Nearly 5,000 more people died in 2022-23 because their homes were damp and cold. That was the winter when energy bills skyrocketed.
While the energy firms made billions of pounds in profit, Rishi Sunak’s Tory government claimed to be doing all it could to ensure that ordinary people would not freeze.
It seems whatever Sunak did, it was not enough.
Here’s the Morning Star, which had the earliest report I’ve found so far:
Almost 5,000 people in Britain died last year as a result of living in cold and damp homes, an analysis of official data revealed today.
The figures, compiled by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition… calculated that of the 21,890 excess winter deaths in 2022-23, 21.5 per cent were caused by living in cold homes.
It comes as a report card by the Warm This Winter campaign on the government’s progress against its eight key measures to tackle the energy bills crisis, including providing financial support for those most in need, has revealed that on half of these, ministers are making no progress.
The report card found that on one measure, the government has taken backwards steps that will deepen the country’s reliance on expensive fossil fuels by failing to reduce Britain’s gas exports.
We all knew that we couldn’t rely on the Tories to protect vulnerable people against rampant corporate profiteering, and this is exemplary of what happens when they are asked to try.
Tories are rabid social Darwinists anyway; they probably think the deaths of your relatives and friends are a good thing for the country. But:
Every time you hear about energy firms’ profits, remember they are built on the deaths of 5,000 people.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Supporters of the current government of Israel also support the murder of children.
No matter whether the Palestinian youth who was killed had committed any crime of his own – and there’s no proof shown here – he should have received medical attention but was instead shot and allowed to bleed to death.
This is just beyond anything…
The kid is just lying there, not a threat, & is then shot & killed at point blank range, an act that was then applauded by a crowd of racist zionist lunatics.
Meanwhile, settlers kill Palestinians, burn crops, steal homes & walk free! https://t.co/mgMv7uwkBB
If that is the culture of Israel, then Israel is barbaric.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Where being a patient gets you: 120000 people have died before getting this far with the NHS that the Tories have starved of resources.
Freedom of Information responses have indicated that 121000 people have died while waiting for treatment by the National Health Service in England – despite UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s promise to get waiting lists down.
The number of deaths is higher even than at the height of the Covid-19 crisis – and double the number of deaths before the pandemic.
According to The Mirror, the Labour Party sent Freedom of Information requests to every trust in England. Although only 35 out of 138 trusts responded, it was possible to extrapolate an overall number of deaths from the figure they provided – 30611. It came in at 120695.
That is more than the 117000 who died during the Covid pandemic in 2021, more than twice the 60000 deaths in 2017-18, and more than three times the 38000 or so recorded in 2012-13.
This is at a time when England has the longest waiting lists in the history of the National Health Service, with 7.6 million people registered as waiting for treatment.
It is important to remember that when Rishi Sunak became prime minister, he promised to cut waiting lists – but there are 600000 more people waiting for treatment now than there were then.
We should also give weight to the words of a health service spokesperson, who suggested that the figure is misleading because the sample size is too small. But no accurate, verified figures have been forthcoming from that source
This in turn suggests that the true figure may in fact be much higher.
The Mirror article quotes Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive at NHS Providers, which represents hospital bosses, who blamed “historic underfunding … a pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, workforce shortages and now industrial action” for piling pressure on the health service.
The historic increases in waiting lists – and deaths while on those lists – have come after successive Conservative governments deprived the NHS of vital funding, gave much of what little there was to private providers who frittered it away in share dividends, and ran underpaid medical staff into the ground.
So we can understand the responses of the pundits on ITV on August 30, when Owen Jones said the evidence suggests a conscious decision by the Tories to prioritise profits for rich businesspeople over the health of the nation…
Presenter: "Its not just about throwing more £ at it"
If we'd spent spent as much between 2010-19 on healthcare per person as France the NHS would've got £40bn/yr more, & if we'd spent as much as Germany it'd be £73bn/yr more. @owenjones84 is right, the NHS has been starved of £ pic.twitter.com/VDXaxwDmRp
… and with Labour, under leader Keir Starmer and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, saying it will not end privatisation, it seems the agony will continue indefinitely.
