Thursday, April 14, 2016 

Still got the Whittingdale blues.

Just in case the whole Whittingdale thing wasn't silly enough, here comes Nichi Hodgson in the Graun denouncing the culture secretary for in her view throwing Olivia King to the wolves:
But being scared for your own reputation shouldn’t be reason enough for you to sully somebody else’s. By stating over and over again that he had not known his former lover was a sex worker, and that he had ended the relationship immediately upon finding out, Whittingdale has thrown her to the red-top wolves, making sure to thoroughly shame her in the process. Unfortunately, Whittingdale seems blind to the fact that it’s not only his former partner he’s distanced himself from, it’s his own spine as well.
 Except Whittingdale hasn't stated anything over and over again. The only comment he has made was the statement released on Tuesday night.  When doorstepped yesterday morning he referred the reporters to the statement and said he wouldn't be saying anything further.  Hodgson does at least accept that if Whittingdale, as he says, was unaware of his partner's work then he
might have felt a justifiable sense of betrayal. But the fact that Whittingdale was so quick to drop her when the tabloid press revealed her identity to him, and is now so keen to stress that immediacy in his defence, doesn’t come across as the reaction of a hurt yet honourable man.
I'm probably one of the least qualified people to pass judgement on relationships, but keeping something like the fact you're a sex worker from a prospective long-term partner (if again that's what Whittingdale was looking for; we're all making huge assumptions here) must surely be considered a deal breaker, especially if active deceit was involved.  We can all comment on prudishness, shaming and hypocrisy, only to come to very different conclusions when it involves us personally.  It's similar to pornography; we might have no problem with consuming it, regard it as the canary in the free speech mine, but plenty would at the same time not want friends or relatives to be playing a starring role in it.  Such are our hang-ups.

In any case, the genuinely guilty of prudery here are barely so much as mentioned by Hodgson.  Yes, Whittingdale could well of said yes, I dated a sex worker, who wants to fucking touch me, only he's no doubt embarrassed by the whole affair also.  No one has disputed his statement as yet, more than suggesting that he was in the dark and ended the relationship because he felt he had been lied to.

Should we be making judgements on this as a whole in any case?  Just as with the other privacy story of the week, it's disingenuous to claim it isn't about that but in fact this for the reason there would be no story whatsoever had the tabloids not decided politician dates dominatrix was worth investigating, even if they didn't end up publishing it.  The irony here is the people who have truly shamed King are those who otherwise claim to be against press intrusion, or normally critical when sex scandals are played out by those whose natural habitat is the gutter.  There is a case for asking why it wasn't published, but it's been hijacked by those whose cause as Ian Dunt has said has degenerated far from where it started off.

All in all, a thoroughly depressing week.

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4/14/2016 05:48:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 13, 2016 

The Whittingdale blues.

Absolutely nothing about the John Whittingdale/dominatrix story seems to make sense.

Let's then take it one step at a time.  If we're to believe Whittingdale's statement from last night, he had no idea that Olivia King was an escort, let alone the proud keeper of a dungeon.  When he did become aware of that fact, he ended the relationship.  No one seems to be as yet disputing it or claiming Whittingdale to be telling lies, so presumably the culture secretary's claim that he met his girlfriend of a few months on Match.com is accurate.

Now, unless I was reading something into the original Byline piece that simply wasn't there, as my take from it was that Whittingdale knew she was an escort and presumably was paying for her to accompany him to events, this is even less of a story than it first appeared.  Even if Nick Mutch is not explicit in saying that was the case, he definitely does claim that "Whittingdale's relationships with prostitutes are said to be well known in the London underworld".  He also quotes an unnamed senior Labour MP as having seen Whittingdale in the Houses of Parliament with a prostitute, although he wasn't sure if she was King or not.

