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Gordon Anglesea: protected, persecuted and finally prosecuted
Gordon Anglesea was a top copper in north Wales when he was molesting children. Today he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his abhorrent crimes.
Gordon Anglesea is 79.
He was convicted of one charge of indecent assault against one boy, and three indecent assaults against another. His offences took place between 1982 and 1987, when both boys were aged 14 or 15.
Judge Geraint Walters said Anglesea was “beyond reproach”.
The BBC delivers a timeline of the conniving copper:
1967 – Anglesea starts work as a police officer in Cheshire. He later resigned following a marriage breakdown and joined Flintshire constabulary.
1976 – Promoted to inspector in Wrexham and in 1978, becomes responsible for the Bromfield area which included the Bryn Estyn children’s home
1978 – Sets up a Home Office attendance centre in Wrexham
1988 – Becomes a superintendent in Colwyn Bay
Community Care, 16th October 1986
And then:
1991 – Retires suddenly after 34 years’ service. Later that year the Independent On Sunday runs an article about Anglesea’s connections with Bryn Estyn. Similar stories follow in the Observer, Private Eye and on HTV Wales.
He said he was libelled. Anglesea said he had never molested boys when working as uniformed police inspector. The courts agreed. But he was lying.
1994 – Sues the four media organisations for libel and is awarded £375,000 in damages
1997 – Answers questions about allegations of sexual abuse before the north Wales child abuse tribunal.
2000 – The Waterhouse report says the allegations about Anglesea had not been “proved to our satisfaction”
News of the World, 23rd October 1983 Via
The Times reported on February 16, 2000:
Widespread sexual abuse of boys and girls occurred in children’s residential homes in North Wales between 1974 and 1990, according to the Waterhouse tribunal’s report, Lost In Care.
It found that a paedophile ring did exist in the Wrexham and Chester areas, consisting of adult men targeting boys in their mid-teens. Youngsters in care were particularly vulnerable to their approaches.
The tribunal was appointed in 1996 by William Hague, who was then Welsh Secretary, after Clwyd County Council decided against publishing a report by a social services expert, John Jillings, into abuse of children in care. The council feared that it would be sued for defamation; it was also warned against publication by its insurers because of the possible effect of compensation claims.
Although by 1996 12 people in North Wales had been convicted of abusing children, there was speculation that the abuse was on a much greater scale. In 1986, Alison Taylor, officer-in-charge of Ty Newydd local authority children’s home in Bangor, had complained to her superiors in Gwynedd County Council about alleged assaults on children. Dissatisfied with the response, she spoke to Keith Marshall, a county councillor, who reported her concerns to the Chief Constable of North Wales.
A police investigation was carried out by Detective Chief Superintendent Gwynne Owen, head of North Wales CID, from 1986 to 1988. The Crown Prosecution Service recommended no criminal proceedings. The investigation is described in the report as defective, sluggish and shallow.
Eric Davies, chairman of Clwyd social services, wrote a memorandum about Ms Taylor saying: “She is a blatant troublemaker, with a most devious personality … I would very humbly suggest … that this lady’s services be dispensed with at the earliest possible time.” Ms Taylor was suspended and eventually accepted voluntary redundancy.
However, she contacted the Prime Minister, Welsh Office, Health Secretary and Local Government Ombudsman. She compiled a voluminous document that was presented to the new social services chairman, Malcolm King, in 1991. He reported it to the police.
The report states that without Alison Taylor’s complaints, there would have been no public inquiry into the alleged abuse of children in Gwynedd. In general terms, she has been vindicated. The response by senior management at Gwynedd County Council to her complaints was discouraging and inappropriate. The Welsh Office’s response was inadequate.
The ensuing North Wales Police investigation, from 1991-93, took statements from more than 500 former children’s home residents who complained of abuse. Some of the most chilling came from beyond the grave. At least 12 children formerly in care have died, most by their own hand. Statements made by six, who died after telling police in the early 1990s about abuse and brutality in the Bryn Estyn community home in Wrexham, were read to the inquiry.
As the police investigation continued, newspaper articles, beginning with the Independent on Sunday, linked a former police superintendent, Gordon Anglesea, to child sexual abuse. He successfully sued for libel, receiving damages of Pounds 375,000, in 1994. The tribunal heard evidence alleging that Mr Anglesea did commit serious sexual misconduct at Bryn Estyn, but were not persuaded that the libel jury’s verdict was wrong.
The report details the abuse experienced by children from the 1970s and names some of the perpetrators. At the local authority-run Bryn Estyn, senior officers Peter Howarth and Stephen Norris sexually assaulted and buggered many boys. Norris continued to abuse boys as officer-in-charge of another home, Cartrefle, until he was arrested.
Alison Taylor, as described by the Guardian in 1998:
In North Wales, it was Alison Taylor, the manager of a children’s home, who spent five years banging on the door of her employers at Gwynedd Council, the police, the Welsh Office, the Department of Health, and the Social Services Inspectorate. All turned her away. Undaunted, she compiled a dossier of 75 separate allegations, won the backing of two local councillors and finally secured the conviction of four men for an orgy of abuse. As a result, the Government finally ordered the vast public inquiry which has now heard nearly 300 former residents of homes make detailed complaints of physical and sexual assault against148 adults. By that time, however, Alison Taylor had been suspended and sacked.
Private Eye, 20th February 1998 by Paul Foot (via)
Time rolled on.
2014 – Arrested and bailed by officers from Operation Pallial, an investigation into child abuse in north Wales care homes
2015 – Charged with historical sex offences
2016 – GORDON ANGLESEA IS JAILED.
Anglesea was investigated as part of Operation Pallial. As a results, 8 men have been convicted, including care home owner John Allen, who was jailed for life in 2014.
John Allen was 73 when he was jailed.
Old men get it in the neck after years of getting away with it.
Newcastle Journal, 18th February 2000
Former hotelier Allen opened his first home, Bryn Alyn Hall in Llay, near Wrexham, in 1968, although he did not have any qualifications in childcare, his trial was told.
He set up the Bryn Alyn Community, which was to become one of the UK’s largest providers of residential care, providing accommodation for children sent from about a dozen local authorities.During the trial, which began in early October, the jury was told of Allen’s previous conviction in 1995 for six counts of indecent assault involving repeated abuse of six boys dating from the 1970s.
More victims came forward following the publication of the Waterhouse report into abuse in north Wales care homes in 2001 and after Operation Pallial was set up.
One former resident at the Bryn Alyn children’s home said living there “wasn’t care, it was like hell”.
Denial and despair in North Wales (September 1997), The Guardian, September 1997, by Nick Davies:
Without power to resist, the children were utterly vulnerable to the paedophiles who had infiltrated the homes. They became sex objects – in the dormitory and in the sick bay, in Peter Howarth’s flat and in Stephen Norris’ room, in the showers, in the staff room, in the bath, in cars, in sheds, in tents, on the tow path of a canal; with men, with women, with residential workers, social workers and with anyone else who wanted them because on the evidence of these survivors, in these children’s homes, no paedophile ever failed to get his or her way…
For the adults, this was a world without boundaries: a woman worker saw a good-looking 14-year-old boy so she screwed him; a man saw a 12-year-old girl who was pretty so he pulled her into a shed and raped her. One boy was allegedly being used for sex by both his housemaster and the female deputy housemaster. When a teacher complained about this, and took the boy home to protect him, his superiors alleged that he, too, was abusing the child. The teacher protested his innocence, explaining that it was his wife and not he who had also started having sex with the boy.
…
Many simply buckled and did everything they could to comply, searching for favour from their tormentors. One man described how he had been anally raped with such violence that his backside had bled for days. He was afraid that someone would be cross with him for having blood on his underpants and so, several times, he had secretly taken them and flushed them down the loo.
…
Two girls ran away and were picked up by police who told them they were lying about conditions in the home. Once the police had left them, one of the women recalled, a care worker punched her in the stomach while her friend was taken into a side room, from which she emerged later with a bruised eye and a split lip. On at least 12 occasions, over the years, police were asked to investigate allegations of violence or paedophilia in the homes but, almost always, their inquiries came to nothing.
Who knew about Anglesea? And why did it take so long for Officer Anglesea to face justice?
Posted: 4th, November 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Happy Marijuanikkah! Cannabis is Kosher
Good news for you frumer yidden who like a toke on Shabbos. Cannabis is kosher. The bad news is, of course, that because everything made kosher is more expensive than the non-kosher strain, your Friday night joint will set you back a tidy sum.
