Category Archives: Scandal

Racist Patel strikes again: Jamaicans are being targeted for deportation by Home Office

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Patel: see the posters behind her? The only UK aid she likes is helping foreigners off British soil. Odd, considering she is herself the daughter of immigrants.

Priti Patel’s Home Office has been disproportionately targeting Jamaicans for deportation.

And it seems clear officials know their actions are racist. Otherwise why would they have spent a year trying to withhold the information after The Guardian made a simple Freedom of Information request?

Jamaicans are 10 per cent more likely to be deported than people from other countries, even though the same rule applies to all of them:

Under the UK Borders Act 2007, foreign nationals who are jailed for a single offence for at least 12 months will normally be considered for deportation on their release, with exceptions under human rights rules – for example, having children in the UK, and for people who have been trafficked.

A comparison of Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Home Office data between 2015 and 2020 showed that once people from European Economic Area countries were excluded, as they are not covered by the act, an average of 65% of overseas nationals jailed for at least 12 months were deported.

For Jamaican nationals, this proportion rose to 75%, however, despite the much greater likelihood of their having significant ties to the UK. For other former British colonies in the Caribbean, such as Trinidad and Tobago, and St Lucia, the rates were higher still.

The statistics also showed that 90% of Nigerian nationals were deported, and 76% of those from Ghana. For Albanians, the rate was 90%, and for Vietnamese nationals 84%.

Concern has also been registered about deportations to Albania and Vietnam, which have known issues with human trafficking connected to organised crime.

The Guardian reported that it had only been able to publish its findings after “a year-long freedom of information battle”:

While the MoJ supplied the information within weeks, the Home Office refused, saying that to do so would be “likely to prejudice diplomatic relations between the UK and a foreign government”, and could hamper the operation of immigration controls.

The Guardian appealed to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which ruled against the Home Office, calling the department’s arguments “vague” and “generic”, and noting that no attempt had been made to substantiate them. “The commissioner will not accept at face value assertions made by a public authority that, in her view, require a proper and fuller explanation,” the ruling stated.

Even now, the Home Office has tried to justify its disproportionate targeting of people from Jamaica: “We do not target specific countries.”

The record states otherwise – because the Windrush scandal showed how the Home Office deliberately destroyed records proving that people of Jamaican origin had the right to remain in the UK, and then pursued an aggressive policy of deportation against them.

It seems Priti Patel has kept up the deportations, despite protestations of fairness.

Source: Disproportionate targeting of Jamaicans for deportation from UK, data suggests | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

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Hancock out, Javid in – it seems Boris Johnson has few Tories to choose from

Sajid Javid: the new Health Secretary has been compared with Gollum from JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth fictions.

Hancock had to go, in the end.

Not only had he brought the position of Health Secretary into disrepute by breaking his own “guidelines” (and we all thought they were rules), but he had allowed the Tory government to be ridiculed.

And nobody thought he should stay. This Site’s (admittedly unscientific) poll gave a 100 per cent result in favour of him resigning.

And now he is gone.

(I’m not saying he went just because of my poll’s result, but it does seem to have reflected the mood of the nation at large, meaning it was impossible for him to stay.)

Ironically, that leaves the woman he allegedly hired solely so he could have an affair with her, stuck in a Health Department job that she may not even be qualified to hold. We know nothing of her record as an adviser.

But he’ll probably be back very soon.

Yes – now for the bad news.

You see, Boris Johnson has appointed Sajid Javid as Hancock’s replacement.

Javid was removed from his previous Cabinet job as Chancellor of the Exchequer in February last year, after a row with Johnson and then-prime ministerial adviser Dominic Cummings over his own advisers.

The fact that he is back now – filling the gap left after the first Cabinet change since he left – suggests that Johnson has very few allies in his own party.

This could explain his refusal to sack his ministers; with only the Britannia Unchained mob (Patel, Raab, Truss, Kwarteng) and a few Brexiters to choose from, he can’t afford to lose anybody.

This would also explain the increasing wave of corruption in Johnson’s ranks.

They know he is weak and they are exploiting it.

