Tag Archives: student politics

Tory behind misogynistic “clean my toilet” campaign apologises

11:15am Thu December 8th

Jason Wong, a candidate for student elections at LSE whose campaign featured shocking sexism and misogyny, has issued an apology after deliberately offensive posters caused red faces at the university.

Wong’s campaign featured a number of sexist campaign posters, including one promising toaster in student halls because “Girls love cooking and love to be in the kitchen” and another promising to cut cleaners’ wages featuring a model dressed (barely) in a maid outfit with the slogan “She can clean my toilet for £12”.

In a letter published on campus, he said:

“I have since then met with the Dean and apologised to her both for the campaign adverts posted and the associated reputational damage it has caused the university. I would like to extend my apology to the school board, including the Director. I have also met personally with the Women’s Officer to offer my apology.”

Call us cynics, but Wong didn’t seem so quite as contrite when he was first hauled before union officers:

Getting sacked from his internship in the intervening period certainly seems to have focused his mind.

“She can clean my toilet for £12″, says misogynistic student Tory campaign

1:53pm Mon November 28th

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Days after Tories at St Andrews University were exposed for burning effigies of Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, members of Conservative Future continue to disgrace themselves. A Tory candidate in student election at LSE has now outraged campus with deliberately misogynistic campaign posters.

The poorly judged attempts at laddish “humour”, which are available on the Facebook campaign site of Jason Wong, include a pledge to provide easy access to toasters for women staying in student halls because :

“Girls love cooking and love to be in the kitchen … The bread isn’t going to toast itself”

Meanwhile, a campaign pledge to slash the wages of cleaners at the university is accompanied by a picture of a PVC-clad model posing with a vacuum cleaner and the text:

“She can clean my toilet for £12”

This is by no means LSE’s only recent episode of controversy on the sexism front. Two students were recently driven into hiding after penning a campus newspaper column musing on the violent rape of women, in which it was suggested that a reader should punch his girlfriend on the back of the head during sex.

Yet another low point.

UPDATE: Unrepentant, he has now been hauled in front of LSE union officials.

Tory society which torched Obama effigy repeatedly burned Mandela

8:21am Wed November 23rd

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The Conservative Association which caused outrage by burning an effigy of Barack Obama have previously torched a likeness of Nelson Mandela on numerous occasions and toasted Apartheid at their annual dinners. The group at St Andrews University have been excoriated for the racial insensitivities of the stunt — but the burning of Mandela, which occurred most recently in 2005, recalls student posters and t-shirts from the 1980s:

The Federation of Conservative Students was subsequently shut down by Norman Tebbitt for being too right wing.

With societies still going out of their way to shame the party, perhaps it’s time for CCHQ to step in?

Chair of Conservative Future mocks northern diet of “chips and gravy”

4:52pm Tue November 22nd

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The leader of the Conservative Party’s youth organisation has been called “patronising” and “snobbish” after insulting the diets of northerners, describing the party’s successes in the region as the ”gravy revolution”.

The Tory website London Spin — previously the venue of appalling anti-gypsy racism — claimed that Conservative Future chair Ben Howlett has “committed to having chips and gravy with CF branches in the north”. Not for the first time, it was left to the blog’s readers to point out how out of touch this supposedly amusing campaign ruse is.

The comments from Howlett, who attended Cambridge University and lives in leafy Fulham, are redolent of long-standing Conservative attitudes to northern England. In 2010 the director of David Cameron’s favourite think tank Policy Exchange claimed the Tories required a “Yorkshire pudding offensive” to target “Greggs man”. This came two years after his wonks published a study suggesting that northern cities were “beyond revival” and residents should consider moving south.

Conservative attitudes to the regions clearly haven’t improved since Edwina Currie claimed northerners were dying of “ignorance and chips”.

The Conservative MP, the elitist dining club and the strippers

1:53pm Tue November 8th

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The revelations of port-fuelled anti-semitism at Oxford University Conservative Association are shocking but by no means the latest soiling of this right-wing political cradle. A look back through the Oxonian archives yields further anecdotes about their forbears – the crucial difference being that they are now special advisers and MPs.

Step forward Aidan Burley, Conservative MP for Cannock Chase, whose peers may now regret providing Cherwell’s Evelyn gossip column with a running commentary of their boozing and other insalubrious exploits too lurid for this family blog. Activities of the group included the acquisition of strippers (pictured above) and chronicling alleged sexual encounters with visiting family members.

As president of the King Charles Club, a notoriously elitist dining society banned from college premises, Burley arranged entertainments fitting the august institution, including a trip to, erm, a strip club. The alumni magazine of £10,000-per-year King Edwards School in Birmingham, boasted that their former pupil “achieved national notoriety” after he advertised the club’s excursion to Stringfellows in both The Times and Daily Telegraph:

“The King Charles Club of the St John’s College, Oxford, held their annual dinner last night at Stringfellows … after attending divine service at the Banqueting Hall, Whitehall, and laying a wreath at the statue of the Martyr King in Trafalgar Square.”

