THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO

MPs At War

Theresa May survived a confidence vote from her MPs but now her Cabinet ministers are filing up to stab her in the back, and they know that she will quit before 2022 and six of them are secretly gathering attack teams to bid for the leadership, and should Theresa May flounder before then, some are so enthusiastic they will be keen to make a move even before her body is cold.

Outside the Cabinet, Theresa May has to fend off attacks from ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and two former Brexit Ministers David Davis and Dominic Raab, and inside the Cabinet, the people who have a responsibility to defend her are grinding their knives.

Sajid Javid was already canvassing support for a leadership bid before the confidence vote, and he provokes Theresa May by continually attempting to interrupt her in Cabinet meetings.

But when it comes down to it they’re all an atrocious pack of back-stabbing despicable prey, gathering like a bunch of vultures, waiting for Theresa May to falter, and ultimately, she will, there’s no uncertainty about that, and Theresa May will boot the bucket down the road until the bucket finally goes over the cliff followed by the United Kingdom in a Lemming-like death dive.

And shortly they’ll all be ordering a set of kitchen knives for each other, talk about backstabbing each other, and right now what Parliament requires is a present-day Guy Fawkes because the establishment has become corrupt to the core and most of the house comprises members whose principal purposes are to feather their own nests.

This country needs help as Theresa May’s grasp on power appears to look somewhat uncertain, and for all her tenacity, she’s not a miracle worker, and the impossible demands of Brexiters will eventually seal her fate, and her appearance was as difficult to interpret as ever.

Theresa May portrayed so little of her emotions as she emerged from Downing Street, you simply wouldn’t have known if she was resigning or declaring unity in our time, but perhaps she didn’t really know herself.

Yet even in what may be her closing days in office, Theresa May still has her uniquely stultifying ability to drain a moment of its drama with Ministers sometimes protesting that she chairs cabinet meetings, rather than leading them and that her own viewpoints remain curiously obscure.

But there was a feeling of precisely that indifference when she came to parliament, with ministers plummeting like houseflies, she didn’t even attempt to pretend this was the deal anybody had wanted, rather, she wanted the nation to know that she had done her best in these difficult times, even if some believed it wasn’t good enough.

The overall aim was of a post woman trudging through a snowstorm, simply attempting to achieve what the people had ordered, as if her own feelings hardly mattered, and maybe, in a way, they don’t, and years ago, when Theresa May first started being seriously considered as a prospective leader, Europe was the one subject on which even her closest political collaborators couldn’t be sure where she stood.

The best they could offer was that she didn’t appear extremely inspired, and perhaps deep down she never thought Brexit could ever work, and perhaps if she’d believed harder in the fairies everything would have worked out, but whatever she feels deep down, it’s not the May way to simulate any sentiment, any more than it is to motivate.

Theresa May prevails by grinding people down, wearing them out, pointing out the lack of a better option, and it’s how she became leader in the first place, it’s how she has survived despite her party’s apprehensions, and seemingly how she will now attempt to stave off the attempted leadership challenge now underway.

This time she can barely get away with acting as nothing has altered, but the word is that nothing will be changing, a deal is a deal, and her best bet is to convince her party that anything is better than the prospect of inadvertently placing Jacob Rees-Mogg in Downing Street, before somehow attempting to sell her unloved deal to the country on the grounds that at least this way everyone will know where they are and Brexit will be over.

As she insisted the British people simply want her to get on with it and that most people don’t care how this thing ends, as long as it does end. Yet that end now looks a very long way off really, and there’s something almost immorally hypocritical about continuing to pretend at this time of elevated national jeopardy.

And if negotiations have really reached a standstill, then stopping the clock on article 50 and throwing the ball back to the people in a second referendum arguably seems the best way forth, but let’s not assume that the outcome of a second referendum would undoubtedly be any more welcome than the last one.

And that the defeated side would be any more reconciled to defeat, or that we wouldn’t waste the next 10 years bickering about who lied and plagiarised, and before we get to any of that, the last act of the Tory psychodrama must first play itself out.

Theresa May is not only running out of road on Brexit, relationships with the DUP, which won’t back her deal, have plunged into the deep freeze amid mutterings of private promises betrayed, and she can’t rely on their votes now to push through whatever tattered remnants of her domestic policy are left.

And desperation to keep the Brexit show on the road is now bending the seat of government out of shape, with reports of policy and spending decisions being twisted to keep nervous ministers on board, but if her premiership has been severely lacking in creativity at times, by taking the referendum result so literally Theresa May at least has to present a moment of dreadful clarity about the consequences.

Tory Brexiters demanded the impossible, well, now they have it, a deal that’s impracticable to get through parliament, difficult to sell to leave voters so cynically led to expect something better, and if nothing else, history will surely remember Theresa May more kindly than either the architects of leave or her forerunner, David Cameron, whose catastrophic lapse of judgement landed us in this mess.

They broke it, but she owned it, which explains the odd note of pity that sneaks in when her name crops up in conversation beyond Westminster, so it may now be for someone else to glue the pieces back together.

Zero-Hour Contract

Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd came under fire after encouraging struggling families to take unstable work after she suggested that people should take a zero-hour contract to circumvent getting a benefit sanction.

Even though she acknowledged she had concerns about some aspects of the benefits system, and she said she’s ready to slow down the rollout of Universal Credit again to make sure it’s effective, she stood by the policy as an MP warned people would be sanctioned under Universal Credit if they don’t take a zero-hour job.

And when the MP was seriously saying people should take zero-contracts she said yes because if people are offered work, they should take it, and then when asked again if people should take work even if it’s unstable she said yes.

