Declaration of Human Rights:

Are we in violation?
Everyone has Right to Free Speech!

by John Wilkins

MANY of us in this country believe passionately in freedom of expression within the law.  Is this the situation today?  I would argue no.

If we truly had such a freedom why is it often difficult getting your views listened to and getting them published even more so. 
 
In the case of the local media there is a diminishing ability to express your views particularly if they are challenging to those in power in our Town Halls.  Letters columns in my local papers are almost non-existent and the local on-line paper is becoming more cautious in its reporting.  Many feel that its reliance on advertising revenue from our local council could be a reason.

However it is also on the national stage that there is an in-balance in reporting important issues, largely because the print media is 80% dominated by papers with what appears a right wing bias. Many fear the BBC treads cautiously at times so has to not upset the powers in Westminster.

You may disagree with me but I will give one example which concerns the vendetta, not too strong an expression in my view, against Jeremy Corbyn.  On the phone to a friend he mentioned a newspaper he had just seen which contained no less than 13 articles detrimental to Corbyn, plus 3 attacking the Labour Party.  I write not as a member of Labour nor any other but I would like to see more balanced reporting, surely there are more issues to be discussed than attacks on one politician, like him or loath him?

A friend has tried to create a newspaper with more left wing views to counter some of the bias in our press and that includes holding our local Labour run Council to account as well as the Conservative Government.  Sadly his criticism of the local Labour leader of Council incurred the wrath of a the then chair of his CLP.  This escalated into criticism of a front page of my friends newspaper which was construed as anti-Semitic and the flames were fanned by right wing blogger,  Guido Fawkes.  As a result fury from the Board of Deputies gave ammunition for Labour to suspend him.  This was overturned on appeal but other contributors were targetted for abuse on social media, including a MEP, some were threats of violence and warnings that MOSSAD knew who they were.
Fast forward several months and a meeting was organised to discuss creating more media outlets expressing left wing views.  Here is where the UN declaration of Human Rights would appear to have been violated by sections of the Jewish community.

Article 19. 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.'

Article 20. (1) 'Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.'
Over a dozen venues were approached and all bowed down to pressure not to allow the meeting on their premises.  The meeting did happen despite this this opposition.  The venue was kept secret until the last minute but a bogus venue was picketed by protesters.  One lone photographer from the Jewish Chronicle did appear but as the turn out was low and the meeting late starting he was fobbed off by being told that the meeting was probably not going to take place.
It did, albeit with a small audience, but including many who had travelled from as far as Devon, London and N. Wales.  Some had no particular political allegiance. Indeed a friend of mine persuaded his politically disinterested wife to attend and she is now a passionate supporter of Jeremy Corbyn!
Whatever your political views I hope you share with me the concerns I have raised and the report published only last year by Reporters without Borders, which campaigns for journalistic freedom.  They placed the UK 40 th. out of 180 countries on its World Press Freedom Index. Some of the countries ranked above us include 'Uruguay, Samoa and Chile for restrictions on reporters seeking to hold power to account'. (The Guardian Wed. 25 April 2018)
As we approach the 200 year anniversary of Peterloo, which captured the imagination of the national press and led indirectly to creation of the then Manchester Guardian a few decades later I wonder if we have come as far as we should in terms of freedom of expression.
Listen to the words expressed about freedom of expression centuries ago:
"The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech."  Voltaire.

“I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It”.

(Attributed to Voltaire, but whilst he expressed such sentiments it was first published by English writer/ historian, Evelyn Beatrice Hall without quotation marks in her book about Voltaire and is now claimed to be her words.)
People in the UK have the right to free speech including Boris Johnson, Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage as well as those on the Labour left even if they are sometimes careless in their choice of words.  One exception is that if those words can be construed as incitement to violence.  One thing I have noted is the violent rhetoric of the far left and the far right and the pro Israel lobby.  Even the calm, reasoned words of outgoing leader of the Lib Dems, Vince Cable were lambasted cruelly by the far left for daring to claim Manchester could be doing more to eradicate rough sleeping in Manchester.  Yet one Labour councillor's solution had been to arrest and fine those he termed aggressive beggars!
Please, those of you who believe in democracy and freedom of expression speak out when those values are threatened, but do so in a calm reasoned manner.
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Politics of prediction: The EU & Brexit

 by Brian Bamford

TONY GREENSTEIN on his Blog last Saturday asked  'The Real Question is Why has Corbyn not Benefited from the Tory Crisis?  Commenting on the poll predictions for EU elections the writes:  

'The victors are, it is predicted the Brexit Party.  The second party is forecast to be the Liberal Democrats. Labour is forecast to be in third place. These are, of course predictions but if they are correct then a number of things need to be spelt out.'