Next, we have the James Cusick piece from Sunday.  This has since been described by another writer on openDemocracy, where the piece has also been hosted, as offering "little to substantiate" a cover-up, while David Elstein points out a number of flaws in Cusick's reasoning.  All of the investigations Cusick details apart from the Independent's took place while the relationship was on-going, before Whittingdale became culture secretary, although he was chair of the influential media committee.  Cusick claims that the Mirror may have dropped its investigation because Whittingdale could have launched a new inquiry into phone-hacking at the newspaper group, although does so in a half-hearted manner.  Similarly, without detailing how, Cusick implies that a similar investigation at the Mail on Sunday was dropped because Whittingdale was "viewed as an asset" by the Mail group.  Finally, Cusick details how things went with the Independent's own belated investigation, attempting to widen out the justification for a rather basic salacious story to claims about expenses not being paid, then to possible hypocrisy charges over Whittingdale's membership of the Cornerstone group.  Again, it ended with the editor shutting it down without apparent explanation.

To some, that four separate newspaper groups all failed to bring the story to print is indicative of a cover-up.  It's also certainly true that equally lacking stories about the private lives of politicians have been printed of late, including Brooks Newmark flopping the old johnson out of his pyjamas for an undercover hack, and the unforgettable Lord Sewel, in red bra, snorting cocaine off the breast of the sex worker who stitched him up.  A far more prosaic explanation is that even by the standards of those two stories, Whittingdale's adventures in online dating were much less exciting.  He's divorced, he didn't know King was a dominatrix in her spare time, and the only evidence they had were some very unrevealing photographs.  Why would the papers other than Independent drop the story on the basis Whittingdale could be useful to them in the future when they couldn't be certain of his career trajectory?  The Mirror phone hacking explanation also doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

This isn't to take the claims of former and current hacks at first sight.  As Francis Wheen quoted by Anorak has it, both the bizarre arguments being put forward by Hacked Off representatives that this was someone whose privacy should have been invaded, and the claims from the Thurlbecks and Wallises of this world are unbelievable.  Clearly the story was of interest to the tabloids, and the Independent; they just in the end decided it couldn't stand up.  I don't think Leveson is of any relevance here at all; the decision was simply made that MP unwittingly dates sex worker is a bit sad rather than scandalous.  You can see this in the way the Indie flailed around desperately for any justification long after the fact, as I described is always the way yesterday.  First you get the story, then you make something up to claim it's in the public interest.  Like Flying Rodent, I think this story would have been more in the public interest than the case the tabloids are up in arms about, but that's barely.  The reason why there's such a disparity is obvious, also: pop star up to shameless sexual antics sells papers; MP gets todger out on Twitter wins awards, if that.

Likewise, the cries from Labour that Whittingdale should stand aside from his role in directing legislation concerning regulation of the press due to his conflict of interest don't now really apply when, err, any conflict is out in the open.  The sword of damocles Chris Bryant lyrically brought up, even if we accept it was a thing despite there being no evidence, is now gone thanks to the exposing of the story.  As Roy Greenslade and others have argued, there does seem to be a lot of overstating of Whittingdale's role.  Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act shouldn't be imposed for the reason that it is grossly unfair, nor has there ever been a realistic suggestion it was going to be brought in; similarly, there is no appetite whatsoever among the Tories as a whole for staging the second part of the Leveson inquiry.  It's hardly just Whittingdale.  The same goes for bias against the BBC: the Tories don't like Auntie, simple as.  Whoever ends up being culture secretary you can guarantee will be just as critical as Whittingdale has been.

I can then understand why people think something stinks, agree this will certainly be something to bring up the next time a politician is caught with their pants down by a newspaper justifying their expose as in the public interest, and still think that on this occasion at least some are looking just that little bit too hard.  Which includes the BBC, Private Eye, et al, who now the story is out there are justified to ask the questions they have.  I also agree with Anna Raccoon when she writes on how Olivia King has every right to be thoroughly cheesed off with the press a whole.

Is that OK with everyone?

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4/13/2016 06:23:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 06, 2016 

Questions still remaining, and answers not necessary.

According to Dan Hannan, in full Monty Python colonel mode, this is getting silly.  Likewise, Boris Johnson "cannot see what they are blathering about".

