Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Rotherham Foster Parents - What About The Children? Remember Them?

The recent fuss about the Rotherham foster parents who allegedly had their foster children taken away because of the foster parents support for UKIP, really reached hysterical levels.

I wasn't sure what I thought about this, my first reaction was "how stupid", but then I wondered what had led up to this situation. Clearly there is an issue here, it is not just "political correctness", this couple were fostering three children from Eastern Europe and the foster parents were by their association with UKIP, opposed to immigration from Eastern Europe.

Based on what I know (or what I think I know) I do believe that Rotherham social workers acted stupidly, they could have handled this situation a lot better than they did. However, this still doesn't negate the fact that there was clearly an issue that needed sorting out, but to tip up and remove the children at 20 minutes notice, was unfair on the foster parents, but most of all unfair it was on the children. It's the children that must be thought of before anyone, or anything else, especially a political party!

From what I have read, social services received a phone call from a member of the public who were concerned about the children's welfare, if social workers receive such a tip off then they must act, they have no choice. I don't know what the tip-off was about, or what was said, but it must have been something serious enough to make social services act, they don't do things like this for nothing!

Children, even babies are very susceptible to tensions and older children are extremely sensitive to things that are said to them or that they overhear. None of us know this couple and they may have been exemplary foster parents up until the children were taken away, but I know they way they have behaved since is appalling. They as well as Nigel Farage and UKIP candidate Jane Collins have made this all about themselves and UKIP and it isn't, it is about those children¬

Why did they contact UKIP who in turn brought in the rabid Nigel Farage who immediately turned this into a huge political fest contacting all his contacts in the national press and TV and used the children's situation and the children concerned as political footballs? If I had a problem like this I would be more likely to go straight to the top of  social services and the local authority and if I had no joy there I would contact a solicitor to get some professional advice, I wouldn't phone the Labour party, totally ridiculous.

All the while this hoo hah was going on and even though the children have not been identified, some must know who they are, teachers, neighbours, friends,etc. Isn't it bad enough they find themselves in a strange country and suffered God alone knows what, taken away from their parents and everything they know, placed in one place after another and then when they have finally settled, suddenly they are taken away so suddenly? Whatever social services should not have done that, they should have allowed more time, obviously there is a reason why they were removed, but not like that, it was unnecessary.

I'm not over enamoured with the foster parents behaviour either! Why did the foster parents seek to make a really bad situation worse by making such a big deal out of things with UKIP and made sure they got their story in all the nationals and TV and then if that is not bad enough sell their story to the Sun newspaper? They say they a want the children back, but this was hardly the kind of behaviour that was going to see social services returning the children to their care was it? Let's be honest the foster parents got paid serious money for emergency fostering the children and the children were never theirs and they knew it and they also knew the children could be removed with short notice and they were placed with them on a short term foster arrangement, they knew this, so why are they using emotive terms which hey know are wholly inappropriate in this case?

The leader of Rotherham Council, Roger Stone has said this is a complex case and from what I can gather it was a complex case before the children were placed with these parents.  Joyce Thacker who is the council's strategic director of children and young people's services said the three ethnic minority children had been placed with the couple as an emergency and it was never going to be a long term arrangement and that social services were acting under legal advice. Having found out about the foster parents connections with UKIP from an anonymous tip off and already been chastised by a judge for not placing the children appropriately they had no choice but to act, however, they should have done it differently, they handled it incorrectly.

Joyce Thacker said: "The fact of the matter is I have to look at the children's cultural and ethnic needs. "The children have been in care proceedings before and the judge had previously criticised us for not looking after the children's cultural and ethnic needs, and we have had to really take that into consideration with the placement that they were in".

OK I understand that, but perhaps a better idea would have been to have found this out before Rotherham social services placed the children and certainly not just turn up and take them away with 20 minutes notice.

As for Nigel Farage and UKIP candidate in the Rotherham by-election, well it's they who should hang their heads in shame for politicising this sad business, they haven't helped, they have made things a thousand time worse, but I suspect their intention was never to help this couple, or the children, but to use them all for political purposes during their by-election campaign.

As for the foster parents, well sorry if this sounds harsh, but they joined Ukip and the truth is that they are against immigration and their leader is a bit of loose cannon given to ranting and raving about immigration and the UKIP candidate in Rotherham, has been overheard in a racist rant against immigrants herself in Barnsley. If this couple had actually read the Ukip mission statement before becoming members they may not have joined, however, it is a bit too late to read it now as UKIP have taken it down from their website - wonder why?
Anyone who doesn't think that Ukip are not using this sad story for their own political advantage only need look at Ukip website and their campaigning. Gone is any talk of their distasteful anti immigrant policies, gone are their more strident views on racism and in their place is everything to do with this story about these poor little children and it is disgusting. Even Andrew Gilligan of the Telegraph is joining in and trying to turn this into a party political issue when it is clearly not. The council happens to be a Labour run council, but social services are not affiliated to any party and it is social services that made the decision NOT the Labour party. The mere fact that Farage is using this, tells you that he couldn't give a monkeys about these children or their foster parents, all he cares about is getting a few cheap and nasty votes by stirring up trouble.

Time Farage and the UKIP by election candidate, Jane Collins, stopped stoking this fire and thought about the children.  Do they even REMEMBER THEM?


Welfare to Work - Government Misses It's Own Low Target


Official figures show that the Tory controlled government's flagship welfare-to-work programme has failed to hit its own target.
Under the scheme companies and charities are paid around £14,000 for every person it finds work for.

If the government had done absolutely nothing at all, the same number of people would have found themselves jobs.

Under the previous Labour government's successful jobs for the future work programme more people were found proper jobs. Prime Minister, David Cameron's reply to this was that Labour's programme was too expensive! I know he doesn't do detail and figures very well, but even by David Cameron's not very exacting standards, that was a pretty silly comment. It cost far less in terms of getting people back to work and having them contribute tax and national issuance etc, than it does for the £14,000 per person that the Tories are paying scandal hit back to work companies like A4e!

The government says the scheme needs more time, but back in June 2012, companies like A4e had still only managed to get 3.5% long term unemployed back to work, if anything the situation at A4e has got worse since the summer and not better.

The government set a very low target of 5.5%,  this was set to give providers leeway but only managed 3.53%. That means between  1st June 2011 and end of July 2012 around 878,000 people were referred to the government's work programme and only around 31,000 got jobs.

The taxpayers are paying companies like the scandal hit A4e to produce results and so far they have totally failed. I would also like to know how many people A4e have actually put into work in jobs that exist and how many are made up! Previously auditors found A4e management instructing staff to claim for putting people into jobs which did not exist and into jobs which did not qualify for payment and fabricating paperwork. This is yet another way the unemployment figures can be manipulated, no wonder the government is loath to do anything about A4e!

Another bare faced lie David Cameron told today in Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) was that the number of those claiming job seeker related benefits had fallen, this was a bare faced lie! The number of long term unemployed and claiming unemployment related benefits has reached an all time high and to ad to that we have another startling fact, there are now more people in work claiming Housing Benefit and tax Credits than there are people claiming out of work benefits. The whole system is in total chaos and this is *before* the massive unprecedented reform of Universal Credit kicks in next year!

