Free Republic

Thomas the Tank Engine has had a team of multicultural female trains join the Steam Team in an equality overhaul. The new series of the children’s animated show Thomas and Friends will see the beloved locomotive leave his home in Sodor to travel the world for the first time. Now called Thomas And Friends: Big World! Big Adventures!, the new series also marks the first collaboration between a children’s TV programme and the United Nations to promote the Sustainable Development Goals. For the first time Thomas will discover new countries and cultures by travelling to China, India and Australia. The...

There are many terrible children's programs through which parents must suffer during their child's young life. For every Sesame Street, there is an annoying Caillou or an acid-trippy Yo Gabba Gabba. But Thomas and Friends is – or was – the one show with enough subversive messages to make me turn it off for good. My son, now three-and-a-half years old, thankfully never never went through a manic train fascination like so many other children. But once in a while, he'd get a bug in his brain to watch Thomas, and every time I sat and watched with him, I...