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Why are the riots in Leeds being virtually ignored by mainstream media?
When it is believed children are in imminent danger if they stay with the family, then social workers have to act. Whether the family is White, Roma, Asian, black, Christian, Muslim or Atheist.
Social workers not being allowed to do their job properly.
Police attacked by ethnic minority crowds.If this was a right wing riot it would rightly be headline news all over the media.
Value Is EverythingI think it would have been headline news but the IT outage is dominating the news today.
Biggest story today is the UN’s finding on Israel. That it’s running after an IT glitch and local disturbance on UK media (if at all) is deeply concerning, though, sadly not surprising.
Search for ‘Leeds riots 2024’ followed by the name of any newspaper and you’ll find multiple articles on it. At least five on the BBC website too including a live blog that it ran.
Similar level of coverage to the disorder outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley last year if you search for that.
Now riots in Southport.
Knew the would be trouble when Starmer was heckled when he visited to pay his respects to the murdered children.
However these people heckling him wasn’t in my opinion there out of respect themselves they were out to cause trouble as 24 hours later.
Some online says it’s the English Defence League. The new name for National Front I assume.
You've got to accentuate the positive.
Eliminate the negative.
Latch on to the affirmative.
Don't mess with mister in between.What message are these morons trying to send out. They are thugs using a heart breaking incident
to loot and damage property which will only cost the British public. What are they objecting against.
Now the ultra right are using this to try and cause chaos. They are targeting immigrants, using this
incident in Southport despite the fact that the youth involved was born in Wales. The police are scared
to go forward as this will be used as another example of the police stopping public expression, so they
stand there with shields whilst bricks, barrels and anything else these scum can get their hands on is
thrown at them.The PM has to give instructions for the police to become active when assaulted. It should be made illegal
during violent protest to wear IRA style balaclavas whilst throwing items or setting cars alight. If we sit
back whilst this happens, it becomes a game for kids to play under incitement by far right groups.I’ve never been so disappointed as I was watching the police standing in lines in Sunderland being pelted
by the scum of the earth. Unless something is done, this will spread.Silly Season aka Riot Season: it’s what sultry summer nights are made for
The Southport murders were just the catalyst that finally fired the powder keg of deep, dark resentment felt by a not inconsiderable swath of white once-working class whose concerns have been largely ignored by successive governments ever since their industrial heartlands were dismantled and their communities left to fester
One doesn’t have to empathise, sympathise or agree with this current response to that resentment; but one must surely realise that it needs addressing and that just rationalising it away as far-right thuggery solves nothing
Maybe Sunderland are missing the huge EU grants that they used to get ( I thought Brexit was supposed to be the solution to the immigration problem but has, in fact contributed to the economic state of the country that’s fuelling a lot of this but that’s the elephant in the room and can’t be mentioned).They then voted for Boris Johnson believing in his levelling up lie. They now have a Labour government that wants to help them but it’s going to take a long time and trashing city centres isn’t going to help. What did Farage say when he was elected? Labour, we’re coming to get you? It was assumed that it was in a political vote winning way but imo Reform will do anything they can to prevent Labour from sorting out this countries problems. I don’t care what social problems these mindless thugs are facing it still doesn’t excuse them for injuring police, their vehicles and their dogs. Champagne socialists like me and my family knew we were going to take a financial hit by campaigning for and getting a Labour government but we did so to help people in those forgotten communities. As for those thugs that were wearing t shirts with pictures of the three murdered little girls; words fail me. It takes me back to an EDL march in Berwick years ago; I asked a policeman what was happening and he said EDL march, but they’re twenty years too late. I still haven’t got over the shock of his comment and wish I’d had the courage to confront him with it. I’m just in despair at the moment. I just hope at my advanced age I live long enough to see this country turn itself round. After the election I thought I could just sit back and ignore politics for a while but, alas there’s still a lot to do. Thankfully we have a wonderful young enthusiastic Labour MP that we can work with although I worry about how approachable she is.
I didn’t suggest the problem was far right thuggery Drone, I suggested that
the far right would use the oppertuity to use it to their advantage ” it
becomes a game for kids to play under incitement by far right groups.” The
far right are only lighting the touch paper where they can. As you surmise
there are more elements here than the far right, but they will work out
how they can incite further unrest where they can.Farage is doing nothing to diffuse this volatile situation. Imo MP’s should not have a platform to spout their views on tv news channels. I hope the government do something about it.
Let’s just hope that these disruptive, and indeed destructive, protesters feel the same Draconian force of the law that the disruptive, but not destructive, Just Stop Oil protesters did.
The prisons are full (allegedly) and Starmer’s government from (almost) day one said there would be a large, early release of prisoners from overcrowded prisons.
I just wonder whether the ‘natives’ cottoned on to this and thought, “well we likely wont get jailed for a ‘bit’ of destruction and/or violence”.‘Last time Rory Stewart spoke to Inside Time, it was 2018 and he was Prisons Minister in Theresa May’s Conservative government. When I caught up with him recently, he was so outspoken that it is hard to believe he was ever inside the corridors of power. He is damning about both the state of our prisons, and the state of our politics – and he proposes radical solutions which go far beyond the policies he introduced while in office.
Our interview takes place at Church House in Westminster, where Stewart is about to deliver the annual Longford Lecture about the rehabilitation of prisoners. He declares in his speech that UK jails are “the most shameful part of our society” and that during his political career he never saw “anything that was as viscerally upsetting as the conditions within our prisons.”
Two problems of prisons in the post-Covid era are well known to prisoners and to prison inspectors, whose recent reports tell the same story time and again. Firstly, inhumane conditions as more and more prisoners are doubled-up in cells built for one, due to a capacity crisis fuelled by ever-lengthening sentences. Secondly, prisoners locked in their cells for up to 23 hours a day, due to a shortage of staff or a lack of will to get them into work or education.
