THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO

A no deal Brexit would be a betrayal of what people voted for because in the 2016 election a promise was made to the preponderance of people who voted for Brexit, and they were voting for a more prosperous future, but not leaving now would be regarded as a betrayal of that referendum decision.

However, leaving without a deal would threaten our future prosperity, and would equally represent a betrayal of the promises that were made, but Theresa May has repeatedly declined to rule out a no deal Brexit despite warnings from industry about the harm it would do to the economy.

Airbus delivered one of the stiffest business warnings to date, branding the government’s handling of the EU departure a scandal and said the company could pull out of the UK if Brexit undermines its capacity to compete, and the UK’s multibillion-pound aerospace sector is standing at a cliff.

Brexit is threatening to slaughter a century of development based on education, research and human capital, and if there’s a no-deal Brexit, Airbus will have to make possibly really harmful decisions for the UK, and Jeremy Corbyn has declined to meet the Prime Minister unless she rules out a no deal.

The best course of action is a negotiated agreement, but after the Prime Minister’s deal yielded a humiliating disappointment in the House of Commons Theresa May has grappled to come up with an alternative that MPs will support and that doesn’t cross her red lines.

The only sustainable solution is a negotiated agreement with the EU if we are to leave the European Union in a way that preserves our economy in order to allow us to achieve that future prosperity that voters were promised.

And if the Prime Minister fails to heed warnings and proceeds to refuse to take a no deal off the table then there’s no other alternative, she must quit.

A no-deal departure would be disloyalty to the people of the United Kingdom, but from the Prime Minister’s viewpoint, what’s important is delivering on the vote of the British people and leaving the EU with a deal or no deal, it’s essentially like a game show.

Maybe it’s time to close down parliament and start again, after all, politicians that are sitting in the House of Commons are nothing more than a misuse of public money, and then there are the lies and dishonesty that we see every single day in the House of Commons and it’s an absolute scandal.

And it’s no surprise that people have no respect for them because respect has to be earned, and what they’re doing is the biggest betrayal of the British voters in the countries history. Maybe it’s time for them to reflect on their actions and take a hard look at what’s happening right across the European bloc because politicians don’t appear to want to listen to the people.

Maybe they want civil unrest, who knows, but when the crap hits the fan, and it looks like it will, particularly with the army being put on standby, all we should hope is that they don’t revert to physical brutality against the people of this country because this will not be accepted by the British people.

There have been concerns that there was Russian intervention in the 2016 Brexit election, and there’s an ongoing investigation by the UK Electoral Commission, the UK Parliament’s Culture Select Committee, and the US Senate on alleged Russian interference, and this has raised questions over the legal validity of the Brexit referendum.

Following the election on the United Kingdom exiting the European Union (Brexit), the former Prime Minister David Cameron implied that Russia might be pleased with a positive Brexit referendum, and the official Remain campaign accused the Kremlin of secretly backing a positive Brexit vote.

And in March 2016, Philip Hammond, the former Secretary for Defence and Foreign Secretary, later the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the only country who would like us to leave the EU was Russia, and in December 2016, Ben Bradshaw MP maintained in Parliament that Russia had interfered in the Brexit election campaign.

February 2017, Ben Bradshaw called on the British intelligence service, Government Communications Headquarters, then under Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, to disclose any information it had on Russian intervention.

And in October 2017, Members of Parliament in the Culture, Media and Sports Committee demanded that Facebook, Twitter, Google and other social media corporations reveal all adverts and details of payments by Russia in the Brexit campaign.

In November 2017, it became common knowledge that Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of the Vote Leave, was a founding member of the Conservative Friends of Russia, and had been a target asset by someone known to be a Russian operative.

On the12 December 2017, members of the US Congress Ruben Gallego, Eric Swalwell and Gerry Connolly wrote to the Director of National Intelligence asking for information on Russian intervention in the Brexit vote, and on 13 December 2017, Facebook said that it found no significant Russian activity throughout Brexit, but this clarification needed was promptly rebuffed by the committee chair, Damian Collins, as being information that was already public following US inquiries into Russian intervention.

In January 2018, a US Senate minority report suggested potential ways Russia may have influenced the Brexit campaign. It was said that the Russian government had attempted to influence democracy in the United Kingdom through disinformation, cyber hacking and corruption.