But never mind the cost. Rejoice!
The Israel National News say Israeli clerics Rabbi Kanievksy and Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein say weed has a “healing smell” and blessed the leaves. In January 2016, a body called the Orthodox Union certified medicinal marijuana as kosher.
Rabbi Efraim Zalmanovich, an orthodox rabbi of some reputation, has issued a religious ruling sanctifying the use of marijuana. The rabbi’s ruling clarifies an opinion by Rabbi Hagai Bar Giora, of the Israeli chief rabbinate, who in March 2013 told reporters, “If you smoke it, there is no problem whatsoever.”
No problem.
Closing time at Australia’s The Grove Hill hotel
Ever go to Australia’s The Grove Hill hotel, a watering hole between Darwin and Katherine, in what might best be termed ‘the middle of nowhere’? The place is closing. Owner Stan Heausler wanted to sell it but no buyers came forward. Now in his 80s, ‘Stan The Man’ has had enough.
He might continue to drink a bottle of rum a day, as is his won, but he won’t be doing it at the Grove.
Grove Hill pub in February 1942
Stories abound about the pub “built in 1934 from materials scavenged from abandoned mining sites in the aftermath of the Great Depression.”
“We were in Victoria dredging for gold, me and Derek, and there was a total eclipse,” says one patron. “We were in the Beechworth pub, I was only 17 … He drank everyone’s beer in the bar while they were out looking at the eclipse. I had an old 350 twin motorbike and we got half a carton under each arm, but going up the hill he fell off the back. For weeks later we were picking cans off the road, picking them up every time we went into town.”
The Northern Territory hotel just existed. “It’s not a great little pub,” says Darwin restaurant owner Lars. “It’s just been here for so fucking long, no one really gives a shit. It’s just been here.”
PS: any gold left in the land, Stan? “We used to sell gold nuggets, ” he recalls, “but the locals had run out of them so we’ve got to wait for them to find some more.”
Posted: 3rd, November 2016 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Brexit balls: ersatz Liberal Nick Clegg says Leavers have ruined your pork pies
Nick Clegg is a LibDem MP. You need to carry that idea in your head as Clegg talks about Brexit in the Guardian:
Melton Mowbray pork pies, stilton cheese and British-made chocolate such as Cadbury’s could be under threat from Brexit, the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has warned.
How so?
Speaking to a food and drink industry conference on the impact of leaving the European Union, Clegg said it was possible that European rivals would start producing lookalikes to British foodstuffs if they lost the legal protection from imitation offered by EU rules.
The French will start producing fake bars of sugar-rich CHOMP in a devious Brexit-fed plot to wean their population off delicious chocolate and onto junk food. Bulgarians will be free to make blue cheeses and serve them in bell-shaped pots.
It’s carnage, readers!
“Outside the EU they won’t enjoy the appellation bestowed on those products and I would have thought other countries would take advantage of that pretty quickly and put products into the European market that directly rival those protected brands,” Clegg said.
And sell them to, what, holidays Brits? Maybe Bulgarians can cook up a Marmite copy and sell it back to us cheaper.
Clegg the liberal!
Posted: 2nd, November 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Sunderland’s David Moyes turns the Stadium of Light into a darkened room
After a match Sunderland manager David Moyes sits in the dark. “I probably spend Saturday night, and quite often, in a darkened room somewhere,” sys Moyes.
Sunderland are bottom of the Premier League. So bad are they that having been gifted parity in their last match against Arsenal – a penalty got them into a game they should have been losing 4 or 5 nil – the Mackems conspired to let in three goals. “Sunday gets a wee bit better,” adds Moyes, Sunderland’s seventh manager in the past five years, “but not much, and hopefully by the time Monday morning comes, you are ready to go again.”
What a life, eh. That bit about a “darkened room somewhere” fingers the spine. Anywhere without a light will do for Moyes on a Saturday night. Lock up your rabbit hutches. (On the lighter side, at least Mrs Moyes get to go to the cinema with her husband.)
Sunderland are now the holders of the worst start in Premier League history after 10 matches. They have amassed two points. As Moyes sits in the dark – and how’s that for a vision of the boss whose team play at The Stadium of Light – he can try to work out if there are three worse sides in the Premier League who can ensure Sunderland avoid relegation and stay up.
Buying the FBI: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump vie for influence
The wife of the Deputy Director of the FBI got a wad of campaign donations from Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton ally.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr. McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, received $467,500 in campaign funds in late 2015 from the political-action committee of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime ally of the Clintons and, until he was elected governor in November 2013, a Clinton Foundation board member.
Very generous.
In other FBI news:
The embattled director of the FBI has been accused of covering up evidence of Donald Trump’s links to Russia while inflicting severe damage on Hillary Clinton, as Democrats hit back in a growing scandal involving her email server.
Having links to Russia is a crime?
Harry Reid, the Democrat leader of the Senate, accused James Comey of “a disturbing double standard” and, in a remarkably forthright letter, said he regretted supporting a man who he once believed was “a principled public servant.”
And Comey?
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and several conservative attorneys and legal scholars held a private forum last month in which they harshly criticized FBI Director James Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation just eight days before Comey sent a letter to Congress announcing his bombshell decision to review new emails in the probe. The event, billed as a discussion on “The Law after Comey’s decision,” featured several speakers including Mukasey, who served in the George W. Bush administration, hammering Comey over the legal precedent he set in concluding the email probe three months ago without charging Clinton with a crime.
Why now? What did he find?
FBI Director James Comey stressed in his letter to Congress Friday that investigators don’t know how significant the new emails may be. But even if they don’t implicate the Democratic presidential nominee, their mere existence could call into question testimony Abedin gave months ago about the email system.
FBI records reflect that she told investigators “that she lost most of her old emails as a result of the transition.”
During a June 28, 2016 deposition with the conservative Judicial Watch, Abedin also swore she looked for and turned over all devices she thought contained government work to the State Department.
“I looked for all the devices that may have any of my State Department work on it and returned – returned – gave them to my attorneys for them to review for all relevant documents,” Abedin said. “And gave them devices and paper.”
Why would she have 600,000 emails on a compute she shared with her dick pics husband?
They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.
Let us turn the magnifying glass on them for a change, by sorting through the hacked personal emails of John Podesta, who has been a Washington power broker for decades….
I think the WikiLeaks releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty.
One week to go. Hillary or Donald?
Posted: 1st, November 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment (1)
Ben Needham: gypsies, a dead witness and a ‘cover-up’
Ben Needham has still not been found. The renewed search for the toddler who vanished on Kos 25 years ago has given us nothing of substance. But the tabloids are at work. If we can’t see the child, we can continue to gawp at his mother.
“‘WHITEWASH’ ON KOS,” says the Sun. “Ben Needham case ‘has all signs of a cover-up’ with sex slurs used to discredit toddler’s mum.”
The story continues:
THE hunt for toddler Ben Needham – who went missing on the Greek island of Kos 25 years ago – has the signs of a cover-up, an investigation found. Greek police were “under pressure” to end their probe quickly, reports The Mirror, and a witness apparently falsely claimed he had slept with Ben’s mum Kerry in an attempt to smear her.
Wow, indeed, that Greek police have spoken out. Good on them. But wait a moment.
…a retired cop, one of the first to join the hunt, admitted: “We were under pressure to close the case. Everyone wanted to find the child. We did our best.”
Unnamed ex-policeman says force was under pressure to end the case of the missing toddler who vanished on holiday to an holiday island? It’s news devoid of detail.
In the Mirror, we read he headline:
Ben Needham case has hallmarks of cover-up with cops wanting probe closed quickly and sex lies in bid to blacken mum’s name
We love a conspiracy, eh, readers? Who knew?
British police searching for answers to the disappearance of the toddler 25 years ago have tried hard to finally lift the gloom
Lucy Thornton writes:
The Ben Needham case has all the hallmarks of a cover-up, a Mirror probe has found. The Mirror can reveal Greek police were pressured to close their inquiry quickly and a witness lied that he slept with the boy’s mum, blackening her name.
A key witness account on Kos is missing and a Greek official has dismissed the UK police’s theory that Ben was run over by a digger.
As the last British tourists leave Kos at the end of the holiday season, a sinister cloud hangs over the island.