Parliament is one “exclusive establishment” with rather fewer naked, writhing women than some alumni of King Charles Club have experienced.

EDITORIAL NOTE: While skirting over his expedition to Stringfellows, when approached for comment Aidan Burley denied involvement in procuring a stripper for his friend (inset left above). Unlike his college entertainment, Aidan likes his threats veiled.

Oxford Tory claims women “serve their purpose” in drunken video

4:09pm Mon June 6th

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Leading Tory students have been filmed mocking urban slang and claiming that women “serve their purpose” in a video posted on YouTube. In what they will doubtless claim is “hilarious satire”, a HandyCam was kept rolling during one of the Oxford University Conservative Association’s (OUCA) boozy Port and Policy events.

After attempts to translate vernacular of “the common man” and derision of The Only Way Is Essex as “presumably a television programme that the masses watch”, the video shows increasingly well-lubricated scholars making various controversial remarks on women and the supposed elitism of dress codes.

With the question “do you hate women?” posed to members, one noted:

“I would say that, er, women are the reason that men do anything at all in the world I think. So they are, in many ways, the most fundamental part of the world.”

A portly reveller provided a telling insight:

“I think, you know, we’re not in the 16th Century any more. Women are perfectly capable of being a monarch.”

But the pick of the bunch came from the individual who commented:

“Well, they serve their purpose.”

Other highlights are below, with the full 10-minute video available on YouTube.

The presenter explains that the “five female members of society” declined to participate in the stunt, claiming “they might say something silly on video.”

In this respect, it seems the OUCA women have substantially more political nous than the men.

UPDATE: A previous version of this post attributed quotes in the video, which was not produced by OUCA, incorrectly to three named society members. Apologies for this error to those concerned.

Tory candidate resigns after claiming female residents “are all slags”

2:17pm Wed April 27th

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A Conservative candidate for Thanet Council and the chairman of University of Westminster Conservative Future has resigned from the party for his blatant misogyny on Facebook.

The Evening Standard reports Payam Tamiz was until recently listed as a member of a Facebook group with the name: “Girls in THANET … you are all slags, hoes, brasses and bheads.” and appeals to its members to ”name and shame” women.

In addition to the Facebook group, his personal page was “littered with derogatory references to women.”

Not a good day for the Tories on the equality front then.

The inside story of Aaron Porter’s secret bid for Leicester South

2:33pm Wed April 13th

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Outgoing NUS president Aaron Porter aborted a bid to run for parliament in the face of fierce opposition from student colleagues and union staffers, Political Scrapbook can reveal.

On 13 March as speculation mounted that he would enter the Labour Party’s selection for the Leicester South by-election, the student leader tweeted to reassure observers he would not be “putting his hat in the ring”:

While seizing the opportunity to burnish his loyalty to the NUS, what Porter did not disclose is he had spent the previous few days laying the groundwork for a run. Porter was plotting even as he attended a student conference in Dublin on 12 March, from which he sent colleagues an email announcing his intention to stand. The wheels were in motion and the Independent on Sunday had already been briefed in preparation for a story the following day:

“You may have seen that on twitter it’s just been reported that I will put myself forward to be considered for the Labour nomination in Leicester South. Obviously where I studied and lived for 2 yrs as a [student union officer] … I’ve only made this decision in the last 24hrs, because the leading local candidate has pulled out, and a few local party people want someone with local connections to put themselves forward.”

With Porter already under fire for his handling of tuition fees and resultant protests, his message generated a deluge of phone calls urging him to pull out of a “fruitless kamikaze mission” in the East Midlands.

Porter’s officer support team, composed of permanent NUS staff, were “absolutely furious”. Sources told Scrapbook that the bid would inflict “significant reputational damage” to the union, presenting a conflict of interest and distraction to the President at a time when he should be leading a lobbying effort on the Higher Education White Paper.

Porter’s email reveals he was far from oblivious to the dangers to the organisation he headed – but had decided to run anyway because “it was a chance I couldn’t turn down”:

“I realise this adds something quite complicated for NUS, but any external attention this brings, I will obviously deal with myself … I will do everything I can to minimise the attention to NUS”

But 24 hours after emailing the selection timetable to friends, however, he admitted defeat and withdrew:

“I’ve done some more thinking, and I won’t be pursuing the nomination … the reaction from NUS/student movement has been somewhere between lukewarm and quite critical, and I’m not prepared to leave NUS under a cloud.”

In February Scrapbook posted on the utterly thuggish pursuit of Porter through Manchester. In addition to physical threats was the accusation – screamed through a megaphone — that ”you’re just looking for a safe seat”.

What on earth possessed him to make that damaging critique a reality?

Tag Archives: student politics

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