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[Starver]

I think we're up to nine. Nine prospective prime-ministers... <countVonCount>Mwahahaha!</CountVonCount>

And Alexander seems to be self-aware enough that he won't be endorsing any particular one of them. Because he knows that it would be a too obvious kiss-of-death, and that nust wouldn't be cricket. Or would backfire horribly, more like.

(Talking of cricket, not that it's that relevent here, but here you are anyway... Fake cricket fools Russians...)


Right now, I don't like the look of any of the contendors at all. But then I have no say in the process, so I doubt they care. I suppose I could hope for someone who fails just enough to spark an early election (or for the lack of obvious successor to spark one) when my vote will be merely inconsequential, rather than irrelevent.

[Loud Whispers]

Panorama investigation uncovers evidence the British SAS may have executed unarmed civilians and the UKSF command covered it up

This comes after the Australian SAS was accused of the same thing by an Army Air Force pilot. It brings shame on our countries that men were killed just because they had a common name, imagine if death squads went through your street wiping out entire households because one chap was named John Smith

[feelotraveller]

But we're the good guys, right? /sarcasm

Let's hope the british government's response is better than that of the australian government. They raided the babc, who broke the story, and laid criminal charges against... the whistleblower (and no one else).  The fight continues to get that one thrown out.  Meanwhile criminal charges for murderous soldiers, forget it - even though the internal review found massive culpability.

[Loud Whispers]

But we're the good guys, right? /sarcasm

Let's hope the british government's response is better than that of the australian government. They raided the babc, who broke the story, and laid criminal charges against... the whistleblower (and no one else).  The fight continues to get that one thrown out.  Meanwhile criminal charges for murderous soldiers, forget it - even though the internal review found massive culpability.

Yeah when they close ranks to protect misconduct - and frankly - war crimes, it makes you wonder what kind of culture is really there behind closed doors

Oh yeah and in more continuation from the child grooming scandals some of you may have heard me rat on about in the past, the Telford inquiry has revealed that it wasn't hundreds of children raped, it was over 1,000 with the police being aware of it in gross detail but blaming the victims because they didn't want to appear racist

The fact that this was a common excuse from the police in Rotherham, Derby and the other councils makes me lose my will. Like how low do you have to set the bar for public servants. Surely "protect children from being raped" takes precedence over "might look racist" but no, can't harm precious career prospects :/

Assistant Chief Constable Richard Cooper said: "I would like to say sorry. Sorry to the survivors and all those affected by child sexual exploitation in Telford.

"While there were no findings of corruption, our actions fell far short of the help and protection you should have had from us, it was unacceptable, we let you down.

An apology is something but... Couldn't they have just done their fucking job?

Fuck...

[feelotraveller]

{snip} the police being aware of it in gross detail but blaming the victims because they didn't want to appear racist

Never attribute to corruption that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Apparently they are just as stupid as the rest of us. Mmm, the smell of porkies

[Loud Whispers]

Never attribute to corruption that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Apparently they are just as stupid as the rest of us. Mmm, the smell of porkies

I honestly wish they were replaced by mediocre policemen who would actually just do the bare minimum of their job. Because as long as they did their job, they'd be doing much better than someone who wasn't. Imagine you have Bob Dole, the overweight bobby who spends most of his day eating a 6 pack of donuts. A teacher calls up Bob Dole saying they're worried their student's been missing for 2 days and has become suddenly very withdrawn. In between donuts, Bob Dole decides to go down and ask the missing student some questions. Picking up his notepad, he writes down everything the teacher and the student say to get a legal record, dates it and realises something untoward is happening with some unsavoury gentlemen. A local councillor cautions him not to inflame racial tensions, but Bob Dole is on his second box of donuts and simply says, "not racist, just hate nonces," and sets to work bringing in some of the men for questioning. Local councillor accuses Bob Dole of racism, but the accusations are retracted when the investigation shows an abundance of evidence that the accused are in fact, child rapists

Instead we get 30 years of thousands of police doing anything that isn't their job
Like congrats on having a rainbow painted police car whilst you let thousands of children get raped. They focused so much on the superficial trappings of social justice that they forgot the basis of social justice is social and justice
My disappointment is immeasurable and my century is ruined
I want my fictional Bob Dole who eats donuts and solves crime. Instead I get Bob Dole who eats donuts, harasses people on twitter and gets promoted up the ranks

