Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • At Sheffield Crown Court

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    Full text:

    This was one of the most extraordinary and emotive experiences I’ve had as a journalist.

    Seven convicted sex abusers sat silently in the dock – many looking to their families in the public gallery or glumly staring at the floor – as a survivor of the ‘harrowing’ ordeal they subjected their victims to stood up and told them that they had lost.

    Speaking directly to them from the stand next to the judge, her victim impact statement detailed the appalling nature of her suffering.

    She was forced to commit a sexual act aged 11, groomed at her primary school playground, raped at 12, her “childlike body” assaulted as she was plied with drink and drugs by a taxi driver.

    In her stark testimony, she told the court how she had been made to take a virginity test aged 11. “You made it sound like it was a crime to be a virgin. That same day you sent me off and forced me to commit a sexual act. My innocence was stolen.”

    The ‘dehumanising’ abuse led one of the victims to being raped by over 150 men by the time she was 16, having been trafficked cross the country.

    The girls were abused in supermarket car parks, in cemeteries, even behind a nursery. In one shocking example, a girl had to escape from one of her rapist’s homes, climbing through a window after she was locked inside.

    Some of the abusers looked towards the press gallery – where I was the only journalist present – instead of looking directly at the address from the survivor of their abuse. One man held eye contact with me for a few moments. Otherwise they looked anywhere but towards the woman telling them how they had not won, how she had beaten their abuse.

    “You ruined my life but I won’t let you ruin my future. I’m a fighter and a survivor. You can’t and won’t ever take anything from me again.”

    She closed her moving speech: “you stole my childhood, now I’m taking your freedom, I am your karma.”

    Mohammed Amar, 42, Yasser Ajaibe, 39; Mohammed Zameer Sadiq, 49; Mohammed Siyab, 49; Abid Saddiq, 43; Tahir Yasin, 38 and Ramin Bari, 37 will be sentenced shortly.

    They were sentenced today to a total of 104 years.

    "I was the only journalist present".

    Update: BBC report.

  • In praise of the Taliban

    From MEMRI TV:

    British Islamist journalists marked the third anniversary of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan with a discussion about the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in an August 28, 2024 episode of the Muslims Uncensored podcast on 5Pillars on YouTube. Editor of British Islamist media company 5pillars Roshan Salih said that he doesn’t consider Britain home because it is dar al-kufr (the Abode of Infidels). He later said that he is supportive of the Taliban and wishes it a lot of success. Salih said that Muslims should withdraw their children from schools in the U.K., especially their girls, because of the corruption taught in the schools.

    Dilly Hussain deputy editor of 5Pillars, talked about his recent visit to Afghanistan. He said that no women appear on billboards, there is no music, alcohol, pork, or gambling.

    5Pillars Islamist journalist Robert Carter said: “We need someone like the Taliban to come here and shut down [the] education and fix it up.”

  • A story of letting a thing be wrecked because you think so little of those who created it

    Victoria Smith on the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and Mridul Wadhwa's resignation:

    There is nothing about the damage Wadhwa has done to ERCC that could not have been predicted several years ago. The tragedy is that plenty of those who enabled the sabotage still claim to be feminists. For women such as Nicola Sturgeon, Mhairi Black and Shona Robison, trans activism’s infiltration of the women’s movement provided the ideal way to prove how forward-thinking and progressive they were. There is, after all, more status in claiming to be a trans ally than in aligning yourself with the women of the past, those drudges who built up the very things that you are now free to trash.

    For this is a story of letting a thing be wrecked because you think so little of those who created it. Reading the past few years’ discourse on female-only spaces and inclusion, one could be forgiven for thinking women were handed rape crisis centres as part of some luxury “cis privilege” benefits package. The truth is that they fought for them. It is shameful that such a small thing — not the end of rape, nor even a meaningful reduction in rape, merely the resources to support women in its aftermath — should have had to be fought for at all. “Good” men should have been desperate to support women in their efforts, providing financial backup while keeping well away. Then, as now, few actually did….

    Half a century after the founding of the first women’s refuges, we should be arguing for better female-only services, not trying to justify their existence or re-invention. Shame on Mridul Wadhwa, but shame, too, on every “feminist” who boosted her status by casually unpicking the work of every unknown, unpaid, unsung woman who achieved things she never will.

  • The trans population figures

    Also of note today – finally, the 2021 census figures which massively over-estimated the number of trans people has been downgraded.

    Census figures claiming that there are 262,000 transgender people in England and Wales have been formally downgraded, after fears the question may have been misunderstood.

