Where is the honour in this system?
GeOffrey BOycOtt was clearly thrilled about being made a knight of the realm this week. He roared onto the today show (r4) on tuesday, as merry as a bowl of yorkshire punch, only to be enraged when presenter Martha Kearney asked him about his conviction in a french court for domestic abuse 23 years ago. Was he a fit and proper person to be so honoured, was her gist.
Domestic abuse charities, various bustling female politicians and the chief executive of Women’s Aid have criticised the decision to honour the former england cricket star. ‘I don’t give a toss, love,’ he told Miss Kearney, managing to boil six decades of misogyny into the reductive syrup of one six-word sentence.
It said everything we needed to know about the ghastly man, even if a tiny corner of my spleen thrilled to his discourtesy. for years, many of us have longed for someone to yell ‘I don’t give a toss!’ at today interviewers when they ask: ‘What do you say to so and so who says blah blah about you?’ Such a shame it was him.
But still. Sir Geoffrey? you have to wonder about theresa May’s thinking, and what I am thinking is that she was past the point of caring what anyone thought.
the former PM introduced a new Domestic Abuse Bill in the dying days of her leadership, saying it was our ‘duty to bring the perpetrators of these vile crimes to justice’. Only to approve a knighthood for a man convicted of exactly that.
Her resignation honours list also contained the names of the architects of her failed administration who have left this country in such a mess. Perhaps there should be more fuss about their inclusion than Boycott’s? Don’t hold your breath, particularly as feminist groups claim the celebration of a man who assaulted his girlfriend in 1996 sends out the ‘dangerous message’ that domestic abuse is not taken seriously as a crime.
In the world of #Metoo, in an era when grave attempts have been made to criminalise wolfwhistling, at a time when any slur against the sisterhood can result in opprobrium and worse, it is hard to think of anything — other than racism — which is taken more seriously in society.
yet it is hard to argue with their belief that domestic abuse is downgraded in terms of moral culpability. And that a man convicted of any other violent crime would never even be considered for a knighthood. It just all goes to prove what a tainted farrago the honours system has become.