[feelotraveller]

I'm not buying it.*

I can get your point about Bob Dole (2) the brown-noser and unfortunately the chances are that some of the junior police officers were somewhat like that.  However it is telling that the vast amount of action on child abuse/exploitation in Telford was pursued and promoted by junior officers.  In fact it was the higher-ups invoking the "can't do racism" excuse (aka a blatant lie to coverup whatever was the real reason).  It is not clear what the deal with the higher ranking police was/is - can only speculate that there must have been some big personal benefits to allowing the exploitation to continue, and much bigger than PR or another promotion chance given the circumstance.  And as stupid as it is for them to invoke racism as an excuse not to act it is just as stupid for us to swallow that lie.  They had to make some excuse and it is crappy that they used 'too racist' but it is a failure of the commission(s) not to even hint at the real reason.  I took you initially to be suggesting the commissions themselves end up being part of the coverup (unwit-tingly?).  Perhaps I misunderstood.

Going back to the original mirror article which broke the issue (for those that missed it) https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-worst-ever-child-grooming-12165527 take the case of Lucy Lowe:

Lucy Lowe, 16, was killed in 2000 along with her mother and sister after her 26-year-old abuser Azhar Ali Mehmood set fire to their house.

Cabbie Mehmood targeted Lucy in 1997 and she was just 14 when she gave birth to his daughter.

He was jailed for murdering Lucy, her mum Eileen and 17-year-old sister Sarah.

But he was never arrested nor charged in connection with any child sex crimes over his illegal relationship with the schoolgirl.

I'll add that she was reportedly pregnant with his child again at the time of the murder-arson.

So it's not racist to charge, prosecute, convict for murder but it would be to investigate potential** child abuse that gave rise to the murder???  Nup, something else was going on.


* Porkies -> Pork Pies -> Lies, pretty common usage deriving from cockney rhyming slang. (Also pork comes from pigs... more slang.)
** 'potential' is just legal speak, don't doubt for a minute that I think child abuse occured here

[Loud Whispers]

Unfortunately you don't get any gold stickers for diagnosing what a disease isn't, any more than noticing shit just doesn't add up. It stretches belief to absurd levels that hundreds of police from all across England could be suppressing prosecution of several thousand rape cases over the span of three decades without a single police officer breaking ranks and going after the child rapists - much in the same way that we know social workers and teachers were pressured to not make reports to police, one can imagine that such police must've been waylayed by someone higher up. Were the traffickers the procurers and suppliers for more powerful pedophiles? It would make sense; we have had high profile cases of child rapists in media, finance, defence and politics. But in the absence of any evidence of a link, in the absence of any evidence that these child grooming gangs worked together or supplied for anyone besides themselves, we are just left with the option of feeling like stupid fools because an easily thwarted crime was promoted and not a single person was allowed to do their job to their job's end. It's easy, and dangerous to accuse everyone involved of being child rapists, but the notion of well-intentioned councillors and police chiefs simply being blind to the damage they were causing because of their own misogynistic beliefs and the political vogueness of the-then multiculturalism project is what the investigations have concluded. It's also not unlikely. It's like the Labour MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion resigning after internal party backlash to her saying british-pakistani men had been targeting English girls for raping, or the Labour MP for Blackburn Jack Straw facing criticism for saying English girls were being targeted and treated like "easy meat." More furor and attention was given by the Labour party to what was said about the grooming gangs and not attention to the fact that all the victims had been utterly failed. In this environment where everyone is neurotic and more afraid of offending the party than prosecuting a child rapist, I am left with the only option - to be stupid, and accept that police were being stupid, and everyone is stupid in this stupid world.

[feelotraveller]

Chill bro, I'm not your enemy.

Gold ain't my colour anyways.

[scriver]

I'm not buying it.*

I can get your point about Bob Dole (2) the brown-noser and unfortunately the chances are that some of the junior police officers were somewhat like that.  However it is telling that the vast amount of action on child abuse/exploitation in Telford was pursued and promoted by junior officers.  In fact it was the higher-ups invoking the "can't do racism" excuse (aka a blatant lie to coverup whatever was the real reason).  It is not clear what the deal with the higher ranking police was/is - can only speculate that there must have been some big personal benefits to allowing the exploitation to continue, and much bigger than PR or another promotion chance given the circumstance.  And as stupid as it is for them to invoke racism as an excuse not to act it is just as stupid for us to swallow that lie.  They had to make some excuse and it is crappy that they used 'too racist' but it is a failure of the commission(s) not to even hint at the real reason.  I took you initially to be suggesting the commissions themselves end up being part of the coverup (unwit-tingly?).  Perhaps I misunderstood.

