The Death Of Food Banks...

You know who said this at the start? Yes, Reader, that's right. We did. All of us in the blogosphere, if we still call it that...

In 2016, when the Guardian visited, Bestwood and Bulwell kept its stock of food in one shipping container; it now has four. Food donations now cover just a third of the demand; increasingly they have to raise money to buy in food. “There has been an assumption that there’s a magic food tree but we are all getting a wake-up call,” he says.

There's no magic anything tree. If you hand out free anything you can expect demand to rise. 

Daphine Aikens set up London’s first food bank, in Hammersmith and Fulham, in 2010. She quit as its manager in 2021 on medical advice after a stress-related illness brought on by endless 12-hour days. “If I had known in 2010 what it [the food bank] would turn out to be I would never have done it,” she says. “I’m glad I did it. But I would have been horrified by what it has become. I thought the solutions would have been found, the issues would be sorted.”

Why did you think that, though? 

First Love focused on people’s lack of income. This could be benefit problems, lack of a job, health issues, or inability to access disability benefits. First Love had pioneered advice workers in its food bank. Bentley decided to focus the charity’s energies entirely on the advice: out went the food; in came a service devoted 100% to support and advocacy.

First Love could spend £6,000 on food parcels to try and keep people afloat, says Bentley, or it could employ two advisers for a month to transform the lives of 50 people.

Is there not already a plethora of advice from government, both main and local, then? Why would you need 'advisers' to interpret it for them?

Yes, It Is Broken, You're Right There...

One Eritrean asylum seeker who reluctantly agreed to move from the Greenwich hotel to the one in Bedfordshire, and did not join in with the protest, said he was distraught about the enforced move but felt he had no choice but to go.

“We came to the UK looking for freedom but the reality is not like that. I’ve lost my friends, my community, my college with this move. I’ve lost everything. The system is broken.”

A system that houses asylum seekers who come in illegally from safe countries, in the most expensive part of the country, and allows their claims to drag on for so long they put down roots, all at the expense of the poor bloody taxpayer, is irretrievably broken. 

When is someone going to fix it? 

Others Should Face This Charge Too, Shouldn't They?

Boden, of Romford Way in Barrow Hill, Chesterfield, and Marsden, of no fixed address, deny murder, two counts of child cruelty, and two charges of causing or allowing the death of a child.

Every single social worker and health visitor who had any dealings with these creatures, in fact... 

Jurors were shown photographs of the couple's cluttered home in Old Whittington, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and blood-stained items found by police inside, including a vomit and faeces-stained cot mattress cover, duvet cover, Mickey Mouse baby grow and a 'Captain Cute' T-shirt.

Paramedics were called to the address at 2.33am on Christmas Day, finding Marsden 'upset and screaming' and the child without a pulse. Medics discovered Boden trying to resuscitate Finley on the kitchen floor but also 'noticed that his (Finley's) clothing was dirty, had dirty hands and fingernails, and he had new and raw scrapes and abrasions on his nose and linings of his nostrils,' said Ms Prior.

Ms Prior said: '(Medics) thought Finley had been dead longer than the parents were suggesting.' The address was later described by a doctor as 'extremely dirty, smelly and very cluttered', while a paramedic said it 'smelt of cannabis'.

And yet that's no bar to being allowed to look after a child, it seems. 

'His parents, we say, worked together to hide the injuries from the social worker, from the health visitor and the police for their own self-centred reasons.

'They didn't want social services to remove Finley if the appalling way they were treating Finley was discovered.'

Why on earth did they worry about such an unlikely occurrence? 

Wait, Isn't This A Good Thing..?

Britain is returning to the era of asylums, a top doctor has warned, after figures obtained by The Mail on Sunday show the number of mental health patients locked up in psychiatric hospitals against their will has spiralled over the past four decades.

Why is this considered a 'warning'..? We should be celebrating!

Experts say the situation is at least in part a symptom of a wider problem in the NHS: the practice of defensive medicine. This is when doctors offer treatment or an intervention that may not be warranted, simply in order to avoid the possibility of a complaint or legal action should something go wrong.

I'm not sure why they should be so worried, since they are hardly ever face any consequences... 