After that, Thornton makes it about, well, her.
Mirror colleagues and I have spent months investigating the mystery and found claims of a Greek “cover-up” as wicked lies, vanishing statements and smears against the family were made.
This is the Lucy Thornton who when reporting on the vanishing of Shannon Matthews, wrote: “I’ve shared the despair and relief, says the Mirror’s Lucy Thornton.” Adding: “Meanwhile, I was hugged in the street by people I barely knew less than a month ago. They thanked me. What For? For just doing my job.”
Never mind the missing child, get a load of the reporter.
Mirror colleagues and I have spent months investigating the mystery and found claims of a Greek “cover-up” as wicked lies, vanishing statements and smears against the family were made.
She then adds:
Rumours continue on the island, that Ben was taken by gypsies, or the mafia.
After the wicked- lies and “cover-up”, round-up the usual suspects. Gypsies. Always the gypsies.
Independent on Ben Needham – 1995. ‘Gypsies did it’
In 2000, the BBC reported:
Theories have included Ben having been killed, abducted by gypsies or sold on to a family who could not have a child, but police have never closed the file.
And in 1997, the Sunday Mirror reported:
The search for Ben has become a crusade for Greek private eye Stratos Bakirtzis from Thessalonika, northern Greece. Two years ago he raised the alarm and told police he had found the missing toddler while investigating a gipsy family. However, he claims the child was swapped before police could search the house.
So much for rumours and belief. What of facts, and the Mirror’s investigation?
Kerry believes there has been a cover-up over her son’s death and people wanted her to “go away….and forget about Ben”.
More belief. And facts?
In a bid to smear the Needham name, a man who worked with Kerry at a hotel on Kos falsely claimed to have slept with her, while she was out hunting for Ben. He left Kos shortly after making the allegation. He turned public opinion against the unmarried British mum and many blamed the family as a result. But Kerry has now been told by South Yorkshire Police officers this witness has finally told the truth.
He confessed it was a lie, but claimed he felt bullied into it. It is understood prosecutors on Kos are looking at this admission.
As we are invited to understand what the Mirror has understood, we hear from the unnamed source:
But he said his main reason for speaking was to reveal the statement of a mysterious witness, a friend of his, was never taken because bosses ignored his report. “He told me he’d seen a car with number plates from abroad. It had two people in the car and they were not Greek people. The witness said the child was playing outside and someone stepped out of the car and took him. My friend does not lie. I went back but once he knew the child was still missing he didn’t want to speak.
Can we speak with the witness?
He said the witness, like so many others, has since died.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 1st, November 2016 | In: Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
A Rape on Campus: a non-apology apology as the libel trial progresses with no sign of the real victims
Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann S. Wenner should not have deleted the 2014 story on ‘Jackie’s’ alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia. There was no proof whatsoever Jackie had been raped. The Columbia University Journalism School called the story a “failure of journalism”.
Wenner’s been talking a libel trial brought by Nicole Eramo, a former associate dean of students at the university. She claims the magazine’s story portrayed her as the “chief villain”. She’s seeking a modest $7.5 million in damages.
“We did everything reasonable, appropriate up to the highest standards of journalism to check on this thing,” says Wenner, as quoted in the NY Times. “The one thing we didn’t do was confront Jackie’s accusers – the rapists.”
Confront? Surely ask for their version of events. As journalism goes, offering the accused a right to reply is pretty standard stuff. The paper adds. ‘Wenner said there was nothing a journalist could do “if someone is really determined to commit a fraud”.’
You could err on the side of caution. But this was an agenda-driven story.
He said that while the magazine rightly retracted “the Jackie stuff,” he disagreed with the decision to retract the entire article in the wake of a damning report on it in April 2015 by The Columbia Journalism Review. He said the bulk of the article detailed ways that the University of Virginia could improve its treatment of victims of sexual assault.
“I stand by the rest of the article: personally, professionally and on behalf of the magazine,” Mr. Wenner said.
Mr. Wenner added: “You just want to be double careful, and by and large we are. We are deeply committed to accuracy in a humanistic philosophical pursuit of the truth.”
Heads have rolled.
Mr. Wenner testified that he knew there was a problem when he came to work the first Friday in December 2014 and found his managing editor, Will Dana, distraught. The deposition also provided Mr. Wenner’s fullest account of his decision to terminate Mr. Dana and the reporter who wrote the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. She had just begun a $300,000 writing contract. Mr. Wenner said that the quality of their work had slipped, in part because of fallout from the article.
“I cannot run the company with devastated, traumatized people,” he said.
Some irony that one traumatized woman’s alleged trauma was their undoing. Can’t work with that state of mind amongst the staffers – but can use it as a subject matter. And as for trauma, what about what of the accused?
The New York Post has more from Werner:
“I’m very, very sorry. It was never meant to ever happen this way to you,” Wenner told Nicole Eramo in taped testimony played at the
$7.85 million defamation trial.“And believe me, I’ve suffered as much as you have,” he said. “And I know what it’s like. I hope that this whole thing hadn’t happened but it is, and it’s what we live with.”
The Daily Beast provides a neat summing up of the alleged crime and notes Wenner’s apology:
He insisted that then-managing editor Will Dana’s retraction was “inaccurate… We do not retract the whole story,” and that the magazine’s biggest mistake was not corroborating Jackie’s account with her alleged attackers.
Indeed, had Erdely and her editors even attempted to do so, they would likely have arrived at a similar conclusion as Charlottesville police did after a five-month investigation: that there was no party at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity on Sept. 28, 2012, the night that Jackie claimed she was brutally raped by eight men; and that they found no evidence that Jackie was assaulted at Phi Kappa Psi or any other fraternity at UVA.
And now for that apology:
“We screwed up. Bring it on. We suffered,” Wenner said, before going on to apologize to Eramo. “It was never meant to happen this way to you. And believe me, I’ve suffered as much as you have. But please, my sympathies.”
And the accused men? No word.
Dear Sir: A woman writes a formal rejection letter to a penis photo on Facebook
Like many internet users, Sarah-Louise Jordan recived an unsolicied picure of a penis in a Facebook message. She writes, “I found a surprising picture in my messages. So, I did the only English thing there was to do; I wrote them a letter.”
“Dear Sir,
Thank you for the unexpected and unsolicited submission of your penis portrait for our consideration. We regret to inform you that it has failed to pass our most basic standards of quality control at this time.
However, for a nominal fee we can offer you a report that will help you change that.
The A4 report, provided via postal service, will include a personalised booklet that cover the following:
Why genitals are not an acceptable conversation opener (a step by step guide to saying hello)
How to appear as though you weren’t raised by wolves
Better ways to deal with your sexual frustration
How to dress your penis for social media (a rough guide to pants)
AND
Penis reading: a new form of palmistry that may help you unlock the key to your future.
We will also answer questions you might have such as:
Do I have too much time on my hands?
AND
Why did my penis fail basic standards of quality control?
(Note: the number one reason for this occurring is that it is attached to a bigger dick than itself.)
Finally, as a gesture of goodwill we intend to offer two free samples with all of your future penis portrait submissions:
An inventive critique of your pride & joy
AND
A surprise consultation with your closest available family member about your portfolio.
We trust this exciting offer is acceptable and look forward to working with you in the near future.
Yours faithfully.”
Spotter: Sarah-Louise Jordan on Facebook
Posted: 30th, October 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Anti-Semitism Watch: LibDem Jenny Tonge makes her move to join Labour?
Baroness Jenny Tonge has been suspended by the Liberal Democrats. Yes, we know, some news there that Tonge and the LibDems still exist. And when you hear the story you might suppose that Tonge has been auditioning for membership to the un-anti-Semetic Labour Party.
Today, a LibDem spokesperson tells media: “The party has suspended the membership of Jenny Tonge. We take her comments very seriously and have acted accordingly.”
Suspended. Not kicked out. Put on hold. That’s how big a deal anti-Semitism is nowadays among the elite. It is not their problem. Of course, nothing is fact. As the Guardian states: “Jenny Tonge quits Lib Dems after suspension for alleged antisemitic comments.”
Tonge noted on Facebook:
“In the course of the evening one member of the audience made a ‘rant’ against Israel quoting some very confused history which I confess I did not hear or understand! I then called the next member of the audience and moved on. The contribution was ignored by the audience after a few claps of relief! Apparently this is my sin! I am at last free of being told what I must and must not say on the issue of Palestine, lest it offends the Israel lobby here, who like to control us, as they do in the USA.
