A 7.8-Magnitude Earthquake Has Killed More Than 660 People In Turkey And Syria

More than 660 people have been killed and thousands more injured in a disastrous 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked Turkey and Syria overnight, flattening whole neighbourhoods while numerous families were still sleeping.

Tremors from the killer earthquake, which lasted about a minute and could be Turkey’s largest ever, was felt as far away as Egypt, Lebanon and the island of Cyprus, while a tsunami alert was briefly issued by authorities in Italy along the country’s coast.

Residents ran from their homes in hysteria in cities across southeast Turkey and northern Syria, taking refuge in cars from a wave of at least 40 aftershocks and collapsing structures.

Concerns increased for people ensnared under the debris as thousands of rescue workers leapt into action, searching through wrecked buildings for survivors who could be heard screaming out from beneath the wreckage.

One video from the border town of Azaz, Syria, showed a rescuer desperately running through a field of debris with an injured child in his arms, while another showed the entire destruction of a building in Sanliurfa, Turkey.

The earthquake was centred north of Gaziantep, Turkey, which is approximately 60 miles from the Syrian border and has a population of approximately 2 million. The area is home to a large number of Syrian refugees.

It struck at 04:17 am local time (0117 GMT) at a depth of approximately 11 miles, the US Geological Survey said. A powerful 6.7 aftershock rumbled about 10 minutes later. Turkey’s own agency said 40 aftershocks were felt.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency said the quake killed scores of people in seven Turkish regions.

About six hours after the earthquake struck, Turkey’s Vice President Fuat Otkay confirmed that the death toll had increased by 284 and said that 2,323 people had been injured. He said about 900 buildings in Turkey’s Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras regions had been destroyed.

Meanwhile, at least 237 have been killed and about 639 injured in government-controlled regions of Syria, with the victims mainly in Aleppo, Latakia, Tartus and Hama, Syrian officials said.

The White Helmets said at least a further 147 people had been killed in rebel-held areas in Syria, bringing the overall death toll from the huge earthquake to 668 so far.

The volunteer civil defence organisation said the earthquake had resulted in hundreds of injuries, dozens of deaths, and people being left in the winter cold.

This is devastating and hopefully, these people will get the help that they urgently need because this tragedy occurred in the early hours of the morning and people were sleeping in their beds – horrific!

And it’s extremely disturbing to see injured and traumatised little children being dragged from the rubble, they are just innocents.

This is what our Overseas Aid should be used for – catastrophes like this, not for lining the pockets of goodness knows who, and the rescuers are such courageous people, they are the heroes and our hearts should go out to those that have lost their lives.

Please whisper good thoughts and prayers to the families who have been devastated by the earthquake because everyone must be extremely scared.

Those poor people – our problems are small compared to theirs, and this is extremely sad news because it’s a major earthquake and I fear that the death toll will grow very sharply.

An earthquake of that calibre is no joke, it’s a big one and it’s not funny, but some people have made some extremely disrespectful comments online. It’s okay to have your views on this in your mind, but these are children that have perished as well as adults, so please keep your views offline, and if people have nothing nice to say about this catastrophe then don’t say anything at all.

The UK’s Biggest Prison Is Being Built Near Jamie Oliver’s £6 Million House

Britain’s largest prison could be built just four miles from Jamie Oliver’s £6 million rural dwelling in England’s most photographed village.

The TV chef and his family face having their lives turned upside down by the monumental building on the doorstep of his mansion, which is located close to the idyllic village of Finchingfield.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) wants to build two mega prisons that can hold 3,430 male prisoners on the site of a former RAF airbase at Wethersfield, in Essex.

Residents in Finchingfield have lashed out at the plans as being almost the worst site you could find a prison.

If they come to fruition, the plans would see Category B and Category C prisons built on the 800-acre site near a region famous for its picture-perfect views.

The MoJ has launched a consultation on the plans but has been met with rigid opposition from people living in the village and the nearby village of Wethersfield.

