On the 8th of February 2012 Peter Williams, a gifted engineer and Guinness World Record holder, committed suicide after falling into arrears on his council tax.
Having paid these off months later, the council then sent him a £1,350 bill for court costs. Unable to pay in full he offered to pay in installments, an offer which was rejected. Despite a letter from his GP stating he was severely depressed and suicidal, still the council hounded him and set a date to evict him from his home which he had bought outright. His bill inexplicably escalated to £70,000 and with his eviction imminent, Peter wrote: “I have had enough and cannot stand any more of the mental turmoil”. Then he stepped in front of a train.
Had Peter not killed himself the council would have been obliged to rehouse him at the taxpayers’ expense.
David Clapson, a former soldier and diabetic, died in July 2014 after his benefit was cut. Clapson had no food in his stomach, £3.44 in the bank and no money on his electricity card, leaving him unable to operate his fridge where he kept insulin.
Jacqueline Harris committed suicide in November 2013 after her benefits were cut. She was disabled. Her sister Chrisitine, a nurse said, said: “If you’ve got a great education, if you have great health, you’re OK. But if you haven’t, you have to fight against the odds.
An inquest found that Harris, who was partially sighted, committed suicide after months of constant pain and following a “fit for work” ruling that replaced her incapacity benefit with jobseeker’s allowance.
These are just a few of the people who have been driven to death as a result of the Con Dem’s fatally flawed austerity measures. In previous blogs I’ve named others who have died, as reported in the media, as a result of fuel poverty and hunger and those driven over the edge by the beleaguered bedroom tax.
The Con Dem attack on the most vulnerable in society has been relentless, brutal and as unyielding as it is ill conceived. If you default on your council tax or you’re late with your income tax, they’re down on you like a ton of bricks.
Meanwhile, HSBC has been exposed as helping the rich to dodge taxes. That’s millions of pounds that should have gone to the NHS and education. Taxes the rest of us are charged at source and have to pay.
Despite HMRC knowing for several years that HSBC has helped over 1,000 of its UK customers dodge tax, only one prosecution has been pursued on behalf of UK taxpayers. It seems, if you rob a bank and de fraud the HMRC dressed in a designer suit and armed with a rolex and a top of the range “tax planner”, it’s not illegal. The more money you have the more you can steal from those that have nothing without ever facing criminal charges, because the laws of morality and criminality that apply to the rest of us have an opt out clause if you can afford to buy it.
The Con Dem government has managed to fast track legislation that squeezes the life blood (literally) out of the most vulnerable in society, yet known loopholes that allow the rich to dodge paying their fair share of taxes, remain conspicuously open. It will remain ever thus unless we make our voices heard.
International campaign group Avaaz has an online petition calling for HSBC prosecutions. It already has half a million signatures. In the UK, campaign group, 38 Degrees has the same online petition directed at George Osborne with over 100,000 signatures and counting.
Tuesday 17 February 2015
Friday 6 February 2015
Child Abuse Inquiry: Survivors' Approval of New Chair is a Step in the Right Direction
The following was published in today's Independent:
Cathy was a child and a prostitute. From the age of four her parents had sex parties where adults would abuse each other’s children. On the few occasions that Cathy found the courage to tell trusted adults, no-one believed her. Her parents were both doctors and “respectable” people don’t behave like that. She was living on the streets at 12, a drug addict at 13 and by the time I met her, at 14, she was “owned” by a pimp in central London. I spent Christmas night with her in casualty. She had been raped with a broken bottle and was severely traumatised.
The psychological theory I studied at university did little to prepare me for that night in A&E almost 20 years ago. As someone with professional experience of working with survivors of child sex abuse, I welcome the appointment of Justice Lowell Goddard, with reservation (she has a lot to prove). The credibility of the inquiry was at risk of derailment when two previous chairs were forced to resign due to their links to the establishment.
The outgoing chair, Fiona Woolf, vehemently denied being an establishment figure but was about as convincing as Jim Davidson claiming to be a feminist. Watching Woolf talk about her dinner parties with senior political figures and her (personal) Christmas card list of over 3,000 , yet concomitantly claiming to be just an ordinary gal, would have been comedic were her appointment not so ill conceived .
