Category Archives: business

Anti Austerity: Time for the Job Creators Allowance

Posted on by

Muhammad_Yunus_-_World_Economic_Forum_Annual_Meeting_2012 (1)This month a radical thinker passed through Westminster and presented an idea that politicians tackling Britain’s economic crisis should sit up and take notice.

Nobel Peace prizewinner Muhammad Yunus was addressing a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference on growth and development en route from Bangla Desh to Mexico City. The conference attracted people from as far apart as Somalia and Paraguay and Haiti and Timor-Leste.

Yunus is the man who created an anti-bank bank called the Grameen Bank in Bangla Desh which broke every rule of traditional banking. As he put it : ” I went and talked to the banks and did precisely the opposite of everything they told me.”

His bank was only interested in lending money to the poorest in Bangla Desh – those with nothing so they could start tiny micro businesses. His ideas have now been taken up in developed economies notable the United States in New York and elsewhere.

He has been criticised however by people who say it  is still exploitative and has not worked, The idea has been hijacked by others as this review suggests.

But his bank is extraordinary. he employs no lawyers, has no detailed contracts, and lends to people with no collatoral and yet 99 per cent of the small loans are repaid. Bad news for Price Waterhouse and City lawyers as well as banks.

I was particularly struck by one phrase he tells the unemployed in Bangla Desh to say. ” I am not a job seeker. I am a job creator. I want to start at the top not be exploited at the bottom.”

Now it occurs to me that this might have a lot of resonance to Britain post the crash. Capitalism and bankers are brilliant at helping the haves have even more so they can exploit the have-nots, What about turning the idea on its head and help the have-nots for once.

Britain is rapidly becoming a more unequal society in wealth and jobs. Constituencies near to me like Hemel Hempstead face a job feast this Christmas with Amazon and Royal Mail competing against each other to fill vacancies. Constituencies like Birmingham, Ladywood and Foyle in Northern Ireland face a job famine  with over 11 per cent still out of work.

It also strikes me that among the wasted talent on the dole they must be people capable of learning skills, particularly in the  child or personal caring professions, but can’t get going because they haven’t basic qualifications or access to a few hundred readies to get started. This is why Jobcentre plus in pushing them into low paid work, zero hour contracts, to become the new exploited of companies funded by wealthy private equity groups.

Now if a politician decided that instead he was going to find a way to connect with the dispossessed by setting up a bank only interested in funding them to create their own job – this might have more resonance in the real world than in the current Metropolitan elite.

Traditionally this idea sits with Labour – the party created by trade unions, that believes in social credit organisations rather than Wonga and backs the ideals of the Co-operative movement. But it could equally apply to the Greens and some strands in other parties

What better way to reconnect to the working class than allow him and her to get cash to buy equipment so they can earn some money, even get  a second-hand white van. A veritable Job Creator Allowance.

What about the money for this?  Why not use the huge fines on corrupt banks to kick start the scheme rather than as sticking plaster for the NHS (Labour) or tax cuts (Tory)? What is a more delicious idea than taking money from bloated, arrogant money manipulators and giving it to the very people they wouldn’t give house room?

How would it work? I don’t know but I now know a man who does. He is called Muhammed Yunus. Someone should call him up and put the idea in their party manifesto. He did speak after all in the Attlee Room,  named after one of Britain’s greatest reforming Prime Ministers.

Is Whitehall still letting profit hungry contractors off the hook to rip off the state?

Posted on by
Chris Grayling: His £400m gift to contractor's profits sparked a pathetic clampdown pic courtesy: BBC

Chris Grayling: His £400m gift to contractor’s profits
sparked a pathetic clampdown pic courtesy: BBC

Remember the major row over  justice secretary Chris Grayling’s “poison pill ” contract to privatise the probation service. This allowed  the successful bidders to walk away with up to £400m profit on a ten year contract should an incoming Labour government have the temerity to cancel it if they won the next election.

Grayling  not so innocently said that this was just normal Whitehall practice. Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Commons public accounts committee said it was “It is not value for money. It is unacceptable and must be challenged before the event.”

She demanded something be done and now the Treasury have responded. They have written to every accounting officer of every ministry and every government agency laying down new guidelines. You can read the letter here and see my news article in Tribune this week.

