wtffashionshark

Hello Readers,

Keir Starmer’s first instinct was to refuse a National Inquiry into child sex abuse by Pakistani grooming gangs, and he was right. We know what happened. We know from the previous inquiries, including the one published by Baroness Louise Casey in 2015 about child sex abuse in Rotherham and the report published by Dame Alexis Jay in 2002, which had taken seven years to complete, and from the evidence of former policewoman Maggie Oliver who has been highlighting this for twenty years and from countless television programmes and articles. We know that vulnerable girls, some as young as ten, usually in the care system, were plied with drink and drugs by much older men who purported to be their ‘boyfriends’. Once they had gained their trust, the men then invited many other men from their community to have sex with the girls. Lots of people knew about it, but they did nothing. Partly they did nothing because they regarded the girls as ‘slags’ who were no better than they ought to be. Ludicrously, some social workers and police officers excused what was going on because the girls were in ‘relationships’ with these men, ignoring the fact that the age of consent in this country is 16 and the fact that men in their 30s and 40s should not be having relationships with pre and post pubescent girls. And we know that in many cases, the police and social workers were reluctant to become involved for fear of being accused of racism and so paralysed into inaction. And we know that when men and women spoke out against grooming gangs, they were accused of Islamophobia, even if the people speaking out were themselves Muslim. And politicians and social workers and police officers had to choose between sticking their head above the parapet and be accused of all sorts or keeping silent while girls were repeatedly raped and assaulted and passed around from disgusting man to disgusting man. Only last week, seven men from Rochdale were found guilty of multiple rapes of young girls over a period between 2002 and 2006. It took nearly 20 years to bring them to justice. What we really want to know is why the hell it has not been stopped.

Despite the robust recommendations in the Casey and Jay reports, they have not been implemented. Adequate protections have not been introduced. Proper data kept as to the ethnicity of perpetrators has not been compiled. Agencies have not worked together as they should have done. People have still hesitated to call out what was happening for fear of allegations against them.  The motivations of the perpetrators and the actions of communities in not giving them up has not been investigated. This all emerged from a rapid audit carried out by Baroness Casey this year with the results announced by the Home Secretary in Parliament this week. The results were so shocking that a National Inquiry will be set up for the purposes of monitoring compliance. Kemi Badenoch took it upon herself to e-mail members of her party to crow that ‘we have won’.  Won?  Won what exactly? How is this a triumph when her party was in power until 2024 and she herself was Minister for Women. Did she call for an inquiry then? She did not. Did she move heaven and earth to implement the Casey and Jay recommendations? She did not. She only called for it when her government was out of office. The shamelessness and opportunism and gall is no more than we have come to expect from her and her shambles of a party. This is not a triumph for her. But let us hope that it is the beginning of the end of the misogyny, cowardice and obduracy which has condemned so many girls to misery.

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We start our review of the week’s astonishing apparel at the Royal Academy Summer Party in London with designer Roksanda Illinic wearing herself. Scroll down slowly.

What the actual fuck has she got on her feet? She is wearing a gorgeous silk outfit unfathomably teamed with cheerleader pom-poms on the bottom of her legs. Which look like stumps. It is positively unnerving, as if she had wandered through a minefield. Where is Princess Diana when you need her?

Also there was model Mia Regan, who main claim to fame appears to be that she once stepped out with one of the Beckham’s gormless sons, Romeo. What she has to do with the Royal Academy, WTF cannot say.

I mean, what even IS this? The top is very floppy and her little panties are fully on show behind filmy fabric that makes her look like she is standing in a rather murky pool….

Now we are in New York where we find actor Colman Domingo parading about in a pastel suit with a Valentino handbag and Christian Louboutin bootees.

Those bootees are a nonsense. If a peach sorbet went to a fancy dress party as a garden gnome, this is what it would look like.

Now to the Tribeca Film Festival and actor Christine Baranski wearing Roberto Cavalli.

Not only is the texture the lovechild of a diseased frog and a roll of crimplene, but it is the sort of dress that your Auntie Sadie wore to your brother’s bar mitzvah in the late 1970s.

And this is actor Carrie Coon wearing Loewe.

The dress (which is ugly) comes with its own built-in shower curtain.

She’s back! Of course she is. Bianca Censori aka Mrs Kanye West, wearing not much in Los Angeles.

To be fair, she is wearing more than she usually does but it is still a case of nips ahoy because covering them up is simply anathema to her. Here is WTF’s question. If it is warm enough to wear only a Skims bodysuit, surely it is too warm to wear a couple of polar bear limbs??

And finally here we are in New York with actor Brad Pitt and his girlfriend, jewellery executive Ines de Ramon.  Brad is wearing Willy Chavarria.

Good grief. Where is his hair? Why is he wearing dad jeans? And what in the name of God is that jacket? Is his next movie the Creature from the Blue Lagoon?

This week’s It’s Got To Go comes from anyone with even the smallest sense of decency. Last weekend a right-wing, 47-voting, anti-abortion, Evangelical Christian in the state of  Minnesota shot and killed a State Congresswoman, Melissa Hortman, and her husband Mark (and their dog). The Hortmans are survived by their two young children.  He also shot a State Senator, John Hoffman, and his wife  Yvette- luckily, they are not dead, despite being hit by fifteen bullets between them. The shooter wore a latex mask and was dressed as a policeman. He went on the run and was apprehended only after a 24-hour manhunt. Before his arrest, MAGA-arsewipe Utah’s Senator, Mike Lee, put out two tweets on his private Twitter account. The first said “This is what happens when Marxists do not get their way” with pictures of the shooter, the one on the left taken from the Hoffmans’ Ring doorbell. And then he put out this one, with a (misspelt) reference to Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s running-mate.

The odious Lee is a bullet-headed bigot, although he purports to be a devout Mormon. Clearly, brazenly lying about the political affiliation of a murderer does not offend his Mormon beliefs. Nor does being a prize shit. How anyone of any religion or no religion could issue jokey tweets about the murder and attempted murder of fellow lawmakers is beyond comprehension, but it goes to show how utterly rotten and rancid the US – and the Republican. party- are. For shame. It’s Got to Go.

Ok Readers, that’s your lot for this week. Please keep sending in your top suggestions for It’s Got to Go as well as your comments, which WTF much enjoys. You can follow me on @wtffashionshark.bsky.social. Let us meet again next Friday wherer you can vote for the WTF Summer Stinker 2025. Be good x