THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO

Not Effective Or Safe Says Watchdog

Clayhill Medical Practice, Vange Health Centre, Southview Road, Vange in Basildon, Essex has been rated as inadequate by the Care Quality Commission.

The practice has more than 6,000 patients and has been ordered to improve by the health watchdog.

Some performance information which includes screening data was lower than local and national averages, and some childhood immunisation data was lower than target levels, and there have been numerous patients that have left the practice over a period of time, and a father died two days after being told by the GP the stroke he suffered was a bout of vertigo.

The widow called an out of hours doctor who diagnosed her stroke victim husband with vertigo over the telephone and escaped being struck off. Dr Francisca Ogunbiyi twice refused to attend Jeffrey Wingrove, 48, after he collapsed at home with severe vomiting and paralysing headaches, and instead decided he was suffering from vertigo and prescribed some anti-sickness medicines for his wife, Isabelle to get. Mr Wingrove who was the father of two and ran marathons died 48 hours later.

His family have since been awarded a six-figure sum in an out-of-court settlement for clinical negligence against the family doctor and East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, and Nigerian-trained Francisca Ogunbiyi could have been struck off by the General Medical Council, which heard Mr Wingrove would have survived if his stroke had been diagnosed quicker.

But instead of Ogunbiyi being struck off she was given a warning, which she then had to declare to her employers over the course of the next five years, but she appealed against the decision, which was upheld during a five hour hearing in London.

The point is that had Dr Ogunbiyi executed her job correctly and she had given him the medical care that he required he probably would have survived, but instead this poor man died and his family were left to pick up the pieces, so it does make you question why Francisca Ogunbiyi only got away with a warning and continued to be able to work.

Not only has she taken the life of a patient, but she’s further taken this man away from his family, and the system has failed.

Mr Wingrove fell unwell on the morning of December 9, 2006, at home in Braintree, Essex, after going to the bathroom and collapsing in horrifying pain. He managed to drag himself to his bedroom with a severe headache but was powerless to move the right side of his body easily and was sweating and vomiting.

His wife contacted her GP and was directed to an out of hours service run by the Mid Essex Hospitals NHS Trust by a private firm Primecare because it was a Saturday. Doctor Ogunbiyi called Mrs Wingrove shortly afterwards and told her to take her husband to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.

There was a disturbing exchanged that was presented during the hearing. Mrs Wingrove who at 5ft tall was 1ft shorter than her husband, again asked for the doctor to come and see her husband because she couldn’t get him out of bed to get him to the hospital.

But Doctor Ogunbiyi told Mrs Wingrove that she would have to get him out of bed. Mrs Wingrove then rang NHS Direct and a nurse told her to demand a home visit from a doctor as soon as possible.

At 12.20pm she called Primecare again but was informed by the doctor that NHS Direct was different there, and that she could insist and they could jump up and down but that they knew the system and it wasn’t fair on her.

Mrs Wingrove said: ‘You’re telling me I cannot get a doctor here? I cannot get him out.’ The GP responded: ‘You’re shouting.’

At about 9 pm Mrs Wingrove called paramedics who also said her husband was suffering from vertigo when they arrived, gave him paracetamol and failed to take him to the hospital.

The next morning Mr Wingrove fell off his bed and was then taken to Broomfield Hospital, he was later transferred to Queen’s Hospital in Romford where he died the following day.

Francisca Ogunbiyi, who lives in Benfleet, Essex, and works at Vange Health Centre in Basildon, was dismissed by Primecare following the misfortune, and she was unavailable for comment following the hearing.

Doctor Ogunbiyi was dismissive, and even though it’s really difficult for the medical profession to make judgement calls, she should have sent him straight to hospital, and it appears that the paramedics that did turn up, in the end, failed to recognise the severity of Mr Wingrove’s health when they arrived at his home and actually saw him.

We don’t need slothful doctors, and it seems like she simply couldn’t be bothered to do a home visit or even ring for an ambulance, and simply fobbed Mrs Wingrove off.

The paramedics were probably following the doctor’s diagnosis, however not taking him to the hospital was an absolute disgrace. They’re not fully qualified medics and should always consider the worst diagnosis.

Very clearly this gentleman was presenting vital signs of a heart problem or even a stroke, I mean, us lesser mortals have that pounded into us by the government’s ad campaign on TV all the time.

Mr Wingrove should have been examined at the hospital, if only as a precautionary measure, but the out of hours service in this country is diabolical, and because of this Mr Wingrove’s family had to say goodbye to him.

So many people have been hurt by this incident, yet Francisca Ogunbiyi gets off with a warning and is still licenced to practice at being a doctor, and it’s a disgrace.

Sadly, there have been many other comparable things that have happened in the NHS, such as a locum giving painkillers to someone with chest pain, and then the patient dies 2 days later, or a woman with bowel cancer who’s told that she has IBS. Or the young man with testicular cancer who’s told the lump is nothing to worry about until he goes to A&E coughing up blood or the woman who’s told that her brain haemorrhage was nothing more than a migraine. Perhaps we should simply bypass our GP, except for the pretty minor stuff and just go straight to A&E because it could SAVE your life.

I question what a doctor has to actually do before they’re struck off because it seems that being too lazy to do a proper job which then leads to a patients death actually isn’t enough.

Universal Credit Nightmare

A single mum with breast cancer was left with only 84 pence after a Universal Credit nightmare. Teacher Gillian Sykes found out she had cancer in January and is preparing to have a double mastectomy operation in the summer, and she has had to quit her job as a supply teacher but said that she’s been left to struggle for survival with the Department of Work and Pensions.

Gillian Sykes told how she has been turned down for assistance and was even made to take bank statements into the jobcentre only two days following her first draining round of chemotherapy. She further had money taken away because the DWP made blunders over dates, and she was eventually left with only 84 pence to live on, forcing her to rely on handouts from family and friends.

Gillian was further told she needed to be looking for work, which the DWP later stated was simply an ‘automated response.’

The 45-year-old, who lives in Ashton-in-Makerfield with her two teenage children, talked about the overwhelming moment she found out she had cancer. She discovered a lump on the 28th December when she was going to bed, and she cried herself to sleep because there is a family history of cancer, and it would have been the 20th anniversary of her mother’s passing.

Gillian was in an all-out frenzy and got an appointment soon after, then two weeks later she was sent to see an oncologist who confirmed what she already knew, that it wasn’t a cyst, it was a solid mass, and a week later she got given the news, but everything progressed pretty swiftly from there, and now shes had three rounds of chemotherapy, and her hair is coming out in handfuls every day, and this summer she will be having a double mastectomy, which isn’t nice, and yet Gillian has had to start a long, exhausting battle with the Department of Work and Pensions to get the benefits she required to support her through an astonishingly hard time.