In my view the response is particularly pathetic and certainly not nearly hard-hitting enough to protect taxpayer’s money.

Of  course accounting officers are reminded that they must consider value for money and must be able to justify such decisions but it does include some  remarkably helpful  “get out “clauses that allow such deals to continue.

One  says they should consider: “whether it is likely that, if the public body terminates the contract for policy reasons, the supplier would have a legal case to claim even without the clause being in the contract.” Well it might but I would be amazed if a judge allowed them to keep all projected profits.

They are also expected just to ask rather than instruct companies “whether the market be willing to bid without such clauses, particularly when outsourcing for the first time, or establishing a new market.” And they should ask whether such a deal is “normal practice in this area of business.”

To me this seems an open invitation for private contractors to say, of course it is, where if they had a private contact with another private firm, they would lucky to get all the money back if the other company just collapsed.

It is only that the Government cannot go bankrupt that they are in a position to negotiate such terms.

Now of course accounting officers could refuse to sign such one-sided contracts in the first place and demand the minister in charge directed them to do so. But in fact remarkably few permanent secretaries and chief executives  ever do this. They can be counted on the fingers of one hand in any financial year.

Once again this coalition government is running the country for the benefit of private companies not for the taxpayer or even to the benefit of the ordinary public.

 

 

Tackling tax demons: Trick and treat at the heart of the City Establishment

Posted on by

On Halloween eve an unique invitation only conference took place in the historic  and just slightly spooky Livery Hall in the City’s historic Guildhall.

For six hours the Westminster Establishment politely occupied the bastion of  the City Establishment to discuss a subject that perhaps capitalism would like to go away – global tax evasion and tax avoidance.

Margaret Hodge;

Margaret Hodge;

Margaret Hodge, chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee and scourge of tax avoiders Google, Amazon and Starbucks, brought together business chiefs, politicians, tax accountants, civil servants, charities, trade unionists and the odd pesky journo like me from Britain and across the world.

The event was unique because on a grand scale it put people in the same room who would verbally be at each other’s throats and tried to find some common ground to tackle a world-wide scourge.The scourge that is making the elite ever richer and leaving the poor, and increasingly the middle classes,left behind as well as exploiting developing countries.

The result was interesting – both for unpredictable quotes and for disclosure of what is really happening to try to tackle this.

One of the  most memorable quotes came from Justin King, the thoughtful former CEO of Sainsbury’s, who admitted that “If business becomes more unpopular than politicians then we really do have a problem”. He also warned no doubt with declining Tesco in mind – that business rates and corporation tax were both on the way out – as business needed less real estate to function and countries vie with each other to reduce corporation tax.

Another memorable moment was Will Morris, chair of the CBI Tax Committee, backing the Public and Commercial Services Union case that George Osborne was wrong to axe a third of HMRC staff. What next Mark Serwotka , the general secretary, sharing a platform with the CBI?

Or for Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at Essex University, who pointed out, after accountants defended their role, that not one accountant had ever been disciplined by their venerable professional body, dating from the 1880s, for producing an illegal tax avoidance scheme.

The other striking feature of the conference in the  male dominated City was the role played by powerful women on both sides of the argument.

For me the most striking was the speech given by Grace Perez-Navarro, Deputy Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration. She revealed that the OECD were not just talking about it but had secured some 90 plus agreements with tax authorities like the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar among many others to exchange information but not to make it public yet. She is also a firm advocate of forcing companies needing to release country-by-country reporting of profits generated by multinationals.

“Our efforts to increase transparency, combat offshore evasion and counter tax avoidance by multinational enterprises are having an impact on the ground and helping countries to make sure that all taxpayers pay their fair share,” she said.

But there were also outstanding contributions by Irene Ovonji-Odida, ActionAid chair, on what needed to happen in Africa and on the pro business side by Heather Self, of  lawyers Pinsent Mason, the capitalist’s best legal friend and from the floor by Maya Forstator, an independent researcher who has challenged the claims by some of the world’s leading charities like Christian Aid and Action Aid on the effects of multi nationals taking money away from developing countries.

We also learnt some curious irrelevant information  about the cars some of the speakers drive. Richard Murphy, the Tax Justice accountant used the analogy that he drove an 11 year old car to show how out of date international taxation law is only to be trumped by Grace Perez-Navarro who drives around in a 22 year old motor.

