So does "far right" mean you're concerned about the impacts of mass immigration?

It's incredibly sad but not relevant here. I'm not interested in Elon Musk's agenda or views about child marriage or what he does in the US. I'm interested in the effect his actions (irrelevant of his own motive) has on highlighting this current issue about Asian grooming gangs in the UK.

The grooming gangs issue has been dealt with in that there have been several reports, investigations and incarcerations. Sunak put a grooming gangs unit in place specifically to deal with it. To suggest nothing has been done is wrong.

You should be concerned with his agenda. He's not concerned about child abuse in the States but is demanding the prime minister of the UK resigns and an MP goes to prison.

Asian grooming gangs are a pet project of Robinson and other far right goons and Musk is supporting him. He is also supporting the far right in Germany.

It's incredibly sad but not relevant here. I'm not interested in Elon Musk's agenda or views about child marriage or what he does in the US. I'm interested in the effect his actions (irrelevant of his own motive) has on highlighting this current issue about Asian grooming gangs in the UK.

The US has child marriage and four states have no minimum age. Why isn't Musk causing a stir about that?

@Nordione1 it's absolute bullshit , for one thing only. There are hundreds of thousands of children in the US going through the same thing(demographics might vary, but that shouldn't matter right?)right now, but not a peep about that from Musk. Not one. If he cares so much why not at least try to highlight that (at any point in time) ? It would be perfect timing right now, really. But that doesn't suit the agenda. Because the agenda is not these girls, it's not justice, it's not solutions, the agenda is interfering in UK politics.

@Nordione1 it's absolute bullshit , for one thing only. There are hundreds of thousands of children in the US going through the same thing(demographics might vary, but that shouldn't matter right?)right now, but not a peep about that from Musk. Not one. If he cares so much why not at least try to highlight that (at any point in time) ? It would be perfect timing right now, really. But that doesn't suit the agenda. Because the agenda is not these girls, it's not justice, it's not solutions, the agenda is interfering in UK politics.

It was obvious from the reports what the police thought of the girls. Let's just say that if the parents of the girls were middle class, they would have been taken seriously.

There is obviously nuance about why the girls were ignored and quite possibly the police weighed up the dangers of being accused of Islamophobia compared to ignoring white working class victims and came down on the side of "community cohesion". As always.

White working class people don't matter to large parts of the establishment.

There's definitely a hierarchy of mattering. Not necessarily race based, but more lack of power and prejudice based.

There have already been several investigations into the abuse as well as a child abuse enquiry in 2022.

It's too simplistic to view the abuse as being ignored because the majority of perpetrators were Muslim. Those girls were dismissed out of hand because they had no power.

Misogyny and classism meant they went ignored. There were also concerns about racial tension. The crux of the issue is people not doing their jobs and the point of reports are to examine why people didn't do their jobs and put strategies in place to prevent it happening again.

Religion is important as the perpertrators being Muslim was the reason the police did not act for fear of damaging community relations.

It just needs acknowledgement. Yes this is why this happened and therefore now we know this, we can stop it happening again.

One parent concerned about a missing daughter was told by the police that an “older Asian boyfriend” was a “fashion accessory” for girls in the town. The father of a 15-year old rape victim was told the assault might mean she would “learn her lesson”.

In at least one case, when a victim found the courage to go to the police, their abuser appears to have been tipped off. While still in the police station, one child received a text from her abuser informing her that he had her 11 year old sister, and that it was now “your choice…”. The child chose not to go through with the complaint.

That’s not fear, that's corruption and callousness and not giving a shit.

And the real proof is in the pudding... proper investigation have been made, trials took place, a lot of these men got convicted and the world (or England) didn't implode. Funny that.

I'm not sure why their religion is important. The majority of Muslims don't rape children.

What is important is why these gangs went unfettered for years and why these girls were failed by everyone meant to be protecting them. The same questions that were asked about Savile, the UKs most prolific child rapist.

He was protected by the police and the BBC and he was raping children in hospital wards. The staff knew and did nothing and in the case of the grooming gangs, the police knew and did nothing.

In the case of the Catholic church the church knew and did nothing. A current investigation into Irish religious schools has brought out tens of thousands of cases of abuse which went on for decades.

In all these cases, institutions and safeguarding failed at a catastrophic level and thousands of children suffered.