Following her cancer diagnosis, Gillian said she was never informed she qualified for Limited Capability for Work Related Activity, which is deemed to give additional cash for those who are unable to work, so she was left fighting with the department for weeks in an effort to get the additional help.

And to be going through chemotherapy is enough, only to have to dispense with the Department of Work and Pensions, after paying into a system as a teacher, and now she’s having battles left, right and centre with Universal Credit, problems with not being told what she can and can’t claim for, in fact, she’s had more help from the Macmillan nurses than the government.

And two days after her first chemotherapy session, she was informed that she had to take her bank statements into the jobcentre to show that they had taken money from her that they shouldn’t have, and Gillian has had her statutory sick pay penalised, and she’s complained and complained and has had to talk to a different person on the telephone every time.

She simply feels like she’s struggling for survival with benefits that she shouldn’t be fighting for right now because she’s already got enough problems having cancer, and following spending weeks waiting to find out if she could get the important extra LCWRA payments, Gillian chose to apply for what is known as a Universal Credit budgeting loan, used to help those who are struggling.

So, she phoned them because that month was especially difficult and was informed by someone that nothing was accessible to her because all the buttons were greyed out and they didn’t know why. Then another time someone else told her nothing was accessible to her because she made at least £2,600 in the last six months, well, of course, she did, she was a teacher, and was working full time with her agency up until the Christmas, so now she’s actually been penalised for working, no surprise people don’t want to work now!

What she does get from Universal Credit, she’s paying the mortgage with, and she has two children and didn’t expect this to happen to her, but she’s suffered from depression for several years, which has been hugely under control and she’s been able to work, and now this is what’s happening on a daily basis, when she has to find out the next step and the next fight, makes you actually understand why people on benefits get discouraged.

But even though they’ve apologised to Gillian Sykes for the suffering caused by the delay and paying her back in full surely doesn’t include the stress that she had to go through whilst battling cancer, she should have further been given compensation as well.

She might have now been put in the long-term health condition group, meaning she gets a high level of support, and will not be expected to seek employment, but what about the support she should have been getting before? Gillian didn’t choose to get cancer, cancer chose her, but the DWP decided that they would keep her waiting for her money and take money away from her while she was battling this horrible disease.

The Department of Work and Pensions would immediately have sent a letter in the post if a claimant owed them money or if the DWP had overcompensated the claimant, they would have been on that like a pack of hyenas, but if they owe you money they drag their feet in the hope that the suffering claimant won’t bother because they’re too frail and defenceless to do so, which literally makes the DWP the rodents of society.

The DWP tell everyone that they ensure that anyone with a health condition gets the help they require, but the problem is, they don’t because the DWP hopes that the claimant might die before they sort their money out that they were actually entitled to in the first place.

It’s unquestionably repulsive treatment for such a severely sick woman with such a tremendous burden before of her, and if the government are going to roll out this whole new Universal Credit, they should at least have the respectability to contract people who know what they’re doing and who realise that suffering people don’t choose to claim welfare, and it wasn’t a lifestyle choice, and Universal Credit is demeaning and ruthless in the way they handle people.

When is this idiot government going to wake up and smell the carnage they’re creating, and now local charities are having to support them with food, electricity, and other basic essentials, and the state of these defenceless people, essentially families come to the charities, and it’s pitiful.

In numerous instances, the parents haven’t slept for weeks with the endless worry of when they’ll be able to feed their children, let alone pay the bills. The problem is the government are completely vigilant and knowledgeable and embrace the scent of their destruction and funeral pyres of the poor unemployed, and the sick, as they open their morning newspaper with their morning cuppa and a smirk on their faces!

But of course, we have to be submissive citizens. Just be happy, and remember that Prince Harry and his new wife just got to restore their new home from taxpayers hard earned cash, and his granny got 369 million pounds to begin improvements on Buckingham Palace, so that she can live there with her Greek sweetheart rent free because the brain fogged old Queen knows how to freeload off her subordinate subjects, and so does Harry and his family, so don’t you think it’s time for the government to quit calling 56 million hardworking citizens subordinate subjects?

No wonder there are people out there attempting to deceive the government, let’s face it, you have to be an MP or possibly a billionaire tax dodger because some of those wealthy people didn’t get rich through hard work, they got rich on the backs of hard working, low paid serfs.

And the government should actually hang their heads in disgrace. They won’t donate for cancer treatments, but it’s okay for us to house immigrant killers, rapists, and subversives who are presently in our prisons at the taxpayer’s expense, but they’ll begrudge cancer treatments.

The Tory chains are there to shackle us to poverty, we don’t actually have much of a voice, and the Tories are running on borrowed time, and back in the day the government would attempt to erase all the evidence before it was put in front of a court of law, the only redemption today is that everything is done and leaves an electronic footprint, and these vile far right wing Tories give out their orders to punish those in need of help, so whatever you do, don’t become ill under this wicked immoral Tory government, because you’ll be penalised by them.

Theresa May Should Quit

Theresa May should stand down as Prime Minister next month, that’s what former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has stated. This comes after the Prime Minister’s fragmented authority suffered a further setback as a major study revealed that Jeremy Corbyn was heading for No 10.

The Conservatives would lose 59 seats at a general election, making Labour the largest party in the Commons. Labour would win 34 seats and the Lib Dems 14 according to the analysis from Electoral Calculus for the Sunday Telegraph.

Experts have criticised the unexpected fall in support on Tory voters’ wrath at the Government’s failure to deliver Brexit, and Leave backers have been drawn back to either UKIP or Nigel Farage’s newly launched Brexit party.

Iain Duncan Smith announced the Prime Minister should quit before European Parliament elections scheduled to be held on May 23, even though we know the Prime Minister has previously stated that she’s going, she said she would go as and when the deal was confirmed, which was looking at around May or June.

What the Prime Minister had to do is now direct everything in the direction of a departure before the Euros which would then enable her to walk away having done what she said she would do, getting the United Kingdom out of the European Union one way or the other, and then we can have another leadership vote and choose a different leader.

The Conservative grandee said polling on the party was currently worrying and blamed dawdling Brexit to October 31 for the situation.

It came as Tory big beasts responded party rules could be altered, making it easier to remove the Prime Minister. Under the prevailing policy, a move upon the leader can only be conducted once in a 12-month period, but Theresa May dismissed an attempt to remove her last December and so would not expect to face the prospect of another potential endeavour to overthrow her until the end of the year.