The MP told the Commons Work and Pensions Committee that the purpose of taking employment is not only about having money coming in, it was also about having confidence of being able to improve people’s own status and being able to have the security of having work coming in, and being able to make sure that you can then get to a higher level, although I’m not sure how people will do that on a zero contract because it has no security, which doesn’t give people confidence at all.

And if the job doesn’t actually give you any hours, the complexity of the system makes it especially difficult to convey what you do, and it’s repulsive that Amber Rudd believes it’s acceptable to sanction people if they refuse to take a zero hour contract job.

Sanctions are driving poverty, driving people to food banks and they fall massively on the most defenceless people, and the government should be ending these disciplinary sanction regimes, outlawing zero hour contracts and reconstruct our social security system so that it helps people instead of punishing them.

Job security and zero hour contracts should not be used in the same sentence because it doesn’t benefit the worker, only the employer, and Universal Credit is one sick joke as people are going without money for months on end, when they have worked all their lives and yet get beaten by the government while they’re down.

It’s about time Tory government went onto zero hour contracts, let’s face it, some of them don’t even turn up and when they do, all they do is fall asleep and still get compensated for it, yet they have the temerity to tell us that we should take zero contract jobs.

If a commoner never turned up for work or fell asleep on the job they’d probably get the sack and certainly wouldn’t get paid, yet some of these freeloaders still get compensated for sitting on their arse and falling asleep, yet again, one rule for them and another rule for the working class.

Amber Rudd’s own work history should be scrutinised, particularly with regards to her tax evasion scams and shell companies that swiftly go bankrupt, and her arrogance is as unbelievable as her ineptitude, and despite how many times she makes a mess of things in government she perpetually seems to get another chance, whereas in the real world no one would actually employ her.

Zero hour contracts are for the interest of the employer and nobody really advances on to permanent work no matter how hard they work, and the government should drape their heads in shame, but then, of course, they won’t because they’ll be too busy checking their profit margins and offshore accounts.

Potentially Deadly Norovirus

Vegetables sold in British supermarkets are riddled with the deadly norovirus. The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) researchers found that one lettuce in every 20 contained the vomiting virus.

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The virus which is spread by human waste was further discovered in one in every 27 packs of frozen raspberries, but experts cautioned that many more fresh foods may be harbouring the norovirus, which has become Britain’s most common food poisoning virus.

About 3 million people are infected by the virus every year, many of whom are children, and it can be fatal in extremely young and old people, as well as those with impaired immune systems. Each year it claims up to 300 victims.

No one should expect to find a norovirus in their lettuce or raspberry’s which suggests grave carelessness on the part of the suppliers, and when the virus is discovered it’s obvious that administration on food hygiene is not being adhered to and that in consequence, the pathogen is entering the food supply chain, and out of the 568 lettuces, mostly grown in Britain, the norovirus is detected in 30 of them.

Seven out of 310 batches of fresh raspberries and 10 out of 274 samples of frozen raspberries also tested positive for the virus, and the results of the YouGov Omnibus study will make you want to avoid shaking hands for the rest of your life.

The numbers revealed that significant minorities of people do not always wash their hands after going to the bathroom, with men, in particular, being the biggest offenders.

Not only that, confusing instructions on supermarket frozen vegetable packages could be putting customers in danger of life-threatening bugs, and British supermarkets had to recall 43 sweetcorn-based frozen vegetable products over concerns they could contain the listeria bacteria following an explosion of infections across Europe killed nine people.

The bugs can cause listeriosis, an illness with flu-like manifestations which can be deadly in the elderly, young children or pregnant women, and health and safety experts have warned that vegetables like green beans, broccoli and sweetcorn should be cooked or microwaved from frozen to destroy the potentially-deadly bacteria.

It should not be defrosted and consumed cold, but despite the problems, not all British supermarkets put clear warnings on their frozen vegetables, and it was analysed that 71 packs of frozen vegetables which could not be eaten raw, including green beans, broccoli florets, baby carrots, petit pois and sweetcorn, from Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrison’s, Iceland, Aldi and Lidl, only those sold by Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Aldi carried a specific “do not eat raw” warning.

About half of the packets had directions telling customers they “should” or “must” cook the product from frozen, but the others only contained cooking instructions which suggested it was best to cook the vegetables, but it’s only ever safe to defrost frozen vegetables and consume them raw if the package explicitly says they were ready to eat from defrost without cooking.

The key is how the vegetables are prepared after picking. Some vegetables are blanched before being frozen, to prevent enzyme and bacterial growth, but most are frozen raw.

Vegetables are in danger of being contaminated by airborne particles, waterborne particles and soil based particles because there is an abundance of viruses and bacteria all around us, but we don’t see these, but they are there.

Cooking ensures vegetables are safe to consume, and each package should say what needs to be done to ensure that safety and people should always follow the cooking instructions, and bacteria is a more common problem in frozen vegetables than fresh because it’s more likely to have been imported and handled by a number of suppliers before reaching customers in the United Kingdom.

However, following the listeria outbreak and in order to be as helpful as possible to customers, the words “do not eat raw” was added to bags of vegetables, and it’s essential that food manufacturers give the required information in order that the food can be used and consumed safely, such as giving directions that food should be cooked for a specific period of time.

And if important safety information is not given with some foods then this should lead to its removal or recall from the market and possible enforcement action taken upon the food companies.

Former Soldier On Universal Credit

An army veteran has blasted the Government’s questionable Universal Credit rules after alleging he was made to live on only £8 a week. Former combat medic Daniel Johnson has been struggling to make ends meet since July after the six-in-one benefit left him with only £32 a month spare.

The 45-year-old, who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps, picks up weekly payments of £155 but says £147 of it is used to cover bills and accommodation.

