Prime Minister John Key has apologised to an Auckland waitress who accused him of harassment and bullying after he pulled on her pony-tail on repeated occasions.
In an anonymous article on the left-wing website The Daily Blog, the waitress said Mr Key behaved like a "schoolyard bully" when visiting her unnamed cafe in the past six months.
She said he later apologised by giving her two bottles of wine.
Key claims to have "apologised", but its the usual minimisation practised by bullies and creeps: "light-hearted", "never his intention to make her feel uncomfortable" etc. Which is bullshit. Invading someone else's personal space without their consent is the sort of thing which tends to make them uncomfortable. And only creeps do that. In the workplace, it'd be straight-out sexual harassment resulting in dismissal. When it comes from the Prime Minister, a person in a position of power who is surrounded at all times by armed bodyguards, its fucking scary.
(Speaking of those bodyguards, where the fuck were they? They're police officers, and someone was committing an assault right in front of them. Shouldn't they have done something about that? Or are they just part of the toxic police culture which sees sexually bullying young women as acceptable?)