There were no instant changes arising from this conference. More important was the fact than in an age of increasing inequality – the issue of tax is certain to remain  high on the agenda and there are active people wanting to deal with issue to make things happen.

Meanwhile as Margaret Hodge wound up the conference with a  damning speech on what more needed to be done, in another part of the Guildhall, another Parliamentary select committee chair, Keith Vaz, was undermining another powerful woman, Fiona Woolf, the current Lord Mayor of London, who has been appointed by Theresa May, the home secretary, to head the child sexual abuse inquiry

The home affairs committee chairman released seven drafts of her letter outlining her links with Leon Brittan,who is likely to be investigated over the disappearance of crucial home office documents,on the issue.showing how she kept changing her story. Today people think she will be under enormous pressure to quit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflections on Labour: Two women who could help change Britain

Posted on by
Margaret Hodge; A practical route map for Labour

Margaret Hodge; A practical route map for Labour

The most exciting part of political conferences is not the main conference hall but the fringe. It is here that people are much more likely to speak their mind and real issues are debated – not set piece presentations ( even if Ed Miliband forgot a bit of his!).

Two totally unreported contributions came from two of the more feisty women in the Labour – both with strong views.

Angela Eagle, shadow leader of the Commons, chair of the conference and the national policy forum made a refreshingly off message analysis of present British society and where it is going.

Speaking at a Unite union fringe organised by Class (Centre for Labour and Social Studies)- analysing the rapidly widening gap between the mega elite and the ordinary worker – she actually described the present situation in society as ” immoral”.-pointing out that  top directors now earn 130 times more than their workforce.

She also defended benefit claimants -pointing out that the media campaign labelling or libelling them all as scroungers – had meant ordinary people coming to her Wirral surgery were wrongly put on the defensive just because they were claiming from the state.

Angela Eagle providing Labour with a moral compass. Pic credit: The Guardian

Angela Eagle providing Labour with a moral compass. Pic credit: The Guardian

She was on a platform where the speakers were firmly of the view that the present economic situation was unsustainable, companies were hoarding money rather than investing and people could only spend by getting more into debt.

It shouldn’t be surprising that you hear such views at a Labour conference, but it is surprising these days to hear such comments from a member of the shadow Cabinet.

The second feisty contribution came from Margaret Hodge, chair of the Commons public accounts committee. She was speaking on a different platform with the Policy Network.  Here the issue was how Labour could make a difference by accepting the present economic situation and using public money more effectively.

Superficially  you might think the two women were on  different planets but actually they complimented each other.

Margaret Hodge, with enormous experience of investigating Whitehall scandals, tax avoidance and the dodgy behaviour of private companies providing public services, had a practical route map on how Labour could handle this.

Her solution including forcing the companies to become transparent with the way they spend or misspent our money, using public procurement to secure the living wage for all workers, clamping down far more effectively on tax avoidance including collecting the taxes, and looking at radical five-year plans to innovate public services, rather than the Treasury knee jerk reaction top impose cuts with three months notice.

Ed Miliband would be mad if he did not appoint her to head a new unit with oversight of public contracts if he wins the election – she could then insist on implementing this programme rather than report on the messes left behind by the private sector.

He would also be mad not to promote Angela Eagle into a job where she could influence the direction of public spending. Both women  have enormous talents. Angela provides a moral compass, Margaret a practical route map  out of an increasingly unfair society.

 

 

 

The nasty coalition move to make English human rights subservient to business profits

Posted on by

Are you black or gay and feel your firm discriminates against you? Are you disabled and find a company stops your right of access? Are you woman and you don’t get equal pay with a man?

Naturally you might expect the government’s independent champion  the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to be on your side and prosecute firms who repeatedly failed you.

But a pernicious piece of legislation now going the House of Lords plans to put all this at risk by putting a nasty spanner in the works to hobble the very body that is supposed to stand up for your rights.

The Deregulation Bill – promoted as liberating business from silly bureaucratic rules – includes what s

ounds like a rather arcane provision saying that all regulators for the first time must consider the impact on economic growth before they launch criminal or civil proceedings ( see clauses 83/84) against a company.

In other words if the EHRC doesn’t do this- big companies with loads of cash can take them to judicial review and get cases where they break the law on discrimination annulled. It would also make the EHRC – not the most radical of bodies – even more careful before it takes up your case.