Yet, two former chairmen of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs stated that the rules could be modified, and Cabinet Office Minister, and Theresa May’s de facto deputy, David Lidington, announced discussions between the Government and Labour on Brexit would proceed.

Mr Lidington told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show that they were certainly going to continue next week, and that he had a good, professional meeting with John McDonnell, and that what they’ve agreed is a schedule of meetings on particular subjects with ministers and shadow ministers concerned getting together to discuss things like environmental standards, like worker’s rights, and security relations between the United Kingdom and the EU.

And what they would hope is to take stock of where they are as soon as Parliament gets back following the Easter break, but he doesn’t believe that this issue can be permitted to drag out for much longer, and as government, they have perpetually made it explicit that while they will do their best to seek and strike a settlement with the main opposition party, it would involve give-and-take on both sides.

And if that doesn’t work then what they will want to move towards is to put before Parliament a collection of options with a method for making a decision and Parliament actually having to come to a preferred choice, rather than voting against everything.

Can you believe the unmitigated temerity of these Tories, with a failed leader of the Tories, a failed Department for Work and Pensions minister who’s now swiftly decided he’s got a conscience because maybe he now wants to put his helmet in the ring for leadership?

There are numerous people out there that don’t like Theresa May, I mean, who the hell does she think she is, and at the moment she seems to be carnivorous, and nefarious and holds disdain of people beneath anyone who is wealthy.

Thousands have died or committed suicide under Iain Duncan Smith’s watch with Ester McVey by his side, but if this was a caring and fair society, he along with the rest of his species should have been locked away, with their assets and property being dispersed amongst the needy.

And I’m sure that Iain Duncan Smith is shocked that there’s anymore poor left in Britain, perhaps he thought he’d removed them all, but presently the quiet man is turning up the volume again, yet he’s the most tedious politician that we’ve ever had to listen to, and I wonder if he believes he might be invited to resume the mantle once again.

And haven’t the Tories used Brexit as a Trojan horse for an economic far right and Atlantic bridge takeover, and hasn’t the UK figured this out yet? Although they know that the voters wouldn’t vote for that, therefore all the secrecy.

Yet the Tories are getting away with their social suicide, slashing and privatising everything in site, further enriching themselves while they mislead society with Brexit. Let’s face it, Theresa May doesn’t look that stressed about it all, in fact, she’s looking rather self-satisfied with herself as she stands on her platform sabotaging Brexit.

And what about all those cuts they forced onto those in real need with their Universal Credit and frozen benefits and all the money they withdrew and wasted on Universal Credit, I mean, what was wrong with the old system? And is that why Theresa May doesn’t look like she’s under pressure with that self-satisfied look on her face, that self-satisfaction of having accomplished her mission of becoming Prime Minister, and the newspapers scaremongering us with fear.

However, is it to do with the Tories failure on Brexit or does it have something to do with the fact that the voters have ultimately realised that the Tories are perjurers and cheats? And who does Iain Duncan Smith think would succeed her, Bungling Boris Johnson, or funeral parlour Jacob Rees Mogg?

Honestly, after years of austerity cuts and turmoil on the people, none of them is actually fit for office, and would the people really trust any of them to run their bath, never mind run the country? Because there actually isn’t anyone to replace her that isn’t useless, and they’re all a detestable sociological infliction on society, and it’s sage advice from a well renowned ancient leader which is as relevant as his CV, which is probably notes scrawled on the back of his expenses form that he used to claim his breakfast.

NHS Bed Shortage

Children suffering a mental health crisis are still being sent hundreds of miles from home because of a deficiency of NHS beds, and one defenceless child was sent to a unit more than 300 miles from home, and another child was located 285 miles away from their family by NHS Herts Valley in Hertfordshire.

Around 1,000 youngsters have been located out of the area, most were girls, around 731 compared to about 298 boys, and vulnerable kids are being sent over 300 miles from their families for treatment because of the shortage of beds nearby and it’s nothing short of a national disgrace.

For those struggling with a mental health condition, support from family and friends is essential, and all data reveals that out of area placements endanger the rehabilitation of people with mental health conditions, and it’s tragic that parents that are worried for their children will be miles away because of the government’s negligence, and there should be strategies to reduce these damaging placements to ensure that children and young people are treated closer to home.

Labour promised at the last General Election to invest more of the mental health budget in services for children and young people so that the money reached front line services, but nearly two-thirds of local health bodies reported unsuitable out of area places of children, but patients should be treated in an area which helps them to maintain the contact they want to keep with family, carers and friends, but it appears that the government do not save, they just destroy!

And it shouldn’t matter if you’re a child or an adult, people need family and friends close by to support them when they’re ill. Mental Health at the moment is a third world standard, and a really low priority to the government, whichever party is in power, and the staff who work in the NHS are at the sharp end and deserve a medal.

Unfortunately, we elected a cruel, self-serving government because as British citizens we appear to be rather ignorant, and we now need a new government!

It can be an incredible wrench for children to leave their homes and families, and being sent far away is not going to support a young person in crisis, and the government should be improving mental healthcare for children and young people, which should be an absolute priority.

It was the ninth time in a period of 10 days that Sherry Denness had attempted to kill herself. She felt like it was checkmate, and that there were no open doors or other ways for her life to turn, she simply wanted to die, and at only 18 years old, Sherry Denness had been diagnosed with a number of mental health conditions, including borderline personality disorder (BPD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

On seven of her nine suicide attempts, the teenager had landed in A&E, been patched up and considered well enough to be shipped home with no additional help. Another time she’d taken all of her prescribed medication in one go and ended up in critical care for two days. But once the physical manifestations had been dispensed with, to her parent’s desperation, she was just released and shipped home.

Sherry was found by the police on a pathway nearby, train tracks lying just ahead. They’d been alerted by a crisis team Sherry had called in her non-lucid state to ask about a place to live. It was a freezing cold night and Sherry was sitting cross-legged on the floor, there was a lot of blood because she had self-harmed again, and her clothes were scuffed from her efforts to climb the fence that stood between her and the train tracks.

And after checking with mental health professionals at the local hospital the police officer used his police powers to detain Sherry under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act. By sectioning Sherry, the police were able to do what they could to keep her safe and get her the help she clearly required.

At the time, Sherry didn’t want to go with the police and resisted their efforts to help her, and it’s thanks to them for calming her down, and for saving her life.