Daniel, of Leominster, Herefordshire, was forced to start claiming the handout after being injured at work on October 31 last year and lost his home as a consequence.

The Department of Work and Pensions had since declared he is fit to work despite him suffering from severe neck pain and being diagnosed with PTSD.

This week he wore his army clothes to stage a one-man demonstration outside Leominster Job Centre to assert his displeasure at Universal Credit rules and the way military employees are handled after leaving the forces, and it’s shocking that this father of three presently has to survive on £8 a week.

He’s been living like this since June this year and it makes him feel useless, and nobody who has served their queen and country should be treated like this, and Universal Credit is superseding a consultant, a GP and mental health specialists who are saying he is unable to work, and he has an A4 binder full of doctor’s notes stating that he’s not fit to work.

He’s still on extremely large doses of morphine, and no one taking that much morphine would be fit for work let alone his issues with PTSD that he’s been diagnosed with, but how is he supposed to live on £8 a week particularly at this time of year? Especially when he’s reached out for help from the country that he’s served, then to be told, sorry, tough luck!

Grandad of one Daniel had taken on additional work as a lorry driver after the cold weather last year affected his garden maintenance business, but an unstable load from one of the lorries fell on top of him, leaving him with three fractured vertebrae in his neck.

Daniel was further diagnosed with PTSD in 2006 after serving with the army for seven years and remains under the supervision of mental health specialists, and was certified unable to work by the doctors because of the amount of morphine he was on.

During his health assessment that he had in June this year, they asked him questions like, could he stand unaided? Could he sit unaided? And could he make a cup of tea unaided? But he can’t actually do any of these things without being in a lot of pain, but with his military training, he simply attempts to get on with it, and from the examination, he was only entitled to the most basic amount of payment.

The money he gets goes on bills such as gas, electric, water, service charges, TV licence and that would all be before the basics such as food, toiletries and clothing, and then he wastes an hour on the telephone simply attempting to get through to someone at the Department for Work and Pensions, which is why he went down to the job centre to protest.

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Ex-mayor of Hereford and ex-paratrooper, Jim Kenyon, 49, has now taken up Daniel’s case in an effort to support his fellow serviceman.

The problem is that decisions are made in government offices, and it’s people at the front line who take the brunt of it, and Universal Credit has pushed Daniel over the edge.

Jim Kenyon is an army vet himself, so he knows what it’s like for these chaps, and Jim sees Daniel pretty much every day to see how he’s getting on and he hopes that he’s not on Universal Credit for much longer.

In Daniel’s case, Universal Credit is not a handout, this man has paid his National Insurance while serving in the army and qualifies for help now, and if this is how Universal Credit treat an ex-serviceman of 7 years, then Joe Public doesn’t stand a chance for any quality of life, and this is totally unacceptable for all in need.

This is an utter disgrace when every week we see programmes about immigration and people coming to England and being housed, being given homes because they have so many kids, they are being given lavish benefits, yet asking for and getting more. Yet these people have paid no National Insurance contributions and have never worked in this country, and our government is keen to look after these people rather than looking after their own people first.

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Lots of people fail the assessment because Atos and the like get rewarded to do so, making a business out of people’s despair and suicidal tendencies are shocking and cruel. Appealing takes months of continuous energy which the sick and disabled do not have in them, and the policy fails the very people it was set up to help, so what’s next, will he be asked if he’s able to breath unaided?

Most of these men were sent to war on a lie, treated like crap and then once they’re out they’re still treated appallingly, it’s shocking, and this is how the Tory government treats those who serve their country, the Tories don’t have a measure of shame between the lot of them.

Gordon Brown Honoured

Once prime minister Gordon Brown has been praised for his special work in striving to ensure every child across the globe can attend school.

Mr Brown was named as the latest recipient of an award scheme set up by Norwegian novelist Jo Nesbo to identify those who are simply doing good things.

The ex-Labour leader said he would give the £200,000 cash prize from the Harry Hole Prize named after Nesbo’s most famous fictional detective to children’s charity Theirworld.

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His wife Sarah Brown is president of the organisation, which works to give young people a greater future across the globe, and Gordon Brown has done such extraordinary work on funding education in the world’s poorest nations.

Mr Brown accepted the award at a ceremony in Oslo in front of Norwegian Prime Minister Arna Solber, and the honour that he received was in support to tear down the boundaries that stop young people from going to school, and brings young people to the front lines of the civil rights struggle of our time, and the right to an education.

This is why Theirworld was picked as a receiver of the award, to help build on the 1,000-strong Global Youth Ambassador group, young people under the age of 30, who are set to campaign until every single child is at school and learning.

They will build the movement of the next generation of leaders and activists for all of those vetoed an education, and it’s so nice to see that Gordon Brown is doing something good, and at least he’s attempting to do something about child poverty in this country that no one else has.

The wealthy Tories could learn a lesson or two from Gordon Brown, at least this man doesn’t prostitute his principles for money, but there are real concerns about the fate of this country, and the fate of the economy.

Gordon Brown didn’t come into politics to become a celebrity or believe that he would always be popular because he clearly wasn’t that, and he didn’t come to London because he wanted to join the establishment, but because he wanted to change it.

People said that he was too serious, but there’s a lot to be serious about, and he was serious about doing a serious job, and what annoyed him and motivated him to fight was when people got treated unjustly.

So, when people shared stories with him about how difficult times were, and what a difficult time they were having with their bills, he wanted to help, solely because he was brought up seeing his parents having to balance their resources like the rest of the country.

And when he talked to parents about schools, he concluded that every child should have a good school because while he did get a break in a great local secondary school, not all his friends got the opportunity to get on.

