Have you seen this @wyld.at.hrt ?
Fucking hell.
I hadn’t seen it, no. Talk about tone deaf, fuck sakes. I speak it fluently but most don’t. Shit, even some white people can’t speak it.
Talk about being completely fucking tone deaf.
But with Ryanair, nothing is a surprise
I don’t understand how a language test is enforceable. If someone refuses to take the test, what can Ryanair do?
its one thing to enforce a language test, its another thing to enforce a test not giving a choice of languages that are official, using only one that 10% speaks…and expect people not to think its not racism or discrimination? What an ass airline and whoever think it is a good idea.
Would they make holders of a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland passport take a test in Welsh to prove their Britishness? 
Learning Welsh is on my to-do list…
Spanish for me. 
Whereabouts on your to-do list? 
All airlines expect their staff to be multilingual for obvious reasons.
However, it makes no sense in this case and is clearly a ploy to keep out black people.
Dim sylw.
But like in Singapore, at least you would offer like English, Chinese, Malay, Hindi etc for questionnaires to involve all levels of citizens…but so even without questioning the need for that particular questionnaire to prove a nationality, the least is to offer it in the multiple languages that are official languages.
Reading the article, the questionnaire is for passengers travelling with Ryanair, not staff. Allegedly because of an increase in forged South African passports. That’s why, I’m asking the question, how is it enforceable if a passenger refuses? I would suggest it isn’t.
In addition to the racist connotation, why does Ryanair think it should fulfil the role of passport control?
Isn’t that a function of international aviation law? I think airlines are required to check that passengers have the required permission to enter their destination, or they will be required by the Warsaw Convention to repatriate the passenger.
Note that the last link also suggests that apart from covering the costs, they would be liable for huge fines as well.
Yes. As a holder of a visa or visa waiver Customs and Border Protection will not let you enter if you dont have a return ticket to demonstrate your plans to leave. The airlines are responsible for denying boarding to a passenger so people who clearly dont met the entry requirements are not even allowed to get to the border control.
However, what is bizarre about this story is that they are not responsible for verifying the authenticity of your travel documents, only verifying that you ostensibly have the required docs to present to border patrol.
This seems soap operay, but I think is actually a big story.
Over the weekend there was a bit of twitter beef among Washington Post reporters. David Weigel, a politics reporter, retweeted a shit misogynistic joke that all women are either bipolar or bisexual - the sort of thing that has absolutely no comedic value other than being disparaging.
He was publicly called out for it by a female colleague, Felicia Sonmez, stating that such public comments harm the reputation of the WaPo, and she was then piled on by a series of WaPo reporters for “bullying” Weigel. The situation has now been “resolved” by Weigel accepting a suspension for the original tweet, and the female reporter has been fired for a violation of their twitter policy.
The whole point of the exchange was Felicia pointing out that in a field where many people are already highly skeptical of the fairness of the coverage that female politicians receive, such public comments from a political reporter, someone who will be reporting on female politicians, does significant harm to how seriously people will take WaPo reporting. This is after all a man who played a significant role in the awful coverage of Clinton in 2016. WaPo heard what she said and basically doubled down on enabling misogyny in political reporting.
Further background
Of note, one of the first colleagues to jump out and attack Felicia has been left unscathed by this whole thing, despite himself taking a really pretty awful (boys will boys) sort of position.
I’m going to put this one here: the BBC News discussing the two Britons sentenced to the death penalty in Russia but no mention whatsoever of the Moroccan national, Brahim Saaudun, who has been convicted with them.
Disgusting.