He naturally issued his warning about these results being based on predictions, but now we know that the forcasts were largely spot on in terms of outcomes.  And as I write this, based on these outcomes people like both Nigel Farage and even Joanne Swinson of the Liberal Democrats, have made further predictions which are becoming more like what Karl Popper has called 'unconditional historical prophecies'.*

Tony Greenstein is clearly what is called a 'Remainer'  and on his Blogg he argues:
'Brexit, the desire to withdraw from Europe is not an anti-capitalist project.  People didn’t vote leave because they desired an independent socialist Britain. The primary force behind leave was the Right and far-Right. Euro scepticism of one variety or another is a Europe wide phenomenon.'

Mr. Greenstein warns that 'Corbyn has prevaricated and dodged for far too long' and he suggests on his Blogg is influenced by the old left-wing idea of the  'British Road to Socialism', or as he suggests is rooted in the concept that Tony Benn used to claim when he says Benn had said that 'the Common Market took away British sovereignty, as if workers and the poor had ever had control over their lives'.

I don't believe we can make unconditional historical prophecies about BREXIT or what will follow a 'No Deal Brexit'.  That kind of historism falls into the trap of vulgar Marxism.  Yet I believe we can make negative predictions like for example as when George Orwell suggested that the consequences of the 'Treaty of Versailles' would be bad but we couldn't predict that it would lead to the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler.  I would suggest that while I can't predict in detail what will happen with Brexit but I do believe that it will be bad for most of us.

* Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper (1963)

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Where Do You Stand?

by Les May

TWO cuttings caught my eye yesterday.

From the ‘i’:

‘Nigel Farage’s fans have been heckled with chants of “Nazi scum” while attending an event during his tour of Australia and New Zealand. In Perth the United Against Bigotry and Racism group held a demonstration. They shouted “Nazi scum off our streets” at those who attended one of Mr Farage’s events, according to The Guardian.’

From ‘BWL’:

‘In the coastal town of Warmington a group of bikers carrying crash helmets and dark visors heckled a group of demonstrators demanding the dismissal of bank manager Frank Pyke with chants of “Ban the Burka”. Last week Mr Pyke refused to allow a woman in an all enveloping garment cash a cheque.’

So what are your feelings about the behaviour of the hecklers described in these two cuttings?

Do you object to the first but not the second?

Do you object to the second but not the first?

Do you object to both?

Do you object to neither?

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'Populism', Imagined Communities & Nations

by Brian Bamford

ROUTINE elections in European countries in 2016 have ushered in a mercurial quality to the political landscape.  Jon Bigger in a thoughtful article on the Freedom Blog about the recent by-election in Richmond wrote:   

'The recent Richmond by-election victory for the Lib Dems shows that the Brexit split can make a very real difference to British politics.  It isn't inconceivable to see the British public split along the lines of the referendum for years to come, with the conservatives and UKIP on one side and the Lib Dems, Greens, and SNP on the other.' 

Mr. Bigger then writes: 

'Note that as things stand there isn't any real role for the Labour Party in this scenario.' 

On the 'libertarian communist' website libcom, commenting on Brexit, someone wrote in what appeared to be an editorial: 

'In the UK context it was clearly a vote against foreign “others” and anybody who can be labeled as such...  Nigel Farage (former leader of UKIP and important leader of the Leave campaign) said on more than one occasion that he would be able to sacrifice economic growth to see less immigrants.'

This seems to have been the case and François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said:

' In Britain, one of the campaign slogans for Brexit was “Vote Leave, Take Control”.' and the idea seemed to be that being in 'the EU was preventing Britain from doing that.'

