Many in Britain will remember Gerald Ratner who killed his own jewellery company overnight by making a series of jokes about his company’s own products. Ratners was a viable business, prior to Mr Ratner’s decision at a meeting of a business group to call his company’s products ‘crap’ and ‘cost less than a prawn sandwich’, but after his remarks became a basket case of a company. Ratners nearly completely collapsed financially and had to rebrand whilst Gerald Ratner himself had to leave the family company that bore his name.
The Ratners Debacle became an object lesson in how not to speak when you are a company COO and how an off the cuff series of jocular remarks by business leaders can kill a company’s brand image. Unfortunately it’s a lesson that the DIY retailer Wickes appears not to have learned as their Chief Operating Officer, Fraser Longden has recently been recorded as saying that those who are critical of Gender Identity Ideology are ‘not welcome’ at Wickes’s shops.
GB News said:
Wickes’ chief operating officer has sparked a furious social media debate after branding gender-critical shoppers “bigots” who are “not welcome in our stores”.
Fraser Longden, the firm’s chief operating officer, attended an online event hosted by Pink News on trans rights yesterday.
Longden said: “I don’t think I’m ever going to change some of the bigots out there’s minds, I’m never going to win that argument with them, so we were doing it to show support to the community.”
When asked about a potential boycott, he added: “The other ten per cent you know, they’re just hot air and they will go and buy a tin of paint in the nearest place to them.
For the record, Pink News is no longer a publication that publishes news of interest to those who might be Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual, it might once have been such a thing, but now it’s little more than a propaganda sheet for trans advocates and those who virtue signal for the trans cause. Like Wickes, who sponsored a Pride float last year emblazoned with the controversial phrase ‘No LGB without the T’, a sentiment that a large number of Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals profoundly disagree with, Pink News gives the distinct impression of being a wholly owned subsidiary of ‘Trans Incorporated’.
It was absolutely stupid for Mr Longden to make such a statement. I don’t brush aside as easy as Mr Longden does the effects of any boycotts over his words. The DIY retail business is not doing so well at the moment because of broader economic problems afflicting the United Kingdom and if sales are down anyway then even a modest boycott might have some negative affects on the company. Calling people who, whether they are Straight, Gay or Bi, understand the realities of human biology and who have legitimate questions for the Cult of Trans, a bunch of bigots is no way to make your company look good. As an aside, a month or so back I popped into the branch of Wickes nearest to Fahrenheit Towers and it was like a ghost town, hardly any customers at all, unlike the local B and Q or the various local independent ironmongers and building supplies firms. If Wickes is not doing too well then it doesn’t need the extra stress of a boycott.
I was somewhat expecting Wickes would ‘pull a Ratner’ or rather ‘pull a Bud Light’ over the issue of the cult of trans after I saw the ‘no LGB without the T’ posters on images of Brighton Pride last year. The fact that the company did not immediately disassociate themselves from this controversial claim, a claim made in support of one particular ideology, told me that Wickes probably sanctioned this poster. This particular incident flew under the radar of many people apart from those of us who have a concerned interest in what is going on with regards to the cult of trans and its impact on the wider world. This latest outburst in favour of the Cult of Trans by a very senior management officer from Wickes has become much more public and much less easy for the public, not all of whom are in agreement with the ideas of those who occupy the wilder shores of the transcult, to ignore.
To piss off potential customers who believe that women don’t have penises by calling them bigots and draw a significant amount of negative comment towards one’s company is not something any sensible COO should do. Wickes, like other companies in similar fields to them are not doing as well as they might have hoped and for the COO to go ‘full Troon’ (never go full Troon) and put himself on the side of an extremely controversial ideology, is like kicking a man when he’s down. Sadly what Mr Longden has done is to kick his company and of course all of its employees, in the face while his company is operating in a business sector that is already having hard times.
