‘Woke' toy firm removing St George's flag from kid's jigsaw puzzle is nonsense – why is our national flag so offensive?

MIKE JUPP'S jigsaw I Love Spring was Gibsons Games' 'most profitable' puzzle.
Suggesting, you might think, that those buying it in their droves rather liked it and, accordingly, it should be considered an unmitigated success and left alone.
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But no. It seems 'the team' at Gibsons Games decided that, 'acting in line with our values' (sigh) it needed to be changed so it was 'no longer offensive'.
At this point, your mind is perhaps boggling at what might be considered offensive about a cartoon image depicting the bucolic scene of a rural English village enjoying a fete and parade?
Well, for starters, there's apparently 'no need for the St George's flag on the top of the church' even though, according to Mike, the scene is set 'on or around' April 23 — aka St George's Day.
Is Emily Thornberry now in the top job at Gibsons Games?
Or does this fourth-generation family firm based in Sutton, England, genuinely feel there's something offensive about the English national flag?
Would they remove the Saltire from a scene depicting the Scottish Highland Games, or the Red Dragon from a St David's Day parade? Doubt it.
Next they came for the Morris dancers who, despite having tell-tale bells on their legs, were mistaken by 'the team' at Gibsons for members of Ireland's Orange order.
'Although many Orange marches are without incident, marches through mainly Catholic and Irish nationalist neighbourhoods are controversial and have often led to violence', they opined in an email to Mike who is based in Bognor Regis, West Sussex.
It would be laughable if it wasn't so dumb.
Once Mike had pointed out that they were actually Morris dancers, they were allowed to stay, but other saucy postcard-esque images didn't fare so well.
A bride was showing too much cleavage and needed 'smaller breasts', a bull drooling over a cow in stockings had to be replaced by cute rabbits, and a cartoon baby left on top of a bin bag was substituted with a fox because 'the team' were 'struggling even to see why it's funny'.
As Mike himself points out: 'Telling a cartoonist how to depict humour is as disrespectful as it is infuriating.'
Quite. Nonetheless, given the implied threat that the puzzle would be withdrawn from sale if the changes weren't made, he spent three months altering it as asked.
But then they wanted 'loads of changes' to his back catalogue, which includes I Love Gardening, I Love Winter etc, and he decided 'enough was enough'.
'I told them to shove it and withdrew my licences. They then sold off my remaining stock for next to nothing,' adds Mike, who says that taking this stand means his income has reduced by 90 per cent.
He's now selling through AJP, a Devon- based company 'who appreciate that the public like and buy my nonsense' but it's small beer compared to Gibsons.
So here's a suggestion. If you're thinking of buying a jigsaw, why not support Mike's stand against this seeking-offence nonsense by buying one of his puzzles direct from him?
I have just completed his new creation I Love Healthcare and would thoroughly recommend it. He has also produced a poignant 'Remember' puzzle to commemorate the fallen.
And if you see the original Gibsons version of I Love Spring in a charity shop, make sure you snap it up.
It's now a collector's item.
You can take a look at Mike's work, and buy it, at alljigsawpuzzles.co.uk.
IT'S A JOB TO FATHOM
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SARAH FOSMO used to work for Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and has experience of 'managing complex, high-stakes operations for ultra-high-net-worth individuals'.
So why, pray tell, has she just taken a job as 'chief of staff' to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex?
Will she be helping Meghan decant pre-bought pretzels into paper bags for house guests?
Or perhaps helping Harry to remember where his old friends live?
Time will tell. If, of course, she sticks around long.
HUMAN IDIOCY
A LION has mauled its 'owner' to death and then eaten him.
What a shock, said no one. For reasons best known to himself, Aqil Fakhr al-Din was keeping the animal in his garden in Iraq and planned to 'tame' it. Yeah, right.
Why do people lose all common sense around dangerous animals?
Like the woman from West Lothian who saw a bear outside the car window while on holiday in Romania last year.
She wound down the window to take a photo and, surprise, it reared up and mauled her arm.
But thankfully, her thick M&S 'this is not just a jacket' saved her from losing the limb.
In 2016, a woman got out of her car on a safari in Beijing and was dragged off by a tiger. She survived but her poor mother was killed as she understandably tried to save her daughter.
Koalas are supposed to be the dumbest animals.
But in some cases, it might just be humans.
BLUNT TV SO SHARP
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ITV 's The Assembly is wonderful television.
The premise is simple: A group of neurodiverse young adults take it in turns to put questions to whichever celebrity has agreed to be in the hot seat.
So far, we've seen Danny Dyer, David Tennant, Gary Lineker and Jade Thirlwall from Little Mix.
'Did you get sacked from the BBC?' Lineker was asked. Answer, no.
He was also asked how much he's paid and whether he'd be going to the World Cup in Saudi Arabia, where the LGBT community can face the death penalty.
I'll leave you to watch the show to find out his answers, and the David Tennant episode is surprisingly moving.
It's a clever vehicle because, were these celebrities asked such blunt questions by journalists, they'd have a fit of the vapours and some helicoptering PR would step in to say, 'We're not talking about that.'
But as the inquisitors are neurodiverse, there's no hiding place. Delicious.
CARE COSTS CRISIS
MY mother, who has dementia and requires 24/7 care, is in a nursing home near me in South London.
Following a small price rise last year (to give the lovely staff a pay rise – no problem) the bosses have just imposed a hefty 9.6 per cent rise.
Which means that staying in a nice but not particularly fancy care home is now costing £1,900 a week.
Yes, you read that right. And that's still pretty reasonable for London.
So my mother's hard-earned savings from her job as a teacher are dwindling fast.
When I queried the eye-watering price hike, they replied that 'several significant external factors' had forced it.
Namely that water rates have increased by as much as 50 per cent in some regions, waste collection charges are expected to rise by eight per cent, and the Government's recent National Insurance hike means they anticipate their organisation-wide expenses to rise by more than £2million.
That cost is immediately passed on to the elderly savers of the world and, of course, now Labour plans to make it harder for care homes to employ foreign workers (a significant chunk of their workforce), the situation will only get worse.
FROM KISS CHASE TO OLD HAT
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OLIVIA HAWKINS and Louis Russell (nope, me neither) have been spotted kissing.
Apparently, she was once a contestant on Love Island, and he was on a similar dating show called Too Hot to Handle.
And their appearances on these two shows seemingly means they can now be regarded as 'famous' – hence their appearance on Celebs Go Dating, where the smooch took place.
They join the merry carousel of former muggles who now earn a living from 'influencing' (being paid to flog brands to their online followers) via their newly acquired stardom.
And when they're deemed too old for all this bikini-clad malarkey, there's always Celebrity Antiques Road Trip.

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