Lauding a lord

While most people have reacted with disgust and anger at Lord Sewel's behaviour and the fact that it has been funded by the taxpayer, that certainly isn't true of everyone. Take the Spectator's Brendan O'Neill, for instance, who has declared that the scandal "makes me feel proud to be British" for the simple reason that it's not the one of the "sad little pseudo-scandals which in recent years have tainted the good name of ignominy" but "a full-on, drugged-up, peer-and-prostitutes scandal, of the kind Britain used to be pretty good at before the square Blairites and cautious Cameroons took over".

Writing in the Independent, meanwhile, Grace Dent has also expressed her admiration for Lord Sewel, on the grounds that his antics show a devil-may-care attitude towards ageing and an apparent determination to grow old disgracefully. She does have a point...