And whilst a comprehensive understanding of the extent and type of Kremlin intervention in the UK’s June 2016 election is still surfacing, Prime Minister Theresa May and the UK government have rebuked the Kremlin’s active measures, and numerous UK government entities, including the Electoral Commission and parliamentarians, have launched investigations into various aspects of potential Russian government interference.

In June 2018, The Guardian implied that Arron Banks, the largest contributor to the campaign for leaving, and co-organiser of Leave received the offer of a Russian gold mine and had a string of meetings with the Russian Ambassador.

But on the 14 June 2018, Arron Banks appeared before a Parliamentary committee hearing, where he seemed to confess to having lied about his engagements with Russians, and later walked out declining to respond to any more questions by citing a luncheon meeting with the Democratic Unionist Party.

In July 2018, the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee, released an interim report on Disinformation and fake news, declaring that Russia had engaged in unconventional warfare through Twitter and other social media against the United Kingdom, created to increase support for a Leave vote in Brexit.

And on 20 September, aggregate IQ, a Canadian political consultancy and analytics company, received the first General Data Protection Regulation (GDRR) notice issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for using people’s data for purposes which they would not have expected.

Several pro-Brexit campaigns paid the company £3.5 million to target advertisements at prospective voters. While its Brexit work was before the GDPR went into force, it was fined because it retained and continued to use the data after the GDPR came into complete force.

The company is affiliated with the SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica, and Cambridge Analytica employees sometimes called Aggregate IQ, but in November 2018, a criminal investigation of Arron Banks was launched after the Electoral Commission concluded that they had just grounds to suspect that Mr Banks was not the actual source of the £8 million reported as loans and that numerous criminal aggressions may have been committed.

Arron Banks was the biggest contributor to the Brexit campaign, but previous to the donations, Southern Rock, Arron Banks underwriting company was technically insolvent and needed to obtain £60 million to meet regulations.

It was saved by a £77 million cash injection, mostly in September 2015 from another company, ICS Risk Solutions which Arron Banks claimed to own when challenged by MP Rebecca Pow, although it appeared from company filings that he didn’t own all of it.

At the time Louise Kentish from the company called STM joined the board, but the day after the election, her husband Alan Kentish, CEO of STM and other STM people joined as well. STM specialises in opaque wealth management using trusts and similar.

About the same time, Arron Banks, along with Andy Wigmore started having various meetings with Russian officials posted at the Russian embassy in London.

Furthermore, according to his South African business partner, Christopher Kimber, Arron Banks had been in Russia seeking to raise funds around that time, and Christopher Kimber said that he was eventually made aware in October 2015, and that in fact, Arron Banks had been dealing with Russians who considered investing in mines, and he was told by Arron Banks that he had gone to Russia and discuss with them the diamond opportunities as well as gold mining opportunities in Russia and that he further indicated that he would be meeting with the Russians again during November 2015.

Months following the cash injection Arron Banks began making substantial contributions to political causes including the £8 million to the Brexit campaigns.

And Russia’s efforts to influence British democracy and the possible vulnerability of parts of the UK political system to anti-democratic interference during the EU election were revealed in a report prepared by the US Senate.

The report which was titled Putin’s asymmetric assault on democracy in Russia and Europe included implications for US national security, it pinpointed the way in which UK campaign finance laws did not need disclosure of political contributions if they were from the beneficial owners of non-British companies that were included in the EU and carried out business in the UK.

This opacity, the report implies, may have enabled Russian-related money to be directed with insufficient scrutiny to various UK political actors, and investigative journalists have also raised questions about the sources of the sudden and perhaps unlawful wealth that may have been directed to support the Brexit Leave campaign. The UK Electoral Commission has now launched an inquiry into the matter.

The senators point out that UKIP and its then-leader, Nigel Farage, did not simply fan anti-EU sentiment but further criticised European sanctions on Russia, and provided flattering assessments of Russian President Putin.

The report adds that even though officially the Russian government declared its impartiality on Brexit, its English-language media outlets RT and Sputnik covered the election campaign widely and offered systematically one-sided coverage.

The senators further challenge the adequacy of the investigations by Facebook and Twitter into the allegations of extensive social media intervention by the Russians during the election. They reference University of Edinburgh research showing more than 400 Russian-run Twitter accounts that had been active in the US election had further been actively posting about Brexit.

