u/SwiftieNewRomantics

An accountant at Historic England reported her colleagues to police for stalking after she was asked to attend a meeting in person, a tribunal heard.

Tanya Langston made stalking allegations as part of a “a deliberate, contrived and calculated plan to tarnish” her colleagues, it was heard.

She said her co-workers at Historic England were trying to “exert control” over her by calling her to attend a meeting and she claimed her manager was stalking her through Skype and a dating app.

A tribunal found she wanted to distract from or defeat misconduct allegations she faced at work and to cause “as much distress as possible for her work colleagues”.

Ms Langston sued for discrimination and unfair dismissal after she was fired. However, Bristol Employment Tribunal dismissed her claims.

Ms Langston joined Historic England, the Government’s heritage watchdog, in 2018 and was based in Swindon, Wilts.

In 2021 she became an assistant systems accountant, but by December 2022 it became clear she was still making errors despite receiving extra support.

She had “shown a lack of attention to detail in her work”, which included “welcome letters being sent to the same client on more than one occasion” and “incorrect email addresses for clients having been entered”.

In March 2023 managers decided “it was appropriate to consider performance management” because of Ms Langston’s “resistance to and lack of engagement with [staff] when they raised those matters with her or tried to correct or train her”.

In May 2023 Ms Langston sent Matthew Ulyatt, the finance and procurement director, messages on Microsoft Teams.

The tribunal heard that “some were random greetings, others were MS Paint pictures of what appeared to be an octopus and a Gameboy character asking what he thought of them, others were text messages which she proceeded to delete before he could read them”.

When Mr Ulyatt queried the messages, she claimed she sent them because she was “bored” after not being allocated enough work. Regardless Mr Ulyatt told her the messages were inappropriate.

In response, Ms Langston said: “You are barely my colleague, you are not my family nor are you my friend and even if you were, you are not entitled to behave towards me as described above.”

This “totally inappropriate” response meant the messages were “now regarded as a formal conduct issue”.

At her next performance review meeting, Ms Langston “became extremely hostile” because she said she believed the team was withholding work from her.

In a meeting in May 2023 she was suspended. In response, she said: “This isn’t going to be a difficult process for me. I’m going to make sure it’s a difficult time for you.”

Ms Langston filed a grievance with Historic England, complaining about the weekly informal performance reviews.

In her grievance, she stated she had “contacted the police for advice, as it is entirely possible that my employment into Historic England is a part of a larger harassment or possibly stalking problem”.

She filled in a bullying and harassment form which claimed that 10 colleagues were possibly in a conspiracy against her.

An investigation was launched and Ms Langston said the “stalking had affected her and her family and was online”.

She claimed it included being required to attend a performance meeting in May 2023 in person. She said “stalking could take the form of attempts to make repeated contact as a method of exerting control”.

During the course of the investigation, Ms Langston claimed that she also believed Mr Ulyatt had matched with her through a dating app and said things “intended to cause her trauma”.

The investigation drew to a close in July 2023, concluding there was no evidence of stalking.

The disciplinary investigation against Miss Langston resumed and she was given a warning for her inappropriate messages but allowed back to work.

However, the tribunal judgment reported that: “The team staff then expressed grave concerns about working with [Ms Langston] in the future given her complaints were directed at all of the team (some of whom had barely met [her]), included unsubstantiated allegations which had been made out of the blue, and included wholly unevidenced allegations of stalking which [Ms Langston] had reported to the police.”

It was found that the relationship between Ms Langston and those in her team had irretrievably broken down and she was dismissed in February 2024..

She took Historic England to an employment tribunal in Bristol alleging unfair dismissal and discrimination.

Employment Judge Andrew Midgley has now dismissed her claims.

He concluded: “I am satisfied that [Ms Langston’s] accounts reflected a deliberate, contrived and calculated plan to tarnish [Mr Ulyatt and other members of staff].

“I am entirely satisfied ... that each of those allegations was fabricated, had absolutely no factual basis capable of justifying them, that [Ms Langston] knew that, and that she deployed them with two intentions.

“First to distract and if possible to defeat the misconduct allegations and performance issues, and secondly to cause as much difficult and distress as possible for her work colleagues.”

When Neil Douglas Roderick McLennan — NDR to his friends — stood for Holyrood this year, he used his initials as his campaign slogan: New Direction Required.

The former Conservative, who lost his deposit as an independent in Banffshire & Buchan Coast but remained a local councillor, has certainly lived up to the letter of his promise. 

Last month McLennan set off for new horizons, taking a job as deputy head at a private school in Cairo. But he did not tell his constituents he would be representing them from the Egyptian capital.