Going back to the original mirror article which broke the issue (for those that missed it) https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-worst-ever-child-grooming-12165527 take the case of Lucy Lowe:

Lucy Lowe, 16, was killed in 2000 along with her mother and sister after her 26-year-old abuser Azhar Ali Mehmood set fire to their house.

Cabbie Mehmood targeted Lucy in 1997 and she was just 14 when she gave birth to his daughter.

He was jailed for murdering Lucy, her mum Eileen and 17-year-old sister Sarah.

But he was never arrested nor charged in connection with any child sex crimes over his illegal relationship with the schoolgirl.

I'll add that she was reportedly pregnant with his child again at the time of the murder-arson.

So it's not racist to charge, prosecute, convict for murder but it would be to investigate potential** child abuse that gave rise to the murder???  Nup, something else was going on.


* Porkies -> Pork Pies -> Lies, pretty common usage deriving from cockney rhyming slang. (Also pork comes from pigs... more slang.)
** 'potential' is just legal speak, don't doubt for a minute that I think child abuse occured here

You vastly underestimate the power the threat of social ostracization can have on people, as well as as the direct benefits from not being deemed racist such as having a career or not losing your job.

It's not like this is the only time something like this has happened either, though usually it is not with as horrible consequences or for as long.

Lucy Lowe, 16, was killed in 2000 along with her mother and sister after her 26-year-old abuser Azhar Ali Mehmood set fire to their house.

Cabbie Mehmood targeted Lucy in 1997 and she was just 14 when she gave birth to his daughter.

He was jailed for murdering Lucy, her mum Eileen and 17-year-old sister Sarah.

But he was never arrested nor charged in connection with any child sex crimes over his illegal relationship with the schoolgirl.

I'll add that she was reportedly pregnant with his child again at the time of the murder-arson.

So it's not racist to charge, prosecute, convict for murder but it would be to investigate potential** child abuse that gave rise to the murder???  Nup, something else was going on.

If you say you can't see how "one man committed arson and murder" goes down differently than "a large network of Pakistanian men were organisedly and deliberately targetting English girls in pedophilic grooming and rape rings", or how the bosses could say "we prosecute the murders but we don't follow up on the rape/abuse lead" then I think you are lying. Not that it needed saying, probably -- once a culture of hush hush has been established everyone would know what they can go after and what they need to cover up.

[feelotraveller]

You vastly underestimate the power the threat of social ostracization can have on people, as well as as the direct benefits from not being deemed racist such as having a career or not losing your job.

Nah, I'm just going on the media reporting of the findings of the commission.  The commissioner had this to say:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/12/over-1000-children-telford-sexually-exploited-inquiry-finds

The report also said it was the often the work of “committed individuals not top-down directives” that continued the work. “It was, as it had been in 2006, ‘ground level’ officers and practitioners who were keeping the CSE-specific response alive,” Crowther said.

Which is to say that of the members of the police force it was (some of the) officers on the beat (our fictional bob doles) that were attempting to pursue the issue.  Contrary to what you seem to be saying there were a number of more junior police quite willing to face whatever negative consequences may have followed but the investigations and initiatives were progressively shut down from above.

So it's not racist to charge, prosecute, convict for murder but it would be to investigate potential** child abuse that gave rise to the murder???  Nup, something else was going on.

If you say you can't see how "one man committed arson and murder" goes down differently than "a large network of Pakistanian men were organisedly and deliberately targetting English girls in pedophilic grooming and rape rings", or how the bosses could say "we prosecute the murders but we don't follow up on the rape/abuse lead" then I think you are lying. Not that it needed saying, probably -- once a culture of hush hush has been established everyone would know what they can go after and what they need to cover up.

Pity I am not saying that.  I was saying how 'one man committed arson and murder' went down differently than 'one and the same man committed repeated sexual abuse of a child'.  To somehow turn your misreading into an accusation of lying is a bit underhanded don't you think?  As to why the bosses didn't prosecute for rape etc. I can speculate but given that they were already prosecuting the same individual for murder the reason can't have been to not appear racist.