With the implementation of Universal Credit, and a much tougher sanctions policy for those people unfit for work on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), things are getting very tough and very frightening. Only 1.5% of people from this group were found work. Referrals to the new ESA claimant group are very low and successful outcomes in the hundreds rather than the thousands the government expected. This means that some disabled people are failing to get the tailored help they require and were promised and how can you make people that are too sick to work, suddenly pick up their beds and work? Why is the government "scratching its collective head" over this fact? They have been repeatedly told by various disabled groups that people are too sick, or too disabled to work and even if they were able to work the employers offering jobs for them are just not there.

For those on Job seekers Allowance (JSA) as well as those on  ESA, it will be providers such as scandal hit A4e who police claimants' job-searches and refer them for sanctions. These companies do this already, however, with Universal Jobmatch they will have even more influence than they currently have.
As the government keep banging on about "something for nothing" and are using the taxpayers money to fund their failing back to work scheme. Also why is the public and journalists being denied information on government contracts with A4e and why information on Freedom of Information requests been heavily redacted on the pathetic excuse of commercial confidentiality? It's taxpayers money, we have a right to know!

It cost approximately £5bn per year to pay out JSA claims and the government frequently infer that people are just "lazy feckless scroungers" whose "blinds are still down" when others are going to work and if they do not meet a whole raft of insults and conditions then sanctions will be applied that may last up to three years, yet Work Programme providers are being paid over £5bn a year and we all now see they have spectacularly failed. Yet far from the government applying sanctions to these companies, they are actually defending their appalling record. Former boss of A4e, and friend of David Cameron's, Emma Harrison has personally been paid £8.6 million in one year alone. According to DWP figures 510,000 people have had their benefits sanctioned, while Emma Harrison gets off Scott free.

This back to work scheme isn't working because it cannot work, it is in chaos just like everything else this government touches or interferes with. Blaming the victims for this government's mismanagement and barking mad austerity and ideological driven measures is totally ridiculous. Out of work benefits represents approximately 15% of the entire benefit bill. it's a sledgehammer to crack a nut and it is failing - big time!

Virtually every Tory and Lib Dem MP has given a different figure and a different set of statistics. Matthew Hancock on BBC Daily Politics show today was gabbling on about a figure of 200,000 that had been helped back into work, where did he get that from, think of a number double it and a few naughts?  If Tory MPs and government ministers are incapable of getting their facts and figures right, how is the rest of us supposed to know what is going on? Or have the Tories decided to come out and intentionally baffle and confuse in order to confound the public to try and limit the damage of bad publicity?

Also if the government doesn't understand why it is having difficulty getting sick and disabled people from the ESA group back to work successfully, then it will not understand other less complex issues and the whole policy will fail - badly.


Sunday, November 25, 2012

Exclusive: NHS Information & Technology Department At Leicester Hospital Trust Under Threat of IBM Takeover


Well, well, well Malcolm Lowe-Lauri former CEO of the Leicester Hospital Trust, looks like you jumped to join KPMG just at the right time! (Just as predicted)  Mr Lowe-Lauri's departure from the Trust was exposed on this blog last June see HERE

Seems that Mr Lowe-Lauri  has a lot in common with a former NHS adviser to the Prime Minister, David Cameron who recently jumped ship to join a lobbying company! See: HERE how many people who previously worked for Government and had dealings with Lansley's Health & Social care [Bill] Act are now leaving Government and NHS trusts, in order to join the private sector and lobbying companies in order to make themselves rich? Companies like KPMG, IBM and lobbying firms like MHP Communications etc it seems are the beneficiaries of people that would have a lot of inside information. Of course they all state they are under post contract obligations not to work in certain areas and I expect they will "officially" fulfill those obligations!

Recently it has come to my attention that IBM, who are the world's largest IT and consulting services company have put in a bid to run IT services and supply software to Leicester Hospital Trust. 

The idea was originally suggested by a non executive director (NED) of the Board, but now apparently negotiations are in full swing and due to be signed off before the New Year, strangely, before a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Leicester Hospital Trust has been appointed! 

Jim Birrell, who last summer was named as the fifth most expensive interim chief executive in the health service, was appointed Interim Chief Executive at Leicester trust. I've no idea what Mr Birrell gets paid by the Leicester Trust, however, as he commanded a salary of around £1,250 a day while in his previous role as Director of Delivery at the Birmingham and Solihull primary care trusts, one hopes that the Leicester Trust is paying their staff properly, and on time, after hiring such an expensive acting CEO?

  • Who was the NED that originally suggested the IBM deal and does he/she have any connections with IBM? 
  • Has the Trust ever put this contract out to tender? If not why not?

As there appears to be a relatively short time to wait before the new permanent  CEO is appointed in the New Year, it does seem a bit odd that the Trust is rushing in to sign off a deal between the Trust and IBM before the new CEO takes up position. As the new CEO, who will be the highest ranking officer in the Trust, surely he/she will want to have input into such an important and costly deal? Especially as IBM appears to have run into difficulties in delivering one of their contracts at South West One (SW1). 

IBM has bailed out troubled Somerset shared services firm South West One with a £10m loan as the local authority venture starts bidding for work as an IT services company. 
The supplier extended a mortgage to cover its 75% interest in South West One (SW1) after managers tore up the troubled public-private partnership's original business plan to avert its collapse. Computer Weekly

If the Leicester Trust was so cash strapped that at one point their then CEO, Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, sent out an email to staff warning that their salaries may not be paid, then how can they afford the services of a giant IT specialist like IBM as well as hiring the fifth most expensive interim CEO in the health service? If the Trust is struggling to provide its own IT services how will they manage taking a loan to cover it? Could it possibly be because IT suppliers like IBM can win big government contracts by cutting prices to suicidal-levels, and then make up the difference by brutally cutting costs and avoiding disaster in the interim by claiming tax rebates? 

The losses are built into the outsource model, say accountancy experts. Non-payment of tax is built in too - since companies only pay tax on their profits. But a loss-making outsource will still generate income for its parent - in the form of inter-group payments that go unrecorded under UK accounting rules.

If this is the case then the loser is going to be the public who will suffer reduced and poor quality services, and the staff, who may begin to lose their jobs.


If Leicester hospital has financial problems why are they even thinking of a deal with IBM? Could it be a deal deliberately set up to fail?
I've heard that the Head of the IM&T Department told the Leicester & Mercury that "nothing was going to be done" and that he knew nothing, however, it now looks like the deal will be signed off before the start of the New Year. If the head of IM&T is telling the truth and actually "knows nothing" then it looks like they too have been kept in the dark about this possible deal with IBM -  why?

Why is Leicester Hospital trust being so secretive about this deal with IBM? What will be the full effect of this deal with IBM on the existing IM&T department at the Trust? Will this inevitably lead to reduced services as IBM seek to make profits for shareholders? Will this deal inevitably mean the closure of the Trust's IM&T department and the loss of jobs?


I am told if the IM&T had a thorough reconfiguration in the department then it could be run a lot more efficiently.  Following an external review of Management for Change conducted for the IM&T department, it was found that more Engineers were needed to cope with the call demand, and less managers. But since then, no additional Engineers have been appointed, but in fact one Engineer was made a Team Leader pulling him off the call work. 