When Sherry’s mum, Andi, saw the blue lights of an ambulance from her kitchen, a cold tentacle of fear slid around her stomach. She ran out of the house, dreading the worst, and to see her daughter alive, and with the police, was an enormous relief.

When they told her that they’d sectioned her daughter, she felt her legs go from under her and she sobbed because she was so thankful that she was finally going to get into the hospital and get the help she so urgently required.

Sherry is from a really loving family but she wasn’t well so she hurt herself again and again, and each time the hospital sent her home, but the family were saying that she needed to be in the hospital because she wasn’t well. But things didn’t go smoothly even after she was sectioned. Once she’d been accompanied by the police to A&E to treat her physical wounds she should have been transferred to a children’s mental health unit.

But a lack of beds meant Sherry landed in an adult ward at a hospital in Guildford, where her parents say she was propositioned by a male patient in his 50s. So she was then transported to a secure children’s mental health unit in Sheffield, 160 miles away. It was the only place that was available.

She was eventually transported from Sheffield to another hospital in Guildford, near to her home, and there she started to feel more lucid and positive. She was eventually discharged and is now back at home with her family, but Sherry has spent almost a year of her life in mental health facilities.

She was 11 when she was first evaluated by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), were they took her mother to one side, and was informed that her daughter was an attention seeker and they didn’t actually take it too seriously, but finally at 13 years old Sherry was given medication for ADHD, but by then the children at her school had already started to bully her.

At school, Sherry was frequently kicked out of class for disruptive behaviour and spent most of her time in isolation. She couldn’t concentrate and no one listened to what she was saying.

When someone has ADHD it seems like everything is going 10 million times faster than normal and they don’t understand why people around them are so calm, so Sherry struggled to make friends and became increasingly withdrawn.

She started self-harming at 13 years old and was first sectioned by the police at 14, and at that point, Sherry’s parents chose to take her out of school, and the family feel that CAMHS let Sherry down for years.

After she was finally sectioned her parents made a viral video in which her dad, Chris, tells the story of those horrific 10 days by holding up a series of messages drawn on paper.

He then asked people to show they care about her, and about other young people struggling to get treatment for mental health problems by getting involved in a social media campaign under the hashtag#wecaresherry.

They began the campaign to give Sherry hope because she believed that nobody cared, and the family are also calling for changes in the way that CAMHS works. For instance, Sherry’s parents have argued that A&E is no place for a child who is having a mental health episode, even though that is where CAMHS tells people to go, but getting Sherry to A&E when she’s in a heightened state is a nightmare, and usually her parents have to call the police to get her there.

Both parents have been trained in safe restraint but have to take turns because her physical strength when she’s distressed can be overpowering, and at A&E it can be about six-hour waits, with unsympathetic security personnel and receptionists who are simply irritated at seeing Sherry back in A&E again.

Sherry has been in A&E a number of times for self-harm and suicide attempts and parents of small children will look at her in disgust and shuffle their children away because they can see her clutching her arm or her leg, it’s not nice and it makes her feel even worse, and she can sit there for hours and hours until they can get a CAMHS person to come and see her.

In the 10 days that Sherry tried to kill herself nine times, she was seen by 18 different healthcare professionals, ranging from staff from A&E to CAHMS, but none gave the help she required to address the root of her problems, and her family said that the threshold for obtaining this help is too high.

They’re further calling for more investment in CAMHS and better training for the staff young people experiencing a mental health crisis might come into contact with, including teachers, the police, paramedics and A&E doctors and nurses. They’d further like to get the message out that early intervention is essential because a lot of this could have been avoided if Sherry had got the help she required earlier.

In many areas, it’s desperately difficult for young people to get the help they require, and many parents have been waiting months for appointments for their child and have nowhere to turn, and sometimes their children have started to self-harm, have become self-destructive or dropped out of school throughout the wait.

Only one in four children with mental health problems is currently getting help from CAMHS, but there’s a postcode lottery, with services far better in some parts of the country than others, and some children are waiting up to 18 months to be treated.

And this further reverberates Sherry’s family’s concerns that those who work with children and young people, in schools, GP practices and A&E, for example, sometimes lack the abilities to recognise and help children with mental health needs, limiting their access to professional help, and CAMHS turns away almost a quarter of the children referred to them for treatment by concerned parents, GPs and others.

Without a doubt, after years of drought, the NHS’s mental health funding taps have now been turned on, but it’s going to take years of combined working effort to resolve these service gaps, even with new money, given the time it takes to train the extra child psychiatrists, therapists and nurses needed.

It’s been more than three months since Sherry came out of the hospital and, buoyed by the #wecaresherry campaign, she’s started to make recovery boxes for other young people struggling with their mental health. The boxes include home comforts like fluffy socks and chocolate, as well as stress toys and information on coping methods.

Sherry got her own recovery box after coming out of the hospital and her favourite things include “an unsquishable stress ball” and coconut hand cream because it smells like holidays, but when she’s low she finds it very lonely, she denies herself nice things like this because she believes she’s helping herself by punishing herself, so when someone goes out of their way to send a box it’s really nice.

She loves helping people and wants to be a police officer for that reason, and she explained this to PC Coe and his colleague over the course of the hours they spent together waiting in A&E and then waiting for Sherry to be transferred.

It’s great to learn that Sherry has big plans for the future, and she asked PC Coe if a police career would be possible after all her run-ins with the police because she was concerned about being ostracised because of it, but he reassured her that she hadn’t done anything illegal, and being sectioned wasn’t the same as being arrested, it was something that could happen to anyone.

Sherry’s dream to join the police may seem unusual for someone who has had so many traumatic experiences involving them. She’s been resuscitated by the police, she’s been detained and sectioned by the police but they’ve stopped her from doing things that she was determined to do, but even after all of that she thinks that they’re highly underrated and deserve a lot more respect.

For now, Sherry is concentrating on getting better and helping other people in the meantime. She still has her low days and still struggles but it’s more endurable, it’s never going to go away and she’s come to terms with that, and there will be days during her life when she’s not going to want to be alive, but she’s come to terms with that as well.

It’s All Gone A Bit Tits Up Really!

We thought Donald Trump made America the laughing stock of the world, but now the United Kingdom is the laughing stock of the world because our politicians don’t appear to know what they’re doing.

The United Kingdom is a diverse place, and now people are saying that Brexit is an utter farce, and can you believe our government, with its incessant squabbling like children, and it’s become truly pitiful.

We’re a laughing stock and it’s truly disturbing, and people are losing their confidence in all politicians, and people that voted out are now regretting it because there was no strategy in place, and it’s all gone tits up really, and it’s given us a bad reputation, almost like we’re out of control.

