A “hysterical” campaign that deserved to lose

Hero
An emperor penguin that made it to Australia, 2,100 miles from its home in Antarctica – the longest journey ever recorded by the species. The oceanic adventurer (pictured) was discovered on the beach in the resort of Denmark, around 267 miles south of Perth. “He tried to do a slide on his belly, thinking it was snow,” says surfer Aaron Fowler, “and just face-planted in the sand.”

Villains
Walsall Council, for fining an elderly volunteer litter picker £150 after he accidentally left his walking stick by the roadside. Officials have since apologised to Alan Davies, 85, and rescinded the penalty, in recognition of the “specific circumstances around this incident”.

Hero
Elon Musk, for earning a nifty 12,000% return on his $119m donations to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. Tesla shares rocketed after the former president’s victory, raising Musk’s net wealth by more than $15bn.

Villain
Google Maps, for publishing updated satellite images that accidentally revealed the location of key Ukrainian military positions. Andriy Kovalenko, Kyiv’s counter-disinformation chief, says Moscow has been “actively distributing” the photos to its troops.

Villains
Northerners, for having potty mouths, at least according to Judge Jetinder Shergill. Presiding over an unfair dismissal tribunal in Manchester about someone insulting a colleague, Judge Shergill said use of the f-word had become commonplace, “particularly in the north”. But bad language is hardly a preserve of one half of the country, says The Times. “Has the judge not visited a naval pub in Portsmouth or an army one in Aldershot? Or a City trading floor?”

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light
We’ve had to wait 10 years for the second series of Wolf Hall, says Chris Bennion in The Daily Telegraph, and the reward is “the drama of the year”. Thomas Cromwell (a “totemic” Mark Rylance) is riding high as “Mr Fix-It, matchmaker, confidant and, now, Lord Privy Seal” to Henry VIII (Damian Lewis). But in the face of “too many fires to put out” for the hot-headed, capricious king, he starts to “understand the limits of Machiavellianism”. Henry, meanwhile, is failed repeatedly by his body, his country and his wives, with each “gout-ridden movement” more challenging than the last. The series “does away with the stuffiness” synonymous with British period dramas, says Dan Einav in the FT, and is so compelling that even those with the shortest of social media-addled attention spans will be hooked. “It has lost none of what made it the BBC’s crown jewel a decade ago.” Available from 10 November.

The Day of the Jackal
Remaking a movie already close to perfection – in this case the “stone-cold classic” from 1973 – is usually a “fool’s errand”, says James Jackson in The Times. But this expensive reboot, which updates Frederick Forsyth’s assassin thriller to the 21st century, is just the job. Eddie Redmayne (pictured) plays the elusive Jackal, his “privileged, cleanly groomed bearing” perfectly suited to the character’s “nerveless intelligence” and untrustworthiness. Some of the side-plots are a little tedious, such as the domestic life of MI6 agent Bianca (Lashana Lynch). But when the Jackal is in frame – “on a job, having a near-miss with suspicious police” – it’s utterly gripping. Six episodes, 1 hr each.

Oh please, just let Scouts be Scouts

How familiar are you with “Billy the Non-Binary Butterfly”, asks Celia Walden in The Daily Telegraph. Or how about “Sam the Cisgender Dog”? Sam uses “he/him” pronouns, whereas Leslie the Ladybird goes with “she/her”. You’d know all about it if you were an eight-year-old being indoctrinated – sorry, “taught how to think” – by your local Scout group. They’re characters in a new “gender identity” card game that teaches children about which pronouns to use when referring to others. There’s post-game “reflection”, too – though that name suggests an openness to discussion which is “probably not there”. Could a Scout, upon reflection, put forward the view that the game is all “a steaming pile of horse manure”?

You could argue that this is all fairly benign. Because, yes, children do need to understand the importance of being kind to others – that’s entirely in keeping with Robert Baden-Powell’s aims when he founded the Scouts back in 1907. But this goes further than that. The organisation’s website also advises children to “alter their daily language”: brother and sister should be de-gendered to “sibling”; mum and dad to “parents”. “I’m sorry, what?” This sort of claptrap is just going to confuse our kids even more than they already are. As child psychologists now accept, “if you start forcing children to question basic certainties, you leave them in freefall”. With so many young people addicted to their screens, organisations like the Scouts are “more crucial than ever”. But they need to rise above fads and fashions. “Let’s leave Billy the Non-Binary Butterfly out of it.”