Two teenage boys have been arrested by police investigating allegations that a fellow pupil was repeatedly raped at their school in Birmingham, it emerged today. The 14 and 15-year-olds were quizzed by police earlier this month after the sex assault allegations came to light.
The alleged attacks on a 15-year-old girl are understood to have happened at the city school between January and April this year. However, officers were only called in recently when the youngster reported the matter to police. Detectives from Rose Road police station detained the boys on May 13. They were questioned and later released on police bail pending further inquiries. The alleged victim and the two boys all go to the same school in central Birmingham.
More transgressive types who aren't so transgressive after all :
Desperate to flaunt their "bravery" with their controversial depictions of Jews suffering in concentration camps and highly sexualised images of children, the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman have admitted to Mandrake that there is one subject area that remains off-limits.
Jake says they would not be prepared to touch Islam.
"It’s a very difficult and sensitive issue and we wouldn’t see it in our remit," he said at the private view of If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be at the White Cube gallery.
Ban Bandanas
Four Birmingham teenagers who police claimed were part of a notorious gang have been banned from wearing bandanas in the colours of the city's Slash Crew. They were given two year ASBOs after the gang carried out a string of robberies on school-children across the city and attacked bystanders at Star City in a six-month reign of terror.
Micah Bailey, 17, of Porchester Drive, Newtown, Neon Stewart, 16, of Hawkesyard Road, Erdington and Remaine Dixon, 15, of Bennetts Street, Lozells, appeared at Birmingham Magistrates' Court yesterday. They were told they couldn't wear a mask or other garment that held "street currency". District Judge Neil Davison, also ordered them, along with the absent Anthony Harris, 17, of Wheeler Street, Newtown, not to meet in public or commit further anti-social behaviour acts.
At a hearing in January, PC Gary Ellis said: "It is believed they are part of the B19 Slash gang, which is a sub-section of the Slash Crew - a large organisation supported by groups of gangs that also associate themselves with the notorious Johnson Crew."
Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik's libel case against the local Dewsbury Press has been dropped after a jury failed to agree in the first trial.
The Guardian's Larry Elliott was in prophetic mood on October 1, 2007 :
"Go for that early election, Gordon, this is as good as the economy is going to get"
Talking of which , a lot of people seem to be recommending this book - David Craig's "Squandered". Just the thing for Tax Freedom Day, which falls today.
It was in Private Eye first, Guido's commenters have added a few names - the Guardianista ruling elite :
Editor Alan Rusbridger (Cranleigh); political editor Patrick Wintour (Westminster); leader writer Madeleine Bunting (Queen Mary's, Yorkshire); policy editor Jonathan Freedland (University College School); columnist Polly Toynbee (Badminton), sent the kids to Westminster; executive editor Ian Katz (University College School); security affairs editor Richard Norton Taylor (King's School, Canterbury); arts editor-in-chief Clare Margetson (Marlborough College); literary editor Clare Armitstead (Bedales); public services editor David Brindle (Bablake); city editor Julia Finch (King's High, Warwick).; environment editor John Vidal (St Bees); fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley (City of london School for Girls); G3 editor Janine Gibson (Walthamstow Hall); northern editor Martin Wainwright (Shreswbury); and industrial editor David Gow (St Peter's, York), Seumas Milne (Winchester College), the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley - Rugby School and Cambridge University, columnist Zoe Williams (Godolphin and Latymer).
Who killed Amar Aslam ? I wonder if the villains will turn out be related to this crowd ? The old Heavy Woollen District really does seem a rough place :
The 42-year-old woman, who has asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said: "I was driving through the centre of Heckmondwike and I saw a gang of about 15 to 20 youths chasing a man. Suddenly he jumped into my car and said 'drive', but as he did I took my foot off the clutch and stalled. It's a diesel so it takes a while to get it started again, but then the youths came and surrounded the car. They threw bricks through the front and back windscreens and side windows, started kicking it and tore both of the wing mirrors off. I was scared. I didn't know anything about what had happened to provoke this and I thought, 'what have I done, I've just pulled up at the lights'!"
She said the group came from the direction of Firth Park towards the Northgate traffic lights. The woman was on her way to collect her son from Ravensthorpe when the incident happened at about 8pm on Monday May 5. Mechanics said the six-and-a-half year old red Saxo was not economically viable to repair.
The woman, who lives in Heckmondwike, said: "I thought the gang were going to beat the guy up and I'd never want to see anyone get hurt, so I'm glad that didn't happen. But he's fine and I've been left without a car and am £350 down."
New BNP shock horror. Is there no end to their evil ?
“I am very concerned about the spate of anti-semitic graffiti in the Hackney area,” Abbott told the Jewish News on Tuesday. “This is very threatening and disturbing for the whole community. Sadly we’ve recently seen a member of the BNP elected onto the Greater London Assembly. This proves the need to fight back against racism and anti-semitism.”
The anti-semitic graffiti in question ?
“Jihad to Israel” was among the messages left on walls, paving stones, phone boxes and dustbin lids in a spate of attacks last week. The Community Security Trust believes there were at least 20 separate incidents, including eight reported in Stamford Hill, home to a large community of Orthodox Jews. Graffiti was also reported in Clapton Common, Bethnal Green, Walthamstow and Forest Gate.
The Italian experience of immigration and crime :
Italy’s statistics agency, ISTAT, fanned the fires of anti-immigrant feeling yesterday by releasing numbers showing that immigrants are responsible for more than a third of the murders committed last year.
ISTAT said foreigners had committed 70 per cent of all petty theft, 39 per cent of the sexual offences and 36 per cent of the murders.
