Nobody has more contempt than me for the House of Lords or for cronies of Tony Blair. But I shall not join in the pillorying of John Sewel over his private life. If he wants to take cocaine and spend time with prostitutes that is entirely his own business. Britain’s periodic outcries over private morality are contemptible. There is no legitimate reason why the activities of consenting adults in their own homes should be of concern to the rest of us. Not the least unpleasant aspect is that those journalists and politicians who whip up such witch hunts are for the most part hiding secrets about themselves. That in 2015 we still have not come to terms with the most ordinary sexual desire or formulated a more rational policy response to use of narcotics, is unfortunate.
I expect if I dug around I could find a lot of things to dislike Sewel for, in terms of the policies he has supported. But to attack political opponents over their private lives – assuming the necessary factors of adults and consent – is low.
Weren’t most of the City boys on cocaine (and champagne) before the crash?
~~~~
Sewel’s first two wives must be glad they got shot of him. His current wife will be mortified.
PS Had anyone heard of him up until today?
Lords and MPs make laws that apply to the public. The Lords are not held responsible for what they do, we cannot vote them out.
If a policeman did this and was found out he would lose his job and pension.
When Lords are no longer Lords then their private lives may be their own. Now, they deserve to be pilloried.
Ba’al Zevul
3:59pm
That’s all right. Cocaine is a huge problem also because it’s not a yuppie drug any more. It’s not particularly expensive.
I very seldom talk about foodbank usage and drugs, because it’s easy to make the inference that foodbanks are chiefly patronised by alcoholics and druggies, which is nonsense.
However, it is true that a certain number of people will spend virtually everything they have on drink or drugs, and will either then steal food or beg for it. I’ve have seen this personally. In these unfortunate cases, I do think intervention is quite justified.
Kind regards,
John
LOL Mary, you mean to say you never heard of John “Buttifant” Sewel? Google him!
He was a contributor on these two titles:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/House-Lords-Expulsion-Suspension-2015/dp/0108558061
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guidance-Members-Accepting-Benefits-Hospitality/dp/010855807X
…. unfortunatly both out of stock. They must be real page-turners…
NG – he’s under investigation. If the allegation is true (and remember the power of Photoshop) no doubt charges will follow, and some sort of justice will follow*. The Press’s prurient interest, and public conviction of the man before the process of the law has even begun, is at least as disturbing as the revelation that important people can find illicit kicks at will. Which has always been the case.
Is this one of those embarrassing, “What? Doesn’t everybody do that?” revelations.
You might try putting that to just about anyone in Canary Wharf.
From 2006:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060913000000/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sewel,_Baron_Sewel
Natalie Graham,
I have never taken narcotics, if that helps. 🙂 But I think sex with two other people is entirely within the range of normal sexual desire. And yes, I have done that.
By a process of free association…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33009682
Scientists say London has the highest concentration of cocaine in sewage of anywhere surveyed in Europe.
The data from the European Union’s drug monitoring body found the capital slightly ahead of Amsterdam.
While London comes top for cocaine flushed down the toilet, Amsterdam’s drains contain greater amounts of cannabis.
The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction data comes from sampling in more than 50 cities.
The results, which take into account the size of each city’s population, show that on average, drug users in London relieved themselves of 737mg of cocaine per 1,000 people during the week in 2014…
…the figures for London tally with the monitoring agency’s wider research which indicates that the UK has the highest rate of cocaine use among young adults in Europe, It said that around 4% of people aged between 15 and 34 had said they had taken the drug in the 12 months leading up to the 2013/14 report. While there are fluctuations from year to year, most studies indicate that most drug use is in decline.
Natalie Graham
4:03pm
I would be interested to see your own definition of “ordinary sexual desire”.
Kind regards,
John
This may be off topic, (sorry Mods) but
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4229855.stm
It would seem, on reading the above, only Scottish Ministers can “use a Sewel Motion”
:-O
The question is not how this chap was screwed and pilloried out of his job. It is why?
We all know these sanctimonious low lives are screwing we the people without so much as missing a beat, all the while telling us we have never had it so good! Then why when the same lot are actually pants down paying to screw a prostitute and helping some drug lord to run his fleet of Mazzeraties suddenly they are pilloried out of their cushy numbers?
What has he done, or more to the point not done? Any ideas anyone?
Bless, The Good Lord even writes for Huffpo
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lord-sewel/house-of-lords_b_7808916.html
For the First Time the House of Lords Now Has the Power to Expel Members Permanently…”
That was 10 days ago.
I’m becoming a bit like Mary here, and am expecting to be attacked by the trolls any moment. (Mary; I’m a “fan” of yours)
Fedup
4:46pm
He got filmed doing it, and not by MI5.
Kind regards,
John
John Spencer-Davis;
My own experience (in the 1980s) with both cocaine and crack suggested to me that their main effects are local anaesthesia with little psychoactivity or after-effect. But my source was a pharmacist friend who was himself purifying the cocaine and performing the isomerisation to crack, so I know it was pure; I could have watched the whole process of preparation. I’d visit over the weekend and I could take as much as I wished. I took a fair bit, trying to experience the stimulant effect but all I ever got was a numb face (snorting cocaine) and tingly lungs (smoking crack). I never got a come-down afterwards.
