Why the British Liberals are the sleazy party

The long list of Clement Freud's political colleagues revealed to be ruthless sexual predators

After his death, Radio 4 broadcast a ‘celebration’ of Clement Freud, the longest-serving panellist on its comedy series Just A Minute.  Typical of his lugubrious contributions on the programme was a monologue on the subject ‘How to be irresistible to the opposite sex’.

To huge bellows of laughter from the studio audience, Freud said: ‘Keeping one’s trousers on at my sort of age is a very good way of being irresistible to the opposite sex – else they might expect what they will not get.’

That was in 2006, just three years before he died at the age of 84. But considering what we now know about his past as a child abuser, such humour is pretty sickening.

Freud is just the latest in a very long list of senior Liberal politicians to be revealed as ruthless sexual predators.

Who can forget the recent, sordid case of party grandee Lord Rennard (nicknamed ‘Lord Grope’) who was accused of sexually molesting a female election candidate and was further alleged to have preyed on ‘at least 30’ victims – allegations which he denies.

And no history of sexual sleaze in Westminster goes without mention of the grotesque story of former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe who became mired in a gay sex scandal involving illicit sex in the Commons, blackmail, a murder plot and the cold-blooded shooting of a blameless dog.

Of course, not all sex affairs in Westminster exclusively involve Liberals – but they seem to have played central roles in a disproportionately large number.

Certainly, such incidents make a mockery of the popular image of Liberals as harmless, sandal-wearing, ban-the-bomb, muesli-munching environmentalists. So why is such a small party – which has been in government only once in peacetime in the past 100 years – so beset by sexual scandal?

One explanation is in the name ‘Liberal’. Whereas the Tory and Labour parties were created as moral movements (the former to promote free trade and sound finances; Labour to fight for the working classes against flint-hearted employers), the Liberals were founded on a much more laissez-faire philosophy.

Above all, they were united by the conviction that progress was based on the free exercise of individual energy.

That ‘individual energy’ has developed into the psychology of ‘Liberal by name, liberal by nature’. At its extreme, in many cases, this has been expressed as wilder examples of sexual freedom.

Another explanation is that, perhaps, forever being the third party and far from the levers of power, their politicians have been under less public scrutiny. As a result, many might have felt able to take far bigger sexual risks.

In addition, a glance at their signature policies over the years shows a party that embraces a very permissive view of society.

I’ve lost count of the Lib Dem party conferences where activists have called for sexual relations to be legalised at the age of 12 or 14. I can still recall a decade ago, Don Foster, the party’s culture spokesman, successfully calling for 16-year-olds to be allowed to visit sex shops and buy pornography. ‘Matters of taste should have no role in censorship,’ he said. Foster is now a Lib Dem peer.

For some time, the party has wanted to decriminalise prostitution – believing it to be a legitimate business.

How symbolic, therefore, that William Gladstone, the party’s most successful leader who became Prime Minister four times, was well-known for ‘rescuing’ prostitutes from the streets of London.

A married man, who apparently whipped himself after his encounters, he admitted to a fascination with vice. He wrote in his diary about committing ‘adultery of the heart’.

He was followed by David Lloyd George, the last Liberal Prime Minister, who cynically sold peerages to raise money for his cash-strapped party after the First World War. Nicknamed ‘The Goat’, he had a mistress for 30 years – his daughter’s governess – and fathered several children outside marriage.

Much more recently we witnessed Lib Dem election strategist Lord Rennard who was suspended from the party in 2014 over allegations of unwelcome sexual advances against four young female members whose careers depended on his patronage. The porcine Rennard was eventually reinstated and now sits in the Lords.

Party chiefs also had to act after veteran MP Mike Hancock was deselected for ‘serious and unwelcome sexual behaviour’ towards a woman constituent. He had to apologise in the High Court for the ‘inappropriate and unprofessional friendship’ and also admitted a four-year extra-marital affair with an alleged Russian spy.

A few years earlier, Mark Oaten MP (married with two children), who was running for the Lib Dem leadership, resigned as home affairs spokesman for having an affair with a rent boy who sold his story to a Sunday red-top tabloid.

Oaten admitted he had no proper concept of the risk he’d been taking, saying he ‘didn’t think for a moment’ the young man would have known who he was.

Five days later Simon Hughes, Liberal MP for Bermondsey, announced he had had gay relationships despite denying being a homosexual. Amid much embarrassment, he was reminded that he’d run a notoriously homophobic campaign against Labour candidate Peter Tatchell in the 1983 Bermondsey by-election.

Most notoriously, back in 1979, Jeremy Thorpe was tried for attempted murder after an alleged conspiracy to kill his former male lover Norman Scott – whom he called ‘Bunnies’. Thorpe, a married man, was acquitted of all charges but was branded by the judge a ‘crook, an accomplished liar and a fraud’.


Thorpe

Of course, one of Thorpe’s colleagues was the 29-stone Rochdale MP Cyril Smith who, for years, had shockingly managed to repel police investigations into his abuse of young boys in care homes and special schools.

Allegations against him had first surfaced in 1979 but the then Liberal leader David Steel dismissed them saying: ‘All he seems to have done is spank a few bare bottoms.’

Despite all the rumours, in 1988 Steel ensured Smith was given a knighthood. And on Smith’s 80th birthday, the then Liberal leader Nick Clegg extolled him ‘as a beacon of our party in the 1970s and 1980s’.

Finally, in 2012, the police admitted that Smith (who died in 2010) should have been charged with sexual and physical abuse and revealed 44 complaints had been made over three decades.

