The court of Caligula

SHOULD PARLIAMENT now be re-christened Caligula's court, after the roman emperor who turned his palace into a brothel? Well, it is a trifle over the top, but sexual licence leads to degeneracy, whether of the hetro or homosexual kind. When such licence is tolerated within this country's seat of power, then comparisons of the kind I made above will resonate especially among future historians.

            

            Politicians have always behaved injudiciously, but they kept it at a distance from the palace of Westminster; usually in their London flats or country homes. Lloyd George never invited ladies into the Strangers Bar, got drunk and lifted their skirt. Jeremy Thorpe had never brought Norman Scott to the same venue, got drunk, opened his flies, and cupped his scrotum in his hands. Tom Driberg settled for dubious Soho clubs to take his young boys. Such behaviour was a private affair conducted far away from the centre of power.

            

           What is happening now is a debasement, but an acceptable one. Acceptable that is until Firecrest Films carried out an investigation which was shown on Channel 4. Now David Cameron has ordered a code of conduct for Tory MPs. Cameron must have known, be it through tittle-tattle, what was going on in Parliament. He must have, therefore shrugged his shoulders at was happening among his MPs.

            

           Yesterday, the ex-Deputy Speaker of the Commons and Tory MP Nigel Evens, was rightly found not guilty on a series of charges brought against him by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) relating to homosexual sexual activities. He was right to have been found not guilty, but, as I see it; not because the activities did not take place: but because they were enacted with the consent of the people Mr Evans was indulging himself with.

            

          Mr Evens has done nothing illegal, but, when drunk, he did try to impose his homosexual needs (I am trying to be as polite as I can) on young interns, who may have not complained or wished to complain about Mr Evans' behaviour. But such behaviour only brings disgrace upon Parliament - in addition to which, our right honourables also treat the public who elect them as their milk cow when it comes to the additional extras that come to an MP - I of course mean the expenses, and subsidised alcohol.

OVERALL, THE behaviour of our politicians, whether relating to their sexual behaviour or financial fraud, regarding their expenses, leaves a nasty taste among the electorate and Caligula's court seems less farfetched than I thought.

            

          When you have an enclosed community, not only at Westminster, but within the capital city as a whole: from where the rest of the nation become the forced recipients of whatever is coming out of a politically correct capital via the media in all its forms - where the Metropolitan elite harvest their ideas as to how the rest of the country should live and behave: ideas which may stand in opposition to the rest of the country; but who are nevertheless force feeding them to the rest of us provincials with our backward-looking ways.

            London is fast becoming not a city, but another country to many of us: and the palace of Westminster a sordid, decadent, and degenerate blot on the landscape. After this latest dissolute behaviour, following the expenses scandal which resurfaced this week, the public should be outraged. But it is hard to determine because the indigenous people are slow to take to the streets and express their anger and frustration with the political class. What the politicians like to call tolerance is often apathy. Apathy born not of indifference or idleness, but contempt and frustration; for they know that whatever they do the political class will come up with all the right rhetorical bluster; and the London-centric press will applaud it - only to see nothing come of it.

           Politicians are seen as thimble-riggers, those con-artists who would hide a pea under one of three thimbles and invite some poor idiot (in this case the voting public) to pick the right thimble. The thimble-rigger allows his 'client' to win a couple rounds before taking him for all he is worth.

           

           Political rhetoric has become such a device; which makes the behaviour of our politicians all the more contemptible after the monetary and sexual corruption that has been part of life at Westminster.

IT IS MY GUESS that why such lewd sexual behaviour has been tolerated by party leaders, is because it is being practised by gay MPs. After all, homophobia is a toxic substance in 'modern' Britain, and woe betide anyone who falls fowl of it. Such behaviour has been allowed to take hold through fear of being seen as a homophobe - in the same way the police and social services in Rochdale and Oxford feared being called racist, when gangs of Asian men plucked orphaned or homeless young white girls (some merely children) from social services and the streets to be sexually abused - including rape. Such is the age of political correctness.

            

          It is my guess that the behaviour in Westminster will continue. The right noises will be made by the thimble-riggers, but no one, except the die-hard party loyalists, will believe them. Public cynicism of the political class is the healthy response to the way, over several decades, politicians have been trained by spin doctors into a studied contempt for the public: and having learnt interviewing techniques from the very people who have interviewed them…for a price of course; how can the public have anything but contempt for the three main parties, and cynicism for their baggage handlers and tent followers - the journalists - especially the lobby variety who have symbiotic relationship with those politicians who wield power in the land.