Patrick Spencer was seen on camera coming up behind two women and putting his arms around them at the private members’ club during a night out in August 2023, less than a year before he was elected to the seat of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich.
Spencer, 38, was accused of “cupping” the breasts of both women, who he did not know, before “fist pumping” towards his friends nearby.
During his police interview, Spencer apologised for grabbing hold of the two women – from behind – and conceded it was “not acceptable in this day and age”. At his trial at Southwark crown court, Spencer insisted that he had not touched the breasts of one of the women, while contact with the other woman had been unintentional.
…
Spencer is the son of Michael Spencer, a billionaire donor to the Conservative party. He told the court he had drunk red wine with his father at lunch, beers at Twickenham while watching an England rugby match, and drank wine and negroni cocktails at the members’ club.
Umm, well, I dunno.
Drunk slobbering over titties in a club is, well, yes, sexual, we can call it an assault, but “sexual assault”? According to the wimmins, yes. But what’s a crime runs into the wall of what society as a whole considers to be a crime. Drunks slobbering over titties might be something considered to be one of those things best met by a punch to the mouth. Or ejection, say. And the people who decide this are the jury. Or even, just one of those things.
No wonder they want juryless trials, right? How can you impose your vision upon society if there’s a roadblock of the commonplace wisdom?
My own view tends toward much of life being best managed by us, the people, rather than by the law. Which is rather Burkean, Hayekian, even, and it’s easy to mock that view too. So it’s open season on titties then, is it? For drunks you say? At which point I’m left mumbling well, but, yes, that is the best way large parts of life should be managed. By us in the right here and now.
Pfft.
Don’t clubs have steps people can be thrashed upon these days?
a firm slap round the face should have been the response.
trsditionally
Which is GBH…
At the first art school dance I attended, a rather fit lecturer’s wife was dancing with a student who evidently regarded himself as a bit of a lad. After getting a bit too fresh with her, the woman got his cock out on the dance floor, and then just walked away.
It worked.
Is the art school dance still in progress? I believe they go on forever.
Not for him it didn’t.
Pete Brown & Piblikto! eh?
The lecturer’s wife had a cock? I thought that was a modern phenomenon!
Ouch. As a young man I recall dancing at a party with a woman for whom I had the raging horn (she wasn’t married and wasn’t attached).
Reader, oversharing slightly, I got a stiffy and, being drunk, did my best not-so-subtly to let her know that.
I must be grateful that she did not expose me to the world.
That would only be common assault, though if she honestly believed she was being sexually assaulted then self defence would apply if the slap was proportionate (but either way I agree entirely that it’s the correct response).
Why did this go in front of a jury ?
Magistrates court
Fined £500 and a few quid for ladies’ hurt feelings.
A waste of court time and public money.
Why did this go in front of a jury ?
Although that was a CPS decision the police were obviously embarrassed and nobody dares to say no to the harpies on these issues.
A punch in the face and the embarrassment of a few tabloid headlines should have been enough, or at most the magistrates appearance and fine you suggest.
But isn’t it his human right to just grab a random handful of titties? Distasteful as it might be…
No. He didn’t just arrive in the country on a dinghy.
He ought to have explained that as a Tory MP his cultural tradition was to grope young men or be groped by older men, so when he was confronted by a room with women in it he was confused and did not understand that different norms obtained.
Not sure i go along with all of the self enforcement of this type of thing. i really do detest the expectation that ‘a protector’ must risk breaking the law and getting his teeth re-arranged on behalf of a.n other. Ideally the gropee should give a performative hard slap, or a shin kick. If that doesn’t work or even if they’re not satisfied with that then they absolutely should always be able to call the police and have an alleged groper up before a beak toute suite.
It can go wrong. Years ago I was in a London pub & a bloke at the bar was roughing up his accompanying woman. Another bloke at the bar, a stranger to the couple, took exception to this & decked him. Whereupon the woman made a good attempt at ripping her rescuer’s eyes out.
Getting involved in other peoples isn’t always a good idea.
Incidentally, that was the London & Londoners of my youth. We expected a certain level of behaviour & often enforced it. How times have changed.