Who made this poor decision which is opposite to that of what the review suggested and why? From where I'm standing it looks like the Trust is deliberately running the Information & Technology department down in order to bring in IBM.m If this is the case, who is leading this?
I'm told there are 4 team leaders for 9 permanent IM&T engineers. The engineers are struggling to cope and they have a backlog of calls, why don’t the ‘team leaders’ help them? This would never happen in a private company so why is it allowed to happen in the NHS? Why isn't Jim Birrell stepping in to help sort this problem out?
The radiology department has their own budget and 6 IT staff, but has been so poorly managed that there are now 550 calls for IT service and no one to do it (surly they need to look into where their staff are working?) The Trusts main IM&T engineers are being pulled of their already overloaded workload to help them – why? Poor management, or is it to make the IM&T service appear poor, so the staff will want IBM to run it? 
The so called relocation of IT services out of the hospital to the county council offices. This was done at a huge expense; only to discover when they got there that staff couldn’t work or connect to the hospital systems due to a formality not being signed off. Staff couldn’t work, and in the end they had no option but to pack up their computers in their cars after days of just sitting at their desks and moved themselves back to the hospital.


If Leicester Trust outsources its IT department they may then be charged for any additional services, such as installing new software which could take many days and cost around  £20,000 to £30,000 labour which is as much as the software. 
Once the Board sign off the proposal to IBM, the main services will be relocated to India, leaving a lot of people out of work in Leicester.

The IBM proposal exposes a story that is actually taking place across the country, where hospital trusts are being deliberately run down, so when the private sector is brought in to run them, people think they are saving them and this could not be further from the truth. What will happen is services to patients will be seriously reduced the quantity and quality of care will be badly affected. The number of different surgical procedures will be cut and many procedures will become only available if you pay for them. It's happening already in Trusts and in GP surgeries.
Recently there was a huge drop in the number of people waiting for treatment, this was primarily because people on waiting lists for surgery were actually reassessed and taken off the list, then they were informed they no longer needed their operation, this was done without further consultation between doctor and patient.

Nurses are losing their jobs every single day, operations are being cancelled, procedures limited, our hospitals are being deliberately run down so the Tory controlled government can flog them all off to the private sector, who are circling the NHS like a flock of vulchers waiting for the rich pickings. 

The number of cabinet and Government ministers who stand to gain from the privatisation of the NHS is alarming, they have interests in virtually every department. If people do not wake up and realise this soon, then it is when we lose our NHS and not if. It's happening now at great pace.

Anyone who seriously doubts what I am saying need only to read this piece in the Telegraph by two doctors Dr Clive Peedell and Dr Richard Taylor who are forming the new National Health Action party and intend to put up candidates in Coalition seats in order to try and save our NHS. See HERE

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Has This Government and Ed Davey Lost the Plot?

People are struggling with their bills and the recent hike in gas and electricity are really frightening people and the government's answer to this is to raise the utility bills even more under the guise of Renewable Green Energy Investment? An investment with a cost not being met by the government or the Thatcher *privatised* utility companies but by the majority being forced to be met by the people of this country. These measures will fuel on average a rise of around £150 average per year!

"Earth to planet Davey" people do not have the money for this huge increase. Can he and this Tory controlled government advise struggling families, who are barely getting by now, how on Ed Davey's "green earth" they are going to find this extra money?

Liberal Democrat New Age Tory, Ed Davey, Energy Secretary, is a buffoon, he lurches from being "green" to "scorched" in half a sentence! Thanks to the Tory government's scorched earth policies, which Ed Davey not only personally supports, but has wholeheartedly endorsed with his voting power in parliament, people living on low incomes are already living in fuel poverty, while people just above them on the income scale are beginning to slip through the net in droves, and the way things are going, pretty soon, many thousands of "middle income Britain" will joining them!

Not only does Ed Davey appear to be flippantly batting away the enormous strain his policy will place on people already almost losing the fight to manage their household expenses, he also ignores the consequences his proposals will have on small businesses, who are already struggling to pay the soaring cost of utilities! The rising cost of utilities are the main cause of rising costs for 45% of small companies. If these businesses want to remain in business then many have no other alternative but to pass their price hikes onto the consumer. It's a vicious circle. When this happens the consumer is left with even less to spend, and consumer confidence is hit still further, local economies take a pounding and this in turn feeds into the general economy, which then adversely affects supply and demand. No demand, equals no growth, and no growth, equals recession and already economics experts are predicting we will enter a triple dip recession in the New Year! You do not have to be economics professors Joseph Stieglitz or David Blanchflower etc to understand this, and What sparked this downward spiral into the abyss in consumer spending (or lack of) off? Answer: The fiscally illiterate Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne and his massive hike in VAT, from 17.5% to a huge 20%. Couple this with what will be the sacking of around a million public sector workers and the omission of their spending power in the economy, it's not hard to see why we are in this spiral of despair now.

The public are in a lose - lose situation.

Public services are being cut and are descending into fear, chaos and confusion and with no expert public sector staff to run them proficiently they are starting to disintegrate  so the public lose out in terms of excellent public services in the NHS, education and local authorities. The economy is also being driven into a black hole and we are being driven back towards Victorian times. We miss not only the excellence of the public sector w employee but we also miss the public sector's spending power in the economy, and their tax and national insurance receipts into the Treasury,and now have a rise in benefit payments to people that would have otherwise stayed productive earning and spending in the economy and paying tax and national insurance into the Treasury. And all of this because the eejit incompetent Osborne cannot see the fiscal woods for the monetary trees who has deployed a scorched earth policy towards benefits and public spending which is doing untold damage to the British economy. If monetary policy is supposed to provide the blunt instrument with which to "bash the economy into line", via interest rates and controlled inflation, then Osborne has by-passed the Bank of England's influence and gone out and purchased, not just a cosh with which to bludgeon the economy half to death, but a pile driver with which to bury the British economy deep into the Tory scorched earth's crust, and Liberal Democrat, New Age Tory Ed Davey, has supported these measures at every opportunity he possibly could by voting with the fiscally illiterate Tory government. Davey is currently aiding the Tory government in their production of scorched earth economic "suicide pills", which we will all need if this incompetent government is allowed to keep blundering through the echelons of the British economy, if they are not stopped - and soon - then there will be precious little to save and it will not be MPs, banksters and corporate friends of the Tory party and New Age Tory party (Liberal Democrats) that will be made to pay for it all - it will be us!

It's pretty hard to accept when today we learn that the Tory government have wasted £5billion on a back to work scheme that has totally failed to get people back to work! The only people this scheme has helped is the Tory doning, Tory supporting back to work companies this ridiculously incompetent Tory government have hired in place of the successful RDAs! Once again we see taxpayers money hemorrhaging out of the Treasury and into the bank accounts of the private sector companies like A4e. Of course the stupid government could have left the previous Labour government's Regional Development Agencies in place who were actually helping to get 100's of thousands of people back to work,  but no this incompetent government knew best - only obviously they did not!

Ed Davey voted to increase the rate of VAT and voted to raise undergraduate's tuition cap to £9000 per year. He has voted with the Tories on EMA which is penalising poorer sixth form students in their studies. He has supported the government in their attempts to privatise education and has also supported the Tory government on the their controversial Health & Social care bill (now an Act of Parliament) which is currently destroying and privatising the NHS and he has also voted for regional NHS pay. (Delicious irony fact - how about we vote for regional MPs pay?)

Now the New Age Tory (Liberal Democrat) party with their multi coloured political swap shop pullovers and rosettes, are not only are helping the Conservatives batter those on benefits and low incomes into submission with the threat of fear destitution via sanctions to benefits etc, but they seem to think these "scum benefit scroungers" people fall into two categories "undeserving poor" and "deserving poor", the former being oversubscribed, and the latter barely in operation! Astonishingly the multi faceted political chameleons now want to put an even bigger strain on the "scum scrounger benefit cheats" *people* (who they have forgotten are actual human beings) via their utility bills and they are supporting the Conservatives who were the political party under former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who sold off this country's utilities, to France, Germany and tried to privatise anything that wasn't nailed down.

