In a world gone mad

For time out of mind and in the words of the old song: ‘It’s the same the whole world over It’s the poor wot gets the blame It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure Ain’t it all a bleedin’ shame.’ Were Robert Tressell, who wrote ‘The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’, alive today, despite all the technological advances […]

Retraumatising the victims of rape and eradicating the poor

Rape is infamously and notoriously difficult to prosecute and that’s if it even gets that far. According to the Crime Survey which is conducted for the Office for National Statistics, ‘on average 85,000 women are raped every year and 400,000 are sexually assaulted. But a mere 15,000 rapes are actually reported. Of those, only a […]

The despicable powers that be and us

It was a huge shock to lose a good friend and campaigner on Monday 1st January 2017. I spent the day in and out of tears, but as the day unfolded I was astonished to realise the extent of her reach and the number of lives she had profoundly touched. It was typical of Denise […]

Culling the stock

Last Sunday I read an article on the cost of badger culling. It is enormously costly, between 2012 and 2014 we paid £16.8 million to kill 2,476 badgers, that’s £6,785 per badger. In Wales, where they use vaccinations, the cost per badger is £293, that’s £6,492 cheaper per badger, a saving of £32.5 million and […]

In the Tory world stripped of humanity people don’t matter

A letter a day to number 10. No 1,539 Wednesday 31 August 2016. Dear Mrs May, Within the DWP, as Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) casually informed us at a parliamentary hearing, people receiving social security payments are known as ‘stock’ and, infamously, David Freud said, “people who are poorer should be prepared to take the […]

Crabb to deploy smart strategies against sick and disabled people

A letter a day to number 10. No 1,431 Thursday 12 May 2016. Dear Mr Cameron, Isn’t this just juicy? We had ‘stock’ from Iain Duncan Smith, ‘swarms’ from you and now we have ‘cohorts’ from Stephen Crabb. Cohorts of inconvenient sick and disabled people. Having told parliament less than two months ago, “we have […]

Four years of witness to the depravity of the worst government in UK history

A letter a day to number 10. No 1,374 Thursday 17 March 2016. Dear Mr Cameron, I hope you’ve got the party poppers out. It’s four years since I started these little daily chats. A witness to the depravity of the worst government in UK history. I love life. Life is the natural expression of […]

Work coaches in GP surgeries is a death knell for patient care. #DoNoHarm

A letter a day to number 10. No 1,350 Monday 22 February 2016. Dear Mr Cameron, It is little wonder that the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) is now widely seen in Britain as the department of death and despair. Iain Duncan Smith told MPs in 2013 that people on Employment and Support Allowance […]

Auschwitz is not there for inspiration for Iain Duncan Smith, it is meant to be a lesson

A letter a day to number 10. No 1,236 Tuesday 20 October 2015. Dear Mr Cameron, For a man who has visited Auschwitz and written a fairly detailed account of his experiences I can only conclude that Iain Duncan Smith has found inspiration in the brutal cruelty of those who so willingly presided over the […]

Britain is a humanitarian rudderless ship

A letter a day to number 10. No 1,195 Monday 07 September 2015. Dear Mr Cameron, Britain is a humanitarian rudderless ship. The refugee crisis is a media storm in this country because right now Britain has no humanitarian government or leader. Your initial response of calling refugees a ‘swarm’ was on a par with […]