Housing development where Osborne gave his speech will have separate entrances for rich and poor

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The true nature of Osborne’s recovery: £1.4m front door homes for the rich ( marketed overseas) and 70 back door homes for London’s poor. ( the rich will need servants to live somewhere near). See Jules Birch’s blog on the marketing and history of the development. Those living in social housing are actually BANNED from using the posh front. entrance. A new apartheid?

Tom Pride's avatarPride's Purge

(not satire – it’s George Osborne!)

George Osborne chose a new housing development in London yesterday to give his speech on how the economy is ‘turning the corner’.

The chancellor said the development – One Commercial Street – was “a physical reminder” of what has been happening to the economy.

Well, he’s certainly right about that.

Because the cheapest private apartments for sale at One Commercial Street start at £750,000 with penthouse suites costing millions.

And the 70 units which have been sold to a housing association  – included because of Section 106 affordable housing requirements – will be in a separate part of the building and will have a completely separate entrance round the corner and well out of sight of the exclusive entrance used by the well-heeled, mainly foreign private tenants.

Yes – Osborne’s absolutely right about One Commercial Street being a physical reminder of the economy.

A rich minority living lives…

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Police arrest second person in paedophile investigation sparked by Tom Watson

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The police have arrested a second person in Operation Cayacos – the investigation sparked off by Tom Watson MP – into historic child sexual abuse, it emerged yesterday
The People reported that Richard Alston, now 69, has been arrested on August 20 at his home in Bury St Edmunds.
The arrest follows 68-year-old Charles Napier’s arrest at his home in Sherborne, Dorset, last November.
Mr Alston a former headmaster of New Barns School in Toddington, Gloucestershire, an independent school for children aged six to 12 with emotional and behavioural problems. The school closed in 1992.
This investigation is separate to the current investigation into historic child sexual abuse in the London borough of Richmond which has seen two people charged and appearing at Westminster Magistrates Court last week and a third person, Harry Kasir, who ran Elm Guest House in Barnes in the early 1980s arrested.

Operation Fernbridge: Two appear in court

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John Stingemore,the former deputy manager of Grafton Close children’s home in Richmond and Father Patrick McSweeney,a former Roman Catholic priest, appeared before Westminster magistrates court today. This is the first court appearance of people arrested under Operation Fernbridge
They were both bailed to appear before Southwark Crown Court on September 18.
A full report on the hearing which is subject to reporting restrictions appears on the Exaro website.
Father McSweeney’s lawyers said he intended to plead not guilty to five offences relating to the historic child abuse investigation in Richmond, Surrey. Mr Stingemore has entered no plea against 11 charges against him.

Judge throws out £30,000 copyright claim against this website

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A deputy district judge has summarily dismissed a claim against this website and Exaro News claiming over £80,000 for publishing two pictures to illustrate the activities of a former Met Police photographer who ran an agency that publicly offered to pay thousands of pounds to public officials for stories on celebrities.
The court findings and background to the story is published on the Exaro website today
The case was brought by Newspics Ltd, the company owned by Matt Sprake, an ex police photographer who works for a number of national newspapers.
For bloggers the ruling by district court judge Stuart Quin at Milton Keynes County Court is interesting since he accepted the case brought by Exaro’s lawyers.Vertex Law,who argued that publication of the pictures amounted to what is called “fair dealing.”
This allows copyright to be waived whoever owns it if the pictures are used to illustrate a story and can be seen to be relevant to the story and in the public interest. This could be significant for bloggers who want to illustrate public figures in a story which is a matter of public interest whoever owns the copyright.
Mr Sprake who denies paying anybody was also summoned by Lord Leveson to give evidence to his inquiry into the press use of undercover work and invasion of privacy.
Mr Sprake claimed Exaro and this website had obtained the pictures from private sources. Exaro argued that this was not the case as the pictures were in the public domain.
The original story is on the Exaro website and on this blog. The pictures which showed Mr Sprake dressed in full photographer’s gear after the bombing in Canary Wharf in 1996 and sitting in the PM’s chair in the Cabinet Room at Number Ten Downing Street were used to illustrate his claims on his website. This said NewsPics advertised a menu of services under the label “surveillance photography”, claiming: “You can utilise the very same skills that are used by the security services and the police.”

