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When the Forces Of Oppression at Bangor University – in the form of Professor Fergus Lowe, Lyn Meadows and Stephanie Marriott (see previous posts) – became particularly intolerable, one of my colleagues symbolically borrowed a copy of Frantz Fanon's volume 'The Wretched Of The Earth' from the University library. This man's life was indeed being made wretched by the aforementioned oppressors, but like me, he was on good terms with a few Empowered Service Users and knew that their lives were even more wretched.
There are a few ends that need to be tied up following recent posts re details of the lives of the wretched and the names of those who made their lives so wretched, so in this post I'll cover a few such matters and people.
Previous posts eg. 'Professor Prestigious And His Associates' discussed how in the 1980s, Thatch was only ever persuaded to allow the public health campaign re HIV/AIDS when one of Dafydd's umbrellas, the then Chief Medical Officer Sir Donald Acheson, explained very clearly to Thatch and her Ministers that AIDS was incurable, affected gay men in particular and that some of her Ministers and associates who were having promiscuous gay sex (eg. Peter Morrison) were going to die from this along with the rent boys if they did not change their behaviour. It was then that dear old Norman Fowler, the Secretary of State for the DHSS, 1981-87, who was also concealing the activities of Dafydd and the gang, got on board with the 'Don't Die Of Ignorance' campaign and agreed to one of those leaflets being shoved through the letterbox of every household in the Britain.
Previous posts eg. 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Bodies Under Canary Wharf' explained that the political class knew that many of the young men who died from AIDS in the 1980s and 90s were rent boys who had been forced into sex work as kids in care, often while in children's homes in north Wales. That is why there was so much attention paid to 'confidentiality' and not identifying those patients when Princess Di went to visit them; those young men were witnesses to a huge scandal and them effectively dying in conditions of secrecy was just another part of the cover-up. Top Docs knew the score, as did all the Angels, counsellors and other people who worked with AIDS patients, including Top Docs Professor Michael Adler and Tony Pinching, as well as Adler's wife Baroness Margaret Jay, who was the daughter of Jim Callaghan and was appointed as a Health Minister by Miranda in May 1997 (see post 'Holding The Country To Ransom – Part I').
The first NHS wards for the treatment of AIDS patients were at the Middlesex Hospital; it was to those wards that Di made her much publicised visit in 1987 to Fight The Stigma. It did not escape my notice that Gwynne the lobotomist trained at the Middlesex and enjoyed lifelong protection from the alumni network of that institution. However, I missed something obvious that, as ever, suggested that the conspiracy and mutual back-scratching may have been worse than I thought.
The Middlesex was shut down in 2005 and was subsequently demolished, but it was located just down the road from Soho. The district served by the Middlesex was Bloomsbury. It was Sir Clough Williams-Ellis's friends from the Bloomsbury Set who were the visiting bohemians to Croesor in north Wales in the summers throughout the middle years of the 20th century who hung out with Bertrand Russell et al, some of whom made use of Gwynne and later on Dafydd to deal with awkward customers (see previous posts). Clough married Amabel Strachey, the daughter of John St Loe Strachey, the Editor of 'The Spectator', for which Amabel wrote (see previous posts). Amabel's brother John – Evelyn John St Loe Strachey – was a Labour politician, serving as Minister for Food and then Secretary of State for War under Clement Attlee (see previous posts). At Oxford, John Strachey was friends with Lord Bob Boothby, who later became known for being a bisexual Tory who used rent boys and was mates with some unsavoury people, including the Krays (see previous posts). The Stracheys' extended network spanned a whole spectrum of influential people; fascists, communists, pacifists, members of the Tory, Labour and Liberal Parties, psychoanalysts, Top Doctors, writers, artists, radicals, suffragettes etc. People tangled with them at their peril and many of the extended network spent time in the Croesor area. They weren't at the mercy of Gwynne and Dafydd, but the people who pissed them off were, as of course were local people.
In 1987 'AIDS Britain 1987' a film about the various Gov't funded programmes which were being set up in the UK to combat the spread of HIV and AIDS was made; this film is now part of the London Screen Archives collection. The initiatives featured in the film included counselling, specialist hospital wards, a public education strategy, charity work and a clean needle programme for drug users. Experts in each field were interviewed about their work. The Middlesex Hospital featured, as did Professor Michael Adler, who explained how HIV is contracted and passed on, as well as how it cannot be passed on. Adler stated that a national strategy was needed and that the NHS and social services need to be aware of what was required of them. Tony Newton, Minister of State for Heath, 1986-88, explained what the Gov't was doing in terms of public education. Alison Taylor wrote to Tony Newton in Feb 1988, describing a brutal assault that she had witnessed. Thatch then appointed Newton as Secretary of State for Social Security in 1989 and he remained in the post until 1992. Tony Newton was Lord President of the Council, 1992-97. One of the roles of Lord President of the Council is to serve as the visitor for UCNW (Bangor University). So Newton was in that post during the frantic years when the demands for a Public Inquiry into the abuse of children in north Wales became louder and louder, when the Jillings Investigation took place and when the cover-up which was the Waterhouse Inquiry was planned and launched. Throughout these years, former kids in care and psych patients were found dead constantly and five witnesses to the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal were killed by a firebomb (see post 'The Silence Of The Welsh Lambs'). Newton could be relied upon to keep quiet and not investigate any of it, that had been demonstrated after Alison wrote to him.
Baron Newton of Braintree; handsomely rewarded for ignoring serious organised crime:
Someone else starring in 'AIDS Britain 1987' was Professor Robin Weiss, who was interviewed about how research into HIV and AIDS was progressing and in what directions it needed to progress.
Robert Anthony "Robin" Weiss was Professor of Viral Oncology at UCL and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. His research has focused on retroviruses, initially as a means of understanding T-cell leukaemia and other cancers. His breakthrough discovery was in 1971 and involved demonstrating that the retroviral genome in chickens follows the rules of Mendelian inheritance. Because HIV/AIDS only came to prominence in the west in the 1980s, Weiss, like all the other researchers who became well-known for their work on HIV, didn't have previous experience of HIV per se, although HIV is a retrovirus.
So what was Robin Weiss doing before his work on HIV? He was the Director of the Institute of Cancer Research at the Royal Marsden Hospital no less, 1980-98. So Weiss was at the Institute of Cancer Research/Royal Marsden at the time of the research fraud perpetrated by the Institute of Cancer Research/Royal Marsden that was exposed in 1990, involving Dr Tony Francis's former colleague Peter Macguire and which resulted in the death – presumed to be suicide – of Professor Tim McElwain (see posts 'Reports Of Death Were Greatly Exaggerated' and 'Apocalypse Now'). When Peter Macguire, a psychiatrist from Manchester, suddenly decided to become a cancer researcher and obtained funding from the Cancer Research Campaign to do this, I was working for the Cancer Research Campaign at the University of Surrey in a team led by Professor Vincent Marks, brother of the President of the BMA Dr John Marks. See previous posts.
John Marks was in an all-out war with Ken Clarke at the time, they really loathed each other, but the priority was to keep a lid on Dafydd et al. Not only were the BMA providing Tony Francis and the other self-styled 'BMA psychiatrists' in north Wales with free advice in terms of how to have me framed and banged up without trial in a secure unit (see eg. posts 'Gwlad y Menig Gwynion' and 'Criminals Are Getting Away With It') but I was told by Vincent Marks et al in Surrey after a year that there was no more funding for my post to continue. It was only a few months ago that I discovered that while I was still working at Surrey, my data was given to Nicola Curtin at Newcastle-upon-Tyne University, who published it under her name without my knowledge (see previous posts). Curtin's funding did continue – partly as a result of my work – and Curtin is now Professor Nicola Curtin. Curtin was not part of our team at Surrey nor one of our research partners and I had never heard of her until I found that paper with my name on it along with hers, some months ago.