[Loud Whispers]

Chill bro, I'm not your enemy.

Gold ain't my colour anyways.

I'm saying I'm stupid, not that you are stupid. If you want you can be stupid with me though

Pity I am not saying that.  I was saying how 'one man committed arson and murder' went down differently than 'one and the same man committed repeated sexual abuse of a child'.  To somehow turn your misreading into an accusation of lying is a bit underhanded don't you think?  As to why the bosses didn't prosecute for rape etc. I can speculate but given that they were already prosecuting the same individual for murder the reason can't have been to not appear racist.

Well the Lucy Lowe decision to prosecute for murder and not for rape was just a tactical one

A top cop told colleagues not to review a triple murder case investigated by his detective dad.
Telford abuse victim Lucy Lowe, 16, died with sister Sarah, 17, and 49-year-old mum Eileen, who was known as Linda, in a blaze started by cabbie Azhar Ali Mehmood, 25, in 2000.
Lucy met Mehmood when she was 13 and a year later had his daughter Tasnim – who survived the inferno after he placed her under a tree.
The Sunday Mirror revealed in 2018 the deaths were linked to the exploitation of hundreds of Shropshire girls.
A public inquiry sparked by our exposé is set to report on Tuesday and will examine whether the authorities failed Lucy.
We can reveal that, before the inquiry was commissioned, Supt Tom Harding signalled the Lowe case did not merit “review”.
The original murder probe was led by his father, Det Chief Insp Clive Harding, now retired. It is claimed officers were told Mehmood was part of a grooming gang. But it would be nine years before child sexual exploitation probe Operation Chalice was launched.
Of the Hardings, the force said there was no conflict of interest, adding: “In 2020, the CPS advised there was insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any sexual offences.”

Their boss thought there was no point going for a rape case where the evidence had already gone up in flames whereas the murder case already carried the max sentence and evidence was in abudance. Of note is not that they did not choose to prosecute for rape, but that they chose not to do a follow-up investigation to the extent of the rapes. To shed some light on this as well, police in this country have a habit of "statistics management." They look bad if there are large numbers of unsolved crimes or crimes without conviction so it seems likely that the superintendent (which is the lowest ranking of the senior police ranks, but still fairly senior) was content with securing the conviction of this one guy without even considering the possibility that this was part of a much larger network of child trafficking. If there really has been something deeper beyond the stated hypersensitivity, I still haven't found anything suggesting a deeper conspiracy. I can't say I see your point

[MorleyDev]

Also the police don't really care what they nail you for, from their POV you're off the streets and in the system after the conviction so long as the end conviction time is proportionate to what they think you did. So ignoring a rape charge that is a lot messier to investigate and takes extra resources to investigate, and could risk complicating your odds of putting someone away in what would otherwise be a clear cut case....

Well, when they can get you for murder pretty comfortably, from their POV, it's usually just good management of limited police resources.

[hector13]

T’be fair, had they figured out the rape case first, there probably wouldn’t have been a murder case to begin with.

[Loud Whispers]

Yeah when they've got the max sentence it's in practical terms already a done deal. I suppose the only difference would be an addition onto the sex offenders registry that would bar them from working with children in future, but murdering children would already preclude you from working with vulnerable persons anyways. It's like nabbing mobsters for tax evasion. Just sus that they pressed for no continuance of investigation. I might add as well that this is one case with one victim, but Telford alone was over 1,000 girls raped, and that's not counting the girls raped in Rotherham (at least 1,400), Rochdale (I haven't found any report estimates), Keighley (ditto), Newcastle at least 7,00 Aylesbury (estimate unknown), Oxford at least 370, Peterborough and Bristol (both estimates unknown). This is just one of those things where it is not only the nature of the crime, but the sheer scale of it. I'm not even sure if I got all the towns, those are just the ones I remember, and I get sick of writing about this. So when the reports conclude that police were in fact aware in gross detail of it taking place over the last three decades, and aware that it was being done by the same men, and still chose to do nothing, it doesn't surprise me. Yet it still doesn't satisfy why nothing was done and why no one will ever face justice for this, or whether this kind of crime is still ongoing and we don't know about it for the exact same reasons it was allowed to happen in the first place. It gives me conniptions