There is no reference to his north African job on McLennan’s Facebook page. The teacher has represented the Buckie & Findochty ward on Moray council, for a salary of just over £26,000 a year, since he was first elected as a Conservative in 2022. His most recent post is about a car abandoned in a village in his ward.

There are no rules saying councillors have to live in their council areas, as long as they did so when they stood for election. Last week it emerged a Fife Tory, Conner Young, was working in Merseyside.

But one fellow councillor called on McLennan, whose term ends in May, to quit. “He should do the right thing by the people of Buckie and Moray — resign and trigger a by-election,” Derek Ross, a fellow independent, said. “At the moment, he is not serving these people.”

The Northern Scot newspaper, which covers Moray, reported that McLennan had a social media footprint in Cairo from this summer. His £4,000-a-year secondary, an offshoot of the English public school Malvern College, re-opened after the holidays on September 6.

McLennan told the paper that he remained committed to his constituents and said he would be judged on his casework. 

He said: “For some time I have divided my professional commitments between Moray and the Highlands, London and international education work. I am privileged to contribute to educational improvement internationally, while continuing to carry out my responsibilities to the people who elected me.

“There will inevitably be political criticism. I do not intend to be distracted by it. I would rather be judged on what I actually do for constituents and on the issues I have consistently pursued.

“My attention will remain where I believe it belongs: helping constituents, standing up for Buckie and Findochty, seeking better outcomes for children and vulnerable people, and asking difficult questions where accountability is required.”

McLennan, once a teacher at Nairn Academy, was previously a senior figure in local Conservative politics before quitting the party eight weeks after his election over what he called “egregious behaviours” from colleagues.

In his Holyrood campaign, which had an inauspicious start when Aberdeenshire council forgot to add him to the candidate list, he called for Scotland to have an independent first minister. 

McLennan also stressed that he lived in the constituency, writing: “I enjoy walking our dogs, eating and drinking in our area’s fine restaurants, bars and hotels (and the cuppa and fine pieces at Findochty Town Hall weekly).”

In most Democratic districts, campaigning to slaughter a cute mammal would probably not win many votes. But Marie Gluesenkamp Perez appears to know her electorate.

“They need to be killed,” says Reyhan Higgins, 52, a fishing guide on the Columbia River, brandishing a rubber-bullet gun he uses to deter sea lions from stealing salmon. “I’d shoot them myself if they would ever let us.”

On the river, the sea lions are barking with satisfaction after a summer of excess. They heave themselves on to the docks, waddling in search of a comfortable position to rest their swollen bellies. For months they have been feasting on salmon — the fish that is the lifeblood of Chinook, a small town in Washington state.

“Been around them my whole life and haven’t found anything good to say about them yet,” says Curtis Bunney, 45, gutting a salmon. “They eat all the salmon and they suck.”

Since 1972, it has been illegal to kill California and Steller sea lions. Hunted for their pelts and meat, California sea lion numbers collapsed to about 7,000 in the 1950s and the species was threatened with extinction.

That year, the federal government passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Their numbers rebounded and now there are more than 300,000 along the Pacific coast.

As November’s midterm elections approach, the row over the burgeoning sea lion population on the Columbia River has reached Capitol Hill.

Gluesenkamp Perez, 38, a Democrat who represents Washington’s third congressional district, has bewildered members of her own party by campaigning for a cull on the river, which separates Washington from Oregon.

For the soft-hearted liberals who dominate the Democrat Party establishment, Gluesenkamp Perez’s apparent bloodlust — indeed, her obsession with sea lions — is viewed with something close to embarrassment.

In a recent committee hearing, she held up a board comparing the size of a Steller sea lion to a family car. She has described them as “Corolla-sized vermin”.

On social media, she has been relentless. “These big boys are driving up food costs for families by gorging on salmon,” she posted on X. “I’m doing something about it.”

At a time of extreme political division in the US, Gluesenkamp Perez is a rare Democrat willing to work with the Trump administration, becoming an isolated figure in her own party after voting with Republicans on a procedural motion.

As a result of her bipartisan approach, she has secured White House approval for a bill that would allow the Cowlitz tribe, Native Americans who have fished the Columbia River for salmon for thousands of years, to kill more sea lions.

Her swing district is a Republican target in November, but Trump voters appear to be won over by Gluesenkamp Perez’s determination to defy the party line and champion their cause.

“When I grew up, Republicans and Democrats worked together,” says Mike Doan, 45, a commercial fisherman who voted for Trump but is supporting Gluesenkamp Perez in November.

