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Crime

Well, that’s a relief then!

Eighty per cent of women do not report rape or sexual assault to police

So, that’s 80% of society free from the plague.

Ah, that’s not what they mean:

Eighty per cent of women who experience rape or sexual assault are not reporting the crimes to police, research has revealed.

And all through it is “rape or sexual assault” which does rather depend upon which definition of “sexual assault” is being used, doesn’t it?

After all, whatever definition is used three’s a borderline where something could be but turns out not to be. Or even, where some would call it such and others would not.

Standard political twattery

MPs could be banned from taking second jobs as political consultants in the wake of the Owen Paterson case under proposals being considered by Parliament’s standards watchdog.

The Telegraph understands that the committee on standards, which rules on whether MPs have broken the code of conduct, is discussing the measure as part of a new report on the rules that apply to members.

It is understood several figures on the committee, made up of MPs and lay members, believe restrictions on outside interests must be tightened after Mr Paterson was found to have committed an “egregious” breach of the rules on paid advocacy.

We’ve just found someone guilty of a breach of the rules. Therefore the rules must be tightened?

Whut?

“We’ve just jailed someone for rape using the current law. Therefore the law on rape must be tightened so we can jail blokes like this”?

No, obviously not. That we’ve just been able to jug the bloke shows that the law’s perfectly fine in our ability to jug blokes who do this.

This has always struck me as evil

Capital punishment in Japan is conducted by hanging, and the practice of notifying inmates just hours before the penalty is carried out has long been decried by international human rights organisations for the stress it places on prisoners.

I’m not sure about this but roughly. After – after note – breakfast it is possible that the guard comes and says today’s the day. And then they hang before or by lunchtime.

Which does make that little period of time after breakfast each day a tad worrying. Especially as this goes on for years, sometimes decades.

Now, whether this is justifiably evil or not is up to each individual to consider. But I can’t see it as being anything other than an evilish twisting of the knife….hmm, maybe brandishing of the rope.

This seems rather garbled

A police force is cancelling Halloween after creating posters telling trick or treaters to stay away from homes due to Covid.

South Yorkshire Police has produced a printable downloadable poster headlined “No Trick or Treaters” below a red warning sign superimposed on a black Hallowe’en pumpkin.

I think it’s actually that they’ve got a downloadable poster which means “I don’t want to take part”. Rather missing the “trick” part but still. It’s not cancellation.

Not that the police have the power to cancel it anyway.

Explaining the lack of electricity in a slum

Outside Madrid, a shanty town. Which doesn’t have electricity. Hmm:

The power provider, Naturgy, offers its sympathies to the people of sector six, but says “intensive and irregular use” is crashing the network. It also points out that it has only three registered customers in sector six; the rest are “illegal connections”.

I also imagine that Spain is like Portugal. You can only get a legal ‘leccie supply if the house itself is legal.

To compare, imagine if someone whacked up 14,000 shacks in the Home Counties then argued that it was a breach of human rights that they didn’t have ‘leccie……

Well, OK

Credit Suisse has been fined almost £150m as part of a global settlement for its role in the “tuna bonds” scandal that tipped Mozambique into a financial crisis.

The bank will pay a total of $475m (£344m) to settle an investigation into the role it played in the $2bn scandal that sent shockwaves through the east African country.

A subsidiary for the Swiss bank pleaded guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud at a hearing in Brooklyn on Tuesday, while Credit Suisse entered into a three-year deferred-prosecution agreement with the US Justice Department.

And the folks on the government side who nicked the money and spent it on themselves, their punishment is?

Oh, aye?

A senior member of a watchdog at one of Britain’s biggest prisons has been accused of smuggling drugs and phones into the jail.

The watchdog has been arrested and suspended from their post on the prison’s independent watchdog after a police investigation.

Prison sources said police were alerted from a tip-off which claimed the watchdog was bringing in the drugs and phones after striking up a relationship with one of the inmates in the jail.

And what sort of relationship might that be?

We might even find out the sex – or perhaps gender – of the visitor at some point…..

Now there’s an idea

Could work:

But critics have said the format of the tour is at odds with the grisly subject matter.

The tour’s promotional image shows what appears to be a woman running through a darkened alleyway with a silhouette of Jack the Ripper behind her.

