#the reform club

[inposterumcumgaudio]

Your thoughts on Madame Wanda or the Thomasina House? If you haven't already ofc.

I've talked a bit about Thomasina House in the Class Structure post and there's a bonus theory I have about it in my post about Gemma Olsen. I might do a post about Thomasina House in particular in the future because there's more to say, but for now, I'll take you up on Madame Wanda and expand that a bit to the Reform Club as a whole.

Gonna disappoint right off, but I don't think anyone is actually having sex at the Reform Club. Sorry. All right, maybe some people do sometimes, like fucking at Studio 54. But that's not actually what the point of the place is.

It is described in the art book as a "punishment club". People go here to be punished for a misdeed they refuse to remember, but becuase they don't remember what they feel guilty for, there's no apparent reason they can't have some fun with it. That the developers have taken this concept and appended fetish play to it confuses the subject, but even then it still makes perfect sense. Fetishes aren't really about sex either so much as foundational (often childhood) memories later re-contextualized in adulthood. Dohoho.

And Madame Wanda is a matron overseeing the discipline of her naughty children.

I would really liked it if she were the Wanda Durbyfield from the "Diary of a Wayward Girl" that you find at the Hippo Club.

In fact, I very much think this was the intention: the Wanda in this diary ends her last entry by saying that, "Some day I'm going to punish them. I'm going to punish them all." And Madame Wanda has a cut diary too, indicating that she would also have been in the habit of documenting her life.

The only problem with this is that Wanda Durbyfield's diary points to her being younger than Margaret Oliphant, which would make her too young to be a Crier. But its a very good story otherwise. A girl unable to raise her child herself and terrorized by the town for it, grows up to find her calling in punishing her fellow Wellies while forgetting just as much as they have why. I think they just couldn't let go of the idea of a Crier running the fetish club because that is also a good concept. Would that they were compatible!

If the cut diary is any indication though, Wanda would have also grown into the role. As Wanda Durbyfield, her punishments would have been a revenge for the rage she was made to endure from the townspeople who were more powerful as a group than her. As Madame Wanda, her punishments are corrections with the understanding that people - children - misbehave without fully comprehending the underlying cause, especially when they have the boldness of a mob obscuring their better sense. This is why you punish them one on one (and presumably a premium rate).

I have a chapter in which I've juxtoposed the Reform Club with the Church of Simon Says and if Wanda Durbyfield was supposed to be Madame Wanda, then the game would have done this as well.

"I don't care if we ARE required to go to church! Those women are lunatics, the way they ganged up on me! You'd think they'd be GLAD I'm giving up the baby. They put their children on the train -- wouldn't they want another child? But no, I'm apparently the worst sinner in the world for sending mine away. Am I supposed to raise it here? Much better for it to live on a farm."

That the Home for Wayward Girls was a religious institution and enforced church-going despite the growing danger it posed would not only place Wanda at odds with the Church of Simon Says on a business level in the future, but a philosophical one as well.

The thing I think is most interesting about the Reform Club is that they are apparently engaging in some sort of resistance efforts, but we never actually get to know anything about it other than that it's happening. And what's more, you only learn this from a line that Sally will soliloquize to herself when walking around in the Garden District.

"I almost miss going to the Reform Club. I bet some of them could help. And they never ask awkward questions. But I'd have to be Naughty Nurse again, and I'm just not that."

I genuinely think, though. that this line is only here to give context to Gemma's bug out bag and not to actually lead into any further supposition about the Reform Club's activities. It's a sort of slight of hand, really, because the thing you're supposed to be focusing on from this statement is Sally's Naughty Nurse act that she just can't bring herself to reprise. Whatever the Reform Club is doing is similar to Mr. Kite in that you are presented it to pique your interest, but you're never permitted to get any closer to it.

And, if we're accepting that Wanda Durbyfield was meant to have grown into Madame Wanda, she even had the sense as a wayward girl know that some people deserved their chance to leave Wellington Wells.

