Category Archives: Abuse

How will an ‘Online Harms’ law help if judges won’t recognise the tactics?

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Kate Winslet: accepting her BAFTA for I Am Ruth, she pleaded for legislation to tackle the online abuses to which young people are subjected. But what good will any law do, if judges refuse to acknowledge the methods of online abuse?

When Kate Winslet won a BAFTA for I Am Ruth, she pleaded for legislation to battle the online harms to which young people are now constantly subjected.

It was a powerful speech, and the panellists on the BBC’s Politics Live on May 15 (Danny Kruger, Shami Chakrabarti, Alastair Campbell and ConservativeHome’s Henry Hill) discussed what could be done. You can hear their salient points here:

https://youtu.be/ectWDks3Y0Q

But is it possible to legislate against the tactics that are used to mentally and emotionally attack young people? Would the courts even recognise such methods if a case reached them?

I don’t think so, based on my experience in Rachel Riley’s libel case against me.

I put forward evidence about several different forms of abuse that are commonly used in the social media but the judge refused to recognise any of them.

That was her prerogative, and I’m sure she had her reasons.

But it sets a precedent that means it may now be much harder for anybody trying to win a case under forthcoming “online harms” laws to succeed.

Actions have consequences. I fear the consequences for young people in this age of anti-social media may be severe.​

I will try to make our MPs aware of my concerns. It would be welcome if you would do the same.

In the meantime, I am still trying to raise money to pay my legal team, whose members were also concerned about the effect of online abuse on young people.

Please – and only if you are able to spare it – donate to my CrowdJustice fund, or contribute in any of the following ways:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

Online harm continues to be an urgent, current issue and my court case was all about that.

It is possible that my actions in defence of a vulnerable teenager may eventually be vindicated, whether a High Court judge approves of them or not.

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Lisa Nandy’s attacks on the left only betray her own repulsiveness

Nandy: a mouthpiece for Labour attack lines without any apparent intelligence to filter out the offensive nonsense.

A confrontation between Labour MPs has won an inordinate amount of attention on the social media, considering the failures of one of the participants.

I refer of course to the argument between right-winger Lisa Nandy and left-wing former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell over their party’s current line of attack adverts – in particular the one accusing Rishi Sunak of wanting child sex offenders to escape prison.

Here’s the relevant part of the discussion on Robert Peston’s ITV show:

Both of them were wrong, in different ways.

Mr McDonnell was mistaken to suggest that Nandy would not make personal attacks – quite clearly, because her response to his reasonable assertion that Labour should not have made an unsupportable personal attack was to make an unsupportable personal attack.

And Nandy was wrong in her entire approach – supporting the advert and attacking Mr McDonnell with the old line about anti-Semitism.

For the record, the manufactured anti-Semitism crisis, in which people like Nandy persuaded much of the country that under Jeremy Corbyn, two-thirds of their party were anti-Semites (in fact, I believe the true figure was found to be fewer than one per cent), was not the worst stain on Labour’s history.

But don’t take my words on it. Here’s Cornish Damo with a detailed breakdown of the incident, the issues, and why Nandy is as vile as she undoubtedly is:

This Writer wonders whether she’s happy now, having done what seems to be her real job – propping up the Tories.

They will get a sympathy bounce because the claims against Rishi Sunak are not supportable, and thinking right-wingers will support them because they will see Labour as divided.

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Brexit opposer makes claim of abuse and racism against Dominic Raab

Gina Miller: at one point in her fight against Brexit, she was afraid to leave her home because of threats of acid attacks. She alleges that Dominic Raab called her a “silly bitch”.

If these claims are true, one has to wonder how Dominic Raab could ever have thought the denials in his resignation letter would fly.

Raab resigned as UK Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister yesterday (Friday, April 21, 2023) after an inquiry found that he had bullied civil servants on two separate occasions.

In his resignation letter, he denied the findings and complained that the inquiry process was flawed.

Now people are lining up to accuse him – if they haven’t done so already.

Here’s Gina Miller, who took the Tory government to a judicial review on the legality of its Brexit, telling Piers Morgan and other guests on his show that Raab called her a “silly bitch”:

She had already expanded on this in an article for The Independent, in February:

The call came to appear on the BBC’s Today programme. I would be on with a Tory MP, Dominic Raab. I hit Google and found out that he was an arch Brexiteer and a lawyer. I thought we would have a robust but reasonable conversation about the merits of the case. How wrong I was.

We were sitting next to each other in the studio. The presenters introduced the case and turned to Raab, who launched into an abusive attack on me: I was a rich woman going against the will of the people; my challenge was a rather naked attempt to steal the referendum by the back door. My nervousness suddenly disappeared. I turned to him and said: “Mr Raab, have you read my case?”

