlier this year Marks and Spenser announced that it was (quite rightly) changing the name of ‘Midget Gems’ sweets to ‘Mini Gems’ and Mars has recently announced that it will be rebranding M and M characters to make them more inclusive. There was more welcome fuel to the fury fire when Primark revealed its ‘parenthood’ range last month which led to the hilarious spectacle of late middle-aged men declaring that they would boycott the goods.

Now, in a further development, Byline Times can exclusively reveal that MENSA International plans today to announce that it will henceforth be known as PEOPLESA International.

In the words of Imayda Uppa, the head of branding at PEOPLESA International, the move has been deliberately taken: “to wind up those boring angry bigots who seem to dominate so much of the conversation and to encourage people more generally to think for themselves, check facts, divine truth from fiction and consider the way we are manipulated and the danger of fake news and disinformation in our modern world.”

Byline Times reached out to Nigel Farage for predictable comment but he had apparently gone off with Lord Hannan on one of the latter’s fictional walks.

So instead, we asked BasilBrawlty7193393 for his take on the move. He told us:

“This is typical of the wokerati’s cancel agenda, which seeks to erase white men like me and replace them with migrant workers. I’m a MAN and as such I will be boycotting MENSA (of which I was never a member) and all the other left wing woke places like the M and M factory. Can’t people leave everything alone? Have they not read Jordan Peterson? DON’T THEY UNDERSTAND THE HATE THEY ARE SPREADING by changing things and making the world nicer, fairer, better, kinder and more inclusive place?”  

We wish him a speedy recovery from his burst blood vessel and you all a very happy 1 April.