The row that has broken out over Rotherham Council’s decision to take three foreign born children away from the couple who were fostering them because they were members of UKIP has certainly hit a public nerve. It’s a huge story not just in the tabloids but also the broadsheets and even the BBC, usually keen to avoid portraying UKIP in a sympathetic light, has been leading with it.

Initially the Labour controlled council stonewalled with pravdaesque blandness

Joyce Thacker, the council’s Director of Children and Young People’s Services, had earlier toured radio and television studios to defend the decision, saying the children had been removed in order to protect their “cultural and ethnic needs”.

But even boneheaded Labour apparatchiks can sometimes sniff the shifting of a public mood and are now promising a review of the decision.

Of course this is not the first time that Rotherham Council has been at the centre of a row over the care of children. It has been claimed that, as in Rochdale, over sensitivity towards “cultural” issues explained why for years the issue of Asian men grooming and exploiting young girls for sex was pushed under the carpet for fear of being accused of “racism” or “islamophobia”

Now Joyce Thacker has some form here as well – see how she contorted herself to avoid committing the deadliest sin of the church of political correctness…

Joyce Thacker, the strategic director of the children and young people’s services directorate at Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, has a vast amount of experience in dealing with sexual exploitation of young people. She says that it is “interesting” to note that most of the men involved are Asian but that it is primarily an issue of the abuse of children by older men.
“What about the younger boys who are sent to befriend the girls in the first place?” says Thacker, “Are they also victims of abuse? Certainly we need to ensure that more work is done within all communities that explores positive, healthy relationships, or these young men may end up being the abusers themselves.”

However it could be that as more stones are being turned over as a result of this UKIP story Joyce Thacker and the Rotherham’s Labour political elite might be having to answer a lot more questions….

The bastion of the left at the UK Guardian appears totally nonplussed at the result of a poll which discovers that working class voters are not particularly enamoured of those policies so much favoured by the chattering classes at their North London dinner parties – uncontrolled immigration and massive transfers of taxpayers money into overseas aid.

Could that possibly be because it is the working class areas of the big cities and small market towns that that find their schools, social services and social housing overwhelmed by the influx of immigrants and never the comfortable middle class suburbs or cosy commuter villages wherein dwell the self perpetuating political, media and academic elite? An elite which constantly lauds the glories of “cultural diversity” and “community integration” while maintaining a convenient distance from the realities of their guilt induced dreamworld.

One reason why the left elite hated Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher so much is that they connected with vast swathes of working class opinion and were not afraid of courting the disdain of that elite – unlike the current Tory leadership which deliberately jettisoned that legacy and paid the price with their failure to win unadulterated power in 2010.

Until the Tories have the courage to cease yearning for the approval of the BBC/Guardian chattering classes they might find themselves withering on the political vine and possibly being edged out by alternatives – UKIP, anyone?

The times they are a changing…..

The fearless BBC is never afraid to grasp nettles…

Social services and police “missed opportunities” to stop the sexual abuse of young girls in Rochdale, a report into a grooming scandal has revealed.
……………………………………………………..
It comes after nine men were jailed in May for grooming girls as young as 13.

Oh and why were these opportunities missed?

“Deficiencies” and “patchy” training of front line staff were behind the failings, the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board said in its review of child sexual exploitation.

Ah, the old patchy training ploy, as Inspector Cluseau would say…but never fear

Lynne Jones, chair of the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board, said the council had “responded” to the review and had “improvements” had already been put in place.

That’s right, somebody wheeled out the same robot that was constructed in 1973, called it Lynne Jones, and pressed the button marked “LESSONS LEARNED”

“…working together….sharing information….raising awareness…..staff traing…..”

Only deep down towards the end of the piece, however, does the “fearless” BBC offer up a “by the way, please move along, nothing to see here” factoid

During the trial there were demonstrations by far-right groups after it emerged that white girls were being exploited by the gang, eight of whom were of Pakistani origin, with another from Afghanistan.

OMG – those crazy “far-right” groups with their racist agenda….take to the hills……oh, wait a minute

However, Greater Manchester Police said that there was no racial element to the case. It said that the main issue was older men exploiting vulnerable young women and girls.

Phew, that’s a relief. It wasn’t because of their cultural background….it was because they were “older men”. It’s not race/culture – it’s age/gender.

