margieriley

Lived in NE, now live in Lancs. Rejoin 🇪🇺 Retired languages teacher & privileged teacher of children with SEND. Labour. Hospital Radio.

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@Th_Angelopoulos Thanks very much for this.

[Thanos Angelopoulos @Th_Angelopoulos]

1/ @Nigel_Farage, @RupertLowe10, @elonmusk , @Conservatives , @GBNews, the tabloids, and the rest of the reactionary establishment are conditioning our attention in focusing on one narrow slice of child sexual exploitation. The grooming gang. The Asian man. The Pakistani man. The Muslim.

That slice is real. It belongs in the picture. But it is a slice, and while the country stares at it, the rest of the picture, where most children are actually being abused, goes unwatched.

This thread is an attempt to put our attention back where the evidence says it belongs. Not to look away from the grooming gangs, but to stop looking only at them.

Every year an estimated 500,000 children in England and Wales experience some form of sexual abuse or exploitation. The figure comes from the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, drawing on NSPCC prevalence research.

The National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection's national analysis of police-recorded child sexual abuse and exploitation in 2024, published in December 2025, found 82% of suspects were male. Male perpetration is the constant that runs through the data, across every setting in the record below.

The settings dominating the headlines are not where most recorded child sexual abuse takes place. Familial abuse is the largest single recorded category. About half of all recorded offences had a perpetrator who was themselves a child. Around 42% had an online element. These figures describe different dimensions of the same data. They overlap, and are not meant to add up.

Group-based offending, the broad category that includes the Rotherham, Telford, Rochdale and Oxford networks, accounts for 3.6% of all recorded child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Inside that 3.6%, Baroness Casey's 2025 audit for the Home Office found clear over-representation of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men among suspects in the three police force areas she examined: Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. That over-representation is real and matters. Casey also found ethnicity was not recorded for two-thirds of group-based exploitation suspects nationally. Describing the state of the data in interviews when the audit was published, she said that in one child's case file she examined in Rotherham, someone had Tippexed out the word "Pakistani".

Pakistani-heritage people are the largest single ethnic group among Muslims in England and Wales, but a minority of the total Muslim population recorded in the 2021 Census. When commentary collapses "Pakistani-heritage" into "Muslim", it attributes to millions of people what the evidence connects to a fraction of one community in a few police force areas. Muslim Women's Network UK published Unheard Voices in September 2013, documenting the sexual exploitation of Asian girls a year before Jay reported on Rotherham.

The remaining 96.4% of recorded child sexual abuse, everything outside group-based offending, in the family, the care system, the school, the online platform, is where the bulk of abuse against British children takes place. It is where the political attention is not. Prevention has to be built on the variable that runs through the data, not around it.

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@cmcayley @TyneSnapper Simplicity in all its glory.

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@gardnerstuart39 👍😁 A local primary school answered the phone saying This is the Head of John the Baptist.

[Kevin Yuill @historykev]

I don't normally do personal posts but one of the reasons why I remain opposed to the #assistedsuicide bill is its determination to provide it for those with #Downsyndrome. Section 19 even provides for a proxy for those who cannot read.

My uncle Kenny, who competed at the National Special Olympics in Canada in 1994, was my first friend. Though he had Down Syndrome he could read (I remember when I was very young he would read me comics), memorised Hamlet's soliliquoy and told many jokes. He was a wonderful, warm, gentle character. But he was also very suggestible and needed guidance about many aspects of life.

I would not have wanted him to decide to kill himself with no input from family and those who cared for him, as this bill will provide for in those in a similar situation to Kenny. The fact that many people with learning disabilities were given DNR notices indicates that eugenic reasoning lives on. That this bill - and its EQIA- is careful to include those with Down syndrome indicates its eugenic nature.

It must be defeated.

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@historykev I have taught many young people with Down Syndrome and the thought that they might ever be persuaded to end their lives is absolutely horrifying. As horrifying as allowing abortion up to birth for babies with Down Syndrome. What have we become?

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@lakesrhino Utterly lush!

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@TomSoede @CockertonMark 😂👏👏👏

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@yorkshire_dales @katewilloughby8 Gorgeous!

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@TomSoede @calculus52 Perfect sense.

[Thomas | Less Noise, More Delivery @TomSoede]

⏯️ THE DAILY DEEP DIVE

If Andy Burnham wins Makerfield, what happens next?

He is campaigning to defeat Reform. Yet almost every conversation about Makerfield seems to end with the same question:

How quickly will he move against Keir Starmer?

That tells us this is no ordinary by-election.

If Burnham wins on Thursday, Labour will have defeated Reform in one of the most politically important constituencies in Britain.

That should be celebrated.

It would show that Reform can be beaten.

It would show that voters in northern working-class communities have not abandoned Labour forever.

It would show that a campaign built around local credibility, public services, community and hope can still defeat the politics of anger.

But within minutes, the media will try to transform a Labour victory into a Labour civil war.

Every television interview will become:

“Andy, when will you challenge Keir Starmer?”

Every Labour MP will be asked:

“Are you with Starmer or Burnham?”

Every government announcement will be judged not on whether it helps the country, but on whether it strengthens one Labour faction against another.

And Nigel Farage will be delighted.

Because Reform could lose the election and still benefit from the aftermath.

Labour would have done the difficult work of defeating Reform, only to spend the following weeks attacking itself.

That would be a serious mistake.

Burnham winning Makerfield would not automatically make him Labour leader.

It would not automatically make him Prime Minister.

And it would certainly not solve every problem facing the government.

To challenge Keir Starmer, Burnham would first need substantial support from Labour MPs.

