Remember how the soon to be installed CEO of “The New York Times” said he knew nothing about widespread long lived rumours of the sexual abuse of underage children committed by one of the BBC’s biggest stars, some of the abuse taking place on BBC premises?

Even when an item on a BBC current affairs programme investigating these rumours was pulled at the last minute…

Even when the go ahead was given a few days later to air a TV special celebrating the star’s life and saying what a wonderful wonderful guy he was…

Well, the plot thickens….

But yesterday Lord Patten – who said he himself first heard about the Savile allegations less than two weeks ago when he read about them in a newspaper – insisted Mr Thompson had been made aware of the Newsnight investigation last December by director of news Helen Boaden.
When asked to confirm that the former director-general knew about the investigation, he said: ‘Yes’.
His comments were later retracted by the BBC Trust, which said he ‘misspoke’ on the matter.

I wonder if any of those brilliant, sophisticated, right on, politically correct lovers of investigative journalism at the NYT will want to have a quiet word with Mr Thompson next time they are sipping their dry martinis?

hhhhmmmm….former BBC Director General Mark Thompson, soon to take up his new job as CEO of the New York Times has just been asked a rather awkward question – how much did he know about the pulling of a BBC programme that investigated allegations that a top BBC star, Jimmy Savile, who died in 2011, was a serial abuser of underage girls.

Although the BBC pulled the programme their rivals at ITV aired a more extensive exposure a few days ago which has forced the BBC onto the back foot.
Thompson claims he had nothing to do with cancelling the Newsnight piece and was totally unaware of the rumours about Savile that had been circulating around the BBC for many years.

After Savile died on October 29 last year, Newsnight spent six weeks investigating allegations that he abused pupils from Duncroft school in Surrey at the height of his fame in the 1970s.
BBC journalists spoke to ten women who claimed they had been abused or had knowledge of abuse at the school, which shut in 1980.
But the investigation was never aired after Peter Rippon, editor of Newsnight, decided to abandon the broadcast in December, shortly before the BBC broadcast three tributes to Savile over Christmas.
After it was dropped, an angry BBC journalist is said to have cornered Mr Thompson at a Christmas drinks party in London to complain.

Thompson got the job at the NYT because of his reputation as a smooth operator with his finger on the pulse of his organisation – yet he claims to be totally oblivious of the implications for the BBC of the Savile programme being pulled.

That’s OK then…..

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 Queen wanted to know why Abu Hamza was allowed to remain in the UK spewing his hate for this country while being subsidised by taxpayers.

“She spoke to the home secretary at the time and said, surely this man must have broken some laws. Why is he still at large? He was conducting these radical activities and he called Britain a toilet. He was incredibly anti-British and yet he was sucking up money from this country for a long time. He was a huge embarrassment to Muslims, who condemned him.”

So do we ma’am, so do we.

Well now even the grand panjandrums at the highest level of the European court have told us it’s OK to extradite him to the USA.

How kind of them.

Now all the lawyers are happy (and richer), the bleeding hearts cannot accuse us of ignoring the bar of world opinion, the race relations/human rights lobby must grit their teeth and pretend to be content and this vile, revolting quivering jelly of hatred and venom is on his way to America to face his accusers in court.

Except not yet

The European Court has now ruled that these men can be extradited as well, but the Home Office can only say it will happen “as soon as possible” at some unspecified point in the future.

Why the hell do we have to wait? Why can’t he be placed on a plane tomorrow and flown across the Atlantic? Isn’t there anybody in this government with a spine?

On second thoughts that’s a stupid question. The spine was removed from our government on November 28th 1990 and has never been replaced.

No wonder these extremists despise us…

….and what sort of signal does it give to those many British Muslims who are battling to show that they can maintain their faith and remain true and loyal citizens of the UK?

But of course there’s nothing new about the spinelessness of western governments…

My dad lived on a tough estate in Brixton when he was a kid in the 1920s. His own father disappeared from the scene very early on so he and his brother and sisters were brought up by his mum. He recalled that quite a few of his friends were in the same position – only the phrase “single mum” had not then been invented.

Working class couples didn’t get divorced but most likely the statistics of separation might have been the same as today. There were also quite a few “common law” wives and “uncles” just living together as “partners” – another word that hadn’t been invented yet.

Wives/mothers tended to stay but some men appeared and disappeared as circumstances changed. That’s not to say that there were not lots of couples who soldiered through together and did their best even through trying times but dysfunctional relationships are not a monopoly of 21st century Britain.

My dad, through his young eyes, saw drunkenness as a familiar facet of everyday life – not amongst his peers but by watching older men staggering out of pubs as they wended their way home through the streets. And, with the drunkenness there was the violence – between men when tempers flared but, more often, the violence inflicted on the women once the men got home.

Levels of accepted behaviour were different in those days. Some men felt they had the right to slap their children and their wives but, as my dad said, there did seem to be an invisible boundary between what was acceptable – and what was not. Using your wife as a punchbag was not right – but few would dare to intervene between man and wife.

Except Ginger….

Ginger was the local bobby and the estate was his beat. He walked it regularly and knew everyone and made sure he was aware of what was going on….”intelligence led policing” is what it would be described as today….Ginger would do it by chatting to mums and kids and shopkeepers and milkmen and postmen and the local publican – and by using his eyes.

My dad said he was big and beefy with butcher’s hands. He could take a joke but was uncompromising if boundaries were crossed. Several times dad or one of his mates would be dragged by the ear to their home and parents informed in no uncertain terms of the appropriate transgression. No parent argued with Ginger – his word was law…Ginger WAS the law.