Finchingfield brings in tourists from afar who come to enjoy the small settlements laid back and historic structures, which also served as the location for BBC’s Lovejoy series.

Houses in the village market for an average price of £425,000, making it one of the most costly in the whole country, with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver moving into a historic townhouse in the area with his wife Jools and their five children five years ago.

He frequently films himself preparing dishes for his TV performances in the garden of the Grade One listed property and has often posted images with his wife at their home.

Since then, he’s had to contend with a scheme to increase the number of beavers in the area in a bid to relieve flooding and plans to develop a new housing estate that other residents feared would blight their ‘chocolate box’ village.

Jamie Oliver is said to have been made aware of the prison plans but has dodged making any public statement, despite Jools seemingly being friends with some of the protesters.

Some residents have speculated that he might not want to be seen as a NIMBY (not in my backyard) protester, especially in the light of his work employing ex-prisoners at his former Fifteen restaurants in London and Cornwall.

The airfield at Wethersfield was an RAF base for Spitfires during World War II before becoming an American bomber base towards the end of the conflict.

The prison, if built will be four miles away from where Jamie Oliver and his family live, not exactly in their backyard then, and I’m sure prisoners are equally as anxious – they don’t want to be subjected to his food either.

And the fact that these residents think that prisons should be built near poor people and poor areas makes me feel less sorry for these millionaires.

All prisons, however, should be built near decent traffic connections so that their loved ones can go and visit because if you don’t drive Wethersfield isn’t an easy location to get to.

I’m sure it’s not ideal for the villagers, but the need for new prisons is urgent, and can be built in pretty and exclusive places as well as ugly or run down ones, and just because these people are moneyed, it doesn’t give them the right to veto these things and make them build it somewhere else that isn’t close to them, and it’s not like the convicts are going to be wandering around the village or in the fields.

Those Who Illegally Crossed The Channel In Small Boats Will Not Be Able To Appeal Their Deportation

Ministers are drawing up plans to stop Channel migrants from lodging legal challenges against deportation.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already outlined how the Government plans to automatically bar migrants from claiming asylum as part of his promise to stop the boats, but additional steps are being formulated to strip back migrants’ ability to launch judicial reviews or appeals.

Two different sets of proposals are being drawn up, a newspaper outlet said, which are likely to pit ministers in a major conflict with the courts.

The first, and the most extreme option would stop all small boat migrants from submitting a judicial review of their exclusion from the asylum system.

The second proposal would only permit legal challenges to be lodged once the migrant has been removed from the United Kingdom, a process known as out-of-country appeals.

Proposals are still being finalised by Home Secretary Suella Braverman and the Prime Minister, but are likely to be included in a landmark package of measures, maybe later this month.

A government source said that the Prime Minister and Home Secretary were working flat out to bring forward the ruling as soon as possible and ensure that it’s legally watertight.

So-called ‘out of country’ appeals, also known as ‘non-suspensive’ appeals, have been widely used in the asylum system for more than 25 years.

In 1996 legislation set out how asylum applicants from ‘safe third countries’ could only appeal from abroad against the Home Office’s decision to veto their case.

A wide expansion of the same principle is likely to be opposed by the House of Lords, judges and the human rights industry because it would cover all nationalities who come by small boat, even if their home country isn’t deemed safe.

The Government’s Rwanda asylum scheme, if finally ruled lawful by senior judges later this year, could play a part in the jigsaw of new measures.

For example, Channel arrivals who come from dangerous lands could be sent to Rwanda, and lodge appeals from there.

Yesterday, a newspaper outlet reported how Rishi Sunak said the new ruling would ensure those who came here illegally ‘will not be able to stay’ and the ‘vast majority’ who crossed the Channel would be deported.

Previously he pledged the Government would stop the boats as one of its five key promises to voters after last year saw a record 45,756 arrivals from northern France.