Retired consultant psychiatrist and Care Quality Commission reviewer Dr Duncan Double said: ‘When I started working on an acute psychiatric ward in 1984, we used to pride ourselves on having an open-door policy.

‘In the 1960s and 1970s there was a drive to close old psychiatric institutions in favour of supporting mental health patients in the community, but, if anything, things have become more bureaucratic and more restrictive.

‘Doctors have become more fearful of public safety or being blamed, so may be more likely to section patients inappropriately. We’ve returned to the worst aspects of the asylums era.’

No, we've returned to the best aspects of them - they kept people safe from the mentally ill and the mentally ill safe from themselves. 

Of particular concern to doctors are people with personality disorders, who make up almost half of mental health patients detained in out-of-area placements. These include borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, in which patients are unable to control their emotions and behave impulsively and irrationally. They can also harm themselves or others, meaning doctors might feel sectioning them is the safest option.

But Dr Jorge Zimbron, consultant psychiatrist at Fulbourn Hospital in Cambridge, says this can have disastrous consequences.

‘The majority of patients with a personality disorder have a history of abuse, so restraining them is traumatic and won’t be beneficial.’

It'll be very beneficial to those members of the public who'd otherwise be assaulted or murdered by them, though, wouldn't it? 

It's Not 'A War On Motorists'...

Sadiq Khan could hike fares for London commuters by as much as 10 per cent from next year, it emerged today - as he was blasted for plans to expand the £12.50-a-day Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) and introduce pay-per-mile charges for motorists.

...it's the inevitable consequences of the Covid measures on all public finances.

TfL, which Mr Khan oversees, saw its revenues collapse by as much as 95 per cent during the pandemic, and another bailout is needed to cover next April after which the organisation is expected to become 'financially sustainable'.

But almost certainly won't, after the consequences of the inevitable surrender to the rail unions which is surely next on the cards. We know they'll surrender, because it's what everyone in authority seems to do when faced with opposition, these days. 

'It almost feels like the Mayor of London is launching a war against commuters,' Commons Leader Mark Spencer said.

I hate to sound like I'm defending the useless Mayor of London on anything, but if it's a war, your government ordered us all over the top into the range of the enemy's artillery, didn't it? 

This Never Occurred To Them Before The Coroner Suggested It..?

'Where there is disclosure that a service user is in possession of an offensive weapon this must be documented; there must be a documented discussion as to the response; the information must be passed to the police; any action taken by the trust and/or the police to be documented.'

For 'service user' read 'potentially dangerous mental patient'...

In his Prevention of Future Deaths report Mr Middleton wrote: 'During the course of that meeting the perpetrator disclosed that he was in possession of a knife, that he was sleeping rough and he needed the knife for his own protection.

'The members of the Dorset Forensic (Mental Health) Team did not probe as to where the perpetrator was sleeping.' He added the fact that he said he was carrying a knife was not probed further by the forensic social worker, who work with offenders with mental health problems.

It was also not recorded at the time in his records and not raised during a Care Programme Meeting - which monitors the package of care people with mental health problems receive - held the day following the disclosure.

Did anyone bother to do their job properly? 

Dorset HealthCare said they accepted the coroner's conclusion and will make changes to 'minimise the risk of such a tragedy happening again'.

Only 'minimise' it, because they clearly know they are employing people who aren't up to the job, and probably cvan't get rid of them... 

Detective Inspector Richard Dixey, of MCIT, said in 2017: 'Ryan died as a result of a brutal knife attack by someone he had classed as his friend.

'His death was tragic and needless and I hope the sentence handed down today will assist Ryan's friends and family in some small way as a step towards closure during what has been a terribly traumatic time.'

You don't think the revelation that it was completely avoidable adds to the trauma, then, Richard..? 

Selecting Your Scapegoats...

In recent days and weeks more small lost lives have been added to this grim toll: Logan Mwangi, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, Star Hobson, Kyrell Matthews and Hakeem Hussain. In each case, decisions were taken that led to missed opportunities to protect these children – but we don’t know why these decisions were made. That will be revealed in safeguarding reviews that are under way.

But Polly has an idea why... 