In addition, the senators noted that research led by a collective team of experts from the University of California at Berkeley and Swansea University reportedly identified 150,000 Twitter accounts with numerous Russian ties that distributed information about Brexit.

The report further points to the huge surge of Russian money into the UK, including the London property market. It records how the Metropolitan police noted that a cumulative value of £180 million in properties in the United Kingdom had been put under investigation as perhaps obtained with fraudulent proceeds by secretive offshore companies.

The fundamental responsibility of all leaders and citizens of a democracy is to protect its elections from subversion, but we’ve learned a lot about Russia’s alleged involvement in the EU election.

Theresa May stated that Vladimir Putin’s government was attempting to undermine free societies and was farming bogus stories to plant discord in the West, even though the Prime Minister then seemed to relax her language and told parliament that if Labour MPs bothered to look at the address that she gave they would see that the examples that she gave of Russian interference were not in the United Kingdom.

But if Russia has been cited of interfering in recent elections in America, France and elsewhere, what about Britain? And to understand the accusations of Russian involvement in the EU election we should first look at its reported links to the US presidential election.

Many of the accusations focus on the Russian Internet Research Agency. The company, based in Saint Petersburg which creates online media posts that are beneficial to Russian government interests. The Agency was making the headlines as far back as April 2015, when Donald Trump was still the guy off the Apprentice and Brexit was a word whispered only in the back rooms of the Conservative Party headquarters.

At the time, the Guardian published an investigation “Inside a Russian troll house”. They found hundreds of bloggers who were paid to swamp forums and social networks at home and abroad with anti-western and pro-Kremlin comments, and it’s thought that this is the home of the Agency and the nexus of Russia’s efforts to use social media to influence overseas politics.

But if we skip forward to January 2017, six months post-referendum and six weeks after Mr Trump’s election, the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence published a report that concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.

However, more was found out about how the Agency works, after a former employee reported to an independent TV channel that the company’s intention wasn’t to turn Americans toward Russia, the aim was to set Americans against their own government, to provoke unrest, provoke dissatisfaction, and to diminish Barack Obama’s ratings.

The New York Times reported that Russian agents and disseminated inflammatory posts had reached 126 million users on Facebook, published more than 131,000 messages on Twitter and uploaded over 1,000 videos to Google’s YouTube service before the US presidential election.

The reports were extracted from detailed disclosures sent to Congress by companies whose products were amongst the most widely used on the internet, and a BuzzFeed investigation affirmed that the Russian government made wire transfers to more than 60 Russian embassies between August and September 2016.

BuzzFeed reported that the transfers were sent with a message “to finance election campaign of 2016.” And a spokesperson for the Russian government stated that the money was intended to help embassies cover the expense of helping Russian nationals living overseas to vote in the country’s own parliamentary election, which took place in September 2016.

What’s not clear is whether any of this activity was connected to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, that question will be clarified in the course of the five federal investigations that are underway in the US.

It’s also worth pointing out that some efforts to uncover Russian-controlled bogus accounts have been fallacious when a report from the Scotsman determined that an alleged Russian online troll identified on a leading news website was really a security guard from Glasgow.

So, did Russian bogus accounts attempt to influence the EU election? Well, according to reports, the Russian Internet Research Agency built up a notable social media presence in the run-up to the US presidential election, which was allegedly able to reach hundreds of millions of users.

But what about the United Kingdom? What proof do we have so far of Russian sway on the Brexit referendum?

In October 2017, research from City, University of London discovered that a 13,500-strong Twitter bot army was present on the social media site about the time of the election.

Twitter bots are accounts that are not managed by actual people but rather post content automatically. The accounts sometimes assume a bogus persona to draw real users to their posts, and it’s thought that these accounts established a chain of zombie agents.

Yet, there was no indication that bots served to cast bogus news, rather, they were invested in feeding and echoing user-curated, hyper-partisan and polarising information, and in the four weeks preceding the referendum, the accounts posted a total of 65,000 tweets about the election, tweets that were described as showing a definite slant towards a Leave campaign.

Nevertheless, it’s worth saying that the researchers didn’t suggest any Russian involvement, but that additional research into Twitter bots and the Brexit referendum was published by the Oxford Internet Institute.

