Tag Archives: misogyny

Dick put ‘on notice’ – but why because of her officers and not because of herself?

Cressida Dick: she regularly appears in the media, trying to mitigate the shocking offences committed by Metropolitan Police officers – and their commissioner.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has been put “on notice” by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, that she must reverse the culture of racism, homophobia, bullying and misogyny discovered in her service’s ranks since she took over.

Khan is said to have referred to it as “a return to the bad days of the Met of his childhood in the 1970s and 80s”.

Certainly there is reason to find fault with the Met Police under Dick’s direction.

The latest revelations show officers, mainly at Charing Cross, had joked about rape, domestic violence and killing black children.

A report by the Independent Office of Police Conduct stated, “We believe these incidents are not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’.”

Recent history bears this out.

Look at Wayne Couzens, who kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard, and burned the body to evade detection. Did Charing Cross officers make a joke about that? One Met officer certainly did – he shared memes showing a police officer kidnapping a woman, but has been allowed to keep his job.

Three more officers were charged with sex offences in October alone. One – David Carrick – now faces charges relating to 29 offences including many rapes between 2009 and 2020. Francois Olwage faces child sex charges. Adam Zaman has been charged with rape.

And what about the officers assigned to guard the bodies of murdered women, who took photographs of them and shared the images on a WhatsApp group because they thought it was funny? The mother of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry demanded that Dick clear the rot from the Met but that clearly hasn’t happened.

Incidents in which Met officers have stopped and searched people who happen to have been “driving while black” abound.

But Cressida Dick herself is not above suspicion either. Both she and the service she heads were found to have been “institutionally corrupt” in their handling of the Daniel Morgan murder inquiry.

And now it seems she is busily covering up the misdeeds of Boris Johnson in the Partygate scandal. Initially the Met refused to investigate allegations of more than a dozen lockdown-busting Downing Street parties, claiming there was no evidence, even though officers from that service were guarding the doors of Number 10 at the time and it seems unlikely that they could have failed to notice civil servants carrying suitcases full of wine bottles into the building.

After Sue Gray uncovered a huge mass of evidence, Dick stepped in and announced that the Met had decided to investigate after all – and this meant the senior civil servant must edit details relating to the 12 parties under police investigation out of her report.

It seems, even after being labelled “corrupt” in the Morgan report, Dick just can’t stop interfering.

So now Sadiq Khan has put her “on notice”. If she does not clean up her act, and that of her officers, then according to a source close to Khan, “the mayor will have to consider whether she is the right person to lead the change needed at the Met”.

He means he’ll have her removed.

As far as some of us are concerned, such a move can’t come soon enough. He should have done it already.

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#PoliceBill: The Lords have blocked the #Tory plan to outlaw #protest

This is a bit huge, isn’t it?

Members of one House of Parliament have shown that they are capable of listening to the public, and have voted to block a plan by the Tory government to outlaw “noisy” and/or “disruptive” organised protests.

The decision to erase this part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has come after a weekend of “noisy” and/or “disruptive” organised protests against this government policy.

And it followed a debate that was punctuated by the noise of a demonstration against the Bill outside the Lords Chamber, to which peers did not object at all.

Home Office minister Baroness Williams tried to persuade peers that police would only use the proposed new powers where “necessary” and “appropriate” – but it seems nobody believed her on that. Once the law is passed, police will be allowed to adhere to its letter, not whatever meaning is being applied to it now. That means they’ll be able to do what they like – and that’s not acceptable in a democratic society.

Baroness Williams tried to gather support by saying the noisy protest outside would not be stopped – which is odd, as part of the Bill would have banned protest from Parliament Square.

Instead, she said noisy anti-vaccination protests outside a school or nursing home were a different matter – and that police should have the powers to intervene if necessary. But such protests are unique to the Covid-19 crisis; they don’t need a permanent law.

So it seems Priti Patel’s Bill is intended to address only current, short-term issues – but will then leave the measures to address them on the statute books in order to oppress people who would otherwise be described as entirely law-abiding exercisers of their democratic rights.

Again: not acceptable in a democratic society.

The Lords also voted to make misogyny a hate crime in England and Wales, in spite of the government’s policy not to.