So, there he was, serving at the time for an incredible country while working as far as possible to give his children an ordinary childhood. But some people were asking at the time why he hadn’t served his children up for spreads in the newspapers, and the response was simple, his children weren’t props, they were ordinary people.

And where he might have made mistakes at least he put his hand up to try to put them right, but then it really hurt that suddenly people felt he wasn’t on the side of the people on middle and modest incomes but on the side of hard-working families was the only place he ever truly wanted to be.

He simply wanted to give the people of this country an unconditional assurance, no ifs, no buts, no small print, and his steadfast focus was taking this country through the challenges of economic circumstances we encountered at the time, and to build a fair society of the future.

And he believed that the British people wouldn’t forgive if he looked inwards towards to the interests of just their party when their party was to the interests of the country and that the people of Britain would never forget if he failed to put them first because at that time it was a time of greater than ever change, so it was a time of higher ambition from Gordon Brown, and because the world of 2008 was so different from the world of 1997, and we continually need to build for these new times – we always need to push forth and not be regressive.

Each generation believes it’s living through changes their parents could never have imagined, and in these unpredictable times, we must be the rock of stability and fairness upon which people stand, but every time there’s a profound change, those with great wealth and privilege have always been able to look after themselves whilst those in poverty suffer.

But it’s the government’s duty, which is what gives them a moral purpose to serve the people who need them most, Britains large majority, people on the middle and modest incomes who need to know that they’re not on their own amidst this change and that the government are on their side.

And where there are new risks and new pressures the government’s job is security for all, and where there are new opportunities, the government’s responsibility is to implement fair opportunities for everyone equalled by fair rules implemented to everyone.

Ensuring people against the new risks and empowering people with new opportunities is the mission of the hour and those who say that governments should walk away when people face these risks and need these opportunities should be judged to be on the wrong side of history.

So, this is the defining moment for us, a test not only of our judgement but of our values, and what counts is not the pursuance of any sectional interest but the elevation of public interest, and the government should at all times put the people first.

The current role of government is not to provide everything, but it must enable everyone, and it’s up to this government to commit to fairness, and all transactions need to be transparent and not hidden.

We know that when it comes to public spending you can’t just wave a magic wand and conjure up money, not even with the help from Harry Potter. So, there are always difficult decisions to make and priorities that have to be chosen, just as families have to make savings to make ends meet, so the government must ensure that we get value for money for every bit of money that is spent.

People feel their communities are changing before their eyes and it’s increasing their anxiety about crime and anti-social behaviour. And so we will be the party of law and order, but it’s not the party of law and order with public services being stretched, with bobbies being taken off the beat every month.

And now we’ve got more British pensioners than British children, more people living longer on fixed incomes and worried about whether they’ll require long-term care, and the government needs to ensure security and dignity for these pensioners.

And there are new pressures on parents worrying about balancing work and family life, but then there’s also advertising aimed at their children and what their children are viewing or downloading from the internet, and so this government should be the party of the family.

Our government can meet all these challenges because it’s about fair prosperity, it must be fair opportunities and fair rules, but the challenges of these new times demand a truly progressive government to help people cope with the new risks and to make the most of new opportunities, that’s why this country needs a Labour government.

To govern is to choose and it’s what a government chooses to do when it’s tested that demonstrates its priorities and exposes its soul.

It is not the mathematics of statistics but the fabric of people’s lives, and when we talk about people being in poverty and people living on the streets, we’re not talking arithmetic, we’re talking about lives that have been changed.

We have to strive for fairness, not because it makes great soundbites, not because it gives great photo opportunities or advertisement and not because it makes for great PR, we should do it because humanity is in our DNA, and Labour is the soul of the party.

When things get tough, we should get tougher. We should stand up and fight hard for justice, and we should never give in.

Fairness is about treating others how we would want to be treated ourselves, so, it’s not about levelling down but allowing people to aspire and reach an even higher level, and to take advantage of all the opportunities of our global economy and to unleash a new wave of increasing social movement across our country.

For far too long we’ve developed only some of the talents of some of the people, but the path to social mobility is developing all the talents of all the people, helping those who are working their way up from very little and boosting those up in the middle who want to get on.

It means supporting what actually matters, hard work, effort and enterprise. Fairness for the future involves significant changes, and we must stand for public services that are universal, accessible to all, and now we must stand for a public service that is personal to everyone.

A better future should begin with putting children first with the biggest investment in children in this country, which involves delivering the best possible start in life with services tailored to the needs of every single precious child.

Child poverty demeans Britain, and our government should be tackling and stopping it. Of course, economic times are hard but our government should be in it for the long haul with the total removal of child poverty.

Fairness demands nothing less than perfection in every school, because every child should leave primary school able to read, write and count, and every child that falls behind should not be left behind and should have a supported right to a personal catch up tuition.

Parents should see their children educated in a school which delivers good results and if that local state school drops below the required criteria, the parents should see that school reconstructed under a completely new management, or close and new school places given.

Our government should be thanking all of the NHS workers, the cooks, the cleaners, the paramedics, the porters, the doctors, the midwives and nurses because they’ve served our country and helped a great deal, and good health care should not be a commodity to be bought by some, it should be a right to be enjoyed by all.

Labour was the party of the NHS, they created it, and they should be allowed to save it, value it and support it, and thanks to the NHS many people’s lives have been saved, and the government should be passionate about the importance of the NHS and should be committed to improving it and keeping it going.

But the moment it’s shameful that we can’t seem to give on the NHS the comprehensive services that private patients can afford to buy because at the moment there’s no vested interest to take on a change for the welfare of the nation’s well-being.

After the end of the war, almost one-third of Britain’s Nobel prizes have been for our genius in medicine, but now we should aim to extend the boundaries of human knowledge and human well-being even more, and we should be Britain’s leaders in conquering diseases which cause so much heartbreak for families.

