Tuesday, March 26, 2013
The useless and dishonest UKBA to be brought back under the Home Office
So the Home Secretary has today responded to the endless dire reports into the UKBA by the Home Affairs Select Committee.
The devil will be in the detail of the ensuing Immigration Bill, but it's right to place immigration properly within the Home Office instead of distancing it from government as a separate agency. That was an entirely cynical measure by the previous Government to remove responsibility -- egg-on-face -- from Home Office senior management and (most of all) ministers.
It seems particularly right to separate enforcement from processing visa applications.
This does not at all mean, of course, that they will get it any more right than the almighty hopeless mess its been in for the past 14 years; especially unless they are going to resource it properly to pay for more staff and far better training.
Teresa May talks of culture issues, but the corrosive culture is top-down -- from the very pinnacle of the Home Office downwards: the resignation to immigration being an insoluble problem (and that, therefore, all you can do is 'news manage'), and the PC politics whereby potential migrants are viewed as having the same rights as UK indigenous citizens.
Monday, March 25, 2013
The useless Lin Homer and her dishonest UKBA, unconvincing mea culpas from political leaders, IPPR misinformation that migrant benefit claims aren't a problem, and David Goodheart not coming quite clean enough
The UKBA deserves nothing less than the opprobrium persistently heaped upon it by the Home Affairs Select Committee; and that certainly goes for Lin Homer, the former UKBA head, who tries to defend the history of deliberately highly inaccurate data on backlogs issued by the UKBA as somehow an inaccurate charge against her. A fine role model for 'women at the top' this 'not fit for purpose' supposed civil servant makes. [The UKBA still do not reveal all of their crytpically named massive backlogs, nor the true scale of those they've lost track of -- let alone the literally millions of illegals, fraudulent supposed legals, and under-the-radar over-stayers they never had any handle on in the first place.]
It's reassuring to see that I continue to be proved not at all to have over-estimated the depth of the problems, albeit that I'd much rather see a wholesale change in Home Office (and ministerial) culture.
As well as all of the leaders of the three main political parties making inept speeches pretending to want to do something about unsustainable immigration levels, there is the IPPR 'think [?] tank' yet again proselytising in favour of immigration; this time falsely claiming that there is little abuse of the benefits system by migrants, when the Benefits Agency continues to have no routine means of checking the immigration status of any applicant; and therefore nobody, including the IPPR, has any clue as to the scale of such abuse.
I see also that former Prospect Magazine editor David Goodheart is again bashing the political-Left from the inside on immigration questions. He's far more convincing in his mea culpa than is Ed Milliband, but as ever he refuses to see the elephant in the room: that the political-Left, of which he has been not a non-prominent part, has long blamed the mass of ordinary people for the Left's own blind acceptance of an impractical ideology. When it didn't work, the group that the ideology was supposed to 'liberate' -- 'the workers' -- instead were turned into the fall guys. With 'the workers' being typically male, 'white' and heterosexual, the replacement groups to be 'liberated' -- the designated new vanguard for social change -- were NON-male, NON-'white', and NON-heterosexual.
This is the basis of uncontrolled immigration (and extreme feminism, etc), not a conscience on behalf of the world. It's the very sort of elitist-separatist fascism the Left projects on to its opponents -- not least such as myself who persist in pointing all this out. Consistently, all on the Left, not excluding David Goodheart, have been too dishonest to admit that they have been at the heart of this, the greatest political fraud in history; of which they should be made to be deeply ashamed.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Keir Starmer talks harmful ignorant nonsense about false rape allegations, which are in fact a high proportion of formal complaints to police
Contrary to the assertion today by the hapless Director of Public Prosecutions, the incidence of PROSECUTIONS for false rape allegations says little about the ACTUAL INCIDENCE of false rape allegation, which research by the University of Nottingham published last year reveals to be commonplace in the judgement of rape prosecutors and judges, with a high proportion of rape complaints being either 'false accounts' or complete fabrication.
The vast majority of those making false rape complaints are not prosecuted, owing (1) to the severe political pressure placed on the police and the CPS to pursue every rape complaint taking the side of the complainant irrespective of any merit; and (2) the severe difficulty in being able to prove 'false rape' beyond any reasonable doubt. [Starmer and his ilk complain that the tiny proportion of rape complaints that end in prosecution does not reflect the incidence of rape; so they can't have it both ways.]
In the estimation of specialist police rape investigators it's 50% to 70% of all cases – and this according to a study by (Sir) Ian Blair, no less.
