G20 protest trial: let the jury walk a mile in police shoes

The trial of a police officer accused of causing Ian Tomlinson’s death during 2009’s demonstration against the G20 summit continues. Will the jury have a chance to examine the pressures the police were under that day?

Some will cry that the police are paid to be under pressure. I cannot join in, because I have never stood for hours in front of a baying, hostile mob inside hot protective clothing, armed with intelligence that persons unknown might attempt a murder.

A few days beforehand a video had been posted on the current.com community called Government of the dead: hang a banker. The calls to "hang the bankers" came from anthropologist Dr Chris Knight, who was suspended from his post at the University of East London for suggesting in couched language that he would not condemn lethal force:

We are going to be hanging a lot of people like Fred the Shred [Sir Fred Goodwin] from lampposts on April Fool’s Day and I can only say let’s hope they are just effigies. To be honest, if he winds us up any more I’m afraid there will be real bankers hanging from lampposts and let’s hope that that doesn’t actually have to happen.

The police, therefore, were facing the possibility that some of Knight’s disciples intended to kill. No wonder tensions were high.

All of which is not to condone the killing of Ian Tomlinson, who was trying to recover from problematic and damaging alcohol use in order to get off the streets and be accepted back into his family. PC Simon Harwood may have provided the immediate cause of Mr Tomlinson’s cardiac arrest. Ultimately, however, he was sentenced to death by Chris Knight and his associates – left-wing chocolate soldiers whose MO is to start battles then melt away to leave others to die in them, even (or should that be especially?) if they are innocent bystanders.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

the hidden agenda behind statement that all communities abuse children?

The Telegraph’s Martin Beckford reports a statement by Deputy Children’s Commissioner Sue Berelowitz that child abuse is happening "in every town, village and hamlet in England".

No argument: more victims of child sexual abuse will encounter crisis intervention services as adults than will ever be seen by social services as children. I admire her willingness to break taboos by adding that sexual exploitation of children happens in "white, Pakistani, Afghan, Gypsy and Romany traveller" communities.

The context of her remarks, however, provides food for thought. The first session of the Home Affairs Committee’s enquiry into child exploitation met today, focussing on the recent Rochdale trial of 11 Pakistani men for grooming and abusing five girls (although one Committee member suggested that all 47 witnesses to this may actually be victims, and will be included in the post-trial enquiry).

Members said repeatedly that there is no racial element to child abuse, and they’re absolutely right. If you name any large organisation, for example, it’s probable that it will contain at least somebody who has been a victim or even a perpetrator of some degree of child abuse.

I hope, however, that the enquiry will dedicate a sub-committee to non-internet-based grooming of girls by organised gangs of men. This will require courage, because perpetrators in this sub-group are largely Muslim and victims non-Muslim. In his recent Vox Africa appearance Tommy Robinson (right) quoted grimly familiar figures: 100 victims in Blackpool, 60 in Telford, 30 in Derby, and the list goes on.

I agree with Ms Berelowitz that all communities must be investigated, but to widen the net merely to dilute the attention on one ethnicity would be a dereliction of duty. Should she be invited to turn a blind eye to Muslim grooming of non-Muslim children, however, the EDL is here to help her refocus.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Click here for a video-recording of the Home Affairs Committee's enquiry into Rochdale - 2 hrs 10 min long, but worth a watch if you have the time

Casuals United blog: Message from an ex police officer regarding grooming gangs

English Defence League on Vox Africa

Vox Africa’s recent debate on Islam and terrorism appeared on its flagship programme The Hot Seat, with Akintayo Adetokunbo-edmund chairing in an urbane but assertive manner.

Four participants – Tommy Robinson of the English Defence League, Paul Armstrong of the Association of British Muslims, Abdullah Al Andalusi of the Muslim Debate Initiative and the BNP’s Carlos Cortiglia – initially resembled a lively Question Time or Newsnight panel (except that neither could have hosted this debate because Akintayo (right) is something the BBC doesn’t possess: a genuinely impartial chair).

