Minnie’s Musings

Interrupted Question Time. It was greeted with applause. And probably a sigh of relief.

Perhaps this rather unpleasant individual who has done The Firm no credit whatsoever for decades will now go away.

He might wander down to the local shop from his shed at the bottom of the garden, but he will inevitably feel as if he is imprisoned (in the lap of faded luxury, maybe) but so be it.

He has been more than disingenuous. He has lied. To his employer (us), presumably some of his friends and his family. And he cannot claim that he hasn’t had a chance to defend himself. He tried and look what happened. His sidestep to avoid grubby exposure in a court of law has resulted in a far more protracted and painful process, namely trial by the court of public opinion.

Immediate members of the family (late or otherwise) may well have chosen to do that thing which people choose to do when children and siblings are attacked, which is take protestations at face value and defend their own. How many of us have a knee jerk reaction to defend first, think later when our child, our brother, our sister is attacked? It starts in the playground and continues throughout life (with a marginal hiatus in teenage years).

Therefore the statement from the King is quite some thing. He has made a very public decision to let the bus his brother threw himself under, reverse back over and deliver the fatal blow. One can only hope that his brother has too great a sense of his own victim hood and self-importance to top himself, as he clearly feels no shame.

But most importantly the final note is for the victims. Because – whether or not he would have been branded a paedophile here (as Virginia Guiffre was 17 and therefore above the age of consent according to UK law) – Andrew Windsor was guilty of the kind of abuse of power that has been exercised for millennia by men, particularly towards young women and girls.

Goodness me, it has taken a long time.