Stewart offers a clear solution to both these problems. “I think it should be illegal to crowd people into prisons,” he tells me. “If you make it illegal, you could change a lot of things very quickly. The governor would have every right to refuse to take in more people, then that turns the problem around onto the government and the Treasury. They would either have to build more prisons, which would be very expensive, or they would have to reduce prison sentences – but they wouldn’t have the option of crowding two or three people in a cell.”
Legislation is also his solution to the problem of unemployed prisoners spending all day locked up. “I’d like legally-binding minimum standards on amount of time out of cell,” he says. How much time per day would the law require? “I suppose it could be 10 or 11 hours.” This would certainly transform regimes, although it would doubtless be resisted by the Prison Officers’ Association unless it came with a large injection of funds for extra staffing.
In October, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk announced the Government’s solutions to the capacity crisis. There were measures to reduce the prison population, including a presumption that sentences of less than 12 months should be suspended (which the Ministry of Justice estimates will free up a maximum of 1,000 cells), and an attempt to move UK prisoners to rented cells in foreign jails (which, if it works, would also create up to 1,000 extra places in UK jails.) But at the same time, Chalk announced that people convicted of rape or other serious sexual offences must spend their entire sentence behind bars, rather than half or two-thirds as they would now. The MoJ says this will add 3,000 to the prison population, cancelling out many of the other initiatives.
Stewart disapproves. “I don’t think that is sensible,” he tells me. “I think that doubling sentence length, which is effectively what you’re doing, is very dangerous because it’s length of sentence, more than numbers, which drives crowding in prisons. I disagree.”
I think that doubling sentence length, which is effectively what you’re doing, is very dangerous because it’s length of sentence, more than numbers, which drives crowding in prisons.
What does Stewart make of the fact that not a single MP on the Government or Opposition benches has spoken out against this policy on rape sentences which, if put into effect, will have a far-reaching impact on prisoner numbers for decades to come?“It tells you that our politics is increasingly virtual,” says Stewart. “It is detached from the reality of what happens in prisons. It is directed towards the party, towards the media, towards loyalty to your leader, but it has very little to do with thinking about what’s actually happening on the ground.”
I have inadvertently drawn the ex-minister into his favourite theme: the dismal state of politics. Stewart, 50, has enjoyed a colourful career both before and after his stint as a minister. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he entered the diplomatic service and governed a province of Iraq following the 2003 Gulf War. He has also completed a two-year, 6,000-mile walking trip through rural districts of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Nepal.
He became a Conservative MP in 2010 and was tipped as a future party leader. After serving as Prisons Minister from 2018 to 2019 he was promoted to the Cabinet, but quit the Party and left Parliament that same year after Boris Johnson became the Tory leader. He now presents a popular podcast called The Rest is Politics, co-hosted with former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell.
As Prisons Minister, Stewart’s most eye-catching move was a promise that he would resign if he didn’t manage to reduce levels of violence at 10 selected prisons within a year. The “10 prisons project” showed signs of success, although he had already left the job by the time the year was up, so his pledge was never put to the test. He tells me that if he was launching such an initiative today, he would set targets to increase time out of cell as well as reduce assaults.
Prisons should offer decent conditions but also set clear expectations on behaviour, Stewart says. Rules should be enforced consistently, or else scrapped if they are unnecessary. He gives an example of dress codes on wings: “If it says ‘No Flip-Flops on the Landing’ – I don’t know why it says that, but if it says it, then don’t wear flip-flops on the landing. Or take down the poster.”
Other reforms Stewart would like to see include giving prisoners the vote, and allowing better access to jails, both to journalists and to classes of schoolchildren, who he thinks should be given tours and shown the insides of cells. He would like the public and their elected representatives to know and care more about prisons and prisoners. He despairs that MP on all sides display “a pretty ferocious focus on victims of crime, and demands for ever-longer sentences and ever more punishment. It’s very detached from the reality on the landing.”
I ask Stewart if he has a final message for Inside Time readers. “Prisoners should be able to expect basic minimum standards,” he tells me. “They should be able to expect that their cells are clean, that they have what they’re entitled to. They should expect to be safe, that violence by other prisoners should be challenged quickly, that there should be clear expectations and rules that everybody understands. That clean, safe, well-run prison should then give you the opportunity, if you’re able to and want to, to turn your life around’
This is what Rory Stewart said about the state of our prisons. In the years since he was prisons minister the government did nothing to improve them or sort out the problems they knew about. So what is it that Yvette Cooper said that was untrue? And is it not the fault of 14 years of Conservative underfunding that has caused this problem? 4 weeks of Labour being in power and for some reason they are being blamed for everything.I didn’t suggest the problem was far right thuggery Drone, I suggested that
the far right would use the oppertuity to use it to their advantageI wasn’t suggesting you were BigG; my post was an addition to yours, not a response
Agreed, it’s the ‘organised’ far right who are inciting the disaffected, resentful and aggrieved, who are largely – and unfortunately – those of limited intellect prone to being impressionable and easily led. They’re not the far-right – as the media would have us believe – they’re the poor neglected saps with a past but no future from the dismal sink estates too easily indoctrinated by the evil rhetoric of the genuine (and intelligent) far right, who can easily recognise a demographic ripe for exploitation. The instigators smile and laugh from afar, safe while the mob they’ve incited do their dirty work and pay the price
I’m with you now Drone, thanks for making it clear to me and I’m
very much in agreemwnt with regards to your thoughts on the matter.
Thanks for that.
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