Lifting crates of black cod and red rockfish on to the docks, he says that ocean-going sea lions are pursuing salmon to the Bonneville Dam, almost 150 miles inland.

“It sounds inhumane, but if we start shooting them, making them scared of the boats and the people, they’ll stay out in the ocean where they belong. Because once they get in the rivers and the estuaries, that’s where the problems start. It’s devastating.”

For conservationists, humans are responsible for the original sin that caused the salmon population to collapse.

In the 1930s, the Columbia River was dammed to provide hydroelectric power to Portland and Seattle, one of Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal projects to lift the American economy out of the Great Depression.

Fish ladders were incorporated into the design, allowing anadromous fish to swim upstream to spawn. The ladders allow the salmon to mimic their natural behaviour, but slow and exhaust them, creating a buffet for sea lions.

Fish ladders were incorporated into the design, allowing anadromous fish to swim upstream to spawn. The ladders allow the salmon to mimic their natural behaviour, but slow and exhaust them, creating a buffet for sea lions.

Ecologists argue that sea lions are exhibiting their natural behaviour and there is no evidence that removing them would restore the salmon population.

“California sea lions should not be made a scapegoat for the much larger, human-caused challenges facing salmon in the Columbia River basin,” says Dr Jeff Boehm, a researcher at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California.

“We believe salmon recovery should be driven by the best available science and by solutions that address the underlying causes of decline — not by an indiscriminate approach to killing native wildlife.”

However fishermen say desperate times call for desperate measures. There were once runs of 16 million salmon a year. Now, only two million make the annual pilgrimage up the river to spawn, and two thirds of these returning fish come from hatcheries.

When scientists tried removing 14 sea lions known to gorge on salmon upstream, all 14 swam back to the Bonneville Dam in less than two days.

Gluesenkamp Perez has ridiculed the costs of trying to remove the sea lions humanely. A small number caught preying on salmon at the Bonneville Dam can be euthanised each year by injecting them with an overdose of ketamine, at a cost of $40,000. These measures are not enough, she says. “It’s probably less stressful for a sea lion to just get shot.” 

The river is known as the “Superbowl of salmon fishing” and recreational anglers will pay $250 each to catch their dream fish, only to have a sea lion steal it from their nets or grab it from their hook. Tourists have been warned not to get too excited when they feel a tug on their line. “They see a net waving, it’s like a dinner bell,” says Al Rahkola, 59, a sports fisherman.

On the Pacific coast, where logging and fishing remain important industries, locals favour going back to the indiscriminate methods employed by their frontiersmen forefathers. 

“Back in the day, they’d throw dynamite in the water. In the 1970s they were still shooting them in big numbers,” says Kiefer Gray, 29, a third-generation fisherman, shovelling ice on to a $320 halibut in the port of Chinook.

“If you go to the city, people want to protect them because they don’t know what they’re talking about. They buy fish from the store. But they don’t know anything about this business and how the sea lions affect our livelihoods. There are just too many of them.”

A mother has said she taxes the pocket money of her seven-year-old daughter to teach her the value of “collective benefit”.

Phoebe Lee, from Twickenham, South West London, takes a 20p cut out of her child’s £3-a-week in pocket money to introduce the idea of contributing to public services and personal responsibility.

The tax contributes to a communal pot that funds household items or family activities.

Ms Lee said: “[My daughter] benefits from things like the NHS and state school because we pay taxes for them – I want her to start to understand them.

“I wanted my children to learn a lesson and feel that community contribution.

“I know this won’t work for everyone, but it’s a way to introduce collective benefit and understand how things work in a family, and eventually, the world,” she added.

Ms Lee is the founder of Inherit Health, an artificial intelligence startup, that sets out to “make a difference” to public healthcare. The company has built an app that collates healthcare data for the NHS.

She contributes £4 a week to the fund, as does her husband, who works as a public servant.

Her other two children, a four-year-old and a two-year-old, will also be taxed when they are old enough, she said.

She places £1 of the pocket money in savings, turning £3 a week into £1.80 a week after deductions. Her daughter can make more money from chores, with Ms Lee hoping to have amassed £300 by December.

Lee insists that the contribution is “symbolic rather than financially significant”, pointing out that she and her husband pay out larger amounts into the same fund, and that she is not charging her children for Wi-Fi or rent.

She says she has also instituted a “mini-democracy” within her family, in which members take a vote on the purchase of shared items or activities.

“We encourage the children to understand where money goes, including donations and public services,” she said.

“We handle donations and make sure we donate time or second-hand bits, or my daughter sells bracelets.”

