Looking like that, he was asking for it

CF is moved to blog once more by the vast amounts of sheer fucking idiocy swilling around Ken 'Hushpuppies' Clarke and his rambling nonsense regarding rape yesterday.

No sooner was the waffle out of Hushpuppies' stupid mouth than a fucking army of 'victims', relatives of victims, friends of victims and the sort of faux-charidees that hover around anybody who might ever consider themselves a victim poured from the woodwork.

Clarke was condemned by all and sundry, partly because it seems a substantial part of the commentariat feel that unless you've actually been raped - ideally recently and repeatedly - you can have absolutely no understanding of "what it's like" and therefore - in a typically wrongheaded leap of logic - have no fucking opinion on the subject whatsoever.

Don't misunderstand, CF still ain’t no Coalition fan , and certainly has very little time for ol' Kenny. He manages to be both an old-school Tory and have a number of fuckwitted ideas on "Europe" - a revolting combination.

And a man of his age and weight really ought to be able to go out on the media and say what he wants to fucking well say without being reduced to a mumbling imbecility by a DeeJay and a 'caller from London' .But this shouldn't be about him.

One of the original reasons he got onto his hind legs was to float the concept of 'plea bargaining'. The idea that, if a rapist pleads guilty immediately - obviously in exchange for some inducement - then the rape victim is spared the ordeal of having their character, behaviour and even wardrobe analysed and attacked in court: an ordeal in itself. CF guesses many victims would be very, very glad to avoid their day in court.

Obviously - duh - the rapist has got to be offered something in exchange for this. What can you offer someone who's probably going to prison anyway? Perfect - the threat of a longer sentence if they don't play ball, and a comparatively shorter one if they do.

Perhaps this is a reasonable idea - perhaps we should discuss that, eh?

No, fuck it, lets not. Let's attack the old, plummy, white man. Let's bash the Tory. Let's see - in a piece of fucking blatant political opportunism - if we can get a Cabinet Minister fired. That's what important. Dear God.

This could have been a sensible discussion about a 'tweak' to the system to improve things for the victims. To prevent young women being told by defence lawyers that really they were "asking for it", weren't they? To perhaps increase the number reported rapes, given that reporting it wouldn't necessarily get you into a courtroom to face your attacker all over again.

But the 'victims' representatives have killed that stone dead, haven't they? Thanks to the knee-jerkers, that’s not gonna happen, is it? For fuck's sake.


.

6 comments:

Bobski said...

Welcome back CF.

Yeah, Clarke has stepped into the "Political Buzzword Minefield". As long as people irrationally over-react at the sound of a word the problem associated with it will never be solved.

Hairy Ricky said...

Welcome back CF, about bloody time too! Did you really think that after Jonah and the last steaming pile left office anything would really change? Same shit different colours. My piss is starting to boil again cause I expected this shower to be better. I can't stand Clarke, but I think he meant to say 'Statutory Rape' rather than date rape. Big difference but then again all rape is serous so they say. Maybe they should bloody change Statutory rape to the more realistic unlwful sex. Then we may get somewhere.

The Filthy Engineer said...

Nice to see you back and in fine form as always.

JuliaM said...

Welcome back!

"Let's see - in a piece of fucking blatant political opportunism - if we can get a Cabinet Minister fired. "

A Cabinet Minster, no less, who is loathed and reviled (by the 'right wing Tories' that Labour profess to hate) because of his soft views on crime.

Truly, Miliband has encountered #EpicFAIL once more...

Jill said...

Yowzer! You're back.

I can't imagine what Ken was thinking, though. He's been in the game long enough not to make such a pig's ear of something. He knows that print and broadcast media and politicians all operate at the level of the infantile.

Out of interest: what IS the average sentence for "proper" rape? And what is the discount from? Maximum sentence? Average sentence?

And do we actually prosecute 16/17 year old adolescents who have sex with their 15 year old girlfriends?

Anonymous said...

Glad you're back!