Julie Bindel, however, took a different view

One youth worker in south Yorkshire told me that because religious Muslims are being pressurised to marry virgins within their own extended family networks, it means that some are more likely to view white girls as easily available and “safer” than Pakistani girls.

Moreover, she felt that the reluctance of Social Services, Police and CPS to act in these cases wasn’t really down to lack of training or “working together” – but fear of being accused of being racist. This allowed the BNP to hijack the issue which obviously made it even more toxic. Now, of course, some people are speaking out…but why were they silent for so many years?

Anna Hall made a documentary for Channel 4 about Bradford Social Services which included interviews with two mothers who said their teenage daughters were being groomed.

The explosive grooming story nearly didn’t make the shortlist. Hall had already filmed several other stories through the children’s department which she was unable to screen for legal reasons. “We weren’t looking for this issue,” she says. “It just kept surfacing. Social workers said, ‘You can’t do that story because it’s too difficult.’ What did they mean by ‘too difficult’? Too racially sensitive?”

The BNP made a big deal of this film, seeing it as a vindication. Channel 4 got cold feet, especially as the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire spearheaded a campaign to stop it being shown.

So it does seem that one thing that motivated the various agencies to keep this in the Pending file was the fear of being accused of racism even though there were clearly people in the Muslim community who were confronting it.

There are, however, a growing number of individuals within the Muslim communities who are willing to speak out against the criminals. Mohammed Shafiq, the director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for peaceful harmony between different ethnic communities, advocates better education about sexual exploitation to be disseminated through imams and other community leaders.
“I was one of the first within the Muslim community to speak out about this, four years ago,” says Shafiq, “and at the time I received death threats from some black and Asian people. But what I said has been proved right — that if we didn’t tackle it there would be more of these abusers and more girls getting harmed.”

But there also appears to be another factor which pushed it down the agenda, according to the Telegraph

Police said the victims were from “chaotic”, “council estate” backgrounds and as many as 50 girls could have been victims of the gang.

That explains it, then – not nice little middle class girls from the suburbs or twee villages. Chief Constables would scarcely get into their golf clubs before being badgered by “concerned” members of the public. But “white trash” from those chavvy council estates….maybe they were, y’know, asking for it?

No wonder these evil men were happy in their work. Their culturally influenced disparagement of these girls was buttressed by the prejudices of officialdom against the Sharon’s and Tracey’s of the white working class..

A self fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one…..

The Aurora shootings and the aftermath have been media headline fillers here in the UK for several days. Our hacks and pundits love this sort of story because it allows them to pontificate on Americans and guns and how any wingnut is able to stroll into a hardware store and kit himself out with enough firepower to recreate the Battle of the Somme if he is so minded.

This then leads in to the issue of gun control and how sensible folk like President Obama and his liberal/left cohorts in politics and media would just love to wean their fellow Americans off their guns and become an unarmed community like Britain….well not exactly unarmed because criminals are quite heavily armed but hey, they just shoot each other, don’t they?

But wait a minute…..” any wingnut”….hold on that…our media prefers the shooters to be white and middle class and slightly creepy because central casting has lots of guys to fit that role.

Of course if you are Brian Ross of NBC white also equals Tea Party. If you’re Joe Scarborough of MSNBC white = autistic loner. the sort of people who never go to Tina Brown’s parties or read the New Yorker or ski at Aspen.

What the Americans need, according to our media pundits, is much stricter laws on gun ownership and gun carrying – except, as Prof William Jacobson points out there are more people shot by guns in Chicago in one month than were shot in that Aurora cinema…..

…and Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the whole of the USA

But of course you will never learn much about the bloody gun culture in “gunfree” Chicago because there are very few spotty white middle class nerds poncing about the South and West sides of the city. This is black on black crime and usually drugs related so not only does it have little news value but merely mentioning those facts would be declared a racist hate crime – and that would never so….

…..and, eeeeermmm, practically the whole Obama machine hails from Chicago…

BTW…if you want to keep yourself informed about the matters that are concerning American conservatives don’t use UK blogs like Conservative HomeUSA or the Spectator Coffee House – they’ll just retread stuff from NYT and WaPo. Go to Prof Jacobson’s blog at Legal Insurrection – it’s Tea Party friendly , easy to follow and 100% suspicious of the great and the good …..

