Well, has Victoria Derbyshire taken Ken Clarke’s scalp following this? I don’t recall such a tough approach from her with Labour Minister’s during the Golden Years but that said, since I find Clarke a C.I.N.O. I hope he does get sacked.
KEN COMMITS POLITICAL SUICIDE ON BBC?
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I laughed so hard I nearly paid my licence fee!
I can’t believe Kuddly Ken was dumb enough to walk into a 5L ambush like that, but I’d be delighted if it costs him his job.
ditto
Perhaps he’s just after the male Muslim vote?
But now 5live have gone into full-on “Save Ken” mode – it’s hilarious, listening to them tie themselves in moralistic knots.
It is indeed splendid stuff
Ken and Patten are probably the only “conservatives” the BBC actually likes and now they could very well have holed one beneath the water line!
Never mind – I’m sure a cosy euro-sinecure awaits Ken…
OK listened to Ken Clark on that link and I cannot for the life in me see where he has gone wrong. All I see is yet another attempt by the left in trying to bring about a vote of no confidence in this government so they can get back in and continue running the country down.
When the left stop pandering to the criiminal classes then they will be qualified and justifed in attacking Ken Clark.
Its groupthink – no one is allowed to have another opinion. Anyone who does not speak socialist is castegated. That is why mealey mouthed politicians backtrack to the socialist line whever the BBc gets upset. Clark did not have far to go though.
Five Lite mentioned Teresa May in touble, Clark in rape gaff and Cameron in dissaray over the NHS all in the same sentence. I think it was Norman Smith? Is he a member of the Labour Party or a BBC political correspondent? Yes I know the difference is negligable.
You must admit he was bloody USELESS in that interview and allowed the truculent Victoria Derbyshire to bully him without resistance. I do not remember any furore when in 2004 the Labour Government brought in 1/3rd reduction in sentencing for rapists if the admitted it early.
Do Judges consider all rapes to be of equal severity and hand out identical sentences regardless of the rapist’s actions ? Of course they don’t. This a combination of PC gone mad and another pathetic excuse to try to discredit the Conservative Party.
Having said all that Ken Clarke comes over as a woolly headed ditherer.
For reasons I’ve posted below, Ken Clark is a total tit and completely unfit to be Justice Secretary or come within a mile of making law and order decisions. That said, I see no smoking gun in his interview with VD.
Rape has been legitimately used as a means to show how unjust his latest proposals to make sentencing softer overall are, and for this we need to ask Michael Howard to come back, but Clark’s comments on the different types of rape cases I didn’t have a problem with. It seemed to me VD was being unduly emotive and missing the point about KC being soft on crime overall.
Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.
In the condem regime you can be stupid/ignorant/crooked/dishonest/inompetent, they can lie and cheat and dissemble and still keep their jobs and even if one has to resign they simply wait until they can hop back in.
Clarke? A traitor and a liar and a backstabbing Quisling. He fits in perfectly in the condem regime, he is highly qualified to be a condem euroslime stooge.
BBCC never happier but when WE are the story.
There are ‘degrees’ of rape and the courts recognise this.
However Ken momentarily forgot that the country is presently run by a Rainbow Coalition of TUCLabour, the BBCC, Polly Toynbee, Johann Hari, that young lad from Liberty, and Mumsnet.
Naughty, naughty Ken.
I got tweeted by Looosy from UKUncut and Tristam Hunt who complained that I didn’t include them in the rainbow coalition.
I had to tell them that, of course, they’re included under BBCC
I am not a fan of Ken Clarke, but his words have been twisted out of their meaning to suit a left wing (BBC) agenda. Technically a 17 year old boy having “consensual” sex with his 15 year old girlfriend is rape because she is under the age of consent.
So according to that smirking Margaret Hodge, Toenails, Neal and the woman with the mad eyes and Bruce Forsyth chin, the 17 year old must have the same sentence as the man who jumps a strange woman and rapes her at knife-point. What an awful message this sends out.