"No one will ever marry her now. Nor me, I suppose. Not unless I can move away."

"Am I supposed to raise it here? Much better for it to live on a farm."

Beyond that, I have a further, wilder theory about the Reform Club and its place in the world.

In Lionel Castershire's quests, he often makes mention of an unnamed client who collects Uncle Jack records, but its in Ollie's act when Castershire asks him to retrieve the Salty Dog from the Lawrence house that we learn more about this client beyond that.

"I have a client who likes to… collect things. Very powerful man. He has quite a few employees, but he'd rather they not know about his… private interests."

(As an aside, I think it's very funny that this dialogue implies the client is a taxidermy dog fucker - particularly in view of what I'm about to tell you further - but upon receipt of the quest, you learn he was probably just after the Hope Diamond that should be in the Salty Dog.)

When you return with the Salty Dog, you get one last parting piece of information from Castershire:

"My client is a man you want in your corner. And not in the other."

I like very much to think that this client is the Mr. Cleland that Madame Wanda is expecting when you come upon her as Arthur.

Mr. Cleland is a reference to John Cleland, who wrote Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, more popularly known as Fanny Hill. In it, a wealthy woman recounts in two letters to a friend known only as "Madame" the sexual adventures of her earlier life. It is considered the first English prose pornography and is otherwise notable for its use of euphemism. It contains no vulgarities directly, instead describing its graphic sexual events in very... couched language. So couched you could lose your clover clamps or the key to your safe in it. Also, Cleland wrote this novel from debtor's prison.

So Mr. Cleland and his friends are coming to visit for some Golden Knocking, are they?

I think this is meant to be euphemism, which is doubly hidden because it is framed in a place that is also trading in innuendo. Which is to say, they are implying this is a fetish-y sex thing, but I think it is actually a business transaction and this is is why you want Mr. Cleland in your corner and not the other.

I believe he brings his "friends", people who owe him money, to the Reform Club to get the screws put to them and that Madame Wanda, resident expert in the art, assists him with this. This may even be why the Reform Club is permitted to operate as it does, it enjoys the protection of a "powerful man". Probably makes makes them lean over the chair and watches while Madame Wanda gives them a proper caning. Maybe the tranquilizer darts on the table are so they can walk home after.

Further story elements in the game that dovetail nicely with this idea are the quest "Moon Juice Leach" and Captain Lawrence's unpaid debts and subsequent "accidental" death in "Old Soldiers".

In "Moon Juice Leach", Eddie Coke is remembered as having not having the "common sense that God gave an ordinary bowl of porridge" nor much reason to need "contraband" motilene, but a desperation to try to steal it all the same. This idea that motilene can even be contraband is a whole other ???, but the constables suppose that Lionel Castershire (who we later learn in Ollie's act is perhaps a tad less upstanding than he appears) may be involved in Eddie's fatal caper. If Lionel acts as a buffer between Cleland and his acquisitions, this would make sense. If Eddie got a taste of that Golden Knocker, it would also explain the reckless attempt at theft.

Meanwhile Captain Edward Lawrence is past due on his bills and on notice for shut off from the Department of Water and Power. More motilene-related troubles. Possibly purchasing discounting "contraband" motilene and being unable to pay that bill either?

Rather than (or unable to) meet his obligations, he's chosen to shut himself up in his house and refuse calls.

To great effect:

If this is the work of Mr. Cleland (or more likely his "few employees"), it presents another interesting connection: that he may also have something to do with who has access to the apples from the last apple tree in the Garden District.

Or maybe Mr. Cleland's just wondering why Captain Lawrence is buying a luxury like apples when he owes him money.

That Ollie is asked to retrieve the Salty Dog from his brother Colonel Lawrence's house, after both brothers have died, seems like a case of shifting the debt around. (This is also why I wondered if the Salty Dog wasn't supposed to be Bonny Prince Charlie at a point.)

