I have a problem with all this nonsense involving the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland.  Her mitigation is being spun currently on the basis that her “technical breach” of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 was merely an oversight by way of her not photocopying her housekeeper Loloahi Tapui’s documentation. Thus it is argued that she did not knowingly employ a person who did not have the right to live and work in this country.  Might I ask what documentation it was that Baroness Scotland omitted to copy?  It has been established that Ms Tapui had no right to remain in this country, so she could not have possessed any relevant papers to copy.  The Attorney General failed to read the documentation she was purportedly shown, or failed to read it properly before failing to copy it as the law required.

All this from someone who is the chief legal adviser to the Government and responsible for all Crown litigation, yet she does not resign nor is she dismissed.  Incredible.

Baroness Scotland must now stand down

“On Friday a BBC journalist announced on breakfast television that “a million children are being abused”.

Where do these figures come from? How do we know? Are we feeding the paranoia that stops a grandfather taking a picture of his nine-year-old grandson playing football? Surely this cannot continue. Someone needs to put things back on an even keel.”

Former Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Stevenson

Earlier in his article for The Times Mr Stevenson, the officer in charge of the Soham murder investigation, remarked,

“As a result of poor intelligence, [Ian] Huntley was appointed a school caretaker in Soham. Did that give him access to children? Yes, hundreds. Did he abuse them? No. In fact he reported to the head teacher that several teenage girls had made inappropriate comments. What Huntley did to Holly and Jessica was as bad as it gets, but did he come into contact with them through being a caretaker? Not exactly — he was caretaker of Soham Village College, a school for the over-11s. The two girls attended St Andrew’s Junior School. Different building, different caretaker. Huntley had contact with them because [his partner Maxine] Carr was employed at St Andrew’s as a classroom assistant. She worked in a class with Holly and Jessica, who both liked her. Holly’s mother sent Carr a box of chocolates on the last day of term to say thank you for helping her daughter.”

He concludes,

“How do we prevent such chance encounters happening? We can’t. No amount of legislation, record keeping or checking could prevent this type of crime completely. Thankfully it is extremely rare. Children are far more likely to be killed by a family member or on the roads.”

 Well now, we cannot have that sort of talk.  Something had to be done. Anything.

“A 2008 federal-funded survey conducted in New Jersey, where Megan’s Law¹ originated, concluded it had done nothing to deter the repeat offenders it is designed to target. It only made them easier to track down when they had reoffended….But a register is a knee- jerk response to the cry of “something must be done,” and that done, we are all too happy to do nothing more.”

Catherine Philp

___________________________________

¹ A law requiring information to be made public concerning registered sex offenders.

“One in three teenage girls has suffered sexual abuse from a boyfriend and one in four has experienced violence in a relationship, according to an in-depth study published today”

reports The Guardian.

The research was undertaken on behalf of the NSPCC at the Centre for Family Policy and Child Welfare, University of Bristol.  The Centre describes itself as “one of the leading national and international research centres on child welfare and child safety issues.”

The survey of 1,353 teenage girls and boys from across the United Kingdom found that nearly ninety per cent of these teenagers aged 13 to 17 had been in an intimate relationship. A quarter of the girls claimed to have suffered physical violence, including being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriends. Ninety-one teenagers were questioned at length and of these, one in six of the girls claimed that they had been pressured into having sex and one in sixteen claimed to have been raped.

A previous report from Bristol University published in late August 2009 concerning domestic violence declared amongst other things that,

“men abuse more than women do but women are three times more likely to be arrested” (my emphasis).

Having been involved in a professional capacity at the sharp end of domestic violence for a sufficient number of years, it was my experience that the overwhelming majority of individuals arrested were male.

It makes you ponder how representative of the general population were the samples relied upon for this latest research.  If sample data is not sound then neither is the conclusion drawn from that data; or as a computer bod would say, garbage in, garbage out.