She added: “It’s not about control, it’s about understanding how things work in a family, and eventually in the world.”

No 50. ChuckleVision (BBC One, 1987-2009)
No 49. The Tomorrow People (ITV, 1973-1979)

No 48. How (ITV, 1966-1981)

47. Postman Pat (BBC One, 1981-1997)

48. Teletubbies (BBC Two/One, 1997-2001)

49. Pob’s Programme (Channel 4, 1985-1990)

50. John Craven’s Newsround/Newsround (BBC One, 1972-ongoing)

51. Knightmare (ITV, 1987-1994)

52. In the Night Garden… (BBC Two, 2007-2009)

53. Rainbow (ITV, 1972-1992)

54. The Adventures of Black Beauty (ITV, 1972-1974)

55. Andy Pandy (BBC One, 1950-1970)

56. Crackerjack (BBC One, 1955-1984)

57. The Basil Brush Show (BBC One, 1968-1980)

58. Danger Mouse (ITV, 1981-1992)

59. Byker Grove (BBC One, 1989-2006)

60. Thunderbirds (ITV, 1965-1966)

61. Rentaghost (BBC One, 1976-1984)

62. Maid Marian and Her Merry Men (BBC One, 1989-1994)

63. The Demon Headmaster (BBC One, 1996-1998)

64. Dick and Dom in da Bungalow (CBBC, 2002-2006)

65. Press Gang (ITV, 1989-1993)

66. Inigo Pipkin/Pipkins (ITV, 1973-1981)

67. The Adventure Game (BBC One/Two, 1980-1986)

68. Ivor the Engine (BBC One, 1959-1963, 1975-1977)

69. Vision On (BBC One, 1964-1976)

70. Captain Pugwash (BBC One, 1957-1975)

71. Sesame Street (PBS, 1969-ongoing)

72. SpongeBob SquarePants (Nickelodeon, 1999-ongoing)

73. Children of the Stones (ITV, 1977)

74. Grange Hill (BBC One, 1978-2008)

75. Hartbeat (BBC One, 1984-1993)

76. Bod (BBC One, 1975-1976)

77. The Changes (BBC One, 1975)

16. Jackanory (BBC One, 1965-1996)

15. The Magic Roundabout (BBC One, 1965-1977)

16. The Muppet Show (ITV, 1976-1981)

17. Paddington (BBC One, 1976-1980)

18. Play School (BBC Two, 1964-1988)

19. Blue Peter (BBC One/CBBC, 1958-ongoing)

20. The Wombles (BBC One, 1973-1975)

21. Peppa Pig (Channel 5, 2004-ongoing)

22. Pingu (CBeebies, 1980-2000)

7. Tiswas (ITV, 1974-1982)

6. Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley (1966, 1967 and 1969)

7. Bluey (BBC One, 2018-ongoing)

8. Clangers (BBC One, 1969-1974)

9. Horrible Histories (CBBC, 2009-ongoing)

10. Mr Benn (BBC One, 1971-1972)

11. Bagpuss (BBC One, 1974)

I am the kind of person who delights in defying stereotypes. I am a fiscal conservative who is aggressively socially liberal. A Right-leaning person of colour. A political gypsy who embraces tribal homelessness as a lifestyle choice and will gleefully savage any given party.

I never thought I’d conform to a cookie-cutter voter profile. Yet it turns out I slot into a new political archetype. My discovery of this started with a lonely pair of Dr Martens sandals in my wardrobe.

A few months ago, I decided to flog some unwanted bits on Vinted to raise extra cash for my summer holiday. I haphazardly photographed a random assortment of items. To my shock, I made £300 in two weeks. 

I then did my research and came across an article about Vinted flippers who scroll auction platforms and sift through charity shops for bargains, then resell them at a higher price online. Having run my own vintage stall on Portobello Market as a student, I knew I could emulate them.

I once more started to nip into Oxfam on my lunch breaks and track eBay auctions for underpriced gems. I am now building a niche in third-tier designer gear by the likes of Balenciaga and Céline – fashion houses that attract cult followers and uneducated sellers routinely underprice.

My best flip to date was a vintage Chloé crossbody bag that I picked up for £27, tarted up, then sold on for £175 to a lady who snapped it up for a festival. I’m now moving tentatively into restoring designer handbags for the higher margins. While competent with a needle, I’m sending the fiddliest fixes to a car dealership skilled in leather craft (cheaper than a luxury “bag spa”).