The first of two major Home Office reports into rape showed that police then 'no-crimed' 25% of all formal allegations of rape, despite the aforesaid most intense inappropriate political pressure. The police would have to be very sure indeed that no rape took place for them to thus categorise. An even larger proportion were categorised under 'no further action'; a proportion of which will also be false allegation. Even under continued sustained political pressure, although 'no criming' has reduced it is still 12%.
Does Keir Starmer know nothing at all about the psychology of bogus complaint?
Is he unaware of the research of Professor Keith Soothill regarding the astonishing triviality of the motivation of girls and women to fabricate allegations of sexual assault?
Is he really not au fait with what police specialist rape investigators and his own prosecutors have long said and continue to say about the alarming sky-high incidence of false allegation of rape?
Has he not read the new criminological paper on the overall conclusions by his own prosecutors that there is indeed a sky-high incidence of 'false accounts' by rape complainants?
Has he not heard of the phenomenon of 'false memory'?
It makes you wonder if Keir Starmer has heard anything but the PC-fascist mantras from inside government and hate-mongering government-paid pressure orgs.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The crazy Savile feeding frenzy continues with the HMIC report today
The latest fools jumping on the bandwagon of the Savile hysteria are Drusilla Sharpling of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary in presenting the HMIC report today, and Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, who has also commented.
I will again set out here the likely explanation for what has blown up into a full-scale witch-hunt out of what may well be little more than usual sexual behaviour of someone in the limelight. [As before, I stress that it could be that Savile is as portrayed, but from all the circumstances and from past similar cases and research, this is unlikely. The test is whether in principle someone facing supposedly cross-corroborated accusations of the sort levelled at Savile nevertheless could be entirely innocent; and, as I outline. this test is passed.]
There is no compelling evidence – that is, evidence that amounts to anything approaching even a civil, let alone a criminal standard of proof – that Savile was the serious sex abuser as he is portrayed. And we know from similar hysterias in the recent past – notably over the cases such as Cleveland in what turned out to be the entirely groundless 'satanic sex abuse' supposed paedophile rings with countless 'victims' – that you can get a great multiplying of allegations even in the absence of any truthful basis. What is more, the spurious 'satanic sex abuse' scandals were in respect of alleged events that were current or in the recent past, whereas the events re Savile are decades in the past and therefore very likely to be the result of 'false memories'. The psychology of constructing fabrications of past events is a human universal, and is rife whenever there is a highly salient seed upon which a construction can be made. A famous and larger-than-life individual who had myriad inconsequential encounters with others is almost bound to be the subject of a plethora of 'false memory'-based supposed incidents.
So what can we say for definite about Savile (apart from that he was on the odd side of larger-than-life, and pretty much a creep)? Well, he was a personification of the role he was expected to fill. As a DJ his job was to create a fun and indeed sexual atmosphere by flirting or mock-flirting. The obvious fact is that his position, as a foremost media star within pop music culture in the febrile atmosphere of the pop music scene in its heyday, was one of an alpha-male, and as such he had and was seen to have sexual licence. Not only would it be that Savile felt able to approach girls/women sexually, but girls/women would expect and in many cases not be averse to this. Girls usually would at least go along with it, if not be actively facilitative. It must be borne in mind that just as someone in Savile's position would be both particularly attracted to and be in a position to act on his attraction to females at the peak of their appeal – a few years post-puberty, at the start of their sexual lives; correspondingly, females, in being sexually attracted to conspicuously successful males, would have been attracted to Savile, and notwithstanding a considerable age difference.
The particularly high-status older male together sexually with the nubile girl, as we can see throughout history, is as natural as it gets. Only in contemporary Western culture since the advent of the 'political-correctness' political-philosophy within the past two decades has this been regarded as a form of abuse. It is most certainly not 'paedophilia', which is defined precisely as an exclusive sexual interest in individuals below the age of puberty. Not only is Savile's interest clearly in post-pubertal girls, but it is not established even then that he had the exclusive interest necessary for a categorisation of 'hebephilia' (corresponding to 'paedophilia' but re adolescents, not children). His extraordinary position meant that he could indulge in a narrow preference for the most highly nubile females, and simply to have promiscuous sex with them without having to offer long-term partnership. This is wildly beyond any realistic hope for all but a very small minority of males, but certainly not beyond their normal dreams. The scope of Savile's sexual interest a psychiatrist would tell you is normal for males.