It looked at 22.6 million tweets and cross-referred them with 2,752 accounts that the US Senate has identified as creations of the Russian Internet Research Agency, and researcher Yin Yin Lu said that she found 416 tweets from the Russian accounts from March to July 2016, the months preceding the EU election.

She was careful to point out that the number of these tweets was important to highlight. So there are about 400 tweets here out of 22.6 million. That’s a really infinitesimal fraction. So the word interference was possibly a tad inflated, although the tweets did seem to be ordered, with accounts clearly retweeting and sharing each other’s content.

A second report this time from the University of Edinburgh found a greater amount of tweets about Brexit from the Russian Internet Research Agency, with researchers identifying 419 accounts running from the Agency that were endeavouring to influence UK politics. The accounts were on the roster of 2,752 accounts suspended by Twitter in the US.

Separately, an upcoming paper from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Swansea University was set to unveil an even wider network of pro-Brexit Russian bots, and the research which had been seen by a newspaper tracked over 150,000 Russian accounts that used the hashtag “Brexit”, most of which was advocating Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

One account, “Svetal1972”, posted 92 tweets between 20 and 24 June, including one that called for Britain to “make June the 23rd our Independence Day”. But why would Russia want Brexit to happen anyhow? Well, there’s some indication of Russian involvement in spreading pro-Leave sentiment online, although nothing implied interference on the same scale as is alleged in the US, but if the rumours are correct, what’s in it for the Kremlin?

Some analysts have implied that Russia prefers Brexit because it believes it will weaken the EU’s bargaining stance when it fronts up to Moscow on matters like the Ukraine. This hypothesis appears believable when looking at a tweet from the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyahin, who penned that “With Britain, there won’t be anybody in the EU to defend sanctions against us so zealously.”

Michael McFaul a former US ambassador to Russia put the case in similar terms, tweeting that Putin benefits from a weaker Europe and that a UK vote to leave the EU makes the EU weaker, and that it was just that simple, but what about Arron Banks? Separate from the question of social media influence, Arron Banks, the co-founder of Leave. The EU Campaign is currently under investigation by the Electoral Commission.

They’re looking into whether Arron Banks violated campaign finance rules in relation to contributions and loans at the EU election, and the company “Better for the Country Limited” of which Arron Banks is a director is also part of the probe.

The investigation examined whether Arron Banks was the actual source of loans reported by a referendum campaigner in his name and whether “Better for the Country Limited” was the actual source of contributions made to referendum campaigners in its name, or if it was operating as an agent.

The announcement by the Electoral Commission makes no mention of Russia or any Russian participants, and it doesn’t say whether there were any specific third parties being investigated as part of the investigation.

Arron Banks said that the Leave. EU campaign was financed by himself, Peter Hargreaves and the general public, and that his sole relationship with the Russians was a boozy 6-hour lunch with the Ambassador where they drank the place dry.

And in an interview with Arron Banks, he was cited as saying that they had no Russian money into Brexit.

The Remain campaign alleged that the Kremlin was covertly supporting a Brexit to undermine the European Union, and in the former Prime Minister David Cameron, President Vladimir Putin might be happy if Britain left the EU.

So, is the Kremlin leader loving a Brexit?

Mr Putin told journalists the election result brought “positives and negatives”. He talked about the negatives, including the unsettling impact on economic markets, and the United Kingdom and EU have been plunged into financial obscurity.

Every country gets the propaganda it deserves because the lower the aptitude of the people, the more rudimentary the propaganda gets, but now the ruling regimes in the USA and Great Britain have debilitated their victims to such a remarkably absurd degree that it’s virtually impossible to comprehend.

Just a few years ago one wouldn’t have thought that these regimes would actually endeavour to invent something as primitive as this entire parody about Russian interference in elections, yet here we are, but the greater the lie, the more inclined people are to accept it, and that’s the repulsive truth.

Nevertheless, here is history repeating itself and then the Free World again looks up to Russia, hoping that Russia will yet again cure it of another bout of disease, but nobody is that ignorant to imagine that the UK is getting it right, but this isn’t only a UK problem, every country gets the propaganda it deserves and Putin’s Russia warrants plenty.

 

 

The Duke of Edinburgh was pulling out of a driveway onto a rural A road when his vehicle was smashed on its side. Yet, the fiercely independent royal, 97 was, in fact, uninjured after the 4×4 he was driving was T-boned and then overturned on the A419 at Babingley, Norfolk at 3 pm.