Labour’s plan to cut waiting lists is to divert even more money to the private sector, to use their spare capacity. But this is just throwing good money after bad, for the reason described by Saul Staniforth, below:
Thornberry says Labour won't be scared to divert money to the private healthcare sector to use their spare capacity.
There isn't any spare capacity in the private sector – its taken from the NHS. Build capacity in the NHS, not in the private sector. pic.twitter.com/UffkzfJ1OO
Private health businesses work by taking medical staff away from the NHS, to work for the profit of corporate shareholders.
If any government – Tory, Labour or whatever – puts money into private firms to carry out treatment, then much of that cash won’t actually go towards making people healthier at all; it will simply boost already bloated shareholder bank accounts.
What’s the solution?
It isn’t hard to see.
For a start, privatisation of healthcare should be reversed, so money that currently enriches those shareholders can be put back where it belongs – making people healthier.
The defunding of the NHS must also be reversed, so that medical staff can be paid what they are worth, and are given a renewed sense of the value of their work. This Writer saw a meme today (September 1) pointing out that doctors and nurses are not 25 per cent less valuable than they were 15 years ago, so they should not have lost that much pay, in real terms.
Above all, UK politicians must accept that privatisation is a failed experiment that has killed thousands of people unnecessarily.
If that lesson doesn’t get through, and needs to be hammered home, then bereaved families now or in the future will always have recourse to one option:
They can put the evidence together, showing how political decisions led to the deaths of their relatives – and they can prosecute the politicians who pushed them through.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Channel migrants: this photo is obviously not of anything that happened today (August 12, 2023) – but Tory policies are putting people like this in danger every day.
Another day, another Tory tragedy. Six people have died in the Channel – and it could be argued that the Conservative government caused the deaths.
Here’s the story:
Six people die and dozens rescued after boat carrying migrants sinks in Channel https://t.co/dZD07ynsFh
There’s a lot of right-wing lunacy circulating on the social media. Never mind that. There’s only one question to be asked and it is this:
How many people would have died today if there was a safe, legal route for people to claim asylum in the United Kingdom?
I think you know the answer is none.
Not only that, but there would be no criminal gangs making money from suffering like we’ve seen today, because there would be no demand for them to help people get across the water.
So these words by Suella Braverman…
My thoughts and prayers are with those affected by the tragic loss of life in the Channel today.
This morning I spoke with our Border Force teams who have been supporting the French authorities in response to this incident.
As another 6 human beings die trying to cross the Channel, here’s a reminder that:
In 2021, France offered to host a UK asylum processing facility in Calais so we could process applications there & ensure people didn’t make the perilous crossing.
It is Conservative policy for the crossings to continue, for the criminal gangs to make money from the people on the boats, and for some of them to die.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Bronzefield prison: the death of baby Aisha happened after at least four other incidents involving pregnancy there.
WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
This is what happens when you let your government put people’s lives in the hands of a private corporation that exists only to make a profit: PEOPLE DIE.
That is exactly what happened at privately-run Bronzefield Prison, on the outskirts of Ashford in Surrey, which is run by Sodexo Justice Services.
An inquest has found that teenage mother Rianna Cleary was found in her cell, covered in blood, her dead baby Aisha cradled in her arms, after she had twice called for help after going into Labour during the night – and both calls were ignored by staff. She had to bite through the umbilical cord.
She should have been monitored five times during the day before the birth but the nurse who had been on duty at the time admitted that this had not happened. A nurse had tried to get Ms Cleary moved to the prison’s healthcare facility but no bed was available.
When she went into Labour, Ms Cleary used the cell’s intercom system to tell an officer she needed a nurse or an ambulance – but the officer on duty did not call for any help. About half an hour later, in what was described as “unbearable” pain, she repeated her request – but the call was disconnected in the guard’s control room. This meant the call bell from her cell was disabled from that point onward.
The senior coroner for Surrey, Richard Travers, said systematic failings at both the prison and the hospital that looked after the mother meant Aisha died; she might have survived if Ms Cleary had been discovered in Labour and transferred to hospital.
These events occurred in September 2019 and the inquest has only just happened – taking a month to be heard.
A glance at the prison’s history shows that this outrage is far from unique: at least four times in the two years to 2019, women gave birth in upsetting and potentially dangerous conditions.
