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Related: About this forumCulture Secretary John Whittingdale Caught in Prostitution Scandal
Or so it says here:
Byline can reveal a year long relationship between a senior figure in David Camerons government and a dominatrix which potentially jeopardized government security and left ministers open to blackmail. John Whittingdale, now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport {was} involved in a long relationship between at least November 2013 and January 2015 with Olivia King, a well known escort who specializes in domination and sado-masochistic practices. It is unknown whether the relationship continues.
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As Culture Secretary, Whittingdales brief includes press regulation, the BBC Charter and OfCom, including the implementation of press regulation based on recommendations from the Leveson report.
Whittingdales relationship has been an open secret in Westminster and Fleet Street circles, and major tabloid and broadsheet papers including the Mail on Sunday and The Independent have undertaken extensive investigations and written stories, only to have the stories abandoned at the last minute. In emails seen by Byline, the Editor of the Independent, Amol Rajan, wrote in a December 7 2015 email to a source that he had made the decision to not run the story on editorial grounds. However, the previous day, Rajan had met with Whittingdale and Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre at the Society of Editors Conference in December 2015. When he delivered the keynote address, he stated that he was minded not to implement a major recommendation of the Leveson inquiry and passed by Parliament as part of the Courts and Crimes Act.
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One senior source associated with a major tabloid newspaper said they believed the story had been withheld for political rather than editorial reasons because of Whittingdales significant influence over legislation related to the media.
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We can also reveal that while she was involved with Whittingdale, Ms. King was also involved in a relationship with a member of the London underworld, who has a previous firearms conviction.Whittingdales relationships with prostitutes are said to be well known in the London underworld and could potentially leave him exposed to blackmail considering his senior position in the Government.
https://www.byline.com/column/51/article/950
LeftishBrit
(41,190 posts)I care more about their screwing the people of the UK!
Though I do have to say, I suspect that quite a lot of Tory MPs have 'dominatrix' fantasies, and it could have explained some of their attitude to Maggie T.!
T_i_B
(14,734 posts)Back when I lived in his constituency there weren't any dark rumours about him. People thought he was a bit of a wally but it's a tribally Conservative area so they all voted for him anyway, and I don't see this story doing anything to change that.
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)And beyond that, into possible blackmail vulnerability territory.
There's supposedly more to come out, so I guess we'll have to wait and see what outlets do and don't cover it.
LeftishBrit
(41,190 posts)Last edited Wed Apr 13, 2016, 11:19 AM - Edit history (3)
at the hands of the Murdoch empire. Who may not have much liked his ordering their representatives to testify in the phone hacking scandal.
It was alleged at the time that Whittingdale had tried to persuade members of his parliamentary committee to refrain from requiring Rebekah Brooks to testify, in case she got her revenge by means of nasty media reports on their personal lives.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielknowles/100097339/the-mps-who-will-take-on-the-murdochs/
He denied it. Who knows? The present allegations make it perhaps more likely that he was indeed worrying about such revenge.
If he knew himself to be particularly vulnerable to blackmail, he should have resigned at the time.
I have little sympathy for him; he is a nasty character who opposed the minimum wage claiming that it was an incentive for immigration, and voted against same-sex marriage (which if his own sexual behaviour is as alleged, is either specifically bigoted against gays, or utterly hypocritical, or both). But I do worry that this may entrench the power of the media barons, and that they may indeed be spreading these revelations precisely for this purpose.
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)He should resign, and all his work in the subject should be torn up.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,146 posts)Mr Whittingdale said he ended the relationship as soon as he found out, in February 2014.
He insisted it had not compromised his job as culture, media and sport secretary, which he began in May 2015.
...
"She was a similar age and lived close to me. At no time did she give me any indication of of her real occupation and I only discovered this when I was made aware that someone was trying to sell a story about me to tabloid newspapers. As soon as I discovered, I ended the relationship.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36031743
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)Culture Secretary John Whittingdale has admitted he had a relationship with a sex worker but said he did not know her real occupation.
Mr Whittingdale said he ended the relationship as soon as he found out, in February 2014.