“They are trying to destroy the Labour Party with spurious accusations of antisemitism and now they have set their sights on the Lib Dems. I have never been antisemitic, and never will be. I am anti-injustice and that is why I criticise the Israeli government’s flagrant disregard for international law and human rights in the Occupied territories of Palestine and Gaza.”
The story goes that earlier this week Baroness Tonge hosted an event in the House of Lords run by the Palestine Return Council. The events was part of a campaign for Britain to apologise for the 1917 Balfour Declaration that led to the creation of a Jewish home in Palestine.
The Jewish Chronicle notes: “Attendees applauded when another member of the audience claimed that “if anybody is antisemitic, it’s the Israelis themselves.”
The paper adds:
Last week Baroness Tonge published a letter online which she said she had sent to The Guardian. In the letter, she discussed the Home Affairs Committee’s report on antisemitism, saying: “It is difficult to believe that a 75% increase in antisemitism it reports, have [sic] been committed by people who simply hate Jewish people for no reason.”
The Times reported on the event:
An audience member was applauded after suggesting that Hitler only decided to kill all the Jews after he was provoked by anti-German protests led by a rabbi in Manhattan. The speaker… said that in the 1930s Rabbi Stephen Wise, whom he described as a heretic, “made the boycott on Germany, the economic boycott… which antagonised Hitler, over the edge, to then want to systematically kill Jews wherever he could find them”.
The speaker went on:
“As opposed to . . . make Germany free of Jews, a Jew-free land. He became a madman after this boycott. Judea declares war on Germany. In Manhattan they had 100,000 people marching in the economic boycott in 1935, it was the same heretic rabbi who caused that.”
The speaker also said that Rabbi Wise told the New York Times in 1905 that there were “six million bleeding and suffering reasons to justify Zionism”. He urged the audience to note the number. This famous quotation is regularly used by Holocaust deniers to suggest that the figure of six million Jews later killed by the Nazis was a myth.
Another audience member opined:
“Chaim Weizmann [a founder of Israel] did a confidence trick back in 1917/1918. He made the British establishment think that world Jewry had power that it just didn’t have. The trouble is, 100 years on, I am not talking about world Jewry, I am talking about that segment which we called the Zionist movement, has that power and it has that over our own parliament.”
David Collier notes on his blog: “This is the transference of classic antisemitic tropes, from the hand of the Jew to the hands of the Zionist.”
The Times adds: “Lady Tonge made no attempt to challenge the provocative comments.”
David Aaronovitch observes:
“Ten years ago the baroness did the old one about Jewish financial power in the form of “the pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. She got a reprimand from her party leader for it. Six years ago it was the ancient blood libel (Jews kill gentiles for their blood or body parts, see also under Shylock), when she demanded an inquiry into absurd allegations that an Israeli aid mission to Haiti was harvesting organs from Haitians. She lost a front bench job for that.”
And no, she was not booted out of the LibDems. He conbtinues:
Before she resigned, Baroness Tonge was suspended, not expelled, from her utterly complacent party. Because actually many people don’t care that much about antisemitism any more. They say they do, but they don’t. They cluck but secretly they think antisemitism isn’t really a problem, that Jews are generally rich and can look after themselves and that — one way or another — they probably have it coming.
In the Guardian we read:
Lady Tonge, the Liberal Democrat peer, is calling for Israel to set up an inquiry to disprove allegations that its medical teams in Haiti “harvested” organs of earthquake victims for use in transplants…
Attacking Israel’s policies is one thing; insinuating that the army of the Jewish state is stealing organs or – as the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published last year, that the IDF was killing Arabs for their organs – is to repeat what antisemites were saying about the Jews in the darkest periods of history. A blood libel, in short.
One hundred and seventy years ago, the Damascus blood libel shocked the world. On 5 February 1840, Father Thomas, the superior of the Capuchin house in Damascus, and his Muslim servant disappeared. The local Jews were immediately accused of murdering the two for the intention of using their blood for making Passover Matzot. Several Jews were arrested and tortured, and some of them died, not before producing “confessions”.
The Guardian says:
The peer has a long track record of making trenchant criticisms of Israel. In 2004, when she was an MP, she was sacked from the frontbench by then party leader Charles Kennedy after she suggested that she would become a suicide bomber if she was Palestinian. At the time, Israel had endured repeated suicide bombings carried out by Palestinians during the second intifada. She was made a peer the following year.
In September, the Sunday Times noted:
A PROMINENT peer is considering defection to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party after “a lifetime” in the Liberal Democrats. Baroness Tonge said she was “thinking about” joining Labour and “a lot of people” in her party were pondering the move as they found Corbyn “a breath of fresh air”.
Smell that?
Posted: 28th, October 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Larry David Was right: driving gives women orgasms, says Islamic cleric
Tweet of the Week was supplied by @S_alqsimi , via, Deanne DuKhan (@DukhanD), who responds to news as to why women driving is forbidden. “Lorraine in the UK asks, which makes and models please?”
Hey, ladies, Curb Your Enthusiasm (language is NSFW):
Posted: 28th, October 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Ched Evans to achieve immortality in new rape law?
More news on Ched Evans, the low-life footballer found not guilty of raping a woman. AOL says the the Attorney General has suggested “the law could be changed to give greater protection to alleged rape victims following the Ched Evans case”.
Evans below
In “Ched Evans trial: Government considers rape law change”, the BBC adds:
Labour has condemned the decision to allow the jury to hear details about the sexual history of the complainant.
When the jury had not head about the alleged victim’s sexual history – in particular a phrase she used during sex – Evans was found guilty of rape beyond any reasonable doubt and imprisoned. When the woman’s sexual history was made known, he was found not guilty of rape. Her sexual history was important in the case for the defence.
Attorney General Jeremy Wright told the Commons it was not “routinely used” in such cases, but there was “a concern”.
It is a huge concern. A cartoon in this week’s Private Eye magazine has the judge asking jurors: “Do you find the accused ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not Guilty’ of raping the dreadful slapper?”
Jeremy Wright QC told Attorney General Questions in the Commons:
“We need to understand more about the decision in this particular case, we need to understand whether a change in the law is appropriate, and if not whether it is sensible to look at the guidance that is given to judges about when this evidence is admissible and the guidance that judges give to juries about how that evidence should be used.
“I think we need to do all of those things before we are in a position to understand what, if any, changes are needed…
“We must be confident that the message sent to those who may be currently worried about reporting these sorts of offences is not that they are not encouraged to do so, quite the reverse, they are, and we need to make sure that those messages are clear.”
The Secret Barrister notes:
…we all know that section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act prohibits leading evidence or asking questions concerning a complainant’s previous sexual behaviour in sex cases. There are certain exceptions to this rule, and the Court of Appeal found in Ched Evans’ case that the complainant X’s previous sexual behaviour was relevant to the issue of consent and was “so similar” to the sexual behaviour of X at the time of the alleged rape that “the similarity cannot reasonably be explained as a coincidence”.
…
The precedent that has been set is none. The Court of Appeal decision sets down no new application of law or principle, and section 41 continues to operate exactly as it did before, excluding the vast, vast majority of questions about previous sexual behaviour. The newspapers, activists and charities propagating this false message are needlessly terrifying present and future victims, and will only risk deterring them from coming forward.
Do we need a new rule?
Whatever happened in this unusual case is unlikely to have any wider application; certainly there is nothing that suggests the Court intends to widen the scope of section 41. Victims should not be scared to come forward on the basis of what is being said, loudly and inaccurately, by those who should know better.
As for the not-guilty-of-rape Ched Evans, well, his name could become part of reworked law governing rapes. You might not like him, but does an innocent man deserve that?
Malaysian religious government says hot dogs are un-Islamic
Hot dogs are un-Islamic, says the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (MIDD). To receive halal certification,the MIDD, a religious government body, says hot dogs must be renamed.
MIDD’s Sirajuddin Suhaimee explains says: “In Islam, dogs are considered unclean and the name cannot be related to halal certification.”
Yes, but the hot dog contains no dogs, it being most often a composite blend of pigs’s scrotum, anus and lips.
“Malaysian halal food guidelines say halal food and halal artificial flavour shall not be named or synonymously named after non-halal products such as ham, bak kut teh, bacon, beer, rum and others that might create confusion,” he adds.