Like many middle-class people who have seen their bills explode as their salary stagnates, I am thrilled with the extra cash. But even more gratifying has been the discovery on the platform of my kindred spirits. In 1997, John Prescott claimed: “We’re all middle class now.” Today it seems that we’re all entrepreneurs.

Hayek would have marvelled at Vinted as the purest embodiment of the spontaneous order, with resellers acting as vital price correctors. At the same time, my fellow flippers and I are intuitively guided by an ethical capitalism ethos, rooted in fairness. I have yet to come across a bad apple on the platform, as either a seller or a buyer.

When I purchased a dress from one lady, she offered to send it to me for free after discovering a tiny stain upon packing it. The flaw was so faint that had she not flagged it I would never have even noticed it. After inspecting the item, I insisted on paying in full. Another woman offered a 25 per cent discount after I had paid for a shirt, feeling she had overpriced it. She hadn’t. I declined her offer.

For many Vinted hustlers, entrepreneurship is not merely a side practice; it is a central ritual, embedded into the journey of life. Young mothers now fund the latest stage in their family’s growth by flogging the vestiges of earlier milestones, from baby clothes to toys.

The idea of a new rising libertarian tribe might invite scepticism. My generation has defied the historical tradition of switching Tory with age. But research shows that millennials are strikingly hostile to tax increases and benefits. Younger than Workington man and Stevenage woman, the economic intuitions of the “Vinted woman” are not spiked with bitter recollections of Thatcherite post-industrial blight.

Vinted women are also strivers rather than survivors. Unlike the middle-aged Just About Managings (Jams) who are struggling to preserve the middle-class life they built for themselves through endless belt tightening, Vinted women are still trying to arrive. They are not in the business of managing but improvising. 

Their relationship to money is different; they are more inclined to dedicate their energies to generating extra cash rather than making their pennies go further. My cohort may be more receptive to pro-growth messages than political strategists assume.

I am convinced that my fellow Vinted hustlers and I are the new Mondeo men. The 1990s suburban swing voter signalled the death of socialist Britain. He bought his council house, ran his own business and spent his Sundays polishing his Ford. Vinted women also herald a seismic turning point: the demise of the property-owning democracy – and the rise of mass entrepreneurship from the ashes.

Vinted women could prove not only an economic driving force but a political kingmaker. The platform’s user base – which has surged to 17 million UK users in just a few years – is mid to low income, professional, skewed female, an average age of 36, sometimes with a young family in tow.

This is precisely the category of voter that may well decide the outcome in the 90-odd suburban swing seats stretching from Swindon in the south to Keighley in the north. Logic follows that professionals who have been priced out of safe urban-core seats, disproportionately reside in marginals. Women in their thirties up to middle age also tend to delay committing their vote until the last minute.

And yet few in politics are aware of this group, and even fewer are interested. When the PM promises to give people “breathing space”, he isn’t talking to Vinted Britain. The latter does not feel claustrophobic or submerged, but stunted and stuck. What they crave from a new PM is not momentary respite. It’s a leg up. 

Reform meanwhile is trapped in a negative feedback loop. Any attempt to expand beyond its disenfranchised male base risks a backlash from supporters who are already defecting in dribs and drabs to Restore.

The Tories are also missing a trick, as they squabble about whether the party should be targeting Reform voters or wealthy southern Remainers. It could win over Vinted women with the right economic vision. But its flagship policies – crusading against business rates, the family farm tax and VAT on private schools – narrowly target their traditional voters. The party offers nothing to the one in five Britons engaged in some kind of side hustle.

Where is the party’s pledge to introduce a tax-free secondary income allowance? Side-hustle Britain has also rendered redundant Badenoch’s economic philosophy, which divides the world into the market class and the bureaucratic class. I know a compliance lawyer who also happens to be a YouTube running vlogger and is launching a 3D-printing enterprise. He’s the kind of voter the party should be reaching out to, not alienating with abstruse culture war theories.

For 100 years, conservatism has rested on the concept of the property-owning democracy. That this seems to be making way for the side-hustle society is good news for the Right. It turns out that when people lack assets, their impulse is not to reach for the Communist Manifesto. It is to diversify their income streams.

Then again, the inability of conservatives to appeal to this new group is embarrassing. That Vinted women remain politically ambivalent despite their capitalist instincts is an indictment of modern conservatism. Here is yet more evidence of the Right’s rank failure. When will our politicians get their act together?

Children’s literature is full of bears. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re brave, sometimes they’re downright heroic. But the best-known of all, beating Rupert and Winnie, Yogi and Baloo, must be Paddington Bear, created by Michael Bond in 1958.

