One of Taika Waititi's greatest strengths as a director is his unique voice; he's able to bring a light touch to tragedy (Jojo Rabbit) and a gentle sadness to offbeat comedy (Our Flag Means Death). That makes him an excellent choice to direct Klara and the Sun, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Sony Pictures just released the first trailer, and it's giving strong Hunt for the Wilderpeople vibes—a good thing, from my perspective, since that's my favorite Waititi film.
Per the official premise:
Based on the bestselling novel from Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro and written and directed by Academy Award winner Taika Waititi, Klara and the Sun introduces audiences to Klara (Jenna Ortega), an Artificial Friend who wants nothing more than to find the perfect home. When Klara meets Josie (Mia Tharia), each immediately senses a kindred spirit in the other. Josie has a fraught relationship with her mother (Amy Adams), and they’ve suffered great loss, but Klara’s innocent wonder and unwavering loyalty begin to heal the family and bring light to Josie’s complicated world.
The cast also includes Natasha Lyonne as an artificial friend (AF) store manager; Rachel House as the housekeeper, Melania; Aran Murphy (son of Cillian Murphy) as Josie's best friend, Rick; and Sophia Bryant-Taukiri as Josie's older sister, Sal. Steve Buscemi and Harry Greenwood also appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles.
Retro-focused game sellers GOG have apologised after sending out a newsletter featuring runes which have long served as Nazi symbols. The symbols appeared in the subject for an email promoting The End of the Sun, an adventure game about a Slavic fire mage who also dabbles in time manipulation.
There’s nothing like a royal tour to sell newspapers. For editors, especially those who beat the patriotic drum the loudest, it’s a guaranteed sales boost. Throw Donald Trump into the mix, and the presses might as well run overtime.
Predictably, much of the UK’s royal-obsessed media fawned over King Charles’s trip to Washington. The Times hailed a “diplomatic masterclass,” focusing on standing ovations and a speech repeatedly interrupted by applause.
Even a fleeting, oblique reference to victims of abuse, widely read as a nod to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, in which the King’s own brother is implicated, was treated as deft statesmanship rather than scrutinised for its vagueness.
Front pages told the same story. The Sun gushed over “KING CHARMING,” celebrating jokes and easy rapport, while the Daily Mail also reached for a “diplomatic masterclass.”
Even more restrained outlets joined in. The BBC called the speech “powerful,” and the Guardian concluded that Britain’s “soft power flex worked a treat.”
We’ve said it before on RWW and we’ll say it again, the media’s fawning of King Charles is deeply hypocritical. These are the same outlets that have cast the King as some kind of woke radical. ‘The King is becoming so woke, he is in danger of abolishing himself,’ wrote Telegraph commentator Petronella Wyatt in 2023. Her beef was his support of a study into the monarchy’s historic links to slavery and failure to rule out any reparations.
TalkTV’s Julia Hartley-Brewer scorned Charles for being ‘green and woke,’ after the King reportedly turned down the offer of having Heathrow Terminal 5 named after him. While the Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey, insisted the royals will only thrive if they are anti-woke.
And the biggest hypocrisy of all? After the Queen’s death, the same media fretted over whether Charles could sustain Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States. Would Charles be able to offer the same polite smiles as his mother did, “through awkward visits with nearly every US president going back to Dwight D Eisenhower?” as the New York Intelligencer put it.
So, which is it? A meddling progressive monarch, or a master diplomat rescuing Britain’s global standing?
A genuinely critical press might have grappled with that contradiction or questioned whether polite niceties about shared values is enough in the face of deeper political and moral tensions. Instead, much of the coverage amounted to little more than royal spectacle: applause counted, jokes noted, and images admired.
Personally, I’m no monarchist, but I felt sympathy for King Charles, packed off to Washington at the government’s behest to placate Trump’s childish impulses, all the while undergoing cancer treatment.
A difficult duty, poorly timed and rather undignified.
The BBC recently faced criticism over a report described as “misleading” in its portrayal of asylum seekers. The report centred on what it called a “shadow industry,” allegedly helping migrants “pretend to be gay” in order to secure asylum in the UK.
According to the BBC, this was the first instalment of a major undercover investigation into how individuals nearing the end of their visas are coached to fabricate asylum claims, complete with supporting letters, photographs, and even medical documentation.