Baroness Williams reckoned any evidence that a crime was misogynistic would be entirely subjective, and police would get tied up in reporting and monitoring statistics and data which are unlikely to be reliable.

Well, This Writer is not convinced. Misogyny is quantifiable and I’m sure people who investigate crimes will know how to do that. Perhaps Priti Patel could try talking with police sometime, instead of talking at them.

The Bill cannot be passed into law until both Houses have agreed on what it should be – so it will go back to the Commons, where the Tory majority will undoubtedly reverse these changes, along with several others agreed by the Lords.

They won’t think about it; they’ll just nod the stupidity back in.

And so the long year begins.

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Dominic Raab doesn’t know what misogyny means. How is he qualified to rule on it?

“He has no idea what he’s doing”: Raab blocked anti-Brexit groups after they broadcast this image while he was Brexit secretary – but it is just as valid today as it was then.

Dominic Raab rejected the idea that misogyny should be a hate crime – on a TV interview in which he then demonstrated ample proof that he didn’t even know what it means.

BBC Breakfast presenter Sally Nugent had to read a dictionary definition of the word to him after he said, “Misogyny is absolutely wrong, whether it’s a man against a woman or a woman against a man”.

Misogyny is hatred aimed specifically by men against women.

Hatred by women against men is misandry.

And Dominic Raab is so illiterate, he did not know the difference. Couldn’t he even be bothered to get a briefing from someone in the know?

… Ah. Well, I think we all know the answer to that. After all, he didn’t understand the importance of the Dover-Calais crossing when he was Brexit secretary.

That’s why one commenter tweeted that he wasn’t surprised Raab didn’t know the meaning of ‘Misogyny’: “I am surprised that he didn’t think Misogyny was a place just south of Calais.”

Raab also demonstrated his ignorance of ‘taking the knee’.

We all know it’s a symbolic gesture against racism, in protest against the lack of attention given to issues of racial inequality and police brutality. Right?

Raab didn’t.

And now this:

And this is what passes for Cabinet-level expertise in Boris Johnson’s government?

I know Raab has been demoted from Foreign Secretary but it is clear that he is still being asked to perform far beyond his capabilities and the UK will suffer as a result.

EXTRA: This response is too good to leave on Twitter:

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Rosie Duffield copies Luciana Berger: her Labour conference abuse claim is fake, too

Rosie Duffield: she reckons she can’t go to Labour’s conference because of threats from LGBT+ party members. Or possibly white male party members. Luciana Berger said she was intimidated by anti-Semitic party members a few years ago. She wasn’t – and Duffield has yet to divvy up any evidence for her own claims.

A Labour MP who broke genuine lockdown rules to meet her married lover has claimed she has been forced to pull out of the party conference because of threats to her safety that seem entirely imaginary.

Rosie Duffield told The Times that she had received online threats from “militant transgender activists”.

But where readers could have expected to see evidence to support her claim, all we got was this: “‘LGBT+ Labour now seem to hate my guts and I feared they’d have a massive go at me at conference,’ Duffield said.”

Ah! So there were no actual threats that she would be harmed if she attended conference at all, then?

“‘The people who threaten me I don’t think are actually likely to harm me.'”

Which people are these? We haven’t seen any evidence of any threats at all. And if they aren’t likely to harm her, why is she making such a fuss?

“‘They just say it often and very loudly.'”

Yes? Then The Times should have been able to show us evidence of this behaviour. And it didn’t.

In fact, This Writer has checked this story as it appears in 10 different newspapers, and none of them were able to show a single abusive tweet that Duffield had received, to support her claim.

And I’m not the only one.

Duffield tried to claim that this nonexistent abuse is a product of “misogyny” by “straight white men”.

She said, according to The Times: “It looks like, feels like, and smells like misogyny.”

Then how come the rest of us can’t see it, feel it, or get a whiff of it?

And if straight white men were responsible for the abuse, why had Duffield already blamed LGBT+ activists within the Labour Party?

Oh yes. That seems logical.

LGBT+ Labour itself has denied any involvement in abuse of the MP. According to the Huffington Post, a spokesperson said: “We have made clear our political disagreements with Rosie on policy affecting trans people, but political disagreement should never result in abuse or physical threats.