Paddington has become the quintessential Briton. He’s found at a railway station. He speaks in Received Pronunciation (RP). He loves marmalade and he wears a Duffel coat. (These were originally Belgian, but in Britain we adopted them when we had a surplus after the Second World War.) For 68 years, Paddington has become cherished through literature, radio, television, the stage and – biggest of all – the screen, where the three feature films so far have grossed over £600m.

In recent years, though, Paddington has also become a mascot for the Centrist Dad. He’s the living embodiment of how the urban middle classes view refugees: cuddly, polite, heroic, misunderstood by villains on the Right. The Lib Dem-ification of Paddington reached new heights in 2022 when the chief whip of the Party joked that the bear should become the ethics adviser to then-prime minister Boris Johnson.

And who can forget the twee comedy sketch, near the end of Elizabeth II’s life, in which the late Queen and Paddington shared tea at Buckingham Palace? (Not to mention the wildly popular meme of the duo, when Elizabeth died months later, showing them walking hand-in-hand to the pearly gates?)

Please Look After This Bear, a new book by academics Melanie Ramdarshan Bold and Aishwarya Subramanian, asks “how Paddington became British”, and what that really means. They analyse a vast array of Paddington “content”, including interviews with Bond himself and others, and argue that Paddington has become crucial to any understanding of British identity.

In fact, he may be its pinnacle. “Britishness isn’t just about where you’re from, but how you behave,” they write. “Bring your best manners and a jar of marmalade, and you’re halfway there.” He’s the version of Britishness that those in power like to project, and that makes him as much a soft-power tool as the BBC: “Visitors arriving in Britain’s international airports are likely to meet Paddington before any immigration officer.” Anyone assailed by massive advertisements as they trudge off an easyJet flight will know this all too well.

Bond himself, it’s true, was inspired by refugees. He saw young British evacuees with “a label round their neck” passing through Reading, en route to safe houses in the countryside. His family took in Jewish children from the Kindertransport, that heroic effort to rescue the youngest victims of Nazi barbarism. He served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, as Ramdarshan Bold and Subramanian detail, and “witnessed a ship packed with Jewish refugees heading to Palestine”. Paddington Bear, according to the author himself, is “a refugee, and I do think that there’s no sadder sight than refugees”.

But Please Look After This Bear, having cited all these facts, tries to advance the framework, repositioning Paddington as a Windrush-generationincomer instead. Ramdarshan Bold and Subramanian point out that the bear made his first appearance in 1958, just months after the Notting Hill riots. Paddington comes to live with the Brown family at Windsor Gardens, slap bang in the middle of Notting Hill and Portobello Road. To shift the focus away from the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust is an interesting choice, and perhaps necessary for Please Look After This Bear, since Ramdarshan Bold and Subramanian’s central argument hinges on what they call Bond’s “quietly colonial logic”.

And that logic doesn’t always intrude. When it sticks to titbits, Please Look After This Bear is fascinating. Paddington’s RP accent was not assigned to him by Bond; the author, instead, envisaged him having the “high-pitched, gruff voice” of an elderly German man, or, failing that, the “Indian English of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, spiritual adviser to the Beatles”. We learn of how Bond and his daughter almost fell out after she – the former managing director of Paddington & Company, which owned the rights to his image until 2016 – decided to “betray” her father’s dedication to marmalade by allowing Paddington to appear in a Marmite advert. In 2024, after a request from film producers for a replica, the Home Office, showing a surprising sense of humour, issued a real passport for a fictional bear.

Inevitably, however, and much like Paddington himself, these snippets of history come with baggage. You might think it nice to learn that the people of Japan were among the bear’s greatest initial fans: not only did they show their support by buying Bond’s books, but they wrote to the author to ask what Paddington’s uncle Pastuzo did for a living. Ramdarshan Bold and Subramanian cite Bond’s wry suggestion, in response, that this bombardment of “questions no one had ever asked before” was proof of the Japanese being “nothing if not thorough”. They then decry his words as being “laced with Orientalist tropes”.

Please Look After This Bear is packed with such undergraduate-level complaints. Paddington’s “brownness is deracialised”, we learn: he “never unsettles whiteness”, but instead offers up a “bear-shaped balm for a nation grappling with its imperial ghosts”. He’s the “good immigrant”, the one that plays along and says “please” and “thank you” even when his host country treats him poorly by locking him up, ignoring him or (in Mr Curry’s case) calling him names out of the window.