Further signs of Johnson’s weakness are evident – and likely to become more so after Javid’s appointment.

We have already seen attacks from Dominics Cummings and Grieve, and the defection of John Bercow to Keir Starmer’s Labour (not a huge leap, sadly).

I’m willing to predict more backstabbings from what we might call more “traditional” Conservatives, as they realise an 80-seat Parliamentary majority doesn’t mean more than 360 supporters for Johnson’s fascism.

They have plenty of attack options – the fact that Johnson allowed Hancock to make so many mistakes, break so many rules (all right, “guidelines”), and generally corrupt his office shows that the prime minister’s judgement is highly questionable.

The fact that Johnson refused to sack Hancock in the face of the public outcry also raises serious questions. Other PMs have sacked ministers who brought their administration into disrepute, even though it meant hiring MPs less sympathetic to their own politics, but Johnson didn’t.  That could be a valuable pressure point in the future.

In fact, there’s really only one ray of hope for Johnson amid this political and public relations disaster:

Hancock’s personal life brought him down, not his utter failure at his job.

This is a man whose three years as Health Secretary were characterised by rampant corruption – the appointment of an adviser purely so he could have an affair with her is just one example – and incompetence.

He gave contracts to provide the NHS with personal protective equipment (PPE) to Tory donors and friends who failed to do so. In the time he wasted this way, tens of thousands of people died.

He wasted £37 billion on a privatised “track and trace” system that still doesn’t work after a year. That organisation was run by Dido Harding, who now wants a job running NHS England – and if she gets it, she’ll ruin it as well.

He lied to us repeatedly about the seriousness of the Covid-19 threat, about the effectiveness of the government’s opposition to it, and about the incompetence of his own decisions (covering up his uselessness).

He failed to provide appropriate guidance to protect care home residents from Covid-19 – most especially from fellow residents returning from hospital but also from staff who worked in multiple homes.

I’m listing these examples off the top of my head, by the way – they are so obvious I don’t even have to research them.

But those failures aren’t what brought him down.

Johnson can take heart from this. It shows that the mindless mass of tribal Tory voters is still right behind him – convinced that his government is doing what’s right for the UK, even as it drags us into the cess pit of fascism and exploitation.

It’s a very small gleam of sunlight through the clouds surrounding him, though.

He has surrounded himself with corrupt incompetents just like Hancock, whose rampant self-interest will bring them before the court of public opinion again – very soon.

What will Johnson do when the mob is baying for the next one’s head?

Source: Matt Hancock quits as health secretary after breaking social distance guidance – BBC News

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Why is Twitter blocking searches for photos and videos of Matt Hancock? Political bias?

Smug little cheat: and Matt Hancock seems to have reason to be cocky, what with Twitter suppressing embarrassing photo and video searches.

There is no reason for Twitter to do this – other than political bias.

Read:

I’ve checked and it is accurate. Photo and video searches using Hancock’s name have been disabled.

Twitter users may wish to inquiry of @TwitterSupport just why it is supporting an unfaithful husband who breaks his own safety rules, thereby increasing the risk of contracting a potentially fatal disease that has been blighting the world for a year and a half.

What’s the strategy there, Twitter?

Something for the weekend, Mr Hancock? Here’s what you’ve given us [HUMOUR/STRONG LANGUAGE]

The last day or so have been a hard time for Matt Hancock and he has said he would appreciate being left alone to come to terms with the revelations about his love life.

FAT CHANCE!

It’s bonanza time for those of us who enjoy mocking what’s he’s been doing with his banana.

I haven’t even seen much of what’s going around but I know you’ll get a kick out of this…

… and this (it’s long, which is probably more than we can say for Matt, and it’s enjoyable, which again…)…

Oh dear – it seems Facebook is demanding you watch it on that platform. Please do. In the meantime, here’s – the real – Matt strutting his stuff on stage with Therese Coffey. What a sex machine!

How about this comment on Hancock being busy saving lives?

A friend of mine has tried to raise the tone by comparing the photo of Hancock having that extra-regulatory snog with Gina Coladangelo with classical art:

Apparently the choice of colours make it much more like The Scream than what was probably intended:

You go for Klimt but you get Munch. I’m sure many women understand that sensation.