He insisted it had not compromised his job as culture, media and sport secretary, which he began in May 2015.
"It has never had any influence on the decisions I have made as culture secretary," he said in a statement.
Downing Street said Mr Whittingdale "is a single man entitled to a private life" and had the full confidence of Prime Minister David Cameron.
Mr Whittingdale told BBC Newsnight: "Between August 2013 and February 2014, I had a relationship with someone who I first met through Match.com.
"She was a similar age and lived close to me. At no time did she give me any indication of of her real occupation and I only discovered this when I was made aware that someone was trying to sell a story about me to tabloid newspapers. As soon as I discovered, I ended the relationship.
"This is an old story which was a bit embarrassing at the time. The events occurred long before I took up my present position and it has never had any influence on the decisions I have made as culture secretary."
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the question for Mr Whittingdale was not about his relationship, but about his role in regulating the press when the newspapers had a story about his private life.
Labour shadow cabinet minister Chris Bryant, who was shadow culture secretary until September last year, said: "It seems the press were quite deliberately holding a sword of Damocles over John Whittingdale.
"He has a perfect right to a private life but as soon as he knew this he should have withdrawn from all regulation of the press.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36031743
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)as they give me an indication of what non-MSM outlets I may be able to trust in future. So far, Byline and Nick Mutch pass muster.
I really don't give a damn about public figures' peccadilloes unless they betray really blatant hypocrisy, exploitation or unconcensual violence, or evidence of undue influence one way or another.
Whittingdale's claims to innocence/ignorance may be truthful for all I know. But name me any other public figure where such a putative juicy scandal was known to the tabloids who wouldn't have been subject to a clickbaiting storm in a teacup with lurid headlines and picture spreads, especially if there was a hint of "kinky" sex to draw the crowds and serve as excuse for publishing salacious images.
That's the key part of this story to me - the interplay between Whittingdale and the media's interests in whether it was covered or not. Add in the potential for blackmail, and it stinks.
Ironing Man
(164 posts)for me its a resigning/sacking issue - firstly i simply don't see how anyone can do a job regulating the press (and lets remember he was a big beast in HOC media and culture select committee before he became a minister..) when he knew, and they knew, that the press had a nice juicy story on him in their back pockets.
secondly, and this is a judgement/integrity thing rather than the operational issue above, he failed to tell either the other members of the select committee, or the PM when he was appointed a minister, that he had been compromised in this way.
we are fortunate that as a minister in a 'who cares' department, he wasn't privvy to much more sensitive stuff and therefore that that much more sensitive stuff wasn't exploited by people who mean us a very great deal of harm, but the point stands that a minister cannot have hugely embarrassing secrets, and a minister certainly cannot have hugely embarrassing secrets that are known by the people he is, theoretically, supposed to be regulating.
sadly i think that however offended disco Dave is by Whittingdales' behaviour (and Whittingdale has already said that he did not tell the PM that he had this, umm.. little local difficulty..) because he needs this like he needs Ebola, the current EU etc.. issues within the tory party will stop Cameron kicking the creep down the Downing Street steps.
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)Whittingdale's position has been seriously compromised by all this. He should not be allowed any say on press regulation.
LeftishBrit
(41,190 posts)Sex worker Sharon Williams has admitted she was mortified when she discovered the man shed met online was actually politician John Whittingdale....
She told us, Its embarrassing, of course no-one wants to be publicly shamed like this because they got involved with the wrong man....
But then he finally admitted he really was a politician, which maybe I could have lived with, until he said he was one of those sick ones thats really sadistic things like inflicting pain and suffering on others, a Tory I think he called it.
I ended it there and then, and even now when I look back on the time we spent together it makes me sad to think of all the other people he was fucking at the same time.
http://newsthump.com/2016/04/13/sex-worker-shamed-by-relationship-with-politician/
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)Regardless of innocence. Nixon said it was the cover up that did him over. On Newsnight they said that when Whittingdale took his girlfriend to the MTV awards, (paid for by MTV,) he did not declare it in the register of member's interests. Yet when he took his then wife to the same award show he did declare it. Hardly the actions of a man with nothing to hide.
