Curious case of Mary Wynch.

Or Mary Winch - but what is in a name ?

I have previously mentioned the case of Mary Wynch. Mary made legal history by being the first person to sue for being wrongly detained under the Mental Health Act –Dr Dafydd Alun Jones was one of those whom she sued. Mary’s case received widespread media attention in the London based press when she won the case – such was the aggro that she received in north Wales that by then she had gone into hiding in Eastbourne. I contacted her via the ‘Guardian’ and met up with her. I think that Mary has probably died by now, so there are a number of outstanding questions that cannot be answered. I have been trying to research Mary’s case for some while but have had great trouble retrieving information. It’s almost as if there has been an attempt to airbrush this case from history. However my co-researcher has now managed to access some information, including a transcript from the appeal – Mary had to initially appeal to the Master of the Rolls Lord Donaldson for leave to sue Jones et al.

I first read about Mary’s case after it was reported in the broadsheets in 1985, after Lord Donaldson allowed her appeal. I had just had my first taste of bad behaviour on the part of the north Wales mental health services but had no idea of just how corrupt that they were at that point. Over the following few years I received very serious grief from them, so when I read at some point in the late 80s that Mary had won her case against Dafydd Alun Jones et al I was keen to speak to her.
Mary told me an even worse story than had appeared in the press. Despite the allegations of ‘madness’ that those we know and love threw at Mary she was actually very level headed and was acutely aware that she couldn’t make statements in press interviews that she did not have evidence for, so she never spoke in public about some very worrying matters. I will summarise what she told me here.

Mary had lived in Caernarfon, worked as a secretary in the agriculture dept at Bangor University (known in those days as UCNW) and for a long while looked after her elderly mother. Mary had a sister whom she did not get on with. Mary told me that at one point her mother was in a care home owned by Jones. Mary was worried about the standard of care there – when her mother subsequently died, Mary was deeply concerned at the circumstances of her mother’s death. Mary’s worst fear was that her mother had died of an overdose that had been unlawfully administered. The story that Mary related to me was that when she saw her mother’s body, it was covered in blisters. Mary was later told that this could have been the sign of a barbiturate overdose. She talked at length of her deep frustration at never being able to prove this, although she was pretty sure that was what had happened. In the wake of her mother’s death there was a dispute between Mary and her sister over her mother’s estate. Mary described her sister as ‘evil’ and believed that her sister was in cahoots with both Dafydd Alun Jones and the solicitors whom Mary alleged had mishandled her mother’s estate. It seemed that Mary had encountered difficulties with a number of different local solicitors firms and she alleged that these solicitors were so closely linked that they effectively formed a ring. As a result of the dispute Mary was ordered to hand over certain documents but refused, as she believed that the law had been broken and corruption was at work.

She was imprisoned for contempt of court and sent to the notoriously grim Risley Remand Centre. She was then declared to be suffering from ‘paranoia’ and was detained in the North Wales Hospital for a year. When Mary finally got out she started the tortuous process of suing Jones, Clwyd Health Authority, Dr Paul Bishop (a GP) and Dr Paul Hayward (the medical officer at Risley Remand Centre) and the Home Office. By the time that I met her, negligence had been admitted and press reports had stated that Mary had been awarded £27,5000 damages – but she told me that everyone involved was quibbling over actually paying the damages and that it looked as though she was going to have to go to Court again to enforce payment. Intriguingly, no more information about Mary’s case or indeed Mary appeared in the media, despite the huge media interest that there had been. I never saw Mary again and I never knew whether she did receive her damages or what the results of her outstanding legal cases against other parties involved with the mishandling of her case were. The lack of further media coverage was quite inexplicable. When I met Mary, as well as telling me about her suspicions and fears regarding her mother’s death, she told me that conditions in Denbigh were dreadful. Interestingly enough although Jones had been prescribing huge quantities of anti-psychotics for her, as with me the nurses did not suggest that she take it. Mary told me that her greatest challenge in Denbigh was not showing any emotion – she realised that these people were a law unto themselves and would leap on any excuse to demonstrate further ‘insanity’ and who knows what would happen to her. She also told me another interesting anecdote. That the ‘young people’s ward’ was visible from the ward where she was imprisoned. Every evening the staff from Mary’s ward would gather around the window and watch the activities in the young people’s ward – Mary explained that the staff told her that Jones encouraged the young people to have sex with each other and that the staff treated the action in the young people’s ward as a live sex show.

One thing that I remembered from the press reports was a statement that Mary had been a voluntary outpatient of Jones’s after her mother’s death. This claim also appears in the transcript from the appeal. Yet I got the distinct impression from Mary that she only encountered Jones when she was banged up in Denbigh. Now Jones lies, he lies under all circumstances and one thing that he lied about in my case was that he assessed me before ordering the police to take me to Denbigh. He did NOT see me beforehand and did not carry out any sort of ‘assessment’. I cannot now clarify anything with Mary, but I strongly suspect that Jones did not treat her as a voluntary outpatient. She believed that her sister, whom she did not get on with and suspecting of swindling her, was in cahoots with Jones, so I think it very unlikely that she was returning to see him as a voluntary outpatient. She spoke of how unpleasant he was when she met me, but she certainly didn’t speak about Jones in any way that suggested that she knew him as ‘her doctor’ – she barely remembered his name and referred to him as ‘the doctor at Denbigh’.

As far as Mary was concerned, Jones was just one of many professional people who had done various things that they shouldn’t have. I note that the claim that Mary had been treated by Jones as a voluntary outpatient was central to the claim of him and his cronies that she was mentally ill – ie. that she had been ‘deeply affected’ by her mother’s death and had it was alleged that she had been referred to Dafydd by her GP. Even if the GP had made the referral this does not mean that Dafydd actually saw Mary. Dafydd cannot be believed and Mary is not here to ask, so this is one of the many unanswered questions about Mary’s case.

As well as appearing in the broadsheets and the Spectator, Mary’s case was also featured in the BBC Two series ‘Taking Liberties’ in an episode called ‘Who Will Listen To Mary Winch’ which was screened on March 5 1991. Readers will notice that in the title of this programme, Mary’s surname was spelt ‘Winch’, as it was in the other media reports and indeed on the Court papers. Yet in north Wales, Mary’s name was always spelt ‘Wynch’ and I seem to remember that this is how she signed her name on the letter to me when she agreed to meet me. This is yet another very odd thing about this case – although I knew from personal experience that Court documents are full of errors, including basic ones and serious ones.

After the BBC programme I never heard another thing about Mary either in the London based or north Wales media. Interest in her case disappeared overnight and I was been unable to gain any further information about it until my co-researcher came up with some gems a few days ago. He has dug out a brief potted history of Mary’s case that appeared in the Spectator and has also acquired a transcript of Mary’s appeal, which was heard on 9 July 1985 at the Royal Courts of Justice in London before Sir John Donaldson (Master of the Rolls), Lord Justice Parker and Lord Justice Balcombe. The case is listed as Mary Agnes Winch v Dr Dafydd Alun Jones, Clwyd Health Authority, representatives of the estate of Paul Eardley Hayward, Paul Manley Bishop, Home Office. John MacDonald and Colin Braham were instructed by B.M. Birnberg and Co for Mary and Jon Williams was instructed by dear old Hempsons (who else – the lawyers who act for the Medical Defence Union who have featured on this blog previously) on behalf of Dafydd Alun Jones and Paul Bishop and Christopher Symons was instructed by the Treasury Solicitor on behalf of the personal representatives of the estate of Paul Hayward and the Home Office. Mary appealed to the High Court for leave for two actions alleging negligence against 1. Dafydd Alun Jones and his employers Clwyd Health Authority 2. Against the late Paul Hayward and his employers the Home Office and Paul Bishop. Because all three of the doctors were purporting to be acting under the 1959 Mental Health Act, Mary had to apply for leave to bring actions against them. It is mentioned in the transcript that Mary had been previously refused leave by Justice Otten (elsewhere his name is spelt Otton).
The transcript states that Mary’s mother died in 1972 and that the Public Trustee administered her estate and subsequently brought an action against Mary and possibly also her sister. Mary was ordered to hand over certain documents and refused (Mary was alleging corruption and law breaking and also maintained that she had not been given the opportunity to attend a crucial court hearing.) Mary was sent to Risley Remand Centre for contempt of court by His Honour Vice-Chancellor Blackett-Ord. The committal was in October 1977 but Mary went into hiding so wasn’t actually arrested until July 1978. It is stated that in October 1978 Mary was discharged from Risley by order of Blackett-Ord to the North Wales Hospital Denbigh to the care of Dafydd Alun Jones, on Section 26 of the Mental Health Act 1959, which allowed her to be detained for up to 12 months. This was done on the recommendation of Hayward and Bishop, Hayward being the medical officer at Risley, Bishop being a GP.

For 12 months Mary was subjected to section 26 ‘either in the North Wales Hospital or on leave’ (at no point did anyone or Mary ever suggest that she had been ‘on leave’ – it was stated at all times that she was banged up for 12 months). Mary’s case was that Hayward and Bishop failed to exercise ‘reasonable care in diagnosing her with paranoia’ and that Dafydd Alun Jones failed to exercise ‘reasonable care’ in considering her earlier release from the North Wales Hospital (I remember that a press report at the time stated that during the year in which she was in Denbigh, Jones did not visit Mary or review her case once).

The transcript also mentions that Mary had consulted several solicitors and was now suing two of them for negligence. Her view was that all the solicitors that she consulted were conspiring to stifle her complaints. This was the first occasion that the Court had to consider an appeal regarding the Mental Health Act. The transcript stated that at the previous appeal Justice Otton had considered that Mary’s applications were not frivolous, vexatious nor an abuse of the process of the Court but that Mary hadn’t satisfied the Court regarding a prima facie case of negligence against each of the doctors. At Mary’s appeal to Lord Donaldson, Justice Parker stated that the case against Dafydd Alun Jones was ‘fit to be tried’, although this was ‘not so clear’ with regard to Hayward and Bishop.