A report by The Guardian in November that year states that in addition to Ms Cleary’s case, “On at least four occasions in this period, women held at the privately run Surrey prison have given birth in distressing and potentially unsafe circumstances, including one woman who gave birth in her cell and another who was left in labour at night-time supported only by another pregnant prisoner.
“In December 2017, one woman suffered a stillbirth and another baby was admitted to neonatal intensive care, in both instances after women were transferred from Bronzefield to hospital at a late stage of labour. In the latter case, it is understood that the woman alerted the prison to concerns two days before she was eventually taken to hospital.
“Board meeting minutes from Ashford and St Peter’s NHS trust, from July 2018, refer to the two incidents, stating: “Adverse outcomes were reported in both cases … significant learning and process change were identified for both hospital and prison teams.”
“The minutes state that Bronzefield, Europe’s largest female prison, intended to review its policy concerning the transfer of pregnant women to hospital and its criteria for risk assessment.
“Sodexo Justice Services, which runs the prison, said that following the December 2017 incidents it had worked with Ashford and St Peter’s Hospital and changed arrangements with its midwives.”
So there can be no excuse for what happened.
But: “The Guardian also heard of a woman who alerted prison staff that she was in labour in July 2018. She was not seen by a midwife and was left in labour during the night, supported only by another pregnant prisoner.
“In March 2019 a woman, understood to have been in the prison on remand, gave birth in her cell with no midwife or doctor present. A nurse reportedly delivered the baby.”
The Ministry of Justice, contacted in November 2019, said that Sodexo had not incurred contractual penalties relating to the levels of care to pregnant women in custody in the previous three years – and declined to comment on then-recent incidents at HMP Bronzefield.
Former prisoners, including one from Bronzefield, said midwife appointments and scans were frequently missed as a result of prison staff shortages.
It all adds up to a failure of service caused by privatisation, in This Writer’s opinion. Private corporations, brought in to run a service like a prison, do so in order to make money and cut corners in order to achieve those profits.
Even when they are found to be at fault, those failings continue to go unremedied, meaning more – and worse – tragedies are likely to happen.
And what is done by the government that hired these – call them what they are – incompetents? It turns a blind eye.
One final point: if you think what happened at this privately-run prison is a traumatically-shocking outrage, ask yourself what will happen to the National Health Service when it is given to private firms like Sodexo.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vladimir Putin: has he given orders for anti-Ukraine-war protesters to be silenced, no matter what it takes?
This Site was contacted with an unusual request: would I agree to publish articles from anti-war Russian websites?
Apparently, most people think everybody in Russia supports the war in Ukraine. In fact, it seems there are protests against Vladimir Putin and his aggression, but there is no information in the media outside Russia.
Russian anti-war activists are tortured and die in Russia as a result, but we don’t know about them.
Would This Site help to change that?
The answer is below – the first of what I hope will be a series.
This one is by Nikita Sologub, written on June 15 and translated by Viana Tina.
It is a translation of the article ««Они меня убьют». Что известно о гибели противника войны, которого силовики пытали в Ростове‑на‑Дону» Никита Сологуб, 15 июня 2023, 22:50, Editor: Yegor Skovoroda
Anatoliy Berezikov, 40, was into noise music, liked cycling around Rostov-on-Don and spoke out against the war. In mid-May, Berezikov was detained by the security forces, and since then he has not been released from administrative detention – time after time new reports have been drawn up on him under invented pretexts. He told his lawyer that the operation officers tortured him and beat him with electric shocks, while the FSB investigator came to the detention center and threatened with treason charges. Berezikov never got out of detention and died on 14 June in the detention center. Police officers were quick to call his death a suicide, but his defenders believe that he could not withstand the new torture. “Mediazone” tells what is known about Anatoliy Berezikov and the circumstances of his death.
He came out of the detention centre and immediately started swearing (police version)
If the police records are to be believed, in the early hours of 11 May officers accidentally encountered a long-haired, bearded man with tattoos on his arms on the outskirts of Rostov-on-Don. They asked to see his documents, but the man refused, shoved one of the police officers and tried to escape. The fugitive, 40-year-old Anatoliy Berezikov, was caught, taken to Police Department No. 6 and a report drawn up for disobeying a police officer. Maria Kornienko, judge of the Pervomaisky district court in Rostov-on-Don, sent Berezikov to 10 days’ detention.