There are different categories of rape – all are serious but some are far worse than others.
An inevitable consequence of calling such underage sex “rape” is to dilute the original meaning of the word. Likewise putting said 17-year old on the sex offenders register dilutes the whole point of the register.
Margaret Hodge would know all about the rape of minors, what with her overseeing Islington childrens homes earlier in her career. It didn’t seem to bother her back then.
Allegedly.
And I well remember Hodge being interviewed by Humphrys on this and being given the softest under-arm bowling I’ve ever heard.
Clarke stumbled when trying to qualify date rape. It’s a controversial subject all on its own, and he messed up. He obivously didn’t mean what everyone is making it out to be, but he did get it wrong to a degree.
He’s a buffoon who’s overstayed his welcome. Perhaps we’ll get something approaching a proper conservative in his place. Maybe.
Having said that, the bit I heard didn’t sound particularly unreasonable. Of course there are degrees of rape, otherwise all sentences would be the same. However, someone with Clarke’s experience should have known that being invited to comment on something that affects people with Special Victim Status was likely to be a trap. As with race, some truths can only be discussed by people in the right position on the victim totem pole.
Don’t get me wrong, IMO most rapists should be locked away until they’ve forgotten what sex is. It’s the BBC wimmin’s BS that surrounds it that I can’t stand.
“Perhaps we’ll get something approaching a proper conservative in his place. Maybe. “
Is there any left. Didn’t they all join UKIP?
Hmm… My loyalties are being tested by this one: Ken Clarke is a europhile moron, so he can disappear off the face of the earth for all I care. Anything that causes Cameron anguish, and especially when it undermines his ‘cuddly tories’ crap, is also good for me.
But, what he said was actually fairly reasonable, if poorly expressed; and I’d hate for the smug beeboids to feel any more self-righteous than they already do.
Different strokes for different folks.
BBC (2010):
“Free Roman Polanski ”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldhaveyoursay/2010/07/free_roman_polanski.html
Laura Kuenssberg just now telling us that Clarke’s gaffe today gives the Tories more ammunition to show him up as being “soft” on crime. Unbelievable how she spins it even further away from reality just to have something to say on air. Or did he somehow mean that 12 months sentence for rape is “crazy” because it’s too much?
I just tried DV’s link posted above to read the transcript or hear the interview and it says the page doesn’t exist.
Nick Robinson is interviewing Clarke right now on the News Channel, and Clarke’s own words put the lie to what Laura K said about how this will make the Tories think he’s too soft on crime. Good thing the BBC had on Vera Baird afterwards to explain that Clarke actually wants rape sentences to be cut in half if they plead guilty. Why didn’t Robinson ask him about that? He only asked for clarification on the date rape angle and and if different types of rape are less serious. That’s not the same thing at all as wanting different sentences for different pleas.
What sort of journalism is the BBC peddling?
Yvette Cooper Tried to stick one on Clark this lunchtime Sky News. Adam Bolton wasn’t having it he really sorted her out, challenging her on every point she made. First time Iv’e seen Cooper turn red. Bolton had all the names of former Labour justice folk saying the same thing. Oh the hypocrisy of it all.
Bolton does have his moments. He’s given more than one politician an uncomfortable time.
Leaving aside the statistics, Clarke was an idiot to say what he said. You would think he has been in politics for long enough to learn something, but he is a buffoon and always has been. But, Dave doesn’t have the balls to sack him. What a pathetic mess this government are turning out to be.
Never have I heard anybody’s words taken out of context as I have heard on the BBC today – luckily I heard the explanation about an 18 year old with a 15 year old (who technically cannot give consent) earlier in the day – because it certainly isn’t being repeated on Radio 4 as I type.
And if I hear once more the clip from Milliband saying that Ken should be sacked by the end of the day I shall scream. Talk about jumping on a bandwagon.
And I don’t even like Ken’s form of Conservatism.