His face was full of fury. The debate was won.

As we made our way out of the studio, the young runner showed us to the lift and said he would meet us downstairs. As the doors closed, Raab stared at me and said: “I can’t make up my mind if you’re naive, got too much money or just stupid. Just because you have deep pockets and friends in high legal places you think you can just go to court to stop the will of the people.”

I was stunned and stayed quiet.

The doors opened and the young man told me my car was just outside. Raab barked at the young man: “Where’s my car?”

The young man replied that they hadn’t been asked to arrange a car and that maybe Raab’s office had organised one instead. Raab was furious and shouted at the young man: “Go get me a f***ing car.”

The young man was shaking, I was even more shocked. I said “thank you” to the young man and suggested he went back inside and let Raab call his team.

She also discussed the incident (also on the video clip above) in which Raab mistook her brother for Nish Kumar in what she clearly took to be “they all look the same” racist stereotyping:

On 11 January 2018, I was invited to be on the BBC Question Time panel with Raab.

Raab entered with two of his team and made a beeline to my brother – a serious-looking, bespectacled, very short-haired doctor – and said, “I am Dominic Raab, look forward to being on the panel with you tonight” with that grin he does. I looked up from the papers I was reviewing in preparation. My brother was taken aback and said, “do you think I’m Nish Kumar? We’re not all the same, you know?”

Nish Kumar has confirmed the incident:

Some have chosen to question the validity of Ms Miller’s “silly bitch” story, claiming that it is impossible to verify as nobody else was in the lift with her and Raab.

The now-former minister himself has denied it.

But she clearly wasn’t lying about the Nish Kumar blunder.

And that lends validity to her other claim.

Not only that, but This Writer does not think Ms Miller’s are the only claims that will be made about Raab, now he has been found to be a workplace bully.

The information is coming out. Feel free to judge it for yourself.

Source: I was bullied and demeaned by Dominic Raab | The Independent

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Raab’s resignation over bullying is a sign of Sunak’s weakness

Happier times for them: Dominic Raab and Rishi Sunak.

Dominic Raab has resigned as Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, after making Rishi Sunak wait a day for him to do it.

He went with the ill grace that has characterised his ministerial career – blaming anybody else he could find.

An inquiry by Adam Tolley KC investigated eight allegations of bullying against Raab, and found him guilty of two.

He handed his report to prime minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday morning (April 21),

It seems Sunak then sat on it for 24 hours, waiting for Raab to do the right thing and resign.

Downing Street says no pressure was applied to Raab and there is no indication that Sunak ever considered sacking him. Resigning means Raab gets to keep his Ministerial pension, and this means that – in practice – any Tory Cabinet Minister found to have committed misdeeds is given the opportunity to resign. Remember how Priti Patel left Theresa May’s Cabinet?

According to the BBC, the report states that:

on a number of occasions, while meeting with policy officials, Raab “acted in a manner which was intimidating, in the sense of going further than was necessary or appropriate in delivering critical feedback, and also insulting, in the sense of making unconstructive critical comments about the quality of work done (whether or not as a matter of substance any criticism was justified).”

It concludes that while implementing a certain decision in the role “he acted in a way which was intimidating, in the sense of unreasonably and persistently aggressive conduct in the context of a work meeting.

“His conduct also involved an abuse or misuse of power in a way that undermines or humiliates. He introduced an unwarranted punitive element.”

It looks at his behaviour in meetings with officials as justice secretary, and picks out an example where Raab complained about the absence of “basic information” from officials, about staff “whom he perceived to be resistant to his policies, and described some work as “utterly useless” and “woeful”.

Raab’s “interruptive style” is not in itself intimidating, the report says, but the combination of this with “unconstructive critical feedback is likely to have been experienced as intimidating, in the sense of being unreasonably difficult to deal with”.

It seems Raab had said he would resign if there was any finding of bullying at all and Sunak had simply waited for him to honour his word. Caught between a rock and a hard place – the findings of the report were always going to be publicised and his comments were already public knowledge – it was just a matter of time before Raab went.

But he didn’t go quietly.

Instead, he complained that Mr Tolley had set his standard for bullying at a very low level, meaning his inquiry had “set a dangerous precedent”.

Was this true, though? It seems to me that, if six allegations had been dismissed, then there must at least have been some reasonable basis for the level at which Mr Tolley decided bullying had taken place.

In his resignation letter, Raab made it clear that he did not agree with the findings against him. He said ministers “must be able to give direct critical feedback on briefings and submissions to senior officials, in order to set the standards and drive the reform the public expect of us.

“In setting the threshold for bullying so low, this inquiry has set a dangerous precedent.

