Don’t forget how Keith Vaz talked about his entertainment for the evening.
“Have you ______ him yet?” The obscured word being presumably “fucked” – although “raped” might be more accurate.
“Someone will need to break him tonight.”
As one breaks in a new pair of shoes.
Keith Vaz has quit the job as Home Affairs Committee chairman.
The Sunday Mirror sought to justify its report by pointing to the political responsibilities of Mr. Vaz, suggesting that his conduct had compromised his ability to fulfill his duties.
As chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee in the House of Commons, he enjoyed a prominent role in oversight of the Home Office, the department that controls Britain’s policy on, among other things, drugs and prostitution.
A john shouldn’t be overseeing policy on prostitution. Conflict of interest.
My dislike of him dates from his joining the theocratic outrage against Salman Rushdie.
In 1989, two years after becoming the first Asian MP since 1929, he led a march of several thousand Muslims in Leicester calling for Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses to be banned. Rushdie subsequently claimed that Vaz, a Catholic of Goan origin, had previously assured him of his support…
I consider that despicable.
Julie Bindel points out the conflict of interest problem with Keith Vaz:
In July this year, a UK Home Affairs Committee published an interim report on prostitution, recommending the decriminalisation of the sex trade.
It also made clear that the committee members, chaired by Keith Vaz MP, were unlikely to recommend introducing a law to criminalise those who pay for sex, stating that the committee was, “not yet persuaded that the sex buyer law is effective in reducing, rather than simply displacing, demand for prostitution, or in helping the police to tackle the crime and exploitation associated with the sex industry.”
And who was the chair of that committee? Keith Vaz, sex buyer.
Now it is alleged that Vaz is a sex buyer, we most certainly should be questioning the validity of that enquiry. An interim report that more-or-less recommends full decriminalisation of the sex trade should be declared null and void, bearing in mind that its chair appears to have vested interest in preventing the criminalisation of punters.
Julie is writing a book on the global sex trade.
During my research I have heard of the best and worst ways in which governments tackle this dangerous industry.
In the US state of Hawaii last week, a violent pimp had his conviction for pimping and carrying out a violent assault on one of the women he was controlling overturned because the prosecutor said, in her closing speech, that the victim was probably seen as ‘just a prostitute’ by the court, when in fact she is ‘somebody’s mother, somebody’s sister, and a woman’.
Justin McKinley, who had been convicted in January 2015 of pimping and sentenced to 20 years in prison, was seen on video beating a woman in a hotel room. The victim had testified that she didn’t want to be in prostitution anymore, and told the prosecutor that McKinley had beaten her for refusing to answer telephone calls from prospective punters.
The Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals ruled that the prosecutor’s comment was not a legitimate area of inquiry and “could have inflamed the jury”. How any court could consider evidence that a victim of a brutal crime is a human being ‘inflammatory’ is beyond me. Perhaps it is because so often, the women in prostitution are considered less than human, and therefore treated as such.
While the punters are considered fully human and tragic victims of something something feminism.
A Daily Mirror story today reports (with photos and audio to back it up) that Labour MP Keith Vaz paid for two Romanian male prostitutes to visit him in a London flat he owns. He was (until today) the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.
Mr Vaz, a father of two, was last night said to have made it clear that he will step aside as chairman of the committee, which is currently examining prostitution in the UK, after the allegations were made public.
Conflict of interest, wot?
The Sunday Mirror alleged the MP had two meetings with the escorts, including a 90-minute session on August 27.
One text, reportedly sent by Mr Vaz, said the men should arrive at “11pm, nice and late”. He is said to have added: “I want a good time please.”
Other messages, which the paper claims to have seen, also allegedly show Mr Vaz telling the men they needed to “get the party started”.
Mr Vaz is accused of asking the young men to bring poppers to the flat, as well as allegedly joking about being a “pimp”. It is claimed he also said he did not use a condom in a previous sexual encounter.
There’s a bit in the Mirror story (which is uncomfortable to read) showing a text where Vaz says one of the prostitutes will need “breaking.”
A Labour Party spokeswoman told the Press Association: “Keith Vaz has issued a statement on this matter.
“As with all departmental select committees, Keith was elected to the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee by the House of Commons and his position is a matter for him and the House.”
The Home Affairs Committee is currently carrying out a review of prostitution laws.
A punter should not be chairing, or on, such a committee.
Matthew Norman at the Independent looks at Vaz’s…adaptability.
His mental flexibility, meanwhile, places Keith among the leading Parliamentary gymnasts of the age. Early in his Westminster days, this political Olga Korbut went, within weeks, from backing Salman Rushdie in his struggle against the Iranian fatwah to leading a march of Muslims through Leicester demanding the banning of The Satanic Verses.
Deal-breaker.
Overcoming these misunderstandings to maintain his committee chair status earned Vaz many admirers, but even his biggest fan will understand why he has felt compelled to vacate it now (if only for a while).
When the leader of a body that is currently overseeing major reforms to prostitution legislation is revealed to have had sex with male prostitutes, it does look a little like a conflict of interest. When it is also investigating the impact of cocaine, and its chair is recorded offering to fund its provision for visiting playmates, that doesn’t look great either.
Even discounting other revelations which have no legal implications – a request for sexual stamina-enhancing poppers; a reference to having “f****ed” a youthful Romanian without a condom in ignorance of whether the latter was free of STDs; introducing himself as an industrial washing machine salesman called Jim – this story may not play especially well in the court of public opinion.
But, he continues sardonically, it should be regarded as heroically dedicated research.
The lengths to which Keith Vaz went to educate himself about issues of interest to the committee he led were astonishing. For a long-married heterosexual man to risk HIV by having unprotected congress with men of whose medical status he knew nothing… look, “heroic” is a wildly overused word, but in these circumstances, what other adjective comes close?
I couldn’t possibly comment.