Way to go, but why didn’t they enforce this policy ages ago? Now, it’s too little, too late. Because previously we had a wimpy government of prime ministers who were terrified of offending and now it’s spiralled out of control.

Our government and previous prime ministers had years to do this and enforce other measures to deter visitors, and they didn’t do a single thing, so why should we continue to believe them now?

It’s always been all talk and no action, and this seems to be more rhetoric, and we’ve heard it too many times before to try and pacify us.

We might believe it when it happens because Rishi Sunak like all those before him will come up against the usual gathering of do-gooders, woke and political left-wing extremists and human rights lawyers, all thwarting any attempts to stop illegal landings.

This government are as weak as Swiss Cheese, and it’s a shame they’re not any stronger, and it’s highly unlikely any of their promises will happen because it’s always a plan and not what’s being done because it’s all hot air.

 

Lord Of The Rings Lawyers Order Lord Of The Bins, Which Advertises With The Tagline ‘One Ring to Remove It All,’ To Scrap Its Name

A two-man waste clearance company called ‘Lord of the Bins’ has been summoned to abandon its title by Lord of the Rings lawyers.

Brighton-based business proprietors Nick Lockwood and Dan Walker, both 36, were told in a letter to cease all use of the Lord of the Bins name, including their website and social media pages by February 1.

In the letter, seen by a newspaper outlet, they were also told to quit using their tagline ‘One Ring to Remove It All’ in order to sidestep any legal action being taken.

The letter was served on January 18 by law firms Simmons & Simmons, acting for Middle-earth Enterprises, which owns the worldwide stage, film and merchandising rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy authored by JRR Tolkien.

But the small business owners have hit back insisting that they just wanted to make people smile and wanted both creative companies to live on together.

They claim that they’re just trying to make a living and doubt people will mistake them for Lord of the Rings.

Mr Lockwood told the newspaper outlet that they were just two men who grew up together and went to school together in Brighton and that they were self-funded and couldn’t afford a court battle, and that they were facing the possibility of having to totally rebrand, and that for a small business, it could have a damaging impact moving forward.

Mr Lockwood said it was easily going to be £5,000 and above, but that they would prevail he was sure, but that the impact would last a prolonged time.

He said that they’ve put their heart and soul into the business, and to think that it could be taken away from them was distressing and that they’ve had stressful nights talking to solicitors.

Mr Lockwood said that this was both of their livelihoods and that they were between a rock and a hard place, and that they couldn’t afford to fight this legally in court, and they were hoping they could make enough noise so that it gets taken away from a legal conversation.

He said that they both have young children and it’s stressful to think of the impact this could have.

Mr Lockwood said that if they don’t turn up on time, no one’s going to throw their Lord of the Rings DVD in the bin, and if they bring out a box office hit, he didn’t think more people were going to ring up for waste collection.

To be fair, I’m sure this isn’t going to hurt the multi-million-dollar franchise. However, they have become the Lord of the whinge.

I’ve even been past a fish and chip shop called ‘The Codfather’, but no one’s assumed it was run by the mafia, and actually, I believe JRR Tolkien would have seen the humorous side of that, and I’m sure that both name and the slogan that they’re using was brilliant.

And rather than bullying small fry businesses like this, why don’t they start with the larger fish like Michael Flatley and ‘Lord of the Dance’ – but they’re just bully boys picking on little men so that they can get a buck or two, unfortunately, these men are small fry and don’t even have a chip.

It’s an extremely smart and witty name, and these mean-spirited bullies should just do one, and the lawyers are just being pathetic. Keep the name, add an E on the end of Lord and change the font, job done.

This Is The Shocking Moment A Couple Leaves Their Baby At The Check-In Counter Of An Israeli Airport

A couple who dumped their baby at the check-in desk in Israel’s Ben Gurion airport before attempting to board a flight to Brussels has been detained by police.