The arrest was due to expire on 21 May at 2.05 pm. At 2.20pm, barely out of the detention centre on Semashko Street in the city centre, Berezikov started swearing and harassing passers-by. Police officers asked him to stop, but the man did not respond and refused to get into the patrol car, pushing the officers and grabbing their uniforms. Rostov police officers, this time from Unit 4, had to detain him again and take him to court, now in the city’s Leninsky district. There, Judge Sergei Bychenko found Berezikov guilty of disorderly conduct and sent him back to a special detention centre, again for 10 days.
This time, however, Berezikov was able to send a message that he needed help. When lawyer Irina Gak came to see him, Anatoliy told her that what was described in the reports was a plain police lie.
Detention. “Beaten and threatened with rape, further torture, possible murder”
In fact, Berezikov wrote, on 11 May he was in a rented flat he had rented after moving to Rostov-on-Don from Shatura near Moscow several years ago. Around eight in the morning there was a loud knock on the door, someone shouting that it was the neighbours. While a sleepy Berezikov was figuring out how to react, the door had already been broken into. About six people in black balaclavas burst into the flat, ran into the room without any explanation, threw him on the floor and started kicking him, then dragged him into the kitchen. While some in the kitchen were beating the man, threatening him and asking questions, others were turning things upside down in the room.
It was only after this that he was brought to the sixth police department, and after drawing up a report, to the judge, which started the series of administrative arrests.
To inform him that the arrest would not be the last, an FSS (Federal Security Service) investigator came to the special detention centre in person, and no criminal case was opened against Berezikov. He not only told his lawyer about this visit, but he also repeated it in the notes he handed in during the meeting.
“I was told (in general terms) about the basement, torture and being sent to war”, he described his conversation with the investigator. Speaking about the end of his arrest, Berezikov feared: “I might be met with, like the last time, beatings and threats of rape, further torture, probable murder.”
New torture and a third arrest. “The man who experienced a stun gun”
On 31 May Anatol Berezikov was to be released from custody. By that time lawyer Irina Gak, activist Tatiana Sporysheva and two other women arrived at the detention centre on Semashko Street. In order not to miss the moment of exit, they took positions at both exits of the detention centre. There was already a police UAZ at one of them, Sporysheva recalls, and a man without a uniform was walking nearby – she thought it was an FSS officer. When he saw the women, he called someone and another car arrived at the second exit. When it was time to be released, the officer on duty told the women that Berezikov had already been released. Believing this, the lawyer and activists packed up, leaving one of the exits unsupervised.
“Then we realised that we had been cheated, that is, while we were discussing, he was taken out through another entrance and immediately taken away. We realised this from the behaviour of the police officers, but we didn’t even know where they had taken him, whether he was being charged again with administrative or criminal offences. So we decided to follow the second police car and when it moved, we followed it,” Sporysheva said.
Following the car led them to Police Station 4, where Berezikov had had a report drawn up before his previous arrest. There, Sporysheva and Gak noticed the same man without a uniform. At the police station, the lawyer was told that Berezikov was not there. A few hours later Irina Gak thought that her client could have been secretly taken to the Leninski District Court – and then she actually met Berezikov in the corridor.
He was pale, the lawyer recalled, “extremely frightened” and generally looked like “a man who had experienced a stun gun at least”. Sporysheva says that when the lawyer asked Anatoliy to write an application to get acquainted with the case file, he was unable to do so himself.
“He was just like a cotton doll who didn’t react at all. He had absolutely cotton hands, his fingers hardly moved, he could not write this statement at all,” she claims. The guards at the time suggested that Berezikov should give up his lawyer. In the minute-long recording from the court corridor he is sitting unresponsive, with his hands folded and staring at the floor.
He was pale, the lawyer recalled, “extremely frightened” and generally looked like “a man who had experienced a stun gun at least”. Sporysheva says that when the lawyer asked Anatoliy to write an application to get acquainted with the case file, he was unable to do so himself.
“He was just like a cotton doll who didn’t react at all. He had absolutely cotton hands, his fingers hardly moved, he could not write this statement at all,” she claims. The guards at the time suggested that Berezikov should refuse his lawyer. In the minute-long recording from the court corridor he is sitting unresponsive, with his hands folded and staring at the floor.
