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

He's clearly avoiding the subject because he knows full well it's happening in London and because the gangs are from the same country of origin as him, he wanted to 'catch her out' and deflect the issue. London has gone completely to pot under his leadership - can't even call it that. I wish there was a system where a mayor cannot have a third term because now he has become completely unaccountable. He has even turned off commenting on his X account which proves he doesn't care or wish to know what Londoners think and feel.

Watch the video, I’m not spinning anything, the only examples Hall listed were those few gangs that were majority British Pakistani. That’s called cherry picking to make the issue all about the ethnicity of perpetrators to further the right wing racism of Hall and her ilk.

He didn’t pretend not to know what a grooming gang was, he pretended to not understand what Hall “meant” by her asinine dog whistle questions.

He's the mayor. He needs to not "pretend not to understand" questions from other assembly members.

It's an entirely relevant and topical question and not only Ms Hall but other people would like an answer. The days when politicians and people in authority can fob off any opinion or questions they don't approve of by frothing about "dog whistles" are coming to a long overdue end, thank fuck.

Watch the video

I've watched the video, that's why I'm on this thread about it

So state that rather than the nonsense replies

Exactly, just about to post same. Don't behave like a total prick.

I mean Susan hall knows exactly what she's doing and to make this about race can cause serious harm to young girls who are victims of grooming and exploitation by white men.

Susan hall rarely asks questions about the grooming and exploitation of young boys county lines as an example.

she's cherry picking

I'm happy for all our politicians to have their feet held to the fire. Khan is a terrible mayor, and a noted misogynist.

Well neither does Hall need to pretend he wasn’t asking what she meant by a question but was asking what is a grooming gang. She dog whistled, he asked what she meant and then she obfuscated and danced around the mulberry bush.

The question “How many grooming gangs are in London” is not an answerable question. It’s like asking “How many KGB are in London” to a mayor who has family in Russia after the Salisbury poisonings. Unanswerable and only asked to highlight his ethnicity to imply he is in the know and complicit/covering up for baddies.

What I find surprising about this is the angle of “I don’t understand the question”.

He could have said (if it were true) that, say, crime isn’t categorised and recorded in that way, or he would need to consult the Met and would answer after that, or that this is a sensitive operational police matter and he’ll answer privately, etc etc.

To feign a lack of understanding just makes him look thick and uninformed. If he has a meeting with the police and they start telling him about grooming gangs - or the absence in London of grooming gangs - he’s going to have to say “I don’t know what those are”. 🙄

The issue isn’t that there is a problem with grooming gangs and that some of these grooming gangs are Pakistani.

There is a completely separate issue which is Pakistani gangs raping and torturing poor and vulnerable white girls in certain towns and cities.

I don’t know why people refuse to accept this. It’s not saying all Pakistanis are child abusers.

Denying the facts and always coming out with ‘the majority of child abuse is by white men’ is completely misunderstanding the issue, I don’t know if the misunderstanding is deliberate or not but it doesn’t help the victims in any way.

I did already state that. In my first post. This was a repetition as you apparently missed it the first time.

Presumably he hasn’t lost the power of speech and clear language

Just say what the issue is and why he can’t give a number instead of repeating what are they

I don’t know why people refuse to accept this. It’s not saying all Pakistanis are child abusers.

Denying the facts and always coming out with ‘the majority of child abuse is by white men’ is completely misunderstanding the issue, I don’t know if the misunderstanding is deliberate or not but it doesn’t help the victims in any way.

Agree.

No Khan should state that not you.

His repetition was nonsense.

To feign a lack of understanding just makes him look thick and uninformed.

Or sly and disingenuous, which is how I perceived it.

She said in her question she wasn’t asking for an exact number, but wanted to know if any existed and if so what was being done about it. A legitimate question to the mayor of the city.

It isn’t racist to ask about grooming gangs.

Posters that think he didn't come across to the majority of people as either clueless or a disingenuous arse who doesn't give a fuck about organised gangs of men raping children are severely lacking in awareness.

It’s less misunderstanding and more deflection made to make people afraid of speaking about the grooming gangs for fear of being called racists. All it does is protect the rapists, and so I now assume that’s the entire reason they use such deflection.

For my last post, I will reiterate that the majority of group based child sexual exploitation (the formal term for grooming gang) are done by white perpetrators:

“It is wrong to say group-based child abuse is predominantly committed by Pakistani men, the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) has said.
Figures from the police database show where ethnicity is recorded, that in the first three quarters of 2024 - 85% of group-based child abusers were white, while 3.9% were of Pakistani origin.”

It is a problem of grooming gangs of which some include British-Pakistani men, and victims are not just white girls.

Anyone who thinks otherwise has fallen for racist propaganda. That is why many of us refuse to accept it- because it’s not a fact at all that we have a special issue with British Pakistani men raping white girls.

also harmful to non-white girls if it’s framed as as a problem just affecting white girls. I worked in foster care and a disproportionate amount of the kids were mixed race and black. Foster kids in general are at high risk for exploitation and abuse. The only girl I knew that was suspected to be trafficked was a black girl from a Caribbean background.

He should have found a way to answer. The victims of this deserve better than a pissing contest.

“^It is wrong to say group-based child abuse is predominantly committed by Pakistani men, the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) has said.
Figures from the police database show where ethnicity is recorded, that in the first three quarters of 2024 - 85% of group-based child abusers were white, while 3.9% were of Pakistani origin.”^

If you don't see why listening to police forces and their quango, when many of these police forces are in it up to their necks on this, while they design away the issue by equivocation about what constitutes a "grooming gang", you're even less aware of the issues here than I thought.

As they say where I grew up, what a total shithouse he is. The dodging around the truth, implied accusations of bad intent for even asking the question. The people who do this, whether it’s in families, communities or wider discourse are in some ways as unforgivable as the actual abusers. They know it’s wrong, enough to pretend it doesn’t even exist.

Yes, this is the problem. He may not have liked the way that she asked, but refusing to answer at all plays into her hands and more importantly, doesn’t help the victims at all.