There is a Dr Fry mentioned in the transcript who seems to have provided an opinion on Mary at an earlier stage of her journey through the Courts. The transcript also makes reference to someone at some point providing evidence stating that ‘she has no insight into her condition and will break into the property she formerly owned and squat in it. She would not remain in hospital of her own accord’. Yet during the appeal it was noted that there is no evidence Miss Winch had ever broken into the property or squatted in it or had ever threatened to do so’. (So Mary had been the subject of ludicrous allegations and speculations for which there was no evidence and these allegations and speculations somehow had found their way into Court documents – this happened to me after I made complaint about the north Wales mental health services.) Justice Balcombe agreed that the appeal should be allowed. The transcript states that the case against Hayward and Bishop was based on Dr Fry’s evidence. John Macdonald submitted that Hayward and Bishop should have made enquiries of Jones and the Official Solicitor and that they did this.

Mary’s appeal was allowed with costs.

My co-researcher has dug up a few details of the ‘Taking Liberties’ programme screened by BBC Two on 5 March 1991. The producer was Rhonda Evans and the series producer was Elizabeth Clough, who until very recently was the wife of Jeremy Paxman. My co-researcher then discovered an Early Day Motion tabled on 19 March 1991, sponsored by David Bellotti, the LibDem MP for Eastbourne – ‘This House urges an immediate review by the Home Secretary of the gross injustices suffered by Miss Mary Winch, now resident in Eastbourne, and recorded in the BBC Two programme ‘Taking Liberties’ on Tuesday 5 March’. Six MPs signed this Motion: Alan Beith (Liberal Democrat, Berwick-Upon-Tweed), Malcolm Bruce (Liberal Democrat, Gordon), Ronnie Fearn (Liberal Democrat, Southport), Geraint Howells (Liberal Democrat, Ceredigion and Pembroke North), Matthew Taylor (Liberal Democrat, Truro and St Austell) and Dafydd Wigley (Plaid Cymru, Caernarfon).

My co-researcher has also dug up something very interesting from Hansard. On 31 March 1993, Alex Carlile asked the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor’s Dept, to order a full investigation into Mary’s case and was asked when there was going to be a reply to letters concerning Mary’s case dated June 1991, August 1991, September 1991, October 1991 and May 1992. John M. Taylor replied that Mary had taken legal action against the Public Trustee which had not yet concluded and he wouldn’t comment because proceedings were before the Courts. At this point I thought that the trail had gone cold – despite so much concern being expressed at what had happened to Mary, there were no more mentions of her again in the media. But late last night I received another e mail from my co-researcher who had found something in Hansard, 27 April 1995. It is recorded that Alex Carlile asked the Parliamentary Secretary Lord Chancellor’s Department if he would make a statement on the actions of the Public Trustee in relation to legal proceedings brought by Miss Phoebe Winch (once more Mary Agnes Wynch’s name was misrecorded). 

John M. Taylor replied that he was unable to comment on individual cases where legal proceedings have been brought against the Public Trustee, who was also Chief Exec of the Public Trust Office. Taylor commented that she was also ‘an independent statutory office holder’ and ‘decisions that she takes in exercise of her statutory functions are those of her office and are not taken on behalf of Government’. Taylor adds that as the question concerns a specific case, he had asked the Chief Exec to reply direct. There follows the text of a letter from Julia Lomas to Alex Carlile, 25 April 1995. The mistake with Mary’s name is acknowledged and corrected and Lomas goes on to state that in 1982 Mary brought proceedings against the Public Trustee in relation to the administration of the estate of her dead mother, Violet Wynch. The proceedings were defended. The case was ‘complicated’ and the hearing was ‘anticipated to be lengthy and expensive’ and therefore in 1994 a payment of £15,000 into Court to settle the matter was authorised. Mary accepted this payment, which was made with no admission of liability on the point of the Public Trustee. ‘The Public Trustee has always been confident that had the case been fought the Public Trustee would have won, albeit at a disproportionate cost to public funds. The payment into Court was and remains regarded by me payment to save public funds rather than any admission as to the merits of Miss Winch’s case’.

And that was the end of the matter – a respectable innocent woman had been ruined, swindled out of her inheritance by a bunch of small town crooked solicitors, illegally imprisoned and then banged up, again illegally, in a notoriously grim, lawless mental hospital for a year. And people occupying the highest offices of the British state colluded with all of it.

Followers of my blog know that in previous posts, I have compared the chronology of some of the things that happened in my own case – being arrested at the behest of the north Wales mental health services, being denounced as ‘dangerous’, being served with High Court Injunctions on the basis of affidavits sworn by people who were lying about me and who had sometimes not even met me – with the chronology of the actions of Alison Taylor and others drawing attention to the paedophile ring that was operating in the children’s homes in north Wales. The injunctions and arrests correlate nearly perfectly with the breaking of stories about the north Wales paedophile ring, the ring which we now know was being facilitated and concealed by a number of people employed and associated with the mental health services in north Wales. The shit raining down upon my head was particularly bad in 1991 – when all that media and Parliamentary attention was focused on what had happened to Mary. It was at this time that the north Wales mental health services, along with St Georges Hospital and Springfield Hospital, were using some of the most biggest names in UK forensic psychiatry to denounce me as so dangerous that I was a candidate for the likes of Broadmoor – although there was documentary evidence that the psychiatrists in London knew that patients in north Wales were being sexually exploited by psychiatrists and that they also knew there was no evidence at all for the very serious charges that I was facing which were eventually dropped. Springfield documented that I had become suicidal as a result of the stress that I was under as a result of the constant arrests and court cases – yet failed to support me at all and discharged me with no aftercare after three weeks. When I arrived home after being discharged from Springfield, I found a letter from my employers, St Georges Hospital Medical School – I had been working as a research assistant there. This letter stated that I had spent an ‘excessively long time on sick leave’ and was effectively telling me that I was sacked. I had been on sick leave for three weeks. I now have in my possession copies of letters signed by managers of the north Wales mental health services in which they ask each other if their friends and contacts at St Georges have found out which dept I was working in and letters describing how their contacts at St Georges were accessing mail sent to me at the hospital in order to find out my home address. I also have a copy of a letter signed by the occupational health physician at St Georges – who basically harassed me throughout my time there and constantly told me to stop my complaints about the mental health services in north Wales – confirming that my ‘behaviour at work’ ‘was not a problem’.

Just after I left St Georges in 1991, Dr Tony Francis from Ysbyty Gwynedd (who has previously been referred to on this blog as Dr X) ordered his solicitors – Hempsons – to take steps to have me committed to prison on the grounds that I was breaking a High Court Injunction that he’d obtained against me. He had obtained the injunction by perjuring himself and I have copies of letters demonstrating that his own legal advisors had advised him very strongly not to take legal action against me. Francis wanted me ‘committed to prison’ because I was writing letters of complaint stating that he and Dafydd Alun Jones were abusing patients and breaking the law. So who was the barrister who represented a man who was breaking the law – along with his colleagues – and tried to have the woman who was complaining about this imprisoned? It was one Robert Francis QC, a barrister who worked for the Medical Defence Union. Robert Francis is now Sir Robert Francis QC, a member of the Care Quality Commission and leading light of the Patients Association! He was also famously employed to Chair the Inquiry into the genocide that took place at Mid-Staffs – there were numerous allegations that Robert Francis played down the full horror of what happened at Mid-Staffs. Francis also led the Freedom To Speak Up review into whistleblowing in the NHS. Whistleblowers maintain that Francis sold them down the river and that his recommendations did nothing to protect them. Readers new to this blog can read the whole shameful saga in previous blog posts such as ‘St George’s Hospital Medical School 1989/90’, ‘Some Very Eminent Psychiatrists From London…’ and ‘The Sordid Role of Sir Robert Francis QC’.

As for the Early Day Motion in 1991 urging an investigation into Mary’s case that was signed by Dafydd Wigley and others – this would appear to have been a noble action but obviously didn’t get anywhere. Yet only a year later, Dafydd Wigley signed another Early Day Motion, this time sponsored by Elfyn Llwyd, opposing the closure of Garth Angharad. Garth Angharad, which was described as a ‘hospital for mentally abnormal criminals’, contained people who complained that they’d been molested in children’s homes in north Wales and was owned and managed by a man who was mentioned in the Waterhouse Report as someone who also owned children’s homes and residential schools which had been at the centre of allegations of physical cruelty and sexual abuse (please see blog posts ‘More On Those Prisons For Folk Who Dared Complain’ and ‘Further Information On Garth Angharad Hospital’). So why in the course of a year did Dafydd Wigley move from a position of defending Mary on a Parliamentary level to working to ensure that the personal prison of Dafydd and the paedophile gang remained open? In about 1990 I received a very supportive letter from Dafydd Wigley after I contacted him about the abuses taking place at the North Wales Hospital. Yet when I wrote to him again a couple of years later I did not receive a reply. It is part of north Wales folklore that Dafydd Wigley was eventually shafted by Plaid for reasons that only members of the inner circle understand and was replaced as MP for Caernarfon by the fool Hywel Williams, a former psychiatric social worker who had worked with Dafydd Alun Jones and the North Wales Hospital Denbigh. Of course as a social worker based in Gwynedd, Hywel will have been employed by Gwynedd Social Services – that’s the Gwynedd Social Services that the Waterhouse Report admitted had a Director, Lucille Hughes, who knew that a paedophile ring was operating within the Social Services but failed to respond. All Williams achieved in the years following his election was to reduce Plaid’s majority in that constituency, which had been huge (recent boundary changes have bumped up the majority again, giving Hywel a bit of a breather). Dafydd Wigley was enormously popular locally – but interestingly enough the one person whom I know who was probably even more complimentary about Wigley than anyone else was Dr Tony Francis. So would anyone from Plaid – including Dafydd Wigley himself – like to explain to the rest of us what went on?