The whole thing reminds me of a Tony Hancock sketch, and it actually astounds me that people talk about democracy dying, the UK democracy has been a sham for years, and the parties have disregarded, or taken for granted most of the people most of the time, and the billionaires who funded and pushed the Leave campaign have all fled to tax havens and stand to make an absolute fortune, the billionaires who funded and pushed the Leave campaign and have all retreated to tax havens, and stand to make an absolute fortune through disaster capitalism using the economic disaster they’ve masterminded all around this debacle, and is simply window dressing around the planned intention to undermine an economy for profit.

And why doesn’t the Queen step in over this Brexit thing, what does she think about all of this? After all, she is the Queen.

And now most people are in support of a Remain, and that’s why Leave voters don’t want another election, because they know British people are now largely Remain, but then who cares what the people want, with all of its promises and lies, and that’s a democracy, supposedly.

New Remainers would be those people who voted Leave, but have now obtained the facts and realised it’s not as easy as promised and are repelled from the lies from the Leave campaign. These are the people who chose Leave but have reassessed it in the light of all the evidence and have now realised their businesses are directly endangered by Brexit.

Then there are those people who voted Leave as a protest vote, not for a moment thinking Leave would win, then they were offended and appalled when the result came out, and then there were those people who were simply too fed up with the entire thing and now believe it’s all too much trouble to Leave, along with all the Brexit lethargy.

And there were all the people that couldn’t be bothered to vote at all because they simply couldn’t be bothered, or didn’t believe that it mattered, and have now concluded we should Remain and that they’ll vote if there’s another election.

But if it’s actually true what we’re being told that young people are more inclined to vote Remain and older people more predisposed to vote Leave, then the following of young people who have attained voting age will now vote Remain and the cohort of old people who have died or become too decrepit or infirm to vote will no longer vote Leave.

The problem is most young people are far too busy burying their heads in social media and thinking about trivia and end up assuming this herd mentality and then end up tailgating the media blindly to the ultimate downfall of this country because to be fair they’re too mesmerised by their smartphones.

But the irony of it all is that the people of the United Kingdom are not in control, and it’s giving the United Kingdom a bad reputation, and it now makes us look like a bunch of dafties, but then we’re hardly a master race!

What did the people who voted Leave think? Were they under the illusion that leaving would simply be a simple process of just packing up documents and potted plants, cleaning up cups and saucers, emptying the bins, with a swift hoover around, hand in the keys and then leave with a forwarding address? No, of course not because our government has made it far more complicated than it needed to be.

And those that didn’t vote probably didn’t understand the EU enough that they believed they couldn’t make an informed judgment on such a complex matter, and we should have more admiration for them for being honest with themselves than someone who reads lies on the side of a big red bus and voted because of that.

This really makes Britain look weak, and the EU don’t care about what happens to us, and they probably look at his like it’s a victory over the United Kingdom because at the moment we’re at war with ourselves, and the EU are our bemused spectators.

But now it doesn’t actually matter if you voted or not, it’s now up to the shysters in parliament as to what happens, and all the politicians supposedly know what they’re doing, the problem is, we don’t know what they’re doing, that’s the reason why we’re in this mess.

We read about it in the newspapers, we might follow it on TV, but actually, it’s a piss up in a brewery, and now everyone is saying that those who decided to Leave and now want to Remain are regretting what they voted for, well, that because we have an absolute flannel as a Prime Minister who was given the job on a technicality and now can’t seem to organise anything.

Medicinal Cannabis Is Legal

In the United Kingdom on the NHS medicinal Cannabis is now legal, and now the drug is accessible to patients across England, Wales and Scotland following a significant law reform.

Products that can now be prescribed contain cannabis, cannabis resin or cannabinol, but patients will only be prescribed the medication if their doctors believe they could benefit from it.

The government made the major change to legislation after facing pressure from campaigners, and high-profile cases included Charlotte Caldwell, whose son Billy suffers from severe epilepsy, politicians heard how she went to Canada to buy the cannabis oil which she says controls Billy’s seizures.

But after arriving back at Heathrow Airport, her supply was impounded, sparking anger.

Her son then fell ill before the government was obliged to step in after doctors made clear it was a “medical emergency,” and after the supply was returned, home secretary Sajid Javid began a policy review into the advantages of sanctioning medicinal cannabis.

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The primary review by chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies verified that there was enough proof to imply it could be of curative use, and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which carried out the second part of the review, further reinforced that doctors should be able to prescribe infused products so long as safety standards are satisfied.

The findings ended in a landmark law change that now sees medicinal cannabis become legal in Britain, but for Charlotte Caldwell, what began as a journey which was about the needs of her little boy actually transformed into something a lot bigger.

Medicinal cannabis gave her back her rights as a mother, but the most important thing medicinal cannabis has done is give Billy back his right to life.

But even though medical cannabis was made legal, there appears to be hazy guidelines and bumbledom that are leaving patients hanging.

In November last year, home secretary Sajid Javid introduced legislation which made it possible for people to legitimately obtain cannabis for medical reasons. At the time, campaigners welcomed it as a benchmark achievement.

The Conservative government had typically taken a hardline position on rescheduling drugs, and scientists and researchers embraced the move, and people throughout the United Kingdom, who had been self-medicating with cannabis for years, expected the legislation to ultimately make their lives easier.

Three months later campaigners said that only a few have actually received a medicinal cannabis prescription since November 2018, and that the few who did succeed in getting a prescription have not actually been able to obtain medical cannabis, owing to difficulties with persuading specialists that cannabis is the best choice, getting licenses for cannabis-based products, and even transporting them once they’re in the United Kingdom.

The difficulty isn’t necessarily the law, but the interim recommendations, devised by the Royal College of Physicians and the British Paediatric Neurology Association, were written with far less time than specialists are normally given.

The law makes no stipulations on the kinds of products that can be prescribed, except that they can’t be smoked, but experts are used to having large quantities of information from randomised controlled experiments when they’re formulating new guidelines.

The central difficulty with formulating those guidelines was that cannabis had been until recently identified as a Class A drug with no medicinal use, which made it hard to carry out experiments on its properties, and the range of psychoactive components within cannabis and derivatives products can further make scientific study complex, as some of the component parts of one cannabis product may behave differently in another dosage, or even if produced in a different way.