Any roll-call of sexual shenangians in the Liberal Party cannot exclude the antics of Chris Huhne, who stood as deputy leader. He admitted cheating on his wife, Vicky Pryce, with his parliamentary aide Carina Trimingham, who, at the time, was in a civil partnership with a woman.

How ironic that the Lib Dem manifesto for the General Election in 2010 declared: ‘We will clean up politics.’

From randy Old Goat Lloyd George to Jeremy Thorpe and Cyril Smith and now Clement Freud, the Liberals have repeatedly revealed themselves to be hypocrites – sexual libertines who preach ‘do as I say, rather than do as I do’.

SOURCE

UPDATE

More on Thorpe:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10677553/When-Jeremy-Thorpe-raped-thought-going-kill-says-NORMAN-SCOTT.html

Germany to scrap 'cultural immunity' and will no longer allow migrants to have multiple marriages or child brides

Germany will no longer allow migrants to have multiple wives or child brides, the justice minister has said.

Heiko Maas told German newspaper Bild that no one has the 'right to place their cultural values or religious beliefs above our laws'.

There has been increased concern over polygamous marriages in the wake of a rise in the number of migrants arriving in Germany, many from Muslim countries.

While polygamy is already banned in Germany, many officials 'turn a blind eye' to migrants who arrive in the country with more than one wife, the newspaper reports. This is also true of forced and underage marriages.

Mr Maas told the tabloid: 'We need to look very carefully. Forced marriages, we can not tolerate, and certainly not when underage girls are involved.

He added: 'Everyone must abide by rules and laws, whether they grew up here or are new. The law is equal for all.'

Referring to migrants arriving with underage brides, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees told local media: 'If the wife is underage, the youth authorities are alerted and they decide if the family stays together or not.'

SOURCE





One in ten Germans want a new FUHRER and a third believe their country ‘is dangerously overpopulated by foreigners’, new study finds

A new academic study has rocked the government in Berlin as people call for a 'dictatorship in the national interest' with one in ten wanting a new Führer to lead them to glory.

The University of Leipzig's research team found that nearly 34 per cent of people quizzed thought Germany is 'dangerously overpopulated by foreigners.'

A total of 21.9 per cent agreed that Germany needs 'a single strong party that embodies the national community as a whole'.

One in every ten Germans wants their country to be led by a 'Führer' applying 'a firm hand for the common good.'

And 71 years after Nazism was vanquished and the horror of the death camps revealed to a stunned world, 11 per cent of people questioned by the university researchers said Jews have too much influence in society.

Overall 12 per cent think Germans are by nature 'superior' to other people - a central plank of the ideology of Adolf Hitler and the original Nazis.

Other findings included four out of every ten people thinking Muslims should be prohibited from immigrating to the country and half of respondents in a survey of 2,240 people saying they feel like 'foreigners in their own country.'

Thirty per cent claimed Germany had been 'infiltrated by too many foreigners in a dangerous way.' And three out of every five Germans believe migrants who have arrived in the country seeking sanctuary from war and terror are bogus.

'They are not really at risk of any persecution in their home country" was the question they agreed with.

'There has been no increase in extreme right attitudes, but in comparison with our study from two years ago people who have far-right attitudes are more prepared to use violence to achieve their aims,' said Dr Oliver Decker, one of the report’s authors.

'There is a clear polarisation and radicalisation in German society, with more respondents also likely to completely reject violence this time around.

'The two groups exist next to each other. We have people who actively engage to help refugees and there are people who actively reject refugees,” said Decker.

The study entitled 'The uninhibited middle' argues extremist thinking has become more acceptable in mainstream German society - one reason for the rise of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

It delivered hammer blows to Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU conservatives in regional polls in March and looks set to send MPs into national government in the general election in the autumn of next year.

'Most AfD voters have a hostile attitude to the world,' said report co-author Dr Elmar Braehler. 'The potential for extreme right or populist right-wing parties is still higher than what electoral results have yet shown,' he added.

The survey noted an increase in negative attitudes towards gyspy communities, with half of respondents saying such people should be banned from city centres.

Gypsies were persecuted by the original Nazis with hundreds of thousands of them murdered in the Holocaust.

And gays - also persecuted under the Third Reich - are also hated: 40 percent of people said they found it 'disgusting' when homosexuals kissed in public - an increase of 15 per cent in a similar survey in 2011.

SOURCE





Freddie Gray trials faltering

The City of Baltimore’s prosecution against six of its own police officers after the death of Freddie Gray seemed overblown from the beginning, what with the seemingly excessive charges and a multi-million dollar settlement before the criminal trials went underway. Now with the hiccups in the case of Caesar Goodson, the officer who drove the police van in which Freddie Gray sustained his injuries, it seems like the city’s attempt at making its police officers into an example regarding police brutality is not going as planned.

The first trial for Officer William Porter ended in a hung jury and the second trial of Officer Edward Nero found the man not guilty. Goodson faces the most serious charges, “depraved-heart” murder, but the judge overseeing Goodson’s trial ordered the city to hand over information to Goodson’s lawyers because he determined the city prosecutors didn’t disclose information that would help Goodson. Namely, Goodson’s defense was never provided with statements from another person who was also picked up in the police van that day.

If the city of Baltimore cannot convict Goodson, it’s doubtful that it can convict any of the other officers involved in the arrest of Gray. Furthermore, history stands in the officers' favor. When police officers accused of murder or manslaughter stood before a judge (instead of a jury), not a single one was found guilty between 2005 to 2011. It seems Baltimore played to the mobs and was too quick to convict.

SOURCE

*************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

***************************