We should be a nation worthy of leading the way to defeat cancer and other diseases and proud because we have a health service that’s centred on the demands of the 21st century.

The NHS is free to all, and it’s personal to all which means meeting challenges for the future, and in a fair society, the fact that older people are living longer should be a blessing for their families, not a burden.

No one should live in fear of their old age because they worry their social care will impose financial hardships they could never afford to face and that the moment they require care it puts their family home at risk, and the generation that restored Britain from the ashes of the war deserves much better, and the government should be putting policies in place so that the elderly can stay longer in their own homes and give comprehensive protection against the costs of care, and dignity and support for everyone in their later years – That’s the fairness older people deserve!

So, when people say in these difficult times there’s nothing we can do, there’s nothing higher to strive for, no great causes left worth fighting for, they’re wrong because our ideas are the ideas that will achieve the hopes of families for a greater future, and providing free nursery care for more children who need it is a cause worth fighting for.

Providing better social care for older people who need it is a cause worth fighting for, and delivering excellence in every single school is a cause worth fighting for. Universal check-ups and new help to combat cancer, these are all causes worth fighting for because it’s the future we’re fighting for.

And in this world of vast financial and social reform, the aim should be something for something, not nothing for nothing because we should be a nation of fair opportunities for all, and fair rules applied to all.

The Conservative government’s policy is to change their appearance by giving the illusion of change and to hide what they actually think, a little like a salesperson who won’t tell you what their selling because they’re selling something no one should buy.

The Conservatives want us to think that they care about public services but they don’t, and of course, there are problems but this country is not broken, it’s the best country in the world, and in the right hands, we could make the United Kingdom even better.

Our country is full of heroes, and I’m not talking about the chocolate variety either, and we pay special tribute to the courage of our armed forces, and the service and sacrifices they make every day in peacekeeping missions throughout the globe, quite frankly we have the best armed forces in the world.

But we must all work together to meet the great shared challenges vital to our future, and to do it for our poor and vulnerable is an act of kindness, but it’s more than that, it will determine whether our new global society thrives or fails.

We need fairness in our society, justice in the world and a leader that wants to do his or her job well, and we need a leader that will deal with the difficult times and face them and stay true to their convictions, and that will understand that all the attacks, all the polls, all the headlines, all the criticism, it’s all worth it, if in doing their job it will make life better for at least one child, one family, one community.

Because being Prime Minister isn’t about them, it’s about YOU!

Thirty-five Pounds For A Lightbulb

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A man from Canvey, Essex who suffers from autism and epilepsy was charged a £10 deposit and was informed that he would have to pay another £25 on the collection of a lightbulb that he’d ordered in the Knightswick Centre, Canvey.

The vulnerable man who’s in his 30s had ventured to the centre in pursuit of a new lightbulb without his carer, and a shop worker from Phone Experts approached him, offering him assistance.

The employee who made the transaction was already working his notice, and this happened to be his last day, so he had nothing to lose. The store refunded the £10 deposit, but the shop has been slammed as targeting him because of his condition.

It’s quite disgusting because the man was quite visibly autistic, and the shop saw this and took advantage of him, but it was only when he became visibly anxious and getting worked up that his mother knew something had occurred, and when a receipt for the £10 deposit was found she realised. A lightbulb only costs a couple of pounds, but the receipt was a scrap of paper from a duplicate book.

They went back to the shopping centre and her son identified which store it was, so they approached them and following some toing and froing the shop chose to refund the money and tear up the receipt.

This sort of behaviour is terrible, and it’s not the kind of store people want on Canvey. This man is visibly vulnerable and he’s been preyed upon, but manager Hussain Razi said that the employee was trying to help, but then acknowledged what he did was wrong.

Mr Hussain Razi said it was a mistake, and that the family are making it into a big issue, that it’s now been resolved and that the store has now returned the money.

They said that the employee who dealt with the man has been fired, but how could he have been fired if he was already working his noticed and it was his last day?

The shop said the worker was simply seeking to help the man, that he seemed like he was disabled in some way, and was only seeking to help. So, if he was really trying to help, why was he fired? Then he said that the worker quoted him between £10 to £35 for a light bulb but he wasn’t sure why because the shop didn’t even sell lightbulbs, well, I’d say that’s going above and beyond trying to help someone.

Obviously, this employee was never going to return this mans money, and the customer would have never seen him again because he was working out his notice, and clearly once he saw that this man was disabled he exploited him. Yet, the manager then backed the fired employee and turned it around on the victim, so how many other people have they ripped off?

The employee was already working his notice, he was obviously trying to make a swift tenner before leaving, then when the man came back for the lightbulb, the crafty employee would have been gone, but it makes you question why this particular employee had been given his notice anyhow.

Whether Mr Razi likes it or not, this employee was representing his store at the time, and therefore it’s the character of the store that’s apparently being undermined by this sad event because clearly it wasn’t a misunderstanding, and it was a pretty big problem.

Mr Razi clearly isn’t the brightest spark in the electrical circuit!

Forced Into Prostitution To Make Thirty Quid

A single mum relying on Universal Credit was driven into prostitution to make a swift £30.

Julie, from Merseyside, turned to prostitution after waiting eight weeks for her first payment from the questionable new benefits policy, but she felt really discouraged and ashamed following the exchange but was desperate to stay afloat.

Julie who asked for her real name not to be used said that she was embarrassed to admit it but that she slept with a guy for money, and it was something she never ever imagined she would ever be able to do, and that she really didn’t believe it was in her as a person.

