Odds and ends

The good news first.

The Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) which hired a man, Mridul Wadhwa, as its CEO under the new rules that state any man can be a woman if he so feels like it, has received a damning indictment of its conduct from an independent review. The review (full report can be downloaded here) found the ERCC failing rape survivors as well as staff, one of whom Roz Adams won a case for unfair dismissal at the employment tribunal, and described the CEO as not understanding the limits of his authority and failing to set professional standards of behaviour in the organisation . The CEO has been allowed to resign rather than be dismissed and the ERCC has put out a mealy-mouthed statement as has Rape Crisis Scotland. This is by no means the end of the saga as the problem is not just Wadhwa, as obnoxious as he was, but the trustees and third sector ecosystem that hired and supported Wadhwa so strongly against a chorus of critical voices. The situation in Edinburgh was so dire that JK Rowlings set up a women’s only rape refuge, Beira’s Place, which was vilified by ERCC in internal communications. The review has now directed the ERCC to take guidance from Beira’s Place on running a women-only refuge.

The Terfs are killing it at the courts with their win rate, take note Jolyon Maugham. Shahrar Ali, ex-deputy leader of the Greens got a £90 000 payout from the Greens for their discriminatory actions against him.

https://twitter.com/ShahrarAli/status/1834603631267500129

The third bit of trans related news is the dropping of the estimated number of trans people in the UK from the 2021 census by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Of course the terfs warned the ONS about the stupidity of its questions which led to amusingly large numbers of trans identified people in predominantly muslim areas of the country. But again, there was an inportant trans identified man in charge and the movement demanded high numbers of trans people, 26 2000 or 0.55% of the population. This embarrasment was largely self-inflicted. Will lessons be learned? Going by the trajectory, it seems unlikely.

BREAKING: Gender identity census figures decertified.@ONS census figures lose status as official statistics.

👏 to Professor Michael Biggs whose work highlighted the problem with the methodology.https://t.co/4xlcG2bOE8

— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) September 12, 2024

An odd piece of news was this conviction of a muslim man who posed as a far right “hooligan” on social media and incited rioting. Ehsan Hussain, 25, under the alias Chris Nolan called for disorder in areas of Birmingham with a large Muslim population, as riots spread across the country last month. He apparently joined a far right Telegram group with 12 000 members and wrote his messages as a joke.

His messages included ‘Awesome, Saltley Gate tomorrow we doing p*** bashing’ and `Birmingham first! We need to take back whats ours’, according to prosecutors.

Messages from the Telegram group were screenshotted and circulated widely on social media, leading a huge counter-protest to gather last month to defend the area from a perceived racist threat.

No such protest ever materialised and the night instead saw scenes of violent disorder among the counter-protesters, culminating in an attack on a pub in Yardley.

This is the second muslim provocateur related to the Southport riots, with the arrest in Pakistan of Farhan Asif on suspicion of cyber terrorism, in relation to disinformation thought to have fuelled the initial riot. The narrative of the white far right as the ultimate menace to peace and democracy is not holding up very well. There is a 12000 strong group on Telegram described as a villainous far right group but none from this descend upon Birmingham for a racist attack. In fact the inciter of the purported attack is found to be a muslim. I wonder how many of the counter protesters who turned up to show off the racists would catch this news item and be more cautious of the narrative that reaches them? This is not to excuse anyone on that Telegram group of racism or extremism, of course. I have no idea about any of them; it is the certainty of the narrative builders such as Starmer that needs questioning.

As for the police, the jokes continue to write themselves and one has gone viral around the world. Diana Johnson, the police and crime minister had her bag stolen at a conference for senior and midranking police officers where she spoke about the growing problem of theft and shoplifting. The incident occurred when Diana Johnson attended the Police Superintendents’ Association conference in central England on Tuesday where one senior officer told her in a speech that the criminal justice system was broken. The bag was stolen from her hotel room and a suspect is already in custody – an outcome that most of the population can only dream of since the police are so useless at actual crime when it concerns lesser mortals of the realm. From the article:

A poll by YouGov earlier this year found more than half of the public do not trust the police to solve crimes, and over a third said they have no faith in the police to maintain law and order.

An amusing bookend to this edition of Odds and ends is this comedian’s impersonation of a Labour MP after a disgraceful vote that cut winter fuel payments to pensioners.