Never mind, Matt – you can always try to justify it by saying you’re an “Alpha Male”. Just don’t expect anybody to take you seriously… ever again.

One parting shot: here’s Jonathan Pie to bring it all home to Hancock in a big way. Be warned that he doesn’t hold back at all and the language is extreme:

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Mythbusting: nurse(?) makes mistake over ‘Do Not Resuscitate’

Ventilator: people with long-term illnesses, disabilities and learning disabilities are still being denied resuscitation by the NHS – and one nurse, at least, has denied the existence of this scandal.

I can’t let this pass.

At Prime Minister’s Questions on June 16, Peterborough’s Tory MP Paul Bristow asked an important question about “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) orders that have been made on NHS patients during the Covid-19 crisis.

Having reported on this scandal many times on This Site, I tweeted in response:

I was surprised and saddened when this provoked the following response from a Twitter user who identifies as a nurse (I won’t reproduce the tweet here because I do not wish to identify that person):

“Are you a healthcare professional?

“No.

“Then do not spread false theories about something you obviously know nothing about.”

I attempted to put my critic straight – as politely as possible, in the circumstances:

“I am a news reporter of nearly 30 years experience and have been covering this story from the start. I DO know the facts here. And I see that, since you provide no information to support your insult, you probably don’t. Go well.”

Sadly, this person would not take the (rather overt) hint and came back at me:

You have confirmed it.

It is a story.

I do not have the time, inclination or room on twitter to “provide you with information” only to say that I have 30 years experience as a nurse and have a postgraduate qualification in Professional Practice

Then this is a person who ought to have known better. The claim, “It is a story,” was an attempt to downplay the DNR deaths as fiction, and I wasn’t having that. Also the refusal to support a claim with factual information is a classic tactic by trolls who don’t have any facts to offer.

So I responded (again):

“And how does that better qualify you to comment on this? I’ve done the research so I know my facts. It isn’t fiction.”

And again this person came back at me:

Ok then would you attempt CPR on a five stone frail old woman? Am not going to carry on with this because I’m afraid you just don’t know what you’re on about

This is misleading, and a lie. Allow me to explain.

Mr Bristow’s question is available  to read in Hansard, here. He said: “Last year, doctors and care settings issued an unprecedented number of “do not resuscitate” orders to patients with learning disabilities and mental illness. Many were unlawful and caused avoidable deaths.

“Despite urgent Care Quality Commission and NHS guidance, shockingly, this practice has continued. Last week, The Telegraph reported that Sonia Deleon died unresuscitated. Her family said she was given a DNR without them knowing, and with her learning disabilities and schizophrenia stated as reasons.

“Does the Prime Minister share my alarm about these cases, which should have no place in our care, and does he agree that they should be independently investigated?”

I won’t bother to repeat Boris Johnson’s response as he made no undertaking to prevent further abuses of DNR orders.

It was clear that the issue here was not the safety of attempting cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on a person who may suffer as much harm in that attempt as by the condition that had caused them to need reviving.

It was a political choice to deny health care to people dying with Covid-19, because they have learning (or other) disabilities. It seems to have been considered an opportunity to clear many thousands of so-called “useless eaters” from the UK’s benefit books.

Sonia Deleon’s story is a classic example; you can read about it here.

In brief, almost a year after it was revealed that a policy was in place to deny NHS Covid-19 care to people with long-term illnesses and disabilities – and NHS bosses then claimed to have warned hospitals, GPs and NHS managers not to make such orders on these people, Sonia Deleon was deliberately allowed to die because a DNR order on her had been made.

Hospital authorities claimed that it the order had been agreed with Ms Deleon’s family but they deny this strenuously.

Ms Deleon had learning disabilities and the circumstances of her death are not only a scandal in themselves but are a continuation of a national disgrace.

And I was criticised for highlighting this atrocity – by someone claiming to be a nurse.

I won’t take this matter further by seeking to identify the NHS trust for which this person works and requesting that they be reminded of the facts and properly disciplined for trying to mislead the public. I may change my mind if any further attempts at deception result from this article.