The principal problem here is two-fold, that specialists don’t value or trust foreign data, and that the old ways of studying medicines won’t necessarily work for cannabis, and there’s been a tremendous disinclination from doctors and pharmacies to jeopardise their licences by facilitating access, and the vast preponderance of people, except for those individual children who are still being forced to rely on the black market to source their medication.

Cannabis is currently treated as a Class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Scheduling Act of 2001, but before the bill was amended in November, there was a series of high-profile cases of children who required medical cannabis products to survive such as Alfie Dingley and Billy Caldwell who were granted waivers by Sajid Javid.

These individuals still have access to specific products, but for everyone else who was hoping to use medical cannabis products, the path is still somewhat challenging, and in a recent report on the status of cannabis in Europe found that doctors in the United Kingdom didn’t know how to prescribe cannabis because they believed that they weren’t informed enough.

Currently, medical cannabis products aren’t licensed for distribution or prescription, and each prescription appears to happen because of one patient speaking to a specialist about medication that has previously worked for them and then attempting to access it through legitimate means.

In practice, these prescriptions won’t be accessible on the NHS, and these products are referred to as unlicenced specials, so there’s been confusion and hurdles with getting to grips with that regime, and doctors, for good reason, won’t prescribe specials except if there’s a particularly valid reason for them doing so.

The decision to prescribe medicinal cannabis is a clinical decision for specialist hospital doctors, made with patients and their families, to determine the most suitable medication or course of treatment for a particular patient, but an image circulating on Twitter, from the Royal Derby Hospital, said that pain consultants and associated staff will not be endorsing or prescribing medical cannabis for chronic pain patients, and that they follow national guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and NHS England to maintain good clinical practice and effective prescribing.

One patient, Jorja Emerson, who was two years old got a prescription on the NHS, but no pharmacies stocked it or were prepared to shoulder the responsibility themselves for importing it. Another, Carly Barton, is still waiting to actually receive her products. She went through a private pain specialist, and the medication itself will cost her approximately £2,500, even though the actual product itself is far less costly.

The prescription has to be written to a very specific level of detail, and then because it’s Schedule 2, it has to be written on pink paper, and the pharmacy that was going to import it required a special license, and then you have to get the package size, either 25 or 30 units exactly right, and then the delivery drivers, and the companies that are involved in delivering it, like shipping companies, need special licenses too.

Many of the products also have expiry dates, and even though the approved prescription dosage under these guidelines is roughly enough for a month, the current prescription and delivery process takes around eight to ten weeks, according to various estimations.

This is not expected to change until more people get prescriptions, and wholesale importers and pharmacies begin importing products in bulk which might bring down the costs and smooth the process over. It’s easier to prescribe in the private sector because money doesn’t come into it, for instance, some NHS trusts might not have wanted to open the floodgates to funding medical cannabis, there are fewer restrictions, but it’s a dilemma because effectively a lot of the population won’t be able to access it because of its cost.

Views are divided into potential solutions, and there are no facts available about who has been able to get a prescription on the NHS, and so far, campaigners are estimating three or four people as far as they’re aware, but the NHS has set up a monitoring unit, which will issue its first results in March 2019.

NICE will publish new guidelines towards the end of 2019, which should help doctors make more informed choices around cannabis prescription. In the hope that individual doctors will prescribe, and see that once they’ve done it, and it’s worked, and they realise it’s a beneficial medicine, then it will pick up. For instance, in Germany, it took two or three years for the medical profession to catch up.

As it stands, the current position around the prescription of medical cannabis could become a self-perpetuating cycle. Not enough scientific data could lead to restrictive guidelines, which leads to fewer prescriptions for people who need them, which means limited proof of their benefit, and so on.

But patients have been self-medicating for years, frequently seeking various products and soliciting help from online forums or communities, although that data isn’t formalised through studies.

The interest in medical cannabis prescriptions isn’t happening in a vacuum. The disparity between what users and specialist know will need significant endeavours to bridge, and for patients in the United Kingdom who are still fighting to access medical cannabis, it simply might not be enough.

Dangers Of The Internet

Shielding our children from cyberbullying and susceptibility to sexual predators has become extremely challenging. There appears to be loads of internet safety for children and women, but never men, why is that?

Today’s kids are able to access more information than any generation before, and thanks to the Internet we all now have a wealth of knowledge that can enhance our lives in a new and fascinating way. However, the Internet also has the potential to hurt us and the people we love.

Too often we read about companies falling a victim from cyberbullying or accounts being hacked or some sexual predator, and these dangers are real.

But looking deeper, are sites like Snapchat, Spotafriend, and Tinder actually safe? Sites like these ask for details on who the person is, their date of birth and where they’re located, but in fact anyone can put any age they want, they’re not required to verify this with something like a birth certificate, driving licence or passport, that can actually confirm how old that person really is.

And because of this numerous young men are being imprisoned for thinking that they’re chatting to someone of 16 or over, when in fact that person might only be 13, purporting to be a person who is 16 or over.

Young adults can only go by what is put on the person’s profile if that person has put 16 plus and looks 16 plus then we simply believe they’re telling the truth, but what if they’re not telling the truth, and some innocent young adult comes along, especially a young male and begins rendezvousing with that person believing what they have put on their profile as true, and then months down the line gets detained and indicted for a felony they had no idea they were committing and then gets tossed into prison.

There are many young girls that go onto apps like Snapchat, Tinder and Spotafriend that start conversations with young male adults, putting on their profile that they’re older than they actually are, coercing the male subject into a relationship, whether it is intimate or not.

We’re in a day and age of technology that although it’s great and really instructive, can be extremely dangerous to adolescent people, whether they be girls or pubescent boys.

These sites are supposed to be parental controlled, but most of the time they’re not, and the corporations that own the sites don’t appear to be particularly vigilant at keeping these youngsters safe, but clearly, they’re only concerned about getting their big bucks and not about the people who use these sites. After all, it’s all about money, and if a teenager gets raped or interfered with or a young boy gets arrested for something along the way, to these companies they’re simply a statistic and nothing more.

Spotafriend is an alternative to Tinder, which is a dating site, but Spotafriend is for teens between the ages 13-19. Teenagers can swipe through to accept people that they might be interested in conversing with, but unfortunately, it’s not only being used as a chat site, it’s also being used as a pickup site for teens.

And not only is it being used as a dating site, but youngsters are not being truthful about their ages and because of this their male counterparts are getting into serious trouble, either by being detained by the police, charged or being sent to prison because they genuinely thought that this site was a safe site.

What do we have to do to keep our teenagers safe on sites like this?

Well, the easy solution is that legislation on this should be changed and that if a site is accessible to youngsters, they should have to prove how old they are before they can join, and if they can’t they should be denied access, and this should go for all sites of social networking, such as Facebook and others.

