Nutmeg's week: Stephen Ireland, Steph Richards, Stella Creasy.

Is there ANYONE at the BBC who understands child safeguarding?

This man goes by the name ‘Richie Bow-Grace’. He dresses as a baby girl, and has said he wears nappies and there are pictures of him with a dummy in his mouth. He goes into local primary schools to ‘teach children about autism’ and tries to have one-to-one sessions with them.

Despite the obvious red flags, the BBC has been showcasing him as an inspirational figure, and describing him as ‘gorgeous’ and ‘beautiful’.

The BBC profiles ‘Bow-Grace’ while now ignoring Stephen Ireland

The Pride in Surrey scandal has continued this week. Some people have been highlighting the alarms they raised about Stephen Ireland, the founder of Pride in Surrey who was last week jailed for 30 years for several offences including raping a child.

For example, a mother wrote to The Winston Churchill School in Surrey, asking to meet the school’s safeguarding team, or head teacher, to find out what checks they carry out on adults like Ireland. She was concerned after hearing about images like this, in which Stephen Ireland is in The Winston Churchill School, seemingly alone with a child in fetish gear, supposedly teaching her about working in radio. She was considering sending her child to this school.

The response she received from the school merely stated: ‘A lot can change in a couple of years so it would be inappropriate to meet with staff’. (The mother opted to take her child to a different school). This blew up on social media last weekend and the school responded on the Monday by … deleting its historic X posts promoting Pride and ignoring all the criticism.

A woman also wrote to Surrey Police last year, stating that she had seen a Pride in Surrey-branded police car on the streets AFTER two of its directors had been charged with child sexual abuse offences. Surrey Police replied to her simply saying: ‘We are an open-minded organisation. Our commitment to inclusion, diversity and equality remains resolute’.

A Freedom of Information request was also answered by Surrey Police - four months after it was submitted - with similar tone-deaf response. Several questions were put to them, such as why did Surrey Police attend a school with Pride in Surrey six weeks after it had arrested its founder? And what will Surrey Police be doing following the revelations that Pride’s current directors smoked crystal meth with a paedophile?

The response from Surrey Police included a bizarre statement with zero evidence to back it up that Stephen Ireland’s abuse is not ‘reflective’ of Pride in Surrey - and that officers will work with the current team and even ‘support’ their events.

Gavin Stephens told Lisa Townsend to “make it up” to Stephen ireland

This comes as it has also been revealed that Surrey Police’s former chief constable, Gavin Stephens, told Lisa Townsend, Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner, to “make it up” to Stephen Ireland, because she had said “biological sex matters in policing”. Stephens responded by writing on the force’s intranet site that ‘trans women are women’. He then confronted Townsend, telling her: “You have three years to make it up to Stephen Ireland. He’s a friend of Surrey Police.” Stephens is now chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

We revealed last week that Surrey County Council has been deleting its links to Stephen Ireland from its website, including a video of him talking about fostering children. It came to light this week that Surrey Fostering, which works with Surrey County Council to provide local children in care with a home, has repeatedly publicly praised Pride in Surrey and Stephen Ireland specifically. He received praise while his personal social media, involved him talking about fetishes.

The fostering link, incredibly, still exists today. With less than two months to go to the next Pride in Surrey event, which inexplicably hasn’t been cancelled and is still receiving support from at least one local council, Pride in Surrey has been noticeably quiet on social media. However, it did this week post about ‘breaking down barriers [when it comes to] fostering children’, one of only a few posts it has allowed comments on since Ireland’s conviction in March.

It’s clear that one of the institutions that Pride in Surrey was able to infiltrate was, and probably still is, the Liberal Democrats in Surrey, which is perhaps the biggest party in that county today. This, for example, is Al Pinkerton, the MP for Surrey Heath, tweeting about Stephen Ireland earlier this decade.

Surrey Heath Borough Council has both Lisa and Kel Finan-Cooke as councillors. Their daughter volunteered at Pride in Surrey and had at least one Zoom conversation with Stephen Ireland, in which they talked about children. Lisa is the former chief operating officer at Pride in Surrey, and the person who reported a whistleblower to Surrey Police for ‘discrimination’ when she tried to raise the alarm about him. Despite this, she has been the council’s head of safeguarding. Kel, meanwhile, has written for Pride in Surrey about how she, and other Lib Dems, protested the LGB Alliance, which she describes as a ‘very dangerous group that spreads misinformation.’ She added that she had to personally tell people ‘facts’ about ‘the benefits of puberty blockers’ to counter the LGB Alliance’s ‘lies’.