I don’t see myself shopping in Wickes because of this but then I’ve never been overly impressed with what they are these days and I’m sure they used to be better. There are other DIY shops out there, shops that won’t tell you that women have penises whilst selling you an overpriced can of paint or lump of timber. Are we looking the next instalment of ‘Get Woke. Go Broke’ with Wickes? Only time will tell of course but companies being punished by consumers for pushing the cult of trans or overdoing the Pride merchandising is now becoming more common, especially in the United States and other parts of the Anglosphere and I’d be surprised if it did not have some adverse effect on the public perception of the Wickes brand.
Surely “Wokes”?
Yes indeed.
Wickes is now on my, slightly long, list of places I won’t frequent and to make it worse I won’t even give people who want to buy something from there a lift either.
I understand that he sold his shares and bought his competitors before he made that statement. If he did I’m sure that is insider trading and therefore illegal.
Nt sure about the share selling thing being an issue, more needs to be dug up about this. Wickes has been involved in Troonery for a while prior to this latest idiocy. The ‘no lgb without the t’ stunt was last year and caused a small commotion back then.
STOP pushing this delusion down our throats, it’s making many people sick & pissed off.
More madness of the Alphabet people in our schools in the U.K.
Twelve-Year-Olds Are Being Taught About Anal Sex In School While Nine-Year-Olds Are Told To ‘Masturbate’ For Homework: The Shocking Lesson Plans Used By Teachers In UK Classrooms
Schoolchildren are being taught about anal sex and orgasms before they have reached puberty and set ‘masturbation’ as homework, secretive lesson plans reveal.
Many teachers are ‘indoctrinating’ children with scientifically false claims about biological sex, presenting gender as fluid and furthering a narrative that people can be born in the wrong body.
It comes as the NHS is facing a mass legal action from 1,000 families who claim their children were rushed into taking life-changing puberty blockers’ by the Tavistock Centre.
FacebookTwitterRedditLinkedInTumblrWhatsAppTelegramWeChatShare
I have no real objection to teenagers (14/15) being being taught that gay people exist and shouldn’t be harmed. I saw what happened to the ‘different’ kids at a pretty rough secondary school and certainly would not want future generations of those kids who might be LGB to suffer and I campaigned against Section 28 for that reason. But that’s not what we have got from post section 28 education. Sensible balanced information about sex and relationships seems to have been chucked out of the window and a flood of really questionable and age inappropriate stuff is now going on in our schools and especially in sex and relationship ed. Ultimately the fault for this lies with the Government. They were not on the ball enough to know when they were being played by activists whether they be sex positive ones or those eager to push the bollocks on stilts that is ‘trans’. The schools were placed in a difficult position in that they had to deliver sex ed but did not have the internal resources to do that so they hired in activists posing as educational material suppliers. Similar to what the Commies did when places like East Germany doled out copies of GDR Review to be used in schools like mine as teaching materials, the activists posing as ed material suppliers are doing the same thing. They are posing as the saviour of teachers who need to teach sex ed. However it’s these activists of the Stonewall sort who are being put in front of our kids and teaching them nonsense about there being a metric fucktonne of genders.
This gender woo is worryingly widespread in schools. I caught my own child’s school using the term ‘pregnant people’ in an communication about a measles outbreak locally.
On the subject of legal cases, I believe that there will soon be a critical mass of cases that can’t be ignored by either the public or the political class.
I always preferred B&Q, cheaper and with a better range of stuff. I would occasionally pop into Wickes as it was on my way home from work but I’m retired now.
I found this part interesting:
“…I’m never going to win that argument with them…”
It’s hard to win an argument when you are wrong. This is why these people fly into such a frothing hate filled rage when someone describes the realities of this matter even in the most reasonable terms.
I’m with you on B and Q. Much better stock and prices than Wickes. I also agree that the attitude of the COO of Wickes suggests that he’s pushing an unwinnable and fact free argument which is why he has taken the route that he has.
Wickes share price change:
1 week – 5.13% 1 year -29.79%
1 month – 7.94% 2 years -52.3%
3 months – 17.1% 3 years n/a
6 months – 6.57% 5 years n/a
The DIY retail market is in a bad way due to economic issues. The very last thing that Wickes should have done was to make the situation for their company worse by getting involved in troonery.