Observers have reported how they pulled the Prince from his wrecked vehicle which had flipped over onto the driver’s door.

A royal bodyguard with the Prince at the time also emerged uninjured, and those who saw the collision said the ageing royal was shaken after his vehicle turned over after being T-boned and left with a broken windscreen.

The people that helped to get him out of his vehicle said he was conscious but somewhat shaken, and there was loads of police around, and Prince Philip who miraculously walked away from the collision was then cared for by royal doctors and the Queen by his side.

The people in the other vehicle were two females and a baby who was treated in hospital but have since been discharged, but, Prince Philip and the driver of the Kia people carrier were breath tested which presented negative readings.

The female driver of the Kia sustained injuries while the female passenger sustained an arm injury, both needing hospital treatment, but the road remained accessible and both vehicles were collected a short time later.

Jordan Andrew, 21, who’s a builder at his dad’s home maintenance company recorded the collision scene while travelling with a colleague who was driving said that he wondered why there were so many unmarked police cars and flashing lights at the scene.

There was a black range rover with flashing lights which clearly belonged to the police, and there was also a black BMW X5 which had flashing lights, and Jordan said he only realised the significance of the collision when he got a news alert on his phone when he arrived home.

Dramatic images show the royal vehicle on its side following the unexpected encounter, and the Archbishop of York tweeted a prayer for the Prince following the collision. But the collision comes after safety experts had warned of the heightened risks of older motorists getting behind a wheel.

Figures show that in 2018, the amount of motorist aged above 70 years old are referred by the DVLA for further examination, which went up by 20 per cent, and under the law, Prince Philip would have had to reapply for his licence once he attained the age of 70.

Nevertheless, there is no examination or test but a declaration has to be made, and once over 70, a person has to reapply for their licence every three years, including the Prince.

But clearly Prince Philip needs to stop driving, and very clearly at the age of 97 he’s too old to drive, and he should never have been pulling out of a driveway onto the main road, but fortunately for him the vehicle was armour plated so he dodged grave injury, but for the people in the other vehicle it could have been so much different, especially with a baby in the car.

The only shocking element in all of this that he’s still allowed to drive, and those other people in their car could have died, could the monarchy have that on their conscience?

The Royal estate must have lots of private roads he can drive on if he needs to drive, and we should question why he drives when he has people that can chauffeur him about, and they shouldn’t be waiving the test for him simply because he’s a Prince.

He shouldn’t have been driving, yet another instance of there being one rule for one and not the other, but the palace was keen to reassure us that he wasn’t hurt but gave no consideration of mentioning that no one else was injured either.

This man is 97 with continued long-standing health problems which makes him self-indulgent, thoughtless and poorly behaved, and whoever was at fault it was he who was definitely “shaken but not stirred.”

There seems to have been substantial evidence to bring criminal charges following the deaths of hundreds of patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital when there was an inquiry in June.

An inquiry in June last year discovered more than 450 patients died after being given dangerous levels of drugs, and Dr Jane Barton, the GP at the heart of the scandal, prescribed potent opioid painkillers to elderly patients.

Hampshire Constabulary previously investigated the hospital three times, but no charges have ever been made against them, or Dr Jane Barton.

Numerous patients who died had been transferred to the hospital to recover from surgeries, and former Assistant Chief Constable Steve Watts who led the third and biggest investigation into the 94 deaths said that he thought that the evidence was adequate to take the case to court.

He believed it was strong enough now, that it was strong enough then, and that he believes there was a determining public interest in doing so, but throughout the investigations, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) looked at viable charges of manslaughter and murder in relation to Dr Barton and some nurses who administered the drugs.

Yet, prosecutors determined there was not a reasonable possibility of securing convictions, and even though Mr Watts knew what the response of the families was going to be, and he knew what the response of the public was going to be, and recollected speaking to the prosecutors saying that it would finish up in a public enquiry and ultimately that the matter would go before a court.

Police in Hampshire handed the matter over to their colleagues in Kent and Essex who are now examining the evidence to determine if a fourth police inquiry is needed, and witness accounts provided to the police earlier are being investigated.

The police were told that they believed that diamorphine had been given continuously to patients by a syringe driver and that it did shorten patients lives, and one auxiliary nurse said that it got to the stage that every time Dr Barton came to the annexe, the nurse would think “who’s going to die now?”