Ramdarshan Bold and Subramanian seem to want to have their marmalade sandwich and eat it. In their view, Paddington is everything a mean-spirited, Brexit-voting Briton should aspire to become and yet, with those same attributes, he’s also a disappointing, even neutered, caricature of what immigrants “should” be. Even his renaming from his Peruvian original – he was Pastuzo, after his uncle – is held up as a sin. “The burden of linguistic accommodation falls, as ever, on the immigrant.”

This approach would be trivially irritating, except that it hobbles the book’s attempts at political analysis. Brexit was “marked by hostile-environment policies and deepening divisions”, which may seem reductive, if not jaundiced, to the majority of voters who supported it. The 2024 riots were simply “a wave of far-Right protest, unrest and violence, much of it stoked by anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiment”; it’s unhelpful not to explain what happened in Southport, who Axel Rudakubana was, what the rioters believed (wrongly or not), and so on.

It becomes clear that Please Look After This Bear has little interest in why other people have other views, and sometimes even act upon them. Mr Curry, one of the few Britons in Bond’s stories who doesn’t fawn over Paddington, is described as “an echo of Powell, Thatcher, Farage”, who are lumped together as “a chorus of exclusion”. This is a book for people who want to wish the Conservatives away, and prefer a Paddington world in which pesky political issues are solved with a nice cup of tea.

Children’s literature is often fertile ground for cultural analysis, reflecting the world-view that society wants to instil in its children. And Paddington is a rich text: an intriguing story about a talking bear who’s funny and chaotic and lovable, and who – to my eyes, as a child of immigrants myself – pokes fun at the constipated Englishness of his new home. There’s plenty to examine here, and Ramdarshan Bold and Subramanian have some good criticisms to make of that vague placeholder, “British values”.

But it seems ludicrous that a book about the little refugee bear, and at a time when he’s a more popular symbol than ever, refuses to take the contemporary politics of immigration seriously. Does Paddington exist merely to teach a population of heartless Britons to “be kind”? What might Conservatives, or Reform voters – if the authors can even imagine them as readers – make of his complex symbolism? Perhaps, I thought, someone needs to remind Ramdarshan Bold and Subramanian that, however often he and his niceness may be shoved in our faces, Paddington Bear isn’t a person. He’s just a fantasy.

Some of the wilder claims made by Jason Arday, such as running 30 marathons in 35 days and separately raising more than £5.5 million for charity, were watered down by his publisher long before the scandal broke.

The publishing company Simon & Schuster removed biographical references about Arday’s alleged athletic feats and his fundraising accomplishments from his author’s page on its website, according to archived web pages.

Simon & Schuster has insisted it will go ahead with the publication of the former University of Cambridge professor’s memoir despite the ongoing furore. It is due to come out on August 27.

Between May 19 and July 25 last year, the claim that Arday had run “30 marathons in 35 days, 300 miles in three days and 600 miles in six days” was erased from his author’s page on the company’s website, as was a reference to the scholar raising “over £5.5 million pounds for 80 national charities over a 20-year period.”

Instead, this segment of Arday’s biography was changed to say he had “raised millions of pounds for charity”. The edits suggest the publisher may have been aware of inconsistencies in Arday’s life story before suspicions were publicly raised about the veracity of his achievements in recent weeks.

Arday, 41, who was the youngest black person ever appointed to a professorship in Cambridge’s history, is being investigated by the university over claims of academic misconduct. He has been accused of plagiarising parts of the PhD dissertation he wrote in 2015, which he denies, and fabricating his academic qualifications. 

Several university academics have called for an independent inquiry into how Arday, a sociology of education professor, was appointed. He resigned from his position last week, saying “the personal cost” of media scrutiny had become “too great” and that he no longer wished to live “under a constant spotlight”.

The Sunday Times can reveal that several Cambridge academics appear to have since withdrawn their support for Arday, having signed a petition that accused the media of “trying to smear him with fake accusations of plagiarism”.

Sonita Alleyne, the first woman to lead Jesus College, where Arday worked, Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge, and Ricardo Sabates Aysa, a professor of education and international development, have all had their names removed from a “solidarity letter” launched by the Good Law Project, which has provided the scholar with support, archived web pages show.

It comes after Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, the president of Wolfson College, withdrew her name.

Alleyne and Aysa refused to comment when approached by The Sunday Times. Baron-Cohen, an expert in autism, did not respond. In a previous statement on July 31, he expressed his support for Arday, who has autism, and said he was being “systematically discredited” in targeted attacks which risked damaging his mental health.

Simon & Schuster was approached on Saturday afternoon but did not respond to questions about why the edits were made to Arday’s author’s page and by whom. 

However, several of Arday’s most outlandish claims have been omitted from the memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, it has since emerged.

