Happy New Year. Last year My WordPress blog reached 304,297 hits with 218,257 unique visitors – compared to 286,840 hits and 203,099 visitors the previous year.
This figures does not include hits on my Facebook and Linked In sites which means the numbers are actually much higher though more difficult to exactly measure. Nor does this include my articles on Whitehall and Westminster for Byline Times. Byline Times is worth subscribing to for all the other independent journos who contribute to it.
Thanks to everybody who chose to read my stories and special thanks to those who kindly donated to my site. Last year I raised some £5600 via WordPress plus another £1600 through Paypal before charges.
The two campaigns I run on this site – the demand for full restitution for the 3.6 million women who lost out when the pensions age was raised from 60 to 66 – and valiant whistleblowers fighting for justice in the NHS and at the nuclear facility in Sellafield – attracted the most interest.
The Department for Work and Pensions emerged as the most hated ministry by pensioners and benefit claimants.
DWP most hated ministry
The biggest hit on the site was not from my campaign for the #50swomen but from the blog exposing the millions of people who have been swindled by the DWP out of a Guaranteed Minimum Pension. Here I was helped out by a retired expert on the issue Christopher Thompson who has tirelessly pressed ministers and the Commons DWP committee to do something about it. This attracted 15,281 hits.
Four blogs on the 50swomen campaign attracted over 10,000 hits – the highest being my report of the WASPI meeting at the Labour Party Conference which attracted 12,405. My report on the proposed remedies for the women by the Parliamentary Ombudsman which I and many women see as a betrayal attracted 10,054 hits. An opportunity to download the summary of the changes attracted 4,400 people to do so – adding a little to more transparency given only a selected few were supposed to see it.
Dr Day case was followed across the world
On the the whistleblower front I decided to do a daily report on the Dr Chris Day case – the appalling story of a junior doctor who lost his training place because he tried to expose patient safety dangers at an intensive care unit at Woolwich Hospital where two patients had already died. This was really old fashioned journalism when people used to cover courts regularly – in this case an employment tribunal – making the proceedings publicly accountable. It paid off not only with a big following of the blog here but thousands of people followed it on Linked In including doctors from Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and Brazil. He lost the tribunal despite the health trust destroying 50,000 emails relating to its case that should have been examined by the tribunal. But the good news is that the British Medical Association is backing his appeal.
There is similar interest -including internationally – in the tribunal case of Alison McDermott who was commissioned by Sellafield to review its human resources policies and found appalling shortcomings and also in India and the UK in the fight by Dr Usha Prasad, the former cardiologist at the Epsom and St Helier University Trust, who was sacked after refusing to change a report on an ” avoidable death” there that should have been reported to the coroner. My thanks to two retired cardiologists, Dr David Ward and Jane Somerville for their help on these cases.
Whistleblower cases call into question the employment tribunal system
These cases have thrown up serious questions about the competence and bias of employment judges and called in question the entire running of the employment tribunal system and its failure to keep records of cases. I am now beginning to be inundated with dissatisfied people who feel they have been cheated by going to an employment tribunal.
This year has been a frustrating year for whistleblowers and for women seeking a just solution to maladministration and direct discrimination over the raising of the pension age. But there is no reason to stop reporting this – though I will be taking a long break at the beginning of this year only to come back reinvigorated.
One final point. A very small minority of people are trying to put up comments on this blog using false names from fake email addresses. I see some national newspapers are no longer going to put up comments on the web from people who don’t declare who they are. So from this year I will no longer carry comments from people who do this.
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Happy new year David. Keep up the excellent work your doing for the 3.8 million women who r struggling without their pensions.
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Happy New Year David, thank you for all you do.
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
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Happy New Year David. I fully support your decision not to carry comments from people who do not declare who they are. Personally, I feel it is very important to ‘own’ comments because not doing so makes it easier for establishment figures to ignore them. Your efforts have highlighted how those in authority have no conscience regarding perpetuating cover ups. We all have a responsibility not to make it easier for them.
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Happy New Year David!
If i change my name to John Smith or something else….would I still be allowed to post here?
https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/on_call/
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Jake of course you can still post here. You have a proper blog post of your own. I was getting particularly at people opposed to 50s women getting full restitution and using three names from the same email address or creating an email address without a name at all.
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I gotya…I just think it’s important to keep anonymity online as well, you can’t speak freely if everything can be tracked back to you..is the other side of it. But glad to see you’re still on the right side of it… 😉
That blog post of mine has been edited and mucked about with though…did you manage to read it? Don’ think I’m going to be around for much longer tbh.
what is to come
https://stateofthenation.co/?p=152480
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I remember the suspicious activity on this blog concerning posts apparently by three individuals who had the same address and who all had pro-Ombudsman leanings.
Someone enchanted by the Ombudsman or a puppet(s) on a string?
There are few places where the truth about the PHSO is ventilated (forget about MSM), so any attempt to undermine discussion on the Ombudsman’s role in the Great Pension Robbery must be strenuously resisted.
I hope it is nothing sinister and that all attempts to subvert the truth fail.
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Langley has a whole floor of people employed to do things like that…came out over a decade back now and nobody seems to remember!
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Hello David
I have a ongoing tribunal discrimination case and unfair dismissal ,failing to make reasonable adjustments,discrimatian arising . Judgement went in my favour either and the remedy is tomorrow 10am at Nottingham tribunal. It is a very complex case which has been going on since 2017 in regards my NHS employment . But does not stop there ,with the parliamentary ombudsman and my son and the treatment that was not given to him causing him further brain damage and I am being ignored by the parliamentary ombudsman even though they investigated my complaint and apolgised for the delays in May 2022 and promised I would have the report by June 2022 ,i have been ignored since.They said i would recieving the report since I had it in in 2019. I don’t get any reply from my local MP anymore either DR.Caroline Johnson who signed my complaint She signed the comment to the ombudsman in regard my son’s negligence. I was working at the time for the respondents and I believe that they dismiss me for making them complaints even though the judgement at the tribunal dismissed that claim. I have a data breach on the trust as they have not gave my data to me they have deleted my data to which I can prove I have put in 2 requests which have been ignored I have a data breach from the ico for my son’s data in regards the above claim. Which Again has been ignored by the trust even though they admitted I want to talk a settlement out of court I had a solicitor for that who was who again no contact . I have a medical negligence claim for negligence to me in regards a accicdent at home but the trusts treatment of removal of my cast too early on a broken wrist I had in that time which has contributed to 2 bones which came out of line and Making me become disabled unable to do my job and that’s how they dismiss me also I have I’ve been told that my solicitor that I could possibly only A very small comprehensory award for the claims that have won due to the respondents count claim SOL the claim and reasoning and I had 2 pensions and they are the complicated method .The judge that has done the trial at the tribunal is very NHS friendly even though she had said that I had su successfully won 3 of the claims by her judgement you would never believe I had won she did not put any details of the wrongdoings of the trust. I’m very worried that they are after all this time and fighting and even though I’ve proven they have been Discriminately that it will all be for nothing I’m in debt but to my eyeballs on benefits I am seen psychiatrist for CBT as i have mixed anxiety and depression and PTSD since dismissal.And I really don’t know what to do. Could you help me? As soon as I mentioned the CQC as well who did a report all the parliamentary ombudsman who is still not getting back to me in ignoring my messages or the MP who’s not getting back to me ,nobody wants to know or help me and I don’t know where to go to find out why nobody is answering me and brushed me under the carpet. It does seem to be continuously going round and round making me very ill I wondered where I go to get somebody to answer some questions in what’s going on?
Your desperately
Miss Mandie Miller
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