Monday, January 22, 2018

#IDon'tBelieveHer


The process is the punishment, and it's sometimes capital punishment:
A coroner has slammed a detective for acting as 'judge and jury' in the case of a grandfather who killed himself after being accused of historic sex abuse.
Alan Bailey was 'hounded' to his death after being accused of indecency and rape by a woman who said he had abused her when she was 15, the inquest heard last week.
Yep, we're back in 'It Could Be Yewtree' territory.
The father-of-two, who maintained his innocence and was awaiting trial, faced a campaign of intimidation by the woman's partner leaving him 'paranoid' and suicidal.
But when he complained to [UNKNOWN POLICE FORCE] investigating officer Aneela Khali-Khan, she allegedly told him to 'man up' - failing to probe the harassment he faced.
Quick! Guess what force UNKNOWN is?

Yep, it's Hillsborough PD again! They've finally found a rape case they want to investigate. I can't imagine what it was about this guy that made them so much happier to go after him than, say, Rotherham taxi drivers. But it gets better, which is to say much worse:
The evening before he was due to answer bail, Ms Khali-Khan rang to say his estranged partner wanted to move back in the house.
She told him his wife should not suffer because 'she had done no wrong'. On February 18 he was charged with a series of sex offences against the woman.
The next day he appeared at court and was granted bail until his trial. But he was forced out of his home and ended up in a hostel for drug addicts and the homeless.
I guess the Tori Cuzt aren't that bad if they're free to spend time harassing a guy who's never been convicted of anything out of his own home.
But his alleged victim's partner started turning up at the store and then driving slowly past Mr Bailey's flat, on one occasion with the woman in his car.
He reported four incidents of harassment, but no officers visited him. He became increasingly 'jittery' and 'tearful' fearing he would be re-arrested for breaching his bail, though he had done nothing wrong.
Take note: stalking cases like this are *literally* why we have legislation covering harassment, not 'people saying mean stuff on twitter'. It's also what the police should be dealing with, instead of throwing men out of their home.
Ms Khali-Khan, who joined South Yorkshire Police in 2003, was a detective constable at the time with two years' experience in the criminal investigation department.
Last year she was promoted to Acting Detective Inspector. She confirmed ringing Mr Bailey to mediate between him and his wife over who should be living at the home.
At which point Mrs Merton would ask what it was about Ms Khali-Khan that first attracted the Promotion Board?

It's clearly not her talent for police work:
Dr Hunter asked the officer: 'You said his wife had 'done no wrong'. What wrong, at that point, had Mr Bailey done? He had none. You assumed he was guilty?'
Ms Khali-Khan, who had no record of the phone call, replied: 'I would not have assumed that.'
It works just like that in the real world, too. Take HMRC for example:
"We have reason to believe you have failed to declare income from a second job."
"I have no record of that."
"OK, fair enough, off you go then."
Yeah, right! Plus bear in mind that plumbers, say, aren't trained in bookkeeping and it's unpaid work on top of their real job. Neither of those two things applies to police officers and recording investigations. In fact, there's seems to be a pattern forming:
Mr Bailey's other daughter Angela Bailey said after her father reported the other man driving past his house on April 22, Ms Khali-Khan rang him and told him to 'Man up'.
The coroner asked the officer about the phone call. She said they had a 'lengthy conversation', but her notes ran to just seven lines.
She could not remember Mr Bailey saying he was scared for his safety or that she told him 'no law had been broken'.
Again: Acting Detective Inspector and, oh, that second job!
Dr Hunter asked why she had not fully investigated the intimidation or a possible case of perverting the course of justice that could have affected legal proceedings.
'You did not take him seriously, you dismissed him,' he told the officer. 'I put it to you that you had already acted as judge and jury and had already formed an opinion about Mr Bailey's guilt.'
Dr Hunter is now a member of Britain's fastest growing club: the 'National Association of People With More Balls Than Tory MPs'.
He added: 'I feel Mr Bailey would have been better served by the Keystone Cops as opposed to South Yorkshire Police.
Yes, the Keystone Cops dealt with bank robberies, not people suddenly remembering they'd been robbed thirty years ago. Here's the key bit:
Dr Hunter accepted South Yorkshire Police's practices have improved significantly since 2010, but said he would be referring the force to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (formerly the IPCC) over the actions of officer Khalil-Khan.
He described her investigation as 'incompetent' and said there were 'serious questions about her conduct and probity that needed to be addressed'. She also 'missed opportunities' to deal with the intimidation.
Dr Hunter also referred the force over their handling of the family's complaint after Mr Bailey's death. He questioned their internal investigation and said his daughters received 'platitudes and a whitewash'.
'Daughters' you say? Well, that settles it! Women don't lie about allegations of crime.