Then the Muslim Public Affairs Committee’s Raza Nadim joined by phone with a prolonged ad hominem attack on Robinson which Akintayo had to curtail by calling “Raza!” in a raised voice. It was something he had to repeat throughout, and to his credit he never lost his composure in the face of the cleric’s rants.

Armstrong and Al Andalusi are sophisticated European converts to Islam and beneficiaries of 3,000 years of Western culture. So I’m glad Nadim was there to show the pan-African channel’s viewers the uncompromising vehemence with which beard-and-burqa imperialists replace debate, victimising diverse communities which turn to English Defence League as a bulwark and final pressure-valve.

Despite the BNP’s elected politicians, the debate centred around the EDL and its concerns, so that a programme entitled Is Islam was synonymous with terrorism turned to Muslim paedophile gangs. With concerns about, for example, the sale of seven-year-old girls for marriage in Niger (legal under Sharia law), it seems our struggle is the talk of Africa.

Akintayo ended by giving both sides food for thought, reminding Tommy that Nigeria’s Boko Haram kill Muslims as much as Christians; and asking Nadim whether it’s right for Muslims to come to Great Britain from overseas and tell their hosts how to live. I’ll watch The Hot Seat again.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Read on English Defence website: Is Islam synonymous with terrorism? Tommy Robinson on Vox Africa

Click here to watch the debate
or watch below:

Is Islam synonymous with Terrorism? Tommy... by EDLrelated

open letter to Fearne Cotton: the BBC's a bully too

Dear Fearne,

I am sad that you have been subjected to personal abuse on social media that you were right to label as bullying. You were undoubtedly under orders to comment on Diamond Jubilee sick bags.

I have to tell you that your employer, the BBC, is also a bully.

It’s not your fault. Many of us have worked for bullies, and some of the nastiest are among your bosses.

Take the misogyny. I hope you enjoy your very good looks for a long time before you start to learn, alongside colleagues like Mariella Frostrup and Anna Ford, that when the lines start you’re no longer required front-of-shop.

And the racism. Race is a chimera, but discrimination on grounds of characteristics once associated with race abounds, with the BBC a major offender. On one hand there’s Greg Dyke’s remark that the BBC is "hideously white", and on the other Lindsay Johns hits home when he attacks the corporation for thinking it’s connecting with black people when Radio 1 Xtra plays rap, and asks "where’s the black Radio 4?"

Last in a selection of the BBC’s many bullying traits is the licence fee. If something upsets me on a commercial channel I switch over and don’t get too bothered; but if the BBC transmits offensive material like Jerry Springer: The Opera or the Ross and Brand débâcle (which was pre-recorded), whether or not I watch it, I am forced to pay for it by being blackmailed with a £1000 fine should I withhold my licence fee in protest.

I hope you take this letter in the spirit it was written, which is one of solicitude for your future well-being. You are a highly talented media personality, and I think your interests would be best-served by ditching the BBC before it ditches you.

Yours

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Here's FEarne's Bullyproof tips on YouTube:

ITV's Lewis and racism in post-race society

The ITV series Lewis deserves its place as a Great British institution. Originally a spin-off of Inspector Morse, inspired by Colin Dexter’s novels and starring John Thaw, Lewis follows the cases of the Inspector who was a Detective Sergeant in the Morse programmes.

The current series finale, The Indelible Stain, followed the Dexter M.O. of a nuanced web of mystery and tangled human lives proceeding from an ostensibly simple start. So much so that the episode’s theme was easy to miss: race or, more precisely, what racism means in post-racial society.

We see a speech by a controversial American criminologist interrupted by a baying mob of anti-racists who, we learn, are "all white, of course". The head anti-racist is an upper-middle-class woman living in a palatial villa who, I imagine, would have no idea of life on a multi-ethnic housing estate. A black girl receives abusive text-messages which turn out to be from a love rival who resents not her race but her beauty.