The Auntie Anne store has been refused halal certification unless it renamed its “Pretzel Dog”. Mr Suhaimee says it should be called a Pretzel Sausage”.
And in keeping with Islamic law, Auntie Anne might care to ‘circumcise’ the tip of its Fat Torpedo:
Warts and all
Posted: 20th, October 2016 | In: Reviews, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Harry Redknapp’s wife Sandra in freak car accident – Daily Mail digs up old horrors
Harry Redknapp was dropping his wife Sandra in Westbourne, a suburb of Bournemouth, when her coat got caught in the door of his Range Rover. The Indy says the 69-year-old [Sandra] “screamed with agony on the pavement after being dragged along the road”.
An eyewitness tells the Sun:
“I was in a shop and a couple of people came in and said, ‘Crikey, there’s a lady who’s been dragged along the road’, then someone else came in and said it was Harry Redknapp who had just dropped his wife off. I heard as he drove off she got her coat caught in the door. She was dragged along the road before he realised. I think she has been badly injured.”
The Indy says there was lots of blood.
The Telegraph identifies the car: “Harry Redknapp drags wife along road in ‘freak accident’ in his Range Rover.”
This private horror is then given the Daily Mail treatment. Can it be possible to attack a man who has been left “shaken” buy seeing his wife hurt? Yes, The Mail sees fit to include this in its report:
In 2006, the BBC’s investigative programme Panorama showed Mr Redknapp on camera expressing his interest in approaching a player illegally in order to arrange a transfer.
Following an investigation by HMRC in 2010, he was charged with two counts of cheating the public revenue, but was later found not guilty at a trial.
It then concludes:
Last night, representatives for Mr Redknapp denied that an incident had taken place.
Get well soon, Sandra.
Posted: 20th, October 2016 | In: Reviews, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Brexit: British federalists and ex-pats seek EU passports in other countries
Brexit is impelling some people to make a choice: stay in the UK or live in the European Union? The Guardian reports that many Britons are appealing to become citizens in other countries.
The number of Britons seeking citizenship in other EU countries has surged as a result of the Brexit vote, with some member states recording near tenfold increases on 2015 figures.
The British are not queuing up to live in Romania and Bulgaria. The report says they fancy new lives in Denmark, Italy, Ireland and Sweden, which all report “spikes” in “citizens eager to secure proper status in the EU”.
Between January and October 2016, 2,800 Britons applied for citizenship in other EU countries. This, says the paper is a 250% increase on numbers recorded in 2015.
Compared with last year’s figures, numbers have surged almost tenfold in Denmark and threefold in Sweden.
Denmark might not be best best option. Many Danes want their own EU referendum on what is dubbed Dexit.
Several applicants told the Guardian that it was the Brexit vote that prompted them to take action.
The numbers are not big, are they. Under 3,000 Britons have applied to be non-British citizens in other countries. And “several” said Brexit promoted the move.
The Guardian was in favour of the country remaining in the EU. So too was the Independent, which said: “Brexit prompts surge in Britons applying for citizenship in EU countries.”
In April the FT noted:
The German embassy in London told the Financial Times that 200-250 requests for information on how to apply for citizenship have been received per day since the referendum result was announced, compared with an average of 20-25 daily inquiries a month earlier.
The Hungarian consulate has received 150 inquiries since the vote, while it said it had received less than 10 during the rest of this year.
How do you qualify?
It is hard to tell what the chances are of the citizenship applications succeeding — people living in the UK depend on their ancestry to qualify.
The German embassy said UK residents would need a German parent. “There are certainly quite a number of people where it seems obvious they won’t qualify. We don’t have any figures for that though,” said Norman Walter, a spokesman.
Other countries have more liberal conditions. Italy, which has received around 500 email requests at its UK embassy since the Brexit vote, offers citizenship to foreigners who can prove that at least one of their grandparents was Italian.
The same grandparent rule applies to anyone seeking an Irish passport.
And less glamorous destinations?
Yet that has not deterred inquiries for a Bulgarian passport. The country’s London embassy has received 15 citizenship inquiries by British people since June 24. “We usually don’t receive such kind of requests so this is a new thing for us,” said a spokesman.
Bloomberg aded:
Estonia said it had seen a “notable” increase in residency requests and Lithuania reported a rise in applications to 34 since June 23, from a typical average of one or two per month.
Meanwhile, you can always just be rich.
Malta and Cyprus are both in the EU, and both offer a fast-track to citizenship for people who are able to invest a significant amount of money.
Maltese citizenship is available to those who invest €1.15m (£965,000; $1.3m) there; the country added a one-year residency requirement after EU pressure. The scheme is aimed at “ultra-high net worth individuals and families worldwide”.
The Cypriot government offers citizenship to those who put €5m (£4.2m; $5.6m) into approved investments – this is reduced to just €2.5m for those taking part in a collective investment. Applicants need to have a property in Cyprus but do not need to live there all of the time. Family members are included in the application, which can take as little as three months.
Should you stay or should you go?
Posted: 20th, October 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
Kelvin MacKenzie and the Sun beat Channel 4 News and a hijab
On July 18, the Sun featured a column but its former editor Kelvin MacKenzie in which he asked, “Why did Channel 4 have a presenter in a hijab fronting coverage of Muslim terror in Nice?”.
That the question was rhetorical became apparent in the next line: “Would C4 have used a Hindu to report on the carnage at the Golden Temple of Amritsar…of course not.”
And again: “Would the station have used an Orthodox Jew to cover the Israeli-Palestine conflict? Of course not.
Hundreds complained to Ipso, the press regulator. This meant lots of people were talking about the Sun and MacKenzie – and so both became relevant.
MacKenzie posed more questions:
…I could hardly believe my eyes. The presenter was not one of the regulars — Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Matt Frei or Cathy Newman — but a young lady wearing a hijab. Her name is Fatima Manji and she has been with the station for four years. Was it appropriate for her to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim?
Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sign of the slavery of Muslim women by a male- dominated and clearly violent religion?
So why did they do it?
…
With all the major terrorist outrages in the world currently being carried out by Muslims, I think the rest of us are reasonably entitled to have concerns about what is beating in their religious hearts. Who was in the studio representing our fears?
Questions upon questions. And like all good columnists, MacKenzie triggered a heated debate.
Manji called MacKenzie’s words “ill-informed, racist and Islamophobic”.
Ben De Pear, who edits the Channel 4 news show, said:
“Whilst we agree that freedom of expression is a fundamental right, we do not believe that it should be used as a licence to incite or discriminate. His inflammatory comments on Fatima Manji’s professional status, which were widely condemned, and his attempts to equate the wearing of a hijab with support for terrorism, have no place in a properly informed and tolerant society… We employ reporters based on their journalistic skills, not their ethnicity. We see no reason why a Muslim journalist should be prevented from covering any story and Fatima will continue to report and present the news on the issues of the day with impartiality and depth. We are grateful for all the support shown to Fatima during this difficult time.”
Difficult time? Really? (See those questions are catchy.) Channel 4 is hardly a fan of the Sun and its readers. Surely the broadcaster got some satisfaction from MacKenzie’s rant? Prejudices, you know, we do so love them when we can back them up with evidence. Manji did not like it. But Ipso has rejected her complaints.
“There can be no doubt that this was deeply offensive to the complainant and caused widespread concern and distress to others. This was demonstrated by the number of complaints IPSO received.
“The article was highly critical of Channel 4 for permitting a newsreader to wear the hijab. It also contained pejorative references to Islam. But the essential question for the committee was whether those references were directed at the complainant.
“Clause 12 seeks to protect individuals while respecting the fundamental right to freedom of expression enshrined in the preamble to the code.
“The article did refer to the complainant. But it did so to explain what triggered the discussion about a subject of legitimate debate: whether newsreaders should be allowed to wear religious symbols.
“While the columnist’s opinions were undoubtedly offensive to the complainant, and to others, these were views he had been entitled to express. The article did not include a prejudicial or pejorative reference to the complainant on the grounds of her religion.
“Clause 3 seeks to protect individuals from harassment. In the light of its findings under Clause 12, and given that the course of conduct complained of was the publication of a single article on a matter which, while sensitive, was the subject of legitimate public debate, the Committee took the view that it did not amount to harassment under Clause 3.
“The columnist’s view that Islam is ‘clearly a violent religion’ was a statement of his opinion. This view, however extreme or offensive to many, did not raise a breach of Clause 1.