The feeling is that the motivation driving many voters in Britain, the USA and now in Italy's referendum over a week ago, is to impress upon the politicians that the status quo and the establishment elites are now unacceptable. 

The Italian electorate threw out a constitutional overhaul that would have increased the power of the prime minister by cutting the number of senators and decreasing their power.  This wouldn't have mattered so much, but for the fact that it gave a political opportunity to the Five Star movement to gain political prestige by opposing it. 

What makes things worse is the lasting consequences of the global recession in 2008 in both Europe and the USA, and the underlying frustration of the pain still being suffered in many European countries. 

In France, economic growth only reached 1% last year, and youth unemployment is still close to 25%.  In Italy, Spain and Greece it's higher. 

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, the director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Plan, said recently:  'The Rust Belt isn't just in America – there's a Rust Belt in the north of France, ... they feel they are dispossessed, dispossessed of their countries sovereignty and their economy.' 

Ms. Scheffer added:

'The way Washington is perceived by many American people is the way many French or Germans or Italians perceive Brussels... they perceive Brussels as almost an illegitimate entity.'

Jon Bigger in his Freedom essay prudently argues that the 'changing [political] landscape may be something we don't fully understand for years and I don't think anyone has got the definitive vision yet (and you shouldn't expect to see it here either).'

And, he suggests:  'Think for a moment about how this anti-Establishment feeling has manifested around the world since it started:  the Arab Spring, Occupy, Brexit, Bernie Saunders, Donald Trump, Momentum and Corbyn...  The response to a disaster within global capitalism hasn't been one of simply global revolution.  Instead people have responded in ways that reject a simple left / right ideological perspective.  When things settle at home and abroad there will be a new alignment, a new politics which which may well conform to a clearer ideological split.'

Geert Wilders, the leader of the right-wing Freedom Party in the Netherlands and regularly rated as the most popular politician, also has said:  'Right verses left doesn't exist anymore'. 

Clearly politicians who look to nationalism and promote worries about disenfranchisement are in vogue. 

The lib-communist website editorial is at pains to stress that they are against nationalism and claim they are 'indifferent towards any national question'.  They stress that 'for us, all nations (small or big) are fake communities.' *

The dogmatic thinking of the 'communists' on their website tract seem in a bit of a muddle between what is the 'state' and what is the 'nation'.  They even finish off with an exit platitude taken from the 1848 'Communist Manifesto' by by Marx and Engels: 

'The working men (sic) have no country.  We cannot take from them what they have not got...' 

Yet then it goes on 'the proletariat must ... constitute itself the nation... though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.' 

What are 'fake communities'? *  Are nations and nationalisms invented?

Or would we be better-off embracing Benedict Anderson and his now his famous study entitled 'Imagined Communities'?**

Put crudely what seems to have happen according Mr. Anderson, is that when peasant face-to-face communities declined from the 18th Century onwards people have felt a psychological need to replace the everyday communities of the village with the 'imagined community' of the nation state in which though people can't possibly know all of the members of the nation they come to feel an affinity with the other citizens through the national media and other cultural forms of identity. 

The 'libcoms' or 'communist libertarians' of small organizations like the so-called 'anarchist federation' are inclined to use a cookbook approach in such a way that their analysis almost writes itself.  Unlike Jon Bigger on the Freedom Blog who modestly admits the 'changing [political] landscape may be something we don't fully understand for years...', while the libcom gang for their part have the dreary dogma of a party-line don't even try to get to grips with the anthropological emergence of nationalism.***  It is so much easier to simply dismiss the whole phenomena of 'popularism' and resurgent nationalism with a grim guffaw and a quote from the 19th century Communist Manifesto to give their statement gravitas. 

 

*    Ernest Gellner has written:  'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist'

**  An imagined community is different from an actual community in that it is not—and, for practical reasons, cannot be—based on everyday face-to-face interaction among its members. It is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson to analyze nationalism. Anderson depicts a nation as a socially constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group.

Anderson's book, Imagined Communities, in which he explains the concept in depth, was first published in 1983, and reissued with additional chapters in 1991 and a further revised version in 2006.

