Essential Snobbery 101: Never consider wagging your tail in court

Wagging for position

When the term WAGs (wives and girlfriends) of high-profile England football team players was coined and moved into popular usage to extend to the female partners of high-profile sportsmen, I do not think it had any encomium quality apart from being dismissive and probably derisive, but it had some currency in the gossip columns, if that was your fare and where you got your news, in the tabloids.

To the snooty, a WAG’s profile depended on the fortunes of her spouse, though many are typically good mothers, generally independent women, good at keeping their men grounded and focused; some even have careers that predate any association with their men of celebrity, they make news and money on their own account, and they should be commended, as exemplary people.

Wagging societal status

However, recently, the high court has witnessed the libel trial that has taken Wagatha Christie into folklore, Coleen Rooney the wife of Wayne Rooney, one-time the captain of the England team and a with a very successful playing career that has moved into less laudable coaching, suspected someone was selling personal information to the papers from her Instagram account, so, she laid a trap of posting false stories exposed to certain individuals to see which one would end up in the tabloids. She revealed that Rebekah Vardy, the wife of Jamie Vardy, a prolific goal-scorer and England team player, was the one.

It takes no guessing that the detective work by Coleen Rooney was given the moniker of one of the most famous murder mystery writers of the 20^th century, Agatha Christie, WAG conveniently attaches to it as tabloid journalism is wont to ululate and grab our attention. For publicly pointing the finger at her, Rebekah Vardy has taken Coleen Rooney to court, and we had a feast of revelations, even as this case should never have gone to court if wiser heads had prevailed.

These ladies, awash with money and influence, though it would be profligate of one to add class, have presented an interesting characterisation of being not only upwardly mobile but that people with a typically working-class upbringing can visit the courts on matters of reputational damage that used to be the preserve of the gentrified signifies how much English society has changed.

Wagging a sausage

Obviously, there are swipes, muggings, drive-by shootings, and collateral damage, like gangland warfare, not literally, but herein is the corrosiveness of gossip; there is someone not involved that gets hurt in more ways than necessary. As we learnt with no substantiation to the veracity of the claim that Rebekah Vardy had alleged to someone that Peter Andre, a one-time chart-topping musician who is the star of musicals and reality television shows, wields a manhood that could be described as a chipolata.

A chipolata is a kind of sausage, and we can leave the rest to the imagination. Peter Andre would appear to be a man hard, wrong choice of word, anyway, the allegation would suggest Rebekah Vardy has met Peter Andre in a state of the Emperor’s New Clothes to have examined the goods and come away unimpressed.

A situation, the hard, wrong choice of word again, the apparently wronged man cannot seem to recall, and since this revelation was made in court and published for public amusement, he is considering going to court to restore his reputation to ensure than endowed is qualified and never alluded to on matters of his appendage. [The Independent: Peter Andre ‘considering legal action’ over Rebekah Vardy’s chipolata jibe about his manhood]

Don’t wag this tail

In my view, this would be totally ill-advised, nothing good comes out of it, it is one thing for someone to describe your private parts to court, it is totally another for the courts to be persuaded to examine your goods for the purposes of the verification according to the description given for length, girth, colour, distinctive characteristics and whatnot, it is not an identity card.

Besides, this apparent chipolata functions majestically; it does not shoot blanks. He has 4 beautiful children who probably would not want this part of their father’s natural endowments exposed to the spectacle of an unseemly legal charade. The associated members of Michael Jackson, Rolf Harris, and Max Clifford came up in their sexual abuse trials, for which the latter two went to jail, and no matter how you imagined it, what came to light was not pretty.

Much as any man, except if in the sex industry with something to talk about, would not want to have his entities on display or as a subject of public commentary, I am unsure that court action would quieten the sniggers, snide comments, or jibes. It is the kind of thing you should allow to die, suffocated by public spectacle, except if Rebekah Vardy decides she has no heart for another court battle and totally recants the allegation, possibly with the added statement that she has never met Peter Andre to be that acquainted with him.