In another statement, a staff nurse said that it appeared that most patients were going on drivers even when they were not in pain, and another nurse said they thought the drug was used to keep the waiting lists down.

Yet, former nurse Sheelagh Joines, who was sister on Gosport’s Daedalus Ward between 1993 and 1997, disagreed, and as far as she was concerned Dr Barton didn’t shorten any lives on her ward.

She said that they were nursed to the best of her ability and that they had what every patient was entitled to, a peaceful, pain-free, dignity – a dignified death.

But she further added that at one stage the ward felt like a dumping ground and that the patients were transferred to Gosport in the belief that they could rehabilitate them, which they tried, but that it quickly became clear that they were nursing care, and that they had damn good nursing care, but that they were not rehabilitated.

However, an inquiry discovered in June more than 450 patients died after doctors gave them dangerous levels of the drugs, and three earlier inquiries into 92 of the mortality by Hampshire Constabulary ended in no charges being brought against them.

But now there’s a new inquiry which is being led by Assistant Chief Constable Nick Downing, head of serious crime at Kent and Essex Police, however, the inquiry by the Gosport Independent Panel stated the quality of earlier police inquiries had been consistently poor.

It found whistleblowers and families were disregarded as they ventured to raise concerns about the regime of medication on the wards, which was overseen by Dr Jane Barton, and there was a disregard for human life of a substantial number of patients from 1989 to 2000.

Dr Barton retired after being found guilty by a medical panel of shortcomings in her care of 12 patients at Gosport between 1996 and 1999. But this is utterly horrifying, however, Hampshire Constabulary said it would step back from any future police investigations because families trust in the force had been destroyed.

The extent of the inquiry, which will begin in September, has not yet been decided, the force said, but Charles Farthing, whose stepfather Brian Cunningham died at the hospital said that earlier police inquiries had been a misuse of public funds.

This has all been utterly shocking and nothing has come out of it, and Charles Farthing wants to see criminal charges pressed.

In August 1998 ninety one-year-old Gladys Richards died at Gosport War Memorial Hospital where she was recuperating from a hip operation, she had suffered a haematoma, a mass caused by coagulated blood, but diamorphine was given through a syringe driver.

And in September 1998 Mrs Richard’s daughter Gillian McKenzie went to Hampshire police and claimed that her mother was prescribed too much morphine, but no charges were brought against the hospital.

In April 2000 another police inquiry was started after numerous families came forward with concerns, but again no charges were made, and the General Medical Council were further made aware of the concerns relating to Dr Jane Barton.

In April 2001 the Police Alert Commission for Healthcare Improvement (CHI) also looked into four more deaths and two others were drawn to the attention of the NHS Ombudsman, but they later suspended their inquiries. Then in June 2002 Mrs McKenzie urged the GMC to formally investigate Dr Barton and was told that there were no grounds for any action.

In July 2002 the CHI report reprimands the hospital’s administration in the prescript and control of diamorphine, and then in September 2002, the police began a third investigation and the Chief Medical Officer ordered an independent review into the deaths.

And in September 2006 the police files on 10 deaths were presented to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). However, in October 2006 the Crown Prosecution Service decided that there was inadequate evidence to prosecute any of the health professionals.

But then in May 2008 police reports were passed to the Portsmouth coroner, David Horsely, and in May, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced an investigation into the 10 deaths. Then in April 2009 a jury inquest at the Portsmouth Coroner’s Court ruled that at least five of the elderly patients who died were overprescribed powerful painkillers that accelerated their deaths, but the police still did not re-investigate.

In January 2010 Dr Jane Barton was found guilty of grave professional misconduct by the General Medical Council but wasn’t struck off, but she retired shortly after, and in the August, the CPS then said that there was inadequate evidence to prosecute Dr Barton for gross negligence manslaughter, but the families of the victims reprimanded the decision.

In April 2013 Coroner David Horsley determined that painkillers and sedatives given to Gladys Richards at GWMH more than significantly contributed to her death, and he gave a narrative verdict at the end of her inquest.

In August 2013 the Department of Health (DOH) published a clinical review of care covering the period 1998-2000. The review concluded that practice of almost routine use of opiates before death had been followed in the care of patients and that the practice had almost unquestionably shortened the lives of some patients.

