Culture picks

The announcement that there will, after all, be a statutory inquiry into the child rape and pimping gang scandal – euphemistically referred to as ‘grooming gangs’ – should be welcomed. The words ‘euphemism’, ‘whitewashing’ and ‘cover-up’ apply to more than just the language used to describe this phenomenon. I first investigated the scandal back in the early 2000s, and published the very first piece exposing it in the national media in 2007. A quarter of a century later, little has changed. A small