The Daily Mail has published a very strange article about Rear Admiral Alex J. Burton, Commander United Kingdom Maritime Forces, after he tweeted in support of LGBT military personnel.
In a story first picked up by Pink News here, Richard Littlejohn wrote in the pitifully titled piece ‘Hello Sailor! Meet the the tweeting trans friendly admiral’:
“Rear Admiral Burton’s official photograph makes him look like one of those gay Dutch policemen played by Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. Further down his Twitter feed is another picture of him posing in a U.S. carrier strike force baseball cap outside somewhere called ‘Bonaventure House’.
Sorry, but I couldn’t help thinking of Julian and Sandy, the alter egos of Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick in Round The Horne. ‘Oooo, ’ello, I’m Julian and this is my friend Rear Admiral Burton. Isn’t he bona? Hello, sailor. Or was that The Navy Lark?
Come to think of it, Burton could have added ‘New York, Paris, Peckham. . .’ to ‘Husband, Father, Warrior, etc . . .’ given that most of our warships are about as reliable as Del Boy’s Reliant Regal van. What we’ve got here is life imitating if not art, then certainly classic BBC comedy.”
As an @RoyalNavy_LGBT champion and senior warfighter I am so glad we are not going this way https://t.co/S8ZI4NjpfQ
— Alex Burton (@RAdmAlexBurton) July 26, 2017
In what Pink News call ‘one of the most disgusting homophobic smears in the piece’, Littlejohn seems to allude to the homophobic slur ‘pillow biter’ by saying “There’s also mention of a boat called ‘HMS Biter’. Probably best not to go there, either.”
@RAdmAlexBurton commanded UK Maritime forces, 3 @RoyalNavy Ships & fought in Iraq war.I think @MailOnline readers would say he’s a top bloke
— Penny Mordaunt (@PennyMordaunt) July 30, 2017
Littlejohn, seemingly not understanding the point of Twitter or the role of LGBT champion, wrote later:
“He’s big on diversity, posting pictures of sailors marching in uniform on gay pride day, and celebrating ‘LGBT and BAME [Black And Minority Ethnic] in the Naval Community’.
There’s another photo of a colleague, Rear Admiral John Clink — a fellow enthusiastic member of the Twitterati — presenting ‘AB (Able Seaman) Innocent Muzwidzwa with the Most Inspiring Achievement in Elective Learning #navysmart’. Your guess is as good as mine.”
The odd piece ends with additional strange remarks:
“Who knows, now the commander of the Navy has come out in support of ‘trans’ rights, how long before we’re told that Admiral Lord Nelson was ‘gender-fluid’? Kiss Me Hardy!”
Pink News comment that “Burton, incidentally, has two children with his wife, according to his official MoD profile.”
Rear Admiral Alex Burton has commanded UK Maritime forces, multiple Royal Navy vessels and has also fought in the Iraq war. That really speaks for itself.
Our senior officers can only follow what comes out of the loony bin of westminster, none of them navy,army,airforce have the courage to stand up to this rubbish.
DAILY MAIL….’nuff said. Its supposed to be a newspaper…….more like a magazine from the top shelf these days (and the Express)
All mainstream media is trash, which is why i come to websites like this for my info.
Notice you only highlist right wing newspapers, none of the trash left wing newspapers which are just as sensationalist.
And the biggest turd of them all…….the BBC !!!
I agree – the way they pander to the government is a disgrace. The tyranny of the licence fee.
And yet they don’t, the fact that they seem to get equal criticism from both left and right suggests they get it about right.
‘they seem to get equal criticism from both left and right suggests they get it about right’
I know that argument but it doesn’t seem that way to me. Ministers & tory mps are always attempting to put pressure, which Labour rarely does. The recent furore about pay was part of the pattern.
Sam it might have something to do with the fact that most of the newspapers are right wing, Sun, Star, Sport, Times, Telegraph, Daily Fail, Express are all right wing. The left has the Mirror and the Guardian, the Independent is centre.
The Daily Mail is a despicable rag that supported Nazism.