VD and the bBC managed to turn a very serious subject about sentencing and drag it down to the level of Ed Milliband. This was an ambush and the chance to debate a serious subject destroyed. We need to be better served than this! The bBC is an utter disgrace and today they supplied the evidence in bucket loads.
That the Tories continue to be so lead-headed about all things media-led is desperate really.
Cameron presumably sends out the likes of Clarke and May because they`re even less use in terms of actually doing anything-better to be the raw meat for the blowfish than actually have them influencing policy in the engine room.
Where are the Tory thinkers to blow the Harmans out of the water?Once you conflate “rapes” with “sexual harrassment” with “hate crimes” then the law is broken…add the last lots counting as “rape” things that simply increased conviction rates and it`s truly toxic.
Innocent men have found out the one sided nature of this debate-and when lapdancing is advertised in Job Centres then it`s a total mess that Labour/EU caused.
If there are no Tories who know these obvious lines of attack-then “votizpoint”?
“Clarke and May”. Two of Labour’s greatest assets. For heaven’s sake , Dave, get rid of them. And Willets while you are at it. I despair.
And Dave should go with them, as long as the consevatives are lead by a PR clown then Britains future is bleak.
Most commenters on Nick Robinson’s blog have seen through all this synthetic outrage, and are highly unimpressed, if anyone can be bothered navigating the sorry excuse that masquerades as a comments system there.
I’m not Ken Clarke’s biggest fan but having had a chance to see more of what this is about, it really is a storm in a thimble. There was a particularly odious Labour MP interviewed on PM today who said that Ken Clarke “was siding with rapists”. She was pulled up on this by Eddie Mair but sadly not forced to justify what she said as there wasn’t time.
It’s when I hear people like her that I realise that however much I detest David Cameron, there are some real shits in the Labour Party for whom no action is too low if they think there’s political advantage to be had.
Robinson’s blog post shows the problem I was talking about earlier. He asked Clark for clarification specifically about date rape and whether or not he meant that some rapes were worse than others. That’s it. However, Vera Baird was on the News Channel immediately after that and made an entirely different accusation about cutting sentences in half for guilty pleas. How a Green Paper from last year turns into Clarke wanting the very thing is another story. That must have been what Laura K meant about fodder to accuse Clarke of being soft on crime. But she didn’t say what specifically the problem was – it was just piling on. I think the BBC dug up the other bit to hit him with on top of today’s gaffe.
That seems to be what the BBC has done all day long here: pile on, throw it all against the wall and see if anything sticks. Since Clarke got at least a couple of his facts wrong, some of it just might, even though Derbyshire’s attack angle of very short sentences was a phony set-up.
‘Most commenters on Nick Robinson’s blog have seen through all this synthetic outrage, and are highly unimpressed,’
Indeed.
Seems there are still some brains engaged and not dancing to the BBC’s dumbed-down, populist tune. Not within it, sadly.
Must be discomfiting the number of +6’s on their shiny new system for comments describing the BBC’s naked support for Mili.E’s attempted populist, faux outrage flounce as professionalism and integrity-free journalism.
Mind you, 6 x 50 on a blog before it closes doesn’t stack up well to the propaganda belched out over the airwaves with no counter.
But speaking of the BBC’s favourite news gathering source…
‘What sort of journalism is the BBC peddling?’
One it seems (having checked Ken Clarke, which is trending) that is based on such as this:
mrmacmanuk Libi Imagrunt @ @BBCNews Ken Clarke thinks we who are upset really agree with him! How screwed is this muppet?! Trust ME, my WHOLE family & I DON’T agree!!!
dieselgreendog Catherine Chapman “@paul_tomkins @vicderbyshire‘s interview with Ken Clarke on BBC News Online >> j.mp/imgLOD” excellent – exposes Tories …
‘Most commenters on Nick Robinson’s blog have seen through all this synthetic outrage, and are highly unimpressed,’
Indeed.
Seems an awful lot getting their views from the BBC, or contributing to how the BBC views stuff.
