The MP for Tiverton and Honiton, one Neil Parish, says he may have accidentally opened pornography on his mobile phone when he was in the House of Commons. Well, we’ve all done it, haven’t we? Who can honestly say that at one time or another we weren’t browsing through twitter or Facebook in a public area and mistakenly put something like ‘Bukkake Girls of Neasden’ in their search engine? It’s an easy mistake to make.
Except that it isn’t an easy mistake to make. I am not going to pretend to be a paragon of virtue and have never inspected ‘adult’ websites but I can honestly say I have never looked at porn on my phone. More than that, it’s never even occurred to me that I might wish to pass the day, gazing at my portable telephone device watching people take part in, well, sex. In true anorak style, I am far more likely to check Flight Radar 24 to find out what plane it is above me and where it’s going, or surf through the echo chamber that is my twitter account or even listen to music.
It is vaguely possible that Mr Parish ‘accidentally’ found himself watching porn in a limited number of ways, one of which might be if he was browsing his history for reasons unknown and he absent-mindedly clicked on something he’d been watching earlier. After all, what he does in private is of no concern to me. In fact, I’d rather not know at all.
In a previous life as a civil servant, if I’d been caught watching porn in work time, whether in the office or not, I’m certain I’d have been sacked and rightly so, especially if, as with Mr Parish, female colleagues could see what I was watching (not that I ever did, obviously). Even a simpleton like me can work out that one is paid for work and not for the purposes of sexual arousal. And let’s be very clear about this: why would Mr Parish, or anyone else, watch porn if it wasn’t for arousal purposes? When next you hear him explaining what he did and why he did it, just remember that.
What is it with the Tory benches in the Commons? We have Neil Parish surfing porn, Wakefield MP Imran Ahmad Khan being found guilty of being a paedophile (and delayed his resignation from parliament in order to trouser his April salary), the actual Chancellor of the Exchequer finding to his horror that his billionaire wife is a tax dodger, as is the health secretary, Owen Paterson lobbying his own government for self-gain and led by a journalist and chat show host who literally lies for a living. There’s so much more.
Parish should go. If he had a shred of decency, he’d resign. If he refused to resign, his constituents should move to sack him. Yet as things stand, he wants to carry on.
It was at least reassuring to see the Tory benches being thoroughly cleaned this week. I dread to think what the cleaners may have found. “What’s that?” “Come again?” “Yeah.”
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