In the 1970s, Robin Weiss worked for the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. The ICRF were also involved with the research fraud starring Peter Macguire which ended in the death of Tim McElwain.
Readers might also remember that other laughable bit of cancer research conducted by Dafydd's mates at Ysbyty Gwynedd and UCNW and published in the 'British Journal of Cancer' in Dec 1990, which was hailed as a scientific first in the world's media but had to be quietly forgotten about days later, when it was pointed out that the research was flawed (see post 'They Think It's All Over – It Is Now'). Deeply flawed – it was based on a control sample of three and one of the controls did not have the illness under investigation. It is worth noting here that the published paper stated that it had originally been submitted to the journal in 1988 but was returned for redrafting. As I explained in previous posts, Dafydd's gang were in desperate need of good PR in 1987-88, so it is quite possible that they did decide to construct themselves as World Leading Cancer Researchers at that time. However, Dec 1990 was a very busy month for Dafydd and the gang. I had just about been forced out of my job at St George's Hospital Medical School – I now know as a result of me refusing to keep quiet about Dafydd et al – and in Dec 1990 Drs Tony and Sadie Francis tried to have me imprisoned on the basis of their perjury.
That article in the 'British Journal of Cancer' appeared at a very convenient time for Dafydd and the paedophile gang. Everyone involved was so dishonest that it wouldn't be beyond probability if that paper had not been drafted in 1988 at all, but had been a quick effort timed to appear when I was marched off to the slammer and if I protested it would then have been my word against the word of World Leading Cancer Researchers. That would certainly explain why such a shoddy effort at fabricating research appeared to have escaped the attention of the peer reviewers who 'advised on the redrafting'.
It was around 1990 that fireworks began to go off in the School of Social Sciences as well, which resulted in a hate campaign against a senior sociologist and an article in 'The Guardian' falsely accusing him of discriminating against Welsh people when making appointing staff (see previous posts eg. 'Badlands'). The whole thing was cooked up by Dafydd's gang as a distraction in the wake of the North Wales Police beginning their investigation into the possibility of a VIP paedophile ring in north Wales/Cheshire.
Who was Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Cancer until 2005? Robin Weiss. His successor, A. L. Harris, stated that Weiss showed "clear vision in developing the British Journal of Cancer into [a] multidisciplinary journal with a focus on research that aims to deliver benefits to cancer patients." Presumably by publishing crap written by the colleagues of a gang of traffickers. Who is A.L. Harris? None other than Professor Adrian Harris of Oxford University, who was mates with Vincent Marks et al at Surrey and unlike Nicola Curtin, was one of the partners on the project that I was working on (see previous posts).
The 'British Journal of Cancer' might well have a vested interest in publishing crap written by people who have been involved in research frauds funded by the Cancer Research Campaign; the journal was owned by the CRC (now known as CR UK).
For details of more fraudulent research conducted by people funded by/associated with the CRC and CR UK, see previous posts eg. 'Oh Lordy, It's CR UK'.
San and Tray's friend Baz:
San and Tray and Professor Robin Weiss:
A few Interesting Facts:
My immediate boss at Surrey, Dr Wynne Aherne, came from the Carmarthen area and in 1988 still had friends and family there. One of my colleagues at Surrey, Wynne's friend, was Anthea Hardcastle, who was originally Anthea Jones and came from Cricieth. Anthea also had friends and family still in north Wales and two of her closest friends was at that time was the Principal Biochemist at Ysbyty Gwynedd and his wife
Tony Francis knew the Windbag, who in 1988 still had delusions that he was going to be the next PM, despite this scene in June 1987:
Although traditionally there were plenty of Tory Top Doctors, by 1988 the Top Docs generally and of course the BMA in particular had fallen out with the Tories big time (Ken Clarke believed that John Marks was 'very left wing'), as a result of Thatcher's contempt and hostility towards the professions and even more saliently because of the new management structure which Thatch was imposing on the NHS. In the late 1980s, Top Doctors were gravitating towards the SDP – Dr Death, who personally knew some of the facilitators of the trafficking ring in north Wales, was the big pulling factor – or, particularly in Wales, the Labour Party. I never saw much evidence of any great commitment to socialism on the part of the majority of Top Doctors, but they did know that the Windbag would do whatever they told him, in the way that the BMA love Mark Drakeford because he takes orders from Top Doctors and gives them money when they ask for it. A case of a well-heeled Oliver (Brooke) who wants some more. The Labour Party has always enjoyed support from the Socialist Health Association and the Top Doctors who have doubled up as Labour MPs are usually members of this organisation.
Could the Windbag let us know if he has any info about this mass outbreak of research fraud in the late 1980s/1990 on the part of associates of Dafydd and the gang who also had links with people who worked with me?
Robin Weiss is now described as a molecular biologist, but his first degree was in Zoology from UCL in 1961 and then he was awarded his PhD in 1969. So Weiss could well have known some of the Zoologists at, or associated with, UCNW during the years that Dafydd's gang ran UCNW.
In the 1970s, Weiss spent some time working with Peter K Vogt in the USA. Vogt discovered oncogenes that play important roles in human cancers and has has received numerous awards, including the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award (1989), the Charles S. Mott Prize (1991), the Szent-Gyorgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research (2010), the Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Cancer Research (2013), the IHV Lifetime Achievement Award for Scientific Contributions (2016) and the AICF Prize for Scientific Excellence in Medicine (2017). Vogt has been elected to several academies, including the National Academy of Sciences USA, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German National Academy of Arts and Sciences Leopoldina and the American Academy of Microbiology. Vogt has served on several scientific advisory and editorial boards, e.g., the National Foundation for Cancer Research and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (since 2000).
In 1977, Robin Weiss was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation. In 1997, the year that the Waterhouse Inquiry began, Weiss became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Robin Weiss returned to work at UCL in 1999 and in the same year became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. In November 2001, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded Weiss the M. W. Beijerinck Prize for Virology, noting especially his work on retroviruses. In the same year, Weiss delivered the Leeuwenhoek lecture. Weiss was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
|Professor Weiss has pioneered aspects of our understanding of HIV and AIDS, particularly on the identification of CD4 as the HIV receptor and on the analysis of neutralizing antibodies. He has also conducted research on AIDS-associated malignancies and on pig viruses in relation to xenotransplantation. He has been President of the British Association for Cancer Research and he is currently President of the Society for General Microbiology.
In 2007 Professor Weiss was awarded the prestigious Ernst Chain Award by Imperial College, in recognition of his pioneering work on HIV/AIDS. Robin Weiss is currently leading a $25 million international research consortium, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in HIV vaccine discovery.
An interview with Robin Weiss which shed further light on his greatness can be found on the i-Sense EPSRC IRC Early-Warning Sensing Systems for Infectious Disease website. i-Sense started in October 2013 as a five-year, £11 million Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC), funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). i-Sense describes its objective as 'to build a new generation of digital sensing systems to identify and prevent outbreaks of infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance, much earlier than ever before. Early detection and accurate diagnosis is key to helping patients gain faster access to care and protecting populations from disease. Our mission strongly aligns to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Challenge Research Fund. We work in partnership with end users in low and middle-income countries, to build innovative digital technologies that meet their needs.'
