Monday 27 July 2015

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/watch-the-undercover-footage-that-allegedly-shows-labour-peer-lord-sewel-snorting-cocaine-with-two-prostitutes-10417927.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/watch-the-undercover-footage-that-allegedly-shows-labour-peer-lord-sewel-snorting-cocaine-with-two-prostitutes-10417927.html

I can't work out what Lord Sewel is meant to have done, other than set-up an incompetant slow-moving and make-work system for sacking peers, which I think should get him sacked as chair of whatever committee.

Other peers think he should stop being a peer after snorting cocaine in front of journalist prostitutes who were doing a sting operation with a concealed camera. They voted for byzantine incompetance. Not the journalist sting prostitutes but the lords. The lords don't mind pomp and incompetance and £300 daily dole for which they do "F-all"; they mind it being mentioned in The Sun. They give interviews suggesting that Sewel resign from being a peer. Why? All he has done is taken a substance made illegal for protection of un-wary users, and said on tape that most peers too "F-all" for £300 turning-up fee. He has also sold extra copies of The Sun because video of a late middle-aged man trying to be naughty is always strange, and all of us can imagine ourselves in his position.


I can't work-out the point of social changes in the last 50 years, if people are still silly about the same things they were silly about during the Profumo Affair. Haven't peers and politicians been reading books, talking to ordinary people, watching telly or generally picking-up good libertarian ideas since the early 1960s era of politicians' sex scandles? No, apparently. Have they been passing laws to make as much as possible legal, so that there is no shame in being caught on video doing whatever it is? Well, Sewel was a Blair choice for peerage, so maybe not in his case. Also, cocaine is an imported product while speed is often made in the UK, so Lord Sewel could have supported UK manufacturing more.

Now he's gone, I can't work out why the chancellor shouldn't go, after being photographed with part of his nose missing as though a heavy user of cocaine, and after similar Sun Newspaper allegations sourced from a prostitute.* The difference is that The Sun did contrive to get a couple of prostitute journalists to go-in with a video camera; the chancellor declined their offer. He had a more discrete source. So the unwritten constitution is:
  • taking cocaine with prostitutes does not get you sacked, if you do it in private and in your own time.
  • letting the servants find out about it is close to the edge
  • doing it on video does get you sacked with voices of condemnation all-round, for failing to get your prostutes from a reputable pimp. This could by why MPs have made speeches about those flyers in phone boxes for Miss Whiplash that cheer-up tourists. They may boost tourism but they undermine the work of official pimps.
  • the job is not much related to the offence. 
    Drivers face massively stiffer penalties for drinking than pedestrians, who face none at all if they can avoid falling-on to somone or vomiting-over someone. You would think that the person who judges what level of public spending is achievable, and the social contract between taxpayers and the same people as benefits claimants over time, would need sober judgement. Maybe do something odd some weekends, but have a lot of quiet time for sober reflection. Or not. Someone who just has to be patient and make a bunch of committees work politely in the Lords needs a lower level of sobriety because the work is more robotic.
What if
  • Someone who has had cocaine on video wishes to stand for parliament?
  • Or been a porn star?
I'm confused.


*
I don't know whether a tabloid newspapre retouched the photo to exaggerate. I do know that another MP has raised the question of the chancellor's cocaine use in the commons. I also know that the chancellor talks like someone who needs a holiday - the promises not matched to reality; the stylised phrases, but a lot of ministers have always been like that over the years.