Jess Philips has said people should approach women and ask if they are okay with going to the Christmas party season.
The government’s safeguarding minister has said that bystanders should be prepared to intervene if they see someone at risk of having their drink spiked.
This comes after PM Sir Keir Starmer held a meeting with police chiefs, hospitality bosses, and transport leaders in No 10 to coordinate action against Spiking.
Labour has also reiterated a pledge to make giving someone alcohol or drugs, without them knowing or agreeing, a specific criminal offence.
Asked about a UN report that says bystanders must step in to help end violence against women, Phillips said she has intervened “many times” and that people would “not be offended” by someone checking if they are safe.
Speaking from a bar in Birmingham, Phillips said staff have been encouraged to intervene if they see “bad behaviour,” such as “men bothering women on the dancefloor.”
Those at the Downing Street meeting shared best practices for tackling Spiking, and the government promised extra training for bar staff to help them prevent incidents, support victims, and retain evidence.
“As everybody around this table knows, this is pernicious,” Starmer told the meeting.
“It is under-supported and under-reported. We have to shift that and are determined to do so.”
Call me cynical, but there are a few things to address here.
Firstly, I do not doubt that a busybody like Ms Phillips would poke her nose into a couple having words with each other at the bar
Secondly, spiking a drink is already a crime, leading to my main point.
This is Labour. I’m pretty sure if they cared about vulnerable women being taken advantage of, they would be more vocal about grooming gangs, but let’s not go there.
Nope, what this is is the start of a push to make our cultural celebration of Christmas and the partying that goes with it all about protecting women and sexual assault awareness because we can’t even do Christmas now without being reminded that there may be a predator amongst us.
Even more subversive is the direction this is taking for small business owners, such as pub landlords or anyone with a function suite.
Present at the Downing Street meeting was Kate Nicholl, the CEO of UK Hospitality. After doing a wee bit of digging, it would appear—and I may be wrong—that UK Hospitality is one of these bodies that springs up and appoints itself the expert/spokesperson for an industry in the same way the government consults certain communist groups as relevant experts on the far right!
Now, I shall reiterate that Kate Nicholl and her organisation may be absolutely tip-top and only want what’s best for aspiring B&B owners, but I have firsthand experience in the last Labour government listening to “Experts” from the food industry, which resulted in many small businesses going out of business.
It goes like this: The “experts” tell the government what they want to hear, which is for them to impose more legislation, tighter controls, and more red tape in any given business sector, essentially raising the bar for operating in that sector.
In my case, it was raising health and hygiene levels to the degree that many small family-run businesses couldn’t afford to upgrade their premises to merely keep trading, while supermarkets could keep up and gobble up the fresh food market.
In the case of spiked drinks in bars, we will no doubt see laws that make business owners responsible for any crime on their premises.
This will be okay for the larger chains and global brand pubs and hotels; they will install anything from extra bouncers to facial recognition CCTV, while Bill and Dot will have to close the Ducks Nest in rural Derbyshire because they can’t afford the upgrades or the liability insurance
George Orwell once wrote, “The socialists don’t love the poor, they just hate the rich”
Labour doesn’t care for the victim, loves the villain, and above all, hates the working man, especially those working folks who dared to earn middle-class money by doing working-class work.
They hate you, and they want to make you pay and want you liable for other people’s crimes.