Ironing Man
(164 posts)alternatively, taking your new girlfriend, that you don't want anyone to know is your new girlfriend, to the MTV awards where they will be seen by perhaps 75% of fleet streets finest showbiz hacks sounds like a very silly idea...
the admin of whether you declare it afterwards seems rather superflous in that situation, no?
personally, based on what we know so far, i broadly believe that he didn't know what she did for a living, and that he found out when the media told him - though quite how that conversation came about might be interesting to know - the problem, for me, is that he decided that because he'd ended the relationship the whole thing was done and dusted and that it was neither a problem that the media knew something juicy about him that no one else did, or that the perception of the media doing him a favour would be a problem when it eventually came out.
he's either not very bright, or he has the integrity of a wet crisp - neither stops from him being a slightly sad bloke in a mid life crisis who got taken for a fool...
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)"taking your new girlfriend, that you don't want anyone to know is your new girlfriend, to the MTV awards where they will be seen by perhaps 75% of fleet streets finest showbiz hacks sounds like a very silly idea..."
It sounds to me like positively flaunting it!
Male public figures' capacity to be led by their dicks hasn't amazed me since the Clinton years (Surely he wouldn't be so daft as to do all that in the Oval Office, of all places?!!! It must be a stitch-up," I naively insisted at first), but really.
Then there's this story about her allegedly handing out, erm, "business cards" in Parliament ...
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)What he got up to with his girlfriend doesn't concern me. It's the fact that Fleet Street seems to have made a special case for him and that he's still go the say so on press regulation.
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)this time, from ex-Independent journalist James Cusick:
Along with other journalists at the Independent newspaper, political correspondent James Cusick spent five months investigating why other newspapers had shut down a story about the culture minister, only to see his editor shut the investigation down too. Here he lays out the anatomy of a press cover-up. In an accompanying comment piece he explains his personal reaction.
https://www.byline.com/project/48/article/966
muriel_volestrangler
(101,146 posts)for indecent assault (formal court hearing in June 2013, setting date for trial of March 2014; the pictures were taken late 2013). Who on earth would think a guy awaiting trial for sexual assault was the person to handle photos about a politician's sexual, but consensual, affair?
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)I guess technically he was innocent till proved guilty. He'd still no doubt have had a wide range of contacts he could peddle them round, of course.
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)The Mail regarded Whittingdale as an asset. Apparently the Independent shares office space and associated logistics with the Mail, and the Mail could always kick them out.
So much for bloody independence.
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)with the idea that a government minister is considered a collateral "asset" by our lovely media.
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)Especially when it's the Mail of all organs. This ex Independent journo is the only one who is telling the truth. The rest are all spreading some bullshit about how the gutter press has somehow changed since Levenson.
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)that totally missed (or studiously avoided) the point by Simon Kellner in Thursday's i (the surviving paper spawn of the Independent).
Here it is in online form: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/john-whittingdales-love-life-none-business/
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)They're deliberately trying to make it about something else. It's not about his sex life but about his decision making on press regulation. Any government minister whose behaviour warrants the interest of Fleet Street is something the public should know about.
The sexual behaviour of a celebrity couple who have been enjoying threesomes is definitely not in the public interest, but that hasn't stopped the tabloids going to court in an attempt to overturn injunctions.
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)Much obvious ribaldry, as you'd expect, about the salacious aspects, but they didn't duck the issues we've been discussing here. IIRC, one of the panelists made exactly the same point as you.
If other DUers can use iPlayer wherever they are, here's the episode: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b077sdjr/have-i-got-news-for-you-series-51-episode-2
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)And my planner is mucked up. I missed last week's episode completely and the first five to ten minute's of last night's.
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)Richard Coles was his usual good value. I think Paul Merton has a mancrush on him!
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)My favourite line was "Say what you like about Hugh Grant, he knows a prostitute when he sees one."