Ginger exuded authority and never walked away from trouble. He had great physical presence but dad never recalled him actually hitting anyone…..except when some wife had been used too often as a punchbag by her beer sodden husband or “uncle” – then there followed the same ritual.

Ginger would appear outside the house or block of flats, take off his jacket, fold it neatly and place it on the ground. On top would go his helmet and truncheon. He would then roll up his sleeves and go up to the front door and announce “Police – open up”. If nothing happened he would kick it open. Once inside he would hold a fairly one sided discussion with the man. This usually entailed, from visual evidence observed over the next few days, beating six bells out of the man with his bare fists. Ginger would then reappear, put his jacket and helmet back on and proceed down the road in his usual slow ponderous fashion without saying a word.

Nobody thought of going to the police station and complaining. It was rough street justice sanctioned by Ginger’s uniform.

Was it right?

Did it end domestic violence? Probably not – but maybe the thought of being at the receiving end of Ginger’s fists might have made some men hold back their punches…

Does violence resolve violence? Who can tell….

But I do know Ginger’s behaviour made a big impact on my dad, as a youngster, in terms of showing that bad actions could have unpleasant consequences – a kind of down on the street education in the realms of ethics….Ginger as the avenging angel…

It’s easy in our supposedly more enlightened culture to be very sniffy and disapproving of how Ginger went about things – but I suspect that a lot of us feel that in an imperfect world it might be comforting to know that Ginger could well be coming round the corner…

BTW…that is not Ginger in the pic, it’s just how I imagined him to look like…

Well we now know, courtesy of the Church of England, that last summer’s UK riots were caused by “society” and the arsonists and looters were not really accountable for their actions. The Bishop of Bath & Wells, Peter Price, echoing the words of the celebrated psychoanalyst Dr Heinz Kiosk declared that “we are all guilty”

The tragedy of our times is that, once again, we have a large population of young people who are desperate to escape from the constrained lives to which they seem to be condemned. Where hope has been killed off and with no prospect of escape, is it surprising that their energies erupt in anti-social and violent actions?
‘In a consumer society, is it surprising that lusting after high-status goods is seen as a way to find meaning?’

If, therefore, crimes are really a cry for help and “society” and more specifically, Government, needs to step in and reverse the “cuts” by providing (and financing) help then a more recent crime demonstrates an even greater need.

Sex toys worth £11,000 have been stolen by burglars who raided a mail order company, police said.

Obviously this is not a burglary per se but merely the actions of “people who are desperate to escape from the constrained lives to which they seem to be condemned”…..in other words they had to steal the vibrators because they can’t get enough sex. I am sure the Bishop of Bath and Wells would agree that the government needs to get its act together and provide them with a lot more

Gordon Ramsay went into Brixton Prison to teach inmates how to cook – but he came out astonished at how easy their life was.

Perhaps we could learn a lesson or two from Arizona….

Abu Qatada, the Jihadist hate preacher who hates our country and its culture of democracy so much is still fighting his deportation order to Jordan despite even the Kafa-esque European Court of Human Rights saying he could go. He is making an appeal to the ECHR via a very expensive lawyer (naturally – after all he is one of our privileged elite, living on benefits and thus subsidised by we the taxpayers) and asked for bail.

IT WAS REFUSED!!!!!!!

I’d love to say that Theresa May, the Home Secretary, backed by a former PR man for a failed TV company (aka David Cameron) had suddenly discovered spines and said don’t give him bail because we are going to bundle him onto a military plane and fly him to Amman, economy class with handcuffs within two hours at the same time we send the ECHR a message saying “Whoops, sorry but you can stuff your decisions where the monkey keeps his nuts….come back in a thousand years when your legal system is as mature as ours”

Unfortunately that wasn’t the reason..

It was because if he was given bail it might upset the Olympics…

That’s right folks – we have to allow these Britain haters plenty of elbow room to facilitate their “rights” to encourage vicious scumbags to blow us up but when it comes to interfering with a festival of sweaty over hyped narcissists strutting their stuff at the public ‘s expense (and that’s just the politicians and celebrities) even an al Qaeda groupie must stay banged up.

No wonder they despise us and think we lack the will to resist – I sometimes think they may be right…..

“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…

Pubs, by their very nature, can be lively, noisy, boisterous places especially as the evening moves on and the alcohol keeps flowing. Some, of course, because of their clientele, project an atmosphere of potential violence where a word or even a glance can generate a challenge. My father, who had been brought up in one of the tougher parts of South London and then, as a soldier, became a frequent patron of pubs throughout Britain and bars around the Mediterranean, took great pains, when I came of drinking age, to induct me into the self preservation strategies that allow a drinker to sense trouble a half minute or so before it breaks out and head towards the most appropriate exit.

So I doubt that, if I had lived in Bolton, I would have gone within a quarter mile of “The Flying Shuttle”, described by the Daily Mail as probably the “toughest pub” in Britain. It appeared to be open all the time, in defiance of the licensing laws, not because the landlord held an open house but simply because the bar staff were too frightened to call time. In the end it took thirteen police officers to close it down and even then there was a mini riot.

But in the midst of even the most terrifying indictment of human degradation something can sometimes sparkle through the darkest gloom. Although the patrons of the Shuttle appear to be a mixture of drug dealers, thieves, gangsters and whores there is at least one person who seems to have not only a rather dry sense of self deprecating humour but also (very rare amongst the denizens of our underclass) a grasp of the English language and an ability to spell…….for he or she could turn The Flying Shuttle

….into The Lying Slut…

What’s that sound? It’s Will Shakespeare chuckling up there in the big library in the sky……

h/t UK Daily Mail