If only "Sid" could see what his backing of the Tory government's privatisation and sell off of shares in British Gas in 1986, would do to the ordinary "working man" in 2012, under the guise of a coalition government which would have been more at home in Hitler's Germany. No doubt his "hiss" would have rapidly been reduced to a pfft!

As usual back then, just as it is undoubtedly is now the shareholders who benefit out of our  public companies and our public services. During and after the battering of Thatcher, you were probably a Tory if you had at least a spare £1,350 for a 100 shares in British gas and in 1986 £1,350 was a huge amount for ordinary families to find and was completely out of most people's reach! Of course some ordinary people bought into the scheme, but it was foreign investors who purchased the biggest number of shares giving them control of our gas (and electricity) companies, which is underpinning the problems we are all experiencing with escalating utility costs today. The same happened with British Rail and exactly the same is happening right at this very moment with the NHS, education and welfare! Are people going to really have to wait another 26 years before they realise how big a mistake this is, or will they learn the lessons of Gas, electric, water and British rail etc?

When people had finally had enough and felt pushed to the extreme, Thatcher's measures led to the poll tax riots in 1990, what will The Tories and their "New Age Tory" counterparts measures lead to in the not too distant future? The mood on the streets is turning uglier with each passing day, couple this with people's genuine feelings of resentment against being demonised by the British government, who seem hell bent on turning factions of society against each other, able bodied against disabled, employed against unemployed, young against old, private sector workers against public sector workers, neighbour against neighbour, healthy people against sick people, indigenous population against immigrants etc in order to get their draconian austerity measures through, it is not hard to see that the whole thing has become a  tinderbox just waiting for some "bright spark" not dissimilar to Ed Davey to set it all off. An extra average of £4.50 per week on fuel bills may not seem a lot to the likes of Ed Davey and Conservative spokesman millionaire Tim Yeo, but it may just prove to be the straw that finally broke the back of the camel of not only the poor on benefits and the low waged, but on middle income earners too and thousands of small businesses up and down the length and breadth of this country!
George Osborne, the chancellor, settled for a cap of £7.6bn in today’s prices on the framework by 2020 – a leap from the subsidy cap of £2.6bn for the 2012-13 financial year, rising to £3.9bn in 2015.This extra cost will be passed on to households and companies through higher energy bills - Finacial Times
It's all very well for the likes of politicians like Ed Davey to have principles etc and one may just be able to understand the merit of why this needs to be done, but it should not fall to the poor, unwaged and low waged of this country to pay for the benefits, that the rich will once again make a killing out of. We saw this with the sell off and privatisation of our utilities and railways and can all now plainly see the catastrophe that these measures proved to be for ordinary people and will be exactly so again with the Renewable Sources bill and is it is already proving to be with the privatisation of the NHS and state school education. Why should the ordinary people who never gained out of the Conservative government's various privatisation of our services, be forced to pay for them though the nose, just like they are being forced to pay now for the banks and financial sector's collapse?

Why should ordinary people who have next to nothing be forced to line the shareholders pockets and  bank accounts of Tory doning health companies, utility companies and banks? Especially while this dreadful government seek to lay the blame for all this country's ills firmly at their door, while allowing bankers to go unchallenged and uncharged and get away with their crimes against the people of this country's standard of living, jobs, savings and businesses?

The government's austerity measures are not designed to pay down the debt and improve the deficit (because both are increasing), but they are s designed to privatise everything in the country, soon we will have absolutely nothing left, it will all be in the hands of Tory doning private sector who operate for profit, not for the benefit of our people. It's true, it's happening and it is happening right now.

Mark my words, people are extremely frightened, they cannot physically bear or accept another attack on their finances or their standard of living and will not accept another huge hike in utility bills and this Tory government and their New Age Tory Liberal Democrat mates will corner scared frightened people at their peril!

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Labour Failed In Reducing Child Poverty? Iain Duncan-Smith You Are a Bare Faced Liar!



If ever Dodgy Dave Cameron and his mates get fed up with screwing everything up in government, they could always turn to publishing books, I have just the titles for them:

How to Fiddle the Unemployment Figures - By David Cameron
How To Rent your House and Make Thousands out of the Taxpayer - By David Cameron
How To Procure Millions of Pounds for Your Political Party From Shadow Banks - By David Cameron
How To get Your Treasurer To Sell Dinner With the PM For £250,000 - By David Cameron
How to Obscure the Tanking British Economy -  By George Osborne
How To Make £450,000 Out of Taxpayers - By George Osborne
How to Avoid Paying Inheritance tax - By George Osborne
How To make £70,000 out Of Taxpayers - By Stephen Dorrell
How To procure Thousands of Pounds From Health companies - By Andrew Lansley
How To Help Virgin Care Buy Up the NHS - By Jeremy Hunt
How To Nick £60,000 From The TaxPayer and Get away With It - By David Laws
How to Pretend That You care About Child Poverty - Iain Duncan-Smith

The latest from the Work and pensions Secretary, Ian Duncan-Smith is that he cares about poverty (if you believe that you'll believe anything). Actually, what he cares about is bringing out a whole raft of measures that are literally going to mean that some people are forced to choose between heating their homes, or eating, while others will be in very real danger of losing their homes under Smith's cap on housing benefit. Then try and conceal it by  pretending you care and order a study into child poverty that we do not need. And who has Iain Duncan-Smith roped in to help him deceive the public over poverty? No other than Liberal Democrat David Laws, the new minister for schools, the man who Cameron fired Sarah Teather for. Laws is the man who is an ex banker multi-millionaire who fiddled the tax payer out of over £60,000 to pay rent to his lover on the pretext he didn't want his family to discover he is gay. He was rewarded for his deceit by being promoted back into the Cameron government and allowed to sit in on cabinet meetings and now he is helping IDS pull the wool over people's eyes about child poverty, it's a disgrace. Children will soon be living in poverty, in freezing cold damp poorly lit homes with little or no food for long periods, this is what IDS and Laws and this hideous Tory controlled government are concealing!

The true reason why Smith is trying to obscure poverty and how it's measured is because he knows perfectly well that his new policies are going to cause a massive increase, not only in child poverty, but in poverty generally and he is going to mask the effects. The man is not only a nasty bullying hypocrite, he is also a deceitful bare faced liar.

We already have the Child Poverty Act 2010 to measure poverty effectively, we do not need anymore layers of bureaucratic clap trap to try and purposefully confuse the issue.

IDS and erstwhile "friend" David Laws have just launched a consultation paper on how to better measure child poverty. Better for who though? Children or this feckless government?

Smith says: "we must learn the lessons of a decade" he is shameless, he hides behind his cloak of religion and lies through his back teeth. He said that "despite best intentions and an unprecedented level of spending" Labour failed to cut child poverty by a half and not enough was done to break the cycle of disadvantage.