As for the final mention of Mary in Hansard in 1995 – by 1996 the Jillings Report was published, a result of the first investigation into the north Wales child abuse scandal (please see previous posts). This was the report that was so damning that it was famously not published and an order was sent out by Flintshire Council (which had succeeded Clwyd County Council after what looks like now a very convenient local authority reorganisation) that all copies should be pulped. The Jillings Report was commissioned by Clwyd County Council in 1994, so Jillings and his team will have been undertaking their investigation in 1995…

The information that my co-researcher has sent me about Mary’s case has prompted me to find out more about the judges and lawyers involved in her case – and the politicians behind the scenes. More posts on this will follow soon.

One more appeal to readers of the blog. Many years ago, sometime in the mid-1980s, Radio 4 broadcast a play called ‘Penrhyn Summer’. It had very obviously been written by someone like me, of my generation as well, who had studied at Bangor University and made friends with local people rather than only students. The play’s plot centred around a young woman who had just graduated and had taken a summer job at Penrhyn Castle and through this had learnt much of the grimmer history of north Wales and how local people had suffered at the hands of an economy dominated by the Anglicised landowners in the region. The North Wales Hospital featured in this programme and there were references to the dreadful things alleged to be happening there. One of the central characters in the play was a local man whom the young woman idolised who framed himself as a radical political activist – towards the end of the play this man announced that he’d been selected as a Plaid candidate for Westminster and dropped his enquiries into the North Wales Hospital… Most of what I hear about north Wales on Radio 4 is so inaccurate that it’s not worth listening to. But this play had the social and cultural landscape of north west Wales in the mid-1980s spot on (only of course Radio 4 used actors who all had perfect SOUTH Walian accents) and it was very obviously based on someone’s own experiences. I have tried to find out who wrote this play, or indeed to gain any more info about it at all, but have got nowhere. If any readers know anything about it – especially who the hypocritical Plaid candidate was based upon – I’d love to know more.

Whilst on the subject of memories of student life at Bangor in the 80s, one of the biggest and most well-funded of the student societies was ‘Community Action’. CA (as it was known) had it’s own minibus and I seem to remember had a full-time paid organiser. One of their specialities was ‘working with disadvantaged children’ in the Bangor area. Students are idealistic and probably would never have imagined that a vicious paedophile ring was operating in the local Social Services. But someone in authority in CA will have smelt a rat. And the one thing that students like me who mixed with local people noticed was how many seriously neglected children there were in Bangor. Children whose parents had abandoned them or gone to prison or who had parents who simply couldn’t cope were just left to their own devices, often left in the care of an older sibling who couldn’t look after them very well. And people did know that all was not as it should be.

When I first complained about Gwynne Williams the lobotomist who was working sessions in the Student Health Centre no less, my first representations – after I’d been threatened by Dr DGE Wood the GP running the Centre and told by him that I ‘wasn’t allowed’ to complain about Williams – were made to the Welfare Officer in the Students Union. This young man admitted that there were major problems with Gwynne Williams and that there had been many complaints about him. He later denied saying this to the staff of the Health Centre. He then told me that if continued to complain about Williams I would get a ‘bad name’ – did he know that I’d be slandered, libelled and lied about in Court perhaps? After this he told me that he couldn’t take my complaint any further. Some five years ago I discovered that this man had become the Financial Director of an NHS Trust in the English Midlands (which was interesting because he graduated with a Third and I was told that he subsequently failed accountancy exams).

Clearly Duncan Orme has done very well for himself after failing to challenge a lobotomist whose handling of one student was so negligent that they tried to kill themselves hours after seeing him. An ideal start to a glorious career in NHS senior management. But my God Duncan – the bastards were assisting a paedophile gang as well….

http://www.drsallybaker.com/uncategorized/the-mary-wynch-case-details/

Cheshire East Exposed: Cheshire East 5 year house supply falls into disar...

Cheshire East Exposed: Cheshire East 5 year house supply falls into disar...: Using the Council’s figures there is a 5.13 years supply of housing land or a surplus of about 86 dwellings. However, on the supply side th...

daily politics 10th may #toryelectionfraud

More Failings In North Wales.

I understand that Southern Health, the English NHS Trust that presided over the deaths of many, many mental health and learning disabled patients, is to be prosecuted over the death of Connor Sparrowhawk (I mentioned Connor and his mum Sara’s campaign to get to the truth regarding her son’s death in a post yesterday). When I first started writing this blog I was contacted by people who had experience of Southern Health – there are many similarities between the gross neglect that pervaded ‘care’ at Southern Health and the sort of thing that has been going on in north Wales. After the scandal at Southern could be concealed no longer, the CEO, Katrina Percy, was moved sideways into a role that had been especially created for her on a protected salary.

This is exactly what happened to Martin Jones when Edwina Hart abolished the catastrophe that was the North West Wales NHS Trust.

Come on then Carwyn, you cannot possibly stand by whilst a Tory led NHS England admits how serious the situation has become without acting yourself. When are the prosecutions going to start in Wales? And you know that I have 10,000 documents detailing the criminal activities of the mental health services in north Wales – and their associates in England – written and signed by those we know and love, because your Counsel General Theodore Huckle QC saw those documents before he too joined in the en masse cover-up (please see previous posts for full details on Theo and his colleagues at Doughty Street Chambers, those well-known specialists in Human Rights). I have copies of everything Carwyn…

Tonight the BBC are screening a special Panorama, dedicated to another story that I have covered on the blog recently, that of the thousands of haemophiliacs (2000 of whom have now died) who contracted hepatitis and HIV from the NHS using infected blood products, purchased from the US after Thatcher closed down the British lab that actually bothered to screen blood to ensure that is was free from infection. Thatcher and Ken Clarke, the Health Minister at the time were told again and again what would happen, because the blood from the US had frequently been sourced from addicts and the destitute as a result of the policy in the US to pay blood donors. Regular readers will know that I have a lot of admiration for Ken Clarke as being the one former Health Minister who was not afraid to confront the ‘virulent’ BMA and who continues to speak about just how odious and selfish that organisation is, but his denial in the face of those warnings about the likely consequences of using blood products purchased from the US was shameful. No wonder both Cameron and May have refused public inquiries into the matter – it leads straight to the door of St Maggie…

Wales is holding a mass recruitment event in an attempt to attract nurses and other health professionals and Vaughan Gething, the Health Minister, has been all over the media. You need to begin the clean-up of the NHS Vaughan – there’s a reason that Wales has become a no go area for health professionals and it has bugger all to do with the local schools, despite the claims of one Dr James Davies MP. Even if you do dupe them into coming here, they’ll just do what everybody else chooses to do – leave again rapidly.

Good people won’t work in an NHS riddled with corruption that is killing the patients and crucifying whistleblowers.

Lastly, I read on BBC New Wales online that there is yet another campaign to ‘fight the stigma’ of mental illness. Well we’ve been fighting stigma for years now but patients are still dying – which has a lot more to do with the dreadful state of the mental health services and the fact that they are permitted to abuse patients with impunity rather than any putative ‘stigma’. This campaign is being led by ‘Time To Change Wales’, which was established to ‘fight stigma’ in 2012.

Well that was five years ago and bugger all has changed – the vile ones have not been sacked let alone prosecuted and patients continue to die. Anyway, this campaign is aimed at children – and we wonder why children are becoming so anxious as the adult world bombards with them with ‘awareness raising’ regarding paedophiles, FGM, mental illness and continues the national obsession with SATS tests…

I was touched to read that Kirsty Williams the Education Minister is quoted as saying ‘I would encourage young people to seek help and talk with someone they trust…Where there are mental health issues it is really important to get help early, to help prevent problems from escalating’.

Some twelve years ago now a young woman called Sylvan Money killed herself whilst in the care of Powys Local Health Board. Sylvan had been suicidally depressed and was supposed to be under constant observation. The two staff who were supposed to be observing her left the ward – to go shopping. Whilst they were on duty. Another person involved in her ‘care’ it transpired couldn’t read and write, although part of their job involved reading ‘notes’ regarding Sylvan. Sylvan hanged herself whilst her carers were out shopping and she was left alone unobserved for hours. The CEO of the LHB was so obstructive during the investigation into Sylvan’s death that the police threatened to arrest her. At the eventual inquest, there were I think 36 failings into Sylvan’s ‘care’ identified by the coroner. In the immediate aftermath of Sylvan’s death, her parents consulted their AM. This AM told them that Powys LHB was ‘a timebomb’. Subsequently, Sylvan’s parents went to see this AM again – but this time she walked out of the room, stating that she wanted no involvement with this case. That AM was one Kirsty Williams.

I was told that Kirsty refused any further involvement because she was about to run for leader of the Welsh LibDems and didn’t want to be seen to be critical of the NHS. A few days after I was told this Kirsty announced that she was running for leader of the Welsh LibDems. I was also told that Kirsty’s in-laws are high Tories, but they support Kirsty because she’s one of the family (actually a very wealthy land-owning family, although Kirsty’s election material usually contains a few photos of her cuddling a lamb, in an attempt to convince the electorate that she hand-rears them all herself).

When the BMA were doing their best to bring down both Edwina Hart and the first CEO of the Betsi Board, Mary Burrows, because both of them were trying to confront some of the shocking malpractice taking place in the NHS in north Wales, Kirsty repeatedly appeared on TV with members of the BMA stating how shocking it all was and it was all Labour’s fault. And now she’s joined their Cabinet (well she has no party left in Wales, so she had to do something to save herself). When I see photos of Kirsty these days I can see the blood on her teeth…I think the problems have indeed escalated since you walked away from Sylvan’s parents Kirsty. Many, many more patients like Sylvan have died. But you’ve managed to get yourself a job as a Gov’t Minister!

 http://www.drsallybaker.com/uncategorized/news-round-up-may-10-2017/

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"Surely! Heads Must Roll?"

Gwynedd Council Deluged With Complaints.