Btw, Richard Coles is on Radio 4 Saturday mornings.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,146 posts)then they might have a leg to stand on. But it's the way more than one paper has enthusiastically started investigating, and then backed off once they've been trying to give her the chance to respond, that makes it look like they were coerced into shelving it once word got to Whittingdale that another paper was thinking of publishing.
LeftishBrit
(41,190 posts)And some of the broadsheets are under their thumb? No doubt the Independent's financial problems made it more dependent.
And the person in government in charge of dealing with the media was liable to blackmail and hadn't declared it.
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)And sing Land of Hope and Glory.
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)The gloves are off at the Mail on Sunday:
Cabinet Minister John Whittingdale had a two-year relationship with a former porn star who claims he showed her confidential Government papers at his constituency home.
Married ex-Page 3 model Stephanie Hudson, 36, says Culture Secretary Mr Whittingdale showed her highly-sensitive documents to show off as he worked on his Ministerial Red Box over breakfast.
And she also revealed how Mr Whittingdale, the Minister in charge of media privacy laws, photographed Cabinet Ministers at a private meeting at Chequers and secretly texted it to her.
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They first went to bed after their fourth meeting. Ms Hudson says Mr Whittingdale told her of his relationship with a dominatrix, known as Mistress Kate, who plies her trade in London, complete with her own dungeon. When the BBC last week revealed Mr Whitingdales relationship with the dominatrix, he insisted he met her under her real name on Match.com and had no idea she was an escort until approached by the media, at which point he ended the relationship. However, Ms Hudson says she believes Mr Whittingdale was sleeping with the dominatrix and her at the same time.
Around February 2014, John told me that he would have to live like a monk for a while because the newspapers had found out a woman hed gone out with was a prostitute. He told me it was all over long before he met me. But last week, I discovered he was sleeping with her at the same time as me, and we always had unprotected sex. It made me angry. I feel so betrayed, not only that he was lying to me, but also he was taking that kind of risk with my health.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3543701/MP-s-porn-star-lover-shown-Cabinet-papers-John-Whittingdale-new-sex-scandal-SECOND-lover-reveals-affair.html
Lots of juicy details there for those who're interested.
Which somewhat scoops notorious hack Andrew Gilligan at the Telegraph, who'd just attempted a blatant hatchet job on Byline:
New details have emerged about the links between the campaigners who revealed the story of John Whittingdales relationship with a prostitute.
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It can now be revealed that:
* The website which finally ran the story, Byline.com, is substantially funded by a Chinese billionaire who has attacked independent journalism, defended dictatorship, said the West is morally bankrupt and written that its survival may depend on becoming less democratic.
* Byline.coms manager, Peter Jukes, has been paid by the controversial campaign group Hacked Off, which has claimed that newspapers may have withheld the story to threaten Mr Whittingdale.
* Byline.com worked alongside Hacked Off to promote the story to the BBC and other outlets, which could undermine Mr Whittingdale, who opposes Hacked Offs demand for state-backed regulation of the press.
* Many key figures associated with Hacked Off, including former director, Brian Cathcart, write for Byline.com. Max Mosley, a major donor to Hacked Off, has also funded Byline.com.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/16/the-truth-about-john-whittingdale-the-prostitute-and-the-cover-u/
The irony of complaining about Byline's funding sources in a newspaper owned by the downright weird authoritarian tax-dodging billionaire Barclay brothers seems to be just one of the things to have escaped Gilligan.
LeftishBrit
(41,190 posts)Not to mention that Gilligan himself has worked for PressTV (largely a mouthpiece for the Iranian Government) in the past.
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)between editors Paul Dacre at the Mail and Geordie Greig at the Mail on Sunday, which Private Eye's long been documenting.