UPDATE:October 25 Milton Keynes County Court have now awarded default costs against Newspics, the company owned by Matt Sprake and his wife, for £23,599.39 so Exaro News and myself can recover legal costs. He has 14 days to pay.

Coming your way: £3.8 billion to spend on public health

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Norman Lamb: off the cuff and off piste at Localis Pic courtesy of The Guardian

Norman Lamb: off the cuff and off piste at Localis
Pic courtesy of The Guardian

In the middle of the biggest wave of austerity to hit England since the 1930s a cool £3.8 billion will be handed over to your local town hall and local NHS from 2015. The aim will be to switch money from your big hospital to your local community to spend on public health and social care.
Do you trust your local council to spend it wisely? Who will know what it has been spent on? and it will it unleash clever new ideas as promised to help local people?
This was a point of a press conference yesterday by the rather arcane titled think tank,Localis,to publish a report asking precisely that. Read it here.
It was launched by a Liberal Democrat health minister Norman Lamb, who began well by throwing his boring Whitehall brief on the floor and launching a passionate off the cuff speech calling for new ideas to stimulate local public health services.
As he was off piste, he refreshingly condemned those private companies exploiting lowly paid care workers, some even on below minimum wage rates,or zero hour contracts, and not being paid for travel between seeing different customers. He might have added that they should join a good union like Unite or GMB to take up their plight, but then he is a Liberal Democrat.
What is interesting about this initiative is that it might do some good. It means more freedom and money for local people to find ways to help the elderly, disabled, the local alcoholics and drug takers and if combined with better housing, transport, planning, job creation and children’s services it might make a difference.
But it is a big IF and it is clear from the Localis report that people have to be made accountable for how this money is spent and that has not been properly worked out. As the brilliant local government expert Tony Travers put it, that you know better who to complain about the dustbins than you do over public health. And he did not get a satisfactory answer from the minister.
In Berkhamsted as a previous blog pointed out we already have the makings of this at Gossoms End, a NHS community hospital with a GP surgery, a nursery, physio and local sheltered housing attached to get good local care. The minister said that the people of Great Yarmouth and Yeovil are also soon to benefit from new community schemes.
In the meantime an invitation to see Gossoms End is still there, Norman. That is if you can get your bossy civil servants to give you any space in your diary. And they may lynch you for throwing away their boring prepared speech.

New Privatised NHS: Medical Services Ltd broke patient ambulance contract

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The 5 hr wait ambulance: Picture taken by me at Hemel Hempstead Urgent Care Centre

The 5 hr wait ambulance: Picture taken by me at Hemel Hempstead Urgent Care Centre

Following my personal exposure of Medical Services Ltd appalling provision for weekend patient ambulance services, my local newspaper, the Gazette, took up the story. the experience onvolved waiting five hours for an ambulance to come and pick up my wife, Margaret, who recently had stroke, from Hemel Hempstead Urgent Care Centre.
Their report reveals that not only were the company at fault but it is clear that the people responsible for managing and overseeing the contract on behalf of the NHS were also to blame.
It is now revealed that Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Group require Medical Services Ltd ( gross profit £7m a year) to collect all patients within two hours. The contract says:
“The Contractor will collect patients from clinics within 60 minutes of being requested by the Department in 90% of cases and within 120 minutes on 100% of cases.”
So this amounts to a blatant breach of contract and if as staff at Hemel Hempstead Urgent Care Centre, say they are regularly leaving patients for up to four hours, this is not an isolated case.
There are also a serious questions for the West Herts Health Trust who are supposed to manage this contract.
Were they asleep when Medical Services Ltd were providing just one ambulance for patient transport and collecting patients from Bedford, Luton, Letchworth and Hitchin hospitals. Or were Medical Services Ltd two timing the authority by using the same ambulance for contracts with other health trusts? Did they allow Medical Services Ltd to close their Watford depot at weekends so all ambulances will have to travel from Luton to pick up patients at Watford General. Great guardians of taxpayers money and patients interests, I don’t think.
Why should the public put up with shoddy providers who flout contracts and complacent NHS supervisors who don’t check up on them?
If you’ve had a bad waiting experience with a private or public ambulance taking you back from hospital you can always use the contact me point on this website or contact the Gazette series of papers to complain. Just give me the details, day, time and wait.
Or you can now go one better. Samantha Jones, the chief executive of West Herts Hospitals Trust, has promised an inquiry after the publication of this blog and would like to hear from anybody who has had a bad or good experience using the patients ambulance service from watford, St Albans and Hemel Hempstead hospitals. Her email is samantha.jones@whht.nhs.uk.