This is just so disingenuous, yet where is Labour's response?  Why didn't they immediately point out that-true Labour miss *its own target* to cut child poverty by a half, but they did succeed in cutting it by a quarter down from the excruciating high levels it was left at by previous 18 years of successive Tory governments? To reduce poverty by that amount was an astonishing achievement. IDS knows very well that during boom years the poverty measure changes and it is harder to get people out of poverty and when we have a fall in the standard of living it gives a false picture that more are being lifted from poverty.Which makes Labour's achievements even more successful. That's why there are four measures as checks. But 60% is the international benchmark by which we will be measured by Eurostat, Unicef, the OECD and everyone else. As the IFS says, whatever the short term blips, over any longer stretch this measure fairly reflects a nation's poverty level.


David Cameron, in his now notorious Hugo Young lecture, accepted the measure and claimed inequality mattered. "More unequal countries do worse according to every social indicator" he said – though he has now reneged from that. He also claimed: "As the state expanded under Labour, our society became more not less unfair." Not true, saysProfessor John Hills, the LSE's great expert on inequality. He says the poor caught up significantly with the middle, and all those below the line did better by exactly the same amount, not just those who inched over it. The great distortion was the soaraway top 0.5%, the mega-rich Labour dared not touch. Leave them out, and the rest of the country became more equal. 
The other untruth is that Labour did nothing but splurge on benefits. This government erases the past, as if 2010 was year zero in tackling the causes of poverty. Labour used the nuanced phrase "social exclusion" to capture the many reasons why people get left behind. A social exclusion unit supervised 18 taskforces exploring every cause and effect, from worklessness to debt, low skills, poor neighbourhoods, bad housing, educational failure, mental health, single parenthood and more. Every year a fat document, Opportunity For All, benchmarked progress on removing causes of disadvantage, including breastfeeding and smoking: why has that been abandoned? 
Consider what else they did. Catching family problems early was at the heart of Labour policy, with Sure Start children's centres and free nursery education. The decent homes plan brought millions of dilapidated social homes up to standard after years of neglect. The claim that Labour ignored work is shameless: "Work is the best welfare" and "A hand up, not a hand out" were Labour mantras from the start. The programme to get single parents into work was an unprecedented success, now dismantled, like the successful scheme that cut teen pregnancies. The Guardian

I really get sick of the way this government of corrupt millionaires lie and cheat and sit pretty while they dish out severe austerity measures on the poor, low waged, disabled, unemployed. I bet none of these people's children will go without this Christmas. This government are doing more to impoverish a whole generation than any other government in this country.

Under Labour, they reduced child poverty by 300,000, it has taken this God forsaken government just 2.5 years to reverse that entirely and place an almost identical number 300,000 back into poverty. All some people have got to look forward to in the new year and spring is poverty and for thousands, they now have the very real fear that they will be losing their homes under IDS benefit cap and Housing benefit cap.

No wonder that the evil bastard Anasazi that is IDS wants to now fiddle the poverty statistics, he wants to conceal the million children he is going to be responsible for placing in poverty. He doesn't want you to think that not having money to heat your home, or feed and clothe your children or put a roof over their head is living in poverty, than man should be locked up for what he is trying to do to people.

This is the 21st century and IDS and this dreadful, hideous government are taking us back to Victorian times. What next? Work houses? Orphanages? People will be evicted from their homes, they'll be unable to rent any other, local authorities outside London will not be able to cope with the extra burden and in the end children are going to be torn screaming and crying from their parents and placed in care, where God alone knows what may happen to them.

It will all end in tears, but I doubt that Iain Duncan-Smith will be shedding any as he spends Christmas with his large family in their rent free mansion complete with tennis courts and swimming pool and extensive grounds. He also recently said poor people should be discouraged from having children by stopping their benefits. Don't forget that IDS is also the man that paid his wife thousands of pounds from the public purse saying she worked for him when she did no such thing, that makes him a cheat and a liar as well as a hypocrite.

Anyone who has a modicum of compassion could not vote for this shower of incompetent, arrogant, heartless fools. Soon there will be no one left willing to admit they voted for the Conservatives, they would be too ashamed to.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Just Who Are Cameron's True Scroungers?

David Cameron and George Osborne
Asleep While Britain Goes Down the Pan!

Has someone been able to come up with a reasonable explanation why it is that Liberal Democrat MP and former Chief secretary to the Treasury escaped criminal proceedings for knowingly falsely claiming over £60,000 in his parliamentary expenses and was then rewarded for his crime with a promotion from the prime minister?

Other MPs and peers from Conservative and Labour have paid the price of their expenses folly however, the weight of the law does appear to have come down much harder on Labour MPs than it has Tory and Lib Dem MP's and I am wondering why this is?

David Laws principle excuse for falsely claiming what amounts to be a kind of "housing benefit" was, he said, because "he is gay and did not want his family to discover the truth" about his sexuality.

Laws was found guilty of serious breaches of no less than six parliamentary regulations, yet was allowed to pay the money back and apologise given a 7 day suspension from parliament, and that was the princely sum of his punishment! (Other MPs have falsely claimed much less and they got a year's suspension and in fact resigned their seat). Laws didn't even have the decency to do what he knows he should have done and resign his seat as the MP for Yeovil, and Cameron and Clegg, far from sacking him (like Cameron promised he would with errant ministers and MPs) encouraged him to stay on, and later when he thought it was safe, rewarding his criminal behaviour with a promotion. So much for David Cameron's promising the electorate recall of their MP if they did not perform properly - yet another lie! It beggars belief and Cameron etal have the temerity to infer that other people on low incomes are "scroungers"!

David Laws
Laws is a multi-millionaire ex banker, he did not need to steal £60,000 from the taxpayer. If he did not want his family to discover he was living with his partner, then why didn't he just not claim housing costs? being a multi-millionaire it wasn't as if he didn't have the money! Why with all of his money did he claim and pass it to his lover to pay his mortgage? It wasn't just rent he claimed either, it was maintenance etc to his partner's house. It has always puzzled me how his family would have known what he was and wasn't claiming on his parliamentary expenses, why would they know, does he show them his expense claims? However, giving him the benefit of the doubt, if his family did see his expenses  didn't they think it was a bit odd that laws was paying for all these other things in his "landlord's" house? Wouldn't they thought it odd that a lodger would pay towards the upkeep of the house he merely rented a room in? At the end of the day, his lover was having his mortgage subsidised by the taxpayer and if he wasn't caught, Laws would have gone on claiming and the taxpayer would have part paid Law's partner's mortgage and it would have still been happening today!

If you or I falsely claimed that were renting a room in a house when if fact we were cohabiting (which is in effect what David Laws did) in order to receive housing benefit, do you think the local authority would not prosecute? If it got to court would the judge accept as mitigating circumstances you did it because you are gay?

No of course not, so why has David Laws got away with this and why at the earliest opportunity has David Cameron and Nick Clegg sacked Sarah Teather from the Government and promoted David Laws bringing him back into Government? And why is David Laws allowed to sit in on cabinet meetings?

I believe the only possible explanation for Laws being permitted to attend cabinet meetings is because Cameron and Clegg are going to give him a ministerial role in the not too distant future, and the position Laws currently holds in Government is just a stepping stone back to the cabinet and just a way of getting the public acclimatised to the fact that Laws is back on scene, despite the fact that he stole over £60,000 from the taxpayer and the public remain largely hostile to him!