I have no interest in knowing what Peter Andre measures, which might go for a lot of us. Personally, I would have sought a means to view a slight in jest and move on with my life, for if I had means, opportunity, and clout, it would not be expended into proving, curvature, cut, or colour. I am not as invested in my phallic appendage as to put it on show. Peter Andre might be hard done by, but he is not hard-pressed to prove anything – let it go.

South Africa: Where injustice parts for justice continued

Many tongues and places

There are some many quirky things about South Africa that make such interesting reading. This is a country of 11 official languages and 3 capitals.

The 3 capitals part was one that really surprised me, because all the while I thought Pretoria was the only capital of South Africa. As it transpires, the administration consisting of the President and the cabinet, mainly the executive sits in Pretoria, the legislature sits in Cape Town and the judiciary sits in Bloemfontein.

Yet, the Constitutional Court of South Africa is based in Johannesburg and this is where the Chief Justice of South Africa sits, whilst this court only is superior to the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa based in Bloemfontein, the Constitutional Court only adjudicates on constitutional matters, the highest court for non-constitutional matters is the Supreme Court.

On a plain of old pains

The Constitutional Court is located at Constitution Hill built with bricks of a demolished awaiting trial wing of a former prison on the grounds of the Old Fort Prison complex that included a women’s goal, a white’s only prison that once admitted Nelson Mandela to its hospital wing and Number Four.

What happened there is best read in the words of those were inmates of Number Four. An eerie calmness settles on you as you climb up to walk the perimeter dyke fence wall of the fort which gives you views of a dangerous inner-city neighbourhood of Braamfontein and Hillbrow that my hostess said whites will rarely venture into and further afield are the richer suburbs of Johannesburg.

Looking towards a new future

The façade of the court has the name of court in the 11 official languages in colourful type and this overlooks the Eternal Flame of Democracy, which was lit on the commemoration of 15 years of the South African constitution.

Having left the Apartheid Museum and stopped off at Constitution Hill, this place merged history, the present and the future in one single of narrative of where injustice dehumanised and justice began to humanise giving hope to a greater and thriving unity of the good of humanity.

South Africa has a long journey ahead, I can see some strong foundations being laid, and some other structures need to be jettisoned, but process will never been stopped in its tracks, the future is coming, the future is upon us.

Nigeria: Prove that you obtained consent or it's rape

On-going and progressing

I have been watching the case of the alleged rape of a young lady by a prominent Nigerian monarch which first came to my attention with the crudeness of cross-examination that asked that she expose her private parts in open court to judge, counsel and other witnesses to determine if indeed she had been raped and bruised. It inspired a blog titled What Rape Victims Face in Court.

There has been much activity since then, though for a rape that occurred in 2010 and a case running into its eighth week including adjournments and other deliberations, the pace of justice has been tardy but a substantive point has been reached. [Source – Vanguard News]

The monarch has no case to answer in terms of three charges of kidnap, assault and deprivation of liberty but having established that he had sex with the lady through his own admission, he would now have to defend himself on how he got the consent of the victim before making love to her – we have the tendency to suggest all acts of sex are “making love”, however, where rape is alleged, it will be utterly inappropriate to consider any inference of love was involved.

Consent is the crux

Now, we have returned to the fundamentals of ascertaining rape – the issue of consent and the burden has with this determination fully shifted on the respondent to prove to the court that there was consent first regardless of the emotion the respondent suggests accompanied the act of sexual intercourse that he says they both enjoyed.

I will also hope that the prosecution will make a stronger case of the rape charge even though the circumstances that led to the victim being within the lecherous confines of the monarch in terms of the kidnap, deprivation of liberty and assault would have helped.

I will suspect in explaining how he got the consent of the lady, elements of the dismissed charges might reappear, the monarch should not think he has gotten off on three of the four charges if he comes under intelligent and hard-hitting cross-examination.