The i-Sense website states that:
'Professor Robin Weiss is a leading researcher whose discoveries transformed our understanding of HIV during its early years in the 1980s. This work paved the way for changes in HIV testing and treatment that saved lives. Robin has been a key collaborator and mentor of i-sense researchers working on the development of HIV diagnostics. During this interview, Robin shares with us his remarkable career spanning 50 years; working on various retroviruses before applying his vast knowledge to HIV, and how his research is now being applied across several pathogenic infectious diseases like Ebola. Robin reminds us how far we've come, but also the obstacles we still face, in reaching the ultimate goal of eradicating HIV and AIDS.'
According to Robin: 'I have spent almost all of my research career working with retroviruses, particularly HIV. For the first 18 years, I was working with retroviruses that cause cancer in chickens, and then in 1980, the first human retrovirus was discovered by Robert Gallo in the US, which causes a form of leukaemia. It was then that I switched to human retroviruses and a few years later HIV was discovered.
At the time of the HIV discovery, I was Director of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and we were one of the few labs in the UK with genuine expertise in retroviruses. We dived right in, were able to obtain the virus in 1984, and found we could grow it to high titre. With Richard Tedder, clinical virologist at UCL, we developed the first really good diagnostic test. This test detected antibodies produced by the body in reaction to the virus. It was based on a radio-immunoassay and was converted into the then novel ELISA method. The test went into blood donor screening in 1985, across most countries in the British Commonwealth.
Radioimmunoassay was the specialism of the team led by Vincent Marks at the University of Surrey. Wynne Aherne in particular developed radio-immunoassays for many purposes; my job at Surrey was developing a radioimmunoassay. I don't know Robin Weiss, but I do remember a woman who worked in Vincent Marks's team in 1988 who was working on HIV. Because Thatcher's Gov't – and the Top Docs – were in such a panic over HIV/AIDS and it was known that it was going to devastate some African nations, Thatch's Gov't had ordered everyone working on HIV to co-ordinate and work WITH each other, not AGAINST each other, which is what so often happens in science. The woman at Surrey used to rave about how great it was that funding was secure and that people therefore shared their results with each other and that collaboration was the order of the day. The only dissenter was an Australian scientists who pissed everyone off by claiming that HIV did not cause AIDS and he offered to inject himself with HIV to demonstrate this.
Robin Weiss will have known that researcher at Surrey and although collaboration was allegedly the order of the day, because Weiss was the senior researcher, he will have been credited with being the Man Who Discovered Things. So Weiss knew Vincent Marks et al who, at least by 1988, were concealing the crimes of Dafydd et al in north Wales…
The i-Sense interview with Weiss continues:
'also in 1985 – You made an even bigger scientific discovery that same year, one that many feel is one of the most significant breakthroughs in our understanding of HIV. Can you tell us a little more about it?
Yes, we identified the cell surface receptor that HIV uses to dock onto human cells, known as CD4. I think that's what I'm best known for. In 1986, we published a paper reporting that while the CD4 antigen is a component of the HIV receptor, it was not sufficient by itself for the virus to enter cells; it needed an extra unknown factor. It took another 10 years before the second factor was identified as a chemokine co-receptor was discovered by Ed Berger at NIH. With hindsight, our predictions were quite smart!'
In 1986, I was still a postgrad at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School/Hammersmith Hospital; Dafydd et al were busy sticking the knife into me via their contacts there, but I didn't realise that at the time. I did however find out about a great deal of wrongdoing and questionable research (see posts eg. 'A Cause Close To Our Hearts' and 'I Don't Believe It!'). So whatever Weiss published in 1986 won't have been anything to do with me being a witness to Dafydd et al's crimes. But Weiss didn't actually set the world on fire in 1986; Weiss claims to have PREDICTED something that somebody else discovered 10 years later; then claims the credit for being Mystic Meg. Weiss and the bodies for which he was working and which funded him had in the meantime been exposed as frauds and liars. A member of the team had even committed suicide – at least that's what his death had been attributed to – as a result of the disgrace. Can we believe anything that was said by Weiss et al, especially predictions of discoveries made by other people ten years later? It's not as if anyone was going to contradict Weiss over these claims; he was riding high by then, had a Chair at UCL and Waterhouse was on the horizon, no-one was going to rock that boat, no matter how pissed off with him they might have been. Up in north Wales, Dafydd, Tony Francis et al were in the final stages of yet another more plan to fit me up and lock me up.
'A pioneering breakthrough and very ahead of its time! How was it you came to discover this?
Our retrovirus lab collaborated with a very good immunology lab at UCL led by Peter Beverley and he had all the monoclonal antibodies known in 1984 to T-cell surface antigens that we needed. We screened all 160 of them all blind and picked out 14 that blocked HIV infection. When we deciphered the code each of those 14 was an anti-CD4 antibody – a clear-cut result!
What was it like in the early days of HIV research?
It was exciting and a little bit frightening! We didn't know how to handle this virus in the lab. Every six weeks we would screen everyone in the lab with our provisional diagnostic test as we didn't want to become infected or give it to our partners; it was always a nervous day when the results came out. We couldn't send it off or receive results anonymously – there were only five of us and we were the only ones with the test.'
I remember it well. No-one knew anything about HIV, everyone was equally in the dark and many researchers refused to work with the virus such was the anxiety. So Weiss and his four colleagues were the only ones who knew what was going on in their lab…
'Yet scientifically it was exciting. The CD4 discovery came quickly, the following year we published on neutralising antibodies (ones that block infection) and proved that although people living with HIV showed high levels of antibodies, they only have very low levels of protective antibodies, which was very different to other human retroviruses we knew about. This still remains a major challenge in vaccine development.
There was also a lot of fear and we had a role in trying to inform behavioural understanding. As some of the only spokespeople in the UK for HIV, we received a lot of queries.'
Told you so. Robin Weiss was the word of God. There was no-one to question him or his results.
'My most recent work before my lab closed a few years ago was applying all the work I had learned about HIV envelopes to other viruses: Rabies, SARS, H5N1 influenza, and two of my former postdocs have done this with Ebola. It is useful for high throughput and because the pseudotypes themselves do not require high containment.'
Weiss could churn them out…
'This might be quite difficult to pin down, but what for you has been your greatest accomplishment?
For me, my biggest discovery was actually one I made when I was still a PhD student at UCL, when I was able to deduce that some retroviruses are inherited in as viral genomes integrated into host chromosomal DNA. Now we know that ~8% of the human genome derives from 'fossil' retroviruses. I was the first to see this and it was my first ever virus paper published in 1967, so last year we celebrated 50 years since this discovery! Working together with a chicken geneticist, Jim Payne, we later proved through crosses between two breeds of chicken that the endogenous retroviruses are inherited as individual Mendelian loci.'
So for some reason Weiss is not credited with earth-shattering breakthroughs with HIV.
Robin Weiss's family show the same pattern of inheritance as Colin Blakemore offspring in that Weiss's children have inherited the gene for being Famous Scientists as well.
'For example, during the Ebola epidemic my daughter, who is an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, went to Sierra Leone where people were doing contact tracing with bits of paper to try and track who was likely to develop the virus. She went there and converted this process to mobile phones'.
