Butler-Sloss quits child abuse inquiry – under pressure from SOCIAL media?

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Attorney General, Baroness, blind eye, Butler-Sloss, child abuse, conflict of interest, David Cameron, delay, due diligence, Elizabeth, establishment, government, historical, inquiry, investigation, Jimmy Savile, Lady, Lord Tebbit, Margaret Thatcher, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Nelson's Eye, people, politics, sex, Sir Michael Havers, social media, Theresa May, Vox Political

Resigned: Baroness Butler-Sloss.

Would anybody argue with the suggestion that the social media – including blogs like Vox Political – played the largest part in the removal of Baroness Butler-Sloss from the government’s inquiry into historical child sex abuse investigations?

Until yesterday, Lady Butler-Sloss was adamant that there was no reason she could not head up the inquiry, even though her past associations with people she might have to investigate included her own brother, the late Sir Michael Havers, who was attorney general in the 1980s.

It was the social media that found this information and revealed it to the general public – who then complained bitterly to the government.

Do we believe Lady Butler-Sloss where she tells us she “did not sufficiently consider” whether her family links would throw the inquiry into question? It seems extremely out-of-character for a former judge, who would never – for example – have allowed a trial jury to include a relative of the defendant, to claim that she could be impartial about matters involving her own family. It was a clear conflict of interest.

One point that has been glossed-over is the fact that this woman is nearly 81 years of age and from the same privileged background as many of the people she would be asked to investigate. Did she even have the necessary sensibilities – or even the ability to open her mind to current thinking – required to head up an investigation such as this?

Of course, Lady Butler-Sloss was appointed by the Home Secretary, Theresa May. She has been accused of failure to carry out “due diligence” – the necessary checks to discover if a candidate can be relied upon to be impartial – but has defiantly claimed that her choice was good.

“I do not regret the decision I made. I continue to believe that Elizabeth Butler-Sloss would have done an excellent job as chair of this inquiry,” she told the Home Affairs select committee. Really? Excellent by whose standards?

We know from Lord Tebbit that there was a ‘hush-hush’ culture in the Thatcher government of the 1980s. He said people thought the establishment “had to be protected”.

Then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – who herself spent a great deal of time with serial child abuser Jimmy Savile – is now seen to have turned ‘Nelson’s Eye’ towards such accusations – the same eye with which he was able to make the claim, “I see no ships”. The eyes of history are likely to take a dim view of such blindness.

And of course the attitude she held is likely to pervade government even now, 30 years later. Perhaps Theresa May wanted this inquiry – which she had resisted for a long time – to be headed by a person who could be trusted not to rock the boat. Perhaps she had been told to select such a person.

Now we must wait for an announcement on a new chairperson. This also plays into the hands of those with skeletons (or worse) in their closets as it creates a delay.

Not only that, but we must all remain vigilant against the possibility that May will appoint another dud. The BBC’s report makes it clear that the requirement for a candidate to have a legal background and the security clearance necessary to be able to read confidential papers means it is hard to find anyone who is suitably qualified and is not part of the establishment.

We still do not know where this will lead and who will be implicated. People like Theresa May and David Cameron will want to protect members of their own Old Guard from retrospective vilification (if Lord Tebbit’s words are to be trusted), and it seems likely they will do everything in their considerable power to fob us off.

It is our responsibility to make sure they don’t.

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UK Establishment Used Care Home Network Like an Amazon Order System for Children to Abuse

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Elm Guest House, investigation, paedophile, paedophilia, Scriptonite

This story is dynamite. It is also distressing so for those of you who need to, consider very carefully before reading it.

From Scriptonite Daily:

For decades, vulnerable children from care homes and other institutions were booked to order by rich and powerful men, for abuse, rape and even murder.  This is the allegation put forward in ‘Nightmares at Elm Guest House’, in an interview with Chris Fay of the National Association for Young People in Care.  While the game may be over for former Tory Home Secretary, and David Cameron’s £500-a-day Trade Advisor Leon Brittan – once Brittan falls, the full and almost unbelievable horror of this case must come to light.