Well I am happy to be fair here, the Guardian is an absolute disgrace at times, certainly on occasion as bigoted as the Mail/Express and the Independent sadly not far behind which is sad as they used to be great and fair papers. at one time That in no way however precludes my opinion that this is one of the most despicable bigoted hack led pieces of ‘journalism’ for some time, which is something of a record with papers so desperate to shock to raise sales. But then Littlejohn has pretty much shot his career in the head a long… Read more »
Another ‘career conscious’ senior officer getting aboard the good ship HMS Virtue Signalling, no doubt in the hope that it will enhance his chances of further promotion.
Cynic !
No realist !! One thing appears evident that given the opportunity of concentrating on improving the combat effectiveness of the units under his command he prefers to spend his time and energy publicly ticking the diversity box.
Do you serve under his command, do you know him? Unless you do you have no knowledge of how good Rear Admiral Burton is at his job or what he is like in the slightest.
Bill Kenny must have served with only white male lousy commanders.
Just let racism, sexism and homophobia die. They are just yesterday’s social diseases. The Mail is yesterday’s newspaper for the chronically blinkered and not too bright. It will probably not last much longer. I’ll be ignoring it. Doubtless, Admiral Burton will be completely unphased.
Not a reader of the Daily Mail but its ranked the most read online newspaper on the entire planet, so I feel that your belief that it’s soon going to disappear is somewhat hilariously mistaken.
More tied utter rubbish from a newspaper, for the life of me I can’t see why anyone buys and consumes this tat.
It reinforces their ill informed prejudices.
Well, that’s unfortunate. I think The Mail is awful.
Littlejohn is so homophobic I’ve long assumed he’s a cliched self loathing closet homosexual.
Not all homophobes are closet homosexuals, i suspect most are just extremely unpleasant people with unjustified loathing of many social groups that differ from their own.
I don’t know if Richard Littlejohn’s piece was deliberately trying
to court controversy, but I thought it actually was rather pathetic and a complete non-story. Sadly, the days of quality journalism and reporting are long gone in the MSM of this country.
As we all know from the last episode of round the horn Julian and Sandy were both hetrosexual and married to women.
LGBT issues are a legal minefield for the military, the male rank and file soldier is not that sympathetic to those issues and life would be very difficult for openly male LGBT service personnel.
One’s sexuality should be private matter for each individual however this is impossible now, unfortunately I feel this is a massive PR exercise for the MOD and senior officers rather than increasing the fighting efficiency of the military.
“Commander of the Navy” I hope Rear-Admiral Burton had a chuckle over that one.
One thing to note about the US military, if a serving member demands a sex change operation the military budget has to pay not the US healthcare system. I saw report saying that around ,30% of transgender personnel will request/demand such a medical procedure during there service.
So you have a financial cost plus the time lost where the person is not available. In the UK I presume the NHS would pay however that person would not available for a considerable time.
My experience is that Alex truly means what he is saying. For avoidance of doubt he is following his conscience.
The United Kingdom;s armed forces reflect the country they serve – all of it. Good.
Agreed Barry, and not before time.
Typically pitiful piece of nastiness from The Daily Mail.
It’s purpose is merely to perpetuate bitterness and small mindedness amongst the populace.
Except it doesn’t, not on any objective level.
That the number of British muslims fighting for jihad outnumbers those in the British army suggests there is very limited “reflection” going on.
Got to laugh at the Daily Mail / Richard Littlejohn haters here. Everyone is allowed to be their own person and have their own views … as long as its the same as my “liberal” views. If not I’ll call you names and describe your work as terrible, your news paper a rag etc.
Blade runner got it wrong in the 80’s, we live in a left wing Dystopia now.
The Russian and Chinese militaries must just sit and laugh at how the liberal west is destroying their armed forces with political correctness
Then go serve with the Russians and North Koreans then.
Laugh away Douglas- it’s called democracy and it’s catching up with delusional Daily Mail readers everywhere.
[…] to the Daily Mail (this same Daily Mail), the Rear Admiral has been “reminded” of what it is appropriate for serving personnel […]