The upshot is that the sexual dynamics in which Savile found himself essentially were much more of a two-way street, with interactions that were mutually reinforcing. It is not at all hard to see how all this could ratchet up so that Savile got all too used to the dynamics and took liberties, as they say. It may be that instead of a formalised peck on the cheek, Savile would kiss on the mouth. There is a new 'Savile meme' of his cigar-smoke-smelling tongue rammed into unsuspecting mouths, and this likely reflects this extension of repertoire, but is also likely to be an exaggeration. Exaggeration is natural human behaviour to make an event more significant than it otherwise would be. Regarding sexual behaviour there is always the dimension that for girls/women any form of sex is often regretted because of the question that it raises of sexual proprietariness. [The main form of mutual denigration that females employ is to portray in terms of sexual over-availability. This is because it injures a female's chances of securing a male long-term (as opposed to a short-term) partner. It is the key weapon in female intra-sexual competition.] For this reason, any accusation by a female against a male of inappropriate sexual behaviour should always be regarded with some suspicion. This goes completely against the current politically dominant philosophy of 'political correctness' contempt for the male, and this is a key feature of the current hysteria against Savile.
If you then add the media feeding frenzy, which provides a huge platform for attention-seeking, and additionally the prospect of large sums in compensation payouts with minimal need to supply proof in respect of any individual incident; then you have the perfect storm to actively facilitate women to come forward to redefine as coerced past sexual behaviour to which there was acquiescence if not full mutuality. Max Clifford points out that most of the many women coming forward to him appear to be fabricating – either exaggerating out of all proportion or making up the whole thing.
To return to the issue of the nubile girl: contemporary age-of-consent law reflects a pejorative view of sex with nubiles stemming from Victorian times that is now anachronistic. The average age of puberty back then was 17, whereas now it is eleven and still falling. If the girls Savile preferred indeed were aged fifteen or fourteen, given the contemporary reality of the age of sexual maturity out of childhood, then sexual attraction to girls at these ages is normal. The objection that sexual maturity is not emotional maturity is true only inasmuch as full 'emotional' maturity may well not be until age sixteen: the onset of 'emotional' maturity is from the hormonal surge at the beginning of puberty, in that it is this hormonal surge which initiates the adult reorganisation of the brain. In consequence, there is sufficient emotional maturity by age of first sex. Clearly, the evolutionary process would never have given rise to females having sex before they were fully ready to engage in it and deal with the consequences. The brain in fact does not reach full maturity in terms of an end to profound plasticity, until age twenty-five. No-one suggests that sexual activity should be proscribed by law until that age. The average age of first penetrative sex is difficult to ascertain, but it is generally agreed to be below age sixteen – age fifteen (15.0 or 15.3 years) according to the 1999 Global Sex Survey. Yet this is an average taken across all age groups: the age of first sex of someone now aged 60 or 70 is likely to be considerably older than someone now aged fourteen. Thus, the age of first sex for today's adolescents is likely to be around fourteen if not younger. Furthermore, the definition in law of sex in terms of age-of-consent is regarding any orifice and any form of penetration (penis, finger, object), or even non-penetration, it would seem, if it involves the labia/vulva. The average age of onset of any such sexual behaviour inevitably will be notably lower still than re full penile-penetrative sex.
It is true, of course, that some girls are still very immature in all respects at age fourteen, but this is in large part a 'class' issue, given that epigenetic changes to girls born into less socially structured and secure environments – notably single-parent families in 'underclass' and other 'lower' class milieu -- bring about especially early puberty, resulting in a polarisation in average age of puberty according to broad social grouping. Augmenting this is the highly protracted adolescence and early adulthood of the middle-class education track. The issue then becomes one of an imposition on others of criminal law from a middle-class reality which is particularly inappropriate for some other social groups.
There is then the problem for such as Savile, that even if there is a desire not to infringe the arbitrary law, of how to ascertain the age of girls so as not to fall foul of the age-of-consent law. Given the falling age of puberty resulting in girls of fourteen/fifteen appearing to be years older, and the ubiquity of young girls lying about their age; then it is near impossible for a male not to fall foul of the law if he is engaging in a large volume of sexual activity. Therefore, even if Savile was mindful of this and trying to be careful, he would have ended up behaving in a way that might appear similar to how is being portrayed.
