It’s chilling and gripping and happening virtually right on my doorstep, according to Murphy’s Law. Do watch the last episode tonight if you don’t mind being shaken out of your comfort zone. It’s on at 9pm, BBC1.
It makes me feel so uncomfortable, these young, innocent women are so very helpless. It is well documented that we have thousands of migrant workers in East Anglia, I see them regularly in my local post office and in town. Is this abuse happening to them, I wonder?
I applaud the courage of Cambridgeshire Chief Constable Julie Spence in raising its profile last week, of the increasing cases of sex trafficking in my county, and her desperate pleading for more funds because of their resources spent fighting human trafficking.
The police task was helped by software provided by i2, a unique Cambridge-based company which provides investigative analysis and visualization software for law enforcement and commercial organizations.
This assimilation of shared data makes the police job much easier, which is probably why the Home Office today announced its crackdown on human trafficking. It is long overdue.
I hope the Home Office also recognises the need to realistically fund this fight.
Update: David Cameron backs Julie Spence’s cash fight.
I agree, it is high time time positive action is taken to extinguish this disgusting trade.
Hello Ellee,
We had a terrific series on Flemish TV called Matrouchkas. It was excellent. The story of young girls from the Baltic States being promised a waitress job in Antwerp and ending up being exploited as prostitutes. It showed their seedy living conditions and the way they were treated by “nice” gentlemen. Awful really. I know it will not mean much in Flemish to your readers but the message is the same and just as powerful.
Regards.
An issue that demands our attention, and unfortunately it is worldwide. Sex traffic-ing is a big problem here in Morocco. It is only just beginning to be brought to the light. It is not only young women but children and boys as well. It does break the heart, but we have to keep our eyes open and get really pissed! I am happy to hear the British government is doing something, as you say now it must be funded.
Good post my dear.
It’s been on the news too
the police just ‘busted’ a people trafficking ring – for ‘sex trade’ in Britain & Ireland.
Ok so an uptown call girl wanting to pay her college fees or wanna be playmate ‘model’ I can understand. You (yourself) sell whatever you have that sells.
But paying for sex with a visibly brutalised girl, who has to perform because of fear of violence – it must as gruesome and seedy, as shown on tv – if not even more in the flesh.
Still, I’ll be watching Murphy’s Law
real life-like gritty british tv movie/series
PS – Thanks for the Newsnight pointer.
People will always get up in arms about spending money on this or that when we could be spending it on health – but money has not improved health care and dentistry is as bad or worse than it was 50 years ago.
But if you want to invest money in high tech science and job creation – space is the place, inflation proof (and expanding, in an expanding universe). But I do think the Moon belongs to Asia. ESA & NASA will be overwhelmed by Japan, China & India, despite having enjoyed a 50 year head start.
Mind you our health service is more like India or China’s everyday. Even there You can get whatever you want if you can pay – whether organs to order, or babies/children to order. And stem cell research from korea promises so much, but promises are cheap, miracles rare and any treatment increasingly more costly, the more bizarre the more expensive.
Just think – Not in the EU. No migrant workers like these perhaps?
What a gritty finale to Murphy’s Law
Great British tv series (film) making
They could have edited into a movie for the big screen – they still could.
Hi Elle, Gordon Brown or Britain could spearhead space exploration and the Moon Base with a £2 billion commitment. The 5 major EU countries would be obliged to follow suit, the US would have to match the £10 billion investment. Russia would have to come on board too – and by the time Japan, China & India add their portion we’d be looking at £50 billion, not just to put a man on the Moon, but to build the Moon Base.
Satellite Communications have become a multi-billion industry on Earth, and the Moon Base would become not just “one small step for man, and one giant step for mankind” but a stepping stone to further real space exploration and manned space flight, with flights to the Moon in 20 years becoming as frequent as shuttle flights to the International Space Station Today.
Q9, I didn’t expect that ending. A shame it focused more on the police in the end than the girls and the migrant workers. I guess there will be more on this theme.
Regarding the space travel, I wonder if we already contribute some funding for a European space project. I remember hearing about it during a trip to NASA – that was the most fantastic stop during our trip to Florida a few years back.
Hi Elle, if you are watching Newsnight
you’ll see that we still only have a meagre European Space Programme, and an even smaller British contribution.
To be asking Gordon Brown for a couple of hundred million to tag to the ESA program is not sufficient to initiate an EU manned space programme or to boost the likelihood of a Briton on the team. To take the bull by the horns and commit a couple of billion to put a briton on the moon and a british moon base, will up the ante for other European Nations (the big five) to follow suit.
Don’t forget that whilst it took £35 billion to put the first man on the moon – and though inflation means some costs are higher – a lot of the ground work has already been done, the technology is no longer NEW or a one off. If anything we are looking at a lot more bang for our money. Though of course research and development is still the order of the day, it cost more for the first space shuttle mission, than it costs nowdays for ‘routine’ space shuttle missions
After all the Japs will probably collect the google prize for little more cost wise than what the prize IS.
Elle, the police woman had been treated like the ‘trafficked’ women
and the fact that she blew away the gang leader (in his home – Manor Hall), shot the chief constable (who suggested she retire for health reasons, because she had become infected whilst being gang raped ON DUTY undercover), and then blew her brains out.
Sure the end focused on the police, but also on the state of mind of any woman abused to such extremes, who manages to get ‘out’ and get hold of a gun.
Basically she was well f***** UP
there was no way she was going to be able to forget what she’d been put thru, and live a ‘normal’ life, and there was only one way out
Q9, It would be great if you could write a guest post on British investment for space travel, you are the expert and a great writer. Don’t forget Michael Foale from Cambridge. Taxpayers may want to know how we can justify that investment instead of improving our hospitals and other public services – our own public transport, for example, as well as helping those suffering in Africa and other developing countries.
I take your point about the policewoman. It must be very difficult for any woman to live a normal life again after such horrific abuse.
From where do you see the funding coming, Ellee?