Parents can teach their children about online safety, but kids are kids and most of them don’t take much regard, it’s the Internet, and all they want to do is surf it as they please, and we seem to actually welcome danger into our homes, why don’t we just open the door and invite it in?

However, companies like Snapchat, Spotafriend, Facebook to name a few should be made responsible for their sites, and what goes on, and if a site states that it’s for 13-19-year-olds, wouldn’t that start to ring some emergency signals for a parent? That’s if the parent or parents even have time to monitor, which many don’t because of work responsibilities and so forth.

But it shouldn’t only be down to the parent or parents, it should be down to the businesses that build these websites and apps, and if a youngster goes on to their site and looks old enough and states in their profile that they’re old enough, then the young man on the other side of the PC has to assume that they are because clearly, we don’t have a crystal ball dangling out of our backside telling us, “Hey, don’t talk to her, she’s not telling you the truth about her age. She might look older, she might have put on her profile that she’s older, but do me a favour, she’s only 13.”

The young man has now been arrested, charged and sent off to prison because he was gullible enough to believe the young girl and because her profile said so. Perhaps next time he should ask for her birth certificate, drivers licence or passport, but that’s not a statute, and would that actually be legal to ask for that sort of information? Wouldn’t that be an invasion of privacy? And if that is the case, then these sites should be locked down permanently because there are no procurements to keep our children safe.

Revoke Article 50 Petition

More than two million people have signed a petition demanding Article 50 is withdrawn as Theresa May was driven to urge EU leaders for a stay to Brexit, as penetration of the people surged to sign it following a night of political turmoil as the Prime Minister turned on MPs in a moving address to the country.

The 100,000-signature threshold for the petition to be discussed in Parliament was immediately surpassed and the phrase “revoke Article 50” became a worldwide trend on Twitter, as the petition collected 300,000 signatures, and it proceeded to grow and reach the one million mark, and then to two million.

The website for the petition temporarily appeared to crash, displaying an error message but was later reinstated.

The petition read: “The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is ‘the will of the people’.

“We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People’s Vote may not happen – so vote now.”

The constituencies with the greatest number of signatures, above the threshold of 5,101, comprised Islington North, represented by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Edinburgh North and Leith, Bristol West, Cambridge, Hornsey and Wood Green and Brighton Pavilion.

Brexit did not go ahead on March 29, which Theresa May stated was a great personal regret for her, after she asked the EU for a delay, and she blamed MPs for failing to agree, and she criticised MPs for failing to agree on a means to realise the outcome of the 2016 election and stated she thought electors simply want this stage of the Brexit process to be over.

Theresa May urged the EU to allow the UK’s departure date to be delayed to June 30 and threatened to quit as Prime Minister if MPs demand a continued delay. The European Council President Donald Tusk then said the EU would give a short extension but only if MPs back the Prime Minister’s deal in the Commons during a third meaningful referendum.

And in the Commons, Theresa May set out proposals to block Speaker John Bercow preventing a third vote on her deal, which was rebuffed by MPs by 230 votes in January and 149 votes, but Westminster was in uproar with MPs, who were given an emergency debate in the Commons by Mr Bercow, frantic to hear Theresa May’s proposals as to how she would attempt to get the deal through following two unbelievable defeats.

Theresa May travelled to Brussels for the summit of the European Council, where she made her case for a three-month extension to the two-year Article 50 negotiation process, putting Brexit back from March 29 to June 30.

Theresa May is and has been acting like a tyrant, and the people’s opinion isn’t being listened to because Theresa May carelessly sweeps all forms of discord aside at the wave of a hand, and most of the people of the United Kingdom obviously want to remain, and the primary vote vaulted the country into exiting with false lights, smoke and mirrors.

The voice of the people should be listened to, and politicians and the Prime Minister are following their own personal agenda, and are being jostled into their actions by big business and not the people of the United Kingdom, and democracy is being exploited for Theresa May’s own ends and obsession with grand supremacy, in the face of public objection.

The United Kingdom doesn’t have a particularly sunny future, there will be custom tax increase prices of multiple products, immigrants from the EU will begin departing the United Kingdom, well, they already have. Benefits will become low, prices will go up but salaries will presumably not, and without cheap workers from the EU, the British people will have to go to work, but as many of them are on benefits, their skills are really poor.

The government will welcome new immigrants to the United Kingdom, but not from the EU, although we now have a different culture, with new religions et cetera, and ultimately, this country will be like a new England where there will be no United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland, or any freedoms.

But we shouldn’t fret about it because Brexit is the primary issue here now with all our cheap workers and great profits, and our government are greedy and because of this, it will become the end of our culture here in the United Kingdom.

Thirst Class

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A school has forbidden children from drinking water in the classroom, maintaining it distracts them from learning, and the teachers complained students were misusing time messing about with water bottles.

But the kids have objected by smearing the word water on an external wall and water is bad on a nearby pedestrian crossing. Nonetheless, studies confirm that the regular consumption of water increases concentration and helps to study, so clearly, this should be regarded as advantageous in a place of learning? Not only that it prevents dehydration, not only that the dictate attacks a fundamental human right to drinking water.

But the headteacher said the embargo was due to extraneous distractions, and that it had created too many disturbances with students and teachers presenting their viewpoints on the matter rather than educating and studying.

Although in extremely warm spells the students are permitted to have their bottles of water out in lessons to ensure they were cool and hydrated, and that this practice did remain even after the warm weather, but now suddenly the presence of bottles on tables was jeopardising their education in lessons, but it didn’t appear to do this in the warm weather, and as a consequence have been ordered to keep their water bottles in their bags and that they can only have a drink between lessons to rehydrate if they want to.

Schools are not concentration camps and children aren’t there to be rounded up like sheep like it was done in Victorian times, although a lesson is only around an hour, so surely they can wait until the completion of the lesson?

Hydration in school is a great concept and it should be allowed without a problem, although those who went to school in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s were never permitted to drink water throughout lessons, and the class endured the desert for the entire hour, they must have been heroes, and it appears that they now consume more time drinking and going to the loo.

How did we ever survive at school? Oh, that’s right we all swigged from the same water fountain at class change or break time, but prohibitions on water bottles are frequently met with disapproval because of arguments that instant access to drinking water during the school day can keep pupils vigilant and observant, and even reinforce educational achievement.

When children are hydrated, they function better and concentrate better, and the amount of fluid each child needs diversifies depending on the height, weight, and level of physical exercise, but it usually wavers around 1.8 litres or approximately eight glasses of water or other fluids each day.