She is so disappointed in herself and ashamed of herself. She had to use food banks and had never been in that position in her life, and she was actually struggling, but some women have now taken to the red light district for the first time as a direct consequence of Universal Credit.

Now women feel compelled to sell their bodies after getting trapped in the poverty net, yet this woman has no criminal history and she doesn’t take drugs, she’s never stolen anything in her life, but she lost her job of 10 years and had nothing to live on.

She claimed benefits but didn’t get a penny because she had to wait over eight weeks, yet Universal Credit simply told her to be patient, but being patient isn’t going to feed her child or pay her mortgage.

A few months ago she’d only ever slept with seven men and now she’s seeing perverts every night and she despises it but she has to pay her bills and keep her home. This is her secret because her partner thinks she works in a bar and it’s a shameful secret to keep.

A mum-of-two, aged 29, further claimed a reduction in benefit forced her on to the streets. Universal Credit took £72 a week off her, her children are nine and one and she needs to get school uniform for her eldest.

She didn’t have a great childhood and she doesn’t want her children to suffer as she did, but all these things have to be paid for.

Her first punter was very sweet and now she can make £450 a night and she’s good at it. She’s been out in the snow trembling but she made £1,000 that night because they felt sorry for her.

Of course, on Universal Credit as soon as you’ve concluded and entered your application, you can get an advanced payment of any sum of your choice, up to your whole benefit award, but this advance is then subtracted from subsequent payments, decreasing further the already small amount of money people get.

And if there’s an option for an advance, the question is, why is there a five-week delay in the first place? Universal Credit is cruel by design, and this cruelty is finally being exposed, and not a minute too soon because Universal Credit is inhumanely brutal, beyond evil, and it’s completely stupid and a destructive mess that’s taking lives.

Universal Credit is a blemish on this country’s conscience and the system needs to be abandoned now before even more people are plunged into abject destitution, and this is not tolerable in the 21st century. Charles Dickens must be turning in his grave.

Depressed Mum Killed Herself

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A mum pursued by the NHS over charges of only £29 took her own life by overdosing on the anti-depressants that forced her into debt. Penny Oliver owed sums of £8.60 and £20.60, but with penalty charges and surcharges these soared, the second one alone rising to £120.60.

And having lost hundreds of pounds a month when her benefits were cut, mum Penny, 54, really couldn’t pay. She had only a few pounds in her account and was enveloped by payment requests when her family discovered her dead in bed in June.

Letters from the council, the NHS and Department for Work and Pensions included threats to take her to court and notify her employer if she didn’t pay up.

Penny, from Whitstable, Kent, took an overdose and left heartbreaking letters to her children, and her children say the NHS and DWP have “blood on their hands,” and now Labour has called for an urgent investigation into the NHS policy of pursuing outstanding prescription charges.

This is repulsive and inquiries have to be questioned about the humanity of a policy that does this to defenceless people. Penalty charges should be scrapped, and it’s a disgrace to abuse helpless, sick people in this way.

Ministers urgently need to step in and examine this policy because our NHS is there to support patients get better not make their health worse by putting unacceptable burdens on people like this.

There’s an irony in this because she overdosed on anti-depressants because she couldn’t afford to pay the prescription charges, and this should never have happened because this mum was struggling to cope with having her benefits cut when she was already suffering from poor mental health, but instead the very NHS that should have been helping her deal with her depression instead started harassing her for money and helped to drive her over the threshold, and she ended her life as a consequence.

Penny suffered anxiety and depression for most of her life and in 2014 was left crushed by the loss of her son Josh, 15, after he took ecstasy. She could only work part-time as a tapas bar chef because of a back problem. She got benefits and was entitled to free NHS prescriptions and subsidised dental treatment.

But last November DWP assessors considered her fit for full-time work. That meant no more free prescriptions, including those for anti-depressants, but Penny ticked the free prescription form at a time when she thought she still qualified, but demands for payments came later from the NHS Business Service Authority which tracks down debt and farms proceeds back into healthcare.

One letter asking for £8.60 was posted in May but noted likely penalty charges. The last demand came following Penny’s death for £73.10, including a £43.00 penalty and £2.50 surcharge. Another letter, dated March 15, demanded that £20.60 for NHS dental treatment and a £100 penalty charge for non-payment be paid inside 28 days.

It warned of a possible additional £50 charge. Penny was left in a state of fear.

How can the NHS justify demands for a sum nearly 10 times the payment Penny missed? It’s unbelievable. Penny was simply striving to keep her head above water and it’s disturbing to imagine that she spent the end of her life in fear and feeling so out of control that she saw no way out other than death.

The mixture of demands from the NHS, the council and the DWP got too much and had the NHS helped her rather than stacking more weight on her she would still be here now.

Penny was on benefits while unable to work full-time because of persistent back pain, but when it eased, the anxiety problems still continued but the DWP ruled she was fit for work.

Her Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) was removed from January, and in turn, her council tax support stopped and housing benefit was halved, from £121.15 a week to just £58.63, and two months later, the council said she owed £303.77 in overpaid benefit.

A DWP demand sent in February said she owed £109.36 and advised that her boss could be contacted to deduct money at source or debt collectors might be called in. Penny agreed to pay £5 a week. She further increased her hours of employment from 15 to 30 and even gave her precious border collie Meggie to a friend, and she even told her GP she was considering death.

Subsequently, on June 14 she took an overdose at her one-bed flat, and an inquest in Maidstone learned that Penny’s mental health had declined quickly after her benefits were cut, and coroner Georgina Gibbs recorded a finding of suicide, stating this because Penny had left notes for her children.

The benefits system punishes people in work and fails to take mental health conditions seriously. These people are destroying people’s lives, they have blood on their hands and whatever self-respect people have left, the authorities are pounding, and the DWP really have no conception how serious it can be living with depression and anxiety.