Dropping a bookcase on Captain Lawrence is a steep escalation, for sure, but if he wouldn't come to the Reform Club, then he didn't leave himself much room to negotiate a payment plan.

Who knows. He might have even liked it.

[joyful-downer]

Too bad Jack's banned from the reform club. It would've been nice to meet him there.

[ghostsprobably]

The reason Flora didn’t recognize Helia wasn’t because of him being transgender but because back when they were kids, Helia was that one kid who ate dirt by the handful and was generally a handful to anyone who took care of him.

Kind of hard to believe that this elegant, well-educated, and cool-headed man was a goblin child that would bite your ankles in his youth.

/j

god this is canon

baby helia out there catching worms for floras garden and showing up absolutely covered in dirt and twigs

i love it too bc under that persona of suave, well traveled, artistic gentleman, helia is so quippy and quirky, so there would be moments where flora is like ahhhh there it is

[livesunique]

The Reform Club, Pall Mall, St. James’s, London SW1, 

Photographed by Will Pryce for Country Life. ©Country Life

[rizwalda]

thinking about ✨them✨

(wip!)

[blackswaneuroparedux]

A true Englishman doesn't joke when he is talking about so serious a thing as a wager.

Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days (1872)

Michael Todd’s adventure comedy film ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ was released in 1956. The film starred David Niven as Phileas Fogg. It also starred Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes (known as Cantinflas) as Passepartout, Robert Newton as Detective Fix, and Shirley MacLaine as Princess Aouda.

The rare picture of David Niven as Phileas Fogg in the Reform Club’s Card Room was part of a set just for publicity purposes and is held in the Reform Club archives. When it came to actually filming the scenes in the Reform Club they shot in the studios with a life-like set. The Reform Club refused to let any filming done on its premises for fear it might disturb its members.

As a current female member looking back, I might have voted otherwise just to let some daylight in to this once stuffy place.

Times have changed and a few private members clubs are quite partial for a big budget film to shoot some scenes in their iconic premises. This includes the Reform Club which has appeared in many popular films such as the James Bond films ‘Die Another Day’ and 'Quantum of Solace', 'The Avengers', 'Sherlock Holmes', 'Tenet', and others. I know there are now grumblings from current members that things have swung too far and the Reform Club is not a film set but a private haven for its members. So perhaps the Reform Club should close its doors on the principle less is more.

Anyone want to take me up on a wager that it will?

[eaglesnick]

THE BIG CON: VOTE REFORM, VOTE BIG BUSINESS

A vote for Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is essentially a vote for big business and the super-rich.

Reform promises to lift 7 million people from paying tax at the lower end of the pay scale to  “save every worker almost £1500 per year.” Although I am sure this saving for low earners would be very welcome, it is the rich who benefit most from Reform’s income tax proposals.

 At the moment people earning over £50,000 pay a 40% tax rate on earnings above this figure. The Reform Party promise to raise the threshold to £70,000, a saving of £3,588 a year for the 15% richest people in the country.

Reform and the far-right favour business over individual workers.  It is therefore no surprise that Corporations are to receive the biggest tax breaks. Corporation tax will be reduced from 25% to 20% for the first 5 years, and then down to 15% after that.

For year ending 2022/23 corporation tax brought in £79.9billion. Under Reform, corporations would be in receipt of tax breaks worth £47.94billion. In November 2022, State of Tax Justice reported that

…”the world was losing over $483 billion a year in tax to multinational corporations and wealthy individuals using tax havens to underpay tax. That’s equivalent to losing a nurse’s yearly salary to a tax haven every second.” 

The only reason Reform would want to legitimise corporate tax avoidance is because Reform is essentially a political party for the already wealthy. They might throw a few crumbs to the ordinary worker but the real rewards are to go to the rich and powerful.

Many large corporations are foreign owned so  tax breaks for big business are just as likely to go to overseas shareholders as they are to UK owners. Does the British taxpayer really want to be subsidising foreign share ownership by cutting tax revenues?

