So Tory MP Neil Parish was looking at a tractor called a Dominator when he “accidentally” stumbled across pornography
in Parliament.
No, me neither.
At first it seemed like another extract from the Conservatives’ Compendium of Spurious Excuses. Right up there with Dominic Cummings driving to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight (maybe he should have looked at tractors too) or Boris Johnson being “ambushed by cake”.
The point is, Parish and his pornographic excuse gave rise to mirth, then justified concern about a misogynistic culture at Westminster, before he finally resigned at the weekend.
Yet despite his arrogance and lack of self-awareness – he conducted an interview in his dressing gown and initially claimed he’d only decide his future after an investigation – there is a reason to feel sympathy for him.
His is a microcosm of the bigger problem that parents are well aware of: the ambush marketing piquing the interest of our kids and grandkids before luring them into the kind of adult material they should be protected from.
As parents we’ve had to learn the hard way to install controls on our broadband to filter out content all too easy to access online. Search for one thing and you unlock a gateway, often unwittingly, into another. Click in the wrong place on any given page or even misspell a search term and, again, you’re in.
On YouTube and shopping website comments you’ll find links directing audiences towards pornographic websites. Some falsely promise free online currency for games.
Others impersonate popular influencers. YouTube, to be fair, works hard to remove links where it can. But the web’s lawlessness means the ambush, particularly for older people not tech-savvy, can come from anywhere.
As respected Professor Mary Beard, 67, tweeted on Monday: “This is not meant as a support for Mr Parish but I have ended up on a porn site after searching for Titian’s Caesar portraits. A shock and I left pronto.”
None of this absolves 65-year-old Parish, an elected representative, viewing pornography on taxpayer time.
He’d been drawn in and admits to going back for another look – exactly what these sites bank on you doing.
To do it in the privacy of his own home is one thing. At work in view of female colleagues is quite another. He should’ve resigned that day.
X-rated ambush marketing, however, will be a concern long after we’ve forgotten him. It is an issue that needs addressing, urgently.