“LGBT+ Labour has never conducted itself in this way and would never encourage anyone else to. It is utterly unacceptable.

“Women in politics are subject to appalling levels of abuse and we are clear it has no place in our party or society.”

The HuffPost piece also falsely reported that former Labour MP Luciana Berger was given police protection at a previous party conference after months of anti-Semitic abuse. In fact, she was advised to have a police escort to and from the conference – and the only people who were ever found to have given her anti-Semitic abuse were far-right activists who had nothing to do with the Labour Party at all.

Nevertheless, Berger tried to blame then-leader Jeremy Corbyn for the anti-Semites who weren’t in the Labour Party, saying he was responsible for an influx of anti-Semites into the party that hadn’t actually happened. Indeed, anti-Semitism in the Labour Party fell under his leadership.

But considering Berger’s precedent, this seems a perfectly reasonable comment:

In fact, the similarity with Berger’s fakery is prominent:

Of course, Ms Duffield, who is apparently afraid of phantom misogynists accosting her within an event that will be, undoubtedly, patrolled very thoroughly by security guards, had absolutely no problem with breaking lockdown rules and avoiding the police in order to have an affair:

It’s interesting that the same people who supported Berger are popping up to support Duffield, showing stunning ignorance of their own hypocrisy. Jess Phillips, for example.

Any normal Labour leader would have reasonably expected to see evidence of abuse before commenting on the story – but not Keir Starmer:

Well, he couldn’t could he? If he had requested evidence, he would have been accused of hypocrisy because he has never shown any interest in seeing evidence to support anti-Semitism accusations.

It is, by now, a classic attack tactic: fabricate offensive behaviour, blame somebody you want to vilify, and get a story published by the papers. Remember Angela Eagle?

It is unsurprising that Duffield is being supported by people like Phillips who bought into Berger’s fakery in order to target innocent fellow party members; she has a shameful history of it herself.

The Labour MP for Canterbury marched in the ‘lynch’ mob with Ruth Smeeth and others to have Marc Wadsworth ejected from the Labour Party in the kangaroo court that was his hearing before the party’s National Constitutional Committee.

She campaigned for Chris Williamson to get the same treatment from his kangaroo court (NCC) hearing.

And she was caught trying to blame her own victims for abusing her in a classic DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) trick, which This Writer called out in a previous article:

She has given an interview in The Times in which she claims that she is the victim of misogynistic abuse and death threats over her opinions about anti-Semitism, Brexit and – particularly – transphobia.

Metro give[s] an example that is pertinent to Duffield’s case:

“Let’s say an influential person is accused of transphobia. They issue a response in which they deny that they are transphobic – ‘I love trans people! I have many trans friends!’ – then attack their critics – ‘people saying I’m transphobic are just cruel, hateful people who want to cause division’. Finally, they Reverse Victim and Offender: ‘I’m receiving so much online abuse because I’m a woman and we live in a sexist society’.

“Now, as a critic, you’re stuck. If you continue to call that person out, you’re ‘cruel, hateful and want to cause division’. You’re being sexist. You’re piling on the online abuse.”

Isn’t that exactly what Duffield is trying to do?

Sadly the right-wing media have been all over this like a rash – and in their usual, casual disregard for fact-checking, none of them have actually bothered to seek corroboration of the claims they have blithely repeated.

And I can’t wait to see the creaking attempts to shoe-horn me into the role of abuser as a result of this article!

But unless and until Duffield can actually demonstrate evidence of LGBT+ Labour members and/or male members of the party threatening harm to her if she attends the party conference, I’ll stick to my evidenced opinion that Duffield is a liar.

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Were the Jake Davison killings terrorist acts? Or is ‘Incel’ just a pretty tag for wretched inadequates?

Jake Davison: from the state of him – both mental and physical, the reason he couldnt get a girl seems clear.

What are the facts?

We know that 22-year-old Jake Davison took a gun (of some kind) and murdered his 51-year-old mother Maxine at their home in Biddick Drive, Keyham, Plymouth, last Thursday.

He then moved out into the street where he murdered three-year-old Sophie Martyn and her father Lee, 43.

