Foot-In-Mouth

I was, like most people I am sure, aghast at the news today. In particular the story of the barrister who called the victim of child abuse a "sexual predator", who also looked older than she actually was.  I was under the impression the age limit at which a person can have sex with someone in the UK is 16. But according to Barrister Neil Wilson that is unless they look a bit older or they have already suffered abuse at the hands of someone else.

Because this is what is missing from most of the coverage thus far in the news. If she is 'sexually experienced' she has already been the victim of abuse. Or is it the case that once a young woman, a child in this instance, is broken we no longer care what becomes of them. Sexual assertiveness in a child is surely, I am not an expert, a symptom of sexual abuse or at least a child exposed to sexual concepts too early? How is the fact that a child has been abused already a mitigating factor in a sexual abuse case? This boggles my mind, it really does. In the wake of Saville and the institutionalised abuse within the BBC and the Catholic Church you would think we would be a bit more self aware and a bit more au fait with the problems caused by child abuse? No one more so than a barrister. This was an educated and experienced man, which makes it all the more shameful. The equivalent of trotting out the old "she was asking for it" excuse in rape cases...in fact it isn't the equivalent it IS the "she was asking for it defence". This is not a Nabokov novel, this is real life, this was a real child taken advantage of by an adult who should have been looking after her and he deserves to be punished. There are no mitigating factors here.

But this isn't the only case of someone suffering from Foot-In-Mouth disease in the news today. A UKIP MEP (another white middle aged male in power, hmm...I wonder...) said that too much UK foreign aid was going to, and I quote "Bongo Bongo Land". I mean, come on! Boris Johnson has a lot to answer for. He is affably bumbling and "says what he means" (ie. no filtering process stopping you from saying ridiculously inappropriate things) and seems oddly to be quite popular for it. So clearly Godrey Bloom thinks this is a winning strategy. To be racist in public.

There is, I am told by friends who work in international aid, much to be critical in how aid money is spent. There is much to be critical about the priorities and activities of well meaning white westerners and 'volun-tourism' but the level of the dialogue, the frankly racist "bongo bongo land" is like something you would expect of Prince Phillip, or your racist nan, not a politician. I mean it goes to show you what sort of party UKIP is that it only asked him "not to repeat the phrase" rather than punish him. It is so crude, so backwards, so bloody Victorian to see the rest of the world as a tribal backwater and Britain as a civilised and civilising force. Aid money should be spent helping people in need and developing the economies and countries that suffered at the hands of the British Empire in particular and most in need elsewhere in the world. It is our duty because we have the privilege of being a wealthy nation not because we feel guilty nor is it money wasted. It is a paltry amount in the grand scheme of things and, I am told, a little goes a long way in the developing countries. This attempt to "open up a debate" on international aid will, I hope, fall flat on its face as I think we have moved on in the last two hundred years but I have been proved wrong quite a lot recently. Bongo Bongo Land, if a character in the Thick of It said it we would all be complaining that the show had jumped the shark and was no longer believable.