When the news became a great big trigger warning...

The news cycle since last Thursday has been more unedifying than usual. Perhaps it is naive to expect that people would largely agree that the correct way to deal with a peaceful protester at an elite dinner is not to push her into a pillar and frogmarch her out, grabbing the back of her neck. And perhaps it is naive to expect that if a couple is having an argument so loud it can be heard in the street as well as in neighbouring flats, a reasonable response would be to knock on the door to see if everyone is OK and, if there is no response, call the police.

Yet here we are, arguing all over the internet about all this. I can only imagine how horrific it must be for so many women who have been victims of physical violence or domestic abuse, which can be physical, emotional, verbal or psychological - or an awful combination of these types.

On Thursday night, Janet Barker, a Greenpeace campaigner, along with a group of fellow activists, managed to barge into the Mansion House dinner just as Chancellor Phillip Hammond was about to give his speech. She was dressed in a red cocktail dress and heels, she carried a small bag, a phone and a bundle of leaflets, and she wore a Greenpeace sash. Her fellow protestors were similarly dressed - red cocktail dresses and sashes for the women and tuxedos for the men - and the obvious question is how did they get as far into the building as they did? It is astounding in these paranoid times, that they were not stopped at the entrance, bags X-rayed and leaflets inspected. I've been to events at the Houses of Parliament and Portcullis House and the security was on par with catching a plane.

But get into the dinner they did. And when Janet Barker walked towards the front of the room, Mark Field MP took it upon himself to stop her - which would have been fine if he'd handled it almost any other way other than the way he did. 

He could have been a true class act and defender of free speech by stopping her, asking her to tell the room why she was there, and then handed her leaflets around the room. Or he could have steered her away by the arm rather than push her into a pillar and grab her by the scruff of the neck, his face magenta with instant rage.

For so many women who have been attacked in that manner, whether in public or private, the endless repetition of the footage for a solid two days cannot have been easy. The pushing into a wall, the grabbing of the neck, instantly weakening defences - it's appallingly familiar for too many. It gave me a brief flashback to the time I was pulled off a footpath in Dubai and pushed into a bush in an attempted sexual assault. And I managed to get away, albeit with laddered tights and a scratch on my chest. I can only imagine how much worse this footage would be for women who have suffered worse violence at the hands of men, especially over a sustained period of time.

Field's defence was that he "acted on instinct" but if that was his instinct, he really does need to take some time away to reflect as to why his immediate reaction was rage and excessive manhandling of a woman who was clearly representing a group known for peaceful protest. Please note that "peaceful" in this context means "non-violent", not "quiet" or "non-disruptive". The Greenpeace protesters who woke me up one morning in Durban in 2011 to protest a gas industry event in my hotel made a racket but nobody was in any danger. They were allowed to sing, bang drums in the street and chant unimpeded. One activist managed to get into the hotel business centre and change the wallpaper on the computers to the Greenpeace logo. There was no harm done. I giggled to myself when I went to the business centre to write up my notes from the gas event on one of the altered PCs - it was excellent mischief.

And nobody was in any real danger last Thursday night. 

Nobody else at the dinner felt the need to react so disproportionately. Plenty of people who were at the Mansion House dinner were at the Conservative Party conference of 2017 when Simon Brodkin, a "prankster" (read: overgrown schoolboy who is about as funny as burning orphans), barged in and handed Theresa May a P45. On that occasion, no male MPs felt the need to be a Billy Big-Balls hero and push Brodkin into the wall or frogmarch him out by scruff of the neck, Theresa May was the very model of British good manners when she took the P45 form in the same way that many a Brit is too polite not to take a leaflet from someone at the tube station, and the security guard who escorted Brodkin out did so with a single, gentle hand to the back.

Following on from the usual suspects defending Mark Field, news broke of a noisy row at Carrie Symonds' flat, which would not be newsworthy except the argument was with her partner, one Boris Johnson, the man most likely to be the next prime minister. He has been staying there after his second marriage broke up. God forbid he rent a place in Uxbridge, his actual constituency, but that would require him to show some sort of commitment to his job as an MP.

But I digress. As with any argument between a couple, only the couple knows the full story, but we do know this argument was loud enough to be heard on the street and through walls, Ms Symonds was heard saying "get off me" and "get out of my flat", Mr Johnson was heard saying "get off my fucking laptop" and smashing sounds were heard. It's the kind of language and sounds that are familiar to many a victim of domestic violence.

