Robert Poste's Child

An aspect of the case I wasn't aware of before is that there were only ten minutes between the first guy arriving at the hotel with the girl and Evans arriving - he was in a taxi on the way to a police station to give a statement in support of another friend who had been caught up in a fight and as soon as he got his friend's text he diverted the taxi to the hotel. As I said before, it does all seem shockingly predatory.

Well fielded, steveo...

While I'm used to travelling alone, not least for work, I've been thinking it might be fun to find someone to do a bit of leisure travel with. I wondered if anyone has had a good experience of doing this that they wouldn't mind sharing? I tried Companions2Travel a couple of years ago but was put off by married men whose wives didn't understand them... I looked again recently and it only has 70 or so members so perhaps it has had its day anyway. I'm not looking to travel with a group a la Exodus, Explore etc - they're great, but what I have in mind is doing interesting things with a like-minded person. Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions.

An American commentator has described Birmingham on TV as 'Muslim-only' and said there's a Muslim police in London who beat people up if they're not dressed correctly. Quite funny really. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30773297

Amazon has some.

LadyN, I was replying to a post from LadyD. You may need to start higher up!

Did you not read either of my posts? I repeat, the perpetrator remains 100% responsible for their crime under the law - it shouldn't undermine that. At the same time I personally would prefer to empower teenagers of both sexes to make choices that protect themselves. And before you generalize this into something I haven't said, I repeat that I'm talking about coverage of this particular situation.

No, LadyD - see my post where I said the perpetrator should remain 100% responsible for his own actions. To use an analogy, if I forget to lock the front door and someone walks in and helps themselves to my purse, that's still burglary. It's more that as a society we seem unable to discuss sexual crimes without flipping into traditional sterotypes. I suppose what I'm getting at is that the debate seems to polarise views of the woman's part - and to be clear I'm only referring to this situation - into either helpless infantilised victim or, at the other extreme, tart who was asking for it. She was only 19 after all and I know I did things at that age (and later) which got me into difficult situations that I later regretted. I'm probably not explaining very well, but it's that aspect I would want to explore with teenagers so no one can take advantage of them in a similar way.

Have to confess an area of this I struggle with is contributory negligence. I believe it's not a permissible argument under Scottish law but I don't know about England and Wales. I don't see how we can talk honestly about rape without looking at that. Why can't we hold a perpetrator 100% responsible for their own actions (rape) while also looking at how the situation came about (drunk, separated from friends, going off with a stranger)? If I had teenage kids, that's what I'd be doing now.

Yes - I assume the increase in men reporting rape may be mainly men on men - in prison, for example.

Isn't this one of the reasons why so few rapes lead to a conviction still? It's not just one person's word against another: at the less violent end of the scale it can be a stand-off between their recollections of what happened when drunk, filtered through a subsequently sober brain and their non-drunk beliefs. Men can be victims as well as perpetrators. Last time I saw stats, reported rapes in England and Wales, victims were something like 85k women and 12k men.

Do you have a scenario in mind, Otta?

Was it? I thought she was English, but it was probably printed in both languages. This is a headily intellectual conversation for someone who's still on the first cup of tea of the day.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Your grandad was Volitaire RPC? I did say quoted... He was good at quotes, as at many other things. I believe it was actually Voltaire's biographer, but hey ho.

That's ridiculous. Free schools still have to comply with the usual standards, they're inspected by Ofsted, their kids have to take the same public exams and they're subject to the prevailing laws of the country. And don't you think the parents might notice?

Blah Blah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Parkdrive Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > It's a very complex one though isn't it, > because > > muslims kill each other all the time > > > > And non muslims have been slaughtering each > other > > for decades, Northern Ireland for example, > stupid > > crass remark. > > It's not a stupid remark. My point was that the > media likes to portray fundamentalism as a battle > between the Islamic world and the West. I was > simply pointing out this is not the case, that > fundamentalism is as much a nuisance to the > Islamic world and other muslims as it is to the > west. True. In Nigeria Boko Haram is mainly killing other Muslims - without wishing in any way to diminish what happened in France this week, at the same time Boko Haram killed hundreds. Today they killed something like 17 people using a 10-year-old girl as a suicide bomber, and that has nothing to do with finding cartoons offensive.

alice Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > that 'freedom of speech' is a good is fake. > > it would mean the paedophile, the racist, the > sexist could write the textbooks for schools. How? People can and do write what they want and, as long as it's within the law and they can get a publishing deal, it may even be read, but textbooks are largely commissioned by academic publishers to support the syllabus approved by the relevant government department or written by existing experts in their teaching fields. No school is going to adopt a random book as a textbook.

It's an intrinsic part of the freedom of speech which attracted people of many different faiths to this and other Western countries. When I was a child my grandfather often used to quote to us, 'I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.' It's that, really.

Well put, leagalbeagle. Twelve years ago, in the aftermath of 9/11, I had an American colleague who kept going on about religious fundamentalists. Eventually I asked if that included the one in the White House at the time.

Exactly. Think we're making the same point - I was picking up on the OP's terms.

Let's face it, if we educate everyone to understand that someone who's drunk cannot give consent to sex, that's the end of this country as very few English people would manage to get a relationship off the ground sober.

After the last week I really hope that a liberal press or mind would choose its words very carefully. 'Teach' would be the language of the right wing, surely. To many people it would imply a hierarchy of power, even of ownership of 'the truth', that Muslims are 'wrong' if they are offended (presumably you did mean only those who are offended, not all Muslims - there are liberals in all faiths). Goodness knows what the answer is. Personally I would like to see a lot more leaders of all religions actively preaching the similarities between faiths as most have similar ideas about how to live a good life.

I think the subject line of this thread alone would be enough to offend many people, not just Muslims.

Missmack1981, I've adjusted my earlier post; hope that's now ok, though just realised it probably means you'll now want to adjust yours too! Sorry.

Husband would be my guess. It's Saturday afternoon after all. (Eek, crossed with the OP - caught red-handed! Was replying to the one before that.)