The investigation uncovered instances of legal firms charging up to £7,000 to construct such claims, sometimes assuring clients that their chances of refusal by the home office were “very low.” Those implicated were often individuals already in the UK on expired student, work, or tourist visas, not people arriving through irregular routes such as small boat crossings.
Taken at face value, the BBC’s focus seems directed less at asylum seekers as a whole and more at the intermediaries profiting from and potentially manipulating vulnerable people.
But critics argue that the report risks distorting public understanding, saying it “massively distorts” reality by presenting what may be a very small set of cases as broadly representative of the asylum system. Such critics include the campaign group Rainbow Migration, which highlighted government data suggesting that only around 2% of asylum claims cite sexual orientation as grounds for protection.
Yet predictably, the report was seized upon by commentators and politicians advancing a nationalist, anti-migrant agenda.
Conservative MP Nick Timothy used the story to argue that human rights laws have undermined immigration control, accusing lawyers and charities of “abetting thousands of crimes.”
Similarly, Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin described the asylum system as “a complete and utter joke,” using the report to reinforce calls for sweeping reform.
But the most hysterical reaction came from Sun columnist Julie Hartley-Brewer, who framed the BBC’s investigation as validation of long-standing claims about widespread abuse of the asylum system. In a celebratory column, she argued that the broadcaster had finally acknowledged what she called the “Great British Asylum Scam,” and provocatively suggested that the BBC had effectively joined the “far-right bandwagon.”
She ended: “So to those at the BBC who have finally woken up to the Great British Asylum Scam, welcome on board the far-right bandwagon! We’ve been expecting you.”
We’ve seen it time and time again. What begins as a story about limited abuse within the system is quickly sold as proof that the entire system is broken, less an exercise in scrutiny than a case study in how narratives are bent to fit political ends. In that sense, the BBC’s reporting, however intended, risks being folded into the same kind of agenda-driven framing it is meant to interrogate.
“Woke fury,” thundered Murdoch’s Sun this week, claiming that phrases like “raining cats and dogs” and “the early bird catches the worm” are now considered offensive under a new diversity guide from Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The paper cast the story as yet another example of equality and diversity spiralling out of control, complete with “fury,” “bans,” and the usual parade of indignant critics.
But strip away the outrage, and a different picture emerges.
The actual guidance does not “ban” phrases. It suggests that certain expressions, particularly those that may confuse non-native English speakers, might need explaining in a diverse workplace. In a health service where staff and patients come from a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, it’s a practical reminder that clear communication matters.
And guess who’s wheeled in for comment? Our old friend Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, who warns of “witch hunts” and a creeping regime of linguistic control. According to Young, NHS staff risk being “cancelled” for everyday speech, part of a supposed effort to edge out older employees in favour of “pink-haired zealots.”
There is no evidence that NHS workers are being disciplined for using such phrases, nor that the guidance is designed to purge staff. Instead, a mild bureaucratic recommendation is inflated into a moral panic.
This is not a new tactic, for the Sun or Toby Young.
Earlier coverage in the Sun followed the same script: select a few debatable examples, strip them of context, and present them as proof of ideological takeover.
According to Young, Sutton Council’s language guide was an example of “woke” absurdity, with the newspaper gleefully reported that the council had banned the term “Christian name” because it might offend non-Christians, while also warning against calling people in their 30s “youngsters” or those over 65 “pensioners,” since these terms could be considered ageist.
This is the Toby Young who managed to secure a seat in the House of Lords from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, despite having been forced to resign from the Office for Students in 2018 after a string of misogynistic and homophobic tweets, including one where he referred to George Clooney as “queer as a coot” and another joking about visiting a bar full of “hardcore dykes.”
But back to the smear on Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The Sun also highlights the trust’s spending on diversity staff and its financial deficit, a familiar attempt to frame inclusion as waste.
No mention that the NHS workforce is more diverse today than at any point in its 75-year history, and that brings a multitude of benefits for patients and taxpayers alike.
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“As Aintree fever grips UK… And he’s off his head. Green leader Polanski in bid to ban horse racing.”
That was the front page of the Sun ahead of Grand National day.
Posting the article on social media, Polanski reminded of his plan to end “rip-off Britain” by taking back “power and wealth from those who have stolen it.”
He added how: “The Murdoch empire is terrified.”
And it’s not hard to see why.
Rather than engage seriously with Polanski’s proposal, part of a wider ethical critique of animal use in sport, Polanski’s position is dismissed as a “cranky call,” bundled together with other policies to create a portrayal of extremism rather than a coherent argument.
