Happy Friday, readers, it’s party time! Political party conference time, that is (the festive period for bores like Society Diary).
After Reform and Lib Dem starters earlier this month, we are now ready to tuck into a main course of Labour and Tory conferences over the next two weekends, with a side of Greens. We might even get an experimental dessert course of Your Party’s inaugural conference in November, if head chefs Corbyn and Sultana can only agree on its ingredients.
Diary’s reporter colleagues will of course keep you updated with any scraps of sector news from the conferences but in the meantime, charities have been busy this week responding to outrageous claims from politicians.
Swans vs Farage
If you missed it this week, Nigel Farage made headlines when he said on the radio that “swans were being eaten in royal parks in this country, that carp were being taken out of ponds and eaten in this country by […] people who come from countries where it's quite acceptable to do so”.
When pushed by similarly named LBC host Nick Ferrari, Farage said he “believed” it was people from eastern Europe gobbling down the king’s protected white birds.
Diary was halfway though filling out its Reform Party application when Farage’s claims were quashed by a pair of charities.
Royal Parks said it had in fact received no reports of people “killing or eating swans” in the eight London parks which it oversees.
Meanwhile, the RSPCA said a video posted online recently by Turning Point UK with the caption “RSPCA worker catches migrants eating swans” (on which Farage might have based his claim) was from a TV programme in 2010.
National Autistic Society vs Trump
Farage was of course reading from the playbook of his stateside pal, Donald Trump, who claimed in a US presidential debate last year that “the people that came in” are eating Americans’ pets.
Trump shared another conspiracy theory this week, when he announced on Monday that the government would tell doctors the use of Tylenol (paracetamol) during pregnancy can be associated with a “very increased risk of autism”.
Just as Diary was about to flush its stash of painkillers down the toilet, the UK’s National Autistic Society (NAS) responded to Trump’s claim by saying: “This is dangerous, it’s anti-science and it’s irresponsible.”
It also called on the government and the NHS to condemn Trump’s “misinformation”, which Diary is still waiting on.
Kudos to the NAS though as this week, more than 20,000 people have signed its petition to counter false statements made by any politician or media figure about autism, which somewhat restores Diary’s faith in the public.
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