Then he would need to win a leadership contest.

Then, even if he became Prime Minister, he would inherit exactly the same difficult country.

And Reform would be waiting outside every difficult decision with a microphone and a flag.

Burnham may communicate differently.

He may connect more naturally with some northern and working-class voters.

He may favour greater public investment, stronger regional government and a more interventionist economic programme.

But warmth is not a fiscal policy.

Popularity does not remove the national debt.

A new leader does not make the difficult choices disappear.

The danger is that Labour starts treating a change of personality as a substitute for the long, difficult work of repairing Britain.

Keir Starmer inherited an enormous mess.

He has tried to restore seriousness, stability and discipline after years of Conservative chaos.

That work should not be casually discarded because the political weather has become difficult.

At the same time, Burnham’s possible victory should teach the Labour leadership something important.

People do not only need competent government.

They need to feel that government sees them.

They need language that connects policy to their lives.

They need hope as well as spreadsheets.

They need to hear Labour speak about their streets, their families, their wages, their safety and their communities in a way that feels human.

My prediction is that Burnham will become the unofficial alternative Prime Minister from the moment he enters Parliament.

The pressure on Starmer will become enormous.

And I will say something uncomfortable.

If Labour MPs abandon a sitting Labour Prime Minister simply because they are frightened about their own seats, they do not deserve to govern.

Government cannot become a permanent exercise in personal survival.

They were elected to serve the country, support the programme Labour put before voters, and help repair the damage left by fourteen years of Conservative rule.

If they place their careers above the party, the government and the country, they are not showing leadership.

They are showing that, when politics became difficult, their first instinct was to save themselves.

But Labour should take a breath.

The first lesson of a Burnham victory should not be:

“Let us remove another Prime Minister.”

It should be:

“Labour has just shown that Reform can be defeated.”

Keir Starmer offers seriousness, discipline and national leadership.

Andy Burnham offers emotional connection, local credibility and a powerful northern voice.

The intelligent answer should be to combine those strengths.

Not immediately force them into a political knife fight for the entertainment of Westminster.

Because Labour’s real opponent is not another Labour politician.

If Burnham uses a Labour victory as the starting gun for a personal leadership campaign, he risks damaging the very government he claims he wants to save.

A prolonged civil war could destroy Labour’s authority, paralyse the government and bring an early general election increasingly close.

That is exactly what Reform is waiting for.

Labour would be running Reform’s media campaign for free.

A Burnham victory should strengthen Labour.

It should not become the opening scene of Labour destroying itself.

Defeat Reform first.

Govern seriously.

Repair Britain.

Then let Labour’s future be decided calmly, democratically and in the interests of the country—not according to the demands of the Westminster outrage machine.

#LessNoiseMoreDelivery
#LessNoiseMoreDelivery

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@GordonFielden @Hepworthclare Has AB ever mentioned the positive things done so far by the government?

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@TomSoede This happens every time, unfortunately. You just have to keep going. You have plenty of supporters who are grateful for your comments. You never know, it might just change someone’s mind. Live in hope!

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

83% of British people are white

87% of MPs are white

92% of Police officers are white

94% of the House of Lords are white

85% of Britains richest families are white

The notion that Britain experiences systemic anti-white racism is absurd

It’s a far-right conspiracy

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@TomSoede @GeorgeFoulkes 🤞

[CrémantCommunarde #NION💙🤍🩷 @0Calamity]

10th June 1944.
The Occupation Forces in France were in a state of panic after the Normandy Landings. Groups of maquisards and resistants all over the country were rising up against the Nazi occupiers.
The 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" was deployed towards the South West to try and quell the resistant uprising. They punished the French resistance with blood-curdling horror, as they had done for 4 years.
On 8th June, the town of Tulle had been liberated by the FFI. On 9th June the Nazis entered Tulle and hanged 99 resistants.
10th June 1944.
The Nazis of the Das Reich division entered the quiet village of Oradour-Sur-Glane.
All the inhabitants were rounded up on the fairground field in the middle of the village, then separated into two groups - women and children on one side, men on the other.
The men were taken to half-a-dozen different enclosed spaces and machine-gunned. The bodies were covered in straw and set alight (some were reported not to have been dead at the time this happened and were burned alive).
The women and children were herded into the church. A kind of asphyxiating gas device was set up, but it exploded, and set the church on fire. As a thick, suffocating smoke and abject panic ensued, the Nazis started firing shots willy-nilly, then piling straw and pews on top of the half-dead bodies. They burned them all.
One woman, Marguerite Rouffanche, escaped, and was able to recount the horror in the days to come.
The village has been kept pretty much as it was found the following day. Burnt out buildings, burnt out cars, a window with a burnt sewing machine inside it, the church, with the burnt out frame of a child's pram.
I visited in the 80s when I lived in France. I couldn't sleep for nights afterwards.
10th June 2026:
I make this declaration:
if you pathetic little proto-Nazis think I am going to allow ANY of you to do anything like that in my country, you have got another think coming.
There are many, many more of us than you. And we will resist your racism, your bigotry and your hatred tooth and nail.
Fascism will not win. You will lose. And you will die in prison, forever regretting following the siren call of the billionaires who want to destroy the fabric of the UK so they can asset-strip it one last time for their corporate sponsors.
Hate. Will. Not. Win.

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@RichardGCorbett @HughEdw31897368 It’s inexplicable!

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@davidm_allan Absolutely stunning, David!

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@SeeTyneandWear What a very lucky time to be there!

[margieriley @margieriley17]

@SeeTyneandWear That’s a good ‘un! Stunning colours.