The dam seemed to burst a bit on this story after Private Eye covered it in print last week. It normally doesn't make much of its content available online (I'm a subscriber), but in this case, it has:
NO sooner had the new issue of Private Eye gone on sale this week, carrying a detailed article questioning the motives of national newspapers in spiking a story about culture secretary John Whittingdale (full text below), than Whittingdale himself took the initiative, issuing a statement that was widely seized on by the BBCs Newsnight, Fleet Street, opposition MPs and press privacy campaigners. The rest, as they say, is histrionics
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So the silence continued until 2016. Two weeks ago, after the Eye had begun looking into the story, a website called Byline ran a version of it under the headline: Culture secretary John Whittingdale caught in prostitution scandal. Last weekend it added a report by James Cusick who took redundancy when the Independent print edition closed of how Fleet Street bosses buried a scandal and got their man into Camerons Cabinet.
Can Paul Dacre et al still ignore the news as it starts to swirl around the internet? When thundering against the Levesonian model of state-backed regulation, the big newspaper groups insist that no politician should be allowed to influence how they do their job. Yet the effect of their silence over Whittingdale is to make it appear that coverage of a senior politician could be influenced by their vested interest in keeping him in office. As the Daily Mail itself demanded last Friday, furious at not being allowed to reveal a celebritys sexual threesome: Whatever happened to the publics right to know?
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/issue-1416/street-of-shame
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)Dacre shouldn't even be allowed to edit a national newspaper.
LeftishBrit
(41,190 posts)You couldn't be an MP if you weren't a citizen (cf Murdoch) or chose not to live in the UK; and these big newspaper editors have more power over the lives of UK citizens than most MPs do.
I don't think those who benefitted from having a private education should be allowed to hold public office either, but that's just me.
LeftishBrit
(41,190 posts)especially as it would have excluded Clem Attlee, Michael Foot and Tony Benn, while still letting in Maggie Thatcher, Norman Tebbit and Rhodes Boyson.
What I do think is that people should be required to have had jobs for at least 2 years, other than in politics or the closely related field of public relations, before they are eligible for elective office. Full-time stay-at-home parenthood counts; being an intern or research assistant to an MP doesn't. I have no wish to go back to the days of compulsory National Service, but at least that did require all, including future MPs, to have some contact with people outside the world of politics.
I also think that MPs should not be able to employ unpaid interns, as that means that only the rich or perhaps the truly fanatical are able to gain this apprenticeship to a political career.
Also, all MPs should have to spend at least a week, before every term of office, living on minimum wage without access to their bank accounts and other financial resources.
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)I don't expect it to become Labour party policy any time soon if ever.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,146 posts)How long it is since someone who wasn't also a British citizen became an MP, I don't know. In practice, I'd expect someone who hasn't been here long enough to get British citizenship wouldn't get elected; though some Sinn Fein MPs may have renounced British citizenship and just claim Irish, I suppose.
Denzil_DC
(7,186 posts)Some of the attempts to dig up dirt on Byline, the crowdfunded journalism site that first published details of John Whittingdales private life, appear to have gone slightly awry.
First there was a Daily Mail claim that campaign group Hacked Off directly funded the organisation, which had to be clarified on Wednesday morning.
And then later in the day the Telegraph quietly amended a line about Bylines backers written by Andrew Gilligan which talked about Jae-woong Lee, a South Korean billionaire who is the father of the sites founder, Seung-yoon Lee.
The problem was that, as Jae-woong Lee and Seung-yoon Lee pointed out on Twitter, they are not father and son.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2016/apr/20/daily-mail-telegraph-byline-hacked-off
Byline has a more detailed rebuttal of the Gilligan hit-job:
The Telegraph has run a hatchet job on Byline Media and Hacked Off today. It is so poorly researched that it qualifies as an amateurish pack of lies - but not journalism.
It had to come: after all the hit jobs on website Byline Media and campaigning group Hacked Off last week, the Telegraph showed its hand, and its desperation, by summoning Andrew Transcription Error Gilligan to write a smear piece so amateurish in its research and construction that it has left those at both Byline and Hacked Off looking like extras in a Smash advert, rather than angrily consulting their lawyers (which may come later).
Zelo Street has asked both organisations to comment, and has been given feedback from senior and reliable sources at both. What follows exposes the sheer vacuousness and dishonesty of Andrew Gilligan - as well as the paper that publishes his work.
https://www.byline.com/column/20/article/989