Finally, he shot dead 59-year-old Stephen Washington and Kate Shepherd, 66, before turning his weapon on himself.

Also shot were a 53 year-old woman and a 33-year-old man who were sent to hospital with injuries that were not thought life-threatening.

Why?

It seems the authorities don’t know Davison’s stated reasons for the rampage – the worst mass killing on UK soil since 2010.

But he has left behind information about his political beliefs that provide us with a workable theory: he reckoned he was an “Incel”.

What on Earth is an Incel?

It’s a term apparently coined in the early part of this century to denote men who believe they are “INvoluntarily CELibate” because women are unfairly withholding sex from them.

Looking at their other beliefs, it becomes apparent that anybody withdrawing from contact with these crazies is likely to have had extremely good reasons for it!

Dr Louise Raw described the Incel philosophy in an article way back in 2018:

They specifically feel entitled to sex with women they perceive as the most attractive — “Stacys” — and resent both them and the “Chads” — romantically successful men — they date. When these are men of colour, the hatred steps up a gear.

This all seemed pitiful until it turned deadly.

Pitiful is right!

The fact is that pretty much every man on the planet might describe himself as “involuntarily celibate” at one time or another.

But – as a rule – we don’t blame women – as a group – for “withholding” sexual contact that we feel we have a right to have. It doesn’t work like that. Sex is the most intimate thing that two people can do, and that’s why most women won’t do it with any Tom, Harry or Dick that turns up. It is perfectly reasonable for them to want a little security in their choice first.

Nobody is “entitled” to it. In fact, if you believe in Darwin’s laws of natural selection, procreation is a privilege that should be awarded only to those who are most fit for the job. There’s evidence for that in the mating displays carried out by the males of other animal species in order to impress the females.

So, as an attitude to relationships, we can safely say that anybody holding this view is a wretched sexual and social inadequate who is just looking for a shortcut to sex that will hide their interpersonal failings.

But there’s another aspect to this: politics.

Incels, it seems, ally themselves with opposition to feminism. The idea is that an improvement in the lives of women must bring with it a worsening of men’s position, and this leads to hatred of women – also known as misogyny.

And misogyny has long been a pathway into support for fascism – in the same way that racism has been.

Incels are therefore most likely to be white men who are misogynistic racists; if they see women they consider attractive with men of colour, then the hatred steps up a notch.

This makes them easy to recruit into far-right organisations, and there is evidence that American alt-right groups have been doing just that.

Davison was certainly prime material for radicalisation of this kind. According to the Daily Beast,

Davison expressed his admiration for Donald Trump on Facebook and posted multiple self-pitying YouTube videos in which he identified himself as part of the incel community.

In one post from 2018, Davison shared a Trump quote and, when his friends ridiculed him in the comments, the suspect hit back: “You may not agree with his political views (I do) but he is different from the scum like Hillary or the people running our country like the neo-con sellout that is [then-British Prime Minister] Theresa May.”

Davison’s Facebook likes suggest he was obsessed with conservative U.S. politics. He followed the pages of Trump, all of his children, and several Trump businesses, as well as pages for the NRA, Fox News, Breitbart, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and one called “Ted Nugent for President.” In one comment, he said it was his dream to move to the States.

It has been noted that these associations were suppressed by domestic news organisations like the BBC in their early reports:

But was Davison a terrorist?

Tricky. And these waters were muddied by the BBC (et all) failing to identify his political leanings…

At first, Devon & Cornwall Police denied any link with terrorism:

But now they’re changing their tune.

UK law defines terrorism as: “Use or threat of action, both in and outside of the UK, designed to influence any international government organisation or to intimidate the public. It must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.”

Personally, then, I don’t think Davison’s actions would constitute terrorism as defined here.

I don’t think he was trying to influence government or intimidate the public because firstly, he didn’t demand anything and secondly, he would need to be alive for any intimidation to work.

The idea of advancing Incel as a cause is self-defeating; even those who identify as members of that group don’t want to be in it!

And his lunatic right-wing ideology will have taken a public relations hammering as a result of his murders.

That being said, there is plenty of evidence to show that people who identify themselves as Incels need to be tracked down and challenged. Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to accede to the wishes below, and define misogyny (and therefore also its counterpart, misandry) as a hate crime.

