Oh God! I’m sympathising with Godfrey Bloom. The hapless Bloom is the UKIP M.E.P. who has scandalised the country, not by the use of the term “Bongo-Bongo Land” to describe the Third World, nor by his assertion that Britain ought not to be sending financial aid there; nor, it should be said, by the fact that he appears to see nothing wrong with producing a UKIP conference brochure whose cover bears the images of several score of face not one of which bears pigmentation other than a rather insipid and sickly beige. No, Bloom has brought scorn upon himself by using the word “sluts” to describe a group of women.
Some context: Bloom had earlier made a comment that women should spend more time cleaning behind the fridge (yes, this is looking more and more like I should leave him to his fate) and was questioned on this by one of his own supporters, a woman, at a fringe meeting, who said that she had never cleaned behind her fridge either. When the vexed question of behind-fridge cleaning was put to the floor, all the women, with one voice, exclaimed that they had never cleaned behind their fridge either.
At this, Bloom “joked”,
“I’m surrounded by sluts!”
There was some laughter but the general consensus, soon expressed, was that he had gone too far this time.
The word, “slut”, it would appear, is now a word that has come to mean what we used to call “loose” and its former use, to mean less than houseproud, has fallen into disuse so that people have taken him to have meant that he was surrounded by women of dubious morals and not merely dirty cows.
Now in this, I feel he has been unjustly pilloried. As an old fool, Bloom cannot be expected to have kept abreast of all the changes to the language since he first crawled from under his rock. I’m convinced that he meant his remark to be taken as a comment on the cleaning abilities of his audience rather than their morals. The word was not uncommonly used in this manner, when I was a lad along with its male equivalent, "sloven". Occasionally, you would hear the word "slattern" - which I've always believed is related to "slut" and which means "to slop" and from which, of course, we get "sloppy". An interesting etymology has it derived from Old Norse, "to slap", which may or may not find echoes in the modern, "slapper" (which I had always believed was a reference to being over made-up or covered in "slap".
Now you might say, “So what? The upshot is that Bloom got what he deserved” and in many ways, I’d have to agree. However, there is such a thing as justice and a person ought to be tried for the crime they committed rather than the crime we wish they’d committed. Bloom is guilty of having been educated over fifty years ago and of being a buffoon. The hypocritical outrage of Nigel Farage has been a wonder to behold but his desire to ditch a former comrade so speedily should tell the electorate that UKIP are learning fast and that’s something I’m rather pleased about, to tell the truth. They are the best chance we’ve had in many years of splitting the Tory vote and for that, I wish them all the luck in the world.
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