The government are not planning to say until the law is passed which regulator –  it could be anybody from the health and safety commission  to English Heritage or the gas and electricity regulators- they will apply the rules. Only that they won’t be able to impose it on regulators in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

But a group of MPs and peers have already rumbled that the EHRC is one of the targets – and ministers have had to confirm that it is true.

The section by the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the Deregulation Bill is coruscating about this .They say :”Applying the economic growth duty to the EHRC poses a significant risk to the EHRC’s independence…The Government is therefore risking the possibility of the EHRC’s accredited “A” status being downgraded and of putting the UK in breach of its obligations under EU equality law. This could be easily avoided if the proposed new duty did not apply to the EHRC. However, it would  appear that the Government still intends to apply the economic growth duty to the EHRC and to attempt to deal with concerns about independence in another way.”

I gather peers when the bill is debated clause by clause from October 21 in the Lords intend to have a real go at the government for doing this.I can offer him one historical argument.

For cinema addicts there is great feel good film doing the rounds called Belle – see this link on Youtube –  set in the eighteenth century about how a mixed race girl is adopted by the family of the Lord Chief Justice who has to rule on whether slaves who were deliberately drowned by a ships’owner were ditched cargo or human beings.

The main case for treating them as cargo and not recognising their rights as human being – was that slavery was big business and that English firms who shipped slaves in future could face economic ruin.In other words just as written in this  21st century bill – the lord chief justice – had to consider the economic consequences alongside human rights.

I am sure Helen Grant, the former equalities minister and now sports and tourism minister, who is of Nigerian and English heritage herself, would not condone the return of slavery to protect business for one moment.

But if she as a former equalities minister  ignores this pernicious clause and does not  urge her colleagues to exempt the EHRC from this legislation she is returning to the arguments of the eighteenth century. Like Belle in the film, her heritage is the same – except for being brought up in a Carlisle housing estate rather than in Kenwood in Hampstead.

How the government lets your car reveal how much disability benefit you receive?

Posted on by
DVLA -revealing disability benefits via car regostration

DVLA -revealing disability benefits via car regostration

With the tabloid media frenzy on cheating benefit claimants reaching new heights and people believing that some disabled people are fraudsters, the government seems to have found a new way to embarrass people on benefit.

The forthcoming abolition of car tax discs  from October means that the only way to check whether a vehicle is taxed is to check free on line at the Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA). All anybody needs is the vehicle registration and the make of car – you don’t even need to know the model.

But the DVLA has decided to introduce a new  way of reporting  on line who doesn’t have to pay car tax  by creating a class of taxation called disabled.revealing whether the person who drives it is disabled rather than leaving it blank as previously.

As I reported in Tribune under the new system, people can find out on line that they pay no car tax, which is only available to people claiming higher levels of benefit. This is through mobility benefit included in the Disability Living Allowance or the new personal Independence payment system, and for war pensioners who have mobility supplements. The site also says whether they are disabled or not.

The changes highlighted on a professionally run benefits and advice website have provoked a storm of protest from disabled people who see it as a breach of privacy and revealing confidential information.

The website says: “The issue here appears to be one of data protection. The information that DVLA are making available is not about the vehicle itself. Instead they are publishing personal information about the benefits received by the individual who currently owns the car or for whom the car is solely used.”

One disabled person, Robert Adam commented: “There are malicious gits out there who resent people getting benefits who are 100 per cent entitled to them. If someone is accused of fraudulently obtaining the Disability Living Allowance, they are immediately pulled in for the new PIP assessment. This DVLA system stating “Taxation class disabled” is not information about the vehicle. It is information about the registered keeper being disabled and entitled to free road tax.”

The DVLA say this is not their intention. They claim their aim is to help people when the numerous parking companies are chasing up people for unpaid parking fines and private parking charges who will be saved from being pursued when they see their entry.

However given the DVLA is also making over £20m by handing over the names and addresses of people driving or keeping the cars to private enforcement companies at a cost of £2.50 a time they are not always that scrupulous. After all many of the parking charges sought by private companies are not enforceable any way as this site reveals and this story on BBC News also illustrates.

It strikes me as just another way of ratcheting up fear of  suspected benefit fraud while at the same time making money from some unscrupulous parking cowboys.

