Nigel Evans MP: "I've Been Framed"

One Daniel O'Byrne rang 30 minutes ago from the office of Nigel Evans MP. He informed me clearly that the offending picture - of Evans posing with Rotary chums at a charidee bash - was taken down from the MP's website to prevent further nonsense from the Daily Mirror.

The latter organ has in fact removed the story from their web presence entirely. Which may mean that the LOL Story is now the only web remnant of this sad escapade.

For my money blacking up is a pretty silly and bad taste way to go when it comes to fancy dress. See quote below. I'll not try to rank it with showing up in Nazi uniform but it's certainly not big and it's certainly not clever. Labour Cllr Bob Piper's pastiche of Cameron as a Mammy's Boy was also silly. Whatever Mandela himself may say that other Tory clown was in bad taste territory. Though I laughed out loud when the Indie's review of 2006 had a picture of the original Mammy's boy Al Jolson next to an item about the Tory conference.

The modern day Tories are trying to move away from their deserved reputation as bigots. However they are not succeeding because of incidents like this. Not to mention the more serious ones like that poet with her asian friends and old Col Blimp Mercer and his "black bastards" line. Because of rampant homophobia in comments on Guido's blog, never mind on the streets of Manchester. And because of a remarkable pattern of presumably careless rather than hateful misogyny over at Dale's place.

More on these observations later. Meanwhile the above picture shows Nigel Evans MP representing the all-party beer monsters group as the gongs are handed out for beer of the year at the CAMRA Festival.

As the Guardian coverage of Mandela's statement concluded:

Blacking up is often viewed as racist because of its connections to the minstrel shows of the 19th and 20th centuries, which promoted the mocking stereotype of a grinning, happy-go-lucky, infantilised black rascal.

UPDATE: Guido has removed my comment asking him to prevent the homophobic commentary rather than stopping the comments. Oh dear. Fortunately I kept a copy of it.