Regarding the grooming gangs, the girls were blamed for choosing a certain lifestyle much as child prostitutes were blamed instead of being seen as victims.

I agree with you. I'm just very uncomfortable with the way this scandal has been hijacked by people with an anti-Muslim agenda, and innocent Muslims are being attacked (literally). But yes, I agree with all you say.

I don't think it's part of Muslim culture to be paedophiles, no. The men that run these grooming gangs do happen to be mainly Muslim though and that needs to be acknowledged just as the country acknowledged the Catholic Church abuse scandal.

I wondered about that as the cause, but in the report extract I quoted the author states she can't explain why such a high proportion of offenders are Asian, so it cannot be that the report was scoped on Asian grooming gangs in particular.

I am absolutely not here to defend white anything (though I am white myself, just for transparency). But I do think that there is a very real institutional resistance to labeling non-white offending as such (e.g. as found in the Jay review, Casey review, IOPC and others). If, say, it was found that a hugely disproportionate share of white sex offending was men of French heritage from a particular part of Normandy, I'd absolutely 100% want to know what was going wrong with the Normans, and to stop it. If that made relations with the French tricky, so be it. Ditto where we find, e.g. white Protestant/Catholic gang criminality, Chinese triad organisations, white British drug trafficker rings, black urban gun crime, white European thieving rings, white paedophile rings, etc. etc. etc.

That doesn't mean I only want to look at things through an ethnic/cultural lens. Absolutely not. Only where it seems to be relevant to fixing the problem. And absolutely not to ignore crime that doesn't fit crude patterns. But there's enough in all we've read and seen about this particular issue to think that specific race and cultural elements were absolutely central to both the offending and the response to it, that I think we should be comfortable facing that.

I wondered about that as the cause, but in the report extract I quoted the author states she can't explain why such a high proportion of offenders are Asian, so it cannot be that the report was scoped on Asian grooming gangs in particular.

I am absolutely not here to defend white anything (though I am white myself, just for transparency). But I do think that there is a very real institutional resistance to labeling non-white offending as such (e.g. as found in the Jay review, Casey review, IOPC and others). If, say, it was found that a hugely disproportionate share of white sex offending was men of French heritage from a particular part of Normandy, I'd absolutely 100% want to know what was going wrong with the Normans, and to stop it. If that made relations with the French tricky, so be it. Ditto where we find, e.g. white Protestant/Catholic gang criminality, Chinese triad organisations, white British drug trafficker rings, black urban gun crime, white European thieving rings, white paedophile rings, etc. etc. etc.

That doesn't mean I only want to look at things through an ethnic/cultural lens. Absolutely not. Only where it seems to be relevant to fixing the problem. And absolutely not to ignore crime that doesn't fit crude patterns. But there's enough in all we've read and seen about this particular issue to think that specific race and cultural elements were absolutely central to both the offending and the response to it, that I think we should be comfortable facing that.

We absolutely shouldn't shy away from examining the fact that these particular perpetrators were Pakistani or Asian. We need to look very closely at why the men from these groups were committing these very serious crimes.
We also need to bear in mind that these six investigations were looking at Asian grooming gangs so it's not surprising that 97% were Asian. The figures I've seen for grooming gangs in general in the UK is that around 85% of grooming gangs are white.

As I said, I work at a University. The vast majority of foreign students return to their home countries and want to do so. Some stay here and find jobs. These people are some of the brightest people you'll meet and a real asset to the country. They'll be paying in way more than they take. We should want bright minds and talented people to stay here.
By the way, my DH came here as a student. He wanted to leave but met me and settled down here, simply because I wanted to stay in the UK. He's a very successful academic. He's brought in many millions of pounds of foreign money in research grants. He has created jobs for dozens of people, including many white British people. He's brought great prestige and a lot of money to the university. He brings in more money than he earns. He earns a lot and therefore pays a hell of a lot of taxes. He's also Asian, of Indian descent. I hope you don't feel he should leave, simply because he wasn't born here.

The university point which you seem to have fixated was that universities which rely on financing mainly from foreign students and which are being used as a route for immigration and residency rather than being good universities in themselves should probably close. This was in reply to.someone claiming that we needed mass immigration just to keep those universities going.

We don't need as many universities or graduates as we currently have anyway.