raincitygirl | (no subject)

For those who haven’t been following the scandal,

legionseagle breaks down the Lib Dem sexual harassment story. The Liberal Democrats are the third biggest political party in the UK, currently serving in a coalition government with the Conservatives. One of their top party grandees, Lord Rennard, was accused of sexual harassment by scores of women over a period of many years, mostly Lib Dem officials and volunteers. An internal inquiry found in favour of Rennard, in a very convoluted way, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to open a disciplinary hearing, and using some apparently fairly bizarre legal reasoning.

legionseagle explains it all much better than I do, and is also a lawyer, which helps. The Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, has apparently been phoning all the women who laid complaints to apologize about what happened with the lack of a disciplinary hearing.

It's not my party or even my country, but I rather suspect the Lib Dems are developing a credibility problem with female voters. And they probably already have a credibility problem with their female party members.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Any chance of rescuing my comment over at your LJ from the spam filter? I think it didn't like me linking to something about the issue.

Assuming links are less of an issue on DW, have the latest from the Graun:

Nick Clegg Trial of Strength over Lord Rennard which includes the frankly boggling:

One senior parliamentarian told the Guardian he thought Rennard had been treated "appallingly" and the liberal principle of "innocent until proven guilty" had been thrown out of the window during the process, in which the peer has not been allowed to see the report into his conduct.

He also said only four women came forward to give evidence, despite one of the complainants claiming at least 10 members had been affected.

The four women in question (all of whom have chosen to waive anonymity for the privilege of being disbelieved, vilified and - at the hands of that irritating old turncoat Shirley Williams, told to get over themselves, it's not as if it was paedophilia or anything that actually mattered) are, of course, the completely non-credible complainants Bridget Harris, an ex-adviser to Clegg, and former [Parliamentary] candidates Alison Smith (now a lecturer in politics at a not-all-all credible small teaching establishment somewhere in the Thames Valley), Alison Goldsworthy, and Susan Gaszczak (now holding the entirely minor and practically nominal role of chair of the Party Conference organising committee)

Hmmm, I've been attempting to rescue your comment from the spam filter but have had no luck. Stupid Livejournal. I could edit the original post to add links to your replies?

Oh, dear; it went into some detail in response to the commenter there about the LibDems history and why they weren't the Republicans but why they have a complicated idea that they're the good guys (read their constitution) and because good guys can't do bad things when allegations o fbad things arise either they aren't bad things or they didn't happen.

Shoot, I'm really sorry.

Oh, well, things are moving pretty fast over here anyway:

This is the Independent OpEd

This is Nick Clegg's former advisor resigning - and how

And this is Rennard's allies threatening to sue if he isn't restored to the Party whip