Plus the Gaurdian:
krishgm Krishnan Guru-Murthy “@terrysaunders: guardian iPhone app has cut down the KenClarke story headline and made it appear a whole lot worseyfrog.com/hs6tzyrj”
Mind you, watching SKY just now and the fat Irish intellect-free zone was trying to score some easy points with the mob off, of all people, his box-of-rocks challenged peroxide sink offsider who, unlike Clarke, knew enough to play even dumber when pitched a googly.
Serious, credible journalism is now dead, and the BBC is at the forefront of those dragging it down. Why I have to pay for this debasement of society is unclear to me.
ps: Sorry about ‘splits’. Cut & pasting tweets seems to carry a lot of hidden character baggage that kicks over the limit. Be fun on the BBC less than 400 version. Not.
My personal fav was from this noted political thinker:
rioferdy5 Rio Ferdinand
It seems Ken Clarke is in a spot of bother over comments regarding rape….
8 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply
In contrast to ‘Newsnight’ and Paxman’s heartfelt anti-Tory rant tonight:
‘SKY NEWS’ today:
“Adam Boulton interviews Yvette Cooper about Ken Clarke’s comments on rape “
Boulton playing a blinder.
If you’ve got a stupid wimmin in front of you playing the ‘fauxtraged wimmin’ card – laugh at her.
Balls and Cooper what an effin pair. 🙁
Boulton tried hard but he still let Cooper bully him eventually. He’s right when he said it’s political point scoring though. Clarke made one or two silly gaffes but in general he made some valid points.
It’s always deeply unsightly seeing a santimonious opportunist exploiting an emotive issue like rape and trying to use emotional blackmail to bludgeon any form of scrutiny.
As unhappy as one is with the Cameron junta, one heaves a huge sigh of relief that moral monstrosities like this are out of power.
“I don’t recall such a tough approach…”
Ah, the classic B-BBC argument; “I don’t remember it – therefore it never happened…”
the return of the beeboid fucktard trollboy
Why not give us some examples of when you think it did happen, then?
He won’t do that for the simple reason he can’t. The nearest he could get if he finds some attacks on Blair for the Iraq invasion, ie only attacking from even further left. But in a real left-right situation Dezzie will not be able to find an occasion when they played agent-provocateur against a Labour minister. Dez thinks he’s clever and a wit – but is only half right there.
Dez, hallo Scott!
As someone to whom words mean whatever you want them to mean, DV does of course mean what you say he means.
That is why we want to see an impartial BBC and you dont.
Have you got over the death of bin Laden and losing the AV vote yet?
Surely now is the time to send our most successful chancellor of modern times to head up the IMF.Ken could leave another legacy for Gordon to piss up the wall..this is no time for a novice…send for Ken!
We could then get a Tory in charge for law and order.
Couldn`t Gordon Brown be better employed driving Chris Huhne around for the next few weeks instead-or at least keep an eye on the road for him? That he has no licence is not a barrier-we are where we are,and strange times call for…etc. He had no license to lead the country or disable the economy for lifetimes,but he still did it!
Let us hope that the Question Time audience has its fair proportion of rapists amidst the questionners tonight…show of hands Dimblebum?
Guessing that is why the BBC were vetting the applications in advance…thinking ahead for us all as ever!
R. Bless!
If the Beeb will let me have my £3,000 a night suite in NYC, I will happily go over and aske DSK what he thinks of Kens gaffe/mots justes-the line might be a bit crackly,but by George I`ll get the goss!
Let us not forget that in the 90’s Ken Clark is the utter idiot who banned Courts from taking into account an offender’s past convictions when passing sentence, till public outcry and JP resignations forced him to back down.
If anyone wants to judge whether VD interviews Tories differently I repost something from the OT:-
Here is an interview Victoria Derbyshire conducted with Harriet Harman on Liam Fox’s efforts to undermine legal underwriting of the level of foreign aid spending (1:06.14). Again, I’d be intrigued to know if the commentariat perceive any bias, and if so, for or against?
One might say Ken Clark is a victim of ‘date tape’.