Inappropriate Relationships Zoo

A furore is taking place over the alleged "inappropriate relationship" between a member of government and one of his aides… it begs the question: what the hell do they mean?

The story is quickly taking over the airwaves and driving the ink out of Fleet St. Supposedly the Foreign Office minister is having an “inappropriate relationship” with one of his Special Advisers (Spads). There're a couple of things about this story. One is: does anyone actually care about that? And two (and far more interestingly) what do they mean by “inappropriate relationship”?

We don’t get this choice of words… Now the man in question is married. One assumes that if he has an affair with a third person, regardless of gender, this would usually be described as “unfaithful” -  that is of course if we don’t count the tabloid press, who’d go the extra mile to fill their first page with some big fat insult of one sort or another.

Of course we don’t know the in-depth private dynamics of other couples (let alone our own) but who is to say that they don’t have an understanding of acceptance over each other's ‘inappropriate’ relationships? This is for them and whoever would get involved with them to deal with. It certainly isn’t anyone else's  concern. It’s not as if he is preaching some moral high ground over heterosexual relationships and has been caught in a web of hypocrisy!

The choice of ‘inappropriate’ over "unfaithful" is rather telling. It almost suggests that it is one thing but not necessarily the other. In other words,  if it were of the opposite sex, then  it would be "appropriate" but... unfaithfull. On the other hand by (allegedly) having a relationship with someone of the same gender, this does not constitute unfaithfulness per se.  In this case it's inappropriate..as it is, apparently, to share a hotel bedroom in the campaign  trail ... much in the same way as it is inappropriate to put a chimpanzee and a frog in the same section of a zoo.

The implication being that  in heterosexual couples, if one is seeking something that one’s partner cannot, by definition and by nature, offer, then there is no case to answer for behaving in an unfaithful way...

Undoubtedly there’s some truth in this outlook on sexual behaviour. However the choice of words to describe it suggests a rather conservative understanding. It almost indicates that the story has been leaked from within Tory quarters. Not long ago, W. Hague had an unusually straightforward way of describing the human calamity taking place right now with everyone's knowledge: he described the Gaza Strip as a prisoner camp – a rarity for a politician and more so from the conservatives.  That alone would have earned him powerful enemies. We don’t endorse the politician and generally his political views but the media should concentrate on issues of policy and not on this kind of speculative innuendo as the one over (that expression again!) inappropriate relationships. Makes one wonder if it were the other way around... ? That is to say, if the man was in a homosexual relationship and shared a room with a younger female Spad....! How would the press describe it?

This media affair amounts to pure monkey business! What is really inappropriate is that the former editor of the News of the World (from all papers – it really illustrates how the Tories see plebs and want them to remain so) is now involved with the current government and, as if that wasn't bad enough, he's plastered all over the media as someone involved with the illegal tapping of phones. What is also inappropriate is that the Spads brought by any new politicians into the civil service get paid anything between £30,000 to £60,000...

And to keep with the same theme of inappropriateness (and "monkey business" for that matter!), what we really find to be inappropriate is to keep animals in a zoo, driving them insane so that they behave in ways that are wholly out of place as this video illustrates... fortunately our readership is well over 18....

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