The couple arrived at the airport in Tel Aviv on Tuesday with Belgian passports and tickets for a Ryanair flight to the Belgian capital but didn’t have a boarding pass for their child.

When they were informed by airport staff that they couldn’t board without buying a separate ticket, they just left the child in its pushchair at the check-in desk and proceeded to head for the security terminal.

Startling video footage showed the moment gobsmacked airport staff noticed the lone pushchair and drew back a blanket, exposing the abandoned baby underneath.

In the clip, one member of staff peels back a cover that had been draped over the pushchair, which was sat on a conveyor belt at the check-in desk.

Loud gasps of astonishment were heard when staff discovered a baby had been left unattended in a pushchair with its parents nowhere in sight.

Staff at the security check-in refused to let the pair through, forcing them to return to collect the infant before contacting the police who descended on Terminal 1 and promptly arrested them, and the pair were taken in for questioning.

The manager of the Ryanair desk told the Jerusalem Post that they’d never seen anything like this, and they couldn’t believe what they were witnessing.

According to Ryanair, people travelling with an infant can either pay about £25 for a lap seat or can purchase a separate seat for the child at a standard adult fare.

Israel’s Airport Authority also released a statement, explaining the couple had arrived late for their flight and left the baby at the check-in desk in an attempt to make it through security in time, and said that a couple with Belgian passports arrived for a Ryanair flight at Terminal 1 without a ticket for the baby and that the couple also arrived late for the flight after the flight’s check-in counters had closed.

They left the baby and went to the security check-in at Terminal 1 to get to the departure gate.

A ground services shift manager took the couple back to the flight counters to take the baby and contacted the police and a security guard.

This is dreadful. Was the child being trafficked? And was this child actually their child? Or did they believe that the staff would succumb and let them on with the baby despite the absence of a pass? However, if they came from Belgian, how did they get the baby to Israel in the first place?

Traffickers will frequently dump their product if it doesn’t serve them or if something goes awry, and trafficking is far more common than we believe, and this couple might have been flying on a Belgian passport, but were they actually Belgian-born?

And it seems that this couple didn’t arrive in Israel with the baby to start with, hence why they didn’t need a pass for it, but on the way back out they would have required a pass for the child. Trafficking or a stolen child perhaps? Either way, their plan wasn’t very well thought out.

Humankind never fails to astonish my bewildered soul.

Unfortunately, parents do far worse than this every single day. Procreation doesn’t make awful people suddenly decent human beings sadly, and far too many morons populate this world.

The Youngest Member Of Mensa In Britain Is A Toddler From Somerset

A toddler has become Britain’s youngest Mensa member aged just three, reading fluently and counting in seven tongues.

Teddy Hobbs managed to gain entry to the exclusive organisation for the intellectual elite aged only three years and nine months.

The child prodigy from Portishead, Somerset, can already count to 100 in six non-native languages, including Mandarin, Welsh, French, Spanish and German.

Teddy, now four, taught himself to read just two years and four months and is now capable of even reading Harry Potter books. He even likes to relax with a word search.

Little Teddy was admitted to Mensa late last year after acing an IQ test with the group, scoring 139 out of 160 on the Stanford Binet test and surprising his parents, who had no concept of how intelligent he was.

Beth Hobbs, 31 and her husband Will, 41, said they’d never expected their son, born Theodore, to get into the group, and never planned to even apply for membership.

Beth Hobbs said that they were told that three was the youngest age of anyone they’d accepted into Mensa in the United Kingdom, though there was someone in the US aged two.

She said that to be fair, it was a total fluke really that he got in. They never sought to get him in, and even when they had him assessed, that was so that they could help him when he started school in September, but they never intended on getting him into Mensa.

She said they did an IQ test, where they basically told him that he was going to sit and do some puzzles with a lady for an hour, and he thought it was the most remarkable thing.

She said that after he finished it they were told he was eligible by Mensa’s child adviser, so they felt he may as well join.

