Spot the difference: On the right, Frank McAveety and on the left, Frank McAvennie off of Only an Excuse

Scottish Labour have been again embarrassed as leading MSP Frank ‘the Wank’ McAveety was exposed as a pervy bastard.

McAveety was forced yesterday to resign as convenor of the Scottish Parliament Petitions committee and as Labour spokesman for sport. As if Labour hadn’t learned their lessons about microphones being left on already, he was overheard in the committee ogling a member of the public. You can hear what he had to say below:

This of course comes hard on the heels of Stephen Purcell, who like McAveety was leader of Glasgow City Council, being forced to flee the country after being exposed as a school closing, land grabbing, gangster tripping, corrupt coke hound.

McAveety has had a far from glittering career as a typical Labour careerist hack, working his way up the ranks by way of several spectacular acts of idiocy.

After Donald Dewar died, he dithered about whether to support Jack McConnell or Henry McLeish as his successor as Labour leader and First Minister. In the end, trusted by neither, he ended up without a job.

He got back into a minster’s seat in 2002, and in 2003 he was promoted to Minister for Culture, Tourism and Sport. Then came the infamous piegate.

"Just one more. I'll just tell them I was at some arty shit anyway."

When he was due to be answering questions in the chamber, he was nowhere to be seen. He eventually turned up really late, and told MSPs he’d been “unavoidably detained at the Scottish Arts Council Book Awards.”

This in fact turned out to be a load of bollocks. He had in fact been munching it up in the parliament canteen, where all the posh grub costs about a pound thanks to subsidies provided by you and me. Journalists had spotted him tucking into pie, beans and roast potatoes, and he was soon caught out as a liar who’d tried to cover up a leisurely lunch.

Funny as this was, it’s hardly the worst offence in the world, and we’re sure many readers can sympathise with someone bullshitting their way out of an extra long lunch at work. Of course, most won’t be on the £73 grand salary of McAveety at the time.

What was a worse error was when he tried to have a couple of anti-war protesters fitted up for “intimidating” him. By intimidating he meant “they said bad stuff I did and it hurt my feelings.”

While out canvassing he’d been challenged on his inaction to oppose Labour’s war mongering in Iraq, as well as the closure of the Govanhill pool. His response was to get the police involved and try to get the protesters thrown in jail. But the Sheriff laughed him out of court, saying surely politicians campaigning on the streets are “fair game” for people who want to voice their disagreement. Frank didn’t agree, saying that he’d “suffered the worst intimidation” he’d felt in his life.

The Sheriff responded that he “must have led a very sheltered life.” He added that Frank had “completely blown his credibility.”

He got his third (or is it fourth) shot at the big time in 2007, becoming Labour shadow minister for Sport and petitions committee convenor, a nice wee gig that will have boosted his salary again. Now that’s come crashing down around him as he’s been caught out perving.

Sheltered life: Protesters take on Frank the Softy

Probably a lot of people will say ‘So What?’ about this, but joking aside it is actually worth remarking on how the woman concerned must feel just now. Low level perving like Frank was engaged in is the thin edge of a spectrum that includes staring at women, shouting stuff in the street, all the way to groping or unwanted physical contact. It’s this kind of thing that means many women are made to feel really uncomfortable in public on a regular basis. For someone in a position of authority like him to do it legitimises this kind of behaviour in the eyes of other men, and will embolden some to go further.

Frank isn’t the first old pervy boy in the parliament. Let’s not forget former Presiding Officer David Steel, who when he saw SSP MSPs Carolyn Leckie and Rosie Kane coming up to vote was heard to declare “Well, the view has certainly got better in this parliament!”

There’s nothing wrong with finding a woman attractive. For a man who’s already in a long term relationship with kids to be sitting ogling a woman and pointing her out to a fellow parliamentarian is kind of not cool though. (Incidentally, is anyone able to identify who was sitting next to him and was on the receiving end of this chat? Because it’s also worth remarking that they did nothing to challenge him, a tacit acceptance that it’s OK to treat women as on display for MSPs’ entertainment.)

Then there’s the whole “dark and dusky” thing. Someone has to come right out and say it: Frank McAveety clearly has racialised fantasies. This is pure speculation (we like speculating on things we can’t prove!), but I would guess he’s probably got a lot of that from porn. Pornography, as well as promoting violence and degradation of women, is riven with racism and racialised views of what women from different parts of the world are “like” sexually. Women from the Philippines, who are clearly a group that gets Frank a bit hot and bothered, are some of the most abused and exploited people around the world, not just in the sex industry but also by employers of migrant workers in virtual slave conditions.

A Gauguin painting from Tahiti: One for Frank's wank bank

Frank also references the painter Paul Gauguin, just to prove how cultured he is (“there’s a wee bit of culture for you”). Gauguin is well known for ending his days in a Tahiti, a French colony that he regarded as a tropical paradise where he could shag natives to his heart’s content in between painting them. He’s a contradictory figure, as although he did argue with colonial authorities, his art is also responsible for helping develop exoticised, sexualised images of Polynesian women back in Europe.

Frank clearly isn’t the worst example of sexism and racism we could throw at you. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a casual sexist or racist. How would you feel, subjected to his leering gaze? Or if you learned that he’d described you as “dark and dusky”, with clear undertones of “a horny exotic native type.”

What we can take away from the whole affair is that Labour produces a certain class of idiotic, careerist fuckwit, who can mess things up again and again but always end up with a cushy job with a salary higher than most of us will ever earn. For a man like Frank, being in the Labour Party provides you with a great career path to not working too hard, long lunches, and plenty of women to perv over in the public gallery. It’s high time we recognised these chancers for what they are: not defenders of the Scottish working class who vote them in, but parasites making a life for themselves on our backs.

Highlights of Frank’s parliamentary career

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 2:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.