That will be the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who offered me a place to do an MSc in Medical Microbiology which was suddenly, inexplicably and unlawfully withdrawn after Dr D.G.E. Wood found out about the offer. Wood had contacts at the LSHTM. See previous posts. It was the withdrawal of the place at the LSHTM that was the reason why I did the MSc at Hammersmith instead. The traffickers of north Wales didn't know that I had that place, so they couldn't throw a spanner in the works until they found out that I was actually on the course. So while I was on the course, Dafydd had me unlawfully arrested and imprisoned.
Robin Weiss is a devoted dad and granddad:
'Without a doubt, my most rewarding role has been acting as a mentor to young scientists. I am very proud of my scientific children and grandchildren, so to speak. To see young scientists come up and do well is a great feeling.'
Particularly when they're members of your own family Robin!
Robin continues:
'I was Director of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, with 600+ employees for 10 years. I think I did a pretty good job, so that is also satisfying.'
600+ employees. Involved in research fraud. Their careers all continued in spite of the 1990 scandal which led to the death of Tim McElwain. Terrifying isn't it.
The scandal didn't hold Robin back:
'Since retiring from laboratory research, I've served on international advisory committees, such as the chairing the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and being a founder member on the Board of the new Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI). While I still possess my mental marbles it's rewarding to be able to offer advice and expertise on research and management, especially in Africa, where TB and HIV epidemics are most alarming. Currently, I advise the Indian HIV Translational Antibody Research laboratory and I'm a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Not least, I enjoy being affiliated to i-Sense owing to my expertise on llama single-chain antibodies, sometimes called nanobodies.'
Ralph Oxley, one of the lecturers in the Dept of Plant Biology at UCNW who was a colleague of D.G.E. Wood's wife Chris Wood and who was married to Isobel Hargreaves, a Gwynedd social worker who worked with Dafydd's gang, kept llamas. This lot are so bloody incestuous that I wouldn't be surprised if Ralph and Isobel supplied the llamas for Weiss's research. Ralph and Isobel kept their llamas at their home in Tregarth which also doubled up as a tourist attraction called 'The Joys of Life'. There were lots of fascinating anecdotes circulating about life chez Oxley. On one occasion Isobel got so angry when the alarm clock woke her up that she threw it through the window. The Oxleys also became famous for having their electricity disconnected because they didn't pay the bill and the llamas caused much complaint because they spat at people. None of these matters constituted serious offences and I take a liberal view of such chaos, but had one of Isobel's Empowered Service User clients (many of whom were destitute) been the subject of such tales, it would have been documented everywhere that they were 'chaotic and personality disordered'. Ralph and Isobel however, being in receipt of two salaries which at the time made them affluent by Gwynedd standards, were just pleasantly eccentric.
The Oxleys eventually moved to Menai Bridge and Ralph died of a heart attack some years ago. I presume that this was not yet another suspicious death, although Ralph was Someone Who Knew who pegged out just as Operational Pallial was launched and when it was clear that a Review of the Waterhouse Inquiry would be taking place. Everyone was very sad because the Oxleys were ready for a glorious retirement, having purchased a castle in Spain which they were renovating.
Incredible isn't it. Everyone who worked with that gang did really, really well for themselves even in the face of extreme fuckwittery. Which for Ralph began when he was young. The reason that Ralph didn't have a PhD was because he left his thesis on a bus before the viva and he didn't have a second copy. Not that it ever held him back…
The i-Sense website is emblazoned with the logos of the i-Sense partnership: EPSRC; UCL; Imperial College; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Newcastle University; University of Surrey; and Public Health England. That's the Public Health England which have just persuaded Theresa May's Gov't to add folic acid to all the flour for consumption in the UK on the basis of some not overwhelmingly convincing evidence (see comments following my post 'Slaves, Perfect Slaves').
Other bodies which the i-Sense website boasts that i-Sense works with are:
Academic partners: London Centre for Nanotechnology; UVRI (Uganda Virus Research Institute); IDH 5G innovation centre. Clinical partners: NHS; National Institute for Health Research; AHRI (Africa Health Research Institute); UCL Partners; Avacta; Bloomsbury Research Institute; Newcastle-upon-Tyne NHS Foundation Trust; Farr (The Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research); flusurvey.org.uk. Industry partners: Google; microsoft; mologic; BD; FIND; OJBIO; Telefonica; TwistDx; Cambridge Life Sciences; microdrop technologies; Cepheid.
I am not the only person who is less than convinced by the claims of Robin Weiss. There is an extensive account available on the web, denouncing Weiss as 'Professor of Virology, Doctor of Spin', which is 'Edward Hooper's response to Robin Weiss's "Concluding remarks" at the 2001 Lincei conference on "Origin of HIV and Emerging Persistent Viruses". It is explained that 'This article is part of a collection of material on Polio vaccines and the origins of AIDS which in turn is part of Brian Martin's website on suppression of dissent' and 'In his concluding speech at the Lincei conference of September 2001, later published under the title 'Emerging Persistent Infections: Family Heirlooms and New Acquisitions' [Weiss, 2003], Professor Robin Weiss devoted a section to the origins of AIDS debate. However, like his other interventions in this debate at the Royal Society conference on "Origins of HIV and the AIDS epidemic" and in the pages of Nature, this paper contained many observations that were flawed, misleading, or simply untrue.'
After this introduction, there follows a complete destruction of some of Robin Weiss's work.
Robin Weiss mentions in his interview that two of his colleagues who were part of the Story Of HIV were Richard Tedder and Peter Beverly.
Richard Tedder was Head of the Department of Virology at the UCL Medical School and he now works as virologist at Public Health England.
Richard Tedder is the youngest son of Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Lord Arthur Tedder.
Arthur Tedder was a pilot and squadron commander in the Royal Flying Corps in WWI and he went on to serve as a senior officer in the RAF during the inter-war years when he served in Turkey, Great Britain and the Far East.
At the outbreak of WWII in 1939, Tedder's department was transferred to the newly created Ministry of Aircraft Production, but Tedder was unable to form a good working relationship with the Minister, Lord Beaverbrook and consequently with PM Churchill; on 29 November 1940, Tedder became Deputy Air Officer Commanding in Chief, RAF Middle East Command with the acting rank of Air Marshal. Tedder directed air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, including the evacuation of Crete and Operation Crusader in North Africa. His bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet". Later in the war Tedder took command of Mediterranean Air Command and in that role was closely involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily and then the Allied invasion of Italy. When Operation Overlord – the invasion of France -came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander at Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force under General Eisenhower.
However Tedder developed an antipathy towards the British General Montgomery and during the Battle of Normandy and later, he was a critic of Montgomery's performance and advocated Montgomery's removal from command. In the last year of the war, Tedder was sent to the Soviet Union to seek assistance as the Western Front came under pressure during the Battle of the Bulge. When the unconditional surrender of the Germans came in May 1945 Tedder signed on behalf of General Eisenhower. He was promoted to the substantive rank of Air Chief Marshal on 6 June 1945. Tedder was awarded the Soviet Order of Kutuzov (1st class) on 28 August 1945 and promoted to Marshal of the Royal Air Force on 12 September 1945.
Lord Arthur Tedder served as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, 1950-67. His election to that office was after a huge scrap and much bad feeling. Tedder was considered to be the 'establishment candidate' and a group of others entitled to vote – including Bertrand Russell, R.A.B. Butler, E.M. Forster and Lord Louis Mountbatten – supported the name put forward by another group of dons, Pandit Nehru, then India's PM. The atmosphere became so unpleasant that eventually Nehru asked to be nominated. In the end, just under 200 people voted, during drizzling rain. After half an hour of voting, the Senior Proctor announced that Tedder had been duly elected, without giving any figures. Who knows, around the back of the sheds there could have been a litter bin with the contents smouldering away…
Lord Tedder also served as Chairman of the Standard Motor Company, 1954-60 and as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC.