But we do know that lockdown put huge strains on families and made it harder for social workers to see what was going on.

Really? There were plenty of signs, they didn't miss them, they simply failed to do their job.  

But to fix this system, we have to decide what the problem that we’re fixing is – and make sure that the pandemic doesn’t mask the longer-term trends.

And what would those be? 

I spent three years researching the children’s social care system for my book and found a system that is so decimated by austerity, the relationship between communities and the authorities now so corrupted by distrust, that in some parts of the country it is no longer able to identify the children most at risk.

Ah, yes. They don't have enough resources. It couldn't possibly be anything else, could it? 

In the absence of the capacity to make sound judgments, systems have been put in place that reduce nuanced, human judgment to tick-box exercises that devious parents can see straight through and outmanoeuvre.

Do any of the parents in these cases strike you as the sort of cunning high-IQ manipulators who should be able to pull the wool over the eyes of dedicated trained professionals? Because it never seems so to me... 

A good social care system would take faster, more decisive action to protect children: take them away from abusive families and offer better support and services to help other families stay together safely.

I'd settle for one that could reasonably distinguish between those two subsets with any degree of accuracy... 

A Warning For Universities...

A 12-year-old who raped and abused a neglected nine-year-old schoolboy wasn't prosecuted due to a bungled investigation by his teachers, a report has shown.

Aren't the wokies always demanding universities do the same for rape allegations of (supposed) adults? 

The abuse happened while the unnamed boys were both students at Appletree School in Cumbria, a special school for children who have been abused or neglected.

Obviously, so they can be abused properly this time... 

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) heard how the victim was repeatedly sexually abused, 'maybe 100 times', by the 12-year-old and others while at the school.

Which others? More children? Or teachers? 

The damning findings are part of a report into abuse at residential schools published today.

Ooh, a government report, those are really worth paying attention t... 

An Ofsted inspection report from 2006 said that Appletree was 'an effective school which meets successfully the academic, personal and social needs of its pupils', adding that there was a 'consistent management of pupils' behaviour, for which there are high expectations'.

Oh. Maybe not. 

Taking Your Work Home With You...

...it seems some take it just that little bit too far!

Despite his PCSO role having been based in Derbyshire, he lives in Wales, according to a statement on the Constabulary's website.

 Well, when your work is virtual, why not?

Bennett also presided over 74 misconduct hearings, involving 90 officers, between June 2010 and February 2012, according to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request lodged in 2021.

Out of these hearings involving Bennett, 56 officers were dismissed - more than 75%.

Which must all now be re-investigated, surely? 

I Don't Blame You, So Would I...

Mr Butoy was arrested, charged and sent to jail for stealing £208,000. It took until last year to get that conviction overturned in the High Court.

But he doesn't feel like his ordeal is over yet. "People say you've had your name cleared you're all right now. But it's not, you want justice," he tells BBC News. "I want someone else to be charged and jailed like I was."

...but you must know it's never going to happen.

On Monday, 14 February, the public inquiry into the wrongful of conviction of 706 Post Office branch managers, like Mr Butoy, will begin to hear evidence. Those convictions are the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history, and are now gradually being overturned in the courts.

Far, far too late for many. 

Crucially, it will ask whether those at software developer Fujitsu, the Post Office itself or even their biggest shareholder, the government, knew about faults in the system while using that data in court to convict sub-postmasters.

The answer cannot be anything other than 'Yes, they did.' 

One such expert, Jez Thompson, worked as a team leader for Fujitsu's Horizon Training Project, covering 60,000 Post Office branches over five years from the late 1990s....he also remembers regular glitches and bugs that made the software fail to calculate the books accurately.

"Occasionally it would work, but a lot of the time it wouldn't work," he says."Anything that was wrong with our system would be wrong on the live system as well," he explains.

"And we used to, on a monthly, probably even a weekly basis, pass information up to our managers just informing them that we'd found a glitch and this doesn't work. That's just the way it went."

"I reported them [these issues] to my line manager and he then reported that to a weekly meeting with Fujitsu Training Services, where both Fujitsu and The Post Office would have been present and glitches would've been discussed," he says. "Computers have reels of data. Somewhere there is evidence that somebody knew something."