What really infuriates, is that the prime minister, the deputy PM and the entire cabinet, the Tory party and the Liberal Democrat party, believe that David Laws is somehow worthy of special treatment, that he is a special case simply because he is gay? That because he is gay and chose to deceive his family, friends  work colleagues as well as the public is somehow acceptable as an excuse for his dishonest illegal behaviour? If it is illegal to discriminate against someone on the grounds of their sexuality, how can it be justified to plead homosexuality in mitigation of an offence?
If Laws was allowed mitigating circumstances on the grounds he did not want to "come out" as a homosexual, then why wasn't Denis MacShane allowed to mitigate on the grounds that his young daughter was horrifically killed in an accident, his mother in law died and his marriage broke up? Or should MacShane merely have said that he was "gay" and used that as mitigation? The difference between Laws and MacShane is laws stole £60,000 that's approximately £48,000 more than MacShane and MacShane did not profit personally, he even gave his interns the laptops, which probably went on to help them get further employment and the rest of the money he spent in connection with his government work in Europe. Laws simply paid off his lover's mortgage and paid for the maintenance of his central heating system etc. I've asked it before, so I'll ask it again and no doubt I'll keep asking it until this hideously hypocritical government answers: "Where is the parity in these two cases"?

The entire government is just so hypocritical. Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan-Smith is about to make thousands of families homeless in April 2013 by punishing them for something that is completely beyond their control. IDS is going to place a cap on their benefits which will make it impossible for a great many families to stay in their present accommodation as they will be unable to pay the Tory landlords rent. He says he wants to make work pay, however, the vast majority of people who are claiming housing benefit are actually in work, but they do not earn enough, they are in part-time or low paid work. So how is docking their money making them feel that work pays? Many may just take the view that they may as well just give up the struggle of getting to work with the high cost of fairs and fuel and other expenses, give up the effort and worry of paying their gas, electricity and water bills and rent and rates and claim it all off of the state! IDS and Cameron have a pretty stupid idea of how to "make work pay"! If Tory doning corporations refuse to pay their workers a decent living wage and continue in hiring more part-time workers instead of full-time workers because it is cheaper to hire part-timers as the employer does not have to pay out so much in national Insurance contributions (NICs), then people will be forced to leave as they will simply be unable to afford to go to work and how will this be their fault? The majority of these companies with such bad practices who treat their workers so badly, do not even pay proper corporation tax, so the taxpayer loses out in several different ways:
  • Very little in corporation tax being paid by these companies so Treasury tax revenues are down
  • Low waged employees pay little or no income tax, so Treasury brings in less tax revenues
  • The state is forced to subsidise companies to pay low wages by topping up employees pay, pushing the benefits bill up
  • These big companies also benefit from the Tory/LibDem government providing them with FREE full-time workers on work government workfare schemes.
  • Free workers means less paid jobs so Treasury once again is not bringing in income tax revenue
  • Hiring two part-time workers means employees pay less in NICs, again affecting the Treasury coffers.
  • Then low waged people will spend less in the economy, which in turn affects us all, if Government dock their working family tax credits and housing benefits, there will be even less spent in the economy!
And this Tory controlled government has the cheek to accuse people of "scrounging"? I know who it really is who is scrounging and cheating the benefits system in this country and it is *not* the public, it is all these mega multi billion corporations, many of whom actually donate millions to the Tory party who are bleeding this country dry and any threat to make them pay their way properly in a civilised society that they benefit greatly from, has them threatening to leave the country and set up sweat shops in India etc. For what they cost this country, personally, I would show them where the door is, but warn them, that once they vacate the UK, they will be *prevented* from trading here in future. If this government wants to get tough, and act tough, then it should get tough with the correct people and stop pickling on soft vulnerable targets!

Meanwhile every single day this Tory controlled government does nothing about these corporations and banks etc is a raid on the wallet of the ordinary person and it is being condoned by the Tories, who are seeking to make ordinary people the scapegoats. These Tory supporting/funding corporations are making themselves and their shareholders mega rich at our cost, it's time people woke up and realised who the real scrounging crooks are!

Greed is running rife and is completely out of control right through this Tory government and Tory supporting corporations, the bubble is inflating daily and just like the credit bubble, it will soon burst. What then?

Tonight it will be revealed that the Tory cabinet Secretary, Francis [Jerry can] Maude will be exposed on Ch4 Dispatches programme as claiming for council tax; gas and electricity charges; ground rent; buildings insurance; internet connection; a TV licence; renting a TV set as well as claiming service charges. Maude's service charges alone are said to be around £5000 per year.

Tory rising star, Helen Grant is claiming £20,000 for a London flat but living in a £1.8m mansion in Surrey.

Does Mark Hoban Minister for Employment. think it is morally acceptable to harass and insult people and treat them like children, ordering them to do things he would not do himself? Does he think it is morally acceptable to call people "scroungers" while he himself claimed thousands of pounds in expenses for items such as wide screen TVs and red silk cushions and a lavatory brush which cost £18?

Does IDS think it is morally acceptable to claim for expenses for his wife, even though she never did the work? Does he think it acceptable to cap peoples benefits and make them homeless while claiming thousands in expenses himself and living rent free in a Buckinghamshire mansion complete with tennis courts and swimming pool and extensive grounds?

Treasury minister David Gauke will be named as pocketing £27,000, made from the sale of his second home which was funded partly by taxpayers.
David Gauke is the minister who believes it is morally wrong for cleaners etc to be paid in cash!  Does he also think it is morally wrong to trouser £27,000 of taxpayers money while criticising those unfortunate enough to be in low paid work and supporting his government who are going to take away their housing benefit and make them homeless?

What about David Laws, doe she think this is morally wrong too? 

Is it morally acceptable for the Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne to force people to increase their personal debt on credit cards to pay their mortgages, their energy bills, to fill up the car of pay the kids school dinner money, in order that he can say the country has come out of the double dip recession he and his "mate" Dave caused?

Is it morally acceptable for this government to force people with little or nothing to take out these legal loan shark payday loans, like Wonga who has connections to the Conservative party?

Is it morally acceptable to force people to sell their gold and other possessions in order to buy food for their families because they can no longer manage, because this government are driving down workers pay and conditions in the work place?

Is it morally acceptable that ordinary people who did not cause the problems in this country's economy or the global economy should be forced to pay for those who did? Tory bankers like David Laws, Michael Fallon, Francis Maude etc etc?


"We're All In It Together"?

If you say so Dave!

Do you see
 David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg, David Laws, 
Iain Duncan-Smith, Chris Grayling, Mark Hoban,
Helen Grant, Francis Maude, David Gauke, 
Or any of the Tory Tyranny in this picture?
No - Thought Not!



Saturday, November 17, 2012

What A Pity TRUE Victims of Child Abuse Cannot Get Such Swift Justice!

David Cameron and his Government  and "friends" in secret places appear to be creating the mother of all smokescreens in order to cover-up, that, which a previous Conservative government also managed to conceal many years ago, using chaos and confusion to obscure the truth.

Apparently McAlpine and the BBC have reached a settlement and almost two hundred thousand pounds of licence fee payers money is probably winging its into McAlpine's bank account as we speak, pity the victims of this whole sordid case can't get such swift legal recognition and compensation for the pain and distress and ruined lives they have suffered! I know it must have been horrendous for McAlpine, however, at least for him the establishment acted swiftly, this is so not the case for the victims of this heinous crime, it's still rumbling on so many years and years later and the victims still have nothing or next to nothing!