Presumably, neither could Downing Street.  On Monday, David Cameron's father's tax arrangements via his offshore investment fund Blairmore Holdings were deemed "a private matter".  Yesterday it became apparent this wasn't going to hold, and so in the present tense, Dave confirmed he was not benefiting from any offshore holdings or shares, nor did he have any.  Further to that, he then made clear neither did Samantha, apart from a few shares in her father's own onshore property holdings.  Come this morning, and still a further clarification was deemed necessary: now Dave is saying that he also won't benefit from Blairmore in the "future".

You don't have to go into a Jess Phillips routine to find this all a bit rum.  Yes, plenty of us to an extent benefit from investments exempt from tax through putting savings in an ISA.  Yes, plenty of us also want to limit our tax liability as much as we can.  No one likes paying tax, but tax in the aphorism is what we pay for a civilised society.  Clearly however there's a difference between begrudgingly paying what we owe, and going out of our way to avoid paying it, as was the aim with Blairmore.

The obvious question for Cameron now is, was his father right to establish an offshore trust for this purpose?  It's not that he needs to answer whether he benefited from Blairmore in the past, as it's apparent he did.  Cameron has after all been highly critical of individuals who have taken part in artificial tax avoidance schemes.  His not being forthcoming will hardly inspire confidence that he means what he says about cracking down on tax havens and those avoiding/evading tax currently, not least when the OBR's projections on reaching a surplus by 2020 are reliant on more tax coming in through the closing of such loopholes.  This is without even beginning to get into how reliant the Tories are now and have been in the past on funding from businessmen who have either been non-domiciled, or have taken part in similar avoidance schemes.

Nor is there really a parallel here between the anger when the Daily Mail attacked Ed Miliband's father for "hating Britain", and the questions now being raised about Ian Cameron's financial dealings.  No one is suggesting that what Cameron's old man did was illegal, and while you can get on your real high horse ala Phillips about it, there's little point.  Cameron has never denied his privilege, and Blairmore if anything looks to be on the mild end of the lengths some went to avoid paying their fair share.  The point now is whether Cameron will act in concert with other world leaders to prevent the rich and global corporations from paying what they owe.  If that means imposing direct rule on places like the British Virgin Islands, instead of pussyfooting around, then so be it.  It should mean that where a light has begun to be shone into the depths of the offshore world, such as with the Private Eye database of properties owned by overseas companies, this should not then be brought to an abrupt end by the privatisation of the Land Registry.  These are hardly radical steps, especially for a prime minister whom according to the spin has been leading the way already.

Something on the other hand that is very much not a scandal is the hubbub around culture secretary John Whittingdale.  According to Nick Mutch on Byline, in a piece unhappily published on April the 1st, Whittingdale was for at least a year in a relationship with a dominatrix by the name of Olivia King.  No documentary evidence is provided by Mutch to prove that the woman photographed with Whittingdale is an escort, let alone a dominatrix, but let's take that on trust.  If the fact Whittingdale might have been paying for sex isn't enough to make it a story, then Mutch has secondary and third angles.

First, King was apparently at the same time as being paid for her services by the culture secretary also making appearances with a "a member of the London underworld, who has a previous firearms conviction", potentially putting him at risk of blackmail.  Second, the press very much knew about all of this, and yet despite in the past running similarly weak exposes, has decided in this case that Whittingdale's apparent lack of luck with women isn't of interest to the public.  Could this possibly be because of Whittingdale's spoken aversion to the BBC, or his refusal to implement the double costs element of the 2013 Crime and Courts Act?

Or is it that the story is just a bit crap?  Are we really in 2016 pursuing the whole blackmail justification, especially on the remarkably spurious grounds that King was also going out with a "member of the London underworld"?  In the Profumo scandal there was at least a Soviet attache involved.  The idea that the press won't expose him because it's not in their interests doesn't really wash either.  The Tories as a whole weren't keen on the double costs recommended by Leveson, nor are they the BBC.  The Independent and Mail on Sunday might conceivably have factored Whittingdale's usefulness to them into their thinking, but at the expense of bringing a minister down, always regarded as a journalistic coup?  Pull the other one.  Not everything is a conspiracy, nor is every unmarried or single politician being seen out with someone a story.  It really isn't any more complicated than that.

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4/06/2016 07:15:00 pm | | | links to this post

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