More than one in four calls to Gwynedd Council are going unanswered because its departments are being deluged with complaints.
Frustrated residents are giving up after failing to get through to officers within a reasonable amount of time, a report has said.
The biggest areas of complaint have been identified as grass cutting , the closure of public toilets and changes in the arrangements for collecting garden waste.

In total 144,862 calls were abandoned out of more than 500,000 made directly to council workers last year. The problem is particularly acute at peak times on Mondays, Tuesdays and Friday afternoons, the Corporate Scrutiny Committee will be told.
The local authority has admitted that the findings are unacceptable and that it planned to draft in new call centre staff to resolve the issue.
Fewer than half of the calls were answered within 15 seconds last year.
A spokesman for the council said it had been inundated with people ringing them to complain.

“We have experienced unprecedented demand over the past few months with the number of calls; and as the report notes, one of the biggest problems facing the service is lack of staff in the call centre, this was something the council hopes to fix by bringing in new employees.”

The spokesperson added: “As is clear from the report, we have identified a number of things that contribute to these problems and have taken steps to address them, working together with the extremely hard working members of staff at the contact centre.
“We are also recruiting more staff to deal with these problems in the short-term because some of those solutions, like the greater emphasis on self-service, could take a little time to bear fruit.
“The Council is not happy with the performance as it is.”

But UKIP’s Assembly Member for North Wales, Michelle Brown AM blasted the council’s record.

She said: “It beggars belief that the council are seeking to blame the public for their poor performance, especially when the calls have been generated by local people unhappy with the council’s poor performance in other areas.

“Only in the world of a dysfunctional local authority does it seem acceptable to say, ‘if people stopped calling to tell us how badly we’re doing, we would be able to answer their calls more quickly.’

“It’s no surprise to me that people are calling to complain when they are paying more in council tax but getting less for it.

“Nowhere in their plans for dealing with the problem do they mention actually addressing the problems the local people are complaining about.

“It seems logical that if the council want fewer people calling to complain, they should improve their performance as a local authority and give people less reason to complain in the first place.

“The council have clearly forgotten that they work for the local residents, not the other way round.”

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/gwynedd-residents-left-hanging-telephone-12602142

bing,

daily politics 3rd may

Cyngor Gwynedd And Challenging Behaviour.

I wonder if the Children and Families Department in Gwynedd ever ask themselves the question "how did we get here ?"

They have had Assembly Members for Wales, Members of Parliament, District Councillors, County Councillors, the Ombudsman for Wales all notified of systemic failures in the Department and asking questions of their behaviour.

I have been astounded at how ineffectual all these people are against council managers - whom, it appears, can behave as badly and unprofessionally as they like and there is no comeback - but that is for another post.

My involvement only began, last February, after a phone conversation between my wife and a social worker.

Remembering that - Gwynedd council need to be reminded that challenging bad behaviour does not mean people are whiny bastards - it simply means they are challenging bad behaviour.

More on Gwynedd Council here -  https://gwyneddsfailingcouncil.blogspot.co.uk/

Eddie Mair vs Boris Johnson - A nasty piece of work.

DISL Automatic - The Ambush (Lyric Video)

conversations kinnock speaking to sean curran

When Special Branch helped sabotage the Grand National.

The Grand National has become symbolic of the cruelty of horse racing. In recent years there have been protests at Aintree but these have always been controlled by the police. In 1993, however, activists  succeeded beyond their wildest dreams as the steeplechase had to be abandoned and became “the race that never was”. The animal rights dimension has largely been written out of the story but you here you can find out what really happened and it will be revealed how an undercover police officer played a key role in an action which cost the racing industry £75 million.

There had been protests against the Grand National during the eighties  but a more militant campaign began after the deaths of four horses in 1989 and seven more the following year. The callous attitude of the racing fraternity was summed up by champion jockey Josh Gifford who said: “I don’t know what all the fuss has been about. In this game horses get injured and killed every day, even exercising on the gallops.”

In 1992, there were protests by local activists both inside and outside the track and some disruption was caused. That year a new organisation was launched called Action to Abolish the Grand National. It spearheaded a national campaign and produced leaflets, press releases and merchandise not only about the National but horse racing, show jumping and eventing in general, demanding that the BBC stop broadcasting equestrian sports and the public stop gambling on horses or any other animal abused in the name of sport.

The Grand National campaign was part of an upsurge in animal rights activism in the early nineties. One of the main targets was Boots the Chemist, which had its own vivisection laboratory, and about ten people from London Boots Action Group went to Aintree for the protest in 1993. The driver was a well liked member of the group named Matt Rayner, who regularly used his van for demos, sabbing and direct action. Although the journey was over 400 miles there and back, he asked passengers only for what they could afford. The difference in petrol money was made up from the group’s coffers.

A small demonstration at the entrance to the course took place on the Friday but by the next day there were at least 100 people. The vast majority stood outside leafleting but a small group decided to take direct action. This account was given was given by the Aintree 15 in the CAW Bulletin No.11 published later that year:

“Moments before the start eight activists jumped onto the course and occupied the ground in front of the first fence. Police and security guards were taken completely by surprise and the start was aborted. The course took some time to clear and just as the horses were lined up for the second time,another seven animal rights people leapt over the barriers and ran chanting towards the start. 
If the officials were taken aback by the first protest, they were dumbstruck by the second. No-one seemed to know what to do, protesters ran back and forth, security guards and police vainly trying to bring them down with rugby tackles as the crowd cheered each new arrest.

Eventually all were caught and the course cleared for the third time, but by now the starter was so nervous that he made a complete hash of raising the tape and horses were called back yet again. After a delay of nearly 20 minutes the start was aborted again but the leading jockeys ignored the recall flag thinking it was another protest and continued on the course. 

The race by this time was a complete shambles. Nine horses were spared the ordeal entirely when they failed to start and only seven bothered to complete the course, the rest of the 42 starters having realised that the race was abandoned.

The protest cost us very little, and all the protesters were released without charge after four hours in custody, but it cost the bookmakers and racing fraternity £75 million in returned bets and millions more in pre-race marketing. What we really gained was the satisfaction of knowing that almost all the horses escaped unscathed, most not even attempting the course.  One suffered a bruised tendon but in the circumstances we are grateful because his injuries would have been far worse if past years are anything to go by.”

Newspapers called it “The Grand Farcical ” describing it as “an unforgivable shambles, a terribly public one”, but in general the media blamed the debacle on the failure of the starting system and the weather (there was torrential rain) largely ignoring the occupation.  An exception was the Independent which stated: “The disruption of the world’s most-watched horse race was a victory for animal rights protesters who staged a demonstration at the first fence for the second year running.”

On the following Monday the Independent published a letter from J Stuart and C Jones from Manchester who said: “As two of the activists involved in the Grand National run-on protest on Saturday we’d like the opportunity to give our side of the story.” They went to to say how press censorship of the action meant they hadn’t received the credit they deserved for the cancellation of the event:

“The BBC failed to televise our protest and the press has played down our role in the day’s events. However the comments of jockeys, race officials and journalists support our view that we were responsible for stopping the race. The official inquiry need look no further than the run-on for the reason why the Grand National ended as it did.”

The Aintree 15 issued a warning: “We have a message for the horse racing fraternity, the bookmakers and everyone else involved in cruelty: don’t bother planning your next event, people have had enough of your cruelty, and now we are going to stop you.” By March 1994 ARC News was asking it this would be “The Last Grand National?”, while Action Against the Grand National  said it “hoped that the march and demonstration will be even bigger this year.”

The authorities knew full well  who was to blame for 1993’s “fiasco” as revealed by the newspaper headline “Welcome to Fortress Aintree”: “The Aintree authorities have thrown up a six-foot ring of steel…in a £1 million bid to keep animal rights militants at bay tomorrow. Fences are being guarded round the clock and more than 200 uniformed police will be on duty, backed up by plain-clothes units, fast response squads and a helicopter.”

Five days before the race,  three workers at an animal rescue centre were arrested on the Aintree racecourse, charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage and remanded in custody until 18 May. Nothing was left to chance. On the day of the National, 20 activists were arrested as they made their way to the demonstration outside the entrance and three more were arrested inside the event. Fences around the racecourse were improved, which made it much harder to get on the track. The race went ahead without disruption.

There was another contingent of protesters from London, once again driven by Matt Rayner. This time people were asked to contribute £7 towards petrol money. Twenty years later it was revealed that Rayner was really an undercover cop who worked for a secret Special Branch unit called the Special Demonstrations Squad. He was embedded with animal rights activists for five years and like many spies at that time he used the identity of a dead child  (his real name is still a mystery). In 1996 he claimed he was going to work abroad and after sending letters to friends was never heard from again.
While Rayner himself did not take part in the occupation in 1993, about six or seven of those he transported to Aintree did.  During the journey people talked about invading the racecourse and he would have been privy to the likelihood of it happening. Would the action have been so successful without the activists Rayner brought from London? It’s impossible to give a definitive answer but possibly not.

What happened on 3 April 1993 was truly remarkable. Fifteen brave people ran onto the track of the world’s most famous horse race – without concern for their own welfare – to say no to animal cruelty.  Despite being arrested all were released without charge within a few hours. In those days all they would have been guilty of was trespass. This action caused £75 million loss to the racing industry and in terms of economic sabotage it is probably still the single most successful feat of direct action ever carried out in the name of animal rights.

Most amazing of all the role played by the Met Police in the whole affair. Not only did Rayner drive to Aintree in 1993 but he repeated it the following year, knowing full well that some some of the protesters he’d transported helped to disrupt the race. Rayner’s manager at the SDS was Bob Lambert,  a notorious agent provocateur with a hands-on approach that included placing incendiary devices in department stores that sold fur.  It seems Lambert demanded a similar level of involvement from his agents.