It seems to me that the expression of misogynistic opinions in the way carried out by the Incels indicates a desire to harm – and a lack of concern about the consequences – that crosses the line of acceptability.

It also seems reasonable to me that, if alerted to such expressions of opinion, police should challenge those responsible and, following on from that – if necessary – take appropriate steps to prevent acts of violence such as we saw last week in Plymouth.

It would be possible, also, to use such interviews as ways to research whether these people are indeed being radicalised by right-wing organisations for the purpose of committing terrorist crime – and to devise ways of combating such activity.

Connected with this, of course, is the fact that Davison owned a gun. His own social media posts and YouTube videos confessed that he was mentally unstable, and therefore it seems logical that he should not have been in possession of a firearm, yet his licence had been renewed only recently.

And it isn’t as though we haven’t been aware of the risks:

Ah, but Chris Williamson is a socialist – and therefore might as well be a terrorist himself – right?

You see how these debates can be twisted by political dogma – especially when news organisations like the BBC distort or omit important facts?

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Policeman who attacked terrified woman WHO WAS JUST WALKING HOME is spared jail

Police: even in the illustration it seems the policeman doesn’t want to be anywhere near the police woman.

It’s as though the last two weeks never happened.

The man attacking a woman while she was walking home in this video was a serving police officer – and remains a serving police officer after appearing in court and admitting the offence:

Let’s look a little more closely at that point about the victim facing an uphill battle to get justice:

So the first thing Warwickshire police did on receiving the complaint was ignore it.

Let us be clear: this was an unprovoked and violent attack by a large, drunken man, perpetrated at night against a much smaller woman.

And rather than treat it with the seriousness it deserved – especially as it related to one of their own – our law guardians did nothing.

I understand they would have brushed it under the carpet altogether if the CCTV footage had not been produced.

As it is, we can see that Oliver Banfield, 25, hurled a stream of misogynistic abuse at Emma Holmer, 11 years his senior, as he tried to employ techniques he learned from police training to drag her to the ground and put her in a headlock.

Apparently this has been described as an “unlawful arrest”. I’m sure you can think of a much better description for what is clearly a hate attack against a woman.

And how was she affected?

Miss Homer said the attack had a devastating effect on her.

She has suffered from anxiety, stress, panic attacks and insomnia and is undergoing therapy and counselling.

Miss Homer said being attacked by a police officer had shaken her belief system “to the core”.

“I often ask myself if the impact of the attack would have been so severe if my assailant was not a police officer,” she said.

“During the assault as I struggled to get to safety I was sure this drunk man was fulfilling a violent cop movie fantasy.

“To be verbally abused with misogynistic slang, grabbed by the neck and forced to the floor on a dark road by a drunk man, a foot taller than me, is terrifying.

“But to then find out he was a police officer shook my belief system to its core.

“Immediately after the assault I was in shock. I could not sleep

“I found myself compulsively running through the streets going through the events of the assault.

“What if I hadn’t got away? What if he had attacked another woman drunk?”

What, indeed?

Yet despite the aggravating features of this case – the use of police techniques, the misogynistic hate speech, and the slowness of his colleagues to prosecute Banfield – a judge at a magistrates court let this man – who should be stripped of his police career – walk free.

He was ordered to pay £500 compensation and £180 court costs, and was put under a 14 week curfew that means he may not leave his house between 7pm and 7am – after he cried off community service, his lawyer saying it would be difficult for him to work with criminals.

WITH criminals? Perhaps somebody should point out that this man IS a criminal.

And let’s remind ourselves that Sarah Everard was “just walking home” (the words have been used as a slogan ever since the incident) when she was attacked and murdered – allegedly by another serving policeman.

Two incidents cannot suggest that such behaviour is epidemic in the UK’s police. But they are enough to instil fear in every woman who has to walk home in the dark because they know they cannot automatically rely on the police to keep them safe.

When a trust is betrayed, it can be extremely difficult to win back. Sometimes it is impossible.

It seems clear that the police – and the justice system – isn’t even bothering to try.

Source: Off-duty police officer, 25, who attacked ‘terrified’ woman walking home spared jail – Mirror Online

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Is the lockdown an excuse for the Tories to force mothers out of work and into the home?

