grooming gangs Archives - The Naton State

D Day for the Deep State

8 May 20208 May 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

At 3.02 this morning, the 75^th anniversary of VE day, I received an innocuous looking email on behalf of the Parliamentary Petitions Committee. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they’d reviewed the Home Office’s response to the Grooming Gangs report petition and, like me, found it to be wholly inadequate. It makes a refreshing change to see our elected officials taking the concerns of the general public seriously, although I’m sure that significant pushback from constituents has something to do with it.

Just like myself and many others, the Committee is not at all satisfied with a Home Office response that completely fails to address or even mention the central point of the petition in the first place. As a result, the Committee has written directly to the Home Secretary to request a revised response that addresses the petition’s request directly. There’s a copy of the letter below if you’d like to read it.

I’ve already voiced my suspicion that the true reason for the Home Office’s opaque response is that said report was never actually created. Now it looks like that hypothesis will be properly tested.

By writing directly to the Home Secretary, the Committee has ensured that the matter can’t just be kicked down the road by a gaggle of nameless, unaccountable mandarins. Speaking personally, I’ve no doubt that that Priti Patel is more than happy to bring this issue to a head, especially as she apparently still hasn’t laid eyes on this most rarefied government document.

Politics

Does the Grooming Gang Report Really Exist?

26 April 20203 May 2020 - by Charles Naton - 1 Comment

I’m beginning to think there’s a unicorn hiding at the heart of Whitehall.

Call it a conspiracy theory, but there’s something deeply troubling about the Home Office’s response to the petition to release the grooming gang report. Actually there are many troubling things, but there’s something about the whole affair that’s starting to make me very uneasy. In fact, this parade of shadows and ghosts has forced me to ask a fundamental question.

Does this fabled grooming gang report actually exist?

Has anyone at the Home Office actually carried out the research and compiled this mythical report that nobody outside the Home Office has ever seen? What reliable evidence do we have to prove the existence of this legendary tome?

Except for the word of some senior civil servants there is none. Plus the non-existence of this report would explain why, having never created it, the Home Office can’t ever allow anyone to see it. It would also explain why a single word of it has never leaked, despite the intense media and public interest. The Sunday broadsheets and the tabloids have a long reach and deep pockets, yet none of them have produced a shred of evidence to confirm that the grooming gang report was ever written in the first place. Forget about the report itself; there are no emails quoting from it, no minutes of meetings and not even a credible source confirming they’ve read it.

There…is…nothing.

Politics

Grooming Gangs – Publish and be Damned

9 March 202029 April 2020 - by Charles Naton - 2 Comments.

Who’s afraid of Britain First? Quite a lot of people it seems. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to learn just how influential they are in the wake of the latest in a long and wearying line of grooming gang scandals. This particular kerfuffle is a little different though, as the action is taking place right in the heart of Whitehall rather than in some grey, far flung northern town.

It’s hard to know which is worse, the wholesale abuse of vulnerable young girls by grooming gangs, or officialdom’s complicity first in turning a blind eye and then actively suppressing the truth of this industrial scale exploitation.

Now it seems that Home Office Mandarins have determined that not even our elected Home Secretary should be permitted to see her own department’s report into the organised ruination of so many young women and girls. It goes without saying that if the Home Secretary is essentially being told to jog on by her own department, the unwashed rest of us have no chance when it comes to seeing this mythical report. Not in the public interest, you see.

Naturally, the usual suspects in the Twittersphere are happy to endorse this politically motivated suppression, arguing that “far right extremists” (cue scary music) will exploit the report’s findings for political ends. Of course that hoary old chestnut makes about as much sense as defusing a bomb that’s already detonated. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, the far right are already exploiting the establishment’s complicity and cowardice by claiming that the institutions designed to protect us from harm are actively conspiring to let that harm to continue. You know you’ve stepped through the looking glass when Britain First actually has a point about something.

Politics

A Tale of Two Cities

14 August 201929 April 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

The very murky death of Jeffrey Epstein has once again focused public attention on the gross distortions that money, politics and patronage have wrought on a supposedly impartial legal system. With the FBI having been caught out protecting Hillary Clinton while trying to hound a duly elected President from office, we shake our heads sadly at the blatant and frankly terrifying politicisation of a once respected law enforcement agency.

At least we don’t have such a dangerously partisan legal culture in this country, right?

Right?

Anyone who thinks such a systemic corruption of policing priorities couldn’t happen here should consider the questions swirling around the Carl Beech fiasco. It’s illuminating and depressing to compare and contrast the unfounded witch hunt of Operation Midland with the way Operation Central was eventually, finally and grudgingly launched in 2008.

The Metropolitan Police could barely contain their glee as they turned their huge resources to hounding a group of fading establishment figures at the behest of an obvious fantasist. Warrants were obtained, houses were searched and Beech’s ludicrous and demonstrably false allegations were declared to be “credible and true” before any investigation had been concluded. The Met were positively salivating at the thought of putting a bunch of old men through the meat grinder, and they weren’t going to let a complete absence of credible evidence stand in their way.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the accused men were retired Tories or their supporters.

Media

Telford’s #MeToo Moment

14 March 20183 May 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

Rotherham, Oxford, Aylesbury, Newcastle, Rochdale, Bristol, Keighley…and now Telford.

It’s only been a few days since the latest story of yet more industrial scale sexual abuse and establishment complicity made headlines, only to tumble down the news ladder just as suddenly as it had surfaced.

Maybe we’re all abused out. Maybe just another run-of-the-mill, conveyor-belt story of organised exploitation and police paralysis is no longer shocking enough to hold our attention. It’s old hat and we’ve heard it all before. Besides, there’ll be another one along in a minute.

Just let that sink in for a moment. As a nation and a community, we are no longer shocked that organised gangs of mainly Asian men can prey on some of our most vulnerable young girls, while our once proud police cower in the shadows, ever fearful that the dark magic of the R-word might be cast against them. Welcome to Britain in 2018, a nation with a hollowed out and inverted value system, where fear of a false accusation allows real crime to go unpunished.