A sob story about long term unemployed jobseekers offered work experience placements as Diamond Jubilee stewards being badly treated was too good to miss for the media elite of the left. Frustrated by the widespread support for the Queen exhibited by millions of ordinary people and uncomfortable with the sight of so many union flags being waved the Guardian and BBC jumped with glee into the issue using anonymous sources to buttress accusations of “slave labour”

Unsurprisingly it was also picked up in the USA by the left wing agitprop website Gawker.

Rather than do some real journalism to find out if other stewards embedded in the scheme shared a similar negative experience the Guardian hacks looked around to see if there was any dim witted pompous windbag who could be wound up and propelled into the media spotlight to give the story political legs.

They needed a pea brained dim-witted has been who would be obtuse enough to pontificate loudly and aggressively without bothering to do any homework

Enter John Prescott

They then needed a highly paid and extremely wealthy member of the soft left media elite to highlight the wages of the people who ran the Jubilee Stewards project and to then try to sandbag one of them on BBC Newsnight.

Enter Kirsty Wark

The trouble with anonymous sources, however, is that it is always difficult to validate the truth of their statements by referencing their backgrounds and checking their claims under hostile cross examination so when several fellow stewards went public with their experiences while offering up their names the BBC/Guardianistas should have been delighted.

Unfortunately these people said their experience had been positive and questioned the accuracy of the Prescott/Wark line.

Isn’t it annoying how facts can so often spoil a good left wing fantasy…

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The dog that did nothing in the night?

Why, it’s the US media, of course which doesn’t seem too keen to unravel the mystery behind what appears to be an attempt to discourage conservative bloggers from reporting facts that are already a matter of public record

Read this and then ask yourself why, at present, there is virtually nothing about it on American TV screens and in the pages of those Pulitzer prize winning investigative “journalists” from New York and Washington…or their branch office in London, the BBC.

Surely it cannot be because of certain influences?

However now a trio of ornery conservative saddle tramps like Dan Riehl, Instapundit and Legal Insurrection with many others have gone into the darkened woodshed at night with their torches what rough beast will be revealed slouching in the corner?

BTW, if you think it couldn’t happen here just remember this and this…

Well he has said it

On Tuesday, Euro judges rode roughshod over the will of Parliament by upholding a 2004 ruling that Britain’s blanket ban on prisoner voting is unlawful. MPs had previously voted by an overwhelming 234 to 22 majority to keep the ban.
Yesterday Mr Cameron was asked in the Commons by DUP leader Nigel Dodds: ‘Will you give an undertaking that you will not succumb to the diktat from the European Court of Human Rights in relation to prisoners’ voting?
‘Will you stand up for the resolution that was passed in this House by an overwhelming majority and that you will stand up for the sovereignty of this House and the British people?’

Mr Cameron said yes.

POW!!!!!!

Cue all the BBC and Guardian bleeding hearts to say how unhelpful this and surely Cameron could have a quiet chat with the ECHR and negotiate some form of weaselly compromise that would give European judges the green light to carry on dismantling our centuries old tradition of common law and parliamentary sovereignty. Cameron has let it be known that he will also defy any “punishment” issued by the ECHR (a stiff letter or maybe a fine) so he has really left himself no room for manoeuvre.

Trouble is he is not known for translating his verbal defiance of Europe into deeds…..remember his embarrassing retreat at a recent EU summit on the question of allowing the European courts to police any infringements of a future EU Fiscal Union? His original stance of open defiance was reduced to that pathetic “watching like a hawk” squeak.

Voting is a right and those who break the law and go to prison give up that right, no matter how many GCSEs or degrees they gain while inside.

Cameron is of the metro elite, a creature more at home with the chattering classes. His Euro scepticism is a sop to the right wing in his party who he secretly despises. But even he can see the growing appeal of UKIP so a bit of red meat thrown to the beasts has got to be par for the course.

Will he do it? We shall have to see – but if he doesn’t then I predict more Tory voters haemorrhaging to UKIP and the bell will be tolling for any hope Cameron might have of being Prime Minister in 2016…..

