Sadiq Khan has no idea what grooming gangs are.

[NoNever]

Sadiq Khan either really doesn’t know which makes him incompetent or is pretending not to know which makes him complicit.

https://x.com/sammywoodhouse1/status/1879943683082186847

People are handwaving away these gangs by saying that they're only a small proportion, there are no common features, bla bla bla.

He fucking knows what they are alright he just doesn't want to implicate anyone as most of them from the big case in Rotherham were mainly Asia, doesn't want to be seen to be tuning on his own

Is this aimed at me?

If so, I am sorry but I can't work out what you mean. Mind you, it's 5am and my flu meds have worn off, so...

I do think these cases have unique features and I do think that the case files should be reexamined to work out how the fuck this was allowed to continue to the extent it did. I thought I had made that explicitly clear in my posts, but perhaps not. Studies on British Pakistani men Othering white British girls to facilitate abuse do not exist, so I cited studies on British men Othering children from
different cultures. My suggestion, which I explained in some detail on the same post, was that something similar was happening here. I can't see where I said anything on this or any other post that could be remotely construed as "they're a small proportion of all child abuse so we don't need to look at it separately"

I do think the girls' low social status in our classist and misogynist society made them uniquely vulnerable to predators. A perfect storm if you like. I do not think that is the same as saying "they're a small proportion of all child abuse so we don't need to look at it separately" either.

I am a feminist. This is the feminism board. I don't think it's off-brand to suggest that good old fashioned misogyny played a part in this.

I fear we are losing our capacity for complexity and nuance.

'Turning on his own?' Dear God, listen to yourself.
Rotherham wasn't in London last time I looked so nothing to do with Sadiq.

I do think the girls' low social status in our classist and misogynist society made them uniquely vulnerable to predators. A perfect storm if you like. I do not think that is the same as saying "they're a small proportion of all child abuse so we don't need to look at it separately" either.

I am a feminist. This is the feminism board. I don't think it's off-brand to suggest that good old fashioned misogyny played a part in this.

Of course I think that misogyny played a part. The largest part. There are several posters on this thread and there are many people in authority who appear to believe these gangs aren't a phenomenon worth investigating together to understand the dynamics and common patterns.

Andrew Norfolk, the journalist who first wrote about this for The Times about fifteen years ago, defined these crimes as:

1. The victims had to be aged between 11 and 15, i.e. adolescents
2. The offenders were acting together in groups
3. The first point of contact between victim and offender had to have occurred in a public space such as a park, shopping centre or bus station, which rules out abuse within the home and organisational settings like schools, places of worship, youth/ sports clubs etc.

He found that the majority of crimes that fitted these criteria were committed by men with Muslim names. If you widen these criteria, you will of course broaden the racial groups involved. Most child sexual abuse in the UK is carried out by white men, we are a majority white nation.

And if this can happen in Oxford, the case that everyone seems to forget despite it being front page news in 2013 when the guilty verdicts came through, I don’t see why it won’t be happening in other affluent towns and cities in southern England, including London.

The evidence that was collected (and covered up, lost, denied) in all the towns where those rape and torture gangs operated showed that
these particular misogynists comprised over 90% British Pakistani males. Mainly taxi drivers and kebab shop owners, local councillors, police, business owners, individuals of standing in the communities. They were family groups/ related to each other across the towns. The taxis were used to drive the girls between towns, the shops and businesses were
used to drug, rape and torture the victims. The victims were mainly white girls but included sikh girls.
The whataboutery on MN is infuriating and is perpetuated by people who were either not there, not born when this was happening, haven't read or listened to the words of these particular victims, whistle blowers or witnesses, or have an agenda of their own. This is still going on because we aren't allowed to name it.
This was one particular kind of grooming gang culture. Not the same as paedophile priests, teachers, scout masters, frequent visitors to Thailand, gangs who traffic women and children across countries. We all know there were/ are thousands of them too.
Listen to the words of Ann Cryer, Maggie Oliver, Raja Miah, just 3 of the many witnesses. This goes all the way to the top of the Labour Party and SK doesn't want to say a word about it.

Well said @porridgecake

Sammy Woodhouse was a victim and is a very brave woman.

They don't do that with other organized crime, why do you think they should with sexual exploitation?

I think this is an important point. The population of the UK is not homogeneous, there are large sections where there aren't many Asian people at all.

These crimes have occurred in places where there is a large Asian population, and really more specific than that, as someone up-thread has mentioned - these are not well educated professionals from big cities. Their origins tend to be working class and rural in many cases.

It's worth noting that in many parts of south Asia, there are similar sexual violence problems with the uneducated rural population. This is well acknowledged in those countries, it's not some outside assessment.

What seems to have happened, IMO, is a problem has been imported in a fairly direct way. It's manifesting a bit differently because the environment is differernt, but it's basically the same issue.

