Fascism doesn't arrive in fancy dress...

[Batmanisaplaceinturkey]

"I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you...

It doesn't walk in saying,
"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."

By Michael Rosen

michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/fascism-i-sometimes-fear.html?m=1

Sad but true.

I would have been oblivious to how corrupt, deceitful and inept the left were until they viciously attacked me for believing that sex mattered. If they hadn't pulled the rug out from under me and revealed what went on behind the curtain in the process I would still have thought that theirs was the best of all possible worlds. I no longer do. Sure, the right will be corrupt, deceitful and inept in their own way too. All power is, but maybe it is a necessary step to finding a better balance.

I am sorry for your friend and daughter. But how can it be a cover up when everyone knows about it now? The bulk of the grooming gangs are white.

Time will tell how his leadership pans out. Certainly the taxation changes towards business is not going to help his standing. Many small business owners will go to the wall over the extra costs of employing somebody.

Have they been reported? Did they take place in our jurisdiction? Is there evidence?

It arrives appearing to be on your side but really it's only ever on it's own side.

It isn't at all unreasonable for people to want quality of life and good quality services.

But services have to be paid for and there are choices to be made. As a population, we are ageing and services are costing more than they did. Some, on the left, think everyone should contribute according to their ability in order to maintain those services to a reasonable standard for everyone. Some, on the right, are keen on the concept of personal responsibility and think that people should be allowed to keep the money they they they earn for themselves and pay for their own services directly. And of course, there are many variations in between.

What we can't have is high quality services for everyone without anyone paying for them. If we can get to a point where we truly understand this as an electorate, the populist parties will begin to lose their appeal. We need to properly acknowledge that none of the parties have a magic wand, and that there will always be compromises that have to be made. Once we have properly digested that fact, and once politicians on all sides start being brave enough to be honest about it, we might actually start being able to make some informed choices about which compromises are acceptable to us and which are unpalatable.

The FBI and Scotland Yard do not share with me details of their evidence.
But as an example, this man should be investigated.

Barclays' former boss has been banned from holding senior positions in the UK after he mischaracterised his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Jes Staley has also been fined £1.8m, said the Financial Conduct Authority.
The regulator said Mr Staley had claimed not to be close to Epstein when, in reality, emails suggested he viewed him as a "cherished" friend.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67087758

For what? Being friends with a pedophile or rapist is seriously shady but not illegal last time I checked.

And you can’t assume there’s evidence because ‘Scotland Yard wouldn’t tell me if there wasn’t’. We know victims of the grooming gangs reported their abusers to the police, and that all of my queries above applied, and they were either ignored or in some cases physically returned to their abusers.

You can’t compare that degree of shocking to the police failing to investigate somebody based on a dodgy friend or rumours.

So true. At the same time though, our politicians and councils need to stop spending money on pandering to tiny minorities.

An example would be this current case with the Nurse and the male to female Dr in Scotland. Common sense should have prevailed and the Dr told to use the one person changing room offered. But instead we get the permanantly offended trying to force their beliefs on the majority.

Fine. Although I do expect the police to investigate people closely linked to a grooming gang when there is clear evidence one has existed.

The FBI asked Scotland Yard to intervene so they could interview Prince Andrew. Scotland Yard refsued.

White rich men are protected in the UK again and again. That is how Jimmy Saville got away with his crimes.

Please remove the racist accusation in your post. Rich men may well be protected. That happens worldwide. You seem to be obsessed with Epstein, but that is one. The majority muslim grooming gangs numbered thousands just here in the UK.

There is no racist accusation. There are more white men involved in grooming gangs than Asian men in the UK.

Have you got a source for this?

Is that a surprise given the UK is something like 80% white and 2% Pakistani heritage?

Well, yes, there is undoubtedly waste in the system. Sometimes caused by poor systems inefficient working practices and/or a lack of joined up thinking. Sometimes caused by people misguidedly trying to do the right thing. I don't think we will ever eradicate that waste altogether, and attempts to do so often have catastrophic unintended consequences - like Osborne's austerity, for example. I don't think that means that we shouldn't try to cut waste but I think we have to accept that humans are inherently imperfect and human systems will always function imperfectly because of that.

I think politicians love to talk about better systems and efficiency savings etc because that enables them to maintain the pretence that we can achieve everything that we collectively want as a society without making any tough choices. I wish they would just be more open and honest about those tough choices and stop stringing the electorate along. However, I understand that it's almost impossible for them to do this when the other parties are still promising the moon on a stick. Instead, the electorate are told what they want to hear... that they can have everything they want without needing to make any real sacrifices.

Not surprising no.

British Pakistanis comprise 2.7 per cent of the population in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics, although that picture varies significantly from place to place.

The Home Office commissioned a study of the available data in 2020, external. It said:

"The academic literature highlights significant limitations to what can be said about links between ethnicity and this form of offending."

"Research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white."

"Some studies suggest an over-representation of Black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations."

It found there was limited research on offender identity and poor quality data, which made it difficult to draw conclusions

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65174096

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65174096
not conclusive either way as reporting hasn’t been done in every force but the evidence isn’t as overwhelming as you think re gangs being mainly of Asian origin.

I believe if we are to look at the figures say five to ten years from now, with police and the population not frightened to point out certain trends. We will find that a massive majority of group based sexual offenders will be of one specific background.

The same was happening within the catholic church and not speaking out about it allowed it to continue. Today thankfully, parents and those in power will believe children over the local priest.

@ARealitycheck So you are simply going to ignore reality?

By the way the current scandal is the Church of England covering up child abuse. But people on MN do not seem to want to talk about it much.

But in the UK, at least, it has been the failure of "centre right" governments over the last 14 years that have pushed people much further towards the far right.

The biggest jump in Reform polling since any of those parties were trying has been since the GE

It is Labour's policies that are ramping up support, they are now at the top of the voting intention.

It will be Labour's approach that drives it further

It would have been a good thing if he had used his "power" to force the russians to fuck off out of Ukraine.

People come up with "oh it's not that simple". Well, it should be. The war would be over tomorrow

And the six tear child sexual abuse enquiry highlighted sexual abuse of children at boarding schools as a key place perpetrators have abused children and crimes have been covered up. Again rarely talked about.

What reality is that? As I suggest, look at the figures for recent years when they are properly collated to show ethnicity, I am willing to bet that one ethnicity comes out repeatedly. Probably even more so, now victims are brave enough and confident enough they will be believed.

Even though studies would’ve suggested that most sex offenders in the UK were/are not Catholic, everyone seemed very happy to acknowledge the Catholic Church had an innate issue with sex abuse. They didn’t rush to deflect to by saying ‘but what about other religions/atheists…’

Equally you seem happy to acknowledge the CofE has a sex abuse issue, but when the common factor is a race rather than a religion, it makes you uncomfortable and deflective. Why is this?