Cathy Dobbs: Puzzled over countryside 'barriers'
The founder of a hiking group for British Muslims took to The Guardian recently to vent about “huge racial disparities in access to the outdoors”.
Haroon Mota said that minority communities face barriers when it comes to accessing the countryside. This had me scratching my head – as I’d never seen any barriers to accessing the great outdoors.
After all, there aren’t farmers standing at gates with pitchforks. So long as you’ve got some good footwear and a waterproof jacket anyone can have a day out in the countryside.
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The world has officially gone barmy. This week it was revealed that hundreds of suspected rapists have been wrongly labelled as women by the police.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Daily Telegraph obtained figures which reveal the extent to which police have been classifying alleged sex attackers based on their self-declared gender.
In the past four years, 260 “females” have been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider rape charges. Additionally, there have been 209 suspects recorded with an “unknown” sex, which is believed to include those who identify as non-binary.
It is important to remember that, by law, rape can only be committed by a biological male. These figures are not only a kick in the teeth to the victims who have to hear their sick attacker being pandered to, but it’s an insult to women everywhere.
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I live near the A38 and on Saturday thousands of bikers travelled past for the Ride to the Wall event at the National Memorial Arboretum. Every bridge over the road had people enthusiastically waving union flags and cheering on the bikers. Everyone was happy and unashamedly proud to be British – there wasn’t an EU flag in sight.
Obviously it’s London dimwits that attend Last Night of the Proms to wave EU flags while singing along to Rule Britannia, while good honest people the length and breadth of the country still have pride in their homeland.
The bikers will have noticed the massive building site they rode through, as HS2 work continues. For a day I’d quite like the job of the chap that sits by a gate on a slip road off the A38. His job is to open the gates for HS2 traffic – I’ve seen him get to his feet once.