    On Thursday, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) requested a reclassification of its 2021 gender identity estimates from “official statistics” to “official statistics in development”.

    It admitted there was the “potential for bias” in answers to the question: “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?” In the 2021 census, people whose first language was not English were four times more likely to say they were transgender than those with English as their main language.

    The ONS acknowledged potential bias in how the question had been answered by those “who responded that they did not speak English well”. Dr Michael Biggs, an Oxford professor who first raised concerns about the question, said the ONS had made a “long-overdue admission” that the question was “fundamentally flawed”.

    He said yesterday: “It’s disgraceful that the Office for National Statistics took 18 months to admit this. Of the total of over 100 questions in the 2011 and 2021 censuses, this is the first to have been downgraded by the ONS.”…

    Biggs said he believed that ONS’s close relationship with LGBT lobby group Stonewall contributed to this question being developed without proper scrutiny and said it was “essential” that other public bodies were stopped from using it.

    Here's the abstract from the April 2023 paper from Michael Biggs:

    The 2021 Census of England and Wales was the first in the world to elicit information on gender identity from an entire population. This paper argues that its results are implausible on the dimensions of geography, education, ethnicity, and religion. The results contradict external sources of data such as referrals to gender clinics and signatures on a pro-transgender petition. The results are also internally inconsistent when the various categories of gender identity are correlated across geography,and when compared to the results for sexual orientation.The spurious results were produced by a badly flawed question on gender identity, which was originally formulated by a transgender campaigning organization. The question evidently confused a substantial number of respondents who erroneously declared their gender identity to differ from their natal sex. Confusion is manifested by the overrepresentation of people lacking English proficiency or educational qualifications in the most suspect gender categories. These findings demonstrate how a faulty survey question can systematically distort our apprehension of the social world.

    In particular the London boroughs of Newham and Brent, which have a significant percentage of residents who speak English as a second language, recorded the highest proportion of transgender people in the UK. Which should perhaps have caused alarm bells to ring.

    The Deputy Director at the ONS is transwoman Alison Pritchard, as it happens.

    Postscript:

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  • A change of leadership

    So farewell then Mridul Wadhwa:

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    "The chair and board should have stepped down too. ScotGov should have withdrawn funding from ERCC until there was an entirely new board and SLT. But yes, apart from all that, the "time is right" for Wadhwa to go. 2/3

    "During his inglorious tenure he did provide one important service to women – he illustrated why men who demand entry to women-only spaces are precisely the men who should never be allowed in. They are, by definition, boundary violators. So goodbye Wadhwa – and good riddance 3/3"

    BBC report:

    The chief executive of a sexual assault support service has stood down after a review found it failed to protect women-only spaces. Mridul Wadhwa – a trans woman – resigned after a Rape Crisis Scotland report found she failed to behave professionally while head of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC).

    The investigation, carried out by an independent consultant, also found Ms Wadhwa “did not understand the limits of her authority” and the needs of survivors were not prioritised.

    In a statement, the ERCC board said it was implementing recommendations from the review, but felt the “time was right for a change of leadership”….

    However, For Women Scotland – which has campaigned against changes to transgender rights – accused the board of "ignoring its own culpability".

    In a statement posted on X, they said, external: "This is the very least that they can do. It seems the board are intent on ignoring their own culpability.

    "It's not good enough.

    "They, and Rape Crisis Scotland, are making a sacrifice. But they created the problem."

  • For the purpose of propagating a continuous war against the Jewish state

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  • Reporting the ERCC

    A new report on the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre is damning on the role of Mridul Wadhwa:

    A controversial rape crisis centre “damaged” victims of sexual violence by hindering their access to biologically female counsellors, a damning report has found.

    Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC), run by trans woman Mridul Wadhwa, was blasted for “many serious failings” including not putting the needs of survivors first.

    The independent investigation condemned the centre for insisting traumatised rape victims, who can be as young as 12, must specify if they don’t want support from someone born a man….

    The review was ordered by umbrella organisation Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS) in May 2024, after a scathing employment tribunal judgment ruled that ERCC worker Roz Adams was subjected to a “heresy hunt” for suggesting a rape victim should know the sex of her counsellor.

    Although rape crisis centres are autonomous, they sign up to the RCS’s national standards, many of which the review found ERCC had failed to meet.

    RCS said the review had found a “significant breach of its standards” and was “pausing” the referral of any new clients to ERCC until it implements the recommendations of the review.

    Women only spaces are a required national standard yet they were not available from October 2022 until at least February 2024, when ERCC knew it was facing a tribunal and would be under scrutiny.