Ex-Actly. In matters like this, all the usual puffery about Chivalry, and Defending the Innocent Flower of Womanhood, and Giving the Rotter a Jolly Good Hiding, tends to run up against the grubby reality of the real world, where relations between men and women are not nearly as cut-and-dried as Mills and Boon liked to portray them. In such a situation, I certainly would not get involved unless the woman was actively yelling for help, and maybe not even then. Much better to leave it to her to sort out, or to the boys in blue. A few days ago, the case of Ruth Ellis was touched on here – knowing what we know today, if you saw her in a pub tangling with Peter Blakely, would you intervene? No, me neither.
llater,
llamas
One of the most vivid memories I have of my late grandmother, who lived up in North West London on the far flung outer reaches of the Bakerloo line was her attempting to intervene in a domestic argument involving two people of ‘non-caucasian’ background on her street. She was called every name under the sun by the woman involved and treated with such verbal ferocity it prompted her to call the police. That was back in the 90s (she passed away in 2000) and even then in my late teens I said the police couldn’t do anything and when she rang them they said that while they sympathised they couldn’t do anything as no crime had been committed.
With London 35% White and falling the only difference nowadays is the Burnham/Starmer regime might well have had her arrested on some bullshit charge of racism. It really is questionable whether the country is currently a better place from a human rights perspective than North Korea – that’s how low we have sunk under this truly appalling regime.
Too true.
Back in the days of gas light and hansom cabs, I was present at a scene where the male and female parties of the first part were both headed for handcuffs, and a very-large quantity of obviously-stolen automobiles were scattered all about. In the full face and hearing of herself, himself loudly and urgently insisted that the entire deal was her doing, he had no part in it and no knowledge of it. If he’d thrown her any further under the bus, she’d have come out the other side. And yet, when it was obvious that he was the one who was about to visit the county hotel, it was she that took us all to Fist City, requiring quite-a-bit of restraint before all was once again calm.
I expressed surprise and wonderment to the wise old sergeant – I was much younger and dumber then – and he replied ‘You don’t understand. They’ve found a dance, that they like to do.’ Words to live by, and I’ve never looked at the relations between men and women that I don’t know very well in quite the same way since.
llater,
llamas
Shrewd old bugger. Much missed.
Too right. I’ve learned an awful lot from non-coms.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (before gas light, even) I was tapped to act as a ‘steward’ at the Summer Ball of one of the Inns of Court. My job was to swan around in a dinner jacket, keep out gatecrashers, guide drunks into taxis, and so forth. The serious work of crowd control was handled by a squad from the Inns of Court and City Yeomanry, the Territorial outfit that was (is?) sponsored by the Inns of Court, but which draws most of its squaddies from the Western edges of the East End.
Comes the hour that I’m called upon to deal with a fight, so off we go, to find two sons of the better classes busy knocking seven shades of s**t out of each other, with a decent crowd looking on. Well, here I thought ‘there goes my deposit at Moss Bros’, when the sergeant murmured in my ear ‘Hang about a minute, sir – let them wear themselves out a bit’. And sure enough, not two minutes later, the mess was all mopped up, they came like lambs to be thrown out, and I didn’t even get my shoes scuffed. Old sergeants – you could bottle it and sell it.
Last time I was down Tooley Street, come to find out they knocked down the Duke of Cambridge and built poncey flats instead. I almost cried.
llater,
llamas
It did sort of work in the days of the incident I mentioned. Actual Londoners had a culture of respect & consideration for others. Why for a big city, London was relatively a safe place. Although… I used to spend time around Whitechapel & Bethnal Green. London Hospital Tavern was known for premium nurse totty. This was the Kray’s manor. Can’t say I ever met them although we drunk in the Blind Beggar. I can tell you it was totally safe. I’d park the car with the top down without worrying. Rarely any fights. It was going up the West End was dangerous. Northern Scum (why civilisation was believed to end north of Watford) & the Hooray Henries, the subject of the piece. No manners, no respect, no consideration for others. And that’s what sets things off.
I had it here last year. At the bar, waiting to be served. The rather attractive Brasilian I was with started getting verballed by some geezer. Since she doesn’t speak English she ignored him & he’s got her by the arm & continues jabbering at her.& she’s getting uncomfortable with it So he got “Fuck off, Sunshine. She’s with me.” Anybody sensible would have dropped it & apologised, but not Northern Laddie. Had a pop at me. Stupid thing to do in a bar full of people I know.. After passing through the door he bounced at least twice. Why I try to stay away from the English.Too many like him these days.
He’s a posh Tory boy, so lock him up!
Oops, the jury cleared him.
FFS it’s the Groucho club not a nunnery.
