I said I wasn't going to get sucked into the Rotherham scandal debate but it is relevant to this blog. The reason for my lack of enthusiasm is that all we see is the same white noise and extruded verbal material from our media, which is nothing that couldn't have been written about any shithole Northern town, every year, for the last twenty years. It still goes on, the plod know who's responsible, and the establishment goes out of its way to marginalise anyone who complains. Sound familiar?
This latest scandal largely has nothing at all to do with Islam and, like the epidemic of bailiff fraud, has everything to do with a bloated, anti-democratic system of local government which has a culture of denial where complaints are concerned. My experience with South Gloucestershire Council taught me everything I need to know. It's the same dynamic behind the NHS Staffordshire massacres.
Hugh Muir is the closest I've seen to sense on this, writing about a similar scandal in Rochdale, while carefully avoiding the cultural aspects. Apart from that, all we'll get is a stream of pontification from London hacks who couldn't find Rotherham on a map and have panic attacks if they go North of Watford. You'll get an adequate but superficial analysis from Spiked Online, but The Harrogate Agenda has it right, and coincidentally, The Harrogate Agenda is what we need to stop this from happening. Anything else is is just the same bland waffle we have heard many times before, where we are assured that "lessons will be learned".
As to South Gloucestershire, there exists the same arrogance of office. Sooner or later all of their skeletons will start falling out of the closet, and readers of this blog won't be in the least bit surprised if Amanda Deeks, Sue Mountstevens and her merry band of thuggish enforcers are also peadophile enablers and rape deniers.
