Back in the old days, when the ministerial code of conduct wasn't shoved in a basement at the bottom of a dusty filing cabinet, protected by ravenous wolves, such behaviour would have elicited either a resignation or a sacking. Instead, the minister responsible for investigating and enforcing that code of conduct resigned instead after Boris's decision. I don't know what surprised me more - the resignation, or the fact that there was seemingly still a government minister with a moral code left in the cabinet.
But I didn't really want this blog post to be about politics, I wanted to once again drag up why the subject of bullying is still so divisive, and why the victims of bullying get so angry when a high profile case such as this ends very much like things used to end at school, with a minor ticking off or an authority figure looking the other way while the bully goes back to what they're best at - making people's lives an abject misery.
Once again I was reminded of those warm cuddly anecdotes that folk love to cling to about bullying, and those tired epithets that "Bullies are often victims themselves" or the real tired old favourite "I met up with the person who bullied me at school and we shared a pint, they showed genuine remorse and everything's now tickety boo."
It's not like that for me, and I suspect I'm not alone. The bullies at my school always "got away with it" just like Priti Patel has. They were never suspended, rarely given much more than a verbal ticking off, and of course resumed their behaviour at the next break time, or the next hometime, or (in my case) right there in the middle of class with the teachers looking on.
One instance still chills me to the bone. One of the bullies at school was, without a doubt a psychopath. He had all the signs already mentioned but there was also something intrinsically evil about him. One day, in biology class while we were supposed to be examining dissected frog slices through a microscope, Darren (let's use his real first name at least) waited until the teacher stepped into a supply cupboard for a moment, then decided to pick up a cover slip from a microscope slide and slash me across the back of the neck with it.
Time stood still. I was in shock. Darren and his cronies waited to see what would happen next. What actually happened was that I gathered up my things, put them in my bag and walked out of class.
By this time the teacher had come back in and shouted after me. I didn't stop. He pursued me to the classroom doors but I just hurried out of school and went straight home. When you're being bullied, sometimes your sense of self protection kicks in to a point where you really do not care what happens next, you just want to be out of there and somewhere safe and I knew there was nowhere safe in school any more if something like that could happen.
My guardian (my Nan at the time) went absolutely ballistic when she found out what had happened. She cleaned the wound (thankfully there was no glass in it but it was a pretty nasty cut), and kicked up merry hell with the school. I was brought into the deputy headmasters office, offered the usual weak promises that 'something would be done' and was back in school the next day.
So what happened next? Whenever I saw the bully and his mates (always the same with bullies, always have to have a gang around them to play to) they would drag me over, pull down my collar to show off the scar, laughing about it while they did so.
This sort of thing went on pretty much all the way through senior school until (at long last) Darren and his cronies left school at 16. I stayed on into sixth form and can honestly say that once they'd all gone, school was better than it had ever been (but that didn't stop me leaving at 17 to go to college instead. I just couldn't trust the place to keep me safe any more as a pupil and though there were still bullies around in 6th form, it wasn't until I got to college that it stopped entirely and people started behaving like civilised human beings.
I have a morbid curiosity about Darren. I have no doubt in my mind that he's still out there somewhere and that he would have hurt someone far worse than me, possibly even killed someone because he had the moxy to do so. He was in the army cadets so perhaps he served somewhere where he could exercise his psychopathic tendencies under the guise of combat. Perhaps I'm wrong about all of it and he's serving in government, scaring the shit out of anyone unfortunate to cross his path.
Those years were terrifying though, and they've left a mark on me that I can't erase (not just the physical scar on my neck). I'm angry at the school still, I'm furious at the teachers (particularly those in authority), angry at Darren of course (because up until senior school I'd been doing really well at school and had a thirst for knowledge that was taken from me because of incidents like this) and it's only now in later life that I think back on those times and wish I could get some sort of closure, some pathetic form of justice, or just assure myself that my daughter will never have to go through anything like that (and by god, if anything ever DID happen to her like that at her school - extremely unlikely as that is - I would raze the place to the ground before I'd let them brush it under the carpet like my school did).
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