OUT OF ORDER, ORDER

BOTTOM LINE: Period products available in the gents.

SO THAT’S what it’s come to……Hatty Harperson and Sir Bernard Blinkin Jenkin – a malignantly mismatched couple if ever there was one similar only in their unctuously and cloyingly stagey delusions of grandeur – ruling on how literally and religiously other people observed social distance by subjecting Boris Johnson – who dwarfs them and everyone else on the committee combined – to a grilling as if he were a cold-blooded mass murderer on death row.

Hatty, her funereal black hanging judge outfit considerably enhanced by a bold and brassy necklace which for all the world looked like a noose around her own neck and Jenkin, a deceptively docile dummy at her right, (better cop to her blatantly bad one, perhaps) waited patiently for Johnson to swear by a bible produced by an official to consolidate the perception of him as a wrong un because he, like everyone I knew, observed the spirit of rules and not the letter of them as the rules were impractical and offensive, needlessly turning healthy people into prisoners and setting one against another.

Dear Christ, I found out earlier on in the day that I can now stock up on high waist period panties, menstrual cups and cases, and even full cycle (and I don’t mean the two wheeled variety) kits in the male lavatories of the public library by filling in a product list with boxes ranging from S to XL for size and just handing it to a member of staff to be able to take home my requested item (WHOOPEE!).

Men can only experience full stops not periods because they are not capable of menstruating and never will be unless genetic makeup is so radically altered that they in future come out of the womb with front bits at the back and back bits at the front or different bits entirely or, much more rationally, do not come out of the womb at all but a test tube in Wuhan.

Yes folks, the world HAS gone mad and we are now drowning not waving in a sick, sad sea of offensive postmodernist trans radical feminist claptrap designed to demonize the penis and everything that it represents (new life), keeping us captive in an altered adversarial universe specifically designed so that black lesbians and trans people can get revenge on male pale stale gammons like me now having to say nothing about the gratuitously hideous takeover of our personal spaces by political virtue symbols, unexploded bombs and weapons of mass destruction like period panties which offend against our very identity while corroding and corrupting community cohesion and social structure.

And while society declines and descends into decadent and depraved delusions which defy science and faith and we stay silent because we have now lost before we start, our political class sends out all the wrong signals.

Johnson, a stereotypical masculine male, is now public enemy number one not just for being male pale stale gammon but for observing rules in an emotionally literate and human-centred way like we always used to before COVID-19 elf and safety fascism gave puritans like Hatty an opportunity to turn witchfinder general and humiliate offenders with relish as if they were consorters with the devil fomenting wicked and vile brews in giant cauldrons deep in the woods when all they were doing was reaching over that woman at Waitrose to get a can of beans or (horror of horrors) having a drink with others.

“Burn the witch, burn the witch” these puritans used to shout manically when some local wife admitted to a bit on the side with the innkeeper while the villagers eagerly and enthusiastically constructed a bonfire on the village green and sharpened their tongues for more vindictive viciousness when the corpse turned black and crispy.

“Order, Order” cried Goody Harperson at odd moments like an old faded stage veteran as if there was widespread disorder in the room provoked, no doubt, by the big bad beast in front of them. There was no disorder and there was no need to insist on an oath being taken as this was not a criminal hearing.

In the 2010-15 Parliament, the Home Affairs Committee has chosen to take evidence under oath in respect of its inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. Another well-known example in the current Parliament was when the Public Accounts Committee administered the oath to the General Counsel and Solicitor to the Inland Revenue. This approach was criticised by another former Clerk of the House, Sir Malcolm Jack, in a lecture (Parliamentary Privilege: a dignified or efficient part of the Constitution? 29 March 2012) following his retirement. He said:

I do not think that that action was reasonable. Again let me be clear: I understand what the Committee is trying to do – elucidate the sometimes murky details of government spending – but if it really wants to pick a fight, that should ultimately be done with the Minister not his civil servants, the only exception being in the case of Accounting Officers who are directly personally responsible for their actions.

Yet in spite of this, the power remains. Thus, rather than simply a theatrical flourish for the cameras, the issue of evidence under oath before committees might merit some further consideration.

To call the committee of privileges a kangaroo court would be cruel to kangaroos. Indeed, this was a court which had effectively announced its verdict before hearing the evidence and its members duly did not ask open questions to elicit information given in a spirit of candour and openness so we could fully understand and learn but instead asked closed questions and lead like Rumpole on an off day at the Old Bailey, relishing their chance to take the moral high ground again.

Johnson, his thinning hair above his ill-fitting suit, gesticulated with both hands in a typically masculine way using chopping and swaying motions like a sumo wrestler, seemed to disappear in front of our eyes as if in readiness to announce at a later date that he didn’t know it was a committee he had attended in case anyone accused him of some new transgression which might have transpired at that very committee.

Guilty as charged for being male pale and stale and reeling from a choreographed going-over with committee members competing to stick the boot in again and again, this dreadful and debased spectacle did nothing to restore our faith in masculinity nor in politics. In fact, it was yet another nail in the coffin of both.

Mentioning Sue Gray – the chief inquisitor who has now scandalously cosied up to Sir Keir Starmer, casting a shadow over the legitimacy of the inquiry and, of course, the system itself – and emphasising that there was nothing covert or shameful about the gatherings during COVID-19 was his best tactics and, may ultimately save him from further humiliation.

I was left wondering why Hatty did not ask him if period products were available in the gents toilets at 10 Downing Street during COVID-19, if not, why not, how long was the toilet without period products and how much he might regret it if he did not ensure they were provided.

Safe spaces for trans people are now hugely important but where are the safe spaces for male pale stales?

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