When the guards were distracted and withdrawn, the women managed to talk to Berezikov. He managed to tell them that while they were looking for him in Department 4, the operatives had taken him out of town and tortured him there with a stun gun. The lawyer took a picture – on his back one could really see multiple red dots, characteristic of stun gun blows.
Because this time the hearing of the administrative report – again drawn up by police officers from the Fourth Department under the pretext of foul language – was attended by lawyer Irina Gak and Tatiana Sporysheva (as public defender), it lasted several hours. The defence demanded that an ambulance be called to the court; when they arrived, the medics gave Berezikov an injection of anaesthetic, but refused to assess his injuries and did not leave any documents.
Despite the defence’s accounts of a visit from an FSS investigator, threats to life, torture and illegal detention in a special detention centre, Judge Lada Evangelovskaya did not accede to requests. Instead, she sent Berezikov under arrest for another 15 days.
According to Sporysheva, after the hearing he managed to say: “I am afraid that I will disappear. I’m afraid that they will kill me and I won’t live till I get out of the special detention centre, that is, I won’t live till 15 June”.
After the trial, the police guards took Berezikov to the car to take him to the police station to fill out the paperwork for his transfer to a special detention centre. On the way to the car, the man managed to tell his defenders that all the things he had with him when he was arrested were missing: his flat keys, a wallet with 15,000 roubles and a bank card with money on it.
The video shows him finishing his cigarette and getting into his car, but he does not have time to throw away the cigarette butt.
– Don’t you have an ashtray here? Aren’t there any rubbish bins nearby? – The detainee asks with bewilderment.
– Just throw it under the car! – The policeman answers.
Berezikov doesn’t want to litter, so the lawyer has to throw the cigarette butt away.
Death in a detention centre
On 10 June, Sporysheva took a parcel to Berezikov. On 13 June the lawyer Irina Gak met him in the detention centre – he was active and, expecting that a criminal case would be brought against him, promised not to admit guilt despite torture.
The day before the end of the arrest, on 14 June, the lawyer, expecting that this arrest might not be the last one, came again to the detention centre. But there she was told that Anatoliy Berezikov was dead.
“At the same time, the cause was not given exactly, they said: either he had a heart attack or committed suicide,” recalls Tatiana Sporysheva, who was next to her. – That is, it was unclear. We called an ambulance, phoned and told the police. We couldn’t believe it, we thought that maybe he was ill, maybe he was still alive, maybe he could still be helped, but they were lying to us.
But soon an ambulance arrived at the detention centre and took away the corpse. The next day Berezikov was identified by his close friend.
The staff at the detention centre claim that Anatoliy Berezikov committed suicide. His defenders are certain that he died after being tortured.
High treason for the enemy of the war. “They torture brutally.”
While he was alive, Anatoliy Berezikov was never charged with any criminal offence. Even the visit to his flat was not formalised as a search within the framework of the investigation, but as an operative investigative measure “inspection of the premises”.
Lawyer Yevgeniy Smirnov from the human rights project “First Department”, who was aware of Berezikov’s misadventures, is convinced that the Rostov FSS Department needed a series of arrests in order to coordinate the criminal case of treason with the Moscow one.
“The decision to launch treason proceedings is agreed in Moscow. They cannot initiate it on their own initiative,” Smirnov explains. – The bureaucratic machine works and it takes time. Some take 15 days, some take two or three months. All this time they tried to prepare him for the case, to make him confess when it happens and not try to defend himself, being without a lawyer under the agreement. So that he would behave obediently and not interfere with the quiet investigation of the case”.
However, Berezikov did not yield to the threats and did not refuse a lawyer, which probably led to the situation in which the detainee died – most likely after more torture.
“There is no forensic report at the moment. There may even be a case, in which a lawyer will be involved as a representative of the victim’s family. Then we will know what he died of. It could be in a month or two,” says Smirnov. – They torture brutally. The lawyer had seen him just shortly before his death and of course he was not going to commit suicide, on the contrary he said that he was going to defend himself, saying that he feared for his life and health. Electricity is such a thing. A little too much, and even the healthiest person’s heart can stop.
The reason why the FSS was interested in Berezikov is unknown to Smirnov, but he knows that from the beginning of the war he “took an anti-war stance, non-violent, he did not hide his views in personal conversations”.