The ethics of the neighbours giving a recording of the altercation to the Guardian newspaper is being furiously debated - along with the ethics of other newspapers making hay from it all while spouting fauxrage at the neighbours who recorded the argument and claiming Ms Symonds is "furious" based on what "friends" have apparently said, rather than anything she has directly told a journalist. There is definitely an intelligent debate to be had about media ethics here, especially in regard to whether this endangers Ms Symonds' safety. The Daily Mail, in particular, should remove from its website a diagram of the apartment building, including a floorplan of Ms Symonds' flat - that invasive crap goes way beyond the public interest defence.

However, it is stunning that anyone says the police should not have been called. The ire has been directed at "nosy neighbours" and their own politics have been thoroughly dissected in today's papers. But in this sort of situation, where an argument can be easily heard outside a flat, where it sounds as if there are people in distress and possibly in physical danger, calling police is absolutely the right thing to do.

It is pretty common for police to arrive only to be told everything is fine, but there are plenty of occasions where the arrival of the police has saved someone's life or is the turning point for an abused partner to leave a dangerous relationship. In the wake of the Johnson-Symonds row, people have spoken up about how they were grateful for the neighbours who called the police, or how they would have left an abusive relationship sooner if the police were called earlier or, tragically, how people were left badly injured or killed because nobody picked up the phone.

I have been the "nosy neighbour". In 2005, I called the police multiple times on the couple in the flat across the hall from me in Sydney. They were drug addicts who would have noisy and violent fights that would spill out of their place and carry on outside the door to my flat, usually in the middle of the night. This went on for months. On one occasion, after I knocked on their door telling them to be quiet because I was trying to sleep, the woman bashed on my door when I was back in bed, yelling that she would "kick my cunt in". Then there was the day when I burst into tears at my desk, crying frustrated tears of distress and exhaustion because I was too sleep-deprived to do my job properly.

That story did not end happily. The parents of the woman called me, desperate for information about their daughter, particularly as they were caring for her child from a previous relationship. One night, the woman knocked on my door to tell me she was pregnant and too scared to tell her boyfriend - I told her she would have to start taking better care of herself if she was serious about continuing the pregnancy and that she should end the relationship. I let her know that her parents were very worried and would take her in. She told me it was too hard to leave him and scuttled back to her flat. The good news is that ultimately she did leave the toxic relationship, but not long afterwards, her boyfriend committed suicide in the flat - by this time I'd moved to Dubai and a friend who lived upstairs told me the sad, sorry story.

I don't regret calling the police. The police officers' interventions could have defused life-endangering situations, even if they always sent the police away and said they were fine. Calling the police several times was still the right thing to do. And it is the right thing to do, regardless of whether the couple is a wretched pair of drug addicts or a privileged couple who are on the verge of being the most powerful twosome in the country.

The more we argue about the morality pushing women into walls and grabbing their necks or whether we should call the police if we overhear a nasty argument, the less safe women will be. Why the hell is anyone who professes to be decent tolerating this?

Photography by George Hodan

The curious tale of Alexandra Pepper

Alexandra Pepper has led a charmed life of immense privilege. She was born into a large, lively, wealthy family and never really wanted for anything. Academically, she was bright and won a scholarship to study at Badminton School - not that her parents would have struggled to pay the fees - but it was nice to have her intelligence recognised.

School was fairly easy for Alexandra, although her report cards reveal someone who was easily bored and not gracious in defeat during games. She didn't need to study too hard and it was no real surprise that she sailed her way into Cambridge.

It soon became clear that Alexandra was able to get through life easily and breezily. She was never the prettiest girl in school, a bit scruffy even, and she was never going to be a revered beauty but that didn't matter - when you're wealthy, white and privileged, a modicum of charm, charisma and humour makes you attractive, magnetic. You grow up to be the kind of young woman who is frequently described by posh people as "good fun". Yes, that's it. She was jolly good fun, our Alex.

Never short of a boyfriend or two, university was mostly a boozy hoot for Alexandra. When you are the privileged life of the party, when you don't have to hit the books that hard to pass exams, when your essays are dazzlingly verbose, it's easy to become entitled and a bit lazy.

But would this mean the wheels would fall off for Alexandra any time soon? Probably not. When you're a cheeky lass from a "good" family, whatever that means, it's astounding what you can get away with.

After she graduated, Alexandra fancied herself as a journalist. She didn't particularly want to bother with the drudgery of learning shorthand or getting her NCTJ qualifications or how to type without turning her fingers into confused, pudgy pretzels. She assumed she'd just breeze into a job in publishing.

And, because journalism can be insanely nepotistic and all about who you know rather than what you can do, Alexandra slid into an entry-level job on a Vanity Fair-style magazine. You know the kind of magazine, don't you? It's stylish, it's slick, it has its serious side - and everyone wants to work there. And then you look at some of the people who do work there and wonder how the hell they got there, like the proverbial turtle on a post.

