April 6th, 2023: @Twitter has been randomly shutting down API access for many apps and sadly we were affected today too. Hopefully we will be restored soon! We appreciate your patience until then.
On 3rd of February, 2021, MPs debated ill-defined so-called "Grooming Gangs" in Parliament.
MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi warned of the dangers of spreading falsehoods which are "exploited by the far-right to create racist divisions in our society, perpetuating myths & stereotypes".
Braverman’s claims about “grooming gangs” go beyond dog whistles & into overt racism. She asserts perpetrators are “almost all British-Pakistani” & reduces victims to “overwhelmingly white girls from disadvantaged or troubled backgrounds”, contradicting Home Office findings.
A 2020 Home Office report concluded such “group-based CSE (child sexual exploitation) offenders are most commonly white”, while victims come from many backgrounds, & include boys. It found no reliable, generalisable evidence of ethnic disproportionality.
The dangerously irresponsible @Conservatives, supported by the right-wing Tory-supporting press & "news" media, are once again exceptionalising “grooming gangs”, promoting #misinformation, & ignoring vital nuance & complexity around abuse.
Speakers at The Conservative Nationalism Conference (NatCon, London, 13-15 May), include: Braverman; Rees-Mogg; Gove; Emma Webb; Danny Kruger; David Frost; John Hayes; Calvin Robinson; Toby Young; Keven Roberts, president of the free-market Heritage Foundation, & more.
You may not be aware of Tory MP Danny Kruger - perhaps better known as Prue Leith's hard-right son - but the malign extremist ideology & influence of this "evangelical Christian" should not be underestimated.
While the sponsors list for London 2023 has yet to be released, the main sponsors of previous events have included Republican billionaire 'libertarian' mega donor Peter Thiel, owner of big data and surveillance company Palantir.
#Britain is becoming a brutal, regressive, intolerant, hard-right, antidemocratic, authoritarian state, run by Christo-xenophobic nationalists, who represent powerful corporate interests. Their cheerleaders meet in London in May.
What's their strategy & ultimate goal?
In London, from 13 -15 May, every swivel-eyed hard-right reality-denying divisive free-market culture-war-fuelling Christo-nationalist authoritarian individual & organisation you've ever heard of gather for The Conservative Nationalism Conference, NatCon.
The attendees read like a 'who's who' of every awful individual & organisation I've written a thread about over the last decade, & it's awash with representatives from every dangerous free-market 'think tank', from the Heritage Foundation to the #TuftonStreet lobbyists.
The concept & use of the term 'grooming' first emerged in relation to child sexual abuse in late 1970s USA, with growing recognition of child sexual abuse & exploitation perpetrated by 'extrafamilial' acquaintances.
The word 'grooming' has been around for a long time, applied to a wide variety of human behaviours & activities.
But in the context of child sexual abuse, the term generally refers to specific techniques used by some child abusers to gain access to & control over their victims.
The techniques a child sex abuser employs are mostly influenced by the relationship between the offender & the victim.
Although 'acquaintance child sex abusers' are sometimes violent, to avoid discovery, they tend to control their victims primarily through the grooming process.
Far-right activist James Allchurch, described as a supporter of Adolf Hitler, has been found guilty on ten counts of distributing audio material to stir up racial hatred over a two-year period through a “highly racist & antisemitic” podcast station called 'Radio Aryan'.
But where would anyone in Britain get the impression that it's OK to stir up racial hatred or use antisemitic tropes & conspiracy theories? Surely no-one in the media or public eye - nor God-forbid anyone in Government - would fuel racism or antisemitism?
The jury heard how the charges relate to audio files uploaded between 17 May 2019 & 18 March 2021 to a public website called Radio Aryan, later renamed Radio Albion: the content of the episodes is said to be “highly racist & antisemitic”, & “white supremacist in nature”.
Two Govt Ministers & the @Conservatives' latest LYING PM, Rishi Sunak, MISLED parliament by LYING to MPs & the British people about the backlog of asylum claims - they implied the backlog in 2010 when @UKLabour left Govt was 260,000. It was was 19,000.🤥
In a statement to the House of Commons in December, Rishi Sunak LIED when he claimed that the asylum backlog – 132,000 cases at the time – was half the size of the backlog left by the departing Labour Govt in 2010, implying the backlog in 2010 would have been about 260,000.
Also in December, the LYING immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, and the LYING safeguarding minister, Sarah Dines, LIED when they told MPs that 450,000 and 500,000 legacy cases had been left by the @UKLabour Govt.
Johnson shamelessly normalised LYING, & now they're all at it.
A #THREAD about John Smith's recognition of the need for unity in @UKLabour.
In an article from May 2014, entitled 'John Smith would have led us to a decent world', John McTernan — Blair’s Director of Political Operations from 2005 to 2007 — wrote:
When John Smith became @UKLabour leader in July 1992. he introduced the ‘one member one vote’ system for electing the Party leader but otherwise wanted to minimise conflict within the Labour Party, which was still smarting from the general election defeat under Kinnock.
John Smith wanted to heal divisions and focus instead on the unpopularity of the Tory Government.
John McTernan stated John Smith and @UKLabour were heading for “certain victory” in the 1997 general election.