In public social networks Berezikov did not talk about the war. He worked as a repair mechanic. According to his VKontakte (Russian Facebook equivalent) page, his only sphere of interest, far from political, was noise music. He made noise synths together with the legend of the Rostov experimental scene Papa Srapa (Eduard Srapionov) and gave concerts under the pseudonym Anatoliy Ryk.
On 14 June, Anatoliy Ryk was supposed to perform at the festival Noise and Fury in Moscow. But on that day he died in a special detention centre in Rostov-on-Don.
Berezikov’s hobby associates interviewed by Mediazona said that he was not sociable, “kept away from the party”, “was a loner”, and “gave the impression of a person excessively eager to draw attention to his person”.
Berezikov himself was repeatedly in the Rostov news because of his habit of riding his bicycle in only shorts even in the harshest of winters. He has observed elections, helped Navalny’s headquarters, and participated in protests, including in support of Alexei Navalny, who was arrested in January 2021 – and was fined for doing so.
Translation of tweet of Vadim Kobzev:
It turned out that I knew Anatoliy personally. He was an activist in our Navalny office in Rostov, participated in rallies and was an election observer. Many people in Rostov had seen him on a bicycle without a T-shirt with a sign saying “Putin is a thief”.
The scum who tortured and murdered him will pay the price
Translation of OVD Info (Transl.- Account in English: @ovdinfo_en Advocacy & monitoring for human rights in Russia. Track repressions & provide legal aid to unjustly persecuted)
Anatoliy Berezikov, a 40-year-old activist, died in a detention centre in Rostov-on-Don. His lawyer, Irina Gak, suspects the man may have been killed in the process of torture
“I cannot name specific names of the people he spoke to, but I know of cases where he vividly expressed his anti-war stance in conversations in public space.
He always took part in actions, and not just came, but showed some kind of activity, handed out materials. That is, he is a long-time activist,” said Tatiana Sporysheva.
According to her, after her arrest Berezikov said that “for months he had been putting up anti-war leaflets, actively doing that while riding his bicycle. Evgeny Smirnov of the First Department does not confirm this, but does not deny it either; lawyer Irina Gak refused to comment.
It was difficult for Sporysheva to say which leaflets had attracted the attention of the FSS. The OVD-Info project mentioned that it could presumably have been leaflets with instructions on how to use the Ukrainian project “I Want to Live” (which accepts requests from Russian servicemen to surrender).
Ukrainian telegraph channels and bloggers have regularly posted calls for Russians to participate in a “flash mob” to post these leaflets on the streets of their cities since at least last autumn, posting layouts for printing them out. On May 10, on the eve of the law enforcers’ visit to Berezikov’s flat, Ukrainian telegraph channel «Оперативний ЗСУ» (Operative ZSU) wrote that “in the flash mob for distributing leaflets over the past few days, Rostov-on-Don, the unchallenged champion St. Petersburg and the unexpectedly small town of Novotroitsk stood out.” “But a separate place in this company is held by Rostov, where flyers of the ‘I Want to Live’ project were posted directly on victory posters,” the channel noted.
Whatever really drew the FSS’s attention, after the search the law enforcers found confirmation of their suspicions in Berezikov’s seized gadgets, lawyer Smirnov believes. “Naturally, he was subscribed to various telegrams to receive information from both sides. Next, they began to get him to admit that he was helping Ukraine, that’s one, and two – why they tortured him was to take out some of their anger. “Traitor to the motherland. You are our enemy, we will do with you what we want.” Some kind of animal feelings,” Yevgeny Smirnov is sure.
There is no record of the “inspection of the premises”, but Tatyana Sporysheva says that in addition to electronic devices, one of the two bicycles was also taken from the flat.
She believes that initially the FSS officers wanted to make Berezikov one of those defendants under the article on state treason, whose detention becomes known only after the court decision is made – without any details of the case. But Berezikov found the strength to resist, sought help from the people outside and thus ruined the law enforcers’ plan.
“This is a very convenient target: Anatoliy has no wife, no children, he has no Rostov registration, and he only has an elderly mother in the Moscow suburbs. He came to Rostov and he has no one here, no one will worry about him, no one will look for him, hence the treason,” she reasoned.