    The review was heavily critical of Wadhwa, who self identifies as a woman but does not have a gender recognition certificate and is legally a man.

    It found her be a domineering as chief executive who “who did not understand the limits on her role’s authority” and it said Wadhwa “failed to set professional standards of behaviour” within the organisation.

    She was portrayed as incompetent, overseeing an organisation with systemic failures and a chaotic approach in key areas such as financial transparency, training and safeguarding for staff and clients.

    Yes, that does indeed sound damning. And he got the job, advertised for women only, despite being a man without a gender recognition certificate. This was at the time of peak SNP-driven gender identity ideology, before the wheels came off that particular wagon.

    The reviewer, charity sector consultant, Vicky Ling, said she was also told victims were not using the service because they deemed it unsafe, given there was no guarantee of being seen by a counsellor born female.

    And she recommended ERCC refer any concerned survivors to guaranteed women only services such as Beira's Place, the rape help centre funded by JK Rowling and condemned by Wadhwa as transphobic.

    Wadhwa labelled rape victims bigots and transphobes if they doubted whether a man identifying as a woman should run a centre helping women recover from male violence.

    She said any staff who did not think all trans women were women should be fired.

    According to the employment tribunal, Madhwa was on a mission to 'cleanse the organisation of those who did not follow her beliefs’.

    Let's not forget Cameron Downing, the former SNP equalities officer who identified as non-binary and claimed to have received extensive support from the ERCC. He made no secret of his hatred of women – he wanted to “beat the f**k” out of feminists – and was imprisoned for six years after being found guilty of multiple sexual offences. That's who the ERCC was there for – not the women victims.

    Joan Smith had a good piece on the ERCC at Quillette a month back.

  • As if using a woman’s womb were a human right

    The case this week of a surrogate mother who had to fight for the right to have any contact with her son – after the gay couple who paid to rent her womb said it was 'homophobic' for her to be involved in their 'motherless family' – has highlighted the contentious nature of surrogacy. Jo Bartosch at Spiked – Surrogacy is exploiting women in the name of ‘inclusivity’:

    The positioning of surrogacy as about gay rights is a particularly sinister manoeuvre. Just as with the misogynistic campaign to remove ‘women’ from law for the sake of ‘trans rights’, the push to erase motherhood has come cloaked in a rainbow flag and decorated with inclusive sparkles.

    The truth is that gay men are (rightly) at liberty to adopt just as heterosexual couples are. Yet surrogacy is being promoted by mainstream LGBT lobby groups as if using a woman’s womb were a human right. Looking at the steady stream of positive surrogacy stories, it seems a public-relations campaign to normalise the practice is well underway. Already, the surrogacy industry is lucrative, global, powerful and growing. Estimates suggest that within 10 years, it will be valued at around $129 billion….

    ‘Kindness’ and ‘inclusion’ are being weaponised to normalise the rental of wombs, the sale of babies and the cutting off of contact between children and their mothers. This is brutal, exploitative and fundamentally anti-human.

  • Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee

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  • “We must consider the fight against this malignant tumour as a matter of life and death”

    The world is catching up on North Korea's clampdown on "anti-socialist" – ie South Korean – culture. Richard Lloyd Parry in the Times:

    Video has emerged from North Korea showing handcuffed teenagers being publicly denounced for the crime of enjoying foreign films and music, in a further sign of the regime’s fear of the “malignant tumour” of imported culture.

    Clips broadcast on South Korean television show teenage girls with heads bowed in some kind of tribunal. One of them, whose name and school are identified on screen, stands weeping in front of a microphone as she makes her confession, before being roughly led away by uniformed soldiers.

    The film, which appears to be an official production distributed as a warning, describes her as one of “several students who watched and distributed impure publications and propaganda materials, including puppet television dramas” — a term used to refer to South Korean television.

    In a second clip, a young soldier confesses to similar crimes. “Using my mobile phone, I watched 15 American movies, 17 South Korean puppet movies and 127 videos and listened to about 160 puppet songs,” he says.

    The scene switches to a classroom of young soldiers as they listen to the testimony of his mother. “He was arrested [for] watching impure recordings,” she says tearfully. “I gave birth to a traitor, not a son!”

    A voiceover comments: “There is a phenomenon by which impure recordings are purchased, viewed, stored and distributed using mobile phones. In the process, even text messages are exchanged in the contaminated puppet dialect. We must consider the fight against this malignant tumour as a matter of life and death.”

    There are already YouTube clips of young people being sentenced to hard labour for watching South Korean dramas.

    The punishment may be worse than years in a hard labour camp: it could be execution.