***  Benedict Anderson has explained his now influential concept thus:

'In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation:  it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. 

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.'

Trump: Civilisation in the Salon & Locker Room

Escaping Derogatory References and Membership Characterisation Devices!

DONALD J. Trump described his words spoken over a decade ago about women as 'locker room banter'.  When Kenneth Clarke in his book and later TV program 'Civilisation' said about the historical rise of the French salon in the 18^th century, was that the nature of the saloon by a social mixing of the sexes, was that it had a moderating effect on the behaviour and conversation of the people involved in so far as the saloon restrained vulgarity, obnoxious and other uncouth conduct by both men and women.  I suppose the 20^th century tap-room in the average public house by separating the sexes and allowing the unrestrained free flow of talk, jokes, banter and gesticulations would have had the opposite effect.

Nigel Farage, according to the current Private Eye, has justified Donald Trump's remarks  about 'feeling-up' women as follows:  'It's the kind of thing, if we are being honest, that men do.  They sit around and have a drink  and they talk like this.'

Any collectivity of either sex be it a 'Hen Party' or 'Bachelor Do' or even an ordinary workplace on the shop-floor is likely to produce conversation and conduct which in another context would raise eyebrows.  In the same way that an academic community of scholars has its own 'interpretive community' and special forms of talk so the average shop-floor setting often has tribal language which would be distinct from from other social engagements with people.  In the foundry at Holcroft Castings & Forging in Rochdale, where I worked  as a maintenance electrician in the 1980s, the terms 'split-arses', and other derogatory expressions were often used to refer to women in general or more specifically in referring to lasses in the machine departments. 

In the Daily Mail, Quentin Letts writes:  'No one talks like that in the locker room of the gym I use.'

That's surprising, because when |I was about 12-years-of-age I had a job as a scorer for the Tweedales & Smalley factory second eleven cricket team, and it was there in the pavilion changing-room that I first began to encounter how grown working-class men talk in groups on occasions when women are not present.  Before that as an eldest child I also heard how women when they think they alone with their own sex talk together about men:  I often heard how my grandmother and mother in private discussed men judgementally, not with foul language of course, but with comments that judgementally loaded blame and curses on male members of the family.  In a way it sometimes amounted to objectifying men by stereo-typing them.

In this circumstances to pretend shock or surprise at what Donald Trump has had to say in the setting in which he was recorded, is a little over-the-top or even naieve. 

Whenever we talk about the meaning of words, rather than reaching for some lazy feminist or a tin-pot politically correct interpretation. perhaps we should consider what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say in his 'Philosophical Investigations': 

'Think of tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws.  -- The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.  (And in both cases there similarities.)'

The meaning of a word is in its use; just as the significance of a tool is in its use.  When I was an apprentice electrician in the late 1950s it was a common trick of leg-pulling tradesmen to send young apprentices to the stores to get a 'rubber hammer'.  The absurdity of the 'rubber hammer' is that it is unlikely to accomplish any utility of persuading anything it hit to move or do the job for which a hammer is normally intended.  Wittgenstein asks in 'Philosophical Investigations':

'Imagine someone's saying:  “All tools serve to modify something.  Thus the hammer modifies the position of the nail, the saw the shape of the board, and so on.”  And what is modified by the rule, the glue-pot, the nails?- “Our knowledge of a thing's length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity of the box.”-- Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions?--'

When a wheelwright at Holcroft Castings uses the term 'split arses' to refer to a women or all women, the words would modify our idea of women perhaps in the sense of the picture theory of language; just as a hammer hitting a nail will modify the position of the nail or a screw-driver may transform the position of a screw and if its a wood-screw it may also modify a piece of wood. 

Words are becoming ever more dangerous things use in a world of surveillance were privacy is in short supply, perhaps we should join Wittgenstein and resort to whistling or sign language.

I've no room to talk because besides doing journalism now I have, in the past, been involved in anthropological investigations and conversational analysis in which I used tape-recorders to surreptitiously record everyday talk by union officials, and others, for the purpose of research.  In a sense we are a bit hypocritical.

Labour's Problem?