Binyavanga Wainaina – you are so right

Let us imagine that Africa was really like it is shown in the international media.
Africa would be a country. Its largest province would be Somalia.
Bono, Angelina Jolie and Madonna would be joint presidents, appointed by the United Nations.
European aid workers would run the Foreign Affairs Office, gap year students from the UK the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Culture would be run by the makers of the Kony2012 videos.

Mocking the image of Africa constantly pimped by the western media – especially the BBC – Wainaina, a leading Kenyan writer pleads for a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to Africa.

Africa’s image in the West, and Africa’s image to itself, are often crude, childish drawings of reality.

He wants us to dilute the image of the mud hut and tribal dance with roads, railways, cables, factories and offices.

Fat chance, Mr Wainaina – the British Guardian reading, BBC watching middle class want mud huts and tribal dances because they need to feel superior. Not in the old Imperial way of keeping the restless natives down with a Gatling gun but because they want to trade pity for gratitude. They lust for famines, droughts, massacres so that they can distribute largesse and feel good about themselves. They have spawned a vast network of NGOs, staffed by their own children just to show Africans that they cannot be trusted to look after themselves.

If they had their way Africa would be one vast national park where the mud huts and tribal dances would be “managed” in the same way as the big game. No cables or smoking factories would desecrate the landscape because the chattering classes need Africa as a background for the frenetic pace of their own lives.

Where would all those “caring” celebs go on Red Nose day if Africa became like India and China, thrusting vigorous economies that were challenging our own sclerotic bureaucracies? Where would Madonna go for her next trophy adoption? What would Oxfam do with all those blankets and condoms?

More power to your elbow, Mr Wainaina – and the next time a rather turgid BBC left wing “comedian” arrives in some “African” village with a fleet of Range Rovers and accompanied by a bevy of mini skirted “production assistants” carrying a football so that he can be filmed for 35 seconds surrounded by grinning young “natives” why not shove his red nose right up his anterior orifice and bundle him on his way….

Last Monday Fiachra Gibbons at the UK Guardian just knew in his bones who had perpertrated those vicious killings of Jewish children and French soldiers.
What could be the link, they ask, between Jewish children and French military personnel? The link is they are both seen – and not just by a far-right fringe – as symbols of all that has sabotaged la France forte, to borrow Sarkozy’s election slogan. Confessional schools, be they Jewish or an informal weekend madrassa, are seen as actively undermining the secular Republic by activists of groups like the Bloc Identitaire and the Front National, as well as some members of Sarkozy’s UMP, and even some on the left.
This was echoed across the UK media with adjectives like “toxic”, “hatred” and “racism” being bandied about alongside references to Dreyfus and Vichy. The whole of France, nay all Europe was invited to rise up and crush the noxious weed of “right wing extremism” and attempts to question the wisdom of unrestricted immigration.

But now it is practically certain that the killings were committed by a French Muslim gunman who appears to be associated with Jihadist groups the tone has suddenly changed. There are now pleas for everyone to calm down and BBC hack Gavin Hewitt has obviously been ordered to tell people that this event will have nil long term impact on the forthcoming French presidential election, essentially telling everyone to “Move along, please, nothing to see here”

I wonder why?

President Obama’s birth certificate, made public as a result of Donald Trump’s brief “campaign”, is a forgery.

This is an astonishing claim.

Note that nobody has said that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen of the USA – just that the document purporting to prove his natural born citizenship is not an honest piece of evidence.

With the results of Maricopa County, AZ sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse,” an incredible claim has become an incredible situation: a team of professional investigators, commissioned by a major law-enforcement agency, has determined that the alleged birth certificate produced by the president of the United States is a probable forgery.

One would have expected a veritable tsunami of claim and counter claim as a result of the Mariscopa County investigation with Obama’s supporters and opponents slugging it toe to toe in print and on screen. I expected to see in the Obama friendly BBC and Guardian a line by line dissection of the Cold Posse’s case with a host of experts drafted in via the NYT and the US networks to pour scorn on it’s conclusions. CBS in particular might well have been rather sensitive to the issue of forged documents after its own Dan Rather debacle.

But instead there has been a deafening silence. Not a syllable from the White House. Zilch from the DNC official newsletters at NYT and WaPo. Nothing from Sandra Fluke, the Democrats Presidential candidate for 2028………….and also nothing from any of the scuffed retreads sleepwalking to the 2012 GOP nomination.

I wonder why?