Read the full story on Scriptonite.

But you should also see this:

I have long left this subject to others to write about.  I had a sense that I should remain quiet on the matter until the legal process had concluded.  I changed my mind after watching Nightmares at Elm Guest House and reviewing the litany of prior police investigations, court cases and media scandals on the matter.  It appears that however close it has seemed, justice has failed to be done for many decades.  The establishment has circled the wagons each time, sacrificed a pawn or two to sate the appetites of public and press, then carried on business as usual.

Today, Theresa May announced the latest internal inquiry in the House of Commons, rather than a full scale public and criminal investigation. Leon Brittan may fall, while the entire edifice of this abuse and cover-up remain intact.

When one looks closer, we are facing the unfolding nightmare that politicians, pop stars and media figures have been supplied vulnerable children to rape and abuse, by members of the social services, over decades.  It is beginning to appear quite certain, that a significant number of children’s homes and institutions for young people, have been complicit in abuse on an industrial scale.  It is also apparent that a persistent cover up has meant people have been silenced, threatened and perhaps even killed to maintain the silence, and the networks of abuse.

The reason for us all to pay attention and for independent journalists and parties to maintain the pressure on this story – is simple.  It is likely that the networks and foul individuals involved have been allowed to fester, largely unchallenged, by the institutions intended to hold them to account.  The police, parliament, the press – all compromised and capitulated.  When members of these institutions were brave enough to come forward, they faced the full force of the establishment.  So it’s on us to stand up and be counted, so that this time, justice is firmly and finally done – in honour of each of the children abused repeatedly by the so called great and good of the UK establishment.  We do not know the guilt of any of those suspected, but we must ensure claims are fully investigated and where guilt is found, appropriate consequences are delivered.

Westminster Abbey protest: Police launch inquiry over treatment of protesters

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allegations, drink, food, ILF, independent living fund, inquiry, investigation, medication, medicine, police, prevent disabled, protest, Westminster Abbey

By John Pring, Disability News Service

The Metropolitan police have launched an inquiry into the policing of a five-hour protest outside Westminster Abbey, apparently following allegations that officers prevented disabled activists from receiving food, drink and medication.

It is just the latest inquiry to examine how the force has dealt with disabled people who have taken part in anti-austerity protests since the coalition came to power in 2010.

Saturday’s protest at Westminster Abbey was aimed at drawing attention to the government’s decision to close the Independent Living Fund (ILF), and included about 10 ILF-recipients, all disabled people with high support needs.

A heavy police presence arrived minutes after activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) began setting up a camp on private land belonging to the abbey, with the support of the mainstream grassroots groups UK Uncut and Occupy London.

Some of the activists were not able to enter the grounds because security staff – who appeared to have been warned about the protest in advance – had already locked some of the gates.

The police presence continued to grow until there were more than 200 officers surrounding a group of about 50 protesters, about half of whom were disabled people.

One of the protestors who had been unable to enter the grounds, Robert Punton, described later in a blog how a disabled activist inside the metal railings asked Punton’s personal assistant to pass him a bag, which contained his medication.

But a police officer pushed the bag back over the fence, even though he was told it contained vital medication.

Officers also refused to allow food and water to be passed over the fence.

Read the rest of this article here.

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Bone thrown to the expenses investigators

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expenses, George Osborne, inquiry, investigation, Maria Miller, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Mrs Bone, Peter Bone, pmq, Prime Minister's Questions, Vox Political, whitewash

Image: BBC.

Tory right-whinger Peter Bone is the latest MP to face questions over his expenses.

The inquiry will focus on expenses relating to the upkeep of his second home between 2005 and 2009. As such, the investigation will be carried out using the system that was in place before it was reformed after a string of scandals in 2009.