Yevgeniy Smirnov from the First Department agrees with her: “From his words – he was talking about threats under the article, for which life imprisonment is envisaged. Knowing the practice that we have all over the country now – and I know many such cases already – it was, of course, treason.
That’s the end of the article: an anti-war activist was arrested multiple times and did not survive the experience. Make of it what you will – but please let me know what you think of the article and if you’ll read more.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Muhammad Tamimi: his two-year-old life was ended after a member of the Israel Defence Forces raided his village and shot this defenceless toddler in the head.
Remember last week, when This Site commented on Jewish Chronicle reviewer Jonathan Sacerdoti’s critique of Maureen Lipman’s performance in the play Rose, in which he stated that it invests “dramatic capital in the outdated notion that Jews kill children”.
Outdated?
This happened last week:
Israeli soldiers shot a 2-year-old in the head!
Haytam Tamimi and his son Muhammad were among five Palestinians injured during a raid on the village of Nabi Saleh that lasted hours.
Israel claims they responded to being shot at in the Neveh Tzuf settlement. This is a lie pic.twitter.com/EjlPnqTsVP
I think it’s time we discussed some of these “notions” that certain people are constantly telling us are “outdated”.
Certainly the claim that armed Israelis shoot children is neither a notion, nor outdated. It is a terrifying fact.
Some have tried to justify the killing of a child by saying his parents put him in the line of fire. This is clearly false; the shooting happened during a raid on a Palestinian village by members of the Israel Defence Forces.
They claimed that they were responding to Palestinian aggression and I am not going to debate that. It might be true but that is irrelevant to what has happened, which is this:
Armed military aggressors attacked unarmed civilians in their homes and shot a toddler in the head, causing injuries from which he later died.
There is no explanation that can justify such an act.
It is unacceptable on any level at all – as all civilised observers must agree. Nobody can ever say they shot an unarmed toddler in the head as an act of self-defence.
And the very least the rest of us should expect is a little contrition from people like Mr Sacerdoti.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Well done to the mainstream media for finally reporting on the case of Errol Graham, nearly five years after he starved to death, having lost his benefits due to a Department for Work and Pensions decision.
And no – that comment is not meant well.
With a little more media attention, it seems likely that the DWP would not have been able to hide information from the Nottingham City Adult Safeguarding Board, whose review of the case, published this week, may now have to be revised.
Disability News Service, which broke the story in 2020, has provided documents that seem to have been withheld by the DWP, and says the Safeguarding Board is now reviewing them alongside its own actions.
The Department for Work and Pensions ignored its own safeguarding advice to deprive Errol Graham of his benefits.
Left with no income, Mr Graham starved to death.
He had been receiving incapacity benefit, and then ESA, for many years as a result of enduring mental distress that had led to him being sectioned.
The DWP stopped Mr Graham’s Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) entitlement – and backdated that decision to the previous month – after making two unsuccessful visits to his home to ask why he had not attended a face-to-face Work Capability Assessment (WCA) on August 31, 2017.
He had not been asked to fill in an ESA50 questionnaire, though. Why not?
The government department managed to stop an ESA payment that had been due to be credited to his bank account on October 17, the same day it made the second unsuccessful safeguarding visit.
Its own rules state that it should have made both safeguarding visits before stopping the benefits of a vulnerable claimant.
Not only that, but the DWP had needed – but failed – to seek further medical evidence from Mr Graham’s GP, in order to make an informed decision about him.
In fact, it seems this would not have made much difference as Mr Graham’s GP had not seen him since 2013, or recalled him for vital blood tests or issued prescriptions since 2015, despite medical conditions including significant, long-term mental distress and hypothyroidism.
Because he had lost his entitlement to ESA, Mr Graham’s housing benefit was also stopped.
When bailiffs knocked down his front door to evict him on June 20, 2018, they found a dead body that weighed just four and a half stone. The only food in the flat was a couple of out-of-date tins of fish.
Mr Graham was 57 years old.
On an ESA form years before, he had told the DWP he could not cope with “unexpected changes”, adding: “Upsets my life completely. Feel under threat and upset…”
He said: “Cannot deal with social situations. Keep myself to myself. Do not engage with strangers. Have no social life. Feel anxiety and panic in new situations.”