The headline says it all.

It needs more research, but…

Tory policies have hit women hardest since they got back into office in 2010.

They are institutionally sexist.

So I was not surprised to see this:

I wonder if we’ll ever see any outrage about it, though. It seems too easy to silence protest in the UK now.

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Rosie Duffield’s DARVO: is she trying to rehabilitate herself by blaming her victims?

Rosie Duffield: she broke lockdown to meet her married lover and had to resign as a Labour whip as a result. Now she’s claiming she is a victim of misogynistic abuse.

Former Labour whip Rosie Duffield is trying to reclaim the moral high ground by playing the victim and we need to reject her.

She has given an interview in The Times in which she claims that she is the victim of misogynistic abuse and death threats over her opinions about anti-Semitism, Brexit and – particularly – transphobia.

The article points to her Commons speech about domestic abuse – for which she received a standing ovation from teary-eyed fellow MPs – as a sign that she’s on the side of the angels.

It doesn’t mention the fact that she broke lockdown in order to commit adultery with a married lover last May. Is her new media appearance an attempt to rehabilitate her image?

Many seem to think so, and the article has triggered a storm on the social media – mostly, it seems to This Writer, between opponents on the transphobia issue.

I stay out of that discussion as much as I can. My personal opinion is that the way a person identifies their gender is nobody’s business but their own.

Nobody should receive death threats for the simple holding of a belief; if their belief is against the law, or encourages people to break the law (especially in violent ways) then there are legal remedies. I wonder whether the Times reporter responsible for the article has seen evidence of such threats, though.

I have seen many tweets like this:

I have also seen t

And then I saw these two…

… and it made sense.

If you check the Metro article, DARVO stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender“.

It states: “First you have Deny – that’s pretty self-explanatory. You’ll see the person accused of wrongdoing simply denying that that’s the case; ‘I do not hold those views’, ‘I never said that’, ‘I did not do that bad thing’.

“The Deny stage is where gaslighting starts to come into play, with the person often trying to simply deny someone else’s lived reality. ‘No, that doesn’t happen’, ‘no, you’re making that up’, or ‘that might have happened, but it’s not as bad as you say it is’.

“Then there’s [the] Attack bit. This is when the accused person will turn around the criticism to focus blame on the person calling them out. So let’s say a celebrity was called out by someone on Twitter – they might go into attack mode by accusing that person of just being jealous, or bitter, or a liar.

“Finally, you’ve got the Reverse Victim and Offender stage. This is where things get sneaky and subtle. Suddenly, the accused person will turn things around and say that actually, they’re not guilty of doing something terrible. In fact, they are the ones being treated poorly.

“In this stage, you might see someone introduce their own trauma as an excuse or a distraction tactic. They’ll respond to accusations of racism, for example, with a story about how they faced gender discrimination when they were younger. Or they might focus their statement on how they feel ‘bullied’ by the accusations, so those reading feel that the person who has been called out is actually the victim, facing online abuse rather than being challenged on their actions.”

Metro goes on to give an example that is pertinent to Duffield’s case:

“Let’s say an influential person is accused of transphobia. They issue a response in which they deny that they are transphobic – ‘I love trans people! I have many trans friends!’ – then attack their critics – ‘people saying I’m transphobic are just cruel, hateful people who want to cause division’. Finally, they Reverse Victim and Offender: ‘I’m receiving so much online abuse because I’m a woman and we live in a sexist society’.

“Now, as a critic, you’re stuck. If you continue to call that person out, you’re ‘cruel, hateful and want to cause division’. You’re being sexist. You’re piling on the online abuse.”

Isn’t that exactly what Duffield is trying to do?

Source: Rosie Duffield: ‘It feels like Gilead where women aren’t allowed to ask questions’ | Times2 | The Times

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Senior Labour staff urged to publish WhatsApp messages IN CONTEXT if they think #LabourLeaks report misrepresented them

I haven’t contributed to the so-called Forde Inquiry into the allegations in the (also so-called) #LabourLeaks report because I think it’ll be a stitch-up.