In July 2014 the government announced an inquiry into the deaths of dozens of patients at GWMH to be led by the former Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones, who led the Hillsborough inquiry, and in December 2014 Care Minister Norman Lamb said that there were pending questions that lingered about the care of the patients who died, and the police investigated those deaths of the 92 patients but didn’t bring about any prosecutions.

In November 2016 the government said the report’s publication had been pushed back as a consequence of the larger amount of families now in contact with the panel, and in June 2018 an independent panel report showed that patients died after being given strong painkillers inappropriately at Gosport War Memorial Hospital.

But what exactly was the decisive turning point that helped expose the scandal at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in which hundreds of patients met their untimely deaths?

A panel of objective experts started by studying the mortality of 163 patients, but what they discovered prompted them to examine more than 2,000 deaths between 1987 and 2001, and research unveiled that 71 patients in the initial group had been given strong painkilling drugs without proper clinical evidence, and this discovery made the panel very concerned.

One of the patients was 91-year-old Sheila Gregory. Admitted in 1999. She was given diamorphine for no apparent reason and died a day later.

Diamorphine is the medical name for heroin, and it’s generally stored for patients suffering intolerable pain, sometimes in their closing hours before death, but like 62 other members of the group, the cause of Ms Gregory’s death was listed as bronchopneumonia.

Helena Service was the oldest patients to die. The 99-year-old was given diamorphine through a syringe driver, pumping the dose at a fixed flow into her body, but the inquiry judged that she was one of those given opioid painkillers without proper medical justification.

The rationale provided for administering diamorphine was that she was restless, and Ms Service died two days after she was admitted on 5 June 1997 from congestive cardiac failure, according to hospital reports.

More than 450 patients died after being given strong painkillers inappropriately at Gosport War Memorial Hospital, and taking into account the absent records, an additional 200 patients may have undergone a similar end to their lives.

The report determined that there was a disregard for human life of a great number of patients from 1989 to 2000.

Doctors are expected to preserve life and cause no harm, and the Hippocratic Oath, penned 2,500 years ago, includes the line: “I will use treatments for the benefit of the ill in accordance with my ability and my judgment, but from what is to their harm and injustice I will keep them.”

But a report published found more than 450 patients died earlier than they would have after being given strong painkillers inappropriately at Gosport War Memorial Hospital.

So, who is this doctor who actively shortened her patients’ lives? She is Dr Jane Ann Barton, now aged 70, who graduated from Oxford University in 1972 as a Bachelor of Medicine.

She became a GP and served at Forton Medical Centre in Gosport, and was employed for five sessions a week as a clinical assistant in the Department of Medicine for Elderly People at Gosport War Memorial Hospital from 1 May 1988 until her departure on 5 July 2000.

While at the hospital she was accountable for the care of people occupying 44 beds, but during her 12 years at the hospital, Dr Barton signed 854 death certificates, and of the patients she treated, 94 per cent had received opiates, with limited evidence of the three analgesia steps recommended in palliative care, which was non-opiate, then weak opiate, then strong opiate.

And a former health minister has attacked the NHS of closing ranks following the deaths in hospital of elderly patients from alleged overprescribed painkiller drugs, and that the NHS and elements of Whitehall had refused to face up to the hard and harsh realities.

It’s really horrific and there’s been an extremely systemic failure with the closing of ranks and a feeling that ordinary people merely weren’t being listened to at all, plus there was an unwillingness by the NHS to face up to some extraordinarily grave accusations about what had occurred in the hospital.

The former minister remembered his response when he was told by the Department of Health officials in 2013 when an email was forwarded to him on holiday in France, that a public enquiry should not be held.

He was incandescent about this so instantly sensed that there might have been a collusion to cloak this up while he was out of the country.

To this day he doesn’t know whether it was a cock-up or a cover-up but it was pretty explicit in his mind that there must on no account be a statement made the following day.

Nevertheless, we shouldn’t disregard all the good that most staff that work for the NHS do, but of course, it’s these other kinds of people who give it a bad name and should be held responsible for their actions, and we should further recognise that it was NHS nurses that blew the whistle on the drug policy so we should not tar them all with the same brush because we do have some excellent nurses that work in the NHS.

Sadly, it takes so long for the truth to come out, and it will probably take more years before we become cognizant of what’s actually going on because these kinds of scenarios are continually swept under the rug, and then everybody closes ranks.