Guy Walters, a writer and historian, told The Telegraph: “I’m a keen runner and I’m also a historian, but there are times when the two things should not be combined.

“Running is about self-improvement, fitness and fun. Jack the Ripper was a disgusting murderer of women. The two things don’t go together.

“What I find strange about horror is how it diminishes with time. Nobody would suggest doing a Yorkshire Ripper run so why is this acceptable?

That’s the one where someone chases you through Sheffield waving a hammer? Could work, could work….

Interesting

What’s that allegedly doing there?

Protesters rallied outside the Supreme Court in Cyprus on Wednesday as lawyers launched an appeal against a young British woman’s conviction for allegedly lying about being gang raped while on holiday.

Since she’s been convicted why is it an allegation?

Or is this some linguistic thing about appeals that I don’t know about?

Well, quite Owen, but we can take a guess

It is impossible to know how much of the surge in reported hate crimes against LGBTQ people is due to escalating harassment and violence, and how much is down to the increased willingness of victims to inform the authorities. What we do know that is that recorded homophobic and transphobic hate crimes have jumped every year since 2015, and yet with an estimated four in five still going unreported, the already grisly figures only hint at a far bleaker reality.

The incidents vary in nature and severity: from abuse hurled at someone identified as LGBTQ because of their appearance, or mannerisms, or a fleeting or profound show of affection towards a partner;

When a hate crime, which should be reported, now includes mispronouning someone, through shouting pansy at them, to actually beating them up on leaving a pub, whereas in times gone by only that last would qualify, we can take a stab at trying to explain the rise in reported LGBTQ hate crimes.

As the definition has changed so has the incidence.

If we do that interesting thing of going out and observing actual human beings the general societal attitude is hugely better than it was back then. Well, except among certain groups of new arrivals but then that’s also something not to be spoken of, isn’t it?

There are no openly trans national politicians,

Nonsense. I worked rather hard to get one elected as an MEP. True, I’d not argue that was the most inspired candidate selection ever but whatever errors there were were nothing to do with her being trans.

Ahhhh….

The former custodian of the Castle Howard stately home has been charged with attempted rape in addition to historic child sex offences he has already denied.

Simon Howard, 65, who ran the 17th property in North Yorkshire for 30-years, was charged last week with three offences against one woman.

It was always a bit weird when his brother turned up and demanded the keys back.

It is understood the allegations came to light following publicity after Mr Howard was charged with historic sex offences dating back to 1984.

Hmm…..

Not amusing but amusing

Gay people have been urged by the Metropolitan Police to avoid “dimly lit areas” and “listening to loud music” following a suspected homophobic murder.

Ranjith “Roy” Kankanamalege, 50, was found dead on August 16 in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, where a crime scene is still in place.

Mr Kankanamalege’s injuries were caused by blunt force trauma, a post-mortem confirmed, and the death is being treated as a homophobic hate crime.

Wandering around back alleyways might contribute to your being attacked if you’re gay but of course it has no influence at all on your possibility of being raped if you’re female.

I have got that all the right way around, haven’t I?

Clever

Army major tricked foreign governments into sending him tanks
Michael Whatley told German, Swedish and Belgian officials the vehicles were for a museum display – but he sold them for up to £105,000 each

Old military kit does get sold off. Collectors sometimes buy. Museums though get first dibs and often don’t have to pay. You can see the attraction of being one of the two, museum or collector, one one side of the process, moving to t’other side on t’other.

Actually, this is true of a lot of kit out there. Old computers can have a value, being a charity that collects them for the kiddies can be – and I’m sure is – done. RNLI pricing on old boats is likely to vary.

Of course, none of this is as bad as setting up a 99/1 partnership in order to gain grants from charities that don’t fund individuals.

Karma

A “smitten” prison officer helped her inmate lover escape from jail, who then went on to strike up a relationship with a second woman while on the run, a court heard.

What was it that attracted you to the lying thug?

Tee Hee

So, the Venezuelan government is trying to track down naughty boys in the slums. They’re offering cash rewards for those who dob them in.

Hmm.

Wanted posters for Carlos Luis Revete, known as El Koki, offer $500,000 for information leading to his arrest

Well, yes, except $ is the sign both for USD and the Bolivar (increasingly not) fuerte. Meaming this could in fact, given exchange rates, mean a reward of 12.5 US cents. Which is a massive sum for dobbing in the local murderous gangster, innit?