She said they were a bit like ‘pardon?’ They knew he could do things that his peers couldn’t, but they didn’t fully realise how good he actually was.

She said they took him to nursery afterwards and he came home after because he was so sad about having to stop doing puzzles, and that he will even do word searches to calm down.

She said he wasn’t even interested in what Mensa was, but that now he’s just about starting to comprehend that he’s more talented than other children, so when school starts she believes he’ll realise more.

Good luck to the young man, but let’s hope that he doesn’t get ridiculed at school for being too intelligent, and let’s also hope that this young man does something useful with his talent like becoming a doctor or scientist because our country needs people like this.

It Gets Worse Just When You Think It Can’t Get Any Worse!

A house hunter has shared her hilarious response after finding a London rental property on the market for £1,387 per month, with its bed stashed in a wardrobe.

Rachel Kitcat was casually viewing apartments on Rightmove when she stumbled across the quirky studio on St George’s Drive, Pimlico, central London, with the bottom of the bed inches away from the oven.

The 25-year-old couldn’t believe what she was seeing and quickly set about filming her reaction to the hidden bed for TikTok.

The video shows Rachel’s face pasted over images of the property, as she says: ‘Guys, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse.

The video shows Rachel’s face pasted over images of the property, as she says: Guys, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse. She said that buying a property in London was out of the question, so she was going onto the rental market now, and that it wasn’t looking too bad, relatively modern.

On the other side of the studio, the wardrobes were relatively new, it had a nice little table where you could eat your dinner on.

Five photographs of the property show the apparently spacious and stylish flat with a furnished kitchen and a large white closet sitting opposite the worktops.

The video then moves on to show the bedroom, with Rachel saying: Hey presto, bing bang bosh, open the wardrobe and there’s your bed.

The pictures then hilariously show a bed concealed inside the closet. The new renters would have to drag it out and lay it on the kitchen floor, where it reaches all the way to the units.

Rachel continues, quipping: Imagine this, you’re laying here after a one-night stand. Bosh, your bloke hits your head on the door, and then bosh, I hit my head on the other door, but fear not, if you just edge towards the end of the bed right here I can get you your fresh chicken nuggets at 4 am in the morning.

She said it was well worth fourteen hundred quid if you ask me.

Rachel from Woking, Surrey, uploaded the video with the caption: The wardrobe bed sent me over the edge.

The video has been liked by more than 5,100 people and has obtained dozens of comments from users left shocked by the price for the studio.

This is just unadulterated greed by the landlord and the owner should be named and shamed. That room is just a bedroom in a house. Not a flat within a house and this is simply despicable greed, but fortunately, no one’s forced to rent it, it’s a choice.

Our housing crisis is one of the biggest single failures of this government, which says a lot, considering all of the other nonsense. The housing situation is now so serious that an apartment like that, Pimlico or not, costs close to an average salary, once all the bills and council tax are included. At the same time, we allowed net migration of 500,000 people last year and dropped house-building targets, and people wonder why rents grew by 20 per cent in the principal cities last year – total stupidity.

Surely there must be some sort of stringent regulations in regard to fire and safety where this apartment is concerned. The landlord should never be permitted to get away with this and it’s a disgrace, but this is actually what young people have to pay for to live.

But this should be made illegal because there should be a minimum square footage for human habitat and it should be imposed by law, and pricing these shoe boxes at a ridiculous price just raises the rent of all other apartments.

Is Liz Truss Planning A Comeback?

Almost 100 days after she departed Downing Street as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister in history, Liz Truss is reportedly planning a political comeback.

The ex-premier made a visit to Washington DC before Christmas to attend a gathering of centre-right figures from across the world.

It’s now emerged, in a string of private gatherings while she was across the Atlantic, that the 47-year-old told US politicians she remained determined to rouse Britain from economic stagnation.

According to the US website Politico, Liz Truss also made it understood that she didn’t trust her beneficiary, Rishi Sunak, to do the job.