Arthur Tedder's seniority and activities during WWII meant that he undoubtedly knew about the shenanigans in High Places, including Royal Places, described in my post 'The Defence Of The Realm'. Tedder would also have known people like Admiral Sir Alec Bingley, who was also party to those shenanigans and who's wife Lady Juliet and son William spent the rest of their careers in MIND – and in William's case as Chief Exec of the Mental Health Act Commission as well – concealing those shenanigans and on into the next generation re Those Who Knew ie. Dafydd et al. The fact that Tedder fell out with people like Churchill and Montgomery and lived to fight another day and pick up a peerage as well suggests that he was wielding a great deal of power over the highest levels of Gov't and the Military for some reason…
No wonder Cambridge University had to ensure that Tedder became Chancellor.
Arthur Tedder died in 1967. So he was around long enough to help Dafydd early in his career as well as Gwynne the lobotomist. After that of course Arthur Tedder's sons were there to keep the flag flying…
One of the best ever cartoon strips in 'Private Eye' was 'Battle for Britain', part of their 'War Picture Library' collection. It was a satirical presentation of the struggles of the Labour Party opposition led by the Windbag against the Tory Gov't led by Thatch.
Arthur Tedder's youngest son Richard Tedder was educated at Dauntsey's School, Cambridge University and the Middlesex Hospital. Tedder was Research Assistant to Professor Richard Harrison at the London Hospital Medical School and then worked with Dr J. D. H. Slater at the Middlesex Hospital, 1973-74. Following that, Tedder worked with Sir Anthony Grabham at Kettering General Hospital for a year. Tony Grabham was one of the Top Doctors leaders whom Ken Clarke did battle with and loathed when Clarke was in the DoH. Well Ken, Brown and I and a few others had evidence which could have jailed some of the BMA bastards but you were prioritising Sir Peter Morrison's career and liberty weren't you.
Grabham was a surgeon and a British Army officer, who was active in medical politics. He was Chairman of the BMA in the late 1970s to early 1980s and was a member of the GMC for twenty years.
Grabham was born in 1930 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and his father was a police inspector. Born into the heart of those who concealed the longstanding abuse gang in the north east who had strong links with Dafydd et al by the late 1960s then…
Grabham qualified from the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, so he will have known Dafydd's other big mate, the Bastard of Newcastle, Lord John Walton, who also cluttered up the BMA and GMC during the 1980s (see previous posts).
In 1954, Grabham served with the RAMC, 1954-56 and was then transferred to the TA. He ended his military service in 1957. Grabham wrote on medico-politics for the BMJ.
Grabham was given a K in the New Years Honours of 1988. That will have been some sort of reward for keeping the lid on the heap of dung which was Dafydd et al in north Wales; in 1988, Dafydd and Tony Francis's mates were in the middle of those research frauds with the CRC and ICRF…
Grabham's 2015 obituary – yes, he was here until recently, nailing lids firmly shut – in the Indie told us a few interesting things:
'Frustrated at the BMA's poor performance, Grabham decided to do something about it. He was elected Chairman of the Central Committee for Hospital Medical Services in 1975, the Council of the BMA in 1979 and the Joint Consultants Committee (JCC) in 1984. The JCC is made up of representatives of the BMA and the Medical Royal Colleges and negotiates with the Government on all hospital matters, except pay and terms and conditions of service. The committee had always been chaired by someone from the royal colleges; Grabham was the first BMA person to fill the role.'
The JCC also appointed the 'Independent' Top Doctors who Chaired Professional Reviews in the wake of serious NHS complaints. It was the JCC who appointed Dafydd's mate Bluglass and the also fully-on-board-with Dafydd Dr Colin Berry as 'Independent' opinions to investigate my complaint about Dafydd et al in 1989 (see post 'Enter Professor Robert Bluglass CBE'). Thanks Grabham!
'A major highlight of his career came in 1975. Harold Wilson's government published a consultative document on the separation of private practice from the NHS. The BMA described this as "perhaps the greatest threat to the independence of the medical profession since the controversy associated with the introduction of the NHS 30 years ago."
But their hearts lie with the NHS!
Grabham helped to put together an alliance of the BMA and 15 other medical and dental organisations. They hired Lord Goodman, who arranged a meeting with the Prime Minister.
Lord Arnold Goodman was Harold Wilson's solicitor. Goodman was widely suspected of being a crook. Lord Goodman represented Jeremy Thorpe for the first part of Thorpe's case when Thorpe was charged with incitement to murder Norman Scott (see previous posts). So Grabham went straight to the top for help to fight his corner then.
Lord Goodman advised that although Grabham was the junior member of the alliance only he should speak at the meeting. A compromise, known as the Goodman proposals, was reached: private beds would not be phased out of NHS hospitals where there were no adequate private facilities close by. Threatened sanctions and industrial action were averted.
Barbara Castle said that negotiating with Grabham was like being "shot at with silver bullets" and that, although he was greedy and arrogant, he was "the best negotiator I have ever dealt with and a huge force in committee meetings." In her diary she wrote. "Grabham made all the running. He is by far the ablest (and toughest) negotiator they have got."
Babs meant that Grabham had the shit on all of them and made it clear that he would use it. Brave Battling Babs the Flame Haired Fearless Socialist didn't grab Grabham by the knackers and say 'do your jobs you callous pompous bastards' because there was that little matter of George Thomas… and Greville… and so many more… And of course Babs Who Hated Private Medicine had Gone Private herself for her fertility treatment and what would have happened to Babs's credibility if anyone had found out about that?
When they sat next to each other at a dinner 10 years later she said, "You're the Tony Grabham?" When he agreed that he was, she retorted, "You were a bugger."
I'd have kneed him in the groin so hard that he'd have needed the assistance of his colleagues.
'Barbara Castle was not the only minister to cross swords with Grabham. When the Conservative government planned to radically reform the NHS in 1990 some members of the House of Lords feared the reforms might harm patient care. So the Health Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, set up the Clinical Standards Advisory Group to explore alternatives, but he specified that the group should not include the BMA, particularly the JCC chairman, whom he regarded as "one of the cleverest and most difficult negotiator he had ever come across." But the President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Sir Terence English, refused to take part unless the BMA was involved.'
It just goes on and on doesn't it. Stupid vain politicians who are so compromised that they are repeatedly blackmailed by greedy equally compromised Top Doctors in a battle of who blinks first. The politicians know what the ultimate manoeuvre will be: a Top Doctors' strike and in the events of the first patient to die, the Gov't will fall. So a criminal gang ran north Wales unhindered.
A second highlight came in 1979 when Grabham was persuaded by leading general practitioners to stand as chairman of the BMA council against the incumbent, James Cameron, another general practitioner. He won at a time when the membership of the association had fallen to about 50 per cent of British doctors.'
Even the other Top Doctors were sick of the grandiose old masons who were running medicine and bullying the junior doctors into the ground. In 1978, Dafydd Wigley had asked Shirl, Callaghan's Education Secretary, to hold a Public Inquiry into Sir Charles Evans's management of UCNW, such was the havoc. There was no Inquiry, which I think was just as well for Dafydd Wigley's sake actually, because everyone knew what the problem was: Dr Dafydd Alun Jones and the gang, whom no-one would reign in. See previous posts eg. 'Slaves, Perfect Slaves'. In 1979, Dafydd had Mary Wynch unlawfully arrested and imprisoned in Risley Remand Centre and then in Denbigh. Grabham said and did nothing. He just took over the BMA.