Richard Tice, leader of Reform until replaced by Nigel Farage a few days ago, is a multi-millionaire who made his money in property development.  Both he and Farage have their own TV shows on GB News, which is bankrolled by the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Marshal and the Dubai based investment company Legartum, founded by New Zealand billionaire Christopher Chandler who made his fortune in Russian gas.

Reform's links to the super-rich goes further. Multi-millionaire Jeremy Hosking has given £2.578,000 to Reform coffers. Is it coincidence he is funding a party that campaigns to scrap UK emission targets when he is “the director of a company with tens of millions of pounds invested in oil and gas” ? (Open Democracy: 22/03/22). I think not.

Another major donor to Reform is the ex-Bullingdon Club member George Farmer. (Other members include David Cameron and George Osborne the architects of Tory Austerity and the liar Boris Johnson who brought us Party Gate). An “ardent supporter of Donald Trump”, Farmer was CEO of the far-right platform Parler, and is married to Candice Owens, a woman who “promotes far-right ideologies”, In 2023 he joined the board of GB News.

The biggest single donor to Reform according to Electoral Commission records is Chris Harborne, handing over £10 million to Brexit/Reform. Harborne owes his fortune to the sale of aviation fuel and technology investments. He gained notoriety when his name appeared multiple times in the Panama Papers. These documents revealed:

 “…off-shore holdings of world political leaders, links to global scandals, and details of  hidden financial dealings of fraudsters, drug traffickers, billionaires, celebrities, sports stars and more”. (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: 03/03/2016)

These wealthy backers of Reform are not spending millions of pounds in order to benefit ordinary workingmen and women. They see these millions as an investment, an investment on which they expect a return for their money.

[sami-lamby123]

its so funny to think about if the doctors arent allowed to be in the reform club, they do take a oath which means they have to uphold a ethical standard meaning no doctor patient relationships, but also they wouldnt stop bringing "experimental" things in that may or may not work LOL

i have so many thoughts on this

the gloves stay on btw

I fear the tools they'd probably bring into the reform club.

[oborofollower7]

Hawks is an interesting character in the sense that it feels like outside of seeing him as a child and the implications behind his persona in certain moments, we don't actually truly MEET Keigo.

[spilledmilkfkdies]

Hello yes hi, I'm here to defend myself and my next take. Because when we take a look at the silly form Duman takes near the end (his end) of season 4- That's a bat, right? A bat DEMON of sorts, yes, but there's bat in there CLEARLY, right?? And do you know what (some) bats have?

Tails.

Not very big, generally speaking, but they're a thing. And I've been THINKING about this for a while, because in my mind? The Dumanic bat should have a tail. Like look me RIGHT in the milk puddle and tell me he doesn't have tail vibes (don't actually).

Then I got to thinking again and? Maybe he does have one. Like I said, bat tails aren't that big. Who's to say he doesn't have one under his skirt/kilt? Is there not room for it? I think there is.

And you can be all like "No, bat tails are like attached to stuff." and whatnot- BUT Y'KNOW WHAT? BATS DON'T HAVE BOTH WINGS AND HANDS SEPARATELY EITHER, NOW DO THEY?

IF DUMAN CAN HAVE 4 HANDS, HE CAN HAVE A LIL HIDDEN TAIL, DON'T YOU TELL ME HE CAN'T.

And don't you dare come in here with a "He's not actually a bat so-" because there is clear bat inspiration at LEAST. The possibility is there, there could be a tail.

[nickmpreg]

wisest will words of the day

[joyful-downer]

Uncle Jack may have been banned from the reform club

...but Foggy Jack hasn't. 👀

[rotten-downer]

I've just been seeing people talking about their OCs at the Reform Club and I'm thinking about Horus going maybe with Vincent and Horus just being lost and Vincent trying not to openly by a simp for him in a catsuit.

I might write something for this.

[art-beyond-the-stars]

Onyx Remington appears as a guest on a beloved show to talk about their work!