What’s more, while the Met was conniving with the protesters, another police force was trying to stop the plot going ahead. On the eve of the race, newspaper reports said the racecourse had agreed “a fluid plan…with the Merseyside Police and Special Branch…Among the weapons at Special Branch’s disposal are snatch squads to eject troublemakers from the course and bolt-cutters to stop protesters chaining themselves to fences.”

The same newspaper warned of  a “2,000-strong army of activists…including the rent-a-mob variety wiling to march under any banner for a punch-up” and said there were reports that racecourse security had been infiltrated by activists who would be disguised as guards.  No source was given for this ridiculous claim but if it wasn’t invented by the journalist, it was more than likely circulated by the police themselves.

The only people doing the infiltrating at Aintree that day were Special Branch. One section had a spy in a key role transporting protesters from London – and probably other spies amongst demonstrators too – while another was doing all it could to prevent the race from being sabotaged. And as is often the case, the police themselves were the main beneficiaries as there was no shortage of work for them to do.

Animal Aid on Aintree 2016: http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_horse//3427//
Matt Rayner profile: http://powerbase.info/index.php/Matt_Rayner_(alias)

See also: https://network23.org/redblackgreen/2015/07/30/flashback-30-july-1995-police-spy-dresses-up-at-pagan-garden-party/

This is a revised version of an article which first appeared on the blog Red Black Green on 10 April 2016: https://network23.org/redblackgreen/2016/04/10/1993-the-year-the-grand-national-was-sabotaged-with-help-from-special-branch/

 https://network23.org/arspycatcher/2017/04/08/when-special-branch-helped-sabotage-the-grand-national/

westminster review 6th april

Jeremy Thorpe, Norman Scott – and the Denbigh Connection.

A reader of the blog has just provided me with this link to a story in Mail Online asking me if I was aware that a connection to Denbigh has emerged regarding the Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott case http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4371716/Jeremy-Thorpe-DID-send-hitman-kill-says-ex-lover.html

I remember this case very well – I was a teenager living in west Somerset when the allegation that Jeremy Thorpe had tried to have Norman Scott killed was first made. Jeremy Thorpe’s first Court appearance was in Minehead and it was the most exciting thing that had happened in west Somerset for years. The eventual hearing was at the Old Bailey and readers might remember that although Jeremy Thorpe was found not guilty, allegations of corruption in high places never went away. Norman Scott was living on Exmoor at the time and I can remember local people all believing that Jeremy’s mates would have another go at killing him. Furthermore I knew someone who knew Norman Scott who maintained that he had seen compromising photos of Norman and Jeremy confirming that they did have the sexual relationship that Thorpe always denied. Norman featured in the media from time to time feeling very sore at having been trashed by the famously biased judge at the trial – well he needn’t have worried, the whole of the west country believed what he was saying about Jeremy and his dreadful mates.

The Mail Online is running an interview with Norman, in which he claims that two people, one a former detective, were recently going to be charged with conspiracy to murder him, but the charges have suddenly been dropped and a load of papers have ‘gone missing’ (sounds like those medical records of mine demonstrating corruption in legal and medical circles and at the Welsh Office). Norman has also claimed that Jeremy had tried to smear one of Norman’s friends, alleging that he was running a ‘vice-ring’ and Mail Online have published a letter from Jeremy Thorpe to Harold Wilson, in which this allegation is made. Jeremy gives the former address of this man in the letter – it is in Denbigh, that is why the reader has sent me a link to the story. The letter is dated 1976. So assuming that the man accused of running the vice-ring had left Denbigh a few years previously, which would give him time to have moved to London and occupy the more recent address that Thorpe supplies for him, that still places him in Denbigh in the 70s – during the period of T. Gwynne Williams and Dafydd Alun Jones’s reign of terror and of course during the period when sexual assault and abuse of vulnerable people en masse was alleged to have been happening in north Wales and when dissenters were banged up in Denbigh with no questions asked, sometimes dying within or else only emerging into the outside world again decades later when Denbigh was closed down. Yes there were still prisoners in there as recently as that. When I was in Denbigh during the winter of 1986/87, a nurse cheerily told me that Denbigh used to house many unmarried mothers – and the last one of them had died in Denbigh a few months previously.

So everyone knew that in 1985 there was still someone in Denbigh who had been put in there decades before for having a child out of wedlock. No-one questioned this. Furthermore the nurse who told me this as an ‘interesting bit of history’, also told me that before she died, she’d taken this old lady on a day trip to Rhyl and for the first time ever she tried an ice-cream and saw a zebra crossing. She had obviously never left the institution until the 1980s. Dafydd and Gwynne knew about that. Another interesting comment that Dr X from the Hergest Unit once let slip during the process of Denbigh closing down was that there was a ‘problem’ because Dafydd had ‘hidden away’ a few ‘difficult’ patients in there and no-one knew where they were going to go once Denbigh was shut. Perhaps Peter Higson, the Chair of the Betsi, would like to tell us all exactly who these patients who Dafydd had concealed in Denbigh were, why they had been secreted there and what happened to them – because Peter is the man who boasts on his CV that he oversaw the closure of the North Wales Hospital. What did you do with them Peter? Oh and another thing – the other day I was reading one of Dr David Crossley’s laughable publications regarding the history of psychosurgery at Denbigh – written whilst David was working there himself – and I noticed that not only did David not mention the name of Gwynne the lobotomist (well Gwynne was embarrassingly recent history wasn’t he), but David claimed that there was ‘one person who died during surgery’. These operations were being carried out IN DENBIGH – in a room that was later used as a store room – by Gwynne Williams and nurses ‘trained in psychosurgery at Denbigh’. ONE DEATH? Don’t make me laugh David, that bunch of butchers will have killed loads of people. WHERE ARE THE BODIES BURIED?

One very entertaining sequel to Jeremy Thorpe’s acquittal in the face of much evidence that he was indeed guilty, was Peter Cook’s performance at The Secret Policeman’s Ball, during which he dressed up as a High Court Judge and performed a truly wonderful satire of a corrupt, biased judge bending over backwards to acquit someone who had attempted to murder someone else. It contained many memorable lines, including some hurling abuse at the alleged hitman that ended with the judge stating that the hitman was ‘someone unable to carry out a simple murder plot without cocking the whole thing up’.

Four years ago I gave the Welsh Govt nearly all the information that I have published on this blog – I also cc’d most of this information to Kirsty Williams and Leanne Wood, in their capacity as opposition leaders. I also wrote many, many e mails to the GMC informing them as to what had been going on. Peter Cook’s biased batty old corrupt judge reminded me so much of His Honour Huw Morgan Gruffydd Daniel when he presided over my ‘trial’, that I also enjoyed myself by attaching the You Tube clip of Peter Cook performing his sketch to my e mails. Since I wrote those e mails, I have acquired even more documentation demonstrating that the institutional corruption in medicine and law was even more serious than I knew at that time. In the same way that nearly all the witnesses who claimed to have been abused by the north Wales paedophile ring have been found dead in questionable circumstances, nearly everyone I know who had the Gwynne and Dafydd experience at Denbigh is now dead. It will be obvious from this blog that I’ve had a few close shaves myself over the last thirty years – including being left with no care for years on end when I was suicidal and seriously depressed, having someone stuff half a bonfire through my letterbox, being prescribed a combination of drugs by Richard Tranter which would have killed me if I’d actually taken them, experiencing cars being driven carelessly in my direction and being regularly contacted by a friend of Dafydd’s who is now serving a prison sentence for attempted double murder (please see blog post ‘A Very Bad PR Man’).
Thankfully, with respect to me, it would seem that there are a number of people in north Wales who are unable to carry out a simple murder plot without cocking the whole thing up.

 http://www.drsallybaker.com/uncategorized/jeremy-thorpe-norman-scott-and-the-denbigh-connection/

Daily Politics and PMQs 29th march

He’s Not The Messiah – He’s A Very Naughty Boy.

One of my previous blog posts discussing Dr Brian Harris, the psychiatrist from south Wales who is now on trial for historical sexual assaults against his patients, noted how one of the patients who alleges that Harris assaulted him attributed Harris’s success as an abuser to the fact that he’d ‘studied psychology’. As I have commented previously, it’s probably more down to the institutional corruption that is rife in medicine and bodies such as the BMA, GMC and MDU.

However the comment about people who have studied psychology reminded me of a number of other dysfunctional people, one in particular, who have studied psychology and participated in impressive quantities of wrongdoing. The man that I’m thinking of is the late Professor Fergus Lowe, the former Senior PVC and Head of the School of Psychology at Bangor University.

Fergus Lowe died not so long ago and was well-known to many people who have passed through Bangor University in the last three decades on the grounds of being, as memorably described by my friend Brown, ‘a highly effective shit’. I know that I had prior warning from Brown regarding Lowe, but even so I was interested to watch a lot of people toady to Fergus and do his bidding no matter how unsavoury that was. A lot of people were doing this simply because they were terrified of him – for some reason best known to himself, at one point Fergus decided to cultivate the company of one of the lecturers in the psychology dept whose teenage son knew someone whom I used to be friendly with. The teenager told my friend that Fergus had started calling in uninvited at their house and that his father was too frightened to stop these visits because he was both ‘in awe of’ and ‘frightened of’ Fergus, whom this man believed was a ‘true psychopath’. I didn’t start observing Fergus and the dynamics that surrounded him until about 2003, by which time he had achieved a very senior position in the University. The official narrative regarding the ‘respect’ that there was for Fergus in some quarters was his success in turning the psychology dept in Bangor from a semi-derelict house (which was how I remembered it in the 1980s when I was a student) to what was allegedly one of the best psychology depts in the UK and even considered to be pretty good in the global rankings. In more recent times, the psychology dept has become known as one of the depts in Bangor packed with international ‘research stars’, many of them having been head-hunted by Fergus in his attempt at world-domination. This always impresses people, but there is a reason why it tends to be overseas academics in Bangor psychology rather than big names from the UK – UK psychologists knew Fergus and would not work with him. A big name in the British Psychological Association whom Brown knew was approached by Bangor in about 2005 in an attempt to head-hunt him and this man told Brown that he would never go to Bangor as long as Fergus was involved with the University. Brown’s contacts also enlightened me as to the source of one of Fergus’s big ‘successes’ that financed the grand building currently housing Bangor’s psychology dept, the Brigantia Building – namely an enormous amount of funding from Unilever some years ago. Fergus did not land this grant through his talents and hard-work. He landed that grant by systematically stuffing over everyone else who was on the team, approaching the funders and making fallacious allegations about his colleagues’ incompetence or misconduct. He was so successful in this regard that he ended up netting the grant himself.