To reinforce the point, the paper reaches for predictable voices. Nigel Farage is quoted branding the proposal “cranky nonsense,” invoking heritage, jobs, and tradition. Tory MP Mick Timothy calls it “extreme madness,” while shadow sports minister Louie French suggests the Greens are “out of touch” with the countryside.
But perhaps even more telling is how far the article digs to build its case. A social media post by Polanski from 2024 is dug up. Then another, from way back in 2018, in which Polanski politely asked a musician to reconsider a horse logo on ethical grounds.
Meanwhile, industry figures are deployed to present horse racing as both safe and benevolent, citing low fatality rates among runners.
What’s largely absent is any meaningful engagement with the ethical argument itself, namely, whether entertainment justifies risk and exploitation of animals.
Horse racing in Britain is not just sport, it’s an economic and cultural institution worth billions, intertwined with gambling, land use, and elite social networks. Questioning it, seriously, means questioning a system of power and profit.
And that’s precisely what Polanski’s message gestures, not just animal welfare, but redistribution, regulation, and structural change.
No wonder the Murdoch empire is terrified.
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All is not well at the Sun newspaper, which has seen its losses grow to £53 million, after changes on online platforms affected traffic and due to legal payouts.
According to the latest figures published by News Group Newspapers, the Sun reported revenue figures at £273.1 million in the year to 29 June 2025 (down from £296m in 2024).
Press Gazette reports: “Pre-tax losses increased from £18m in 2024 to £53.3m, just below the 2021 level (loss of £51.1m).
“One off-charges increased from £14.1m to £36.7m including a £7.4m charge relating to legal fees and damages over previous illegal newsgathering activities at The Sun and News of the World. In 2024 there had been a £13.7m credit in respect of legal fees and damages.”
News Group Newspapers, the subsidiary of News UK that publishes The Sun, also had to settle ‘claims brought by Prince Harry and Sir Tom Watson on the eve of a trial by admitting “unlawful activities” took place at The Sun and issuing a “full and unequivocal apology” as well as a payout rumoured to be in excess of £10m.’
Other reasons cited for losses at the right-wing paper included changes to social media algorithms which adversely affected news content.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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The culture vultures are not especially discriminating in their choice of targets. Their latest supposed casualty is Tesco, accused of “turning woke” for rebranding some gingerbread products from “Gingerbread Men” to “Gingerbread People.”
The story, reported by the Sun, centres on Tesco’s “Free From” gingerbread biscuits adopting gender-neutral language. The paper notes that Morrisons has made a similar change, saying it wanted to “promote inclusivity to all,” and that Sainsbury’s has also faced criticism for selling “Gingerbread People.”
The supposed backlash appears to consist largely of a few indignant social media posts. One user complained: “Run run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I am the gingerbread person? Tesco this is pathetic.” Another reached for the culture-war cliché: “Go woke, go broke.” A third demanded an explanation, insisting that “Gingerbread MAN” is neither offensive nor inappropriate and “always has been and always will be.”
Tesco declined to comment, though it’s understood that product names are routinely reviewed as part of standard range updates. The company continues to sell products labelled “Gingerbread Men,” and there is no suggestion these are being withdrawn. There is no prohibition, no linguistic purge, just an additional, more inclusive label on certain lines.
To give the controversy intellectual weight, Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, was invited by the Sun to interpret the reaction. He suggested that people feel they are “losing their language” and becoming marginalised by changes to familiar terms relating to “man” and “woman.”
But Furedi is no disinterested academic voice parachuted into a neutral debate. He has long fulminated against so-called cancel culture and has been associated with political currents aligned with Viktor Orban’s right-wing populism in Europe. In the past, writer George Monbiot accused him of backing libertarian campaigns against gun control and tobacco advertising restrictions. More recently, he was recruited by the Daily Mail to stoke outrage over Paddington Bear and a reimagined Palestinian lullaby raising funds for humanitarian aid, presented as evidence that the BBC had “gone woke.”
There is a familiar pattern to these episodes. A corporation makes a minor branding adjustment. A handful of social media users profess outrage. A right-wing tabloid elevates the noise into a national controversy. A reliable culture-war commentator supplies the thesis that civilisation is under threat.
Meanwhile, the biscuits remain on the shelves. If anything deserves scrutiny, it’s not Tesco’s labelling but the predicable, laborious voices that turn the most negligible of changes into a full-blown culture war.
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