Victim remorse is unlikely

Rape by definition is the crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse. As long as the victim believes she was forced into the act, she has been violated and rape has occurred, the onus is now on the alleged rapist to prove they obtained consent and the accusation is not one of remorse after the event.

Going from the information that went into the case when I first wrote about it, the alleged inducements and offers of a bribe by the monarch would suggest a level of culpability but that is just an opinion.

Students are wards of constituted authority

In another development, 35 students of a secondary school in the monarch’s domain were suspended for coming to court to protest the trial of their monarch when they should have been in class.

Much as it is important to have a sense of justice inculcated as part of one’s education, when under the supervision of an authority like a school, such protests would normally require the students obtain permission and they might well be accompanied by a teacher for both their safety and to maintain order – it would appear the said students did not follow that process and were duly sanctioned.

Obviously, with the case sub judice, I would hate to think the students protested out of plain sentiment and in support of the supposed entitlement the monarch might have had to force himself on the lady and for the justification he might have felt not to be held accountable for his alleged crimes.

Public opinion issues

It is also instructive that no mention is made of townspeople or market women having come out in support of their king and there is no telling that the said students were not paid to buttress the image of the king as having community support condemning his on-going prosecution and assumed persecution.

If anything, monarchies in Nigeria are no more as absolute as they tend to be portrayed, the courts are no respecters of persons regardless of status and rape victims can begin to expect that their alleged rapists will have to convince the courts as to the means by which they obtained consent before sex.

Editorial: Mrs Adewole, Christianity is more than a pair of trousers

The bad example of Christians

Sometimes you wonder about how much Christians act to bring Christianity into disrepute and public ridicule.

Their conduct in trying to exercise rights of expression based on some obscure passage of scripture rarely does much for the message of the gospel and there can be no correlation with the meekness, selflessness and example that Christians are to demonstrate.

The real message of Christianity flows out of the gospels of the apostles which are in essence the narration of the life of Jesus Christ, a ministry that brought radical change to the way the religious and political systems were run at that time.

Looking out from the gospel

The need to display a Christian outlook that emanates first from the example of the gospels is pertinent because every other session of the bible is an image and reflection of the living example that Jesus Christ showed.

Whilst the Mosaic Laws prepared a people for the service of God, they are hardly the bedrock of Christian faith and a good deal of the prescriptive rules, creeds, laws, traditions and customs have been done away with as the new testament and covenant replaced the old.

Most important of all for any adherents of the Christian faith is to live peaceably with all mankind being an example of love, compassion, care, understanding, modesty, courage and goodness.

The clothes are still different

A midwife offers a great service of care and love to humanity in helping the delivery of babies, hospitals however do have codes of conduct and there are reasons why certain types of apparel make the working in a hospital more comfortable and manageable.

Culturally, there in some places there might be a strict separation between what menswear is and what womenswear is, there are other settings where apparel is more or less unisex, the matter of trousers in many societies is down to the cut and the fit; men’s trousers are rarely ever for women just as women’s trousers are rarely for men.

An ancient practice superseded

In the UK especially, you have to be so absorbed in the Levitical priesthood pulling off heads of pigeons and turtledoves, sacrificing scapegoats outside the camp and shedding blood over all sorts of religious paraphernalia as vividly depicted in Mosaic books to suddenly happen upon the literal instruction of Deuteronomy 22:5 which in the New International Version from the news story states that “A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does.”

In those times and in that community, that was as prescriptive as it got including the admonition not to wear clothes of mixed material and other exacting minutiae needed to separate the Israelites from the other races and tribes that will eventually surround them when they arrived in the promised land.

A poor reflection of the mission

If Christianity has now been reduced to the externalisation of apparel to the point of wanting to look different and be a disruptive influence within the workplace, one would be left with the unfortunate needless death of Jesus Christ and the resurrection would have been a stunt without any particular spiritual significance; we might well follow the regime of a diet and be happy.