I heard many first-hand accounts of Fergus’s wrongdoing and it seemed quite wide-ranging. There were constant allegations of dishonesty, plagiarism and research fraud. One person friendly with someone I know well told me how his friend withdrew from a PhD in the school of psychology when Fergus told her to fabricate research results. She tried to refuse and Fergus’s response was ‘the trouble with you is that you always want to tell the truth’. She withdrew from her PhD and now freely tells everyone that academics are ‘liars and cheats’ – a consequence of having Fergus Lowe as a PhD supervisor. There was an event involving Fergus that has gone down in the history of Bangor, an event remembered by a lot of women in the area who are now in early middle-age and whose children used to attend the University nursery. That nursery was used by Fergus for research purposes and it was actually where he carried out the research – if indeed he did carry out the research that he claimed, one can never be sure, it was Fergus after all – that made him famous, the ‘Food Dudes’ project, an initiative aimed at promoting healthy eating in children. Ironically at the time when Fergus was receiving glowing tributes for this work in the media and he was giving interviews about the importance of healthy eating, whilst Governments were using that research as a basis for health policy, I used to watch Fergus pop down to Morrisons in Bangor to buy his lunch – a bottle of coke and two packs of crisps. Every day without fail. However it wasn’t Fergus’s own taste for junk food that landed him in trouble with the mothers of Bangor. It was the fact that somehow they had discovered that their children were being ‘experimented on’ without their knowledge let alone their permission. The kids had all been entered into clinical trials without parental consent – trials which involved some kids being fed a bad diet, whilst others received the nice healthy fruit as promoted by Food Dudes. The middle class mums of Bangor hit the roof when they found out that their kids might have been the ones being fed crap at the nursery and in an attempt to defuse the outrage and rumours rocketing around the area, the parents were invited to a meeting with Fergus in the University Council Chamber, where he was supposedly going to reassure them that nothing untoward had happened. I know three parents – two mums and a dad – who actually attended that meeting and they said that there was uproar. The dad said that when he challenged Fergus, Fergus became so aggressive that he thought that he was going to hit him. What is so entertaining though, is that as one of the mums said ‘Fergus forgot that there is nothing like an angry mother’ and I was told that this was one occasion on which Fergus ended up literally fleeing from the room faced with a gang of furious women…

It was not only Fergus’s research that was dodgy, his teaching practices weren’t much better. In order to attract ‘world-class’ researchers to Bangor, Fergus struck very favourable deals with them, which included them having to do very little teaching to enable them to just get on with their research, which would of course be the factor that pushed Bangor psychology up the league tables. But at the same time, Fergus knew how profitable undergrads were and was determined to pack them in. So hundreds of students would be enrolled every year. From what I saw there were two groups of psychology students at Bangor. There were very bright ones who wanted careers in psychology and who had gone to Bangor because they knew that it was a highly ranked dept. Then there were a number of rather fragile troubled students who had often experienced the glorious mental health services and were now ’empowered’ to go to university. They were choosing psychology because they believed that this would enable them to ‘understand myself’, confusing it with psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. They were positively encouraged to do this by the mental health services, because they were then categorised in a box ticked ‘recovered’. No-one told them that the psychology degree at Bangor was nothing to do with psychotherapy/psychoanalysis – Bangor has a huge emphasis on behavioural psychology and the course also involved topics such as biochemistry and of course statistics. (At one point Bangor was scandalised because the statistics module in the psychology dept was being taught by a man who was of the ‘hippy’ community in Bethesda who had a very obvious drug habit and was regularly seen cultivating the company of girls below the age of consent, herding them into taxis and then disappearing with them. There was very great concern expressed by a lot of people that the University saw fit to employ this man – I was told that Fergus was quite happy to do so because he paid him a pittance. The scandal only came to an end when the ‘stats lecturer’ turned up to work after having taken LSD and started playing Jimi Hendrix to the students on the grounds that if they listened closely they’d understand stats in an instant. This was too much even for Fergus and the stats lecturer was employed no more.) The fragile students with mental health problems or no previous qualifications used to encounter great difficulties and would usually withdraw at the end of the first year having found themselves completely unable to cope academically and would often end up feeling very bad about themselves. Fergus knew that this was happening but didn’t mind at all – he’d netted a years worth of fees from them. Furthermore, I got the impression that there wasn’t much time in the psychology dept for students who might be struggling – at one point I discovered that a two tier system was in operation in that dept, which involved a select few of the very high achieving students being identified and approached in their second year and asked to join an elite group, who would then enjoy extra tuition etc. Which was great if you were part of that group, but what about the others – they were paying the same fees and they weren’t told in advance about this two tier system. However, even the very academic students often became disillusioned with the psychology dept. Because Fergus was expecting so little in the way of teaching from the Big Names, the students were taught by postgrads. This is of course a common practice, but usually this is done partly to enable the postgrads to gain lecturing experience. Fergus however rolled out this system en masse – hundreds of undergrads would be packed into the biggest hall in the university, with a postgrad virtually wetting themselves with anxiety on the stage in front of them, trying to give a lecture when they were insufficiently experienced. This happened so frequently that the students who had gone to Bangor to work with famous people would realise at the end of three years that they’d barely met any of these famous people. There is however one high profile academic in the school of psychology who does seem to take an interest in students and whom the students all loved, that is Professor Guilluame Thierry. I have heard fantastic things about him – but he is the only well-known person in psychology whom I hear the students praising.

But Fergus was running yet another scam among all this. Most postgrads like to do a bit of teaching because it enables them to supplement their PhD studentships. However I was told that Fergus was grossly underpaying them. One brave soul decided to challenge him about this and I think that she also tried to encourage everyone to join a union as well. No-one would back her up – they were far too frightened – so she went to see Fergus to confront him about the exploitation that was happening. She told me an extraordinary tale – that as he saw her approaching his office, Fergus marched out of his room screaming and swearing at her, grabbed her by the hair and tried to drag her down the corridor. I asked her if there were witnesses to this and she told me that people were coming out of their offices to see what the racket was about but when they saw what was going on, every single one of them retreated back into their office and shut the door. The same person also told me of another Fergus-related outrage. She had been invited to a conference in Chester as part of the psychology team with Fergus. She went out for the evening in Chester and had a really bad experience – a man attempted to rape her. She fought him off and managed to get back to the conference venue where she encountered Fergus. She was very shaken and told him what had happened. He commented that she was obviously alright now and went off elsewhere with the others leaving her alone for the next few hours. Attempted rape of one of the researchers? Fergus didn’t bat an eye-lid. Interestingly enough, although this person was a good researcher and remained in the school of psychology to pursue further work after her PhD, she was never promoted. Even more interestingly, I discovered that she was actually writing the publications of some of the professors in the psychology dept only to find that they were taking her name off the work when they submitted it for publication. So that’s how the senior staff in the psychology dept built up such impressive publication lists…

Although I knew that Fergus did this sort of thing and encouraged other people to conduct themselves like this as well, I always wondered how he’d got such a foothold in the University initially. About ten years ago I found out. During Thatcher’s administration there had been one round of university funding cuts that were particularly savage and had almost destroyed certain universities like Aston and Salford. Another university that had come under attack – although I don’t know why – was Bangor. There was a fear that the University was actually going to be closed down, but in the end it just suffered the closure of a number of depts, including philosophy, drama and maths. Psychology was also earmarked for closure and at that time Fergus was an unknown junior lecturer there. When he realised that the dept was about to be closed down, Fergus hit on a stroke of genius – he arranged a conference at Bangor and invited B.F. Skinner, the famous American behaviourist, to the conference. He then told Skinner that the dept was earmarked for closure and generated an enormous amount of publicity. Behaviourism was becoming very unfashionable by then, so Skinner was delighted to find another behaviourist – Fergus – and campaigned with him to prevent the closure of the dept. A number of people were very grateful to Fergus for this, because he saved their careers, as well as his own, and they have remained loyal to him ever since, although they know exactly how great the wrongdoing has been.

