My thoughts on the Brooks Newmark story

I had no clue who Brooks Newmark was until my timeline on Twitter was full of him on Saturday night and Sunday morning after it transpired that he is the latest Minister to get caught with his pants down.   And then the story broke of him and some illicit pictures.  And paisley pyjamas.   That’s their Christmas market buggered then.  Nobody is going to want to give a pair of those as a present to a loved one this year.

Least of all Mrs Newmark.    God knows how she feels this morning knowing what her husband has been up to in possibly the marital bed.   And knowing that we all know what he has been up to.   Plus his five children, the shame they must feel towards their “fine upstanding pillar of the community father” right now is probably off the scale.

I couldn’t care one way or the other whether he would have been sacked had he not resigned.  I have no idea how this revelation affects his day to day job, or if it should cause him to resign from a company he founded called Women 2 Win, or even step down as an MP.    I believe we should all be able to make mistakes, apologise and then move on.    I don’t believe if your boss or mine had been caught in this way they would have resigned so I am not sure I understand why he should.  And before people start commenting, telling me why, do you know what, I am really not that bothered.

At the end of the day the only people that should actually care about all of this is Brooks Newmark’s wife and children.   Nobody else.

But something niggles me about this case.   Something that I don’t really see people talking about.

Is it a coincidence that this was announced on the evening of the Tory Party Conference?

I don’t think so.

This has been a set up.  A honeytrap.

The Mirror claims:

The male reporter, a freelance ­journalist who passed the information to the Sunday Mirror, was carrying out an undercover probe into claims by sources that MPs were using social media networks to meet women.

Posing as a “twenty-something Tory PR girl” called Sophie Wittams, he set up a Twitter account featuring a profile picture of an attractive blonde female and began following several MPs.

So hang on.   If “Sophie” is not really Sophie.   Who is she?  And who’s is the profile pic on the account?   And whose pictures were they that were sent privately to Mr Newmark?

Given the furore over pictures stolen from, apparently, icloud accounts of various celebs and used by God knows who for God knows whatever purpose now this leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.    Does this lady have any idea her picture has been used for this purpose?  Either the profile picture or the explicit ones sent privately?

Perhaps the girl in the profile pic agreed to her pic being used as the profile pic on Twitter but did she also agree to supply the explicit pics?   If she didn’t she is going to have to do some fierce defending to her loved ones that they are not her and that she only agreed to a bit of it.     Once she is identified the media will assume the explicit pics are her too and that kind of shit sticks.

This online “affair” went on for some time it would seem with the pictures getting more and more explicit.   Did the reporter stockpile them all in sequence of “rude / ruder / even ruder” and then send them off one by one, praying the next one would be called for so his search and cataloguing hadn’t been in vain?  Or did

I am sorry but this all stinks.   What kind of person, as a freelance journalist, decides to probe such a claim?  Why?  Why would you think “right, that’s going to be my next story, and I am going to set myself and pretend to be a woman and go onto Google and type in naked women and then save some pics and try and trap a married MP”.     What sort of person is that morally bankrupt that they feel that kind of behaviour is in anyway superior to what Mr Newmark has done?

And why MPs?   Okay, let’s for arguments sake say there are a load of MPs using social media to meet women.   So what?  Why is that any more wrong than say bus drivers?  Doctors?   High Court Judges?   Hell, why not journalists or newspaper editors?

Why not older men who pray on under age girls?  Teachers and pupils?  Why not investigate those real stories.   Why not investigate real stories? Why go after one that is orchestrated?

What sort of “journalist” then releases the info when he knows it will cause the biggest waves and most embarrassment for David Cameron, on the eve of the Party Conference.   So now as Cameron appears in the media he is fielding questions about this and not being grilled over important issues.   Issues such as cutting housing benefit to under 21s.   Yeah that gets buried in paragraph 23 now.   A policy change and a benefit cut that could have catastrophic consequences for thousands of young people when that is cut, along with Jobseeker’s Allowance.

We are penalising the same age group by forcing them into tens of thousands of Pounds of debt if they go to university, but if they try and get a job, even a low paid one so at least they have something to feel proud about the Government is now going to cut the Housing Benefit that would help them survive.

But let’s not focus on that, hey?

Let’s not concentrate on how young people of today are being screwed, let’s hear some more about how an MP got screwed over, possibly for the first time.   There is no suggestion he had done this before.   That he would never have done it had he not been flattered by “Sophie” and caught up in some ego trip that a young 20 something wanted to see the contents of his pants.

Just for a headline and as part of some “investigation” Mr Newmark’s wife has been dragged into the saga, just for the hell of it.   For next month’s pay cheque.   Destroying their homelife.   Shattering the relationship those children have with their father.

Whilst at the same time posting pictures of a woman who may not have had any idea her pictures were being used for this purpose all over the internet.

That’s what’s screwed.