The Home Secretary "jokes" about spiking his wifes drink with Rohypnol

[cakeorwine]

As the other thread has been automatically hidden

"James Cleverly has apologised for joking about spiking his wife’s drink with a date rape drug in comments made at a Downing Street reception.
The home secretary’s remarks came just hours after the Home Office announced plans to crack down on spiking, when someone puts drugs into another person’s drink or directly into their body without their knowledge or consent.

Cleverly told female guests at the reception that “a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night” was “not really illegal if it’s only a little bit”, the Sunday Mirror reported.
He also laughed that the secret to a long marriage was ensuring your spouse was “someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there”."

So much to say about this

Remember when shit like this got you sacked? Good times.

Context is everything here.

I am horrified at the lack of judgement and awareness the Home Secretary has shown. He was at the function in his official capacity!
This isn't a case of a private comment being misreported. He was working and talking to political journalists.........

@BerriesNutsConkers not sure context is required.

Stating your deeply held belief that women are adult human females is not the same as telling jokes about trans women.

Telling jokes about drugging women is not ok. If he thinks women should be drugged then he should come out and say it.

One is freedom of speech, the other is just being offensive.

I would like a Government that neither thinks drugging women or joking about it is ok.

This might be what you believe but does anyone have the freedom to say whatever they want and not get fired?

A young man i know had a drink spiked, he was repeatedly raped.
Still having on going therapy, he went from being a happy go lucky to having panic attacks, anxiety and losing his job.

He now has the indignity of being pressured into work by the DWP when he clearly isn't capable of it, he is too ashamed to tell his GP let alone the DWP people.

Yet its a subject of humour for this cunt Cleverly.

Bu...bu...but...LABOUR!!!@!@@£#

What a tedious, unimaginative and privileged argument. Your bar is piteously low.

This might be what you believe but does anyone have the freedom to say whatever they want and not get fired?

That poster wouldn't answer when given hypothetical examples about black and disabled people, despite me answering directly when they put an example to me about trans women.

Which suggests they do actually think some words mean you should be sacked, otherwise they wouldn't have wriggled out of answering - even chopping off the bit of a post asking their thoughts on the examples and just responding to the other bit of the post.

So in their opinion, it seems some words do justify being fired. Just not words joking about rape.

@VisionsOfSplendour they may not condone spiking and rape as a party but they allow a whole lot of scum to represent them.

They are ok with children living in poverty, rhey are perfectly happy to destroy our health service, education, social care.
Happy to allow people to die in small boats trying to get to safety.
Happy to be allied with countries who commit war crimes and sell them weapons.
They were happy to elect a useless prick like Johnson.
And on and on and on.

Tories are irredeemable scum and the people that vote for them are supporting that. I couldn't really give a shit if you and your Tory voting family find that ridiculous and insulting.

And yet this is reprehensible.
He is responsible for Law and Order yet "jokes" about carrying out a crime on his own wife. Signalling to people considering it that its just a mild laughing matter

And he does this hours after Home Office announces a crackdown on spiking because its become an increasingly common and dangerous practice - so he can't even claim he didn't realise what a serious and criminal action it actually is.

As a politician it undermines the work of his own department, never mind undermining his wife. He doesn't care though, he wants to be thought of as a charming wit or he wouldn't have said it to a journalist.

Needs to delete the charming and add a T

What context makes it ok? Do you think it's ok in any way for someone in public office to hold those views and joke about them, even in private? I fucking don't.

Wow.

Well he's shown us who he really is.

I thought I had answered? I don't think people should be sacked for making jokes, no. However, my answer might change depending specifically on what was said and the context. The examples you givr are vague and hypothetical. So I can only give you an answer based on principle, I'm afraid. I'm not sure how helpful it is to talk in such vague terms.

Now if Cleverly were attending racist rallies, or drugging women, or telling others to do such things, of course that would be criminal and he should face the strongest possible consequences.

Free speech is such a straw man argument here. No one is saying he should be thrown in jail for these remarks as far as I've seen, just that he's shown he's not fit to be home Secretary.
If I told my boss some choice opinions I have about him, he'd sack me but not have me arrested lol.

As have some posters. Bashing a hole through the bottom of the barrel trying to defend him.

It doesn't fly.

This arrogant fool should be sacked immediately. A member of parliament and the cabinet, the home secretary ffs, joking about women being drugged and raped by their partner in their own home. If this is proved he has to go now. I hate this disgusting cesspit of Tory vermin. Get rid. Reminds me of Saville brags about 'Spanish Fly'......

Free speech is such a straw man argument here. No one is saying he should be thrown in jail for these remarks as far as I've seen, just that he's shown he's not fit to be home Secretary.

Yes, this.

Thanks for saving me scrolling back. These conversations about freedom of speech/expression are so tedious, with people not understanding that freedom of speech is not absolute and also that there is a difference between freedom from prosecution by the state and freedom from the very reasonable consequences of losing your job if you've caused harm to your employer or your party/government.

@beastlyslumber

I thought I had answered? I don't think people should be sacked for making jokes, no. However, my answer might change depending specifically on what was said and the context. The examples you givr are vague and hypothetical. So I can only give you an answer based on principle, I'm afraid. I'm not sure how helpful it is to talk in such vague terms.

My examples weren't very vague. But let's give a specific example. If he said:

"It's a good thing trans women are allowed to use women's bathrooms now, it just means there are more women to take advantage of!"

If he said that, would you think he should keep his role as Home Secretary?

Also do you still think that saying "I believe wholeheartedly in everyone's right to freedom of speech" is mutually exclusive with saying "I believe that some things said while exercising freedom of speech should result in being sacked."

For those of you complaining that I've left the discussion, ffs chill out. Its Christmas! People are busy. And apparently I have to be at your beck and call, responding to comments and questions (including those I've already responded to)? No, I don't think so.

I accept I'm in a minority here and so I'm getting a lot of comments directed towards me. And I appreciate that people are taking my arguments seriously enough to engage with. Please continue to attempt to change my mind if you like, but just understand that I have other things to do today than answer to mumsnet! Thank you! Later!

Concerned by some of the view points on here but hey ho, freedom of speech and all that.

The fact is that his freedom of speech has shown that he’s not a fit person to do the job he currently has.

Yes. He's the Jim Davidson/Bernard Manning of the Tory party.

Yet you had time to copy and paste (to chop of some bits) lots of other posts while not addressing the bits you chopped off 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm posting while feeding a baby. I really hope when she's older people aren't still of the opinion that men should keep their jobs in government after publicly joking about raping women.

It's not being permanently offended. It's expecting those that govern to have some basic decency.

This

I'm a senior leader in a civil service arm's reach body - we have the same code of conduct, expectations on behaviour etc. we are heavily pushing EDI. That comment would have been a disciplinary offence. Joking about a women, or any other group of people, being permanently sedated is misogyny/discrimination, not a joke!

The fact is that his freedom of speech has shown that he’s not a fit person to do the job he currently has.

This.

Which is a shame. I had the impression he wasn't as bad as some of the others (though I can't remember why – maybe I was just flat wrong).