So whose  bacon did Fergus save? Well where mustn’t much to the Bangor psychology dept in those days, but there was a dyslexia unit – which was actually very good but which Fergus wasn’t involved with – and there were a few PhD students. But there was also a clinical psychology course. That course was training the students who were being sent on placement to the North Wales Hospital Denbigh – and they were witnessing what was going on out there. One of those students told me in the late 80s that if you were any good, you just finished your training, left north Wales and got as far away from Dafydd Alun Jones and Denbigh as possible. But there were some people who didn’t do that – and some of these deeply compromised people are hiding around north Wales at the moment.
I had been told back in the late 1980s that Dr Dafydd Alun Jones was wielding influence in the psychology dept in Bangor and had attempted to embezzle thousands of pounds from the University to pay for his daughter, Dwynwen, to attend a private college in England. I was told that Dwynwen had failed to get onto the clinical psychology course, so Dafydd was sending her to England privately but decided that someone else could pay for it. I was told that someone in Bangor University had stopped Dafydd doing this and that this was actually the end of Dafydd’s influence in the University. What I didn’t know was that this person was Fergus Lowe. Dwynwen was doing a PhD in the psychology dept at the time and it was widely alleged that she had only been given the place because of Dafydd’s influence – I was told that her finals results would never have been good enough for her to be accepted for a PhD but as is his usual practice, Dafydd worked a fiddle. Fergus was seething and is remembered for refusing to speak to Dwynwen whilst she was a postgrad there. So a lot of people were very grateful when Fergus slayed Dafydd, particularly the person whose salary Dafydd tried to steal to fund Dywnwen’s education. But that person’s salary was actually earmarked to fund a job for her at Denbigh – this person wanted to do clinical psychology and the training involved an obligatory stint as an assistant in a psychiatric hospital. That person did indeed take up the job at Denbigh – and was appalled at what she witnessed. She decided not to do clinical psychology after all – I suspect because of what she witnessed at Denbigh – but stayed in Bangor to do a PhD in the psychology dept. She still works in Bangor University today. I got to know this person very well a few years ago because I worked with her. Whilst I worked with her I was being threatened, harassed and arrested by Martin Jones and Elfed Roberts et al at the North West Wales NHS Trust. This person knew all the details and indeed read the threatening letters that Martin was sending me. At one point she observed of Martin that ‘he’s not going to stop this is he’. After hearing about one of the (many) attempts to imprison me she commented that ‘you wouldn’t have survived a prison sentence and you weren’t supposed to’. And after Martin tried to have me arrested for making a ‘hoax call’ when I was ringing Ysbyty Gwynedd A&E seeking medical advice, she responded ‘that was done to try and make you look like a fuckwit so no-one would ever believe a word that you say again’. This person also knew how corrupt the local psychiatrists were – when I told her that Dr Richard Tranter of the Hergest Unit had documented upon my medical records that I was being bullied at work by the University rather than documenting that my health was suffering because Martin Jones and Elfed Roberts were having me arrested constantly, she was good enough to describe the allegations of me being bullied at work as ‘bollocks and Richard knows that’.

So there is someone else as well as me who witnessed the abuses that took place at Denbigh, who knows about Dafydd, who knows about the wrongdoing of Fergus Lowe although he saved her salary from the ever-hungry jaws of Dafydd and who knows the lengths that Martin Jones, Richard Tranter and Elfed Roberts were going to in order to try and discredit me and conceal the abuses at the Hergest Unit. This person also knows the reality behind Professor Mark Williams and the miracle that is mindfulness and along with Fergus Lowe held mindfulness in utter contempt, but knew that it was making Mark Williams and Bangor University famous as well as a lot of money. Indeed Mark Williams was this person’s manager at one point. This person also knew about the various local abusive psychiatrists such as Laurence Chesterman and Marie Savage being involved with the psychology dept and pretending to be following ‘research interests’ when they clearly weren’t. Furthermore, this someone also knew that a nurse who had done a PhD in Bangor’s psychology dept was being falsely presented at Ysbyty Gwynedd as a ‘clinical psychologist’ and was carrying out ‘assessments’ that only clinical psychologists are permitted to do. There was one thing that this person did know that I didn’t however – on one occasion after we had finished discussing the activities of the dreadful Dafydd, I mentioned dear old Dr Peter Higson, the current Chair of the Betsi, former clinical psychologist at Denbigh, lecturer at Bangor psychology dept and currently member of Bangor University Council. This person told me that Higson was a big mate of Fergus’s and ‘he didn’t shag the patients but he did shag the students’. As readers may have gathered I knew this person very well and I was quite upfront with her that I was writing to the Welsh Govt about the things that had happened to me at the hands of the mental health services and that one day I intended to publish the whole story. What I didn’t realise at the time was that this person was gathering as much info as she could from me and I suspect was informing those we know and love of my every move – because unbeknown to me she was co-authoring a book with Richard Tranter and was also busy doing deals with psychiatrists such as Rob Poole to establish the Centre for Mental Health and Society at Bangor University. When she heard that the dreadful Raj Sambhi had imprisoned me at the Heddfan Unit no doubt she thought that I was finished and no threat to any of them anymore.

So who is this totally unscrupulous person who is now working with people whom she knows concealed the sexual abuse and illegal detention of patients, who knew about the scams that passed for ‘research’ in the psychology dept and who knew that Martin Jones and Elfed Roberts were doing their best to frame me in an attempt to imprison me but nevertheless co-authored a book with the man who was writing lies on my medical records in an attempt to cover their tracks? Step forward Professor Catherine Robinson, who sadly it would seem did pretty much anything to get herself a Chair at Bangor University. The irony is that when Catherine was awarded that Chair I sent her an e mail congratulating her and saying that I was glad to see someone getting a Chair without behaving like a shit. Little did I know….I always wondered why she never replied to that e mail. Oh well, the good thing about not having a job in a university Catherine is that you can publish whatever you want and you don’t have to kowtow to er, criminals.

Sadly I believe that Catherine and her ilk are the legacy of Fergus. A psychologist who has now retired from Bangor University observed that Fergus did indeed stamp out the influence of the dreadful Dafydd from Bangor University, but he just replaced it with his own toxicity. A generation of academics were not mentored properly and were led to believe that the only way to advance yourself was by bullying, cheating, deception and by keeping absolutely silent even when you know that terrible things are happening. Someone used the phrase ‘dangerous deference’ to me the other day – I think it’s an affliction affecting many in north Wales (and the NHS generally). Fergus is now dead – although no-one seems to know what he actually died of, who knows another psychopathic psychologist might have killed him – but the effects of him live on. After Fergus was made Senior PVC, there was a big problem because no one else from the psychology dept wanted to step into his place as Head of Dept, because they knew that he’d be constantly on their back. Eventually the post was filled by one Professor Oliver Turnbull. I know of two incidents involving Turnbull. One involved him attempting to coerce an artist from Bethesda into selling one of her artworks priced at £10,000 to him for £800. He tried this because he’d noticed that she was participating in the trials run by the psychology dept in order to supplement her income, so he struck up a conversation with her in order to assess just how poor she was. When he realised that she was struggling for money, he offered her a pittance for the painting that he was after. She refused and was surprised to be told by Turnbull that ‘you’ve got to sell it to me because you’ve got no money so you’ve got no choice’. She had no money but she did have principles so she walked away. The other incident involved Turnbull and the Bangor psychology dept appearing in Private Eye a few years ago. A student in the psychology dept at Bangor had complained of being sexually harassed by one of her teachers. Turnbull had written a rather inappropriate e mail, questioning whether this student really had been harassed or whether she was just a weak student and should they therefore remove her from the course. Unfortunately for Turnbull, he cc’d the e mail to a number of people including the student herself by mistake. Someone took the e mail to Private Eye and Turnbull disappeared on gardening leave for a few months. However he reappeared eventually – and I understand that he is now PVC for Teaching and Learning at Bangor no less.

 http://www.drsallybaker.com/uncategorized/hes-not-the-messiah-hes-a-very-naughty-boy/

Westminster City Council’s Cabinet decision on CCTV.

Westminster City Council’s Cabinet has agreed to decommission the authority’s current CCTV network of 75 cameras from 1 September 2016. The Cabinet also agreed to continue constructive talks with the Mayor’s Office for policing and crime and the Metropolitan Police to try to work towards a pan-London solution.

Providing CCTV coverage is what is termed a non-statutory council service. This means that it is not legally required and is at the discretion of every council as to whether they provide it. The crime and disorder CCTV system in Westminster is primarily used to provide reactive support for the police in securing arrests and prosecutions relating to crimes committed in sight of cameras.

Whilst the council has set aside £1.7m to upgrade the entire system, which is ageing and at times can be unreliable, there have been discussions with the police, business partners, MOPAC, the GLA and Government for many years about the issue of ongoing CCTV running costs, of up to £1m per year. To date, no support has been forthcoming.

There are many other cameras operational in central London that are not being affected by the council’s decision, for example those cameras operated by Transport for London and thousands operated by private businesses. The CCTV systems operating in Westminster’s housing estates will also be unaffected. In addition, there are many other crime prevention initiatives that are run successfully, often in partnership, with the police, council and businesses that do not involve fixed CCTV cameras and the council will continue to build on those processes.

If no solution can be found, the Cabinet will decide at a future meeting where to allocate the £1.7m currently earmarked for upgrading the CCTV system on other, potentially more effective crime prevention measures, such as improving the public realm or better street lighting.

Cllr Nickie Aiken, Cabinet Member for Public Protection, said: “Like many other local authorities around the country, our current view is that we are not able to continue to subsidise this non-statutory service when there are many other pressures on our budgets and where other partners are the main beneficiaries. We will keep talking and in the past week have had very constructive discussions with the Mayor, the Metropolitan Police and Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. We want to work towards a pan-London solution that is right for the capital as criminals don’t stop at borough borders.”

 https://www.westminster.gov.uk/westminster-city-council-cabinet-decision-cctv

Australia - Reserve Bank concerned on highly indebted households, real estate bubble.

The Reserve Bank's warnings about the risks of a potential real estate bubble in Sydney and Melbourne are getting louder.

The March minutes released today underscored the Reserve Bank's concern about how highly indebted households would deal with a shock from a combination of rising unemployment and falling consumption.
In its most recent meeting a fortnight ago when the board kept rates on hold, the RBA did not appear to see an end to accelerating real estate investment in Australia's major east coast cites.
The RBA warned that recent data continued to "suggest that there had been a build up of risks associated with the housing market".

"Even though building approvals had fallen significantly in recent months, the substantial amount of work in the pipeline suggested that dwelling investment would continue."

The RBA said the continuing strength in real estate investment remained concentrated in New South Wales after dwelling investment rebounded in the December quarter.
"Conditions appeared to have strengthened in Sydney and remained strong in Melbourne," the minutes said.
"These cities had continued to record brisk growth in housing prices and auction clearance rates had remained high."
Capital Economics chief economist for Australia, Paul Dales, said the two cuts in interest rates by the RBA last year led to a surge in household borrowing.
"The acceleration in house price inflation in the fourth quarter of last year has undoubtedly continued into the start of this year and will remain a thorn in the side of the Reserve Bank of Australia for a while yet," he said.

