A former MP has added to the Black Lives Matter debate, but arguably for all the wrong reasons.

Fiona Onasanya recently tweeted

“So I was wondering why Rice Krispies have three white boys representing the brand and Coco Pops have a monkey?”

Now, I really don’t want to sound insensitive. As I have already mentioned on my blog, I am in full support of BLM.

If I thought for one moment there was a chance, that as a white privileged male, I could be somehow missing a racist design on a box of Kellogg’s cereals, I would question myself. I deplore any form of racism, so certainly wouldn’t be blogging in favour of it.

Is using a monkey to sell a chocolate breakfast cereal a form of racism? In my opinion, absolutely not. Especially as the same monkey is used to promote the white chocolate variety of the cereal…

The whole Coco Pops monkey debate naturally took over social media for a few hours, as well as making the news in all the major publications.

Besides sounding a little daft, my only concern about tweeting outlandish statements, such as the one by Ms Onasanya, is that it may overshadow and dilute the fantastic work being carried out by BLM. I would hope that stories like this don’t hang around in the memory for long, and people will return to tackling serious forms of racial discrimination.

Finally, to put the Coco Pops monkey in context, one example of what I feel to be a highly racist TV ad, is a cartoon promoting the fruit squash drink, Kia Ora.

According to the Encyclopedia of Google, this advertisement was regularly shown in the 1980s and early nineties.

It shows how far society has progressed in 30 years, when adverts like that can go from acceptable, to simply downright racist

I am sure that I am not unique in that over the years, I have discovered words from the English language that I cannot pronounce correctly.

I would not be at all surprised if the majority people in this country have words they struggle to say.

Watching video clips of the yobs fighting police at the weekend, it would be incredible if they could manage to put a coherent sentence together between them. “Engeeerland!”, “Rar! Rar! Rar!” and “White power” don’t count. Neither do grunts.

“THAT WOULD BE AN ECUMENICAL MATTER!”

I digress. I would imagine that many civilised members of society have a small collection of words that their mouths simply refuses to get out. This is regardless of intelligence, education, or dialect.

The men and women who introduce programmes on Radio 4, with their clipped British accents, are the only exception to the rule. Rumour has it, they have to read aloud the entire Oxford Dictionary as part of their job interview process!

Now for the bit you’ve all been waiting for. The pièce de résistance…

By the way, it doesn’t count if you cannot pronounce those last three words. They’re not actually English, and are only used by presumptuous artists, chefs and bloggers *ahem*.

Words Sean Cannot Say Properly
Palpitations
Particular
Ridiculous

Don’t ask me why those three words in particular cause me so much trouble. It’s quite ridiculous, really. If you ever meet me, don’t make me try to say them – I’ll panic and end up having palpitations.

If I am ever approached by Audible, and asked if I would be prepared to publish my blog as an audiobook, I would be more than happy to save money by doing the reading myself. For obvious reasons, I would have to ask someone else to read this blog post! David Attenborough or Morgan Freeman would be my first choice. If not, Ralph Ineson, who’s voice seems to be on every TV advert, would be more than sufficient.