The 18th October 2017 Wirral Leaks post that started it all…

#Racism and alleged #Racism

We thought a blog post on here would be a good place to ‘curate’ a number of #racism and alleged #racism tweets and list them for readers chronologically, as they went out.

The starting point was that infamous incident on a bus in Sorrento on 7th October 2017.  Then…

• the first post on Wirral Leaks
• the second post on Wirral Leaks
• the third post on Wirral Leaks
• despite alleged #racism being a crime, the complete radio silence by the Liverpool Echo, Wirral Globe, BBC news North West, etc.
• the brave reporting of the ugly Sorrento alleged #racism in Private Eye
• the woeful “Show Racism the Red Card” charade led by Councillor Tony Norbury at Wirral Council and;
• the hideous fallout ever since, including censored posts to the Wirral Globe
• a subscriber to the Wirral Globe online being muzzled, banned and having their freedom to speak closed down by some officious unknown employee of the Wirral Globe, a once decent newspaper which now appears to harbour a deathwish.

The tweets

A post to the Wirral Globe’s Granty’s Inferno was given the “inferno treatment”, but instead of singeing the fingers of council racists, Granty’s colleagues were turning their fire on their public, censoring their readers and emptying their inboxes of anything that didn’t agree to whatever the unstated new code is for public contributions!  Obviously, anything connecting senior Wirral councillors to alleged #racism was not now permitted by these bold defenders of the ‘free and fair’ press.

Not content with simply erasing posts reporting criminal alleged #racism, the Wirral Globe then went one step further and decided that it was time to  run their local ad-sheet like a local alehouse.  The clear message here was, “You will not be allowed to upset our customers, so…  Yer barred !!”

Fair enough !

This personal “raising of the drawbridge” against us happened on exactly the same day that the Bishop of Liverpool used the local rags to ask for UK authorities and media institutions to examine their closed off culture, listen to the public, take on our concerns, be more empathic, open and transparent and stop being an obstacle to justice where there have been catastrophic official failings, followed by calculated cover ups e.g. Hillsborough 1989.

Labour Councillor Tony Norbury

Councillor Norbury Quote… “We should challenge all forms of racism”.

But lately, the same Labour councillor, Tony Norbury – along with ALL of his colleagues, to a man and woman – have chosen to be silent rather than address two very clear forms of #racism that may have occurred slap bang in the middle of their own local party!!

As the apparent figurehead for all things #Racism, we felt the blatant hypocrisy of Councillor Tony Norbury, he of the “Show racism the Red Card” staged photo opportunities and the earnest, attention-seeking public tweets, was leaving a bit of a foul aftertaste.

So in the highly unlikely event that he had not heard about his party colleagues i.e. Elaine Foulkes alleged #Racism in Sorrento, and Deputy Council Leader George Davies’ alleged #Racism on the #Wirralgate audio recording, we took time to make sure that he became fully appraised of the details…

And in response to Councillor Norbury’s #Racism poem, which he read out to the assembled throng of po-faced, deeply dubious and shifty characters seated around him in the Wirral Council chamber…

And finally…

…at one point, we stopped to have a ponder on what has gone so hideously wrong at the local newspapers and attempted to evaluate and unravel the What, Why, When, How, Where and Who of taking a decision not to report an alleged crime involving members of the local Labour Party to your local public.  Please click the link…

I have six honest working men,

They taught me all I knew,

Their names are What and Why and When,

And How and Where and Who.

Rudyard Kipling.