Turns out that it really is the quiet ones, huh?

[coochiequeens]

A performance venue that received "substantial amounts of public money during Covid" is peace spring a woman because TQ+ activists don’t want to hear from a Lesbian with gender critical views.

SNP MP Joanna Cherry has told BBC Scotland she has been cancelled by an Edinburgh venue for "being a lesbian with gender-critical views".

She was due to appear at The Stand during the Fringe Festival in August. 

The venue has cancelled the event after staff said they were not comfortable with her views on transgender issues.

The Edinburgh South MP is a critic of Scotland's Gender Recognition Reform plans, which make it easier for people to change their legally-recognised sex.

Ms Cherry told BBC Radio Scotland's Drivetime programme: "I would hope The Stand would see sense here. Staff shouldn't be framing editorial and artistic policy.

"I'm being cancelled and no-platformed because I'm a lesbian, who holds gender-critical views that somebody's sex is immutable.

"I've made those views clear over a number of years. I have never said that trans people should not have equal rights.”

The show was part of an In Conversation With series of events with interview guests including film director Ken Loach, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham.

Ms Cherry said she was planning to talk about her career in politics and the independence movement, as well as her feminist views.

She added: "Because a small number of people don't like my feminist and lesbian activism, I'm being prevented from talking about all of those things in my home city where I'm an elected politician. 

"I think it says something's gone very wrong in Scotland's civic space.

"Small groups of activists are now dictating who can speak and what can be discussed."

The Stand - which was co-founded by SNP MP Tommy Sheppard - said it did not endorse the views of any participant in the In Conversation With series, which is organised by independent producer Fair Pley. 

In a statement The Stand said: "Following extensive discussions with our staff it has become clear that a number of key operational staff, including venue management and box office personnel, are unwilling to work on this event.

"We will ensure that their views are respected. We will not compel our staff to work on this event and so have concluded that the event is unable to proceed on a properly staffed, safe and legally compliant basis."

Scottish Conservative MSP Rachael Hamilton said the Stand had received "substantial amounts of public money during Covid" and many people would be "dismayed" by the stance it had taken. 

She added: "Whatever views people have on this sensitive issue, it cannot be acceptable to shut down free speech."

Last week, a screening of the Adult Human Female documentary was cancelled for a second time by the University of Edinburgh on safety grounds after protests by trans rights protestors. 

The film is billed as an "explainer about the issues, how far things have already changed for the worse for women and how difficult it has been to be heard, to be listened to", with its producers saying that accusations that it is transphobic are "designed to shut down debate".

Some university staff and student groups said the documentary contained content that was "a clear attack on trans people's identities".

First Minister Humza Yousaf has called on the university to defend freedom of speech and to allow robust debate and discussion.

He added: "I see that as no conflict with the other stance that I'm very proud of, which is supporting trans rights. That is something that I am unequivocal about.

"But we should ensure that our universities - and society more generally - are a place where we can have that robust exchange of ideas."

Mr Yousaf has launched a legal challenge to the UK government's block on controversial gender self-identification reforms that were passed by the Scottish Parliament in December. 

Ms Cherry was among the senior SNP politicians who opposed the legislation, which aims to make it easier for people to change their legal sex and lowers the age at which they can do so from 18 to 16. 

Meanwhile, Ms Cherry also told BBC Scotland she hoped the SNP would get its "finances and governance in order" amid a police investigation and the resignation of the party's auditors.

Ms Cherry, who resigned from the SNP's national executive committee in June 2021, said: "I was one of a number of members elected on a manifesto to deliver better transparency and scrutiny over the party's finances and governance.

"I'm sad to say we failed to do that, and it wasn't for the want of trying.

"I just regret it's come to this. I would like those who stood in the way of reform back in 2020-21 to reflect on what they've done."

Ms Cherry also said the party had not done "the necessary groundwork" on economic issues under former first minister Nicola Sturgeon to win over opponents of Scottish independence.

