Carl Gombrich

„The co‑host of the Fifa World Cup finals this summer is currently bombing one of its participating nations. The co‑host of the tournament has murdered the head of state of the third‑ranked team in Group G. Nothing quite like this has happened before.“

Yeah, he was a bad loser. Not a good look.

Doesn't change the fact that there was a helluva lot of dodgy voting going on, and that we need to change the possibility of that happening in any constituency.

How do you mean?

Terms of Reference.

Yep. I've had my say on the ToR. Have you had a go with them yet? I think we have til Friday?

Yes. There are many aspects to getting the grooming-rape gangs enquiry right. Obviously, more justice for victims and more convictions for criminals, but also a proper enquiry will reveal so much corruption throughout society.

I speak for myself and say: absolutely. This is about protecting democracy and public trust. Far more important than any particular political party.

How might we ever get to the bottom of whether Iran is An Existential Threat, or not?

There must be a way to vote remotely now using secure biometrics or something better than postal votes. This doesn't help at all, of course, with some of the block/family issues - and may even make some worse (e.g. easier to 'explain' things at home than in a polling booth) - but we need change.

Isn't it also that there is fundamental disagreement on what those challenges are?

Yes, I've been following Raja a long time. I'd still like to understand better exactly what he did wrong when he worked in schools. But whatever wrong-doing there has long been surpassed by his bravery and analysis of these issues.

A huge part of the scandal is that the authorities allowed this abuse to go on for so long because they lived in fear of being seen as racist and of raising "community tensions".

And for the first part of this, academia must take some responsibility for leading the discourse on racism. 2/2

More superb work from openjusticeuk.org on the grooming-gang transcripts.

Lots more work to do, of course, but so far the picture is really that religion and race were only - at worst- a *factor* in this mass crime, not the *cause*.

1/2

Polanski is a liar.

This is not the first time he has lied.

I doubt it will be the last.

I find these things almost as impossible to believe as the Big Bang.

Utterly amazing.

We just don't know anything, really.

I aspire to exude as much confidence as this little Kinesin protein strutting along a microtubule while hauling intracellular cargo.

Look at that little guy go! 🔬🧪

Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey:

"Tax exiles like Isabel Oakeshott and washed up old footballers who mock ordinary people who stay in the UK and pay our taxes... As we protect them, it's only right for tax exiles to start paying taxes to fund our armed forces, just like the rest of us".

100,000+ Underage Victims: This Has Been Going On Longer Than We Know… YouTube video by Winston Marshall

#groominggangs

Julie Bindel - 1.00 in - says "we have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of girls in the name of multiculturalism and community cohesion"

She identifies the Labour Party particular, and it would be fair to say all "progressives" as well

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9uA...

The Green's have so much dangerous nonsense once you scratch the surface, ripe for exposure.

On any health-related issue, an attack would be particularly salient given Polanski's hyno-boob history.

(I can't quote-post the clip so it's screen-shot. The original is on the author's profile)

*vicious. Bloody hell 😳 🤣

Good comment. Look forward to more chats on here, hopefully 😊, although, so far I've found this place a mixture of sanctimonious, self-serving and viscious 😁

I disagree about the extent of success so far. There is a world of work still to do to smash these gangs - think Italian mafia 1970s-80s before the authorities and prosecutors Falcone and Borsellino started to get a proper grip.

Well, I hope you'll forgive some of us who might be trying to do something, however small! I don't think 'the right' have exactly covered themselves in glory either, btw!

In my view you're too fixated on Reform (or whatever) rather than getting to the bottom of this historic crime. The cover-up and corruption is immense and ongoing. It needs a foreign judge with experience of investigating mafia, not more establishment types marking their own homework.

Agree with all you say.

Personal for me as I am deeply committed to universities as a reforming and progressive mission but they - and we, the academic class in general - are terribly implicated (by omission, if not commission) in this historic crime.

Agree Church could do more but several countries commissioned fully external inquiries: for example, France (the Sauvé Commission), Germany, Ireland, and Australia’s Royal Commission, all state‑mandated or independent of Church control, which scrutinised Church handling of abuse.

🤣🤣. The anonymous and widely criticised Home Office report (see Casey 2025) the discredited IICSA report which, inexplicably, sampled localities where little or no GLCSE was reported, Maggie Oliver taking the government to judicial review on Thursday for not implementing its own recommendations.

Hello both! There's a lot of evidence of racially and religiously aggravated abuse now in the grooming-rape gangs. See e.g. www.openjusticeuk.org

As for replacing this mass abuse with another - always possible. But we should address 1 such mass abuse (public schools, Cath Church,etc) at a time.

As Popper says somewhere, the really distinguishing thing about democracy is that it allows you to get rid of leaders you don't like.

It is perfectly legitimate, therefore, for a democracy to legislate so that groups who would take that right away cannot come to power.

Its