'Little doubt' of bubble in Sydney, Melbourne

The Reserve Bank's warning about the risks came after ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft said there was little doubt that a real estate bubble existed in Sydney and Melbourne.

SoundCloud: Peter Ryan on the RBA minutes

ABS data released today shows home prices have risen 4.1 per cent in the fourth quarter. Sydney prices have surged 10.3 per cent year-on-year, while Melbourne jumped 10.8 per cent.
"Borrowing for housing by investors had picked up over recent months and growth in household debt had been faster than that in household income," the minutes said.
However, the Reserve Bank made the point that the housing risks were centred on the east coast while growth in other parts of the country was sluggish.

"In contrast, housing prices and rents had fallen in Perth for two years or so and apartment prices had declined in Brisbane."

Despite better than expected economic growth in the December quarter, the Reserve Bank pointed to weak wages growth with household savings continuing to decline.
"Members noted that over the past two decades movements in the Australian household saving ratio have been much larger than those in similar economies," the minutes said.

Last week, RBA assistant governor Michelle Bullock warned that an acceleration in investor growth could pose a risk to the financial system in the event of a downturn or a global shock.
The RBA was also concerned that labour market conditions "remain mixed" and that employment was "not quite as strong" as the headline figures indicated.
The rising Australian dollar remained a concern and the RBA believed "an appreciating currency would complicate the adjustment of the economy" as the mining investment boom fades.
The Australian dollar has been sitting around 77 US cents after the US Federal Reserve signalled a more cautious path to future rate rises.

 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-21/reserve-bank-warns-housing-bubble-in-sydney-and-melbourne/8372856

UK banks 'involved in multibillion-pound Russian money-laundering scam'.

Some of the UK's top banks allegedly processed around £600 million in a multibillion-pound Russian money-laundering scam.

High street names including HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Coutts are among those involved, The Guardian reported.

More than £16 billion and maybe as much as £65 billion was moved out of Russia between 2010 and 2014, the paper said.

Banking records detailing the scheme were reportedly obtained by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Novaya Gazeta.

The documents detail around 70,000 transactions, including 1,920 totalling nearly £600 million that went through UK banks and 373 through US banks, according to The Guardian.

A Barclays spokesman said: "Barclays complies with the rules and regulations in all the jurisdictions in which it operates and has systems and controls in place to mitigate the risk of the bank being used to facilitate financial crime.

"This includes risk-based systems and procedures to monitor ongoing customer activity, which we constantly review, and procedures for reporting matters to the relevant law enforcement authorities as appropriate.

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"In addition, through a number of industry initiatives, Barclays partners closely with global law enforcement in the fight against financial crime."

A spokesman for HSBC said: "The bank has systems and processes in place to identify suspicious activity and report it to the appropriate government authorities.

"This case highlights the need for greater information sharing between the public and private sectors, each of whom holds important information the other does not."

RBS said: "We are committed to combating financial crime and money laundering in line with our regulations and have controls and safeguards in place to identify, assess, monitor and mitigate these risks."

A UBS spokesman said: "UBS applies a robust money-laundering prevention framework across its business operations globally, consistent with locally applicable regulations."

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: "This scandal needs to be investigated in full by the National Crime Agency, and the Government must ensure they have all the resources and support needed. Britain cannot be a haven for the criminals of the world who are looking to hide their money.

"It's deeply disappointing that there are British banks involved in yet another banking scandal as the actions of a few shouldn't overshadow the hard work of the thousands of employees in the sector who will have had nothing to do with this case.

"But it appears that some of these big banks haven't learnt the lessons of the past, and are clearly not doing enough to clamp down on financial crime and money laundering."

 http://www.aol.co.uk/news/2017/03/20/uk-banks-involved-in-multibillion-pound-russian-money-launderin/

Daily Politics 9th march

Empire Files: Israeli Army Vet’s Exposé - “I Was the Terrorist”

Daily Politics 7th march 2017

Norfolk children’s services: ‘There have been very serious miscarriages of justice’.

An investigation by this newspaper looks at if children have been let down by Norfolk County Council. Photo: Thinkstock

Serious concerns remain about the department which looks after hundreds of the most vulnerable children in Norfolk, almost four years since it was rated as ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted.

 

An investigation by this newspaper, starting today, will look at the issues that continue to hang over the department.

Just four months ago Ofsted inspectors carrying out their latest review ruled that “children and young people are still not consistently receiving good enough services”.
Our probe into the department, rated as inadequate by Ofsted since 2013, comes as part of a wider campaign titled ‘Fighting For Their Futures’, which will look at whether or not children in this region are being failed and given a harder start in life because of where they are growing up.
As well as Norfolk County Council-run children’s services, we will focus on education standards, mental health, deprivation and a range of other areas. We will also draw up a manifesto of improvements that need to be made to give our youngsters the best opportunities possible.
Over the next few days, our findings on children’s services will include:
•how an MP is preparing to take a dossier of concerns and allegations about how children have been removed from their families to the new head of Norfolk County Council’s children’s services department

•how two former Norfolk councillors allege they were forced out by council lawyers when they raised concerns about the department
•concerns over how and why senior foster carers have had children removed from them
•doubts over the independence and effectiveness of a review looking into foster carer complaints
•how a much-trumpeted partnership between Norfolk County Council and a charity has yet to get off the ground
•the staggering amounts of money spent on consultants and interim heads of the department since it was branded inadequate
Responding to our findings, a spokesperson for Norfolk County Council said its children’s services department was improving and looking to the future. A new interim chief, Matt Dunkley, started in February and is said to be optimistic that inspectors visiting the department this week will find further improvements.

North Norfolk MP Norman Lamb said he believed there had been "unacceptable practices" at the children's services department. Picture: DENISE BRADLEY

The department’s job is to safeguard all children who need help and protection, to act as the corporate parent of children who need to be taken into care, to provide adoption and fostering opportunities, to support care leavers up to the age of 25 and to provide support for schools.
It currently has around 1,100 children in care, who are placed with foster carers as well as in council and private accommodation.
In both 2013 and 2015, the service was rated as ‘inadequate’. Inspectors in 2015 found “widespread failings” for looked after children and care leavers.
And the department was told at the end of 2016 by Ofsted that its rate of improvement to get out of its current “inadequate” rating was slow.
That led to the resignation of the department head Michael Rosen who has been replaced with another interim – the fifth head in four years.
North West Norfolk MP Henry Bellingham has been involved in about half a dozen cases where he said there had been allegations of wrongdoing against the children’s services department.

Matt Dunkley, the new interim director of Norfolk County Council's children's services department. Photo: Norfolk County Council.

He has gathered a dossier of these cases which he will take to the department’s new head, Mr Dunkley.
Sir Henry said: “I know that the vast majority of social workers are doing an excellent and very difficult job and they are in a no-win situation.
“If they don’t act and there’s another tragedy like Baby P they will be pilloried and if they are overzealous they will be accused of not doing enough to keep the child with the mother.
“The key thing is that it is incumbent upon them to put full evidence to the court. I find, in some cases, corners have been cut.”
Sir Henry said some of the cases in his dossier should be reopened.
“I know that where children have been taken away, that can never be reversed,” he said. “But it would help people involved to be able to ask questions and to be given assurances what happened to them would not happen under the current regime.”

North West Norfolk MP Sir Henry Bellingham said he had a dossier of cases which raised concerns about how some children had been removed from families by the council. Picture: Matthew Usher.

He is also taking cases to the most senior family court judge in the country, Sir James Munby, who has said there is a “crisis” 
in the system nationally because so many children are being taken into care.
In September last year, Sir James called for urgent research into why the number of cases where councils applied to separate children from their families had more than doubled since the Baby P scandal to almost 15,000 in 2016.
Norfolk’s children’s services department takes more children into care proportionally than neighbouring Cambridgeshire or Suffolk and the numbers are rising again with almost 1,100 in care now, an increase of five percent in a year.
North Norfolk MP Norman Lamb said he had also come across cases where there had been “unacceptable practices” within the department, particularly with the way foster carers had children removed from them.
“It goes back over many years,” he said. “There definitely have been very serious miscarriages of justice.”
He too called for a change of culture at the department.

'There have been very serious miscarriages of justice'

'Crucial that these issues are resolved'

'The worst thing is not knowing how the boys are'

Two former councillors claim they were driven out

Emails cast doubt on review's independence

Social workers: Damned if you do, damned if you don't?

What Norfolk County Council says...
This newspaper asked the county council a series of questions about the concerns raised in these articles.
A spokesman for the council said: “Children are taken into care when their parents can no longer look after them safely.
“There is no single reason for this and each family’s circumstances will be unique and complex.
“We want children to be cared for in permanent, stable homes wherever possible. However, we will always look for the best placement for each individual child and this can include kinship care, residential care or specialist facilities.
“Children’s services was completely reorganised in 2015 and additional investment was made to support children and families to reduce the risk of children being taken into care.
“A range of anonymised case studies formed part of the annual review of early help services report.
“We were one of 10 authorities chosen to develop best social work practice via the Signs of Safety project.
The positive impact of this was recognised in our 2015 Ofsted report.
“Additionally, improvements are detailed in the published Ofsted monitoring letters of July 2016 and November 2016.”

Related articles

• The EDP says: Crucial that issues which have dragged down Norfolk County Council’s children’s services are finally resolved
• ‘The worst thing is not knowing how the boys are’ - mother who had boys taken away by children’s services speaks out
• Norfolk children’s services investigation: The grandparents who can’t see their grandchildren
• Two former Norfolk councillors claim they were driven out when raised concerns about children’s services
• Chairman of foster carer group says Norfolk County Council’s legal head targeted him
• Foster carers who had children taken away by Norfolk County Council are still looking for answers
• Emails cast doubt over independence of Parker Review into how foster carers were mistreated by Norfolk County Council
• Being a social worker: Are you damned if you do and damned if you don’t?

 http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/education/norfolk_children_s_services_there_have_been_very_serious_miscarriages_of_justice_1_4915971