The damning figures confirmed the opinion of almost half the country that immigrants are “dishonest”. However, ISTAT also noted that many of the crimes committed by foreigners were against other foreigners.
And a British one :
Cambridgeshire police has paid for 50 of its staff to attend language schools because dealing with foreign suspects takes up to three times longer than dealing with British cases. The trend is further evidence of mounting pressure placed on the police by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants since the European Union expanded four years ago.
Last month Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, was told by senior officers that the bill for police translators alone had soared from £14m to £24m from 2004-6.
Julie Spence, chief constable of Cambridgeshire, warned last week that the arrival of hundreds of thousands of eastern Europeans in the county, mainly for agricultural work, had left her own force underresourced and could spark “civil unrest” as the economic slowdown bites.
Arresting and processing a British suspect takes four to five hours. “With a foreign national you may have to bring in an interpreter and have documents translated – that clogs everything up,” Spence said. “As a result, it can take an officer the whole shift plus overtime to get it done. That means you don’t have your policemen out on the streets doing what they were four years ago.”
More BNP outrages - falling onto a neigbour's knife in an act of unprovoked suicide. I've got no idea what the history was between the victim and the killer, and whether the deceased, Keith Brown, subjected Mr Khan to years of abuse or not. But given the political climate of the last ten or more years, and the vilification of the BNP to the point where BBC comedians can joke about shooting them or duffing them up, Mr Khan's solicitor would have been a saint not to have used the 'racist abuse' defence, just as female poisoners use the 'domestic abuse' defence. And it worked for both parties - Mr Khan got manslaughter and our lady poisoner, a former NHS cook, walked free.
The mighty Yazza once again invokes the blessed shade of the late Mary Whitehouse :
Progressives are expected, indeed required, to deride and detest the old crone, and I duly do so here. But I also sense a weakening of the old certainty that we were absolutely right and that she was a wholly malevolent force. The new film, Filth, is, according to Robertson, "an amusing reminder of that age when 'you've got to admit Mrs Whitehouse is right about some things' briefly entered the language."
Have I got news for him. In liberal circles today, that same sentiment is expressed, and without embarrassment. Julie Walters, who plays Mrs W in the drama, is one of the self-doubters: "I think we should have understood her better. She did have a point ... much as I support freedom of expression, I believe children should be protected from things they are not emotionally equipped to deal with. And it was Mary Whitehouse who first campaigned against child pornography."
No one is more intolerant of dissent than the prophets of free speech. Whitehouse dared to take them on and, even though I find many of her views utterly objectionable, she was right to do so and right too to warn of the chaos and bedlam to come.
Yazza, the Daily Mail is your destiny. Don't fight it .. you know you want to ...
Ross at Unenlightened Commentary has an amusing piece on the Yazztastic one.
Via the Speccie, this wonderful Times of India piece on papers and politics :
In the UK, for instance, Conservatives read the Daily Telegraph, which is tailor-made for them, news, editorials and all. The Guardian, on the other hand, is far to the left of not just the Tories but also of New Labour, the paper's constituency seemingly that of the 'Londonistan' of mullahs and minarets. The Guardian used to be called the Manchester Guardian; today it might well be called, by fans and foes alike, the Madrassa Guardian.
Remember all those uninsured drivers in Bradford ?
I remember thinking how many CCTV cameras there are in Bradford (the killers of PC Sharon Beshenivsky were being tracked within minutes of her shooting) and that therefore someone must have taken a decision not to go after uninsured drivers, doubtless for reasons of "community cohesion".
The BD8 area, which covers Girlington, Manningham and Lower Grange, is the second worst in West Yorkshire, with 42.7 per cent of vehicles uninsured.
Alas when Rita Turner was born in the 1920s how could she have known that such decisions would kill her ?
Banned driver Imran Khan was at the wheel of a Vauxhall Astra when it hit 79-year-old grandmother Rita Turner, from Idle, on Drewton Road between Westgate and Manningham Lane, at 2.40pm on May 23 last year.
Mrs Turner, a grandmother and mother of two sons, died at the scene from her injuries and the usually busy road between Westgate and Manningham Lane was cordoned off for several hours. Police launched a hunt for the car, using footage from Bradford's "ring of steel" CCTV system, and appealed for witnesses to help them in their search.
The vehicle was eventually found in Manningham and subjected to forensic testing. It had suffered extensive damage to the windscreen and front end.
Khan, 21, who was uninsured, failed to stop at the scene of the collision and, at an earlier hearing, he and a co-accused admitted a charge of perverting the course of justice by concealing the Astra and throwing away the keys.
And finally ... one of those little stories which just don't seem to make the BBC.
A teenager has been charged with attempted murder following a disturbance in which another 17-year-old boy received head injuries in Rochdale.
Police were called to Denehurst Park in Greave after reports of a disturbance involving two groups of youths at about 9pm on Friday 23 May.
Police believe a group of about 12 white youths were attacked by a group of seven or eight Asian youths.
During the disturbance, a 17-year-old white boy was assaulted and sustained head injuries resulting in bleeding on the brain that required emergency surgery. He was taken to Hope Hospital where his condition is currently described as comfortable.
Extra patrols were placed in the Greave area over the bank holiday weekend to provide extra reassurance to residents (i.e. to prevent reprisal and counter-reprisal - LT).
A 17-year-old boy from Rochdale was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and subsequently charged. He appeared before Rochdale magistrates today (Wednesday) , where he was remanded in custody until next Wednesday (4 June).
The arrest and subsequent charge was the result of detailed information provided by witnesses and inquiries are on-going.