I don’t want to spoil things for my fellow crime-fiction buffs. All I can say is that issues of race, which appear to have been at the start at the heart of the investigation, peter away and show race itself to be the chimera that it is.

The social comment I felt The Indelible Stain made was that if we want a society that has deconstructed the notion of race, we must also stop holding onto that of racism. The further implication would be that the minority of people who would have their peers cling to notions of victimhood as to a lifebelt, and tar the majority with the prejudices of a bigoted rump, need to realise that the past is history and they stand where we all do: shoulder to shoulder, facing the coming storm.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Click to go to the Lewis page on the ITV website
Check out Lewis on Amazon!

The Diamond Jubilee weekend

So how was your Jubilee weekend?

I’m glad to say that rain didn’t stop play in our village, gazebos having been donated for Sunday’s street-party. The turnout, comprising all ages, was great. A hog-roast was supplied by the butcher for cost price (if that) and his staff volunteered to clean up the High Street afterwards.

On Monday our local hall put on A Queen is Crowned. Laurence Olivier had done a workmanlike job of narrating the colour record of the Coronation – another rainy day! – marred only by his occasional inability to control his enthusiasm. We were then treated to a 60s cover band performing note-perfect renditions of some of the best popular music produced during her Majesty’s reign.

Afterwards my better half and I watched the Thames Jubilee Pageant on i-Player, and thought: come back Laurence, all is forgiven. Only the BBC could turn an event on a scale unparalleled since 1662 into the apotheosis of banality. As one letter-writer to the Telegraph noted, "the viewing numbers reflected not quality but monopoly". The same went for Tuesday’s coverage of the National Service of Thanksgiving in Westminster Abbey, where the nadir was surely provided by Fearne Cotton extolling the virtues of a Diamond Jubilee-themed sick bag.

Some redemption came with the Diamond Jubilee Concert, especially Gary Barlow’s Sing, starring musicians from across the commonwealth, with the Military Wives’ Choir providing a thoroughly British touch. Furthermore, in Barlow’s Making Of…, the absence of celeb tears when in the Dagoretti settlement to recruit Kenyan percussionists the Slum Drummers was refreshing.

It was the Queen and her people who saved the Diamond Jubilee from the BBC’s efforts to reduce this remarkable woman to the status of a sofa-surfing celebrity. When looking back on it, I suspect A Queen is Crowned will be the high-point - along with, of course, the subject of the film as she was on the day: her own inimitable and dignified self.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Scottish boy rapist case: the attack on adolescence

The case of a Scottish 12-year-old with "unfettered access" to internet porn who raped a 9-year-old girl will, inevitably, raise further fears about attacks on childhood. These fears aren’t quite on target. The attacks, as just seen, are certainly harmful to children, but are aimed at adolescence.

Adolescence as it exists now began, as far as we can tell, in Plato’s Athens: rich young men would remain in education until twenty, while girls would marry at about 15. After falling into disuse it was reinstated when the age of consent for sex was raised from 13 to 16 in 1885.

In the article Adult Anxieties, Youthful Passions, Susan Ferentinos outlines modern anxieties about adolescent sexuality when she refers to "this tension between growing and going too far, between guidance and control".

Add to this the pressures on both genders identified by the American Psychiatric Association in The Sexualisation of Girls – the media, cartoons, music videos; that’s before we come to internet porn.

Once, dirty movies came as videos that had by law to have plots and were limited as to their explicitness. Rules were broken, of course, but now the anarchy built into the internet renders rules, and therefore boundaries, meaningless.

Once a video was bought it ceased raising money for its makers: but anybody, of any age, who views internet porn exposes themselves to advertising and/or the desired viruses in this trade that is worth £3bn annually. No wonder Google cavils about controls!

Adolescence is a time of children’s lives when adults undertake to protect them from themselves and from us, and this undertaking is the hit-counter’s enemy. Factor in abusive sex education and pressures from cultures which regard adolescence as alien, and the only surprise about the Scottish rape case is that it hasn’t happened until now.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Click for an explanation of why pornography is addictive