Voluntary serfdom, where the masses accept their ‘place’ in the world order and doff their caps to the toffs is alive and well.

While the world burns and crackles to gunfire and natural disasters, it seems that the establishment in magazine land at least is keen to comfort us with fascinating facts about the Royal Family.

Did you know that the Duchess of Cambridge,  Prince William’s wife, doesn’t wear orange? Apart from ‘who cares – really!?!?’

I read the article in ‘Hello’ with trepidation, waiting for the writer to draw some absurd connection between the politics of why Kate would avoid a William of Orange reference. But no such in-depth philosophising emerged.

How do you know what colour her pants and bra are? For all we know her undercrackers are a blinding daily assault of neon.

Now I can’t blame the journalists really, as what can they report about a female member of the Royal Family who doesn’t say anything interesting other than to patronise the little people with meaningless single-sentence platitudes as she glides down a fenced off walk to meet the commoners of foreign lands.

But unfortunately, I think that maintaining the image of the pretty figure-head with no views of her own has seeped and continues to seep into all levels of our society.

On Linked-In this week, I saw that a young male CEO had posted a  fulsome thank-you comment about one of his employees.

‘You are an amazing woman’ he wrote. That sound you can hear is my blood pressure.

So what’s wrong with that? Isn’t it just charmingly direct and thankful from a boss to a middle-aged employee?

I’d place a large bet on the fact that he would never have written ‘You are an amazing man’ and therein lies the continuing (groan) problem.

Unless her job was actually being female, it’s irrelevant and demeaning to include her sex in the compliment.

The fact that the equivalent phrase for a man is not something a male boss would say about another man, also feels uncomfortably inappropriate and borderline creepy.

Furthermore, there’s no way he would say in an annual review ‘you’re a disappointing woman, we need to put you on a performance improvement plan’.

He’d get sued! So why use a phrase that’s better off in the boudoir? And in public! And online?

So male employers and bosses everywhere, I say – know your limits and listen up.

Our female sex has little to do with the quality of our job performance unless we’re prostitutes, wives or mothers.