But I will take the opportunity to request that anybody who has relatives living with a long-term illness or disability, or a learning disability, should contact the NHS and ensure that orders equivalent to death sentences have not been applied to their loved ones without their knowledge.

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Why is police officer part responsible for corruption in Daniel Morgan inquiry being trusted to clean it up?

Cressida Dick: This Writer is cursing the fact that this image isn’t a post-arrest mugshot.

We should be furious about this. It is an invitation to allow the corruption to continue until all the UK’s police forces are poisoned.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has insulted the nation with her response to the findings of the Daniel Morgan inquiry.

She said it was a “matter of great regret that no one has been brought to justice” – but failed to say anything about the fact that she shares responsibility for that failure.

Dick started her statement by saying she wanted to acknowledge the “resilience” and “determination” of the Morgan family, but that’s not what they wanted; they wanted her to acknowledge the failings the inquiry discovered – including those in her own behaviour.

Then how about this for cheek:

“I have been personally determined that the Met provided the Panel with the fullest level of co-operation in an open and transparent manner, with complete integrity at all times.”

As far as I can tell, that is a direct lie – Dick herself was singled out for criticism in the inquiry report for obstructing the investigation by denying the inquiry panel access to vital information.

So: no co-operation; no openness; no transparency – and absolutely no integrity at all.

Referring to the report, she stated: “We will take the necessary time to consider it and the associated recommendations in their entirety.”

I can only conclude that she will take as much time as it takes to find a way of dismissing the report’s accusations of “institutional corruption”, to avoid bringing in any of the changes the inquiry panel demanded, and to deflect the criticisms that related directly to her.

In other words, This Writer is willing to bet that, having been found to have betrayed her duty to the public in order to protect the Met’s reputation, Dick will again betray her duty to the public in order to protect the Met’s – and her own – reputation.

It should also be noted that Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave’s comment that he does not accept that the Met is “institutionally corrupt” – as the inquiry found – is cause for deep concern.

He was saying that he will attempt to obstruct plans to root out the corruption that the inquiry found.

I said it in a previous article and I’ll say it again here:

If Priti Patel could be trusted to do her job properly, she would have already demanded the suspension of Dick and every other police officer involved in this 34-years-long corrupt cover-up – all of them.

She would then invite law enforcement officers from a completely different place – possibly even from a different country, because I don’t think anybody here can be trusted to be honest (think Hillsborough) – to investigate their roles and determine whether and what criminal charges should be levelled against them.

But she isn’t doing any of that.

She’s trusting one of the people responsible for the corruption to clean it up. She’s making this worse.

Source: Daniel Morgan report: Cressida Dick apologises for failings in case | Metro News

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Hancock pledges payouts over infected blood scandal – like those the Windrush victims are still awaiting?

Matt Hancock: would you believe a promise by this man?

Matt Hancock has promised that the government will pay compensation to people infected by contaminated blood products – and their families – if a public inquiry into the scandal demands it.

What a pretty promise!

Here it is:

The health secretary told the inquiry: “I respect the process of the inquiry and I will respect its recommendations, and should the inquiry’s recommendations point to compensation, then of course we will pay compensation.”

This Site has reported on the infected blood scandal before, and the Guardian‘s account of it is as good as any:

As many as 30,000 people became severely ill after being given factor VIII blood products contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C imported from the US in the 1970s and 80s. Others were exposed to tainted blood through transfusions or after childbirth. On average one person is dying every four days, with approximately 3,000 haemophiliacs having died to date.

The question is: why should we believe Hancock?

His record hardly speaks for his honesty.

And as for his government’s record on payouts… here’s the National Audit Office, discussing another recent scandal:

If the death rate really is as reported, then considering the government’s tardiness in stumping up compensation cash…

I wonder if any of the victims will see a single brass farthing before they die.

Source: Infected blood scandal: Hancock pledges payouts if advised by inquiry | Contaminated blood scandal | The Guardian

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The vast majority of Windrush Scandal victims have yet to be compensated by a government that doesn’t care

The Empire Windrush brought many people to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War II. If it had still been in service a couple of years ago, the Tories would have been trying to use it to deport them all again.