Both George Osborne and Maria Miller had their expenses examined under this system, so we can expect Bone to get away with any wrongdoing as well.

From evidence that has emerged in the Osborne and Miller investigations, it is clear that the pre-2009 investigation system was completely useless except as a way of whitewashing MPs’ reputations.

Of course, Bone is a frequent contributor to Prime Minister’s Questions, where he often claims to have been prompted into making a query by his wife.

In the unlikely event that he is found guilty of a misdemeanour, will he be blaming that on Mrs Bone as well?

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How do you fight disability hate crime if the police are the perpetrators?

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autism, Bedfordshire, commissioner, crime, disability, disabled, Faruk Ali, hate, Independent Police Complaints Commission, investigation, IPCC, learning difficulties, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, police, suspend, Vox Political, whitewash

An attack on a disabled man is being investigated by the local police and crime commissioner and the Independent Police Complaints Commission – because the victim said it was committed by on-duty police officers.

Bedfordshire’s police commissioner has said the alleged attack may have been a disability hate crime, but the force has stirred up anger by refusing to suspend the two constables while the investigation takes place.

Faruk Ali, who has autism and learning difficulties, allegedly suffered the assault as he stood in his slippers, next to the dustbins outside his family home.

He says – in a story confirmed by neighbours – that he was grabbed by one policeman, pushed to the floor, and thrown against some wheelie-bins before being chased screaming into the house. There, family members said the assault continued and one of the officers punched the victim.

The two accused policemen did not immediately report the incident to their superiors, and it is understood they have claimed they thought Faruk Ali was committing a robbery (in his slippers, remember).

The Disability News Service has the full story.

All I can say is the people of Luton, where the incident took place, had better hope they have a good commissioner; experience suggests the IPCC will be as much use as a bucket of whitewash.

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Is this the DWP’s latest statistics fix?

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5 Live, BBC, benefit, benefits, cap, Department, DWP, employ, employment, fix, fraud, Freud, government, interview, investigation, job, Jobseeker's Allowance, Lord, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Pensions, people, politics, seeker, self, social security, statistics, tax credit, unemployment, Vox Political, welfare, work, Work Programme

Detective work: Let’s uncover the facts hidden in the DWP’s latest attempt to dazzle us all with statistics.

According to the DWP, and dutifully repeated by the BBC, more than 3,000 people who were subjected to the government’s benefit cap have now found work.

But have they?

This statistic – and the basis on which it is worked out – seems very suspicious to us here at Vox Political. That is why this site is appealing for anyone whose benefit cap has been removed because of it to contact us with their story.

Here’s what the DWP is saying: “Over 8,000 households who had their benefits capped have since found jobs, reduced their benefit claim, or had another change of circumstance – with 40 per cent of these finding work.”

Lord Fraud – sorry, Freud… although it seems likely that he is living up to his nickname in this case – said: “It is encouraging to see that people who have been subject to the cap are moving into work, so soon after national implementation was complete.

“Our reforms are creating an alternative to life on benefits and already we are seeing an increasing number of people changing their circumstances so they are no longer subject to the cap.”

Changing their circumstances, are they? An alternative to life on benefits – or just an alternative life on benefits?

Does anybody else recall another situation in which people were advised to change their circumstances to avoid the effect of a government benefit change?

Here’s a clue: “Jobseekers on the Work Programme are being encouraged to declare that they are self-employed – when they aren’t – in order to get more money in tax credits than they would on Jobseekers’ Allowance.”

That’s right – this site reported, almost exactly a year ago (February 4, 2013), a BBC 5 Live investigation that interviewed people who “admitted they had been told to claim tax credits as self-employed people, even when they had no feasible job ideas or could not possibly turn a profit. They said they thought it was fraud.”

Let’s look at today’s figures on the Benefit Cap. The report suggests that 3,250 households were no longer subject to the cap – the magic 40 per cent who found work – because they had “an open tax credit claim”.