My own court case against Labour will go to trial on October 2 and I’m happy to let Mr Forde QC come to his own conclusions, which I may then find easy to use against the party if my own legal action is successful.

You will understand why I see no point in contributing when I make this point: if Mr Forde’s inquiry was above-board, why did a small left-wing blog have to suggest that disputed WhatsApp messages be published in full?

The demand is an obvious one, but it has been made on the Skwawkbox blog, not in the mainstream media or by anybody directly concerned with the inquiry. The article states:

Former staff accused in a leaked Labour Party report of abusive comments toward other staff, racism, obstructing disciplinary processes to facilitate media attacks – among other things – and even of sabotaging Labour’s electoral campaigns are trying to sue the party for breach of confidentiality.

They also claim that their WhatsApp conversations were used out of context to incriminate them – a defence remarkably similar to the one that Keir Starmer just abandoned in order to pay ‘whistleblowers’ a huge amount of money in a case Labour’s lawyers said the party was likely to win.

If those attempting to sue the party believe the context of:

  • comments such as ‘pube head’, discussions of bra-less female employees and women’s weight and glee at Labour’s first black woman MP allegedly crying in a toilet
  • the diversion of party campaign funds to an ‘Ergon House’ account to use for their own priorities
  • comments expressing horror at Labour’s strong performance in the 2017 general election
  • actions to block and derail investigations into antisemitism and other racism

would show that those comments and actions were innocent and entirely in keeping with the positions they held and the substantial salaries they received for filling them, then the solution is simple:

Publish their conversations in full, so everyone can see for themselves.

How suspicious that none of the individuals concerned seem keen to take up that offer!

Perhaps they fear the evidence will serve merely to corroborate that of others who have gone public with their own submissions to Forde – assertions which support the leaked report’s claim that senior officials of the Labour Party spent years sabotaging Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and succeeded in preventing him from winning a general election in 2017 (and possibly in 2019 as well).

Here‘s a piece on Open Democracy that provides ample information on the subject. I am grateful to a Facebook friend who summed up its claims as follows:

The Offices of the Leader of the Opposition are less than half a mile away from Labour party headquarters on Victoria Street. Labour party HQ is responsible for setting up the party leader’s offices. They should have been up and running when Jeremy Corbyn took over from Ed Miliband. Joe Royle has submitted evidence to the internal Labour inquiry, chaired by Martin Forde QC into sabotage by party employees before the 2017 general election.
1) There were no ‘handover notes’ left for the new leader’s team.
2) Many of the office computers had gone missing.
3) The computers that remained were old and kept crashing.
4) There were not enough monitor screens for computers.
5) John McDonnell’s offices had been completely gutted.
6) The walls were bare, with staples and blu-tak left behind.
7) There were desks without chairs or computers.
8) Attempts to hire new staff were delayed, frustrated or blocked.
9) Jeremy Corbyn had only 16 staff. Ed Milliband had twice that.
10) The party refused to hire a former treasury economist (James Meadway), so he had to be seconded from a trade union which did hire him.
11) Discussions from meetings were leaked to journalists instantly.
12) The leader’s office could not trust Labour HQ not to leak every policy announcement in advance.
13) A rally for John McDonnell was held in the middle of nowhere to deter members from turning up and prevent press coverage.
14) This tactic had been used before.
15) Press releases were blocked.
16) Staff members briefed against Jeremy Corbyn’s office.
17) The party’s message was deliberately kept off social media.
18) Coordinated staff resignations
19) The 2017 manifesto was leaked (never happened before).
20) Facebook adverts designed to be seen by Corbyn’s team only but prevented from being seen by the public (£5,000 cost per one).
21) Staff disappointed that the party did so well in 2017.
22) Corbyn’s staff’s access to Labour HQ was revoked in anticipation of losing the election.
23) Resources, including campaign organizers, were diverted away from winnable marginal seats to safe Labour right-wing seats.
24) Labour lost the seats necessary to win the 2017 election by 2,227 swing votes.

And what are the so-called victims in this case – the ones whose WhatsApp chats were quoted and who say they were misused – doing?

Are they backing calls for the chats to be published in full?

No. They are trying to hide the evidence and have the Forde Inquiry closed down.