Liz Truss’s time in No 10 was overwhelmed by economic upheaval in the wake of her tax-cutting mini-Budget, which has since been almost entirely junked by Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, but while it’s claimed she admitted blunders in the way she pushed forward with her economic objectives, Liz Truss isn’t said to have shied away from her low tax agenda on her US trip.

The website reported that Liz Truss told Kevin Hern, a member of the US House of Representatives, that she wanted to form a similar body to the Republican Study Committee, an influential body in Washington.

Mr Hern said that she expressed a desire for such a faction at Westminster to accommodate all of their ideas into a collaborative group, in order to hold the present Prime Minister accountable.

He also revealed that Liz Truss floated the Conservative Growth Group as a name.

This month, a group of two dozen MPs supportive of Liz Truss were said to have assembled in Parliament, with the ex-Prime Minister in attendance to form a group of the same name.

Another US political figure who spoke to Liz Truss on her December trip told Politico she voiced fears that Britain’s conservative movement could vanish entirely as she warned about Tory’s electoral prospects.

Sir Jake Berry, who serves as Tory chairman under Liz Truss and who accompanied her on her US trip, told the website that the party had failed over a considerable duration of time to justify why they were conservatives in an effective way.

Liz Truss’s attendance at the International Democrat Union forum in Washington last month was at the invitation of its chairman, ex-Canadian PM Stephen Harper.

A supporter of Liz Truss told a newspaper outlet that she’d used the visit to touch base with other centre-right figures in a string of private gatherings, as she reminisced on her time in No 10.

Unfortunately, she’s a below-average woman who believes she has what it takes to be at the top with the best of the best, and hasn’t she caused enough damage? She must be delusional.

I’d love to know what she smokes even if it’s just to warn teenagers to avoid it at all costs, and this woman evidently needs therapy of some sort. She’s not fit for office or even an MP.

I think that being described as the worst Prime Minister this country has ever had should probably tell her that she should take her marching orders seriously, and most people in her situation would have hidden under a rock for the rest of their lives, but that’s shameless politicians for you.

And who are we really fooling? A comeback, she never really started, but then she’s another deluded Tory headbanger who just doesn’t get it – they’re the problem, not the country, and not the people who live in it.

The Tory Party Chairman Nadhim Zahawi Has Been Sacked

Nadhim Zahawi has been sacked from Government by the Prime Minister after he was found to have committed a grave violation of ministerial rules.

The Tory chairman’s departure comes as a consequence of a frenzied row over his tax affairs after he was revealed to have paid a penalty to HMRC as part of a tax bill.

The sum given over to the tax authorities by Mr Zahawi is said to be at least £4.8 million, including a £1.1 million fine.

The revelation Mr Zahawi paid a fine to HMRC forced Rishi Sunak, who is claimed to be livid at the controversy, to this week’s order for an investigation by his ethics advisor, Sir Laurie Magnus.

Sir Laurie Magnus has now ruled against Mr Zahawi for failing to properly disclose the tax controversy when he was appointed to various Government positions.

He outlined multiple infringements of ministerial rules by Mr Zahawi in a damning four-page report.

Sir Laurie blasted the departed Cabinet minister for failing to reverse a prior public denial that he was being investigated by HMRC.

Sir Laurie’s findings left Rishi Sunak with little choice but to sack Mr Zahawi from his Cabinet.

After being sacked, Mr Zahawi promised his support to Rishi Sunak from the back benches of the House of Commons, but he also lashed out at media coverage of his tax disgrace and delivered an apology to his family for the toll this had taken on them.

The dramatic conclusion of the row over Mr Zahawi will come as a massive disappointment to the Prime Minister, who’s expected to celebrate his first 100 days in No 10.

Rishi Sunak is also continuing to face questions over the fate of Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who’s subject to a continuous investigation into bullying claims.

The Prime Minister promised to lead a Government with integrity, professionalism and accountability when he took office in October.