Is your NHS boss a tax avoider? You’ll soon find out

Posted on by
NHS bosses: subject to tax avoidance inquiry

NHS bosses: subject to tax avoidance inquiry

The tax avoidance scandal that shook up Whitehall is soon to spread to the NHS. As reported earlier following the exposure of Ed Lester, the former head of the Students Loan Company, for channelling his salary through a personal service company to avoid  paying national insurance and tax at source. The practice was still going on in Whitehall two years after the event and 125 civil servants who quit have been reported to Revenue and Customs.

 Now the NHS is to face the same scrutiny. Reports in Exaro News and Tribune last week highlighted the issue – with the findings now likely to be sooner rather than later.

An inquiry has been ordered by Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, after Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury requested it.

Some two years ago a lesser inquiry – just into board members of NHS bodies – revealed some 28 out of 84 people were on this bandwagon. Earlier examples included   Robert Clarke, finance director at NHS Professionals, which supplies temporary workers to the health service, was paid at least £534,000 over three years through a personal-service company.

Another former chief executive of NHS Professionals, Neil Lloyd, was paid £631,000 off payroll over three years.

This time the Health Department sounds uncompromising. A spokesman said:

 “Tax avoidance will not be tolerated, and there is no excuse for it in the NHS, or any other part of the public sector.”

The Trust Development Authority, which provides guidance on governance to NHS trusts, is working with Monitor, which regulates the running of health bodies, to carry out the investigation to ensure that the use of off-payroll contracts is in line with guidance.

targeted is anybody earning over £58,200 a year or has been in post for more than six months and being paid through a personal service company.

In my view it cannot come soon enough. Tax avoidance deprives the Treasury of cash that could be used for better public services. Tax avoidance in the cash strapped NHS is actually depriving hospitals and communities of vital cash. All these people also earn a fair whack. They are not those forced to take a one per cent pay rise and see their living standards go down. On the contrary through tax avoidance they get richer on the backs of others.

 

Exclusive: The East Coast rail bosses tax avoidance scheme that hit the buffers

Posted on by
East Coast trains at Kings Cross. Pic courtesy:; www.rail.co.uk

East Coast trains at Kings Cross. Pic courtesy:; http://www.rail.co.uk

A blunder by the Department of Transport has allowed two top state rail bosses to repeat a tax avoidance scheme which should have been outlawed in Whitehall following the exposure of Ed Lester, the former head of the Student Loans Company.

The deal allowed the highly paid chief executive, Michael Holden, and his finance director, David Walker, to avoid having tax  and national insurance deducted at source from the state-owned Directly Operated Railways, which is responsible for the East Coast mainline. They are now on the pay roll and are currently paid £244,000 and £171,000 a year respectively. Originally it appears the money was paid into their two personal service companies run with their wives.

A  full report in Exaro News today names the two top officials cited in a written Parliamentary statement from Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury last week which revealed that 128 civil servants had been caught on ” off pay roll” contracts that should be have been full-time employees, Some 125 former civil servants who quit have now been reported to Revenue and Customs.

 But the Treasury has put the blame on the other three on two ministries, Transport and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and has fined both ministries over £500,000 between them for the lapse which they should have put an end after six months.

Michael Holden. chief executive of state-owned Directly Operated Railways

Michael Holden. chief executive of state owned Directly Operated Railways

 Michael Holden appears to be all round railway buff,competitive  swimmer, fell walker, and an advocate of the beauties of Surrey living in Woking. As non executive chairman of East Coast Rail ( which I can praise for a good service to disabled people) a member of the travelling public recently asked him to pose for a picture on their mobile.

He describes himself on his Twitter account as: “A bit grumpy, mostly old, but all man, busy with railways, being dad and lots of other stuff. Looking for that elusive work-life balance thingy.”

On his Linked-In page, he says: “I lead the UK government’s business unit capable of running rail franchises when no tendered franchise can be put in place.” He runs a personal-service company, Coledale Consulting. He describes it as: “Railway-management consultancy specialising in strategic advice to railway companies. Clients include infrastructure providers, train operating groups and companies, and client side including government. UK, Ireland, Sweden.”

David Walker appears to be  a less flamboyant and is not on Twitter. He has interesting links with Romanian as well British railways..