There’s a serious lack of support and the authorities should have been seeking to help Penny.

Canterbury City Council, the DWP and NHS Business Services Authority all extended their condolences to the family, that’s almost like locking the barn door after the horse has bolted, and it’s not good enough.

This is all so tragic because the Business Authority are behaving like wheel clampers for the NHS, hitting on the sick and most defenceless and making threats by giving out penalties. Yet, the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage can live it up with fancy champagne and lunches and nothing is said, it’s absolutely sickening.

The council are evil and their sympathies are false, with a Tory policy that is shameful, cruel and corrupt to the core, and this is an especially distressing case and if a person has mental health problems they’re not handled with respect compared to someone with a physical disability, particularly by some segments of the NHS, which is not right in a seemingly cultured modern western culture.

Mum Criticises Basildon Hospital

Chelsea Clarke took her daughter Dolcie-Rae to the hospital after she came down with a very high temperature and a rash over most of her body. She alleges she was made to wait in the hospital for more than 24 hours to get treatment and states they were badly handled by some of the nurses in Puffin Ward.

Basildon Hospital has declared Miss Clarke encountered a bad experience and the member of staff, who was a temporary agency worker, is no longer working at the hospital.

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Miss Clark, 21, from Laindon, Essex said that she took her daughter back to the hospital shortly after 6 pm on November 25. She was put with her daughter in the main A&E department outside the X-ray because her daughter was contagious.

Dolcie had not drunk or eaten anything all day and her mum had reported this to the hospital when they arrived and informed them that Dolcie didn’t have any wet nappies and the hospital didn’t appear to be that concerned.

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Following hours of waiting, about 9 pm they were seen by a nurse and sent back to wait for the doctor, but hours went by. Dolcie still wasn’t drinking, still no wet nappy and still no tests done, and her mother was seething by this time.

They were kept in A&E waiting for so long and in the end, they were there the whole night before anything was done properly and she was getting so upset, no one appeared to be that concerned about how Dolcie was, and letting a mum wait with a baby less than a year old for so many hours overnight is unacceptable.

She claims a nurse also simply laughed at her when she said Dolcie had only drunk two ounces of water all day, and Miss Clarke said she was told to go home with her daughter at 2.30am, but refused as she believed her daughter was dehydrated and needed further treatment.

She was put in Puffin Ward the next day.

Dolcie was released from Puffin Ward on November 27 and is recovering at the family home in Laindon, but it beggars belief on how they were treated by some of the staff, and although Dolcie is home now and getting better, they were in A&E far too long and some of the nurses were especially rude.

Basildon Hospital has apologised to the mother after she was made to wait overnight for her daughter to be treated, and Basildon Hospital might have apologised but the truth remains that this sort of treatment of a baby so young should never have occurred.

Mum Chelsea Clarke said she was made to wait for hours overnight before her daughter could be treated for hand, foot and mouth disease. Miss Clarke further alleged a member of staff was rude to her when she said her daughter was dehydrated from only having two ounces of water in the last 12 hours.

Basildon Hospital has apologised to Miss Clarke for the extended delay she encountered, caused by a busy A&E, but this is not good enough, children and the elderly should be a priority.

Dawn Patience, director of nursing at Basildon Hospital stated: “We are committed to providing our patients with high-quality care and when we experience exceptionally high attendances to A&E staff work hard to avoid the long waits this patient and her mum experienced and we have personally apologised to her.”

But this is not the first time something has gone wrong at Basildon Hospital, and okay Basildon Hospital has been taken out of Special Measures, but when people are saying they wouldn’t recommend it to their friends, well, it does make you wonder.

And people dying because they’ve failed to do their job properly does not give me confidence at all, and when a young patient suffered an epileptic fit, doctors were unable to give her the anti-seizure medications she needed because the stock was out of date.

And to make matters worse, there was no senior staff on duty to treat her because it was 5.30pm and the consultants were on call but not on site after 5 pm.

It’s horrifying the type of care the hospital is giving, and even though Basildon Hospital succeeded in getting off special measures, it presently seems like they should go back on them once again, and following a second grave incident in October 2012, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) harshly criticised the management and culture of the children’s services.

In the meantime, in a survey, half of the hospital’s staff announced they wouldn’t recommend it to their friends and family, and the organisation needed to put empathy, care, openness, transparency and learning at its core.

These are all worthy aims, but to truly translate them into action, hospital administrators must be more visible. So, they changed their structures and put doctors and nurses at the core of management and decision making, ensuring that safety was their first priority.

Well, as you can see, it hasn’t made much of a difference, even when they employed 200 more clinical staff and put greater importance on delivering the best care 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with consultants rotas ensuring senior cover out of hours.

But it’s apparent that not much has been accomplished at Basildon Hospital.

And then in 2017, there was Reeta Saidha who was admitted to Basildon Hospital suffering a miscarriage. Reeta died from sepsis shortly after suffering a miscarriage, she was 15 weeks pregnant when admitted to Basildon Hospital in Essex last December after her waters broke.

Her husband Bhooshan said that doctors at Basildon Hospital told Reeta that she should wait 24 hours to see whether the labour would advance naturally, but Reeta Saidah’s health declined quickly over the course of three days until her death on December 23, Reeta was only 38 years old, and left two young children behind.

Her husband Bhooshan has yet to recover from his loss and it has torn his world apart. He is still grieving and it’s still pretty hard, and a pretty dark time for him, but what he needed to find out was what happened so that it doesn’t happen to anybody else.

It was all quite surprising to him that the hospital didn’t do anything because his wife had failed to progress in labour in the past, but Reeta was not in any discomfort, so they waited as instructed but nothing happened, so she was asked to wait another 24 hours, and again nothing happened.