“It will encourage spurious complaints against ministers, and have a chilling effect on those driving change on behalf of your government – and ultimately the British people.”

In another part of the letter he said he was “genuinely sorry for any unintended stress or offence that any officials felt, as a result of the pace, standards and challenge that I brought to the Ministry of Justice”.

This has been described as a “non-apology” by a person who “advised him at a senior level in a government department”. This person said: “Whilst the letter contains an apology, it’s one of the best examples of a ‘non-apology’ from a minister in recent years. It’s relatively easy to set pace, standards and challenge, it’s much harder to lead effectively to deliver against these objectives.”

This person continued: “Raab’s version of a Secretary of State and Deputy Prime Minister is one that should be learnt from and ultimately consigned to the history books. The level of relief from hard-working civil servants who can now, under new leadership, get on with the challenging and important jobs they signed up to do, is palpable.”

That claim has been borne out by responses to the BBC by civil servants. One said: “I feel relief – just huge relief.”

Another added: “It’s perhaps of note from his letter that he feels there are different, perhaps acceptable thresholds of bullying, which perhaps says all it needs to say about this whole fiasco.”

Sunak himself has stated that there were “shortcomings in the historic process” by which the inquiry was carried out, that have “negatively affected everyone involved”, and “we should learn from this how to better handle such matters in future”.

This is another indication of the prime minister’s personal weakness.

One of his ministers has been found to be a bully, but he’s not about to bring in measures to ensure that nobody else does the same.

Instead, it seems he wants to water down the process to ensure that it can’t make a similar finding against any of his other ministers, even if they deserve it.

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Smartphone public warning system could endanger domestic abuse victims

This is a public service announcement:

It seems the fact that the emergency alerts system will cause mobiles with a 4G or 5G signal to emit a loud siren-like sound, receive a message on their home screen and vibrate for up to 10 seconds may also alert abusers to the presence of secret mobile phones held by their victims.

The government’s advice to abuse victims is simple: turn off your concealed phones or switch them to airplane mode until after the test has taken place.

It is also possible to turn off emergency alerts altogether. In your mobile phones ‘Settings’, go to ‘Emergency alerts’ and switch off “severe alerts” and “extreme alerts”.

I’ve just checked my own smartphone and it is quite easy to do.

Meanwhile, if you want to know exactly what your phone will do at 3pm on Sunday, here’s the rundown:

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Legal challenge launched after Dominic Raab refuses public inquiry into youth detention centre abuses

Dominic Raab: he has spoken pretty words about human rights in the past, but apparently the human rights of young boys who were sexually abused in youth detention centres mean nothing to him.

Thousands of men say they were sexually abused at youth detention centres when they were young boys but Dominic Raab has refused to launch a public inquiry. Why?

That is the purpose of a judicial review demand that has been launched in the courts.

Raab has avoided commenting on the reasons for his decision – because the judicial review claim is taking place. Justice minister Damian Hinds, responding to a Parliamentary question, said it would be inappropriate to comment while legal proceedings are ongoing.

He did say the government has “the deepest sympathy for the men who suffered sexual or physical abuse while detained at Medomsley Detention Centre”.

But Medomsley is not the only place where these abuses are said to have happened.

It is true that more than 2,000 victims have come forward from Medomsley, but others have reported mistreatment at centres across England between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Several were raped and sexually abused by guards as children, and although several men have been prosecuted, survivors say the full extent of the horrors they suffered has not been properly investigated.

Lawyer David Greenwood said he had personally received reports of abuse at “every youth detention centre in the country” in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Greenwood, the head of child abuse at Switalskis Solicitors, said he had been contacted by 160 people held at the former Eastwood Park youth detention centre in Gloucestershire, but believes the true number of victims there will be more than 1,000.

Claimants argue that Mr Raab’s decision was legally “irrational” and violates obligations under human rights laws, including the freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.

A judicial review may overturn Raab’s decision and get an inquiry launched – and obviously this would be good for justice.

But will it tell us why Dominic Raab decided not to launch one in the first place?

For me, that is the important question.

We already know of many abuses that have taken place in these detention centres and it is clearly in the interests of justice to know how far the rot extended.

Raab – as the Secretary of State for Justice – has obstructed this.

I think we should be told the Justice Secretary’s reasons for wanting to hinder the course of justice.

Source: Dominic Raab refuses public inquiry into abuse of thousands of boys in youth detention centres | The Independent

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Angela Rayner caught lying (?) about Labour’s attack ad on Rishi Sunak

Angela Rayner: her blink rate means her comments about the Labour ‘child sex’ attack advert on Rishi Sunak are not credible.