It is a further issue as to whether or not Savile was actually coercive – that is, intentionally so – in his behaviour. He hardly needed to be, and even if he actually tried to be careful in this respect, given the volume of sexual activity then with the regular miscommunication between the sexes (especially in the light of mixed signalling by females of coyness and 'come-on'), it would be fully expected that errors would be made. Compounding with the above-mentioned retrospective redefinition of consensual sex as coercive, it is almost inevitable that accusations would accrue to someone in Savile's position, irrespective of his actual character.
The allegations against Savile in respect of institutionalised girls look odd given Savile's access to girls generally. It could be that he realised that any complaint against him re such girls would tend not to be believed, and on this basis he targeted them; but his brazen attitude more widely belies this. Whether or not from his hubris as a celebrity, Savile may have regarded engagement with the girls sexually as in a real sense bringing them out of their institutionalisation and normalising to thereby actually benefit them; just as when he took them to the Top-of-the-Pops or Jim'll-Fix-It studios for recordings. The institutionalisation of such girls may well have led them more than usual to go along with the behaviour, such that a spiral of miscommunication could ensue, with Savile being unwittingly coercive. It is very easy to take the perspective that if Savile did indeed have sex with these sort of girls, that this is a simple abuse of authority and a very serious one; but the sexual dynamics above outlined apply, and there is an ever clearer basis for a retrospective redefinition of sex as coercive.
The issue of harm is held to be self-evident, and in any case it is argued that sexual coercion of females of any age, let alone at or under the age-of-consent, is fundamentally unacceptable. This stems from the very deepest biological/evolutionary reasons: the essential basis of all social system in 'policing' male access to sex (which is for reasons beyond my scope here). The obvious harm ancestrally and historically is the obvious one that a girl could end up with a child by a male who is merely indulging in extra-pair sex (and therefore is not intending to support the girl and any subsequent child) and/or is in any case somehow an unsuitable male – that is, lacking in 'good genes' (the basis of male attractiveness across biology). Well, Savile was a very high-status male and there is only one case (so far as I'm aware) in which a putative victim alleges that an abortion was required. It is not clear whether or not Savile used condoms – if, indeed, it is clear that much of the alleged actual penetrative sex took place. Irrespective of these considerations, the harm that is alluded to is the supposed most serious harm of child sex abuse. But even if there was abuse, there was no child sex abuse (unless the outlier allegation of sex with a pre-pubertal boy is proven) because the girls were all past the age of puberty. [In any case, meta-studies on the adult clinical-psychological sequelae of child sex abuse show a very surprising minimal if not null impact.] One woman is claiming that Savile's hand up her skirt when on air in a TOTP filming when she was a teenager has resulted in her subsequent broken marriage, yet there is nothing apparent in the video that she was even upset at the time. Such is the ludicrosity of the cases springing to light.
Overall, there are multiple inter-related and mutually reinforcing facets to the hysteria over Savile, and the essential truths of the male-female dynamics are being completely ignored. The feeding frenzy is feeding upon itself and may turn out to have emanated from little real meat in the first place. It may well be that Savile went beyond an excessive laddishness to exploit the lucky situation in which he found himself, to become reckless as to the acquiescence of girls to engage in sex. It may further be the case that Savile turned into (or was from the outset) an out-and-out abuser, but as yet this is unproven and there appears to be no way forward even in principle whereby it could be proven.
The Savile hysteria is a marker for our times, which will distinguish them as being peculiarly at odds with human nature and remarkably intolerant and plain stupid. Savile has become an emblem for a cultural hatred of the male. As a relatively low-status male myself, I hardly have great affection for high-status males such as was Savile; even those who behave as perfect gentlemen. The concern must be that if this is how we now jump to malign even high-status males, then as regards the majority of males – boys as well as men – we can only marvel at the extent of prejudice and contempt directed towards them.
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
We can always trust DPP Keir Starmer to get it completely wrong.
We can always trust Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, to get it completely wrong.
The lessons from police-media trawls of celebrities is that innocent people are libelled and have their lives ruined; not that we should follow the lead of the Met
Police and only listen to putative victims instead of first properly investigating the likely bogus nature of their complaints.
Look what happened in Portugal when the police and media conspired to trawl for supposed child sex abuse victims of the leader of Portugal's main centre-Left political party and that country's most prominent TV figure. Both were tried, convicted and imprisoned, but four years later they had to be released after the judiciary were forced to admit that the corroboration of a huge number of complainants added up to precisely nothing.
Mutual corroboration of fiction amounts to fiction, not fact.
In the UK we saw what happened with the BBC and Lord McAlpine. Now we have the witch-hunt against Stuart Hall, following the likely serious injustices perpetrated against tutors at Cheetham's Music School.