Nevertheless, Mrs Saidha’s health started to worsen, and she worsened so much that she was in total agony, and it was documented on the Thursday afternoon that she had sepsis. Sepsis develops quickly within the body and increasingly reduces the possibilities of survival except if immediate action is taken.

Such a response should include specialist consultation, very tight monitoring and the quick elimination of the cause of the infection, which in this case was the baby, and the first hour since the diagnosis of sepsis is crucial.

Reeta’s husband trusted the doctors and at the time believed that she was in the best place and he was not too stressed at the time because he was not made aware of the sepsis and thought the pain she was having was from the birth.

Little did he know that she was fighting for her life.

Her health proceeded to worsen and on the Friday, she had gone into Septic Shock, Stage 3 renal failure and DIC, a condition which affects blood clotting and causes extreme bleeding. She was then taken to theatre but her symptoms had now grown to critical levels.

It was Friday morning, over 18 hours following the diagnosis of sepsis when doctors eventually referred her to theatre to remove the baby. She was then taken to intensive care and the next thing her husband knew she was on life support.

An inquest learned that the sepsis was induced by an infection which occurred after the premature rupture of her membranes and the sepsis quickly spread through her body.

Mr Saidha said shortly after arriving at the hospital it was obvious the baby would not survive.

Reeta was unresponsive from Thursday evening even though it looked like her hand had moved the following evening, but this was false hope for Reeta’s husband because the sepsis had been allowed to progress to a life-threatening level even before she was transferred to the intensive care unit.

On Saturday morning Mr Saidha got an emergency call from the hospital saying he must come to intensive care quickly as is wife was no longer responding to treatment. She died several hours later on December 23.

All her family are completely heartbroken and Mr Saidha had to tell his children that their mum wasn’t coming home. The children had a big get well soon poster for her, and when he stepped through the door he had to tell them that their mother had died. They are so young and they don’t understand, it’s really hard for them.

Mr Saidha said he is concerned about the treatment provided to his wife in the days leading to her death, and he hinted that the doctors were more preoccupied with his wife’s labour rather than the threat presented by the sepsis, and said that his wife should have been seen by intensive care specialists at an earlier stage as this may have spared her life.

With all of this in mind, it’s no surprise people are losing all faith in the NHS, there are far too many blunders in our hospitals, and Basildon Hospital is top of the list.

Christmas Housing Crisis

Almost 320,000 people will be homeless this Christmas because of the housing crisis. There’s one in 200 people that are living in makeshift accommodation, hostels or sleeping rough, and the amount of homeless has increased by 13,000 last year to 319,837.

This includes 294,952 people in emergency accommodation or B&Bs, 5,096 rough sleepers, 14,867 in hostels and 4,922 in rooms offered by social services. London is the worst with one person in 52 (170,000) identified as homeless. In Brighton, it’s one in 67, Birmingham one in 73 and Manchester one in 135.

The amount sleeping rough has more than doubled since the Tories came to power in 2010 when there were 1,768 people living on the streets. But earlier this year the Government announced it was spending £100 million to tackle the problem.

But half had already been committed to tackling rough sleeping and homelessness, with the rest “reprioritisation” within existing budgets.

We urgently need action now.

The charity highlighted the case of Telli Afrik, who had a job but could not afford his private rent. He sleeps in one room in a hostel with wife Janet and children, Bridgit, three, and Beatrice, five, in Waltham Forest, East London, and his family are at breaking point.

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire stated: “We are determined to respond to the causes of homelessness.”

Welcome to Theresa May’s Dickensian England as we fall further into the trenches of purgatory, dragged there by this vile shameful Tory government who couldn’t care less as long as they hold on to power.

The Tories are hate machines which just rolls on, creating suffering and death in its wake, and there’s no way to support this deliberate Tory policy that enforces poverty, and then there are the Tory voters that are so full of hatred that they will go mad if you criticise the Tory party.

But the Tories housing policy is to make more people homeless and to target the poor, the sick, the dying and the disabled as they can’t argue back against the Tory bullies, and with things as they’re going, they’ll be housing the sick, the dying and the disabled in workhouses several years down the line, if Tory voters let them get away with it.

Welcome to Theresa May’s Tory Britain where the streets are paved with homeless people, even entire families while Theresa May’s Tory government continue to be propped up.

So, it’s a Merry Christmas from your wicked Tory party, but don’t worry, you’ll be able to get a food bank parcel, don’t worry, your accommodation is only temporary, a hostel with a family of five living in it, and then when they do get permanent housing, if they ever do, the government will sort them out a nice Universal Credit package that might take around 5 weeks to sort out.

Welcome to the Tory party factory where they tell you that they want to support their citizens and that they genuinely care about you, but what they’ve really done is cause heartbreak, and it all started off with Margaret Thatcher selling off council homes.

Many of those local authority houses were sold for a pittance and finished up in private landlords hands. Now housing benefit doesn’t come back to the council and not enough homes are built, so housing is beyond peoples reach.

It should make you laugh because now we have the Tories addressing the homelessness problem that they created in the first place, you really couldn’t make this stuff up.

The Tories are always discussing the problem of homelessness, that they created and are in denial of, and in a civilised nation, solving the dilemma should be at the pinnacle of their priorities, whichever party are in government.

But do you really think they’ll consider all those homeless people this Christmas when they’re eating their Turkey and sipping champagne in front of the fireplace?

It’s really disheartening to see people homeless particularly at Christmas, but at any time it’s sad, but of course, our government don’t give a damn, and I honestly don’t believe anybody imagined the suffering that such a ruthless assortment of dictators could force on people with their neverending austerity policies.

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