I had two lines of “coke” during the 2000s, and could clearly taste amphetamine; it tasted more of speed than cocaine, and there was no knowing what else may have been mixed into it. Each time, the single line made me extremely “hyper”, quite unlike my experiences in the ’80s. I went running to burn off the excess energy, though usually I hate running. Both times, I felt really down the next day.
Drugs which are illegal are usually adulterated, especially if they’re white powders or unidentifiable pills. This should be remembered when attributing effects to “street drugs”.
Craig, the stuff about Sewel comes on top of the stuff about Bercow:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/24/john-bercow-expenses-claim-chauffeur-journeys
It doesn’t look good.
Sorry Mary, didn’t see your link at 3.04pm.
Trouble is, both prostitution and drug dealing is a feature of capitalism that often involves exploiting vulnerable, oppressed groups in society. Some would argue that this is financing the system and incompatible with the socialist ideal. In communist countries drug dealing is dealt with extremely harshly: in China drug dealers are taken to public places and executed en masse with a bullet to the head on the spot.
Clark
26/07/2015 4:53pm
Thanks for that, Clark.
I am a strong believer in decriminalisation, and I would also like the state to take over the manufacture and distribution of all substances that are presently used by criminals for profit. Personally, I abhor drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, although I have used both those and others extensively in the past. I was lucky to be able to give them up.
My reason for believing the way I do is that the cost to society of making these things illegal is much worse than the cost of making them legal. However, it is important to remember that substance misuse is most often expressed within a context of despair and emptiness, depression, and suchlike. Without a serious attempt to tackle these matters by state, government and society, we’re not going to minimize substance misuse.
Kind regards,
John
Like Bercow, Sewel’s expenses seem to have been generous…
If you read the Huffpo article linked by Martin and again here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lord-sewel/house-of-lords_b_7808916.html
he seems to have been instrumental in a spring-clean, which almost certainly got in the way of some Noble Lords’ prior lifestyles. Maybe this was revenge.
Becky Cohen
4:57pm
Demand creates its own supply. In these socialist utopias why are people so willing to take drugs that others will risk execution to supply them? In my opinion, they would do better to legalize drugs and address the problems that are leading people to take them.
I am in full agreement, however, that the manufacture and supply of illegal substances is a logical outcome of a system geared towards personal profit and indifference to the plight of others.
Kind regards,
John
Isn’t it ironic that Lord Sewel is, or to be more precise, was the head of the Standards Committee which oversees good conduct in the House of Lords.
It wouldn’t surprisd me in the least if other unelected Lords, were involved in similar shenanigans.
Those who make the law should keep the law.
I feel sorry for someone’s partner when they see prostitutes. When they’re put at risk of whatever STDs without their knowledge. Applies to any kind of promiscuity of course. As well as, in cases like this, being put in the centre of a media storm that’s not of their making.
a persons preference of inebriant shouldn’t be judged, sure, but use of prostitutes cannot be lumped in with drug consumption imo. if he sees women as a commodity and has no problem using them to do something his palm could achieve quite easily, then it speaks to his shallow and misogynist character. the sex trade is not harmless, and it is not simply a personal freedom issue, as can be more robustly argued about drug consumption.
As long as it’s done on his own time, with his own money, why should it be of national interest? Might be of interest to his wife/partner (if he has one – I don’t know or care). To anyone else, they should mind their own damned business.
Glenn,
He quite clearly says in the Sun video that he’s paying for the sex and cocaine with his official expenses!
Ben
5:20 pm
Mary put up a YouTube video on the previous thread at 4:14 pm which I assume is of this character snorting coke and conversing with the escorts.
I find it quite startling and disturbing, for the following reasons:
– he finds it amusing that he is using £200 / day (taxpayers’ money, incidentally) not to pay for lunch but to pay for “this”, i.e. drugs and sex;
– he does, in my opinion, quite clearly have a contemptuous and wholly disrespectful attitude towards his companions;
– he says that certain young ladies “look innocent but they’re whores”, and says this in a thoroughly unpleasant way.
I understand Craig’s position that what this man does in his private life is his own business. But he comes across as such a bastard, that I’m not very happy that he is in public life at all.
Kind regards,
John
In the case of both drugs and prostitution, the associated evils arise directly from their being illegal or doubtfully legal.
Ben, I have no time at all for the “prostitution demeans women” argument. There are plenty of male prostitutes. It depends for its power largely on the myth that prostitutes are unwilling or forced, which nobody should ever be. The large majority are not
If people choose to earn their money by helping someone orgasm, rather than by delivering their mail or cooking their pizza, precisely why is that wrong?
The argument springs largely from sex-negative feminism and the idea that sexual activity, and particularly penetration, in itself “demeans women”. This is nonsensical.
Here is the video in which Lord Sewel says his lunch money £200 quid (some lunch) has been used for the purchase of cocaine.
Now considering the “lunch money” comes from the taxpayers funds, this debacle is not a private affair, but a public affair, the Guardian says the the police are also investigating the video.
After all prostitution and drug taking are still illegal aren’t they? Or have I missed something.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6560352/Baron-John-Sewel-drug-binges-with-prostitutes.html