“The suggestion that the complainant was a ‘pawn in this tv news game’ was clearly conjecture, and underlined that the author’s criticism was directed at Channel 4 and not at the individual newsreader. There was no breach of Clause 1.”
Kelvin MacKenzie and newspapers are still relevant after al these years. Who knew?
Posted: 19th, October 2016 | In: Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Ched Evans lets the knowing elite give football a kicking
Ched Evans continues to excite the Press. In the Mirror, David Kidd writes beneath the headline “Ched Evans acted like a scumbag, but that’s no excuse for this systematic kicking football is getting.”
Kidd says mixing with lots of footballers has not left him with “the impression that they are a group of men who are contemptuous of women”. Adding that “footballers are easy scapegoats for an establishment dominated by inherited wealth and private schooling which dislikes their game.”
Ched Evans, a lowlife innocent of rape, no more epitomises the game any more than Jimmy Savile is a typical children’s entertainer. Evans represents himself only. So why does Kidd use him to support his own prejudices against those who went to fee-paying schools and are lucky enough to have well-off parents?
It’s not just toffs in positions of authority who, when not parading footballers as role models for inept and slack-jawed football fans, want to give footballers a good kicking.
When Chelsea fans prevented a black Frenchman from boarding a train in Paris, Nick Clegg told one and all, “I was so ashamed.” It is pretty much the only evidence we can find of Clegg expressing shame for anything.
Footballers and football fans behaving badly gives the elite what they want: someone to make them look good.
Giving football a shoeing is nothing new. In 1985 a Sunday Times editorial called it “a slum sport watched by slum people in slum stadiums”.
Of course, Clegg did go to public school. so let’s hear form someone who did not. Get this from Caitlin Moran in the Times, who in 2014 through Evans was forced to reconsider her belief in redemption:
Perhaps young, rich, fit, unrepentant men who have raped do need to see their lives reduced to ash – without prospect of forgiveness, employment or absolution – until the day they die. I’m starting to see the sense in choosing, say, a hundred rapists and making their lives publicly, endlessly awful – unrelentingly humiliating, without prospect of absolution. Of making them famous for being appalling; regarded as untouchable. So that men become terrified of raping, in the same way women are terrified of being raped. So that rapists spend their lives dealing with the night they raped in the same way women currently do.
Perhaps the only way society can be good – to progress; to change – is to stop believing in redemption for a while. Perhaps redemption does women no good at all.
One law for the rich footballer – who, it must be said, was unrepentant because he always maintained his innocence, something now on the law books as fact – and one law for all other kinds of criminals and crimes.
Posted: 19th, October 2016 | In: Back pages, Reviews | Comment
Tory MP: electrocution and dental X-rays are just part of being British
Teenagers are all over the tabloids. The Mirror leads with the 14 years olds who murdered a mother and her daughter. Katie Edwards, 13, and her mother Elizabeth Edwards were murdered by the 14-year-old girl and her boyfriend in Spalding, Lincolnshire. The children broke in and grabbed their victims in the next as they slept.
The other teenagers on the front pages are those trying to reach the UK for a better life. Some are older than they claim to be. So one Tory MP wants them to be X-rayed to see if their teeth are under age or over age. The Home Office says: “We do not use dental x-rays to confirm the ages of those seeking asylum in the UK. The British Dental Association has described them as inaccurate, inappropriate and unethical.”
And useless.
“We work closely with the French authorities and their partner agencies to ensure all those who come to the UK from the camps in Calais are eligible under the Dublin regulations.
“All individuals are referred to the UK authorities by the France Terre d’Asile [charity] and are then interviewed by French and UK officials. Where credible and clear documentary evidence of age is not available, criteria including physical appearance and demeanour are used as part of the interview process to assess age.”
Mr Davies reasons that refugees keen to reach the UK won’t mind being examined. “Someone who is willing to throw themselves on to an electrified rail line or jump into a moving lorry isn’t going to be terribly worried about having an x-ray,” he reasoned on BBC Radio 4 Today. He stopped short of suggesting electrocution and being run over should be part of the entry process.
“We must not be naive about this. It’s no good Lily Allen turning up with tears in her eyes and all the rest of it. We need to be quite hard-nosed here,” he added. “People are desperate, I understand that, and they will say what they need to say to get in. When I was in the camp in Calais there were caravans with notices on saying, ‘Come here, we will coach you in what to say to get into the UK’.”
Entrepreneurs are everywhere.
He adds: “People in Britain, I think, want to help children but we don’t want to be taken for a free ride either by people who seem to have got to the front of the queue even though they clearly look, in some cases, a lot older than 18.”
Forget dentists. Hire school bus drivers to appraise age. Some of those kids are massive.
The Ched Evans witch-hunt is entertaining housewives on Loose Women
The Daily Star leads with news that Ched Evans could take libel action against Gloria Hunniford and ITV after “she expressed doubt over striker’s not guilty rape verdict on Loose Women TV show”. “Ched to sue Loose women,” thunders the front-page headline.
Ched, reduced to one name like all top TV entertainers, is not a rapist. But his case is a talking point on daytime telly. The Mail notes:
The family of cleared footballer Ched Evans are set to engage lawyers to look at libel action against Gloria Hunniford and ITV following comments made on Monday’s Loose Women programme.
And:
Chesterfield and Wales striker Evans, 27, was found not guilty of raping a 19-year-old woman at a hotel near Rhyl in 2011 at a Cardiff Crown Court retrial on Friday.
His age now is used against her age then. He was 22 then. Both were young adults. The Mirror does the same: “The 27-year-old was found not guilty of raping a woman, then 19, in a hotel room in Rhuddlan, North Wales, in May 2011, following a retrial.”
Back to the Mail:
However, 76-year-old Hunniford hit out at the former Manchester City and Sheffield United striker on the popular daytime show on Monday afternoon. Despite the not guilty verdict, Hunniford expressed doubt over the jury’s decision. She later added: ‘I wouldn’t send my grandchildren to him for sex education.’
Well, no. It’s unlikely he’d answer the door to them, let alone get out the whiteboard and ask Gloria’s grandkids to take notes as he pontificated on fidelity, honesty, love, reproduction, and consensual sex. Ched Evans will have to look elsewhere for a celebrity to endorse his sex ed classes.
The Mail adds:
Hunniford may not be alone should lawyers decide to take action, with Evans’s representatives considering launching proceedings against a number of parties including Sheffield United, who released the player when he was originally convicted of the offence in 2012, and Brabners, who represented him at his original trial.
Father-of-one Evans served half of a five-year prison sentence. He had always protested his innocence and a retrial was ordered by the Court of Appeal earlier this year. A spokesman for ITV’s Loose Women said: ‘We’ve received a complaint from the father of Ched Evans’ partner, to which we are responding.’
Ched Evans is innocent.
Allison Parson writes in the Telegraph:
An online feminist lynch mob – and even Gloria Hunniford on ITV’s Loose Women – have chosen to ignore that decision, with possible libel actions to follow. They seem to think that “not guilty” doesn’t mean that Evans, who served two and a half years in jail, is off the hook, despite what the Court of Appeal says. Right. I mean, what would they know?
Expect to hear lots more about this.
Posted: 19th, October 2016 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
The myth of racism in football and a need to trial The Rooney Rule
The Daily Mirror’s headline is unequivocal: former Manchester United and Aston Villa striker Dwight Yorke is a victim of racism. The headline states: “YORKE: I’m Being Held Back By Racism.”
To further drum the point home, the Mirror adds: “Wannabe manager Dwight Yorke insists racism is stopping him even getting INTERVIEWS for jobs.”
The story begins:
“You keep hitting a wall, keep constantly not getting anywhere” says ex-Man United star who has the coaching badges but cannot get his foot in the door
That’s a pretty big claim. Football is just about the least racist industry in the UK – a quarter of Premier League playing staff are black. Why should Yorke, discovered by the then Aston Villa manager Graham Taylor on a tour of the West Indies in 1989, think racism is stopping his career?
The Mirror is adamant:
Ex-Manchester United striker Yorke insists racism in football has stopped him and other retired stars breaking into management.
Only racism has prevent Yorke from becoming a manager? No. Reading on we get a qualifier:
He says he has completed his coaching badges but is convinced his colour has played a part in stopping him from building a career in England.