The one thing that we should remember is that drs are not Gods, they’re human beings, and we should trust no one because human beings make mistakes or decisions that end up taking lives because they really do think that they are God!

 

Over time during history, whether it be war or simply natural occurrences, we learned about these things through stories that were carried down for the generations, and over time, those stories have become numbers and then those numbers have become numbness.

But it’s essential to nurture compassion to ourselves and to younger generations and it has to be done through stories because when you learn someone else’s story, and when you understand how complicated their stories are, it’s much harder to stereotype the other.

Then you can’t make all-embracing generalisations about women or men, about white’s or blacks because it becomes harder because of those particular stories. Therefore, it’s especially critical to bring not only one story but an enormous multiplicity of stories.

And also as human beings, we’re emotional people, and we need to accept this truth because we connect through those stories.

If we know someone else’s pain or sadness, and what they’ve gone through, there’s a piece of you that should understand it better, but if we just read about categories or numbers then we stop feeling.

And it’s pretty interesting when you look at the documentation of the people who have endured the worst crimes in human history including the Holocaust, genocide and civil wars, nearly all of them are saying almost the same thing.

They say that the antithesis of morality, humanity is not necessarily evil or badness. They’re saying these crimes occurred not necessarily because people were wicked.

They say the reverse of goodness is numbness and is the moment when you stop feeling indifference when we are desensitised, and there comes a threshold when we cease caring.

Whether it’s 5,000 refugees or 500,000 refugees, numbers don’t mean anything after a while if you don’t know their stories, and that threshold is something that we should find extremely dangerous because once we have that kind of desensitised numbness, and once we stop caring for each other then anything can happen from that moment onwards.

So, it’s the responsibility of the storytellers to pierce holes in that wall of numbness and hopefully help people to feel compassion for the others, sadly there’s a developing trend of not only the lack of compassion but open hatred towards people’s suffering, and it’s a sad indication of how low mankind has regressed over the years.

Sadly, there are people who can’t be taught compassion and we should pity them, but it also takes a certain measure of insight to be able to see yourself in someone else’s situation and to assess that situation from a basepoint other than your own life experience.

It also takes a fair bit of understanding to stop and consider someone else’s situation from more than one perspective before judging, and empathy can be shown and it can be acquired at any time in life.

As a child, I grew up in a moderately antiblack family, which as I got older stunned and surprised me because my family were Jewish and knew of all the atrocities that occurred throughout Hitler’s reign. My mother’s people came from Romania and Poland and my father’s people came from Russia and Spain, so I wasn’t sure where the hatred came from.

We’re usually taught prejudice and narrow-mindedness from our progenitors, perhaps not willfully but as children, we’re like pawns and monkey see, monkey do, but this particular day I was out at the shops getting sweets, I must have been roughly 10 at the time and there was this little boy and I remember calling him something to do with his colour, I called him “black” and his immediate response was, “I’m not black, I’m brown.”

I wandered home feeling really guilty because he didn’t look annoyed at what I’d said, but I was annoyed that I’d said it and I swore that I would never be like that to anyone again, and just because my family were prejudiced it didn’t mean that I had to be.

But we fear people that we know nothing about, and if something is different from the norm, then, of course, it’s got to be bad, but my great grandparents came over on what they called the “Onion Boat” although I’ve no idea why it was called that, I guess the same reason that Africans are said to have come over on the “Banana Boat” although I much prefer the Banana’s than the Onions!

But my great-grandparents brought a vast legacy with them and that was the gift to tell stories, accounts of what they went through and what happened to them and why they ended up coming to England, well, not only England, I have family all over the world that got separated, and even though they sometimes still heard from them, they accepted the fact that was how it had to be at the time to survive because these people were and are survivors of whatever atrocities they’ve had to live through.

We whine about people coming over from abroad to England, but we still enjoy the fruits that they bring with them. The corner shops that they work in till the early hours of the morning. We’re happy to drive in a Japanese car, dress in clothes from China and eat food that comes from all corners of the earth, I know the world is round, not flat so has no corners, but that’s for another storyline.

BUT WE’RE NOT HAPPY TO HAVE THEM IN OUR COUNTRY!

That’s because some people and others never learn because they’re deluded by their own stupidity.