Yesterday Matt Hancock landed himself in hot water by disapprovingly commenting on the tone of new shadow minister Rosena Allin-Khan during a debate, prompting immediate backlash from the quick-to-offence brigade, with the line “he wouldn’t have castigated a man’s tone” being trotted out. Guido’s been through the archives and found 44 examples from Matt Hancock of commenting on “tone” that undermine this outrage. Since his election in 2010, Hancock has chastised the tone of 11 MPs, only two of whom were women – Allin-Khan yesterday and Caroline Lucas. Man or woman, black or white, everyone is equal under the spotlight of Matt Hancock’s tone policing…
A scrum of woke Parliamentary rugby players are miffed off today as a result of an email from the Chairman of the Commons and Lords Rugby Team, Mark Pawsey (who is also, coincidentally, the MP for the Rugby constituency). He has invited male MPs, Lords and staffers to sign up for a full tournament of rugby, his email quite reasonably invited female MPs to a less brutal game of touch rugby. “Nice bit of sexism” one rugby-loving staffer rather unfairly commented…
Writing to MPs with the subject line “Do you or anyone in your office play rugby?”, Pawsey explained the team plays “for fun under a modified version of the game called ‘Golden Oldies’ which enables those whose careers are nearly over to continue playing…”. The invitation seemed open to all, however the captain went on to say
“In previous sessions we have also accommodated lady players by having a short game of Touch Rugby before the match. So, ladies are also welcome to join!”
It would obviously be a dangerously uneven contact sport with mixed teams, this seems a perfectly reasonable compromise. What a ruck up!
The #MeToo movement claims another… former doyen of the Lobby and top Guardianista Sir Michael White has been accused of smacking a young female journalist on the bottom. Angella Johnson, a feature writer at the Mail on Sunday, tweets:
Mike does not deny the charge, claims he too is a victim and says Angella should have taken it as a compliment:
Remember Mike thinks it is actually female journalists who are the predators. “Much younger”? He’s only been married a few decades…
24 year-old Jared O’Mara fancied himself as a bit of a rock star player and used a forum on his band’s website to try his luck with imagined groupies. In messages to followers of his band Dirty Rotten Troubadours, O’Mara told one female user: “Don’t worry luv. I’ll lay on your rack any day (double entendre intended!)”. The conversation turned to what Jared looks for in a groupie…
O’Mara went on to boast that “pretty young girls want me”, continuing his obsession with teenagers.
He told his band’s followers that he only sleeps with “pretty” women who share his principled political positions: “any girl that would like to make whopee with me must be passionate about charity and the fight against social injustice”. He only sleeps with feminists? That may not be a successful strategy for him in future…
UPDATE: This is Jared’s old account on the Arctic Monkeys forum. Writing when he was 25 years old O’Mara described himself as a “Dirty perv who dreams of bumming birds”, posted “I just wanna get drunk and chase some skirt” and joins in with other users leering at photos of naked women. Another user asks him what age girls he prefers – he replies “legal“. This account is registered to his email address.
Theresa May responds to the Jared O’Mara scandal:
“All of us in the House should have due care and attention to the way in which we refer to other people and should show women in public life the respect they deserve.”
Remarkable it took Labour so long to deal with him.
Jared O’Mara wrote about “sexy little slags” and “teenage girls” being “fingered”, Guido can reveal. In an early music review of the Arctic Monkeys posted in his name when he was in his mid-twenties, O’Mara described the band’s guitarist, writing that “teenage girls” will “take him home” to experience his “quick fingered dexterity”.
O’Mara went on to describe the gig, and how in his words “sexy little slags” danced to the band’s songs. The Arctic Monkeys have a lyric “sexy little swine” – it appears Jared adapted the words to fit his obsession with sexualising teenage girls. This was all written in the year that he was first selected as a Labour candidate, when he was in his mid-twenties, much older than the teenagers he publicly objectified, and old enough to know better than to call young women “slags“. Corbynistas are now joining centrists calling for Jared to go, will Jez finally act?
