Lidl Parking Policy

Here in the South Lidl have had a policy in place for a while where customers that use their car park get free parking if they buy something. They then scan the receipt on a machine and enter the registration number.

Anyone not buying something and getting a receipt cannot validate their parking and I expect get a fine.

Which is great if you turn up at Lidls for something and they have it on the shelf. But what if they don't have what you want in stock? You're forced to buy something and queue up for ages just to scan a 20p box of Paracetamols or something.

Bloody ludicrous.

Grooming Gangs: Lots More to Come.

Finally the names of the members of the Hudderfield Grooming gang (the one Tommy Robinson was sent to jail for reporting on), has been released due to the release of the reporting restrictions.

Ther have now been cases in Rochdale, Rotherham, Huddersfield, Oxford, Dewsbury, Newcastle, Bristol.... which on their own should be shocking and there should be an outcry in the media.

Back in 2013 the BBC reported there were 54 cases and 54 gangs being investigated. I have heard that the number of cases yet to be prosecuted is approximately 32. Whether that is the truth, I have no way of proving, which is the root of the problem. There is no way of knowing the truth of the matter.

The majority if not all of these subject to reporting restrictions, hence why there is no mention of the number of upcoming cases and an ability to show the scale of the problem.

This is where the media is failing: the reporting restrictions need to be lifted to show the scale of the problem so it can be honestly debated. The restrictions are currently lifted weeks after the cases have been tried and the defendants prosecuted, hence old news and only given passing notice in the media.

Had it been 54 tower blocks combusting, or 54 boats sinking in the Med, the media would be all over it and begging the government to lift the restrictions. But it seems the minorities are the media focus, the majority have second-class status, especially if they are working class.

UPDATE:

In this report in the Indenpendent, it state operation Stovewood (the National Criome Agency inverstigation into has 34 ongoing investigations involving 114 suspects. It is unclear in the report if this is Just in Riotherham or Nationwide. The report makes reference to locations in Rotherham, so it's possible that Stovewood just invetigates child explitation in Roltherham.

If so the number of defendants and cases beggars belief.

At the end of the article it references a number of other ongouing investigations and a gang in London the Independent itself exposed.

The conclusion is that this grooming culture is prevalent across teh country and there must be gangs in virtually every town an city in the country. The current restrictions on reporting must be lifted so the public can get a sense of the scale of the prolem, so they can make informed choices about the security of their own children. Who by the substance of these reports are at very serious risk.

On a related subject, this report on the BBC suggests that women and girls are subject to continuous harrassment when out in public. It would be nice for the report to go further and provide details on where and by whom these women are being harrassed, so women can make an informed choice about their safety. I wonder if there is a lack of detail on the perpetrators or the hotspots because that points to a certain ethnicity....

The War on Drugs...if There is Such a Thing.

I've never been involved in recereational drugs. Never taken them, never wanted to.

Howeveer, it strikes me that the supposed war on drugs is not being won by our lackadaisical Police force and lenient law courts.

It can't be when drugs are so freely available, which of course most people realise, but the Governmentfails to understand.

So it shouldn't shock me when outside the local Co-Op store last night I could hear a pretty fed up teenage girl shouting to a bunch of kids that could not be more than 11 that she could only afford a gram and that if they wanted it they would have to be quick as her source goes to bed at 9pm.

But still... to be shouting it so that anyone within 100 yards could hear her tends to suggest a blase attitude and a sense that it's okay.

IT'S NOT OK.

The war on drugs needs to heat up.