Ever since this sordid matter reignited, the prime minister's 'moral outrage' has been a joke and a complete sham. The number of Tory MPs who crawled out of the woodwork to take sly aim at the victims of childhood sexual abuse was also sickening, but what else can we expect from that party? The Tories are hardly a political party known for their sensitivity and compassion to people less fortunate than themselves.  Then just as it looked that the Newsnight/BBC fiasco may start to die away, up popped the Tory MP John Whittingdale, who chairs the Culture Select Committee, to wade in trying his best to reignite the whole thing by announcing, he has written a letter to the Director of ITV complaining about ITV and presenter Philip Schofield.  Still more subterfuge in an attempt to keep this Newsnight spat on top of the news rather than do what should be done - concentrating on the victims and letting the public know what is happening. Once again we have let these people down very very badly and once again the Conservative party have been in the thick of it!

Over the past couple of days Lord McAlpine has emerged to tell us all how angry he was, good for him, I would have been angry too, but, I am a hell of a lot angrier at the disgusting way victims of childhood sexual abuse have been treated in this country by the press, and this hideous Tory controlled government. I note that McAlpine wasn't sufficiently enraged enough to prevent him from accepting such a huge payout from the taxpayer though. Is there a lost principle there? I also note what appears to be veiled threats coming from McAlpine's legal team against people that may have mentioned his name on twitter, I've news for them, they cannot sue people for money which they don't have and it may come as a surprise to Lord McAlpine, but the vast majority of people haven't got two pennies to rub together at the moment, thanks in most part to alarmingly incompetent Tory controlled government which he supports! He also can't sue people for talking about him or telling the truth, it's only libel if what is being said isn't true and I never saw or read anything untoward on twitter, mainly just people asking what all the fuss was about, since when does Lord McAlpine's legal team have power over people's conversations? Or have we all suddenly woken up in Russia? I think these over privileged people are beginning to get way ahead of themselves.

Personally I couldn't give a twopenny damn about Newsnight, or the ridiculous nitpicking letter Tory MP John Whittingdale sent to the Director of ITV, but just to add my bob's worth, why has there been so much fuss about a name that was *NOT* actually announced by anyone during the Newsnight TV programme? Why is Newsnight to blame for conclusions on twitter that some may have jumped to? Why is Lord McAlpine's legal team engaging in shady innuendos trying to scare twitter uses who mainly just asked an innocent question for example: "why is Lord McAlpine trending"? They know they cannot sue anyone for making a remark like that, so why are they behaving in this threatening way? They need to ask themselves if intimidation and manipulation used like that is against the law too, or they may find themselves on a counter legal action. This Tory government are taking this country and totally destroying everything.  Has our democracy really been damaged this far under this autocratic Tory controlled "Hitleresque" coalition government? Does this dreadful and hideously incompetent government really have this much control over our thoughts and communications? Or is this something they are working furiously towards, in order that we be silenced and unable to criticise them, or talk about any heinous misdeeds by politicians in the future? Hence their trying to pass a law that gives them the right to look into our medical records and flog them off to "interested parties", or which gives them the right to get into our email accounts and read our emails? Where was Lord McAlpine's/The Sun/The Mail/ outrage against this assault on our democratic freedoms? Strange how these monied privileged people only seem to find their voice when it affects them personally, meanwhile the poor, disabled, unemployed, elderly and vulnerable are being metaphorically half battered to death by this shocking out of control Troy government. Or is the party that is supposed to be for individual freedom just one big stinking rotten red herring on a hot summer's afternoon too? And why doesn't this terrible government tell us all where the plight of the REAL victims in this ridiculous Newsnight red herring lay? Or have they now been suitably silenced too scared to speak out not only because they fear they will not be believed, but also now because they fear they may be sued. Well done Cameron, you must be so proud of yourself!

Amid much fanfare the Home secretary Theresa May announced inquires that on closer inspection turn out to be anything but. How that woman can live with herself and her lies and foolish incompetence is beyond me.

Apparently a Justice Macur has been asked to conduct an Inquiry into the original Inquiry to observe if it was carried out properly. One wonders if in another 16 years will we have another future Tory Home Secretary announcing that they have ordered and Inquiry, to look into the Inquiry, that was set up to look into the original Inquiry? Omnishambles? there really isn't a word invented which could adequately describe this ridiculously stupidly inept Tory controlled government, so hyperbole abounds I'm afraid!

Do we need an Inquiry to tell us that  the Justice Waterhouse Inquiry had no real power and the remit he was given by the then Welsh Secretary, William Hague, was deliberately narrow? It all smacks of delaying tactics and create obfuscation to me, probably introduced until all the witnesses either commit suicide, die, or get murdered? See HERE for a list published in the Independent Newspaper in 1996.

This whole affair seems to have been micro-managed.  Could it be the PM and his chief spin doctor - Craig Oliver (the former editor of BBC flagship news programmes) and Tory peer Lord Patten, Chairman of BBC Trust (parachuted in by Cameron) and his erstwhile "pretendy son" the former BBC Director General George Entwistle? Must be bad if the government are going to these lengths to conceal whatever it is they appear to be trying to conceal!
The days following Newsnight have been one long very unfunny joke, full of farce, lies and innuendo, like a plot for a far fetched political play by the autocratic David Cameron on speed!

Not adverse to indulging in a bit of shameless politicking, on seeing his chance, David Cameron charged in on his hard rough ride steed, to condemn the BBC's £450,000 payoff to Entwistle, who is he trying to kid?

What seems to have been hidden forgotten  in all of this public hand-wringing being undertaken by the prime minister and his clones, is the indisputable fact that 'Sir' Peter Morrison, who was closely linked to the heart of Margaret Thatcher's government has been implicated in child sexual abuse. Morrison has also been named in former senior Tory Health minister, Edwina Currie's autobiography as procuring boys for underage sex.

With all this faux hooha about Newsnight being used as a smokescreen, sadly the victims of this abuse are still being ignored and they still do not believe they will be heard or that action will be taken, as one of them says in this Ch 4 documentary  where a reporter asked: "Do you think we will ever get to the truth?"....Eye witness replied "No, too many people have got too much to hide"! 

Sadly with the closing of ranks of the Conservative party and the ridiculously blown out of all context Newsnight programme, it looks like these eye witnesses and victims will be proven right - yet again! Morrison is not alone either, yet this story has become so muddled, so confused that it is almost impossible to get to the truth and the Inquiries announced by Theresa May Tory Home Secretary will not serve anyone, except for the perpetrators of child abuse, as with the deliberately confined Waterhouse Inquiry ordered by the then Conservative Welsh Secretary William Hague in 1996, no names will be allowed to be mentioned, so once again the witnesses are being silenced by a cloak of Conservative political secrecy.

Lord McAlpine was *NOT* implicated and he is totally innocent and only been to Wrexham once and I have no reason to doubt him, good we have that clear.

But it doesn't alter the fact that two people with the same surname as McAlpine have already been named in possible abuse cases.......Are police detectives actively investigating this line of inquiry? It looks like they escaped investigation in the original Inquiry because they were not allowed to name names! Will this be the same with the Macur Inquiry now?

How much longer are we going to allow governments to pull the wool over our eyes before we demand that these eyewitnesses and survivors of the childhood sexual abuse be heard and be heard properly? The deliberate obfuscation and the deployment of disinformation by Cameron and Tories in general and their "friends" in the right wing press last week was as sickening as it was totally and utterly wrong and completely unjust.