Here in Canada there have been recent problems with inter religious/ethnic violence in some cities with very large, fairly recent Asian immigration. It's a direct reflection of the conflicts that were going on where the people involved came from - they have just changed the setting. It's very disturbing to people who live there.

It's as if you had people saying - well, this is only a tiny proportion of violence in Canada, and you see plenty of other Asian people who don't do that, so obviously it is racist to treat this as an ethnic issue.

Well, fuck that, it is obviously an ethnic issue when you suddenly have a small, previously racially homogeneous city with 1000 newcomers in a year and you are seeing Hindu-Muslim violence breaking out, even if it is a statistical drop in the bucket. And the police apparently should just treat it as if it is like other random violence?

There is a reason gang related crimes are policed differently.

From the Times. Why is this happening. They have been told to improve data.

Of people sentenced for drug offences last year, 39 per cent were recorded as having an unknown ethnicity, up from 8 per cent in 2010. Over the same period, sexual offenders with no recorded ethnicity increased from 15 to 29 per cent.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/406a6059-4455-4ca0-ae3d-75416d207b89?shareToken=dc5cf51a763839cafedf4598afff06b0

The mayor of London is is head of the administration for London. His topics include police and crime. Even though he has a party affiliation and of course party politics play a role, he is the mayor for all Londoners and not meant to prefer or disadvantage any group.
The assembly members in the video, including Susan Hall, have a right to ask questions about his office and he has to reply to them, as they are the check to his executive powers. He does not sit on this chair as a private person.

That's why it is both wrong for the mayor to assume racist intentions in her questions as well as assuming for observers (both for and against his opinion) he should react a specific way in return. He does not hold his office as representative of any ethnicity or religion.

Of course in reality these could be the undertones of the debate, but it's not in the job description. And it is a weird implication, too, that all other Asian Muslim men, who have nothing to do with the gangs and are law-abiding citizens with a moral compass, would wish these crimes are not solved. That's a prejudice in reverse.

That leaves the question, why would anybody not want this to come to light?

If the problem is that some people fear everybody being tarred with the same brush and a lot of prejudice, then that is a separate problem to be tackled. It should not prevent justice.

Reasons Sadiq may have not answered her:

He thinks she was being racist.
He doesn’t like her
Playing political games
Doesn’t know about grooming gangs
Doesn’t care about girls being sexually abused

None of these reasons are acceptable to blank a discussion about widespread sexual abuse of girls. If he had an issue with the way the question was asked then he should have addressed that. Whichever way you look at it, he benefited only himself in (what should have been) a discussion about sexual abuse of minors.

That's why it is both wrong for the mayor to assume racist intentions in her questions as well as assuming for observers (both for and against his opinion) he should react a specific way in return. He does not hold his office as representative of any ethnicity or religion.

Of course in reality these could be the undertones of the debate, but it's not in the job description. And it is a weird implication, too, that all other Asian Muslim men, who have nothing to do with the gangs and are law-abiding citizens with a moral compass, would wish these crimes are not solved. That's a prejudice in reverse.

That leaves the question, why would anybody not want this to come to light?

If the problem is that some people fear everybody being tarred with the same brush and a lot of prejudice, then that is a separate problem to be tackled. It should not prevent justice.

All this.

Another twist. Khan has very little integrity.

www.thetimes.com/article/bd2ec8f2-d376-47d9-a9cb-56b83bd8373d?shareToken=6a1bc9c703910fdd1446436b9562242e

Sadiq Khan will face an investigation after he accepted £3,000 worth of free tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.
The investigation was prompted by a formal complaint from Susan Hall, a Conservative member of the London assembly and former mayoral candidate.

I think that’s irrelevant.

If he or any other politician get found against for freebies or expenses then think less of them. But that’s nothing to do with grooming gangs.

No, but it partly explains his appalling attitude to Susan Hall.

I’m sure he hates her anyway! He is very self-important, arrogant and prickly.

The word that came to my mind, both wrt Swift tickets and more generally, is 'entitled'. That's how he always comes across to me. Smug and entitled.

Entitled is right.

We live along one of his range rover cavalcade runs (which almost always come with police escorts... natch...)

For a man who wants everyone to use zero emission cars or take their life into their hands on bikes hes suprisingly fond of a gas guzzler

Susan Hall again? What a coincidence
Anyone would think she'd lost badly in the election and might have an agenda?
Does anyone one else in this thread actually live in London and was witness to what an awful campaign she ran? Or does everyone just dislike Khan for whatever reason.

I’m pretty sure there are Londoners on mn threads

Khan was still goady

I'm talking about this thread in particular. It always seems to me that most of the hostility to SK comes from people who don't actually live here.
After all, we elected him three times, which seems to upset a lot of people.

People dont have to like him, @beguilingeyes - it's not obligatory.