The third case uncovered by the Treasury was at the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA), which hired Claire Evans off payroll as director of corporate services in October 2012.

Her annual salary last year was between £140,000 and £145,000.

Again, the Treasury said that the AHVLA was too slow to put Evans on the payroll. 

The biggest offender for off pay roll contracts is Vince Cable’s department of business,innovation and skills and its agencies – accounting for almost half the 125.

 

 

 

 

NewsPics : High Court orders company to be wound up and receiver to be appointed

Posted on by

NewsPics, the company run by photographer Matt Sprake and his wife, is to be wound up after it failed to pay Exaro and my legal costs now totalling £24,000.  The decision was taken by a registrar in the High Court yesterday. There is a full report on the Exaro News website and  an item in the Guardian Diary about the present situation. A receiver will be appointed in due course to distribute the firm’s assets.

There is also a report on the UK Press Gazette site of the hearing.

Bath Knightmare: A cautionary tale for disabled people

Posted on by

The Bath-Knight over my bath :Now working properly after quite a lot of trauma.

The Bath-Knight over my bath :Now working properly after quite a lot of trauma.

One of the disadvantages for my wife Margaret recovering at home from a stroke is that she cannot have a bath because of loss of mobility.

We have an old-fashioned roll top bath and our home is part of Grade II listed Tudor coaching inn – still a pub until 1969. Standard aids to get in and out of the bath don’t work.

So it was with great interest when we received a cold call – I’d still like to know who gave the company our  ex directory number – from a firm called Care Knight – a British company based in Stoke on Trent – with a solution.

 The company make an aid called Bath-Knight, a powered mobility aid with a belt that can gently lower and raise you into the bath – and can easily fit over all types of bath and even be mounted on a free-standing frame – useful for Grade II listed buildings.

So we had a visit from a salesman – David Murphy – who assured us it was easy to fit and would be no problems. ” we had no trouble fitting over roll top baths and we even have customers from stately homes who are very happy with it.” he said.

As a blurb says: “If you have trouble getting in and out of the bath, then a Bath-Knight bath lift can help put an end to all your worries about bathing.”

But it was not to be. The first sign of a problem came when they came to install it. The installer,Chris,had to abandon it because he had not noticed he had to move the waste pipe from the bath when he drew up the specifications. As he had cancelled the plumber he had to make a new appointment. And that is when the real trouble began.

 
Both Chris and Martin, the Polish plumber, came to fit the installation and moved the bath to reroute the waste pipe which did not take too much time.
The next day I had a bath. When I came back two hours later water was pouring into cellar, dripping from the ceiling into the hall, and running down the wall to our main staircase.
I called Bath Knight and they sent the Polish plumber back the next day. It turned out to be an all day job with no water. What the installer had done was fracture the copper piping to the bath and they had to replace the piping.
That should have been the end of it. But when my wife used the Bath Knight and found the angle on the belt was too steep. She felt unsafe and worried she would slip off particularly when trying to get out of the bath.
I contacted Bath Knight and their initial response was tardy – Chris the installer insisted it was correct – but it wasn’t and the customer care manager, David Reiter,stopped him coming to see us.
I sent a letter to the chairman,Mrs Annette Greenwood, threatening her with a pretty critical blog about their product.
Mr Reiter did a U-turn and came down from Stoke on Trent to Berkhamsted, to see us. He not only found that the angle was a little on the high side but that the frame which holds the robust aid moved when it shouldn’t.
To the company’s credit things got better. Martin, the Polish plumber, who was the most helpful of the lot, came and redecorated our hall. A new frame arrived and it is working better.
But there was a further sting in the tail. I wrote and asked for a reduction on this most expensive kit, it costs over £2000. I got no reply, instead just bill reminders from the accounts department, ending up with a threat of legal action. I complained to Mr Reiter and finally got £250 off the bill.
What should have been an extremely simple process became a nightmare. I have published this to warn people that the elderly may find the product a little unnerving because of the slope.
But also I wonder that if I were not a savvy journo whether we would have had a different outcome. Care-Knight charge a lot for their product – which I must admit is robust. Most of their clients are elderly and vulnerable and may literally not be able to stand up for themselves if faced with such an equivalent mess. I would warn people to be wary – and also ask how they got your address, Care Knight do pay for such information.