I suspect that might turn out to be the wrong tense, Mr Thompson... 

Good!

Of course, in the crazy world of the 'Guardian', this is bad!

The government’s New Plan for Immigration aims to restrict family reunion rights for refugees who travelled through a safe third country before reaching the UK. This applies to the thousands who travelled to the UK in small boats.

Many of them have, in fact, travelled through multiple safe countries. Can the 'Guardian' find one that deserves to be here this time?

Reader, they cannot: 

One Syrian asylum seeker, who fled war, imprisonment and torture in his homeland before travelling through several countries and reaching the UK, said he was “horrified” by the government plans.

“We did not leave our country in search of happiness,” he told the Guardian. “I am talking here as the head of a family deserted. Rather, we went out to save our family from a war that does not know the young or the old and does not differentiate between the strong or the weak, in which no one can survive.”

“We walked in the most dangerous country, crossed the desert and crossed the English Channel in a rubber boat, knowing we may die in the sea. Has any official asked themselves what motivated us to risk ourselves … I was ready to die in order to save my family. What Priti Patel is thinking now is to eliminate our families by depriving us of family reunion.”

No, she's seeking to implement the will of the British people who have voted in a party that promised a crackdown on this sort of 'asylum shopping'.  

Incompetence, Or Design..?

PC Roberto-Cristian Varvara, 27, was charged alongside then-girlfriend, Special Constable Alexandra Chiriac, 22, over a three-day break they were said to have taken to Romania in mid-October last year. Colleagues of the officers accused them of returning to work at Colindale Police Station instead of going into self-isolation and quarantining.

However a prosecution mounted against the officers collapsed in dismal circumstances for Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service, after it emerged PC Varvara and SPC Chiriac had been charged under the wrong Covid-19 regulation.

Hmmm...suspicious? 

Heaping on the embarrassment, Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram excluded key evidence from a PC who had failed to caution PC Varvara during an angry interrogation, while he also concluded there was not proof that the trip to Romania had actually taken place.

Or serial incompetence? It's really hard to decide one way or the other. But I'm leaning towards incompetence, since it seems there's a lot of it to go around: 

In June, they had been convicted of breaking the quarantine rules when originally prosecuted through the Single Justice Procedure, and were handed £2,000 fines each at a behind-closed-door hearing.

The magistrate had not spotted the defendants were charged under the wrong regulation...

*sighs* 

Neither of them paid fixed penalties that they were issued and did not engage with the Single Justice Procedure prosecution.

But they successfully applied to overturn the convictions and push the case to trial on Tuesday this week.

Judge Ikram found that the police, backed by the CPS, had tried to use a Covid-19 regulations that was in force in July 2020, rather than October 2020, to pursue the case.

Remember when they called it the Great British justice system..? 

Sorry, Covid Isn't The Fall Guy Here...

A man who stabbed people at random, killing one and seriously injuring seven others, has been sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years.

But not for murder, as you'd expect... 

McLeod pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, as well as four charges of attempted murder and three charges of wounding with intent.

He was sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court. 

The judge said the 28-year-old was a "significant risk" to the public and ordered him to be detained, initially at Ashworth psychiatric hospital.

Oh, well, I guess we're all safe now...until they let him out again. 

McLeod was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time and was "well-known" to mental health services. However, the judge said he got "lost in the system" after being freed from prison during the COVID lockdown in April 2020.

Really? Gosh. There must have been a lot of covid around in 2019, 2018, 2017  and 2016, then?

The court heard McLeod had been suffering with paranoid schizophrenia since 2012. He had previous convictions for robbery, escaping from lawful custody, possession of a firearm in a public place and possession of class A drugs.

Superintendent Jim Munro told Sky News: "He wasn't under any licence conditions and actively being managed, so he'd come back out having served his sentence."

Don't blame covid for the perennial and consistent failures of the mental health system, judge.  

Now They Are Worried..?

Sir Lindsay Hoyle spoke to Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel following the fatal stabbing of the 69-year-old MP in his Southend West constituency.

He added: 'Those people who do not share our values or share democracy, they will not win and we won't let them win. We will continue to look at security, that is ongoing and it will continue.'

