Presidential?

It should come as no surprise that some parts of the media* are reporting that Jeremy Corbyn was in attendance at the now infamous Presidents’ Club gala dinner and gropefest.  Corbyn, for all the work that has been done by the mighty machinery of Labour and the momentum movement, looks like the sort of person who would sexually harass a young woman, and then get caught.  It’s the beard, which simultaneously makes him resemble a disgraced former lecturer at a polytechnic who was ‘let go’ after unfortunate incidents with a number of female students described as ‘brave’ in left leaning newspapers and ‘attractive’ in all the others and is now on a register of some kind, and also just the sort of allotment keeper who, despite the ounces of organic loam permanently residing in the turn-ups of his suspiciously ironed jeans, keeps the real filth in his shed.

The dinner in question is now the subject of extensive reporting, none of which has yet posed the question ‘who, the actual fuck, thought it was a good idea at the height of a rebalancing of gender inequality relating to harassment and remuneration, thought it was a good idea to have a men only dinner of financiers?’.

There is so much wrong with what happened at the Dorchester that night that it’s difficult to know where to begin.  Or actually, where to stop.

So let’s start with the sexism.  Why were there no male waiters?  What sort of organisation can get away with hiring staff based solely on their gender?  Or maybe there were male waiters, but they were not harassed.

And yes, it’s ‘waiters’.  It’s not ‘hostess’.  A hostess is a female who hosts a party.  Or invents a trolly with an integrated hotplate.  Somebody who brings drinks to your table is a waiter or a waitress.  Hostess is one step away from describing yourself as an ‘entertainment event facilitator’.  It’s pure snobbery, what the fuck is wrong with being a waiter or waitress?

The sexism on display from the arseholes (let’s not dignify them with the term ‘men’, a man, a real man, is a gentleman.  I know what makes a gentleman, take a look at the fucking title of the blog if you don’t believe me.  I don’t claim to be one, but I can recognise the virtue in others.  The clue, by the way, is in the way the word itself is constructed) was staggering.  What sort of person touches another person without first being invited to, unless pushing them out of the way of an oncoming crazed badger or similar?  Sticking your hands on somebody uninvited is, er, assault, is it not?  Let’s examine it this way, all of the descriptions of the tactile goings on, let’s substitute all of those with this image, a bloke wets his finger and inserts it into the ear of another person.

How.  Fucking.  Creepy.  Is.  That.

‘Socially unacceptable’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.  It’s the sort of thing that would result in any sensible person reaching for their cigar cutter and indulging in a bit of digital decoupling.

Apparently, the women were all asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.  Now, I may not know much about the catering business, but apart from the very reasonable contractual obligation of senior KFC staff not to reveal the Colonel’s secret recipe, I don’t understand why the catering trade should require a secrecy pact, it’s taking a few glasses of plonk from the kitchen to a table, not serving snacks on Air Force One.

The dress code was a bit interesting too.  The industry standard for waiting staff is black trousers or skirt and white top.  The white top suggests clean hygiene, the black trousers suggest infrequent laundering.  Apparently the defining characteristic required of the waitresses was that they were sexy.  Let me tell you, the defining characteristic of anyone waiting on tables is that they should be prompt with the food and booze.

The company that set all this up ‘Pimper Events’ or something, appears to have got off lightly, considering that they appear to be auditioning for a move into the exciting commercial opportunity of trafficking if their instructions to their employees are anything to go by.

All in all, it’s pretty bloody horrible.  Women have been treated as objects, again, arseholes have proved themselves to be arseholes, and got away with it, again and Jeremy Corbyn, a man with a proven record of discourteous behaviour towards women (every Wednesday afternoon) has yet to deny he took part in the proceedings.

*RT, Twitter bots geotagged in North Korea and Chipping Norton, DailyMailOnline