PLATELL’S PEOPLE: Soft parents are to blame for woke kids insisting on identifying as cats and dogs 

Of all the stories about wokery and self-identification, none has been so bizarre as the one about children insisting on being addressed by their teachers as cats, dogs, dinosaurs or other animals known as ‘furries’.

It’s so absurd, I thought it must be fake news — until I read the Mail’s investigation that showed it to be a genuine phenomenon.

What’s more, teachers are indulging these children. At Rye College in East Sussex, a teacher admonished a pupil as ‘despicable’ for refusing to accept that another in their class should be regarded as a cat.

It’s got to the point where the Department for Education has weighed in, with a spokesperson saying: ‘It is completely inappropriate for schools to treat a pupil as an animal or inanimate object.’

Yet the debate now raging over teachers allowing children to self-identify as animals overlooks — if you’ll pardon the pun — a very large elephant in the schoolroom.

Which is that no child would be entering a class identifying as a furry in the first place unless their parents or parent allowed it. Mum or Dad may not actually place the cat’s ears on diddums’s head or secure the tail to their school uniform — after all, some of these children are in their teens. But parents are indulging this ridiculous behaviour, when they should be refusing to let their kids go to school — locking them in their rooms if need be — unless they are dressed properly.

Yes, woke, trans-obsessed, furry animal-embracing teachers must take some blame. But the real responsibility surely lies at home.

Who knows why so many parents capitulate today to their children’s every whim? Perhaps it’s down to family breakdown, the rise in single parent families or too much time spent at work.

All I know is that we are in danger of raising a generation of children who can do no wrong, who are feted, adored and encouraged in every one of their stupid fads.

And that if this continues, none of them will be fit for any job in the outside world.

Whatever happened to just saying ‘No!’? Any child who is allowed to identify as a dinosaur will struggle with real work — unless it’s as an extra in Jurassic Park.

How Queen B’s frocks help polish her Halo

On stage in Amsterdam, Beyonce proudly announced that each of her many outfits that night was created exclusively by black designers to celebrate Juneteenth, a national holiday in the U.S. to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans. Let’s hope the 12 seamstresses she hires to repair her costumes aren’t needled by the fact that she coins in £7 million per show.

Why as a cricket lover do the words ‘Women’s Test cricket live on BBC’ fill me with dread? Perhaps it’s because, against Australia, England’s ladies are playing just one five-day Test compared with the men’s five, their pitch is smaller making boundaries easier and star bowler Lauren Filer’s near 80 mph fastest ball is eclipsed by Mark Wood’s 97.8 mph in the men’s team.

Maybe I should just relax, tune in and watch the grass grow.

Sex and the hefty…

And Just Like That, the reboot of 90s hit series Sex And The City, starring Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie, should have been called ‘Botox And The City’ or ‘And Just Like That, I Called My Plastic Surgeon’.

What a disappointing mishmash I found the first two episodes: full of woke tropes; women in their late 50s pretending they’re in their 30s; unconvincing sex. Talking of which, the opening scene, where a bare-breasted Miranda’s much larger non-binary partner Che is making love to her in a swimming pool, was like watching an amorous hippopotamus.

Westminster wars

• As the interest rate hike hits millions with mortgages, Rishi Sunak says: ‘It’s going to be OK, we are going to get through this. I’m 100 per cent on it.’ Highest rates in 15 years and he’s got just months to deliver? We can expect an enforced repossession of No 10 at the next election.
• A bit tin-eared of Keir Starmer to suggest he will include former PMs Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in a bid to stuff the House of Lords with Labour peers, given Brown’s constitutional review last December called for the abolition of the Lords. Just as Keir himself has previously demanded.
• Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt was among those who voted to support the defenestration of Boris and the verdict of the Privileges Committee. She may yet need that Coronation sword to protect her from her constituents.

A moving moment on This Morning today with a tribute to George Michael ahead of what would have been his 60th birthday. He’d anonymously given £50,000 to a woman he saw on the show who struggled to afford IVF. She was back with daughter Betsey, now 11. All the more poignant as George was famous for privately helping strangers, but couldn’t save himself.

Not wanting to get down and dirty at Glasto with the ordinary kids, Cruz Beckham, just turned 18 and launching his own music career, opts to stay in the Winnebago area with his girlfriend Tana, where plots cost £20,000. Good luck, Cruz. Here’s hoping you haven’t inherited your mum Posh’s singing talent.

Much sniggering as a survey reveals we’re such creatures of habit we even have our favourite gas ring on the cooker and watch the same films again and again. But there’s snobbery here, too. No one sneers when I tell them I’ve re-read The Great Gatsby or Pride And Prejudice. But if we repeat-watch movies, we’re plebs.

Noel Gallagher’s soon-to-be ex-wife Sara MacDonald shows off a barbed wire heart tattoo as their divorce is finalised. He says he’s used to things being ‘more stable’. Let’s hope he doesn’t Look Back In Anger after realising Sara could have been the Wonderwall giving him his stability.

RMT boss Mick Lynch defends his rail union’s decision to strike in the first week of the school summer holidays, causing havoc for folk unable to fly abroad and relying on trains for their staycations. What’s the betting Lynch’s mob have already booked their holiday flights, happy to leave low-income families in train misery?

Spotify insiders revealed ideas Harry suggested for new projects included interviewing Vladimir Putin and Pope Francis. He blamed the media for portraying him as a ‘thicko’, but he’s good at that himself.

Take a reality check, Kelly

A little rich of Kelly Osbourne to label Harry a ‘whining, complaining t**t’ and the privileged ‘prince of a goddamn country’ when she is herself the privileged princess of celebrity royalty only famous on the back of Mum and Dad and their reality TV show The Osbournes.

‘Sin’ of the Sussexes

Celebrating the Windrush generation’s 75-year contribution to Britain, Sir Trevor Phillips says the Sussexes ‘squandered a golden opportunity to show everyone what this country is really like in matters of race’.

The equality campaigner said they constructed ‘a ridiculous story’ about their maltreatment, adding: ‘In my book that’s a sin.’

Given that Harry and Meghan’s popularity is at a record low in the UK and U.S., it’s a view shared by millions.