At some point, “silly” turns into “sad” which turns into “tragic.”

British Film Institute tells filmmakers to tick new diversity targets or miss funding

In order to score funding from the BFI (honestly, I don’t know how important that is for the British film industry), it is proposed that new Britfilms must have two of the following three features:

at least one lead character must be “positively reflecting diversity”, with the story more likely to receive funding if it “explicitly and predominantly explores issues of identity relating to ethnicity or national origins, a specific focus on women, people with disabilities, sexual identity, age and people from a socially disadvantaged background”. … It will ask filmmakers to ensure that at least 30 per cent of supporting and non-speaking characters are also “diverse”.

Off-screen, at least two heads of department must be from diverse backgrounds, as well as a range of “key creatives” including the director, screenwriter, composer and cinematographer.

The third category requires companies to offer paid internships and jobs to “new entrants from diverse backgrounds” and to help them progress.

One wonders what exactly is meant by “diverse. Does this mean that a film about, say, King Henry the 8th  can get away with having an Irish character? or must it be a blind black lesbian single mother who has courageously struggled against domestic abuse and alcoholism?

On this same page there is a link to a piece about a new BBC series:

BBC goes for Game of Thrones audience with new Saxon vs Viking drama

Now how the hell are they going to shoehorn 30% “diverse” actors into a story about Scandinavian white people fighting Germanic white people in a world populated almost exclusively with white people? Or are they going to make a third of these dark-age warriors gay cowboys eating pudding?

‘Mocking accents should be a crime’ says linguist, Dr Baratta

I’ve no idea who this goober is. Likely a nobody, apart from being a professor of Something Or Other at Manchester U. But making speech a crime? How does this merit anything other than mockery and derision? Anybody know what exact accent he has, so that it can be mocked? Really, there’s only one reply to this sort of idiocy.