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Surely we've all learnt from the Jimmy saville affair that you don't keep things hushed up. I don't want to get into victim blaming but these are our represent

Surely we've all learnt from the Jimmy saville affair that you don't keep things hushed up. I don't want to get into victim blaming but these are our representatives. If they can't / won't come forward. How can they expect others to. How can they expect to change the culture in the rest of the country? But then trying to make this all add up just calls into question the very existence of this list. Are you really saying there's no one in parliament willing to name names? It just smells of one mp making things up for her own agenda.

pjc50 4y ago
Accusing someone of sexual harassment will quite often tank your own career, and is not guaranteed to have any effect at all on the accused. Besides, Westminster runs on bullying; MPs aren't quite party employees, so they have to use extremely underhand coercive control to keep people in line. See Gavin Williamson. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Pincher_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Pincher_scandal : as chief whip, he would be the person you'd have to report misconduct to! And it was apparently "widely known" that he was prone to sexually harassing other men before he got that job.
- benj111 4y ago
  >Accusing someone of sexual harassment will quite often tank your own career. Any examples? Plus any politician you ask would say they're willing to take the hard decisions. So we should hold them to that. And if it's at the point where there's a circulated list of 40 names that no one is willing to do anything about. Don't mention the list at all! Mentioning the list is corrosive without doing anything about the problem. If a judge announced 10% of judges were bent, but wouldn't name names, what do you think that would do to the justice system? Ultimately the list can be announced on the floor, there's vulnerable people outside of Westminster that might want to talk to their, and trust their MP. They have the right to know the contents of the list. If there truly is a list, and it's accurate, it needs more than a report to the chief whip to fix it, as the Chris pincher thing shows.
  - asoneth 4y ago
    > They have the right to know the contents of the list. Is this true? If you pass along a warning to friends/coworkers does this obligate you to make a public accusation because other people have a right to that information? Personally I think the confidence threshold for making a public accusation against an individual should be substantially higher than the confidence threshold for passing along private warnings or mentioning the existence of such warnings. And given the number of public accusations against politicians I don't find it particularly surprising that there are additional accusations that have not been made public. To use your metaphor, if 5% of judges have been publicly accused of corruption, would it surprise you to learn that there are rumors (but no public accusations) against an additional 5%?
    - pjc50 4y ago
      It's obviously a nuts claim, that essentially gossip should not exist; that it should be impossible to have such a thing as a private opinion in a subgroup of a social group.
    - benj111 4y ago
      >Personally I think the confidence threshold for making a public accusation against an individual should be substantially higher than the confidence threshold for passing along private warnings. Somebody presumably experienced the alleged behaviour first hand. They could make the accusation. I made reference to Jimmy saville in my first post. He got away with paedophilia for decades because no one would publicly call him out on it. Further it's unfair to the accused. If you make a public accusation, they can at least respond to it. There could be innocent people who have no idea what is being said about them behind their back. I don't think morally there's a higher confidence threshold. If you think someone did something, enough to spread the rumour, then everybody should know, if you aren't that confident, perhaps you shouldn't be spreading the rumour at all. I suppose legally it makes you less exposed to libel, but an MP on the floor isn't exposed to such risks. The point of my metaphor was that you need to trust judges. If 10% of unnamed judges are bent, then you can reasonably question any decision of the judiciary. The judges need to be named and investigated. And in the meantime you can at least have some faith in the remaining 90%. What am I to think of my MP now? Should I recommend people contact him? Should I contact him, not knowing whether he's on the list or not? How should I interpret him not doing anything, like seemingly all the other MPs? How many of these Mps sit on select committees dealing with abuse etc? How many of these MPs are drafting laws on abuse? If one of those laws gets watered down, is that because there's a good reason or because it was drafted by a rapist? Ultimately I don't think public naming and shaming in the first instance is optimal, but if there is a list, then there is a severe failure somewhere, and existing processes aren't fit for purpose. If MPs actually want to sort this out amongst themselves in the investigation phase, that, I think would be best. In the absence of that, publicly announcing the names is the best option.
- gadders 4y ago
  We also have the Tom Watson scandal, where an MP tried to weaponise barely-believable claims of paedophilia for political ends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Watson_(Labour_politician)#Operation_Midland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Watson_(Labour_politician)...

