You didn’t think we’d actually leave that one alone, did you? The divine Jacqui, Minister of Love, watching porn on her telescreen? And claiming it on expenses? Too good, too good, we said.
We were actually quite disappointed to discover that she was blaming it all on her husband. Who was, of course, sticking to party lines if he was watching Television X / The Fantasy Channel, which is owned by that stalwart Labour supporter and owner of the fine and ancient Daily Express newspaper, Richard “Dirty” Desmond.
The Telegraph is claiming that they know exactly which films were watched too:
The films were viewed at 11.18pm on April 1 and 11.19pm on April 6, while Miss Smith was staying in London. On the evenings in question, Television X, one of nine adult channels available under the terms of their Virgin Media cable television contract, was screening features called “Raw Meat 3″ and “By Special Request”.
The Torygraph hacks have better access to TVX’s schedules than we do, but if those are indeed the films in question, there’s pretty much nothing about them on the internet. James Delingpole, also at the Telegraph, digs up a copy of Raw Meat 3 – a rather unlikely-looking gay flick (as one commenter notes: “This is not journalism – it is a stinking cess-pit on the site of what used to be a great national newspaper”, and he’s not wrong). And Playboy TV responds by offering the Jacqui Smith VIP Package: “The Cabinet isn’t the only thing that benefits from a shuffle every now and then”.
Of course, there is actually a serious side to this. As El Reg notes:
What cannot be overlooked is her serious crusade against the adult industry and all its works. Along the way, she has not been shy to attack the presumed consequences of pornography and links between porn and the acting out of sexual fantasy.
Smith has has not been inactive in denouncing pornography, and the government of which she is a part has cracked down on all areas of adult content, not least in the form of the still-untested “extreme porn clauses” of the Criminal Justice Act (s. 63-66) and the forthcoming ss49-55 of the Coroners and Justice Bill (the so-called “cartoon law”).
What’s particularly galling is that they’ve done this without a shred of evidence as to the links between watching pornography and taking personal action, and misapplied laws which, as we’ve noted elsewhere, could easily be used to attack all kinds of literature, including our own.
Cracking down in public on what most people do in the privacy of their own home is not a new trick for government, although it illuminates the double standards that underpin MP’s attitudes to pretty much everything, including their expenses. Freeing up the porn, and tightening up on elected officials seems to be a much better course of action.