Les May

LABOUR's present problems run much deeper than whether Labour's MPs see Jeremy Corbyn as having the qualities needed by a party leader and future prime minister.   But to understand why one has to probe a little deeper into Labour's past.

The 1945 Labour government transformed the lives of ordinary people beyond measure.  That the libertarian Left still object to it as 'statist' and the marxist Left think that it did not go far enough in imposing state control, does not detract from that achievement.  

But the Atlee Labour party enjoyed one luxury which, as Blair consistently demonstrated, has been absent in recent years.  Memories of the 1930s and the landslide in the 1945 election meant that Labour did not have to choose between power and principle.  It had both and used them to good effect.

In and after the Thatcher years 'selling' a principled Labour message to the electorate became more difficult, not least because of the concentration of the print media into a small number of hands.  Blair either wasn't up to the job of doing this or he consciously chose to abandon principle and go for power alone.

I was happy to see Corbyn elected as Labour leader.  I did not see him as a future prime minister, not least because he would be too old.  But I hoped that he would be able to hand on the mantle of a principled Labour message to a future leader.  My wish was that he would begin to inject a bit of principle into Labour's message to the electorate, that he would form a shadow cabinet from those who shared these views and above all that they would go out and make a real effort to 'sell' this message to the electorate.

The recent resignations have scuppered any hope I might have that this will happen.  Too many Labour MPs bought into the media myth that Corbyn was a part of the 'hard left' when in many respects he is about as far left as Hugh Gaitskell.  The worst of them rushed to criticise him in the Tory press and line their pockets at the same time.  Others briefed journalists anonymously.  

Whoever succeeds Corbyn will be faced with the same dilemma.  Do you go for a 'quick fix' and choose power over principle or do you get down to the difficult job of ''selling' a principled stance on politics to the electorate?  And then there's the question of disloyalty.  After years of briefing against Ed Milliband and Corbyn will these same MPs be able to resist.

Just how difficult this job is going to be can be seen from this extract from a Daily Mail article:

'If Labour goes into a general election as a divided party with an incoherent approach to immigration and a dithering hand wringing attitude to Brexit, then it could be annihilated in much of England.'

This reads like a job description designed for Nigel Farage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Gaitskell

Britons ask Google, what is the EU after poll result!

UKIP LEADER - NIGEL FARAGE

WELL! what an extraordinary situation we find ourselves in since the great British public voted to leave the EU on Friday. While that, public school, half-wit, Boris Johnson, was declaring that "markets were stable", the pound was falling, bank shares were plummeting, as well as company share values, and prices were beginning to rise. There is talk of another independence vote in Scotland and Sinn Fein, are now calling for a border poll on a united Ireland. And nobody seems quite sure when Britain will leave the EU or what leaving actually means.

The REMAIN camp didn't think that they would lose the referendum and the LEAVE camp didn't think they could win, so nobody seems to have thought about a post-Brexit exit strategy. Even Johnson, is now saying there's no need to rush to Brexit. They're all up shit creek without a paddle. As David Cameron, as announced that he will not be triggering Article 50, (the procedure for leaving the EU), he has handed a poison chalice to the next Tory leader, possibly Boris Johnson.

One person who will have worked out a Brexit strategy, is the Kremlin Tsar, Vladimir Putin, Nigel Farage's favourite politician. The Russians have been banging money into anti-EU parties like Marine Le Pen's, National Front for years. They want to wreck EU economies and Nato, so they'll be happy as pigs in shit by the Brexit vote.

As for Corbyn and Labour, many Labour voters were saying that they didn't know where Labour stood on the EU. Jeremy Corbyn, is a well-known Eurosceptic and he was merely paying lip service to the party's pro-Europe policy. By doing so, he's stabbed million of young kids in the back who initially supported him, when he stood for the leadership.

A total of 33,577,342 votes were cast in the EU referendum. Leave (52%) got 17,410,742 votes and Remain (48%) got 16,141,241 votes.
Tameside, a solid Labour area, saw 61.1% voting to leave the EU - 67,829 (Leave) and 42,034 (Remain).
In nearby Oldham, the leave vote was 61% - 65,309 (Leave) and 42,034 (Remain).