Peter Righton was the former Director of Education at the National Institute for Social Work and was a consultant for the National Children's Bureau, yet was also predatory paedophile who founded the PIE. PIE members presented themselves not as abusers, but as "child lovers" keen to "liberate" children  from sexual "repression"who wanted the age of consent reduced to four. Righton published essays justifying paedophilia, which he called no more mysterious than “a penchant for redheads”. Some of Righton's colleagues backed this but later sought to explain his enthusiasm for sex with children away, by saying they did not want to appear "anti gay"!

Many children made serious allegations against Righton, yet nothing was ever done about it and during the years of the Conservative government, his career was allowed to flourish. When Customs and Excise intercepted a package of child pornography posted to Righton from Holland in 1992, police eventually raided his home and discovered the true extent of his crimes when hundreds of pieces of correspondence between him and other paedophiles, which revealed that he had abused, prostituted and shared numerous boys. Righton's associates and correspondents included an assistant bishop, artists, aristocrats and public school teachers.  It was at that time that it also emerged that Righton's lover ran New Barns School in Gloucestershire a school for emotionally disturbed children, which admitted many children from London care homes and Righton was the school's vice-chairman of governors. The school was investigated and closed down.
There has been suicides connected with this school and an Islington care home, Nick Rabet, committed suicide in 2006 after being arrested for abuse, he used to drive pupils back and forth between the home and the school.
One social worker who was said to be deeply concerned about one of the pupils of New Barns after the boy confided in him, disappeared on Christmas Eve 1989 after promising the boy action, the files of the boy he was so concerned about disappeared with him and neither he or the files has ever been seen of heard of again! It was Nick Rabet that used to drive this boy between the home in Islington and New Barns school in Gloucester. the disappearance of this social worker meant the home could tell police that it had never sent pupils to New Barns school. The Inquiry into Peter Righton's alleged ring was closed from orders "from on high" in 1994. Righton was given a £900 fine for his child porn imports, and a caution for a 30-year-old-indecent assault.

So much for the Conservative government credentials of law, order and justice!

Many other similar investigations into paedophile rings have also mysteriously been closed and then just as in the case of now in 2012, cover-ups have taken place; events and the victims and eye witnesses demanding investigation have been ignored. The Inquiries and investigations ordered by Theresa May and David Cameron are in my opinion just cover-ups with fancy names! In the end nothing will be done, because for anything to be done, the perpetrators many of who did or may still hold senior positions within our society.

The one and only good thing about now is that Tom Watson the Labour  MP and deputy chairman has got hold of this and as we have seen from his endeavors over exposing hacking concerning the Murdoch newspapers, he will not let it go.

If we fail the victims now after they have placed themselves in the firing line of people like two of the most iniquitous journalists David Rose and Bob Woffinden writing in the right wing newspaper the Mail On Sunday then we fail as a decent civilised society. I have no idea why, but these "journalists" (and I use that term lightly) disgracefully and despicably took it upon themselves to attack a victim and completely misrepresent what he said, totally and utterly without thought or care or conscience. It was just bullying of a man who has suffered so much in his life, bullying of a man powerless to fight back, a survivor of horrific childhood abuse and the dreadful effect this has had on him, bullied by these two journalists, even for the Mail on Sunday this ranked pretty despicable.
They did a job on this victim and systematically and in my opinion deliberately, misrepresented his whole case against the state and took a metaphorical wrecking ball to it, more or less giving the green light to those who raped him over 50 times when he was just a boy in a care home to just get away with their heinous crimes. When I read it I felt sickened to my soul, not because Mr Messham had made a mistake, but because it felt like he was being abused all over again by Rose and Woffinden and I felt "dirty" just reading that malicious venomous diatribe. I hope that if there is some justice in this world that someone with the knowledge and know how will come forward and offer to take Rose, Woffinden and the Mail on Sunday to court for defamation of character, they simply should not be allowed to pick on an individual like this, simply because they know he hasn't the means to strike back. If Lord McAlpine can complain and receive recompense in such a short period of time, then so should Steve Messham, why is there one rule for this rich and another for the poor? "We're all in this together?" Pah!

Perhaps being abused on a daily basis by those who were tasked with caring for him doesn't register on the consciences of Rose and Woffinden or the editor of the MoS,  fortunately however reading the comments below that disgraceful fetid piece which emanated from the sewer like minds of those who penned it, it appears that most readers didn't agree with them, and I take heart that the majority refuse to be taken in by a report which was clearly meant to deceive and mislead. If Newsnight is accused of "sloppy journalism" and should not have been broadcast, then so too should the Mail on Sunday stand accused of "sloppy [and feted] journalism" for publishing that grossly unfair piece of trash and they should be forced to apologise and pay the price for it!

Mr Messham's abuser was not Lord McAlpine, however, what is also going unreported is the fact that there were two other people with the McAlpine name in the Wrexham area and hopefully the police investigation currently being undertaken by Keith Bristow, will have this thoroughly investigated, in a way it was not investigated in the first Inquiry! Hopefully the Justice Macur Inquiry will be able to allow victims to name names too and their evidence will not be deliberately discredited, covered-up and swept under the carpet! (Although I am not holding my breath!) The way in which victims of this abuse were treated then is absolutely appalling and the way they continue to be treated is even more appalling now.

By the very nature and trauma these people have suffered in their childhoods could instigate behaviour as reported by Justice Waterhouse, and he should have made this absolutely clear. Trying to chin someone who is calling you a liar and a fantasist after being raped over 50 times by men when you were a boy should have been reported in context by the Mail on Sunday reporters, not make him out to be some out of control person who decided to chin someone for no specific reason (other than to themselves).

Why didn't these journalists report the dubious nature of the way the report compiled by the then Director of Derbyshire Social Services John Jillings, known as the "Jillings Report" was incredulously ordered to be "pulped"? The new police investigation *must* discover why the report of the investigation carried out by Jillings and all its copies was ordered to be destroyed, on who's say so? It was a legal document that should have been kept for a minimum of 7 years and was well within that time frame. I find it incredulous that on the orders of councils themselves acting under orders from their "insurers" this highly contentious legal document was ordered to be destroyed in its entirety, and Jillings himself apparently even destroyed his own copy! It smacks of a serious cover-up.
 Just as well Flintshire council has found a copy of the report in their archives and are finding out if it can be released under the freedom of information act, but don't hold your breath as David Cameron is sure to object, just like he did over the NHS reforms impact report! Or perhaps this too will mysteriously disappear?

"Currently there are at least 13 different inquiries including 3 BBC inquiries into Jimmy Savile, a Department of Health Investigation into Broadmoor, a CPS inquiry and Inquiries into child protection in Rotherham and Rochdale. Yet the Government has no way to draw all this together or to make sure that serious problems are not hidden by the fragmented nature of the investigations".

How are all these inquiries going to serve their purpose? There is no coordination, things will be missed and  links between people and possible paedophile rings will also be missed, abusers will go undetected and yet again slip through the net unpunished while their victims struggle to get on with their lives.

Perhaps the answer doesn't lie in so many more endless inquiries? Perhaps what we need is a dedicated task force of trusted police officers and detectives serving and non serving, men like Jim Gamble formerly head of CEOP (online child protection) to conduct it? Why not ask Mr Gamble? Or would that prove too embarrassing for this ridiculous government who disbanded CEOP causing the very much respected Mr Gamble to resign in disgust? I wondered why this government did this, however, perhaps now the pieces of the jigsaw are beginning to fall into place!