Of course, entitled little Alex didn't really want to bother with the mundane bollocks that most graduates have to do when they start out in the media. It was a bit of a shock to the system to discover that her first job would not be as editor, or doing glamorous things such as presiding over photo shoots for the cover with the likes of Meryl Streep, who was starring in The French Lieutenant's Woman at the time. She enjoyed the magazine parties, of course. Who wouldn't? But when it came to making the coffee, doing research tasks for senior writers, or returning soiled clothes from fashion shoots to PR companies, that wasn't really her thing.  

But did I mention she was fun and charming and charismatic? And connected. She was bored but convinced the editor that she could interview a few up and coming British artists. Or maybe an aristocratic BAFTA winner... These stories would be a piece of piss for her, a chat with the kind of people she hung out with on weekends. 

Before long, she was getting bylines on proper features. With her lack of shorthand, attention span of a kitten and low boredom threshold, her interview subjects weren't necessarily quoted accurately. Hell, if Alexandra found them to be truly dull, she'd throw in a few fake facts for her own childish amusement. There are still people who think a certain famous actress has a collection of terrifying china poodles in her bathroom and the handsome lead singer of a band that was big in the '80s had appalling acid reflux. 

Pulling these sorts of stunts would see most people fired on the spot, never to work in the media again, but Alexandra got away with her slapdash journalism for more than a decade. Sure, she was sacked once or twice, but she was the cute, goofy cat who always landed on her feet. She was such a laugh, her opinion pieces were hilarious apparently, even when they were full of or evidence-free assertions and awful views, particularly on the vulnerable. And opinion writers often get away with playing fast and loose with the truth - after all, it's an opinion, not a news report. Accuracy, schmaccuracy!

But what of Alexandra's personal life while all this was going on? She had plenty of fun at university and good for her. Like many a well-heeled young woman though, she "settled down" when she was 23, marrying a lovely young man she met at Cambridge. He had always been the backburner boyfriend and her parents were relieved when she looked suitably virginal in a lace-festooned '80s wedding dress for the ceremony in a village church not far from her parents' estate. It surprised nobody from her university days that marriage wasn't really a great fit for Alexandra. Her first husband's joy at discovering he was going to be a father was soured when she left him for the man who actually got her pregnant and promptly made him her second husband, albeit with a much quieter wedding.

Alexandra discovered that she was rather good at getting pregnant and proceeded to have four more children with her second husband, except one of them was actually the daughter of an art gallery owner - there was always talk in her social circles about the girl who was born nine months after rumours swirled around about Alexandra's sudden passion for arts funding.

Arts funding? Oh yes, by now, Alexandra was a Conservative MP, parachuted into a safe seat, after enough time had elapsed for people to forget about the scandalous end of her first marriage. It was all part of an Alexandra rebrand - she was able to charm the local Conservative association by presenting herself as a respectable, if a tad eccentric, barrister's wife and devoted mother who passed the time by writing Sloaney moany newspaper columns about assorted rich person woes. As a politician, she was very careful to vote with the Tories on any policy that would shrink state responsibility for the sick, the poor and the disabled - but she was able to appeal to people outside her world by flying the flag for causes such as the arts and animal rights.

And then it all came out. The whispers became howls about the true parentage of one of her three daughters. Then new rumours popped up about another affair, another two cuckolding pregnancies and this time, two abortions rather than giving birth to her sixth and seventh children by a third man. Alexandra's contrived persona fell to pieces. She was not able to charm and lie and deny her way out of this one. She was an ambitious MP, she was being touted as a future cabinet minister, maybe even Britain's second love-her-or-loathe-her charismatic female prime minister - but instead she was asked to resign from parliament. She had lied to her leader about her affairs. That was the end of her political career and her second marriage.

Sure, post-politics, Alexandra was going to be fine, at least economically - her family would look after her, she'd blag her way into some media work, as she left politics she was throwing herself into the era of the troll for hire, there would be a market for her terrible opinions.

But no woman in politics could survive the quadruple scandal of two affairs, a child as the result of one affair and abortions as the result of the other. And the stench that would surround this woman would be even worse if she was from a working class background or an ethnic minority.