Well, no, not really

The place was Dubai. The star was Tina Turner. “As the American pop legend belted out Simply the Best,” write authors Simon Clark and Will Louch, “guests sipped vintage champagne served from an ice bar that was melting slowly into the Arabian sand on the beach, fire dancers performed and cigar rollers flown in from Cuba handed out their aromatic wares.”

The host of the party was Arif Naqvi, founder of Abraaj, a private equity fund that managed nearly $14bn and had stakes in a hundred companies. Its investors were treated to oratory from Bill Clinton, the former US president, and dinner with Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. Arif’s promise to give capitalism a conscience seduced western governments and billionaire Bill Gates.

But it was all a lie, a fairy tale. In their gripping new book, The Key Man, British journalists Clark and Louch tell how Arif helped himself to the private equity group’s money, pocketing $780m, half of which is still missing. The account raises questions over whether “impact investing” and “stakeholder capitalism” are less about poverty alleviation for the world than guilt alleviation for the Davos elite.

It’s nothing to do with impact investing, Davos or stakeholder capitalism. It’s to do with criminality. To echo Willie Sutton, “So Mr. Naqvi, why’d you start a private equity fund?” “Because that’s where the money is”.

Drawing wider economic lessons from this is ridiculous.

Yes, obviously,

A former Labour MP sexually assaulted an aide in his Westminster office and fired her when she refused his advances, an employment tribunal has ruled.

Mike Hill, the former Hartlepool MP, was found to have repeatedly harassed his parliamentary staff member, and climbed into her bed and rubbed against her.

Mr Hill sexually assaulted the woman at work on more than one occasion, and victimised her when she rejected him by changing her employment terms and conditions then making her redundant.

Book ‘Im, Danno!

She said in her witness statement that Mr Hill had been her friend for several years when he suggested she moved to London to work in politics, and they live together in a flat to cut costs.

In September 2017, she claimed that he told her he loved her. When she rejected him, she claims he apologised and said he still wanted her to work and live with him in Pimlico, central London.

He continued to pursue her when they moved in together, the tribunal heard.

Perhaps not the wisest of moves…..

That you Rudy?

Eric Adams, borough president of Brooklyn who served in the New York Police Department for over two decades, won the party primary after a campaign promising to strike the right balance between public safety and ending racial injustice in policing.

“New York is going to show America how to run cities,” Mr Adams said on Wednesday as the final votes were being counted. “I understand crime, and I also understand police abuse, and I know how we can turn around not only New York, but America.”

Didn’t Rudy Giuliani already do this once?

No Love, this really doesn’t work

A legal challenge to prevent transgender inmates with convictions for sexual or violent offences against women being imprisoned alongside other women has been rejected by the high court.

A female former inmate, who claims she was sexually assaulted by a transgender women prisoner with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) while in HMP Bronzefield in 2017, asked judges to declare the justice secretary’s policies on the care and management of trans prisoners in England and Wales to be unlawful.

The claimant, known only as FDJ, argued her human rights were violated by having to be in the same prison as transgender women prisoners with convictions for sexual or violent offences against women.

As stated this is clearly the right decision. Because victory for the idea would mean that the human rights of a female prisoner would be violated if she were to be in prison with natal females who were convicted of sexual or violent offences against women.

Which, you know, doesn’t work.

Sure, there might be other reasons not to put meat and two veg in among the wimmins but this can’t be one of them.

Well, yes, and?

Child sex abuse victims have been accused of lying by police and ignored by mental health services, leading to suicide attempts, an official inquiry has found.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) spoke to 56 victims and survivors of child sexual abuse between the ages of 11 and 21, and 77 specialist child sexual abuse support workers.

The findings, published in a report called Engagement with Children and Young People, show children claimed police accused them of lying when they tried to report abuse.

Some people who have claimed to have been abused children have indeed been lying. So, what is anyone supposed to do?

The Britten/Brammall case isn’t the only one either. The whole Satanic Abuse thing was made up out of whole cloth as well. And so on.

It’s also true that some to many children claiming abuse are not lying – abuse happened and they suffered it.

So, how to sort between these two situations?