She added: "I've always argued that the way to win a referendum was to persuade people who voted no in 2014 of the merits of our case. 

"The SNP needs to discuss both how we convince people to the cause of independence and also how we actually win our independence. 

"We need to put the sovereignty of the Scottish people back to the front and centre of our debate." 

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Never write a letter to your mistress and never join the Carlton Club.

- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Despite its having Wellington’s characteristic terseness and, as regards the first bit, good sense, it feels an odd thing to say. Wellington was after all the Carlton’s founding father and, although he played no large part in its affairs, he must have observed its political success with considerable satisfaction. Perhaps, like many phrases supposedly uttered by famous people, it was attributed to him, but actually coined by someone else.

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the establishment of the Carlton Club in the history of British party politics. At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, there were in existence two great clubs, Brooks’s and White’s, linked to the historic Whig  and Tory Parties respectively. But by the 1830s, the two political parties needed far more than their long-standing London bastions could supply. They simply were not large enough. Some MPs had begun to resort to non-political clubs, like Boodle’s in St James’s Street, giving rise to the following merry ditty: ‘In Parliament I fill my seat/With many other noodles/And lay my head in Jermyn Street/And sip my hock at Boodle’s’.

Such exile from the political mainstream soon became unnecessary. Politics entered a new era, in which the two parties, which evolved in the 1830s and the two subsequent decades - acquiring new names, Conservative and Liberal- expanded their political activities greatly. They needed London accommodation on a generous scale in premises which provided a variety of rooms, large and small.

That is what the Carlton Club supplied. In 1837, the year of Queen Victoria’s accession, it opened its first club house in Pall Mall on the corner of Carlton Gardens, yet another reminder of the gross, bloated monarch, George IV (114 years later a slim Miss Margaret Roberts would depart from the next door house in Carlton Gardens en route to her marriage to Mr Denis Thatcher).

The Carlton club remained on its Pall Mall corner site until a Nazi bomb fell on it in October 1940. The original club house underestimated the party’s need for space. It was enlarged in the 1840s as Sir Robert Peel brought the party first to election triumph in 1841, and then to political disaster and division as a result of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. To assist the Conservative party’s recovery from the split that the Corn Laws’ repeal brought about, the enlarged building was demolished and replaced by an even bigger one in 1856.

Members stared from the Carlton club’s windows across Carlton Gardens at the Reform club, founded in 1836, four years after the Carlton, to equip the Tories’ opponents with the same range of services, social and political, that the Carlton pioneered. It should be noted in passing that in the new nineteenth-century political world the Conservatives put themselves at the forefront of organisational change, where they were to remain until Tony Blair’s day.

The close proximity of the two rival clubs meant that they kept each other under close observation. In the early days, the Reform took a great interest in the volume of mail posted by servants of the Carlton, who retaliated by waiting until darkness fell before venturing forth. During a political crisis in 1884, blinds were pulled down at every window of the Carlton club’s library after a member noticed two figures across the road in the Reform club spying with the aid of opera glasses. Members of the Carlton noted with satisfaction that their club eclipsed the Reform in size and grandeur.

But that’s a matter of griping. Or is that groping?

In 2022, the disgraced Conservative MP Christopher Pincher was alleged to have sexually groped two men, in an area known as Cads’ Corner within the Carlton. Former No 10 strategist Dominic Cummings once claimed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson referred to the now disgraced MP as “Pincher by name, pincher by nature” before making him deputy chief whip, which he subsequently had taken away from him.

The club boasts about this ‘inviting corner’ that features a small cluster of chairs underneath a grand staircase - but talk to my father’s peers and friends who are members about how Cads’ Corner gained its name and they get all coy and look at their watches. Indeed it’s well known that it’s the spot where male members could stand to stare up the skirts of female guests walking up and down the stairs.

As a member of the Reform club naturally I think they’ve got their head up their arse or at the very least looking up at some unlucky lady’s skirt.