See, this is the point. An allegation of a 'historic' sex crime is enough to destroy a man's life, but when we have complaints made by the deceased and his family *at the time* combined with a suspect who's records are dodgier than the clocks at Honest Joe's Car Emporium, suddenly it turns out that you can't trust chicks.

In fact, it's worse than that. The unsupported testimony of Ms Loony-Pants was enough to threaten a man's liberty and have his reputation destroyed, but we're not even allowed to question whether someone who - based on her own testimony - is incapable of basic record keeping should really be employed as a police officer, let alone promoted.

To return to a point above: if the Tory Party really wants to be relevant again, they should ditch the constant rebrands and focus groups and just go after the thugs in blue who destroy lives at the drop of a hat, then skate on technicalities when they're under fire.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

It's Science (For Some Values Of Science)


Showing exactly the kind of savvy political judgement that secured their massive landslide in 2017, the Tory Party is staying well clear of the John Worboys fiasco. I'm guessing their computer models of the electorate warned them to avoid alienating the key 'serial rapist' demographic.

Meanwhile, in the real world, this case is reinforcing everything we ever suspected about the rehab industry. Consider for instance their strange definition of 'independent expert'.

Personally, I’m just shocked – shocked – to find that an ‘independent expert’ producing reports for the Parole Board turns out to a True Believer in the Cult of Rehab... and she’d have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids reading the stuff she’s published openly for years!

As Britain's most brilliant blogger once said, the rehab industry is the Rosetta Stone for understanding how the left gets away with it. For years the left has tried to claim that if you oppose the rehab industry then you, sir, hate The Science. Now it turns out that these scientists sound a heck of a lot like a Guardian editorial.

Hey, can we at least get some ground rules so we can tell when they're being scientists and when they're being activists? Maybe something like lab coat on equals expert, lab coat off equals campaigner?

Sunday, January 07, 2018

The Difference Between Barnes Wallis And Disney


When Barnes Wallis made a bomb, at least it bounced. Disney: not so much. 

Yes, $464 million is serious money - although that's the gross and it has to be compared to the $4.2 billion they paid for the rights in the first place - but under performance of $187 million is a lot to pay for virtue signalling. Assuming a similar percentage drop off in DVD sales and merchandising, it looks like Disney have just paid a self-inflicted SJW tax of $200 million, or enough to make a whole other movie.

All of which is by way of saying that when the Smart Set tell us that 'people' are too sophisticated to want the supposedly simplistic narratives of the original Star Wars trilogy, they actually mean a very specific sub-set of people, namely themselves. 

Meanwhile, normal people just want to see a decent movie, same as they ever did. Hence why one of the few non-disastrous DC movies was helmed by a woman who explicitly rejected the kind of smirking cynicism exemplified by 'The Last Jedi'.

The point is not only that movie journalists turned out to be hideously out of touch with the public, but in so far as politics is downstream of culture, the implosion of Star Wars might shed some light on another failing franchise, namely the Tory Party.

Just like 'The Last Jedi', the Tory Party has embraced empty virtue signalling combined with a sneering attitude to actual virtue and it's having about as much success in terms of garnering support from normal people. It turns out that, MSM to the contrary,  the jaded hipster demographic isn't actually a barometer of where the country is going after all.