How can the public be sure that girls in Rochdale are safe, even now?
Day of shame
WE are sick of hearing scripted reassurances that a scandal was long in the past.
Sick of the excuse that the guilty staff have all gone and there is nothing left to see.
Sick of inept bosses moving on with honours, unlike the brave whistleblowers who were ignored.
It’s a pattern familiar to anyone following the injustice at the Post Office.
Except today we are referring to the rape and trafficking of young girls in Rochdale and the repugnant failure of police and the council to end it.
The review into this scandal, supposedly from 2004 to 2013, makes chilling reading: Hundreds of mainly poor white girls abused and sold to other paedophiles by a grooming gang of Asian men.
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As with identical horrors all over Britain, victims were ignored or their claims distrusted.
Despite clear evidence, investigations were woeful and held back by political correctness.
But we are not buying that this is ancient history.
Nor do we trust Manchester police’s claim that “lessons have been well and truly learned”.
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Cops complacently declared this scandal at an end in 2012 when nine perverts were jailed.
But the review concludes that “only scraped the surface”.
It says 96 men are STILL a danger to children there — and implies there are many more.
Its author says: “Many abusers have not been apprehended.”
So why aren’t there scores more arrests today?
How can the public be sure, even now, that girls in Rochdale are safe?
We’re pumped
AT last a Pumpwatch scheme to stop drivers being ripped off looks an imminent reality.
We congratulate Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho.
It always made sense to force forecourts to compete harder and swiftly pass on any falls in the wholesale cost of fuel.
The new scheme would order them to feed their live prices into phone apps, so drivers needing to fill up can head for the cheapest.
A similar idea already saves Aussie drivers healthy sums.
But enough talking. Pumpwatch has been years in the making. Roll it out.
Bullying Beeb
A NATION enraged by Post Office cruelty should now ponder the BBC’s appalling mistreatment of vulnerable people.
About 130 a day are prosecuted for non-payment of the TV licence they cannot afford.
Despite living in poverty and with serious illnesses, some are fined up to £1,000 in secret courts.
The Government must not repeat the failure of politicians like Ed Davey to act over the Post Office accusations.
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It must stop organisations bringing prosecutions without involving the CPS.
Then it must rapidly decriminalise non-payment of the licence, before scrapping it once and for all.