Under his leadership the BMA introduced regional services and industrial relations officers to help doctors in their disputes with employers. Membership increased to 75-80 per cent of doctors, and the largest increase in membership of the association came while Grabham was council chairman.
So the decent Top Docs who were becoming disillusioned and concerned were sunk and outnumbered by the greedy bastards encouraged by Grabham.
He illustrated his financial acumen by starting BMA Services, which helped members with their financial affairs. This tied in members, who lost the services if they resigned. BMA Services was eventually sold for £500m. He was a business leader manqué.
But our hearts are with the NHS! All we are concerned about is patient care… Ooh I was a young doctor before the advent of the NHS and I remember Typhoid Mary well… And Florence Nightingale… Do you know my nephew Ed, he wants to be PM…
Grabham was a member of the General Medical Council for 20 years, running twice unsuccessfully for President.
So Grabham was one of those batting all the complaints about Dafydd re sexual impropriety, illegal imprisonment and patient deaths into the long grass. An even bigger bastard will have been elected President.
In 1993 he became Chairman of the journal committee of the BMJ Publishing Group. Thanks in part to his business knowledge the group's turnover rose from £12m in 1991 to £55m in 2004.
But our hearts are with the NHS! (shurely shome mistake – Ed)
In 2002 he was elected president of the BMA. In his presidential address he said that he was "a child of the NHS", but criticised the service's chronic underfunding.
I told you – Typhoid Mary, Florence etc etc, he remembered it well. The only problem all those centuries later was that the Top Docs didn't have enough money, despite those figures quoted in previous paragraphs. In 2002, Miranda was PM and Miranda was known for throwing billions at the Top Doctors in return for complete suppression of whistleblowers eg. Mid-Staffs, North Wales…
He said that a third of the NHS was of the highest quality, a third reasonably good, and a third verging on Third World medicine.
Thanks to Dafydd et al receiving complete protection from Tony Grabham and his mates…
Although he knew that it was against BMA policy he suggested looking at other healthcare systems rather than relying on a tax-based healthcare system.
But our hearts are in the NHS!
Grabham loved foreign travel, particularly to Egypt and the Caribbean. He was interested in antiques and enjoyed good food.
Somehow I thought that he would. Empowered Service Users lived rough, even some in Bethesda, let alone in big metropolitan centres.
Some colleagues and opponents found him arrogant and ruthless,
but he was always polite and dignified.
So was Bluglass actually, but just look at what he was doing…
He and his wife, Pam, who was a staunch supporter throughout his medical and political careers, were kind and thoughtful.
Their first child, Sarah, who has Down's Syndrome, always came first when they were making travel or social arrangements.
Yes, Grabham will have looked after his own. While thousands of other Down's syndrome people were systematically neglected by the NHS, resulting in them having an average life-span some 25 years shorter than other people. In Bryn-y-Neuadd, Gwynedd, people like Grabham's daughter were Helped To Explore Their Sexual Needs and Supported In Their Sexual Relationships by Dafydd's colleagues…
'Even after he developed spindle cell sarcoma last year they found time to send me flowers after I had had an operation.'
Grabham bothered to sent flowers to the writer of this obituary (Linda Beecham) because she was worth knowing. I'd like to have seen the details of his flowers orders; I can predict who will have been on the receiving end of those flowers.
Now here's a few extracts from Grabham's Torygraph obit:
'The Association was then at a low ebb, almost moribund in the view of some doctors. Its image was still bruised by its opposition to the introduction of the NHS, and many doctors saw its only priority as increasing the pay of GPs. One senior physician was heard to remark: "The BMA is just about one four letter word: CASH." As a result only about half of doctors belonged to the organisation and hospital doctors were obviously discontented. The Association's problems were compounded by demoralised staff and a lacklustre team of chief officers.
Then, in 1979, the exception to this, Jim Cameron, the chairman of the BMA Council and a popular and successful GP negotiator, reneged on a promise to serve for only three years despite the fact that, given his age (74) and his preoccupation with general practice, many regarded him as unfit to continue. In a dramatic turn of events some GPs lobbied Grabham to oppose him and he was overwhelmingly successful in the subsequent election.
Fortunately Grabham's start as chairman coincided with the election of new chief officer colleagues of a different calibre. The new-look Association began by concentrating on serving the whole of the profession as well as taking a public stance on scientific and ethical questions. As a result the membership of the BMA reached its highest level ever under Grabham's chairmanship, while its image was polished by a revamped public relations department.
Some of the increase in membership may have reflected his introduction of BMA Services, an attractive scheme of benefits for members which Grabham copied from Canada. He became its director, as he did of Private Patients Plan, which the BMA adopted two years later.
Grabham retired from the BMA chairmanship in 1984 but his experience as a negotiator continued to serve him well in the final phase of his career. This included a year as president of the BMA and the chairmanship, from 1995, of the British Medical Journal Group, masterminding its transition into an independent body, though linked to the BMA. Its new status freed the BMJ of the need to report the humdrum detail of BMA activities and allowed it to enhance its reputation as a professional journal of international importance. The group itself developed electronic publication and expanded its range of specialty journals, with both financial turnover and profitability increasing to levels that justified Grabham's hands-on approach.
Grabham's devotion to his patients and his profession meant that he neglected to develop other interests, preferring instead to go for long holidays in the sun and buying bibelots after prolonged bargaining which could verge on the embarrassing. He always carried a hand lens to detect flaws with which he cajoled many a jeweller to slash the asking price .
He was a private man whose immediate courtesy and charm concealed the ambition and even ruthlessness in some of his political and business dealings. But his real nature came out in his deep devotion to his family.
A few extracts from the BMJ's obit to shed yet more light on this misunderstood Top Doctor who was all heart:
'Barbara Castle, who was secretary of state for health, was proposing to phase out private practice from NHS hospitals and change the consultant contract to favour full timers over part timers. Consultants opposed this strongly as they felt it betrayed the contract they'd agreed with Aneurin Bevan at the start of the NHS.
At the time Grabham was the chair of the Central Committee for Hospital Medical Services (CCHMS, the "consultants' committee" of the BMA), and he put together a "grand alliance" of the BMA, the royal colleges, BUPA, and a member of the Hospital Consultants Association (HCA), a body that then threatened the BMA's pre-eminence in representing consultants. For £20 000 (about £90 000 now) the alliance hired Lord Goodman, a friend of Wilson and the fixer of his day. He arranged a meeting of the group with Wilson and with a single phone call ensured an editorial supporting the consultants in a leading newspaper.
Goodman's advice was that only Grabham speak in the meeting despite him being the most junior. Grabham expected Wilson to be a "rough diamond," but he was dressed smartly and smoking a big cigar when the doctors arrived. Surrounded by older and grander men, including the presidents of the royal colleges, Grabham put the consultants' case in what we can be sure was his clear, precise, polite, but firm manner. Wilson asked the then president of the Royal College of Surgeons what he thought, but, following Goodman's advice, the president said that only Grabham would answer for the profession. The meeting was a success in that a compromise was found..'
Tony Grabham was given his knighthood for 'his work in Chairing the JCC'. That 1988 knighthood. My complaint about Dafydd et al took so long to meander through the system and was subject to so many delays that although Bluglass didn't perform the cover-up until the summer of 1989, my original complaint was made early in 1987. I have documentation demonstrating the numerous lies that were told to me, the number of documents that were forged/amended/post-dated etc. Tony Grabham was almost certainly still Chairing the JCC or very heavily influencing it when someone decided that Bluglass and Berry would need to be mobilised.
