Labour MP Keith Vaz? Male prostitutes and drugs? This really is "Schadenfreude Sunday"

Finally, they've got the bugger!

In case you don't take the Sunday Mirror, here's the whole sordid story.

I've searched my heart in an attempt to find even a smidgin of fellow-feeling (actually, not a particularly felicitous phrase in this context) - or compassion or "there but for the grace of God"-style sympathy for the comprehensively disgraced Labour politician. But, honestly, I just can't. I laughed when the story popped (poppered?) up on Twitter late last night - or rather, I emitted a series of delighted gasps (much as one suspects the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee did at several points during his repellently sleazy encounter with two East European male prostitutes).

Vaz - a former Labour Europe Minister - has been a suppurating boil on the backside of British politics for many years. Let's hope he has finally been lanced by the Mirror.  Britain's longest-serving British Asian MP has already resigned his select committee role (it's currently investigating Britain's prostitution laws!), but he isn't entirely taking it lying down (as it were). The shamed MP has already issued the following statement:

"It is deeply disturbing that a national newspaper should have paid individuals to have acted in this way. I have referred these allegations to my solicitor Mark Stephens of Howard Kennedy who will consider them carefully and advise me accordingly."

Too late, mate! You've been caught with your pants down - literally -  and seeking revenge on the newspaper responsible for revealing your hypocrisy really isn't going to help.

Is Hacked Off still a thing? I've just checked and it's still alive, but, as its last story was about nasty newspapers publishing misleading pro-Brexit claims, it seems to have widened its remit from protecting the rich and famous from having their little peccadilloes revealed to include suppressing any press story which annoys the metropolitan left-liberal elite. Still, it'll be interesting to see what these self-righteous pillocks have to say about Vaz's behaviour.

Just one other thought: I notice that the BBC and several respectable newspapers have chosen to describe the men with whom Keith Vaz paid to have sex as "escorts". Aren't they just prostitutes? The word escort suggests entertaining trips to restaurants and parties, with sex as optional extra. Is it because "escorts" sounds less judgmental? Well, when it comes to people paid from the public purse to spend their time strutting about telling the rest of us how we should live our lives and who frame the laws governing our behaviour, I'm all for being extremely judgmental. I suggest we stick with "prostitutes" (not you, Keith, obviously).