It would be wrong to suggest that every single one of these households had been urged to pretend self-employment, in order to avoid the cap – and thereby make it seem that the government was getting people into work, just as with the jobseekers last year. Some of them may have started their own business and some may have started working for other people.

But did they really all manage this feat, when there are five jobseekers for every available job?

It isn’t logical, is it?

That’s why Vox Political wants to hear from you if you were told to say you were self-employed, even though you didn’t have a job, in order to evade the Benefit Cap. You won’t be identified in any future article; the aim is to establish what is really going on.

It seems likely that the DWP is committing more benefit fraud than the rest of the country combined.

Vox Political deplores benefit fraud –
especially if it is committed by the government!
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Will the government really penalise GPs whose patients opt out of data sharing?

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anonymise, bid, bma, British Medical Association, bullied, bully, Care Quality Commission, care.data, CCG, clinical commissioning group, common, company, Conservative, Daniel Poulter, data, disease, doctor, Extraction Service, firm, form, General Patient, government, GP, GPES, GPonline.com, health, Health and Social Care Information Centre, healthcare, inform, Information Commissioner, investigate, investigation, Jeremy Hunt, letter, medConfidential, medical, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, National Health Service, NHS, opt out, penalise, people, pharmaceutical, politics, private, privatisation, privatise, profit, RCGP, record, reprisal, Research, Rosie Cooper, sale, screen, secretary, sell, share, sharing, sick, sold, threat, Tim Kelsey, Tories, Tory, undercut, Vox Political

It seems the government has found a way to dissuade GPs from letting patients opt out of having their medical records sold to private firms – the threat of penalties or even an investigation into the way they run their practice.

Vox Political revealed earlier this month that the government is planning to make a profit from selling the private records of NHS patients in England to healthcare and pharmaceutical firms.

The records are said to be ‘anonymised’, but in fact anyone buying your details will be able to identify you.

The system, originally called the General Patient Extraction Service (GPES), now the Health and Social Care Information Centre, may also be described as the care.data scheme. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants you to think the information will be used for medical research and screening for common diseases, but in fact it could be used by private health companies as evidence of failures by the National Health Service, and could help them undercut NHS bids to continue running those services – accelerating the privatisation that nobody wanted.

Patients have the right to withhold their data, but they must specifically inform their medical practice of their wishes. This is why medConfidential created a web page containing a special opt-out form, along with a form letter in various formats, allowing patients to opt out themselves, their children and any adults for whom they are responsible.

Now GPs are living in fear of reprisals if they don’t deliver enough details to the new system.

According to GPonline.com, Health minister Dr Daniel Poulter failed to rule out penalising GP practices with a higher-than-average proportion of patients opting out of new NHS data sharing arrangements.

In a written answer to Labour MP and health select committee member Rosie Cooper, Dr Poulter also refused to say what level of patient opt-out from the scheme would trigger an investigation.

Asked whether practices would be penalised, who would investigate practices with a high opt-out rate, and at what threshold this would apply, Mr Poulter said: “NHS England and the Health and Social Care Information Centre will work with the BMA, the RCGP, the Information Commissioner’s Office and with the Care Quality Commission to review and work with GP practices that have a high proportion of objections on a case-by-case basis.”

Ms Cooper took this as an admission that GPs were “being threatened and bullied into ensuring patients don’t choose to opt-out”.

Reacting on Twitter, NHS national director for patients and information Tim Kelsey ruled out fines for practices where large numbers of patients opt not to share data. He wrote: “Nobody is going to get fined if patients opt out.”

None of this offers a good reason for you to leave your medical records unprotected – in fact, it gives you more reasons to opt out than before, and might provide GPs with the excuse they need to retaliate.

Doctors have been pushed further and further by the Conservative-led government’s changes to the NHS. For example, they were told they would have a greater say in where the money went, as members of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), but that was not true – they don’t have the time to take part in such decisions so they have been handed over to firms that are often part of the private companies now offering services to the NHS (for a price).