Grabham married, in 1960, Pamela Rudd, who survives him with their two sons and two daughters; two of his children are doctors.
Sir Anthony Grabham, born July 19 1930, died February 21 2015;
A Truly Malignant Influence.
Surgeon who defeated Labour plans to abolish private hospital beds and led the BMA into an era of growth
BMA into an era of growth
Dr John Anthony Grabham is listed as a Director of various companies including Surrey and Sussex Colorectal Ltd; Surrey and Sussex Consultant Partnership Ltd.
After his stint learning the ropes at the knee of Sir Anthony Grabham, Richard Tedder was appointed as Assistant Lecturer/Senior Registrar at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, 1975-76. From 1977 to 1979 he was Wellcome Research Fellow at Middlesex in the Department of Medical Microbiology and a Lecturer in the same department, 1980-81. Tedder was appointed a Senior Lecturer at UCL Medical School in 1981; was Head of the Division of Virology, 1982-95, in 1991 being appointed Professor of Medical Virology. He became Head of the Department of Virology in 1995.
Tedder's first published work was on Hep B, with later work on the diagnostic development and treatment of HIV and Hep C. He also has interests in chronic viral infections of the liver. Tedder is a consultant virologist to the National Blood Service and a member of several DoH, Royal College of Pathologists and Strategic Health Authorities working parties and groups in the fields of virology and pathology.
Richard Tedder is also:
- Honorary Consultant, Department of Microbiological Reagents, Public Health Laboratory Service, Colindale, 1981-
- Short term external Consultant, Global Project on AIDS, World Health Organisation, Geneva, Switzerland, 1987-
- Director of Virology Service, UCL Hospitals 1991 onwards
- Honorary Consultant Microbiologist, North London Blood Transfusion Centre, Colindale, 1981 onwards
- Department of Health Advisory Group on Hepatitis
- Consultant Virologist to the National Blood Service, 1995 onwards
- Head of Blood Borne Virus Unit at the Centre for Infections, Health Protection Agency, Colindale
- Standing Advisory Committee on Transfusion Transmitted Infections
- Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (SaBTO)
- Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians
- Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and Council Member
- Society for General Microbiology
- European Association for the Study of the Liver
- European Rapid Viral Diagnosis Group
Richard Tedder's older brother, Lord John Tedder, spent 15 years lecturing in chemistry at Birmingham University and then was appointed to the Roscoe Chair in Chemistry at the University of Dundee. Tedder became Purdie Professor of Chemistry at St. Andrews University in 1969, and held the post until 1989. He then served as Emeritus Professor, 1989–94.
Bluglass was not only an alumni of St Andrews, but he held the Chair in Forensic Psychiatry at Birmingham University for many years as well.
Tedder succeeded his father as Baron Tedder and served in the Lords. Although he was apparently reluctant to perpetuate the title, he was persuaded by colleagues that the peerage system could benefit by the presence of a scientist and educator. He served on the House of Lords Committee on Hazardous Waste, and contributed to discussions in the House about matters of science and tertiary education. He was also honoured by his election to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
In 1981, Tedder became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.
One of Lord John Tedder's 'time-consuming and abiding interests' was the development of the Open University. The OU was a Harold Wilson initiative, the development of which Harold left to Jennie Lee and Lord Arnold Goodman to play with. Many paedophiles' friends of an earlier generation were involved with the OU in its early days (see previous posts).
Richard and John Tedder's grandfather, Sir Arthur Tedder, spent a life in the financial service of the Crown. He was Chief Inspector from 1906 to 1911 of Customs and Excise and above all others was the official responsible for the organisation of the machinery of the first old-age pension scheme in the world. Working directly for both Asquith and Lloyd George as Chancellor, Sir Arthur Tedder was an imaginative innovator who became one of Lloyd George's favourite senior officials. Arthur Tedder occupied the key post of Commissioner of Customs and Excise from the watershed budget of 1909 with its tax on property until the end of the WWI.
So famille Tedder have been telling people in Gov't what to do for generations.
There is very little trace of Robin Wesiss's colleague Peter Beverley on the internet, although Beverley's name occasionally crops up here and there. He can be found on the ResearchGate website, listed as an Emeritus Professor at Imperial College. Here's his mugshot:
Beverley's qualifications indicate that he was a Top Doctor as well as a scientist. Beverley also gets a mention in the biography of Professor Mala Maini, Professor of Viral Immunology in the Division of Infection & Immunity, Faculty of Medical Sciences, UCL:
'I am Professor of Viral Immunology in the Division of Infection and Immunity at University College London, also working as a Consultant Physician in a viral hepatitis clinic. My research has always been closely informed by the patients I see in my clinics and the samples they generously donate for our work.
I obtained my specialist medical accreditation in 1995 and my PhD, funded by an MRC Clinical Training Fellowship, in the lab of Peter Beverley (ICRF, London) in 1998. A unifying theme in my research training has been the T cell immunology of persistent viral infections in humans (from EBV to HIV and then HBV). Whilst funded by the Edward Jenner Institute to work on HIV-2, I joined forces with Antonio Bertoletti and became increasingly focused on HBV immunopathogenesis, starting my own group in this field in 2002. After an MRC/Academy of Medical Sciences Clinical Scientist Fellowship, I moved into a tenured position at UCL and a personal chair in 2009. In 2013 I obtained a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award.
Other positions I currently hold:
- Deputy Head of the Department of Immunology
- Chair of the Athena Swan team, Division of Infection and Immunity
- Deputy Post-graduate tutor, Division of Infection and Immunity
- UCLP Theme Leader for Immunity/Immunotherapy of Chronic Infection
- Our research programme is focused on dissecting the immune correlates of viral persistence and liver damage in order to allow the development of novel immunotherapeutic strategies for hepatitis B virus (HBV).
- As well as being of great medical importance in its own right, HBV provides a useful model to provide insights into liver immunology, which has relevance for other hepatotropic infections and malignancies, liver transplantation and autoimmunity.
- We have become fascinated by how the liver utilises multiple specialised cell types and pathways to maintain a uniquely tolerant immunological environment. Defining the mechanisms of hepatic tolerance is critical to understanding how three of the most prevalent and devastating human pathogens, HBV, hepatitis C virus and malaria, take advantage of this niche in which to replicate and/or persist.
- We are also interested in how hepatic immune responses mediate and regulate the liver damage that drives fibrosis, ultimately leading to the complications of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) that still kill an estimated 600,000 people a year with chronic HBV infection. This is of particular interest in patients co-infected with HBV and HIV who have ongoing high mortality from accelerated liver fibrosis.
- Existing therapies are rarely able to cure HBV or complications like HCC so our goal is to develop tailored boosting of antiviral immunity. The rationale for this approach is based on the fact that many adults control HBV through their natural immune response without overwhelming liver damage.
I have made substantial contributions to various teaching programmes over the years and have acquired extensive experience in teaching through seminars, interactive tutorials, and one on one in the lab or clinic. I have taught medical students and junior doctors, BSc and MSc students, nurses and physiotherapists, and post-graduates on an Advanced Immunology course.