That I am afraid is where the recalcitrance and unreasonableness of one Mrs Hannah Adewole has brought us; a midwife whose sense of community service in the employ of Queen’s Hospital in Romford, Essex has been lost to a radically fundamentalist and irrational adherence to a single decontextualised verse of scripture on wearing trousers at work which she terms men’s clothes and she is taking her employers to court for religious discrimination and harassment.

There might well be a case for the idea that those of other religious persuasions are somewhat more favourably treated and it could well be that they have taken time to negotiate their concerns better than to take offence and go confrontational.

Laugh her out of court

Now, it is her prerogative to sue but I pray it must not be done in the name of Christianity and it is not that I failed to notice in her picture that appears to the whole wide world that through fundamentalist eyes, she has forgotten an essentially chaste and modest looking dowdy head scarf.

This a la carte selection of scriptures of convenience must stop and I would hope to all that is good, seemly, honest, true, just and fair, she is laughed out of court and really, if she hates her job, she should just quit and find some backwater hospital with Mosaic Law guidelines in which to ply her trade.

Acknowledgement

The Daily Telegraph under the Health News section runs the story - Christian midwife sues over order to wear trousers.

A selected comment

Going from the line of thinking she has adopted, the best rated comment posted by philantony goes thus and it puts this whole ruse into context.

• I do hope those outfits she wears are not of mixing wool and linen (Leviticus 19:19)?
• And that she avoid coming in to work during her period or indeed allows any women into the hospital who are menstruating as this would clearly be a health risk (""When a woman has a discharge of blood, which is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening." -- Leviticus 15:19-20
• And I hope she doesn't swear or joke... "Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place...." -- Ephesians 5:4
• And the same for gossiping. "Do not go around as a gossiper among your people..." -- Leviticus 19:16
• And of course hospitals should shut down on the Sabbath at risk of violating Exodus 20:8.
• Or does she believe in excluding children of unmarried parents from church? And for 10 generations thereafter!! "A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the lord." Deuteronomy 23:2
• And I do hope she doesn't eat oysters or prawns or shrimps or the like. (Leviticus 11:9-12 and Deuteronomy 14:9-10)

Nigeria takes Big Tobacco to court about kids

Why kids smoke

Sometimes one can wonder how kids get into smoking and eventually get hooked on the thing for life.

Growing up in Nigeria, there was a bit of a rascal in me and I remember times with my cousins we had a puff at strips of matting (sleeping mats) which had the look and feel of real cigarettes but their potency and efficacy was not known apart from the fact that they were unsmokable.

I had a puff or two before I was a teen but only really started when I was 14, however, it was a secret act of rebellion and quest for adulthood – however, kids caught smoking exacted the highest penalties of corporal punishment and serious ostracism from older members of society along with status amongst peers.

Resisting peer pressure

I always drew the line about what I would try and I remember one episode when I was in company of people more wayward and off the rails than I was, who were smoking pot, I refused to participate whilst others did – a few days after, one of the tough girls in that group leapt out of a first-floor window to escape many things I cannot recount.

She spent a few weeks in hospital and returned to her ways and people usually do.

I did have an inclination to start smoking pipes, but never got that far with the threat that someone at polytechnic was going to inform my parents of my smoking; one had to be more discrete about these vices.

Quitting by religion

At 18, I got religion and it just stopped, the desire, the craving and wanting and I did not have another puff till 17 years later and none since.

Whilst religion seemed a good thing, one must say that there is nothing that preaches against smoking as one can find preaching against alcohol. Basically, smoking is just a “social vice” which has been promoted into a sin because basically, it is what adults do rather than kids.

If however, one sees smoking as an addiction and hence a type of bondage from which one would want to be delivered then there is scope for belief systems to help.

There is also the matter of stewardship of your body in such a way as not to bring it into harm’s way – though not many take the body as seriously as they show even though it is the only shell of representation we have to interact in this world.