He’s also been left mortified after telling MPs earlier this month that the row over Mr Zahawi’s tax affairs had been addressed in full before being forced to order Sir Laurie’s inquiry.

In a damning four-page report to the Prime Minister on his findings, Sir Laurie announced that Mr Zahawi originally failed to declare he was subjected to an HMRC investigation when he was appointed Chancellor by Boris Johnson in July last year.

This was a role that put him in control of Britain’s tax system, and Sir Laurie said it could have led to claims of a possible conflict of interest.

It’s high time we the taxpayer, and employers of all these MPs laid down boundaries, with terms and conditions as it is for all employees – break the rules and you’re sacked, however, corruption seems to be the natural course of a government that’s had its feet under the desk for far too long.

Mr Zahawi always mentions being an immigrant and most people think that he was poor, but in fact, his family were affluent even before his family came to the United Kingdom.

Mr Zahawi was born in Baghdad, Iraq, to a prominent family from Khanaqin within the Kurdish Feyi tribe.

His father is Hareth Nadhim Al Zahawi, born in 1942, a British-Iraqi businessman who founded the Al-Zahawi Group, which after the US invasion of 2003 obtained a contract to provide logistics, cleaning and support services to the new US-led interim government.

Now known as IPBD (Iraq Project and Business Development), its interests have expanded to cover steel manufacturing and property growth, and generally supporting the reconstruction effort.

His father is also a director of Balshore Investments Limited, Gibraltar, and in 2022 was resident in Lebanon with his wife Najdat, both British citizens.

His paternal grandfather was Nadhim al-Zahawi, Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq from 1959 to 1960, and Minister of Trade.

Five Years After The Worst Treatment Disaster In The History Of The NHS, More Than 500 Infected Blood Victims Have Died

More than 500 victims of the worst treatment tragedy in NHS history have perished during the long-awaited infected blood inquiry.

A newspaper outlet exposed the damning figure as the five-year investigation, the most extensive inquiry in UK history finally ends next week.

The inquiry will sit for the last time next Friday before chairman Sir Brian Langstaff retires to consider the mountain of evidence, but it’s come too late for those who’ve perished without seeing justice.

According to the Haemophilia Society, more than 500 of those infected in the scandal have perished since the investigation was reported in 2017. With victims dying at a rate of one every four days, it’s feared many more will be gone before the inquiry’s recommendations are enforced and full compensation given.

Society chief executive Kate Burt urged the Government to face up to past mistakes by acting quickly on the inquiry’s conclusions, which are expected to be published next year. She said that time was not on their community’s side.

Thousands were contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C through infected blood in the 1970s and 1980s amid claims of a cover-up. Among those to have perished during the investigation was campaigner Peter Mossman.

Peter Mossman died aged 78 after developing pneumonia and was buried at 3 pm on February 3, 2022. Sir Brian is expected to give his closing remarks at 3 pm on February 3.

Peter Mossman’s son Gareth said that his father was consumed by his need to get justice and fought for this inquiry for so long.

He said it made him emotional to think that the inquiry was coming to an end on the anniversary of his funeral and that it was massively upsetting that he wasn’t there to see it.

People with haemophilia were mostly contaminated via a plasma-derived product known as factor VIII, a processed pharmaceutical product sourced from the United States and elsewhere.

Did this mean that the Americans had the same problem and did it make people sick, or did they keep all the clean blood for themselves?

This was a standard legal malpractice, but they kept dragging it in and out of court as long as possible in the hope that the complainants either ran out of money, will or life or preferably all three so that the defendant wins by default. This should have been sorted out decades ago! And people are dying waiting for organ transplants while the blood/organ donor service refuses to accept solutions to this situation because they chose to rely on altruism.

And even though this story is now making the news, it’s truly not gotten the kind of coverage it should have done, but of course, killing off patients saves money, and there certainly doesn’t appear to be enough outrage about this.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started