Although I consider myself to now be on the centre-right of the political spectrum, I’ve never believed that it is good to live or operate in a political bubble. This is because if you only consume media or opinion pieces that come from ones own side then you may miss things that are important or fail to see nuances in a story.
One of the left leaning outlets that I always keep an eye on is Harry’s Place. For over a decade Harry’s Place (HP) has been an outlet that has not been afraid to speak about important issues but has not slavishly followed a leftist party line. It does call out the failures of the Left as well as celebrating what I have come to see as the ‘sensible left’ the left that is outside of the identity politics obsessives and the toytown revolutionaries which are often louder than their support base would justify. The output from the site is not as frequent as it once was but in general when it does publish articles they are nearly always worth reading.
A good case of an article that I would say makes for essential reading is an examination on HP by the author Muncii of aspects of the report into child sexual exploitation in Telford in England’s West Midlands. Muncii has decided to concentrate on how the local authority, which has mostly been run by Labour since 1973 with occasional short periods of Tory or No Overall Control rule, handled the three decades long problem of sexual exploitation of children in that area. Muncii said that there were other aspects of the story that they could have examined, such as the failures to stop abuse by West Mercia Police, but they’ve decided to concentrate in this article on the local authorities many and quite appalling failures.
I would urge readers of this blog to read the Harry’s Place article that is linked below as the sort of safeguarding failures that have occurred in Telford could quite easily happen elsewhere. The massive levels of incompetence shown by Telford council, the siloisation of Safeguarding teams, the skittishness over engagement with the fact that certain types of Muslims are overrepresented in these offences, the poorly thought out and inadequately funded or supported programmes to tackle this abuse, could all happen anywhere else in the UK.
Here’s the link to this story:
http://hurryupharry.net/2022/10/25/telford-safeguarding-when-councils-fail/
This is well worth a read and after you’ve read it then try to work out if your local authority may have similar structural and organisational problems as has been revealed to have been present in Telford.
I will not quote from the article itself here on this piece as this piece is so good and so informative that it is difficult to decide what to take as an excerpt. However as HP has a policy of clearing comments after a week or so I will paste below some of the comments that caught my eye.
Comments from the HP article
What I find depressing about all these reports into child-rape grooming gangs is that despite the perpetrators being overwhelmingly Muslim (as noted by Imran, below) the religious dimension to these acts is always, always overlooked. This even in the light of clear statements by brave survivors of how their non-Muslim status made them lesser beings who could be exploited.
Until and unless this facet of the problem is brought into the open (despite the inevitable charges of Islamophobia and racism) and explained I do not see how the cause of this can be properly identified and until such time as the religious dimension is repudiated from an Islamic-theological viewpoint I do not see how this can be prevented.
muncii92 Jon MC • 12 hours ago
A Rochdale victim recounted, in her evidence, that one of her abusers would recite verses from the Koran while he was raping her. What kind of mind-set is this ?
Another of the Rochdale guilty men was well known and admired in the local Muslim community for his commitment to his faith , his extensive knowledge of the Koran, and his devotion to teaching it to local children in the mosque.
Miles Meagre • a day ago • edited
‘The Inquiry was set up in 2018 after a diligent investigation by two Sunday Mirror reporters, claiming that up to 1000 girls had been abused by gangs in Telford since the 1980s. It was a non-statutory Inquiry, meaning that witnesses could not be compelled to take part.‘ – emphasis added.
Sunk before putting out of harbour. The only way forward to is get people into a properly constituted court and witnesses to be questioned under oath. There should be no limitation on time. As long as it takes.
‘Historically, in Telford, ‘the nature and scope of CSE was not regarded sufficiently seriously by the majority of Councillors’ despite the growing evidence.‘
Local Council elections can be decided on a mere 5-7 per cent turn out of the registered voters; wards where Pakistani or Bangladeshi votes count, Councillors would obviously put electoral considerations first, easing their doubts, if they had any.
‘Cluster staff were told that Exploitation was not the business of Safeguarding and that detailed reports should not be shared by email as the allegations ‘could start a race riot.’ – emphasis added.
Thereby children – children – were thrown on the fire, sacrificial victims on the altar of the cult of multiculturalism. What were these agents paid to do precisely?
‘Case studies show that where Safeguarding was involved, children were often treated as if they had full agency: the approach was ‘victim blaming’ with a focus on the childrens’ behaviour rather than the actions of the perpetrators. The support provided by the Safeguarding team was reactive and erratic with continual drift and delay’ and the team ‘hid behind protection of information , with a well embedded culture of confidentiality…’
From conversation over decades I assume these people were all wearing their Politically Correct blinkers; any issue that placed an ethnic minority in the frame would be treated with a particular set of given outcomes, none likely to impact ‘community cohesion’. I well recall community meetings where the white residents were lectured by semi-educated white community workers on their faults before any of these had actually been adumbrated. I concluded being both white and poorly educated as we were by comparison, our guilt was a given.
Muncii, thank you. What horrifies me is that Westminster knew about all this and did nothing. If our MPs were halfway decent human beings they would have taken action. But no, nothing. Utter disgrace, the lot of them. I think only one woman MP eventually stood up and made a fuss, but the rest? They all need jailing for breaching their duty of care to these children.
Miles Meagre mirax • a day ago • edited
There is no licence to sexually exploit children. All young people under 16 are classified in law as minors. They cannot give consent to sexual relations. To engage with a minor in sex acts is against the law.
That pinned up in every mosque in the country should help. The rest of us men get no warning.
Miles Meagre Avi_in_Jerusalem • 16 hours ago
Thanks avi – and good to hear from you again. You are wise not to hold your breath.
One of the most important aspects of the national child sex trafficking scandal was the silence of the media; I had to go to places on the internet I would normally (and do) avoid to read about the cases before the courts! It was left to fringe personalities (in all senses) on obscure blogs to expose the history of large scale commercial trafficking in many cities; Telford might have been one of the original places but was only exposed in full as far as I understand after several others. Even now, few discuss how this financially rewarding idea of grooming vulnerable children seemingly emerged in many different towns around the approximately the same time last century. Much remains unclear. Is this lack of clarity unavoidable or deliberate?
There are persistent claims made, one by a former victim, that the grooming continues.
Burt Miles Meagre • 14 hours ago
I met a Home Office staff member circa 16 years ago. She had just finished a deep survey on the capability of each our police forces. I asked what were the conclusions. She said that they were all absolutely dreadful, fit only for traffic control duties. The Met was slightly better.
Zero evidence that the Home Office has sorted out this issue in the years since.