So without warning, the DWP flung him into exactly the kind of new – and harrowing – situation that he would be unable to handle.
Now it seems that
An independent safeguarding review into the “shocking and disturbing” events leading to Graham’s tragic and lonely death concluded that multiple failings by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), his GP practice, and social landlord meant that chances to save him were missed.
Describing Graham as a “man in acute mental distress who had shut himself away from the world”, Nottingham City Adult Safeguarding Board said decisions taken by all three agencies had exacerbated his problems towards the end of his life rather than supporting him.
Strange, that. How many years has it been since the DWP and the Tory government in general started insisting that their decisions always support benefit claimants?
That clearly seems to have been untrue. Agreed?
The review said DWP and Nottingham City Homes had failed to understand why Graham did not respond to their letters, texts and home visits, and so did not grasp the extent of his vulnerability when they left him without money, food and on the verge of homelessness.
Although both agencies had followed their own procedures correctly when they took critical decisions to deny Graham of vital services, the review makes clear such procedures were based on “partial information and misconceptions” about why Graham had refused to engage with them.
How did they follow their own procedures correctly? My understanding is that the failed to follow their own safeguarding advice. It was known that he was a vulnerable claimant so, after he failed to attend an appointment, why did the DWP stop his benefit – and backdate the stoppage – before it had carried out the two safeguarding visits it was required to do?
Why hadn’t the DWP sought further medical evidence about him, as required?
It was known that he could not cope with “unexpected changes”, as he had made it clear in an ESA form years before.
Oh… but the DWP never provided that information to the Safeguarding Board. Isn’t that outright dishonesty?
The Safeguarding Board said
A key lesson from Graham’s death was that his refusal to engage with support services did not negate his vulnerability and was not an excuse for inaction on the part of service providers. “Indeed, non-engagement may be a sign of increased vulnerability,” it concluded.
But that wasn’t the problem – in fact, it was the opposite of it. The problem was the refusal of the DWP – and others – to engage with Errol Graham.
In response to the report’s publication earlier this week, the DWP said it acknowledged that the government department had improved its processes since Mr Graham’s death.
But that was based on false information, because the DWP had not been honest with the Safeguarding Board. In fact, one might say it had refused to engage properly.
I wonder how the DWP will respond if the report is changed and a much more negative verdict is returned.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
The recommendations refer to multiple errors and policy failings across universal credit, employment and support allowance (ESA) and personal independence payment (PIP).
All those investigations and yet the bodies continue to pile up.
And the government somehow continues to deny any blame.
Why do you tolerate this? Is it just because you aren’t among the dead?
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
The problem: ambulances are delayed at hospitals because patients, who could be discharged, haven’t been.
Are the news media carrying out some kind of government propaganda job to run down the NHS and the ambulance services in a time of strikes?
Here’s a Metro report on a man who was found dead in a supermarket car park, five hours after calling for an ambulance while having a heart attack:
Martin Coleman, 54, died while waiting for an emergency response in the car park of Lidl in Taverham.
He was found in his van outside the store – just a 15-minute drive from the nearest hospital- in the early hours of July 1 last year.
At the time, the service was on ‘black alert’ due to the pressures it was facing and no ambulances were available when he called.
He was told to keep his phone line free, so did not contact friends and family.
David Allen, head of operations at EEAST, highlighted the pressures the service continues to face – despite efforts to make improvements.
He said: ‘Sometimes we can have up to 30 ambulances waiting outside the Norfolk and Norwich [hospital] at any one time.
‘There are over 400 patients across the three Norfolk hospitals who are medically fit to leave but cannot be discharged.’
He said the ambulance trust was making efforts to treat more people in the community and had been able to reduce the number needing hospital admission by 22 per cent.
The problems at the hospital – with knock-on effects on the ambulance service – are due to political decisions not to provide adequate funding for staff and beds.
Here’s Noam Chomsky to explain:
Conservative government calculates that a certain amount of unnecessary death is required to fuel the calls for privatisation, from a gamed and angry public. Obviously the real killing they’re after is AFTER the shares are primarily owned by themselves and their mates (ask Sid!) https://t.co/T3XFJJ6IjYpic.twitter.com/7UImho7AxL
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. This includes scrolling or continued navigation. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