The Mirror did not get the story. It is repackaging Yorke’s words to beIN Sports, in which he said:
“I’m still looking to get in. I’ve done all the coaching badges at St George’s and the one thing I find very difficult, let alone get a job, is to even get an interview. I’m finding it very, very difficult at the moment. Yes, you are doing all your coaching, all your badges, but then when it comes to getting a job, you are not even getting an interview. It’s all about who you know as well, that has to play a role. Despite all my experience of being a player, I’ve never had the experience of being a manager which is a different concept from being a coach.”
So a lack of experience and not knowing the right people are factors in his failure to secure a managerial job.
BeIn Sports not Yorke brought up race. Yorke responded:
When asked whether it was down to his lack of managerial experience or his colour, Yorke replied: “I think there’s a bit of both there. I genuinely think there’s a bit of both. It’s often been discussed, no-one has really taken it up, but I do have a tendency when I speak to everybody, certainly black players who are trying to break into managerial department are coming up against the same concept because of your race.”
There are no black managers in the Premier League. There are, however, many foreign-born managers. Only six of the current crop are British.
Yorke adds:
“You keep constantly hitting a wall, keep constantly not getting anywhere and even with all the noises that I’ve made, I’ve even tried to get in at Villa at this point. What I’m saying is that it would have been nice to just have your thoughts heard.
“OK, maybe you will never get a chance to be a manager but it would be nice to go in there, present yourself, get to know that person and [have them] say, ‘OK, Dwight, we like your concept, but you’re not experienced enough. Go away and do this or do that.'”
It’s hard to comment on York’s efforts to get a managerial job without knowing to which clubs he’s applied. Were Villa ever likely to take on an ex-player with no managerial track record to be their figurehead?
The Indy twists Yorke’s words a little to deliver the headline:
Dwight Yorke says being black is stopping him becoming a manager after missing out on Aston Villa job
To link Aston Villa with racism is absurd and unfair. And it wasn’t simply missing out on the Villa job that shaped his thoughts.
The Indy adds:
Ryan Giggs does not have a large managerial history to fall back on though, and the fact that he was installed as the bookmakers’ favourite for the Swansea job when Francesco Guidolin was sacked does support Yorke’s argument, given he has not been able to secure an interview at clubs in the lower tiers of English football.
Again that’s absurd, too. Giggs didn’t get that job. He tried and failed. Swansea appointed a foreigner. The bookies made Giggs the favourite because, well, he’s Welsh. What other reason was there? Swansea is owned by Americans – and they appointed one of their own. Gary Neville scored his first managerial job at Valencia on the strength of coaching a poor England side and being mates with the Spanish club’s owner.
Worse than that is the hype that misrepresents Yorke, who was circumspect and measured in his words. The tabloid twist makes for sensation. Rather than investigating racism in football’s boardrooms, they could look at racism on what passes for Fleet Street. See any top-flight editors, chairmen of the board, managing editors, new editors and so on?
But Yorke’s views do make us wonder why with so many black players there are so few notable black managers?
Former player turned media pundit Jason Roberts said it was due to “unconscious bias” at best or “possibly racism” at worst.
Cyrille Regis opined: “As a player, it’s tangible. You can hear the racist chants, you can see the bananas on the pitch and you can react to it, but when you are going for jobs and interviews and putting your CVs in, you can’t really tell somebody’s heart where they’re coming from, what prejudices they have inside of them.”
The football league is looking to introduce The Rooney Rule:
The ‘Rooney Rule’ was established in 2003 and named after Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the chairman of the NFL’s diversity committee. It requires NFL teams to interview at least one black or ethnic minority candidate for head coaching and senior football operation opportunities that become available, as part of a transparent and open recruitment process
Brian Collins noted in the New York Law Review: “A decision-maker harbouring unconscious bias is forced to confront his own partiality by meeting face-to-face with a candidate he might never have considered.”
Time to help black managers and would-be black managers – and with it encourage more black faces to consider a role in management.
Posted: 18th, October 2016 | In: Back pages, Reviews, Sports | Comment
Bank-robber daughter tricked dad into being her getaway driver
Other Parents spots this story from Florida. When Chelsea Wilson, 24, was arrested in connection with a bank robbery in Fort Lauderdale, she told the teller: “You have exactly one minute to give me all your $50 & $100 bills from both your drawers or I will shoot you! No dye packs, no alarms follow these instructions and no one will get hurt, act normal.”
Saving up for a car
Wilson then walked off with $300 in cash and got into a waiting car -a vehicle registered to Wilson’s father, who was in the driver’s seat.
“I drove her to a job interview and waited for her to return,” said dad. “I thought the cash was advance payment for her job.”
Wilson has admitted to robbing the TD Bank branch and the three other banks, presumably in her role as security assessor.
Posted: 17th, October 2016 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Ben Needham: excavations end, forensics take over and speculation is rife
The latest hunt for Ben Needham has ended. Police have stopped excavating work ends on the Greek island of Kos. Ben vanished on 24 July 1991. He was 21 months old.
British police have sent “items of interest” to forensics in the UK. The Times says there are 60 such items.
Det Insp John Cousins, who is leading the investigation, tells media:
“I’ve got the confidence that we have done exactly what we can, given the plans we had before we came out here so that I can give an answer, whatever that might be, to Ben’s family… It has been a difficult job, the conditions have been extremely hot and very dusty and they are long hours they have been working.”
The BBC report end with one fact and one theory;
Ben vanished from a farmhouse, which his grandfather was renovating, in the village of Iraklis.
Officers are working on the theory that Konstantinos Barkas, who died of cancer in 2015, might be responsible for Ben’s death.
The BBC keeps things open. Sky News has a more precise guess:
Ben may have died on the day he disappeared, run over by a local digger driver, who was clearing land near the spot where the toddler had been playing.
After the guesswork, the speculation:
If nothing significant has been recovered, it will be a bitter disappointment for the Needham family…
But the prize for reporting goes to the Star:
Ben Needham dig called off as family told missing tot will ‘NEVER be found’
Is that what a cop said?
The Star has read the words of one Greek officer in the Mail:
“The British police will never find anything. We thoroughly investigated all the areas that the British investigators are searching now at the time and nothing was found. We examined all scenarios of the disappearance of the young English boy and a full report of our findings was compiled and sent to police HQ consistent with an allegation of the abduction of a minor. The investigation and the whole saga continues because the British have provided the money. But the whole operation is futile.”
Such are the facts.
The Ched Evens interview: the role model explains everything
Sat with his fiancée, Natasha Massey, and two dogs, footballer Ched Evans – not a rapist – talks to the Sunday Times about his ordeal.
He says:
“This has never been about me as a footballer but [about me] as a person, a human being. A father who wants to take his son to the park knowing that no one can look at me and say, ‘He’s a rapist.’ That’s why I wasn’t going to stop until I was proven innocent. From the first day, I would have agreed never to kick another ball in return for people accepting I was not a rapist.”
But to many it was about his role as footballer. Why else was the news on the front pages? One line stuck. Evans told police: “We could have had any girl we wanted … We’re footballers.”
The woman?
“I have got mixed emotions really. The fact is I cannot say she has ever accused me of rape. She hasn’t. She went to the police, believing her bag had been stolen. When me and Clayton got arrested [Clayton McDonald] we told the truth straight away and still to this day five years on she has never claimed that she had been raped.
“My belief is that it got put to her that she had been raped by two footballers. But my feelings towards the girl involved is that I can’t actually say I am angry, because – if she genuinely doesn’t remember – it doesn’t mean that we raped her. It doesn’t mean she didn’t consent. It just means that she can’t remember.
“I’d be lying if I said I feel some hatred towards her. I don’t. It would probably be more [correct] to say I feel sorry for her because of what she has been put through.”
The sex?
‘I have gone in the room and at the time Clay is having sex with the woman. As soon as I walked in, and I will never forget this, the door bangs behind me and they have both looked at me…
“It escalated into sex and as soon as I did that, I started to think, Tash [girlfriend Natasha] was coming up the next day and I’d better get home because I couldn’t have explained why I’d stayed in the hotel. Clay decided to come with me and he stayed at my house.”
The lover?
“Tasha’s life would have been easier if she just cut all ties with me the moment I told her I cheated on her. She knows me, she knows I wouldn’t commit a crime like that. She didn’t stay with me for money, that’s for sure… My behaviour that night was totally unacceptable but it wasn’t a crime.”