Does Keir Starmer know nothing at all about the psychology of bogus complaint?
Has he not heard of the phenomenon of 'false memory'?
Is he unaware of the research of Professor Keith Soothill regarding the astonishing triviality of the motivation of girls and women to fabricate allegations of sexual assault?
Is he really not au fait with what police specialist rape investigators and his own prosecutors have long said and continue to say about the alarming sky-high incidence of false allegation of rape? [Surely he's not unfamiliar with the study on this by no less a person that Sir Ian Blair?]
Has he not read the new criminological paper on the overall conclusions by his own prosecutors that there is indeed a sky-high incidence of 'false accounts' by rape complainants?
I'll not re-rehearse here my analysis of the absurd witch-hunt against Jimmy Savile – see my earlier blogs posts on this; suffice to say that the test is whether or not someone in Savile's situation could be innocent; and clearly there is a perfect storm of combination of factors that indeed would lead someone in Savile's position to be falsely witch-hunted despite being innocent.
The mind boggles how it is that we have such a total idiot as Keir Starmer in charge of prosecutions in this country.
Friday, March 01, 2013
The absurdity of the sexless sex scandal. Those Lib-Dem ladies were involved as much as was Lord Rennard in business absolutely as usual in the real world of people as sexual beings.
It's neither possible nor desirable to somehow try to outlaw how people naturally behave – and how others expect them to behave – in their very different ways (and not least their sexual ways) according to their sex. Men form themselves into what are essentially dominance hierarchies, with the high-rankers being sought after by women; who, in trying to get near these individuals, try themselves to ape men in climbing organisations – like the Lib Dem Party. The complication is that women don't compete for status per se, as men do, because status is a measure only of male attractiveness (mate-value); not of the female (which is simply fertility – youth, shape and looks, pretty much). So women 'climb' in whatever way is more their style; like using their sexual charms in subtle – and often not at all subtle – ways.
Picture the Lib-Dem candidate development soiree. It's not hard to see how rendered ridiculous is the idea that any however mild male sexual behaviour is inadmissible in this or any situation, as if there were no corresponding behaviours by women. Such naïvety is the true sexism.
All those Lib-Dem women won't have kept their flirtatious ways under wraps; albeit that deployment may be more unconscious than fully witting. They will have felt flattered by corresponding male behaviour from male high-flyers in the Party. But when in stepped the pretty lardy lump that is Chris Rennard, the ladies were not so much for interesting.
Evidently you do need some other confirmation of mate-value than just being the Party swot. Apparently, it's not OK for the usual low-level sexual interplay to go on if the male isn't a full suit in the attractiveness stakes; even though otherwise it's business as usual. In other words, if it's to female advantage, then usual human life in its ubiquitous sexual aspects is fine; but at moments of women's choosing this can be rescinded and everybody else has to accept this. [And when does this fickleness ever stop? Not when you're well into penetration if the woman retrospectively questions her consent!]
Now, in this light enter Lord Rennard's friendly hand finding the odd lady's knee or back. Anything but the sex of any sex-scandal; a fully public, normally fully exposed appendage everybody had probably grasped and shaken a little earlier. Just part of the usual so low-level it's nearly-invisible sexual banter on view everywhere. Indeed, it's likely in part camaraderie – how the lads get on with each other, extended to the gals so as not to patronisingly leave 'em out.
To what extent was Rennard simply behaving in an expected playful manner by way of reciprocating the signals the ladies were giving off to all and sundry? They might well have been making general unconscious coy come-on signals to the whole room. Men may well feel it ungentlemanly not to acknowledge female projection of presence. And we're still not as far as anything one-on-one here.
Quite how socially incompetent and misanthropic do you have to be to turn this innocuous scenario into a cauldron of abuse?
Anyway, if the hinted extrapolation of this were in any way true – that the Lib-Dem Party is a casting-couch – then the orangey-yellow totty (and it would have to be this category) who made it to be PPC (prospective parliamentary candidate) or better ….. where are they in all this? If they had to sleep their way to the top, don't they think we'd want to hear about it?! Can't think why they're keeping mum.
Well, OK, I'd guess the issue here would be that the high-flyers the girls were prepared to sleep with were not lardy lumps like Lord Chris. This was natural mutual attraction, you understand; not abuse at all. [Not like Lord Lard's wandering mitts.] What's wrong with that, the totty would enquire?
Nothing, except having yer cake, eating it and vomiting it back up.