Very Churchillian, Sir Lindsay, but Churchill fought to keep the Nazis from landing at Dover. 

What's Border Farce doing under Priti Patel? Escorting them in by the hundreds... 

Every politician is currently thought to have had a security assessment in the constituency, and they get a 'standard' package such as alarm systems, shutters, CCTV and personal alarms for staff.

However, there are concerns that most of the measures are applied to offices and homes, while surgeries often happen at churches or other buildings that might not be secure.

That sounds like a failing of security assessments then. A gap you can drive a truck through.  

A senior Parliamentary source told MailOnline: 'The Commons will have a complete review again. Police need to be at surgeries. It is the only solution.'

We don't have enough police to keep our streets safe, and you want more of them standing idly by while Mrs Miggins complains about the amount of dog poo on the street outside her house? 

It's not, of course, the only solution at all. And you know it.

Over To You, Grant...

Seven of London's Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) are to be scrapped after they were found to increase local congestion and caused 'no material change in air quality'.

Ealing Council studied nine LTNs following outcry from residents, who gathered in their thousands outside the town hall in April to demand they be axed.

So, sometimes the local council listens. But surely the effects of these wretched things were well-known before they were put in? Who'd be so stupid as to imag...

Oh...

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps previously announced the scheme - which plans for 200 LTNs across the country - is to receive hundreds of millions of pounds as part of the Government's so-called 'green transport revolution', which hopes to reduce car use by encouraging walking and cycling.

*sigh* 

The damning report challenges the Government's repeated claims that LTNs are a popular idea among the public.

It seems all their claims hold as much water as a sieve when you look at them closely, doesn't it? 

Protecting Our Borders..?

The number of foreign criminals released from prison on to the streets has reached a record high of almost 11,000.

Official figures show that at the end of June there were 10,882 foreign national offenders who had been released from jail but not deported.

All are subject to deportation because they were handed prison sentences of at least 12 months.

I wonder how many new ones we are unknowingly (or in the case of the 'Tory' government, uncaringly) admitting right now?  

The latest total has rocketed by 176 per cent since 2012, when the number stood at less than 4,000.

Wasn't the Tory Party once the party of law and order? I'm sure I remember it used to be... 

One in eight prisoners in jail in England and Wales are now non-UK citizens, or 9,850 of the 78,000 behind bars.

Will we see that figure rise in the future? I'm not a betting woman, but I'd have a flutter on that. 

The Perils Of Multinational Chains...

Co-op boss Steve Murrells has worked in the retail sector for decades, so when he says shortages are 'at a worse level than any time I have seen', he has to be taken seriously.

But bare shelves at his supermarkets are not the only sign that something's up. McDonald's stopped serving milkshakes and bottled drinks this week after becoming the latest victim of a nationwide shortage of delivery drivers. Chicken chain Nando's shut 50 outlets last week after its suppliers struggled to deliver enough peri-peri wings. And at Marks & Spencer stores, signs were put up warning customers that some bakeries have run out of fresh pastries due to 'delivery issues'.

These aren't 'shortages' as we normally understand them. 

The country's not running out of flour and eggs, and there hasn't been an outbreak of bird flu that has wiped out the supply of chicken, or another foot and mouth disease outbreak that has loosed DEFRA kill squads on our dairy herds...

But restaurant and fast food chains insist on control of supply. If Mrs Miggins running the corner shop cafe finds she's short of flour at the local cash and carry, she can nip to Tesco. The manager at the local McDonald's branch can't pop into Sainsbury and buy up all their milk, because he's not allowed to - McDonald's milkshakes can only be made with milk supplied by their own delivery service.

The haulage industry is labouring under a shortfall of around 100,000 truckers. The problem is so acute that the Government is considering increasing the maximum allowable length of an HGV by 6.5 ft.

So, is this the dreaded effects of Brexit that the Remainers warned about? No. It's government interference accompanied by market forces.  

Take the length of the average trucker's working week. HGV drivers are restricted to driving ten hours a day (up from nine pre-Covid), but factor in waiting times and they can be out of the house for 12-15 hours a day. The impact this has on family life has driven many younger drivers out, with the result that 62 per cent of the workforce is over 45.