Elm Guest House – “Mary Moss” files

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This is another significant post from Chris Fay, who has campaigned tirelessly to bring sexual abusers of children to justice, about a document on Elm Guest House in Barnes which has led to fevered speculation on the internet about a cover up of prominent figures who could have sexually abused children there. What he is saying here is that the victims are genuine but do not automatically assume that all the adults who are alleged to have stayed there are abusers. This does not mean that on going investigations under Operation Fernbridge will not lead to further arrests.

chris46's avatartheneedleblog

In the interests of accuracy, and to protect the reputations of innocent people, I would like to set the record straight about certain things contained in the “Mary Moss” files placed online last year.

These were mostly handwritten notes made on a daily basis concerning NAYPIC’s investigation into complaints from young people in the care of Richmond of abuse at Grafton Close Children’s Home, and elsewhere, including the Elm Guest House in Barnes from 1977 to 1982.

Unfortunately, being just notes, they have no real context.  I will try to provide that.  Amongst the documents is a list of boys names. These are VICTIMS not abusers.  These were the names of young people who had complained to us, were strictly confidential and should never have been made public.  Due to the unfortunate circumstances around the police raid on Mary Moss’s home, these were released online.

Also included was a list…

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Exaro News: Pay wall scrapped – It’s all free

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You can now read all my stories and many other good scoops on the Exaro website free of charge.
Just like my old employer The Guardian and unlike Rupert Murdoch’s Sun and Times there is no longer a pay wall between you and the story.
So go to the site and see and hear the full private Murdoch ” tape”; all the stories about Ed Lester, the former head of the Student Loans Company now at the Land Registry and his tax avoidance; all the stories on the Operation Fernbridge historic paedophile investigation; the government’s flawed plan to abolish the Audit Commission and embarrassing disclosures about the activities of the Serious Fraud Office.
Exaro is now funding its activities with a big expansion in data journalism -aimed at business.
Go on indulge yourself!

The New Privatised NHS : Wait five hours for a patient transport ambulance

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Discreet logo of Medical Services on" NHS " ambulance. Pic taken by myself