pjc50 4y ago

Accusing someone of sexual harassment will quite often tank your own career, and is not guaranteed to have any effect at all on the accused. Besides, Westminster runs on bullying; MPs aren't quite party employees, so they have to use extremely underhand coercive control to keep people in line. See Gavin Williamson. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Pincher_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Pincher_scandal : as chief whip, he would be the person you'd have to report misconduct to! And it was apparently "widely known" that he was prone to sexually harassing other men before he got that job.

benj111 4y ago
>Accusing someone of sexual harassment will quite often tank your own career. Any examples? Plus any politician you ask would say they're willing to take the hard decisions. So we should hold them to that. And if it's at the point where there's a circulated list of 40 names that no one is willing to do anything about. Don't mention the list at all! Mentioning the list is corrosive without doing anything about the problem. If a judge announced 10% of judges were bent, but wouldn't name names, what do you think that would do to the justice system? Ultimately the list can be announced on the floor, there's vulnerable people outside of Westminster that might want to talk to their, and trust their MP. They have the right to know the contents of the list. If there truly is a list, and it's accurate, it needs more than a report to the chief whip to fix it, as the Chris pincher thing shows.
- asoneth 4y ago
  > They have the right to know the contents of the list. Is this true? If you pass along a warning to friends/coworkers does this obligate you to make a public accusation because other people have a right to that information? Personally I think the confidence threshold for making a public accusation against an individual should be substantially higher than the confidence threshold for passing along private warnings or mentioning the existence of such warnings. And given the number of public accusations against politicians I don't find it particularly surprising that there are additional accusations that have not been made public. To use your metaphor, if 5% of judges have been publicly accused of corruption, would it surprise you to learn that there are rumors (but no public accusations) against an additional 5%?
  - pjc50 4y ago
    It's obviously a nuts claim, that essentially gossip should not exist; that it should be impossible to have such a thing as a private opinion in a subgroup of a social group.
  - benj111 4y ago
    >Personally I think the confidence threshold for making a public accusation against an individual should be substantially higher than the confidence threshold for passing along private warnings. Somebody presumably experienced the alleged behaviour first hand. They could make the accusation. I made reference to Jimmy saville in my first post. He got away with paedophilia for decades because no one would publicly call him out on it. Further it's unfair to the accused. If you make a public accusation, they can at least respond to it. There could be innocent people who have no idea what is being said about them behind their back. I don't think morally there's a higher confidence threshold. If you think someone did something, enough to spread the rumour, then everybody should know, if you aren't that confident, perhaps you shouldn't be spreading the rumour at all. I suppose legally it makes you less exposed to libel, but an MP on the floor isn't exposed to such risks. The point of my metaphor was that you need to trust judges. If 10% of unnamed judges are bent, then you can reasonably question any decision of the judiciary. The judges need to be named and investigated. And in the meantime you can at least have some faith in the remaining 90%. What am I to think of my MP now? Should I recommend people contact him? Should I contact him, not knowing whether he's on the list or not? How should I interpret him not doing anything, like seemingly all the other MPs? How many of these Mps sit on select committees dealing with abuse etc? How many of these MPs are drafting laws on abuse? If one of those laws gets watered down, is that because there's a good reason or because it was drafted by a rapist? Ultimately I don't think public naming and shaming in the first instance is optimal, but if there is a list, then there is a severe failure somewhere, and existing processes aren't fit for purpose. If MPs actually want to sort this out amongst themselves in the investigation phase, that, I think would be best. In the absence of that, publicly announcing the names is the best option.
gadders 4y ago
We also have the Tom Watson scandal, where an MP tried to weaponise barely-believable claims of paedophilia for political ends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Watson_(Labour_politician)#Operation_Midland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Watson_(Labour_politician)...