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I
N a world first for Mediawatching, we are leaving the relative safety and comfort of libraries for our first story in this
month’s column.
So without further ado, we head to a gritty Sarf London boozer and the mean streets of East Dulwich, where a familiar scene was playing out ahead of a Drag Queen storytime. Reactionary “grass-roots” student-movement, Turning Point rallied its placard-waving supporters to the Great Exhibition pub to exercise their freedom of speech, by demanding that the storytime did not go ahead. Despite their opposition to “cancel culture”, the demonstrators kicked up a storm as they threatened a boycott of the pub – the only problem was, the event wasn’t taking place. The pub released a statement saying: “They appear to be opposing our Drag Storytime event for under-fives, an event that took place in July 2022. Whilst the event was a huge success last year… there is no event booked at the Great Exhibition next Friday, nor has there ever been.”
Turning Point did hand out flyers, according to Southwark News (https://bit. ly/3LnQbui), but locals also arrived on the scene to protest against the protestors. Protesters protesting against protesters who are protesting against a non-existent event could be the next episode in Duke Smoochem a YouTube parody game that has taken on a life of its own. Dan Douglas created the Duke Nukem-inspired scenes in response to a Daily Mail article about Matt Hancock’s lockdown-breaking kiss. His unique approach to modern British life is proving a hit, and has reached the attention of The Guardian (
https://bit.ly/3mSXUpX), which reports “Dan Douglas started Duke Smoochem as a Twitter joke. Now the project has spiralled into an epic portrait of a declining nation – with everyone from Matt Hancock to GB News in its satirical crosshairs.”
Among Dan’s creations, which can be seen on his YouTube channel at https://bit. ly/3JGBlhb, is “a scene in which the player can visit a public library that has been converted into a food bank. Inside, the books have been pulled off the shelves
March 2023
Boris Johnson, among others, stars in the dystopian world of Duke Smoochem.
and thrown on a bonfire for warmth, while a volunteering David Cameron can be found extolling the benefits of the ‘big society’.”
While Duke Smoochem has bare library shelves, our next story has a bare woman among the library shelves. The Daily Star (unsurprisingly) has been quick to pick up on the reports that “a viral four-second video shows the unidentified woman stripping off in what appears to be the Central Library in Hong Kong before posing for a camera in the buff”.
Despite strict rules on public nudity, which could land the woman in jail for up to six months, the paper reports that she did adhere to Honk Kong’s Covid rules by keeping her face mask on. The video was shared on the messaging app Telegram and has also resulted in the arrest of a man who took screen shots and shared them. For anyone wanting more of The Daily Star’s take on events, find them here
https://bit.ly/3YLhhOH.
As if there isn’t enough to contend with these days, we have seen a throwback to 2008 and the financial crisis that saw the emergence of banks that “are too big to fail”. The Silicone Valley Bank has been bailed out by the US Government, and seen
its UK subsidiary sold to HSBC for the princely sum of £1, after a run on deposits threatened its existence. The bank’s customers, we are told, are largely from tech firms and start-ups and any failure would put these businesses at risk. But Mediawatching’s interest was piqued by a report on News Radio 1070 WKOK about Milton public Library, which says: “Seven Milton Public Library employees almost missed a paycheck [sic] this week due to the collapse at Silicon Valley Bank.”
The Library had to dip into its reserves to pay the staff members, with library director Kris LaVanish telling WKOK that “the library was lucky it had a good fundraising year to have the money in its operating budget to pay the affected employees. She added that if this happened last year, ‘it would’ve shut the doors’.” Find out more at https://
bit.ly/3YNxdjq.
Finally as part of events to mark Women’s History Month, library staff at Detroit Public LIbrary created a dress made entirely from discarded books. The finished product can be seen at https://bit. ly/3mTLFcq.
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