And the biggest selling point is that there is some documentation recorded that if children are hydrated, they do perform better, particularly on tests, and in addition to keeping pupils alert, ensuring that kids are hydrated can further lead to a healthier environment for both pupils and tutors, and could reduce a significant number of sick days in both pupils and tutors.

High schools are more likely than junior or middle schools to ban water bottles to stop pupils from sneaking alcohol into the classroom, but drinking water from bottles allows more fluid consumption than drinking from water fountains, which a lot of kids don’t like to drink from because the water is usually warm and the fountains are usually not clean.

Criminal Cuts To Our Legal System

Your right to justice should not be contingent on the size of your bank account, and for decades our legal system has been founded on the belief that anyone, wealthy or impoverished, is treated the same, and this entire premise is now under threat because of Tory cuts.

And fees have sunk so low that now innocent people are not able to get decent representation in court, while the rich can afford top-class defence lawyers to purchase their freedom, but the range of devastation that’s been created by this Tory government doesn’t end there.

Cuts to legal aid have locked people with housing difficulties or employment problems out of the justice system. Budget reductions mean fewer offences are examined by police, while a cash-strapped CPS is prosecuting fewer cases.

This is the legacy of Conservative austerity, criminals going free, the innocent punished with the rich being able to purchase special treatment, and the evidence is clear, ministers are guilty of bringing our justice system to its knees.

And the Tory’s should be in the dock for using public funds to buy or influence support from a pretty culpable political party, just so they can cling onto their jobs and power. Bribery is a crime, and this is an abuse of public funds.

But then why do ordinary people vote Tory, they must like being cheated and deceived because they keep on doing it? And maybe we should be condemning the Hyacinth Buckets out there that actually believe that voting Tory makes them a cut above their friends.

Officially we have the worst politicians in UK history, people are experiencing the severest austerity, and this has contributed to numerous deaths to the poor and disabled, with cuts to NHS, police, and banks and power companies who make more money, more profit and the wealthiest get wealthier.

Legal aid has ended for the needy, so they can’t argue back and get justice, so yes, of course, the Tories should be put in the dock for atrocities to humankind.

Where’s “Wolfie” and the Tooting Popular Front when we need him?

The justice system actually isn’t about justice, it’s never been fair and that’s exactly the way the privileged classes like it, they slam the poor for the smallest step off the straight and narrow, while they get away with the most outrageous atrocities owing to their connections.

So many people are being denied access to justice because of the cuts in Legal aid, and Legal aid cuts force parents to abandon their fight for their children because numerous parents can’t possibly afford solicitors fees and are now confronted with the likelihood of losing their children or financial rights on divorce or the especially formidable probability of representing themselves in an old-fashioned justice system that’s not designed with them in mind.

And it high points these Legal aid cuts, clearly demonstrating the harm caused to men, women and families without representation that are caught up in a totally one-sided legal fight against ruthless adversaries, and it’s cruel of the government to consign disadvantaged people to ill-treatment by ruthless landlords, employers, public authorities or retailers just because they can’t afford to employ a lawyer to enforce their rights.

We’re continually told how the Legal aid act has mounted to an unaffordable level, but it would be informative to know how far this is due to the enormous amounts doled out in high-profile commercial matters as opposed to the comparatively minor amounts needed to help people with genuine legal requirements, and I speculate that the voters would prefer to support the latter at the expense of the former.

We’re now seeing the appalling effects of legal underfunding, as people are forced to defend themselves with only the haziest notion of what they’re doing, and being a barrister has often been associated with allurement, intrigue and financial profit, but these imminent reforms that we’re seeing to our legal system now have lawyers fearing for their livelihoods, why? And who stands to suffer the most?

It really reveals the sad state of affairs when a barristers wig and gown were posted on eBay because some barrister had hung up their wig, gown and collar after five long years of slog and penury, but the life of a barrister used to be abundant with mystique, evoking Rumpole and Dickens, cobbled lanes, grand Inns of Court, dazzling rhetoric and exciting cases concerning murder, abduction, gangsters and drug lords.

But few people will shed a tear over the demise of the barrister, but if any of these people were in trouble, if their freedom was on the line or if they were the victim of a grave offence, then they would want a barrister with years of experience, rather than someone who had been sent by Tesco, not because they’re the best choice, but because they’re actually the cheapest.

The government claimed that it must cut £220 million from the £1 billion Legal aid budget, which funds criminal barristers and various small solicitors firms. To willow down the system, in 1994 solicitors were given the freedom to handle basic advocacy in the courts. This lead to a huge reduction in demand for the services of junior barristers who used to cut their teeth on simple cases.

Solicitors tended to adhere to the magistrate’s court, leaving the more pressing work such as murder and rape cases to barristers with years of training in speech and distinct details of the law, but with the modifications that have been launched following government pressure that has been executed, solicitors and in-house advocates, barristers acting only for big companies appear to be considered qualified enough to handle the most complex Crown Court cases after completing only a weekend quality assurance course.

But the government stated that the scheme was intended to guarantee that solicitors and barristers only handle cases in court where they’re qualified to do so and will be tiered so higher accreditation was needed for the most demanding cases, but barristers, however, believe it’s a smoke-screen to give any contributor of legal services a façade of propriety.

And to stand in court and thrive upon the many intellectual and psychological relationships between the judge, jury and client, and to keep all the balls in the air is quite a difficult thing to do, but I’m sure they’re used to it, it’s like second nature to them, but it also takes years to be able to do that, and the notion that you can master it in a £350 two-day course is ridiculous.

And the ultimate nail in the coffin came when Chris Grayling proposed best-value tendering, where firms tendered for Legal aid contracts, to be granted not on merit but to the lowest bidder, and agreements were given to multinational solicitors and firms such as Stobart’s, not to mention others such as the AA and Saga, both of which displayed an interest in expanding into this area.

And hundreds of small solicitors firms and barristers chambers that can’t afford to tender will feasibly go out of business overnight, and even before these squeezes on possible work and pay, numerous junior criminal barristers are struggling to survive, with most getting about £10,000 a year after tax, VAT and their various expenses for things such as travelling and chambers’ rent, which are typically 20 per cent of earnings which are taken into account, for the first five years of their careers.

Being a legal-aid barrister is no longer a job, it’s a hobby, and perhaps a nice one for those with an independent income, but you can’t make a living from it, at least not in the first four or five years, and it’s often pretty genuinely true that you’d seemingly be better off on benefits.

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