Angela Rayner is the latest Labour bigwig to come out in support of that vile attack advert that claims Rishi Sunak doesn’t want child sex criminals to go to prison.

Party leader Keir Starmer has said he supported it, after initially saying he had not been informed of it and what it contained. He was a member of the sentencing panel that approved the current guidelines for child sex offences, back in 2012 – so in fact the current situation is more his doing than Sunak’s.

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has also spoken up in support.

And now Angela Rayner. But we have a doubt about the wholeheartedness of her comments:

Yes – the blink rate gives her away.

I did an article about this after seeing James Cleverly being interviewed on Laura Kuennsberg’s Sunday morning show. Here‘s what I said then (and don’t worry – the relevant part is quite early in the clip):

“The normal blink rate is around 16 times per minutes but Cleverly is going 19 to the dozen, all the way through,” I say on the clip.

“When we’re really interested in something, our blink rate slows down because we’re trying to take in more information – but when we’re stressed or anxious, which is normal if we’re trying to deceive someone, the blink rate goes up.”

Now go back to the Rayner clip, in which she blinks 13 times in 16 seconds.

If she had been in a television studio, she might have had an excuse – because studio lights may be harsh on the eyes. But from the background, it looks as though she was at home or in an office.

So there seems no other explanation for her blink rate but stress.

Is she lying about the advert? Or is she just unhappy to be having to support it? You be the judge.

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Rachel Reeves adds her support to attack ad saying Sunak is soft on child sex offenders

Like minds: but do Rachel Reeves or Keir Starmer realise how grotesque they look?

It’s as though someone is asking who’ll be the next to support the unsupportable and they’re all leaping up, shouting, “Me! Me!” Isn’t it?

Rachel Reeves has followed Keir Starmer in voicing her approval of the Labour attack advert that accuses Rishi Sunak of wanting child sex abusers to escape prison.

This Writer can only echo the words of Phil Gould in his tweet below…

… and ask: with ghouls like this leading the Labour Party, who would possibly want to vote for it?

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Starmer stands ‘by every word’ of Sunak child sex attack ad. Hypocritically?

Keir Starmer has said he stands “by every word” of a Labour attack advert accusing Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak of not wanting child sex criminals to go to prison – but isn’t this hypocritical, as he was on the sentencing council that devised the relevant penalties?

In a widely-reported Daily Mail article (and doesn’t it speak volumes about how far the Labour leadership has sunk that he is willing to write an article for the paper that once supported the Nazis), he made “absolutely zero apologies” for the advert:

I make absolutely zero apologies for being blunt about this. I stand by every word Labour has said on the subject, no matter how squeamish it might make some feel.

When 4,500 child abusers avoid prison, people don’t want more excuses from politicians: they want answers.

But Keir Starmer was on the sentencing council that set the current guidelines for sex crimes, back in 2012.

At that time, Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry wrote to him, objecting to a different part of those guidelines – so she was aware that they were passed by Starmer:

But on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she made a remarkable display of selective amnesia:

And all the while, the public outrage against Labour’s position continues to grow, both in the mass media…

… and in the social media:

And it is leading to hard questions about Starmer’s strategy and the likely end result of his bizarre choices:

This could be the scandal on which Starmer loses not just the local elections next month, but also the next general election.

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Labour bigwigs deny knowledge of controversial ‘child sex’ attack advert

Keir Starmer: did he really not know about a highly-inflammatory attack advert that went out in the name of his Labour Party?

Do we believe neither Keir Starmer nor Yvette Cooper knew anything about the Labour attack advert accusing Rishi Sunak of opposing prison sentences for sexual assaults against children?

That’s what the Labour leadership wants you to think, it seems:

Asked on Saturday whether Starmer had approved the graphic or knew about it in advance, a Labour source said the leader had not been aware of it and stressed Starmer would not usually be expected to sign off individual campaign materials.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was not informed or consulted… The Observer has been told.

One well-placed party insider said they understood the digital poster was produced as part of a policy push by the shadow justice secretary, Steve Reed, whose team was keen to highlight the way in which too many criminals were receiving community sentences rather than custodial ones.

So it seems if anybody is going to take a fall for this, it’s likely to be Steve Reed. This is reminiscent of all those times Tory leaders have been accused, only to have a subordinate fall on their sword instead – isn’t it?

Meanwhile, Labour has released a second advert:

And it seems more are likely to follow.

But if large numbers of frontbenchers are denying prior knowledge of this one and disowning it, as the Observer article suggests, then I can only concur with former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell’s question:

“If any of this is true… why hasn’t the ad been taken down?”

Source: Yvette Cooper was ‘not told’ about Labour’s Sunak attack ad in advance | Labour | The Guardian

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