This is scathing – and it comes from the National Audit Office, no less:

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Johnson dubbed ‘Major Corruption’ as one-fifth of UK Covid contracts ‘raised red flags’

Boris Johnson: Major corruption.

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, as the saying goes, and Boris Johnson is finding that out for himself right now.

After he referred repeatedly to Keir Starmer as “Captain Hindsight”, a commenter on Twitter responded that Johnson himself must be “Major Corruption” – to rapturous applause:

Johnson is in no position to deny the claim that is implicit in his new nickname; today (April 22) new allegations landed, suggesting that 20 per cent – an entire fifth – of Covid-19-related contracts awarded to private organisations were “red-flagged” for possible corruption.

Here’s The Guardian:

Transparency International UK said a “seriously flawed” arrangement, whereby companies bidding for contracts were prioritised if they were referred into a “VIP lane” by their political connections, had “damaged trust in the integrity of the pandemic response”.

The group said it had identified 73 Covid-related contracts with multiple factors that would ordinarily be treated as red flags for possible corruption, such as the company being politically connected. Twenty-seven PPE or testing contracts worth £2.1bn were awarded to firms with connections to the Conservative party, it claimed.

The group said it had also identified £255m of contracts awarded to companies that had only been incorporated within the previous 60 days. The figure is surprising because the short lifespan of the companies suggests they cannot have had any track record of actual business.

The group said Boris Johnson’s government must urgently disclose the identities of companies awarded public money through the VIP lane, which was set up by the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care in the early days of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, we have also learned that David Cameron was trying to get his grubby little hands on personal data belonging to NHS staff, while he was lobbying on behalf of Greensill Capital, in which he had a financial interest.

And the Twitter commentariat has been happy to supply multiple other examples of Johnson’s alleged corruption. For example:

One last observation: while it has been great fun calling Johnson “Major Corruption”, at least one observer has suggested that we are ranking him too highly:

As alternatives go, it is appropriate on many different levels – isn’t it?

Source: Fifth of UK Covid contracts ‘raised red flags for possible corruption’ | Coronavirus | The Guardian

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Red faces over ‘RedThroat’ as reporters line up to say Greensill leaks were NOT from Labour mole

David Cameron: there are genuine concerns about his conduct on behalf of Greensill – so why is a columnist for a Tory rag trying to make trouble for the whistleblowers?

The trouble with Dan Hodges’ assertion that a Labour Party mole leaked embarrassing information about the Greensill scandal is that a falsehood can go around the world before the facts have got their boots on.

In this case, the refutations have come fast – and there have been a lot of them – but the implication that this huge scandal has been fabricated by Labour will undoubtedly be taken up by the Tory-supporting trolls for use in the future.

Here’s Hodges:

In the article, he writes:

‘It’s pretty clear we’ve got a Labour mole inside Government,’ a Minister tells me. ‘There were suspicions before the Greensill affair, but this has basically confirmed it. It’s the only explanation for where all this stuff is coming from.’

Alternatively…

Tim Fenton, over on Zelo Street, has described the Tory frenzy to find Labour moles as “Amateur hour at the paranoia bar” and his article is well worth reading.

Even Gabriel Pogrund over at The Sunday Times, who seems to hate Labour so much that he published lies about This Writer (for which the paper later had to publish a humiliatingly-lengthy retraction), had to agree that Hodges is wrong here:

I wonder whether this is a thinly-veiled attempt to unmask the alleged moles, so the Tories can root them out of Whitehall.

If so, it is to be resisted.

Tory corruption is rampant and they are hardly likely to broadcast their misdeeds willingly.

We need whistleblowers in Whitehall to tell us what these people are really doing with our money.

We should not sit back and allow them to be punished for their honesty.

Of course, Hodges won’t take any punishment for publishing a falsehood.

Undoubtedly his article has boosted sales/reads of his rag, the Mail on Sunday.

As an ex-newspaper hack, This Writer can assure you that such a boost was all that its bosses wanted.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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