Those rotten companies

I am quite interested in the move by Nigeria of suing international cigarette companies on the matter of childhood smoking. They probably have a cause, I am not sure if they have a case.

Indeed, there should be serious educational material that talks about the dangers of smoking and the consequences of the same beyond threats and housewife tales.

When I was a kid, the most glamorous adverts were the smoking ones which showcased Marlboro Man and made every kid want to live their lives like him.

Tobacco companies would want to present a responsible corporate image to the West whilst they aggressively ply their trade in developing and emerging economies because that is where the growth for their market is, until some smart head shows to replace fossil fuels with tobacco.

Intoxicating Africa for Western profits

These emerging economies would usually not have addiction mitigating services or disease amelioration systems to handle cancers and other smoking-related disorders such that once people are hooked, they are truly hooked as they dig their graves with each long draw of the puff.

It is a welcome move and if does not get the companies doing something positive about eliminating access to the toxic weed to children they would know that the times of dumping poisons in Africa to keep their profits in the West are coming to an end.

In general, smoking is becoming less a social statement with smoking bans in New York, London and many other cities, smokers are finding ways of a healthier outlook to life; there are some who see a human-rights element to the freedom to puff, hopefully the quest of a healthier life would outweigh any temporary benefits that lead to long-term terminal illness.

References

Illicit tobacco trade contributes to global disease burden

Smoking curbs: The Global Picture

The African tobacco conundrum

Taking the World Up in Smoke

Tips to stop smoking

INEC can, Atiku can

A court tussle begins

If ever you really wanted to muddle up something, you get the lawyers and courts involved - Sorry wigs, the evidence is there, every time.

So, earlier today an appeal court ruled that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could bar candidates from running in the elections taking place this month, which some read as a blow to the ambitions of the Vice President to contest as the presidential candidate of the Action Congress.

Now, the Federal High Court has said that INEC must allow the Vice President to run in the April elections.

The interesting part is that the appeal court is somewhat superior to the Federal High Court, but as the latter's decision comes after the former, one does wonder where the trick of this big conundrum would unravel.

If courts have to take on each other, then Nigeria has really evolved to a higher state of legal jurisprudence, it is worth looking at this very closely.

Democracy - Counting the votes or Counting on judges?

Count each vote please

The kind of democracy that the United States espouses is probably not the kind of democracy that many other democratic nations would ascribe to. This is most evident in the turmoil that is about to engulf Mexico.

The Election 2000 dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush, came down to the difference between counting each vote meticulously and the television networks making extrapolations and projections on a sampling of votes which then lead them to call an election for either party.

When the Mexican Electoral Court approved the counting of just 9% of the votes when a wider range of supposed irregularities were alleged, it was clear that resolving a suffrage through the courts rather that the count would lead to chaos.

Democratic ambivalence

Beyond this, the current American government displays a worrisome ambivalence to democracy; the ones they have supported in Afghanistan and Iraq are verging on failed states, the Palestinians popularly elected a “terrorist” organisation for which they are being punished, then Iran and Venezuela are democracies only that they are governed by anti-American figures.

The most interesting observation however is juxtaposing the American reaction to the recent Thai military coup and failed Venezuelan military coup of 2002.

Though the US has not vehemently defended the democratic cause in Thailand they have expressed their concern as “a very sad development”; this was not the case with Venezuela, they were not quick to condemn the coup and it appears they might have been culpable in the vent too.

The support the US offers to so-called liberation groups to destabilise democracies from within should be cause for concern, I would wonder how America would react if external forces intervened to perfect their not so perfect democracy.

References

Thai leaders ban political action

Foreign Policy In Focus Policy Report: Venezuela’s Failed Coup, the U.S.’ Role, and the Future of Hugo Chávez

The Observer | Special reports | Venezuela coup linked to Bush team

U.S. Goals Are Thwarted At Pro-Democracy Forum

Iran: Tehran Opposes U.S. Pro-Democracy Initiatives