But if you're a wealthy, privileged man with an equivalent track record to the fictional Alexandra's, both personally and professionally, your political career would be fine. If you managed to carefully cultivate an image of being a figure of fun, a scruffy eccentric chap, you could get away with saying all manner of hateful, horrible tripe and it would be brushed aside as bantz. You'd go on to do something high-profile, such as mayor of a major city, your multiple screw-ups and disgraceful wastage of public funds in that role would be overlooked, you'd blag your way back into another safe seat in parliament, you'd be bestowed one of the great offices of state, you'd find multiple ways to bugger up that job to the detriment of the country's international reputation and put a woman's life in peril in an Iranian prison.

And then you'd be the favourite to be the next prime minister.

Because it's still different for wealthy, privileged men.

Image credit: Maxpixel

Powderhounds and pot-heads... The absolute state of the Tory leadership contest

This weekend has seen a pathetic scramble among Conservative Party leadership contenders to 'fess up about their past drug use. Last month, Rory Stewart inadvertently kickstarted the Tory snort-off with a confession guaranteed to liven up the next Lonely Planet guide to Iran - he smoked opium at a wedding there 15 years ago, apparently out of politeness.

Then there was the obligatory statement of regret and of an awakening when he saw the damage the opium trade does to communities in that part of the world.

It would have been a mildly amusing footnote to a leadership campaign dripping with lies, false promises, Brexit unicorn fantasies, mindless bumper sticker soundbites and general self-serving omnibollocks, if it wasn't for the Daily Mail interviewing Michael Gove and leading with his confession about taking cocaine 20 years ago as a "young journalist", a mere spring chicken ingenue aged 31.

Then we had Jeremy Hunt trying to out-Stewart Stewart with his gap yah confession of gulping down cannabis lassi while backpacking in India, Andrea Leadsom sticking her head over the powdery, potty parapet with a tedious admission of smoking a joint while a student, and Sajid Javid boldly stating that he has only ever smoked cigarettes. A ridiculous claim of Boris Johnson's from a 2005 episode of Have I Got News For You reappeared this week in multiple news reports - he said he tried to take cocaine but sneezed. Jesus Christ, even when Johnson is not actively seeking attention, it is handed to him anyway.

Johnson's story is the snot-stained equivalent of Bill Clinton trying marijuana without inhaling. It's totally on brand for him. It's perfect for his completely contrived, lovable buffoon persona. Oh, what japes! BoJo is such a silly duffer, he gets stuck on a zipwire, his moobs jiggle hilariously when he goes for a jog, his hair is a fright and, golly, he got all sneezy when he tried to snort a line! It's yet another distraction from the many, many reasons why Johnson, a principle vacuum with the ethics of a wasp at a picnic, should not be an MP, let alone PM.

They all regret their drug use, of course. None of them would dare admit that it might have been fun. And nobody is going to compare the impact of illegal drugs to the impact of the legal, but frequently socially, mentally and physically destructive drug that is alcohol.

This sorry snowstorm wouldn't really matter too much except that none of them have used this line, so to speak, to announce that under their premiership, the country can look forward to a new, innovative approach to drug laws. Nobody is going to promise harm minimisation polices, broader decriminalisation, a public health approach rather than a punitive approach to drug use, or call for an end to prison terms for minor drug offences.

It's a cynical tightrope act for the candidates. They are trying to appeal to the wider community and to the Conservative Party members who will choose the next leader and therefore the next Prime Minister, despite the party membership being a group that in no way resembles modern Britain. Hurrah for democracy!

Once upon a time, these confessions of illegal drug use would spell the end of a political career but we are living in absurd times - Claire Fox has been elected an MEP for the Brexit Party despite appalling views on child pornography and jihadi videos that, even a decade ago, would have ended her political career before it started.

The drug confessions are a calculated risk - will enough Tory party members be unbothered when it comes time to make their selection, and will enough people who might vote Tory find the whole thing to be a massive wheeze rather than an exercise in self-interested hypocrisy with nothing constructive promised as an outcome? Overall, the whole brouhaha has been viewed as a bit of a laugh rather than evidence of how terrible the candidates are, of how little they would actually do about ensuring drug laws are sensible and evidence-based rather than populist kneejerk reactions to play to their crowd.

The reality is that it's much easier for these white, privileged people to admit to drug use than it is for poor people or people from ethnic minorities. These are the people who end up in jail for low level drug offences way more often than people like Gove, Stewart, Hunt, Johnson and Leadsom. Indeed, Gove was predictably mealy-mouthed this morning when Andrew Marr asked him if he should have gone to jail for taking cocaine, and about the obvious hypocrisy of being responsible for tightened drug laws despite his own experiences.

In the end, these pitiful confessions probably won't harm the chances of any of the candidates, but they are not the start of the Conservative Party developing drug policies that will do any good either.







Photography by Austin Kirk/Flickr