But doesn't it pay well? 

Meanwhile, driver pay has slipped to the point that they get little more than supermarket shelf-stackers, partly due to the Government blocking a loophole that allowed them to operate as limited companies.To make matters worse, the number of drivers entering the industry for the first time has been badly hit by the Driver And Vehicle Standards Agency cancelling 'at least' 30,000 HGV driving tests last year due to Covid.

Oops! 

Bin Wars Looming...

Councillors have warned that people 'will go mad' if the government proceeds with plans to force homes to have seven bins each.

If only they would. Mostly, they'll just grumble and send letters to the local paper... 

It follows the government unveiling plans to standardise waste collection across England, with separate bins for dry recyclables – glass, metal, plastic, paper and card - in addition to bins for garden waste, food waste and non-recyclables.

This is the sort of plan that can only be conceived by people who live in huge, sprawling detatched houses with plenty of room for all these receptacles. Ot who have other people to worry about this sort of thing for them. 

Stockport Labour councillor Roy Driver said that aside from storage, an issue with most bin collections is 'street clutter'.

He continued: 'Blind people struggle to get past, as well as people with mobility problems and women with buggies. If we have more bins this problem will be exacerbated.'

Pshaw! Who cares about people, we've got a planet to save..! But are we doing that badly?

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said last month: 'We are going further and faster to recycle more of our waste to protect the environment.’

Oh! 

'Less than 10 per cent of household waste is now going to landfill and the amount of food waste being recycled is up by over 40 per cent since 2015.’

So...what's the issue? 

‘But we must do more, and through our major reforms of kerbside collections we will boost recycling levels and step up our war on plastic pollution – while our proposed weekly food waste collections will maximise recycling and stop the build-up of smelly waste around homes.’

So while these extra vehicles are trundling round the streets pumping out the diesel fumes they claim are ruining our quality of life, and the hotter summers they keep telling us we'll have due to climate change are heating up the stinking food waste bins, do any of these geniuses stop to wonder just what we're saving the planet for..? 

Valuing Everyone...

...except those damned heretics who won't bend the knee!

Three peers face being banned from using House of Lords bars and restaurants after refusing to take a controversial sexual harassment course.

Former Tory party treasurer Lord Kalms, Lord James and Lord Willoughby will lose access to Lords' facilities, and will be only allowed to communicate with staff by email, after refusing to take part in 'Valuing Everyone' training.

Good for them for sticking to their guns,. Unlike others. 

Former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine called the training a 'shocking waste of taxpayer money' after completing it to avoid punishment.

What a craven example to set. Typical of Hestletime, who clearly values subsidised food over principle. 

Challenge Consultancy has pocketed £885,354 for running the course across the Commons and Lords, a Parliament spokesman said.

You'll note that attendance for MPs was made voluntary instead of compulsory. Because they knew they'd all turn up anyway? 

The peers will only get the access back if they agree to the training, which Lord James, 83, who previously advised George Osborne, argued is an infringement on freedom of speech.

Hereditary peer Lord Willoughby, 82, said the training was 'misguided' and amounted to 'virtue signalling'. He told the committee: 'The idea that we should be trained to value everyone is wholly misguided.

'However much training I get, I will never value everyone; as an example, I will never be able to value murderous terrorists, however many re-education or self-criticism camps I am required to attend.'

Well said! 

Lord Stanley Kalms, 89, who ran electronics retailer Dixons, said: 'During that period I was at the forefront of female equal rights and pay well ahead of legalisation.'

To demand that they now turn up for a hugely expensive Two Minute Indoctrination is repulsive. 

And Next, She'll Warn Us That Water Is Wet...

The head of the schools watchdog in England has denounced a “militant” new brand of activism in school communities, which she warned was leading to confrontation within and outside the school gates and having a potentially limiting effect on education.

You've only just noticed? Where have you been for the last 10 years?

In some cases, she said, children and teachers were being subjected to abuse and even violence for being the wrong religion, race or ethnicity, and she said pupils should not be forced to support their peers’ campaigns for fear of being ostracised if they do not.

Too little, too late. Where were you when a schoolteacher was hounded out of his school for showing an image of a religious figure?