There should be a special tax on the club to fund the widows and orphans murdered by the drug dealers who supply the place.
All the fault of feminists who were outraged that men only clubs existed and demanded access.
Bringing back men only spaces does sound like the solution!!!
“Stop that!” doesn’t work?
Bringing government in is bizarre.
These strong independent women….. didn’t punch him in the gob?
The punishment for making a drunken fool of yourself is making a drunken fool of yourself. He’s also an MP and voters can decide if they want to be represented by a sot.
What an appalling waste of public money.
Doris Day never had problem with wolves and mashers. When they tried it on she slapped them in the kisser. Problem solved.
It’s odd to watch movies like hers from the Sixties. Men made moves on women that most men would never think of trying today. But there was also an expectation that it was not acceptable and the man deserved whatever the woman gave him.
Men made moves on women that most men would never think of trying today
Are you surprised that testosterone levels have plummeted over the last 50 years? Men were real men in the 50’s.
Are you really not willing to acknowledge that social mores have changed over the last sixty years? Are you seriously suggesting that it’s all down to testosterone levels?
the man deserved whatever the woman gave him.
One ?
In a previous post I blather on about this play on the wureless with Judi Dench. Another scene she describes how she met her married loverwhen he groped her in this fashion in Devon.
I hope she looked better when she was young.
I considered her appearance a M as obscene. Very wrong for the role.
What do you think a DEI woke female M would be like? Have you seen any UK police Chief Constables? Like that. Or like the current Archbishop of Canterbury. Or the King.
She was never attractive. She has always looked like Judi Dench.
Lois Maxwell should have been the female M.
That’s an interesting idea, Lois Maxwell.
I can see why Dench was cast, having seen her famous performance as Lady Macbeth. I mean if a woman must be cast as M, she is as good a choice as anyone.
But I never found her, or her relationship with her Bonds, convincing. Her voice was too prone to wobble emotionally and her eyes to sparkle as if she was about to cry.
But to be fair to her she probably wasn’t helped by the screenwriters constantly giving her duff lines intended to convey just how gritty and tough she was -‘you’re a sexist misogynist dinosaur and I won’t hesitate to send you to your death’, ‘ if you ever break into my apartment again I’ll have you shot’, ‘Christ I miss the Cold War’ – lines which Bernard Lee would never have been given and which it’s impossible to imagine him needing.
I think it may just be the case that the parent-child/senior officer-junior officer relationship which Fleming sketches so faintly in the novels can only be played out, Bond’s character being what is, by a male M.
Ralph Fiennes slipped into the role with such ease I almost literally breathed a sigh of relief.
I think it may just be the case that the parent-child/senior officer-junior officer relationship
Which is why Maxwell would have been a good choice. Suddenly Bond has a superior whom he knows and respects (loves?) and she could manipulate him.
Roger Moore lobbied hard for her.
Dench of course was supposed to be like Stella Rimington.
I agree about Fiennes. He has that ‘been there, killed him’ look about him.
Ah, you’ve reminded me of an occasion some millenia ago when I used to drink in the Baker and Oven in Paddington. Several well known faces from the world of crime and acting etc were often to be seen there and Bernard Lee was a regular.
Bernard liked a drop or two and, on one riotous night I had a one way conversation with him, lasting over an hour. He was so pissed I couldn’t understand a word he said, but he was great fun and sadly missed.
Good story!
Must have been a while back. He was the young sergeant in The Third Man.
Hard to imagine him pissed. But also not so hard.
Alas like so many actors, booze is what did for him.
I suspect that the reason that so many people expressed pearl-clutching outrage at Donald Trump’s ‘grab ’em by the . . . . ‘ quote is precisely because anyone with more than an ounce or two of street smarts knows that, while it’s a rather-declassé thing to say, it also has the unfortunate quality of being 100%-true.
llater,
llamas
Guilty or innocent, that behaviour sets off an ear-splitting cunt klaxon. Does any non-cunt think he’d get a positive response by coming up behind a woman and “accidentally” grabbing her tits? Alcohol being a relaxer of inhibitions reveals that this bloke thinks he would. Fucking entitled Tory-boy cunt. I hope his wife keeps her legs closed for the rest of their marriage.
I disagree. I don’t even know why I know about this. A drunk guy grabbed tits at a party. So what? Why should I care? Why should they care?
A non-story. Summer doldrums at Guardian. Gotta print something.