Kel has in the last week locked her X account while Lisa has deleted hers.

Another person to delete their X account in the wake of the sentencing of Stephen Ireland is BBC reporter Kathy Caton. She has a show on BBC Radio Surrey, the station that has almost completely ignored Ireland’s story, despite regularly platforming him when he was running Pride in Surrey. Caton is the former women’s officer for BBC Pride, project manager for Brighton Trans*formed (an organisation that exists solely to promote the lives of cross-dressing men) and someone who worked closely with Ireland and Pride in Surrey. In fact, she was heavily involved in allowing Ireland to present a show on BBC Radio Surrey - with, it seems, Lisa and Kel Finan-Cooke.

Another great week at the BBC

The BBC has responded to an FoI request by stating that it has decided to not follow the law when it comes to ensuring women’s toilets are for women only. This comes despite the Supreme Court saying men are not women in April, the EHRC saying public bodies should exclude men from single-sex spaces that same month and Keir Starmer then urging public bodies to implement the changes quickly. The BB has said it will wait until final guidance is published and signed off by the government before taking any action. In the meantime, men like Jen Ives here, who works in a BBC building, can continue using women’s toilets, which he says is essential for his mental health.

BBC News has continued to write more than one article a day about Pride in July, even though June was meant to be Pride month. We’ve had a 1,500 word article analysing why 75% of Pride events are reporting a drop in funding, which blamed ‘economic issues and the political climate’. However, at no point is it mentioned that several Pride organisers have been jailed for sexually abusing children.

We’ve also had at least 20 articles in recent weeks about Reform UK’s policy of not allowing Pride flags to be flown on council buildings that the party controls. There has been a clear editorial angle to the reporting each time; you can probably guess which way it went.

And we got to see an interview with this bloke this week, for some reason.

BBC News also published its second article in a week alleging sexual misconduct in a British church. In both cases, the allegations are made by a cross-dressing young person who we are told is the opposite sex to what they are. This appears to be part of a concerted effort by the BBC to normalise cross-dressing people in the church.

And Smoggie Queens, the BBC sitcom about drag queens that secured just 30,000 viewers for its second episode, has been named best comedy at the Broadcast Digital Awards. Judges, 11 of whom work for the BBC, praised it for ‘ticking the box for representation’. Meanwhile, the BBC says it is looking to pay ‘people of all genders’ to appear as extras in the second series of what it describes as the ‘hit comedy’.

Labour has learnt nothing since Lily Madigan

‘Steph’ Richards, a man who was once appointed to lead an endometriosis charity, is aiming to appropriate another role meant for women. He has been put forward as a candidate for women’s officer of LGBT+ Labour by the newly formed Labour pressure group Trans Rights Alliance (TRA). TRA is predictably endorsed by Labour MP Nadia Whittome.

‘Steph’ is also notable for his belief that a four-year-old girl will express ‘gender confusion’ through rough play, while a boy of the same age will do so by playing with dolls. He’s also an advocate of men feeding babies the drug-induced secretions from their nipples if they feel the need to do so to satisfy their fetish.

‘Steph’ is head of Translucent, an advocacy group for ‘transgender and gender diverse’ people, which recently launched action against the EHRC, claiming its response to the Supreme Court ruling has been unlawful.

His latest invasion attempt is almost certainly unlawful and really it should be a case of when, not if, he is prevented from standing. ‘Steph’ claims LGBT+ Labour is ‘entirely separate’ from the party and therefore cannot be ‘controlled’ by it. LGB Labour is considering legal proceedings if the party does not declare his nomination void.

Meanwhile, Labour MP Stella Creasy has released a statement, in ‘trans’ colours, about how ‘distressing’ and ‘inconsistent’ the EHRC response to the Supreme Court ruling felt for ‘trans’ constituents. There was no mention of women’s distress at being, unlawfully, forced to share intimate spaces with men for many years. Fortunately, some of these women were on hand to correct her weak grasp of the issue in a community note.

And a woman is preparing to sue Labour-run Camden Council over ‘trans’ coloured road crossings in Bloomsbury. Blessing Olubanjo objects to the political message the crossings send as well as the health and safety implications for those with visual impairments. The council, which is struggling financially, says it will fight any legal action because ‘Camden is no place for hate’.

And finally

Do you remember ‘Alice Avizandum’ - a man who pretended he was a Muslim girl and said he masturbated over Muslim women being forced to drink alcohol, and praised men who punch women? He now pretends he’s a Christian woman called November Kelly.

See you next week!