Evans has also been talking to the Mail on Sunday.
Ched the activist?
“I was young at the time and I was stupid and I wasn’t aware of the situations you could potentially find yourself in that would land you in trouble. I have never been taught about anything like that. You get your gambling and drinking training but nothing else on top of that. In this day and age people need educating on alcohol and consent.
“I read somewhere you would have to get signed consent. That wouldn’t be realistic but someone needs to come up with something. The best thing is just to be educated. And when they are drunk to think twice about it. How would it look in a court of law?”
This was big news because footballers are portrayed as scum. When you have one whose depravity is manifest, he gives lie to the top-down use of footballers as “role models”. Evans appears to have fallen into the trap of believing the hype. The Guardian notes: “Footballer acquitted this week of raping waitress says he wants to speak to young players about risks they face.”
No. Young footballers can speak with their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. Thanks but no thanks, Ched. Save it for your book.
Ched Evans is not a criminal. That much is fact. Why the police and CPS pursued him and sought his conviction is debatable.
Posted: 16th, October 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews, Sports | Comment
When Hillary Clinton spread ‘negative’ news about Obama being a Muslim
Hillary Clinton has to do nothing to win the US Presidential race to the bottom. The media are obsessed with reality TV creation Donald Trump and accusations that he molested women. But what about those leaked emails, the ones WikiLeaks has published about Clinton?
First a few words about the sex. Jonah Goldberg is impressed by the double standards: “I honestly can’t get my head around the fact that Hillary Clinton’s closing ‘argument’ in this election is sexual harassment. Bill Clinton’s lifelong enabler has managed to turn this topic into a deadly weapon against a Republican nominee. This is like Godzilla turning public safety into a winning issue in the Tokyo mayoral race.”
And now for those emails on Hillary’s secret server that got wiped – whoops!
Kimberley Strassel writes in the Wall Street Journal:
Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the former general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the attorneys in her circle of friends “can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents.” She added: “It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.”
…
Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.
…Worse, Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, as documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show, took special care of donors to the Clinton Foundation. In a series of 2010 emails, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton asked a foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with the Haitian earthquake relief were “FOB” (Friends of Bill) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs). Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website.
But the big bangs are to do with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In 2008 Hillary was vying with Obama to be the Democrat Party’s presidential nominee. Her team produced a list of “negatives” to attack her rival.
One of these “negatives” as to accuse Obama of being a Muslim.
CNN explains it away:
According to Tom Matzzie and Paul Begala, two Democratic consultants advising the 2008 polling effort by Progressive Media USA, it was simply an effort to test Obama’s vulnerabilities in a potential general election against John McCain.
Begala and Matzzie told CNN that the group also tested arguments against Clinton, a claim that is backed up by a separate hacked email available on WikiLeaks as Document ID 2187.
“This is Campaigning 101,” said Matzzie, an Obama supporter in 2008 who was the president and executive director of Progressive Media USA. “You test the vulnerabilities of your candidate — something (Republicans) should have done for Donald Trump.”
But Obama and Clinton were rivals, right?
And in another leak, Hillary apparently said:
The main reason behind successful immigration should be painfully obvious to even the most dimwitted of observers: Some groups of people are almost always highly successful given only half a chance (Jews*, Hindus/Sikhs and Chinese people, for example), while others (Muslims, blacks** and Roma***, for instance) fare badly almost irrespective of circumstances.
What did Hillary Clinton say at the last debate? Oh, yes: “They they go low, you go high.” But not as high as Obama, allegedly.
Posted: 15th, October 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Ched Evans: The witch-hunt continues
Former Sheffield untied footballer Ched Evans is innocent. You might not like him. You might think him a scumbag, a low-life or hard done by. But one thing he is not is a rapist. A conviction for rape was quashed on appeal. A retrial found him not guilty. End of. What might have been a typical night out has damaged lives.
So how do you report on the Evan’s acquittal?
The Star goes for his apology and crying.
The Sun goes for his balls.
An innocent man – one guilty of committing no crime – is branded “GUILTY” on the front page.
Is this part of a ploy to woo the woman Evans was accused of raping? She is now able to sell her story. The Sun would surely buy it.
The paper follows an attack on him with another story about idiots on Twitter who rush to judgement.
‘A DIRTY LITTLE B****’ Ched Evans’ supporters troll his accuser as footballer is found not guilty of rape
THE teen waitress who accused Ched Evans of raping her in a hotel room has been viciously trolled on Twitter in the wake of his not guilty verdict. The woman – who cannot be named – was subjected to a barrage of online abuse after Evans was sensationally cleared of rape this afternoon.
Her life has been damaged. She has a new identity and has “moved far from her North Wales home”. Do not name her. It is a criminal offence to do so.
The Sun picks out a few quotes from bleeding hearts in the Twitter mob who want the woman to suffer more.
One wrote: “Hope the stupid s*** who is guilty for getting for getting Ched Evans sent to prison and ruining his life gets named and shamed for life ruined.” Another added: “Poor Ched Evans. The girl who accused him of rape should be locked up. She basically ended his career that piece of s**t.”
The case against Evans was approved by Crown Prosecution Service. Their task was to prove guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. They failed.
In the Daily Mirror, Alison Phillips writes: “What woman in her right mind would go to the police this morning if she were raped last night after too much to drink? I wouldn’t.”
Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS Wales Ed Beltrami says:
“We respect the decision of the jury today. This case hinged on the issue of sexual consent – that someone consents if they agree by choice and have the freedom and capacity to make that choice. Being drunk does not mean a person relinquishes their right to consent, that they are to blame for being attacked or that they were ‘fair game’.”
The trial judge words should be noted. Ms Justice Nicola Davies instructed the jury:
“Your decision must be made calmly, objectively and without emotion. You are not here to judge the morals of any person in this case and this includes the complainant and the defendant. You are to try this case on the evidence you hear in this court in this trial and nothing else.”
She directed the jurors to consider three questions:
Question 1:
Are you sure that when the defendant intentionally penetrated the vagina of the complainant she did not consent to it? If you are sure that she did not consent, go to question two. If you conclude that she did consent or may have consented your verdict is NOT GUILTY.
Question 2:
Are you sure that the defendant did NOT genuinely believe that the complainant consented? If you are sure that the defendant did not believe the complainant was consenting, your verdict is GUILTY.
If you conclude the defendant did believe or may have believed that the complainant was consenting go to question three.
Question 3:
Are you sure that the defendant’s belief in the complainant’s consent was unreasonable? If you are sure it was not a reasonably held belief then your verdict is GUILTY. If you conclude that it was or may have been a reasonably held belief then your verdict is NOT GUILTY.
Matt Dickinson nots in the Times: “Just because it isn’t rape, doesn’t mean it isn’t misogynistic and nasty.”
In the Telegraph, we read: “‘Team Ched’ show just how sick football culture in Britain is.”
The established facts of what happened at the Premier Inn near Rhyl on the night of May 30, 2011, are sordid enough: Evans lied, as he admitted in court, to obtain the key that gained access to the bedroom, did not speak to the young woman before, during or after sex, then left the hotel by a fire exit…
As for the impression of contrition, forget it. His statement on Friday that he “wholeheartedly apologised to anyone who might have been affected by the events of the night in question” does not square with the fact that he has stood by while a website has published horrendous character assassinations of the woman concerned. Her life, to a greater extent even than his, has been ruined. If a man such as Evans is now to be made a martyr, then the culture of football in Britain truly is sicker than we thought.
The Indy has more:
Robert Brown, a partner at Corkerbinning, told The Independent: “In a jury trial, as in this case, it is for the prosecution to persuade the jury beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty.
“The verdict means that a particular jury was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of [Mr Evan’s] guilt. It is not the same as saying the woman has lied.
“Saying she should be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice is a complete non sequitur. The Crown Prosecution Service could prosecute her if there’s evidence she was deliberately lying, but there is no evidence of that.
“The fact that the jury don’t give any motive for their decision is one of the reasons why you cannot say this woman should be prosecuted. “Because it may be that the evidence from the woman was not the deciding factor in the case.”
Do you believe in the rule of law? Do you believe a person is innocent until proven otherwise? If you do, you can read about Ched Evans and move on. If not, you can continue to use an ugly story to support your own pet theories, businesses, causes and prejudices. You can join in the witch-hunt.
Posted: 15th, October 2016 | In: Back pages, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