Now they are being told they may face reprisals if they do not betray the principle of doctor-patient confidentiality.

But you can only push a person a certain distance before they push back.

How will NHS doctors in England respond?

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Phone hacking, Leveson and the AC/DC affair

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"loading a gun", AC/DC, affair, Andy Coulson, BBC, Brecon and Radnor Express, celebrities, celebrity, Chris Blackhurst, Coalition, Communications Director, confidential, Conservative, Conservatives, correspondence, criminal, David Cameron, Director of Communications, Downing Street, government, investigation, Leveson, Leveson Inquiry, Levi Bellfield, Lord Justice, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Millie Dowler, News of the World, phone hacking, police, press office, Rebekah Brooks, Rebekah Wade, scandal, The Independent, The New York Times, Tories, Tory

AC/DC: Was Andy Coulson guilty of criminally monitoring the activities of private individuals, and was David Cameron guilty of irresponsible misjudgement by allowing him into Downing Street? These are the important questions behind the Leveson Inquiry. There should be no concern about hurting another editor’s feelings.

Certain people seem to be forgetting that the Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press was partly prompted by a newspaper’s interference in criminal investigations after a schoolgirl was murdered.

It is understood that reporters from the News of the World (I don’t know how many of them did it) hacked into Millie Dowler’s mobile phone, listened to voice messages left on it, and then deleted them, allowing new messages to be left and illicitly monitored, and leading her parents to believe that the teenager, who had been killed by Levi Bellfield, was still alive. This act also hindered the police investigation into what had happened.

Rebekah Brooks, a close friend of Conservative MP David Cameron – who later became leader of the Tories, and Prime Minister in 2010 – was editor of that newspaper at the time. The New York Times alleged that, if the allegations were true, then it was possible Mrs Brooks knew about the hacking and allowed it.

I am a newspaper reporter – and was editor of The Brecon and Radnor Express for a while before running my own online news business for a few years. I know the scale of our respective operations was vastly different, but I can promise that I always knew how my reporters were getting their stories. If I didn’t know, I asked.

Mrs Brooks was followed as editor of the News of the World by one Andy Coulson, who went on to become Conservative Party Communications Director and then Director of Communications for the Prime Minister (when David Cameron assumed that role in 2010). He had taken up the Conservative Party position after resigning from the newspaper over the phone hacking affair. He had been subjected to allegations that he was aware his reporters were hacking into the telephones of private individuals, including celebrities.

The Andy Coulson/David Cameron (or AC/DC, as I propose to call it from now on) relationship is the important issue here.

The main question behind the Leveson Inquiry has always been this: Did David Cameron allow a criminal, who used illegal methods to monitor the activities of others, into the heart of the British government?

This would have been a colossal error of judgement – possibly an unforgivable one.

The editor of The Independent seems to have forgotten that this is what it’s all about. Responding to a letter from the Inquiry, Chris Blackhurst claimed that Lord Justice Leveson was “loading a gun” that he was preparing to fire at the newspaper industry.

He told the BBC it was “a point by point demolition of the industry”, describing it as a “diatribe” raising criticisms that did not bear any relation to practices at his “end of the market”.

This is a man who badly needs to get over himself. Serious questions have been raised about the behaviour of our national newspapers, and if the Inquiry has found that they are justified, then they need to be addressed.

He does not know the full extent of the Inquiry’s findings. The letter he received is a standard part of inquiry procedures and gives notice of possible criticism, offering those concerned a chance to respond before a conclusion is reached. They are one-sided because positive findings do not necessitate a warning.

And we should not gloss over the fact that Mr Blackhurst has broken the rules by making the complaint. The letter he received was confidential and those who receive such correspondence are obliged to keep them that way and not discuss them openly.

By whining about it, Mr Blackhurst has made Leveson’s point for him.