His running 600 miles in six days challenge is not mentioned, early reviews of the book indicate. Only three male runners have ever managed such a feat, according to modern records. References to Arday’s fundraising efforts, meanwhile, are alluded to but no definitive figure is given.

The Times reported last week that Arday claimed in a book proposal for the memoir to have had testicular cancer and locked-in syndrome and to have almost died in a car accident when he was a teenager. These references have not been included in the book.

In April, a spokesperson for Simon & Schuster said: “I can promise you’ve never read a story like this — even the viral news headlines don’t do it justice.”

Last week it was reported that Arday had previously told The Guardian that he had been offered “1.4m” for the book. The offer was made as part of a “pre-empt” deal.

Arday has a degree from the University of Surrey, a master’s from St Mary’s University in London, and a PhD in education awarded by Liverpool John Moores University.

Before joining Cambridge, Arday was employed as professor of sociology of education at the University of Glasgow, from January 2022 to March 2023. A university spokesperson announced on Friday evening that it had commissioned a “review” into his appointment “with the aim of understanding all the facts and learning lessons for the future”.

He also worked at Durham University between 2019 and 2021. Lisa McKenzie, a senior lecturer at the University of Bedfordshire, was employed alongside Arday during this period and, in a social media post on Friday evening, questioned whether Durham would also open an investigation into her former colleague.

“I was employed with Jason Arday at Durham,” she said on X. “The way Arday was treated by some of the academics in that department was embarrassing, like he was a messiah.”

When asked what he was like as a colleague, she replied: “Nice actually — polite and gentle but obviously a bit off-key in some of the things he said, a bit like a guru. He once said in a meeting he was most proud of his hair which he got from his white grandma — looking back, I don’t think that was true.”

I won’t name the person or where to find it, but you might have heard already a certain relatively high profile person live-streamed themselves hurting themselves, quite graphically. People are decrying this person doing it while still sharing either the video or screen grab. Why?? It’s awful. The person needs and is now getting help. It makes me sick, I really didn’t need to see it.

A Cambridge professor hailed as a diversity poster boy claimed that he had featured in Seven Up decades before he was born.

Prof Jason Arday said he had appeared in the TV series, which follows the lives of a group of people for decades from the age of seven.

The inaugural episode was broadcast in 1964. He was not born until 1985.

Prof Arday is at the centre of a row about academic plagiarism after The Telegraph revealed that he has been accused of copying parts of his PhD thesis from an earlier work by another student.

He has admitted a series of errors in his work but said the “positioning of me as this kind of liar and fantasist is totally unacceptable”.

Now footage of a talk Prof Arday gave in October 2022 has re-emerged, revealing his claim that he appeared as a child on Seven Up.

He told the University of Bath’s Race Equality Taskforce: “I was part of a programme, actually, which – it doesn’t really exist any more – but it was called Seven Up at the time.

“And Seven Up is basically when they follow you over the duration of your life, so they follow you at [ages] 7, 14, 21. I was pulled out of the project when I was 14.”

During the same talk, he also claimed: “I had just turned 18 when I learnt to read and write.”

Seven Up was the first episode in a decades-long TV series created by Granada Productions for ITV.

The series follows 14 people’s lives at seven-year intervals, beginning when they were seven years of age. The final instalment is expected to be broadcast later this year.

The inaugural episode was broadcast in 1964, meaning its subjects were born in 1957. Subsequent programmes have been titled 21 Up, 28 Up and so on as the participants have grown older.

The BBC also commissioned a spin-off series titled Up: Millennium Generation. This began in 2000, also featuring a group of seven-year-olds. At the time, Prof Arday would have been 15.

A BBC spokesman said: “We can confirm he was nothing to do with our films.”

Prof Arday was hailed as the youngest-ever black professor at Cambridgewhen he was appointed at the age of 37.

Yet recent analysis of the sociology of education professor’s thesis showed that more than 180 passages were identical or near-identical to another student’s thesis.

Since then, questions have been raised over his academic record, as well as his claims to have been a multi-million-pound charity fundraiser through his athletic endeavours.

In an interview with The Times, Prof Arday admitted a series of errors in his work but attributed some to his autism, explaining that his method of making sense of information had relied heavily on mimicry.

He has also claimed to have run 30 marathons in 35 days, the final nine of them with a broken leg. The professor also said he had played both football and snooker professionally.

“I can’t make people believe me,” he said. “Nobody lives their life having a receipt for every single thing they say or they’ve done.”

He insisted that he had been subjected to a “dark arts” campaign.

Both Prof Arday and Cambridge University were contacted for comment.