In the end, the survivors’ objections were heard. If they don’t trust, absolutely, in the integrity of the process, starting with the appointment of the chair, they will (rightly) boycott it and the whole process will unravel. If their views were treated with contempt at this stage, why should they put themselves through the nightmare of reliving historical sexual traumas?
Cathy, though writhing in agony, refused to be examined by the belligerent male doctor. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think her request for a female doctor was unreasonable, but he clearly did. He lectured me on his innumerable professional accolades. I pointed out that Cathy didn’t get to choose not to be raped with a broken bottle, particles of which remained lodged in her vagina. That having found herself ripped asunder and in A&E on Christmas night, she didn’t choose to be bullied by a condescending doctor. But she did have one choice left. She chose not to have another man anywhere near her, let alone her private parts, for the foreseeable.
We did get a female doctor, though it was a long wait. Hopefully Theresa May has learned something I realised as a graduate advocating for a traumatised child, that sometimes, the most important criteria for a role can’t be found on a CV alone. It doesn’t matter how many letters you have after your name or what university you went to. If you cannot command the trust and confidence of your key stakeholders, you’re not the right person for the job.
A credible and therefore qualified candidate will be able to command the trust of survivors by having the capacity to relate to them on a personal level. Ms Goddard appears to meet this criteria.
There was no fairy tale ending for Cathy. But to do her and other survivors of child sexual abuse justice, this inquiry must proceed apace and be unimpeachable.
Cathy was a child and a prostitute. From the age of four her parents had sex parties where adults would abuse each other’s children. On the few occasions that Cathy found the courage to tell trusted adults, no-one believed her. Her parents were both doctors and “respectable” people don’t behave like that. She was living on the streets at 12, a drug addict at 13 and by the time I met her, at 14, she was “owned” by a pimp in central London. I spent Christmas night with her in casualty. She had been raped with a broken bottle and was severely traumatised.
The psychological theory I studied at university did little to prepare me for that night in A&E almost 20 years ago. As someone with professional experience of working with survivors of child sex abuse, I welcome the appointment of Justice Lowell Goddard, with reservation (she has a lot to prove). The credibility of the inquiry was at risk of derailment when two previous chairs were forced to resign due to their links to the establishment.
The outgoing chair, Fiona Woolf, vehemently denied being an establishment figure but was about as convincing as Jim Davidson claiming to be a feminist. Watching Woolf talk about her dinner parties with senior political figures and her (personal) Christmas card list of over 3,000 , yet concomitantly claiming to be just an ordinary gal, would have been comedic were her appointment not so ill conceived .
In the end, the survivors’ objections were heard. If they don’t trust, absolutely, in the integrity of the process, starting with the appointment of the chair, they will (rightly) boycott it and the whole process will unravel. If their views were treated with contempt at this stage, why should they put themselves through the nightmare of reliving historical sexual traumas?
Cathy, though writhing in agony, refused to be examined by the belligerent male doctor. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think her request for a female doctor was unreasonable, but he clearly did. He lectured me on his innumerable professional accolades. I pointed out that Cathy didn’t get to choose not to be raped with a broken bottle, particles of which remained lodged in her vagina. That having found herself ripped asunder and in A&E on Christmas night, she didn’t choose to be bullied by a condescending doctor. But she did have one choice left. She chose not to have another man anywhere near her, let alone her private parts, for the foreseeable.
We did get a female doctor, though it was a long wait. Hopefully Theresa May has learned something I realised as a graduate advocating for a traumatised child, that sometimes, the most important criteria for a role can’t be found on a CV alone. It doesn’t matter how many letters you have after your name or what university you went to. If you cannot command the trust and confidence of your key stakeholders, you’re not the right person for the job.
A credible and therefore qualified candidate will be able to command the trust of survivors by having the capacity to relate to them on a personal level. Ms Goddard appears to meet this criteria.
There was no fairy tale ending for Cathy. But to do her and other survivors of child sexual abuse justice, this inquiry must proceed apace and be unimpeachable.
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