Stench of moral hypocrisy hangs over the hard Left
CAST your mind back to last month and the furore over the exposé of the Presidents Club men’s dinner. It revealed bad behaviour with some female waitresses being groped. There was, quite rightly, a great deal of upset.
Much of that anger came from Left-wing politicians and writers. The airwaves were full of attacks on the male oppression of women and institutionalised sexism which the Presidents Club represented.
Labour MPs – male and female – made hay attacking the wealthy plutocrats, a few of whom appeared to be behaving as if their wealth gave them licence to do as they wish. Now switch to the past week. Last Friday a newspaper revealed how a number of senior Oxfam workers had used prostitutes in Haiti while they were on aid missions. Some of these prostitutes were said to be children. If they were, those Oxfam workers should be accused of rape. Oxfam did not report a single one of its employees to the police. Some were even allowed to quietly resign.
One man – Oxfam’s mission chief in Haiti, Roland van Hauwermeiren – was allowed a “phased and dignified” departure so that Oxfam’s reputation was not damaged.
As a result of Oxfam’s refusal to let the authorities know what the men had done, many of these men went on to work for other aid organisations.
Since that first set of revelations there has been a further devastating series.
Every day has brought more examples of the various ways in which Oxfam’s leaders have shamed the very notion of humanity.
THERE is a tale that needs to be told of hypocrisy, double standards, arrogance and immorality. And it is a tale that is based on the varying reactions to the Presidents Club and Oxfam exposés.
Be clear: what happened at the Presidents Club was appalling. If waitresses were groped, those responsible should be prosecuted for assault. But you would have to be warped in the extreme – to put it mildly – to consider the bad treatment of a few waitresses at a dinner as even close to being on a par with the appalling treatment of women and children, and the subsequent protection of those