The Evening Standard on Friday 24 June reported:

"Eight hours after the poll closed, the internet giant Google reported that Britons have been frantically googling 'what is the EU?" in the hours since the results of the historic referendum were announced."

According to 'How Ages Voted' -YouGov Poll:
18-24 year olds were 75% Remain.
25-49 year olds were 56% Remain.
50-64 year olds were 44% Remain,
and 65+ were 39% Remain.

Internal Report Showed Up Ukip Danger

AN internal report written by Alison Spencer-Scragg, the Regional Political Officer for Unite the Union in the North West of England last October, argued that in last year's by-election in Heywood and Middleton  '(Ukip) managed to poll over 11,000 votes with very little activity on the ground.'  Ms. Spencer-Scragg wrote that:  'Apart from initial leafleting and flying visits from Nigel Farage, actual campaigning on behalf of UKIP activists was minimal.'


This finding suggests that the threat to the Labour Party from John Bickley, the UKIP candidate in Heywood and Middleton, may be significant tomorrow.  Some Labour supporters have even privately admitted to me that they wished that Mr. Bickley was standing for the Labour Party. 


After their close result in the by-election last year Alison Spencer-Scragg wrote:
'The 36-point increase in UKIP support is itself one of the biggest surges ever recorded in a by-election.  Only in six previous contests in Great Britain has a party enjoyed a larger increase in vote share than UKIP managed in Heywood and Middleton.'


It will be interesting to see how Mr. Bickley  and UKIP performs tomorrow in Heywood and Middleton, and whether he can close the gap on the current Labour MP for the constituency, Liz McInnes.  Ms. McInnes is a member of the Unite union.
 

Child Sexual Exploitation for 'Political Gain' or 'Personal Profit'?

Who is exploiting sexual grooming?

LAST Friday The Guardian reported that 'the father of the main prosecution witness in Britain's biggest child grooming scandal' had accused Nigel Farage of exploiting the issue for 'political gain' in his party's attempt to 'unseat Labour' in the Heywood and Middleton by-election.  In The Guardian piece the father was given the name 'Tom' to protect his daughter

Heywood in Greater Manchester was the centre of yet another Rochdale scandal in which a sexual trafficing gang of men of mostly Pakistani origin were found to have exploited at least 47 young white girls.  Mr. Farage in a leaflet distributed around the  constituency blamed the Labour Party for its 'love affair' with 'immigration, political correctness and multiculturalism' for betraying the 'white working-class girls'.

It is known that Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for the neighbouring constituency of Rochdale, has had contact with one of the fathers of one of the victims of the earlier sexual abuse grooming scandal which led to the prosecution of nine Asian men in 2012.  Mr. Danczuk has also claimed that a culture existed in Rochdale which allowed these activities to flourish.  Judging from the contents of his book 'Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith' that he and his fellow author Mat. Baker are pushing at the Rochdale Literature & Ideas Festival, he still believes in this narrative.

This book by Danzcuk shows that Mr. Danzcuk has some skills not only in the realm of Victorian melodrama, but in the ability to get other people to utter statements that fit his own narrative. 

The Guardian report states:  'Tom was moved to speak to the Guardian about Ukip’s tactics after receiving the leaflets through this door.'  [and] 'To heap blame on “political correctness” did not fully explain the many reasons why the abuse was allowed to continue, he said.'

'Tom' the father of the girl, concluded:  'Its a complex issue about the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and social services, all turning a blind eye.  It’s not all about political correctness, although it was a factor.'

The Guardian story notes:  'Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale who has campaigned for greater transparency around child sex abuse, has been drafted in to help.'

Mr. Danczuk declares:  'Ukip are a genuine threat and people across the party are working hard to fight them street by street...'

The problem here is that Simon Danczuk, with all the money he has made from the serialisation of his book by of all newspapers the Daily Mail, could also be accused of making hay out of exploiting child sexual grooming for both political gain and personal profit.  Certainly when I spoke to the former Labour MP for Heywood and Middleton, Jim Dobbin, some weeks before he died he told me that the whole thing 'had become a money making exercise', and he wasn't referring just to the book that had been published but to the serialisation in the Daily Mail by Danczuk and Baker.