Discreet logo of Medical Services on” NHS ” ambulance. Pic taken by myself

Medical Services Ltd is not a name instantly recognised by the general public. Their website claims they are the nation’s leader in the providing integrated patient transport and is bulging with testimonials from a grateful public.
The Anglo- Danish company (Falck a Danish private fire and ambulance company has just paid for a 45 per cent stake and put a director on the board) claims to be Britain’s biggest private ambulance provider, operating in London,Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and North West England.
It is well placed to make a lot of money as the NHS is progressively privatised,having according to its latest company accounts,a turnover of £29m, gross profits of £7m, and operating profits of £577,000.
However its PR appeal does not live up to reality. I am in the position of caring for my wife Margaret, who suffered a stroke while we were on holiday.
As previous posts on this site show, she received amazing treatment from the NHS when it happened on the Isles of Scilly and is receiving very good loving care and physio at Gossoms End rehab unit in Berkhamsted.
At the moment she can’t stand up or walk unaided and can only travel in ambulances.
Last weekend she had to get an X-ray – after toppling over – to make sure she had not broken her wrist. She received a speedy transit to Hemel Hempstead urgent care unit in an NHS staffed ambulance and was seen, X rayed,and sorted by the doctor’s co-operative who run the centre.
But then things went wrong. We were told we had to wait two hours. Two hours became three and then four. We pressed staff at the centre to find out whether this ambulance would ever turn up. Finally nearly five hours later it did, the driver saying it had only heard about the job half an hour ago when he started work on the night shift
Checking with staff I discovered that the ” nation’s leader in integrated patient transport ” is regularly leaving vulnerable disabled people for four hours before it picks them up.They said the Luton centre was rude to NHS staff and was fairly callous about patients having to wait in distress.
Later I discovered that Medical Services Ltd had just ONE patient transport ambulance on duty on Saturday evening covering the whole of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire from Letchworth to Watford and Dunstable to Bedford. They have a depot in Watford, with ambulances there, but they close it at weekends. No wonder it took five hours.
Next day I penned a pretty angry e-mail to one Joe Sheehan, managing director of Medical Services ( salary £120,000 last year – a 20 per cent rise). I suspect it caused him a bit of indigestion over Sunday lunch at his Kent home but I will credit him that he did respond to me -including sending me his mobile phone number.
Also to his credit he investigated it, admitted it happened and apologised for a ” sub standard service”.
He has also promised short-term action to remedy some of my complaints by rostering extra staff at the weekend so people won’t wait so long and raise the issue with the NHS commissioners who contracted him to do the work.
I have also sought an explanation from the East of England Ambulance Trust. They pointed out, see their comment on this blog, that they don’t commissioned his company. But they have got in touch with the Herts Valley Clinical Commissioning Group who are now contacting Medical Services Ltd about the delay. I hope to find out when they let contracts for patient transport whether they specify standards of service or staffing cover. They could have a share of the blame if they don’t.
I suspect however most people would never have thought of even finding out who owned the ambulance that came to pick them up – they would have assumed as a member of the public did when I was photographing the ambulance – that it is the NHS.
This is why I am told NHS staff at hospitals, urgent care centres, and the front line drivers ( this one was courtesy himself) bear the brunt of public anger for shoddy services while I fear the management of these private companies just collect the money and never have to face the public or be hauled to account.
This managing director – to be fair to him – seems to have smelt the coffee. He had better. The public deserve better.

Government’s barmy and complex plan to tackle defamation on the web

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The Ministry of Justice has just excelled itself with a daft plan to try and tackle libellous and abusive comments on websites.
A splendid blog on the Inforrm website by media lawyer Ashley Hurst from Olswang reveals that a so-called simple system to provide redress to force web operators to take down posts is anything but that.
As he himself states the ministry claimed it “designed to be as straightforward as possible for people to use” but there are in excess of 20 cross-references in a procedure spanning over four pages with 47 FAQs and 10 pages of guidance.”
Worse it looks as though it will do the opposite that it intends by encouraging more people to blog anonymously as people might have to get court orders to find out who is behind the post.
He points out “People blog and comment on websites anonymously for a reason: because they do not want to be identified. Why would an anonymous blogger suddenly identify himself without a court order because a website operator tells him that a legal complaint has been received? There is absolutely no incentive, especially for a whistleblower, someone intent on causing damage, or someone who cannot afford to be sued, to come forward and identify themself voluntarily as a potential defendant.”
There is also a 48 hour fast track application to get someone’s post down – but make one mistake in the form and web operator can ignore. I can’t imagine WordPress, based in the US with a tradition of free speech, being over impressed by these new UK regulations.
For those who want to study it further he supplies a flow diagram, which almost rates in complexity ( but not quite) with Andrew Lansley’s re-organisation of the NHS.
In my view the planned regulations look hardly worth the paper they are written on. They seem a waste of cyberspace.