Here‘s The Guardian (and shame on that rag for giving this demand column space):

lawyers for the accused officials say the WhatsApp messages were used selectively and edited to give a false impression. They also say the inquiry should be abandoned given the damage already caused by the leaked report.

It’s interesting that these staffers would suggest that a tactic regularly employed by Labour’s disciplinary system to falsify accusations of anti-Semitism against party members (I have personal experience of this) has been used unfairly against them.

Some might call it “sauce for the goose” (suggesting that such treatment is poetic justice for the likes of these people) but I would not be one of them. For one thing, I expect the accusation to be proved false when (if?) the facts come into the open.

And Claudia Webbe, who headed the disputes panel that used those tactics at the time, seems to agree. Although I am uncomfortable with having to side with someone who was part of the system that attacked me, I think she makes points that are worth reading in this matter:

“It’s disgraceful that anyone would attempt to justify racism towards black Labour MPs and misogyny towards women employees, which has driven many of our members, particularly BAME members, to leave our party in disgust.

“If former officials thought quotes in the report – which are clearly copied and pasted from WhatsApp – were misleading, they would welcome the Forde inquiry having the chance to see the full texts. Instead, they seem to want to stop the inquiry from looking at the evidence because they fear it will confirm the accuracy of the WhatsApp messages.”

Ultimately, the Labour staffers whose WhatsApp chats were used (and we all know who they are, even if we can’t mention the names yet) are unsafe whatever happens.

If the Forde Inquiry publishes the messages in context, so we can all judge them for ourselves, then it seems likely they will be exposed as racists and misogynists (and possibly anti-Semites as well).

If they succeed in blocking it, then we will all draw the obvious conclusion that the inquiry would have revealed them to be racists, misogynists etc and their names will automatically poison anything with which they try to associate themselves.

If I were in their position, I’d let the information be published and allow the public to make an informed choice, rather than try to hide it like a coward.

Refusal to condemn Trump’s racist tweets highlights where the problem lies in BRITISH politics

Victims of racism and misogyny: Donald Trump has told these four Congresswomen to “go back” to the countries from which they came; they are all US citizens.

Right-wing, and so-called ‘centrist’, politicians in the UK have validated misogyny and racism – and fake claims of anti-Semitism – by failing to condemn the racist tweets in which Donald Trump attacked four US Congresswomen.

All are from ethnic minorities although three were born in the United States, but Mr Trump suggested they should all “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”.

It’s as bad as Theresa May’s racist advertising lorries from 2013, which bore the legend, “Go home.” Here’s what he said:

He has doubled-down on his words in subsequent tweets:

Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have condemned Mr Trump’s words. Ms Omar said his “blatantly racist attack” on four women of colour was “the agenda of white nationalists”, while Ms Tlaib called it “simply a continuation of his racist, xenophobic playbook”.

Notably failing to condemn Mr Trump’s racism were Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. They criticised Mr Trump for using the words he did, but both repeatedly refused to say whether they considered the US president’s remarks to be racist.

Commentators in the UK have taken note of this spinelessness on the part of these men, one of whom is certain to be the UK’s new political leader before the end of the month.

Absolutely right.

Note that Jeremy Corbyn was quick to recognise racism. Messrs Hunt and Johnson failed to do so – but were happy to accuse Mr Corbyn of being a racist, on the basis of no hard evidence at all.

Indeed!

Do you agree? Mr Maginn also stated:

On the anti-Semitic aspect of the claims, we have this:

Ah, but of course we do, as Rachael’s sarcastic tweet highlights.

Yes. Well done, UK-based supporters of Donald Trump, on your exemplary service to fascism.

You have supported false, misogynistic and racist claims against democratically-elected representatives of people in the United States.

You have supported the weaponisation of false allegations of anti-Semitism against the same women – and the false labelling of political opposition to the Israeli government as anti-Semitism.

In doing so, you have supported the liars in the UK who have also weaponised false allegations of anti-Semitism and false labelling of political opposition to the Israeli government as anti-Semitism.

And you have done it for selfish reasons (“a sweetheart trade deal that would put our NHS at risk”).

Anybody who actually supports this – especially Conservatives who have or will vote for either candidate in their leader election – should crawl back under their rock and die of shame.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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