Currently I teach on the Immunology BSc and Virology BSc courses and supervise undergraduate and postgraduate students in the laboratory.
|Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians – Medicine
|Royal College of Physicians
|Doctor of Philosophy – Immunology
|University of London
|Member of the Royal College of Physicians – Clinical Medicine
|Royal College of Physicians
|London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
|Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery – Clinical Medicine
|University of London
Here's Mala, who's PhD was supervised by a cheat and a liar who remained silent even when one of his colleagues was found dead:
The Bloomberg website tells us that Peter Beverley 'serves as Professor at Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research. Prof. Beverley served as head of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund's Tumour Immunology until 1995. He served as Scientific Head of the Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research. His research interests include tumour immunology and the understanding of the memory T-cells of the immune system. He serves as Member of the Scientific Advisory Board at MNLpharma Ltd. Prof. Beverley has served on numerous
So Beverley held a senior role at ICRF, when the ICRF was one of the bodies at the centre of the 1990 research scandal which resulted in the death of Tim McElwain. Could that be the reason why Peter Beverley has largely disappeared from the internet? Furthermore, just look at the address provided for Beverley in his capacity as a Member of the Advisory Board for MNLpharma Ltd:
Corporate Headquarters
Plas Gogerddan
Aberystwyth, Dyfed SY23 3EBUnited Kingdom
Phone: 44 1970 823 201
Now there's a surprise.
Plas Goggerdan is the address of IBERS (the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences) at Abersytwyth University.
It was claimed that:
MNLpharma ('MNL') is a private UK drug discovery and development company focused on the exploitation of imino sugar therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of disease. The company's in-house programmes focus on cancer, and infectious diseases. MNLpharma has discovery and development programmes in the areas of immunomodulation and direct acting antivirals with a number of compounds showing promise against several key viral pathogens where effective treatments are currently lacking.
MNLpharma's lead compound (MNLP462a) is an imino sugar immunomodulator which has demonstrated impressive protective and therapeutic effects in in vivo cancer models. As a broad spectrum immunotherapeutic MNLP462a is anticipated to be developed for use in a wide range of diseases including infection and as such has great commercial value and potential. This candidate will enter the clinic in 2006.
Whether that candidate did enter the clinic in 2006 or whether that was just another load of spin by some chancers with links to Dafydd et al I do not know.
In addition to imino sugars, the company has a unique chemistry platform of pure, novel, drug-like natural compounds called Phytopure. This collection is being exploited in a limited number of highly targeted collaborations. Whilst its own imino sugar therapeutics are being developed in-house, MNLpharma seeks to exploit Phytopure through a limited number of alliances with companies that are leaders in specific fields.
Phytopure wasn't the only thing that was being exploited.
'We're the paedophiles' friends and you can't get us.'
Phytopure led the the establishment of a company called PhytoQuest, also located at IBERS at Aberystwyth and which is very much still alive.
PhytoQuest's website – which carries the logo of Aberystwyth University – tells us that PhytoQuest 'owns science to innovate natural ingredients and compounds in the high-margin healthy-living products emerging from the convergence of food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. PhytoQuest traces its history back to 1999 when Prof. Robert Nash founded MolecularNature Limited (MNL) as a spin-off of the UK's Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER). In 2006, MNL was bought by Summit Plc and in 2009 an MBO allowed for the formation of PhytoQuest Ltd.
'The BEACON Biorefining Centre of Excellence is a partnership between Aberystwyth, Bangor and Swansea Universities, working in the field of conversion of biomass into biobased products. Led by Aberystwyth University, it is backed with nearly £8 million from the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government. BEACON helps Welsh businesses develop new ways of converting feedstocks (e.g. rye grass, oats, miscanthus) and waste streams into products which have applications in the pharmaceutical, chemicals, fuel and cosmetic industries.
BEACON will build on research already underway at Aberystwyth University's Institute of Biological Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) to produce fuels from energy crops such as high-sugar grasses like rye. It will also enable Swansea University to focus on developing their expertise in using bacteria and fungi to digest, or ferment, plant matter within the bio-refining process.
Bangor University will build on work to develop new materials from plants which can be used to develop innovative products, having recently discovered that compounds found in some local plants can be used to control problems like potato blight.
We are seeking to:
- Establish links between the business community and academia within Wales
- Develop new products and processes that will support economic growth
- Create highly skilled jobs in the area of green biotech
- Support inward investment
- Promote science excellence from Wales
BEACON offers businesses with interests in the biorefining sector access to the research, expertise and knowledge base of universities in Wales.
We can help:
- Companies in the construction, packaging and manufacturing industries by developing new biocomposite materials
- The bioscience industry – for example, developing new microbial or enzyme systems and technologies for the processing of biomass
- The chemical industry by providing new sources of 'green' chemicals
- Fuel producers by offering 'green' fuels, impacting on the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) and reducing carbon emissions
- Rural communities by applying biorefinery technology to the processing of non-food crops
This encompasses a huge range of businesses in areas as diverse as: Agrochemicals, Bio Fuels, Coatings and Adhesives, Cosmetics and Personal, Essential Oils, Lubricants, Nutraceuticals, Pharmaceuticals, Speciality Polymers, Surfactants, Water and Effluent Treatment, for example.
The BEACON partners can undertake:
- Formulation of new biocomposites
- Extrusion / bioplastics
- Novel chemistries / applications
- Metabolic engineering of yeasts
- Protein modelling such as new enzymes, e.g. for food industry or bioprocessing
One of the Angels from Bryn-y-Neuadd ended up as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Healthcare Sciences at Bangor University. He told one of the receptionists not to let me into the building because I was a dangerous loony who attacked people with knives. It certainly baffled her because as far as she was concerned I was someone's PhD supervisor.
'I've just spent a restorative week on retreat at the Trigonos centre in Nantlle, North Wales. The natural scenery and wildlife were stunning. For me, the highlight was an early morning practice on the lakeside as the sun rose from behind Snowdon. The mountain (in the centre of the picture) was a constant presence during the retreat. I had the luxury of time to notice how, from minute to minute, the landscape was subtly or sometimes dramatically transformed by the ever-changing light and weather.
The retreat was organised by the Mindfulness Network CIC especially for mindfulness teachers. I'm grateful for the support and guidance of the highly skilled facilitators, Trish, Bartley and Elaine Young. I learned so much from the experience and I'm incorporating these insights and approaches into my own practice and teaching.'
Someone who became a Champion of CR UK and promoted its work after her own life was touched by cancer was the agony aunt Claire Rayner, who began advertising the wonders of these research fraudsters in 2002. I don't know whether Claire Rayner knew of the details of the frauds with which CR UK had been involved, although of the many celeb supporters of CR UK, Claire would be in a better position than most to acquire knowledge of and see through the scams.
Rayner was from a London Jewish family and was educated at the City of London School for Girls. In 2003, Rayner discussed a childhood of physical cruelty and sexual abuse at the hands of her parents. Her family emigrated to Canada and following that, in 1945, Claire was placed in a psychiatric hospital by her parents. Claire Rayner received much credit for Speaking Out and she was frank that she had endured a very hard time. Claire Spoke Out after quite a few other people had begun Speaking Out, but before the en masse Speaking Out.
All I could think was why hadn't Claire Spoken Out about a few other things? When I began working in biomedical research in the late 1980s, Claire had long since established her reputation as an agony aunt and an expert on matters Angels and the NHS and would be invited onto 'serious' TV programmes as well as lighthearted quiz shows. On one occasion I was watching a lighthearted show starring Claire in which the guests had the chance of Living Out Their Dearest Fantasy. One old lech stated that he wanted to be given a bed bath by 'three dolly nurses'. Everyone in the studio was bowled over by this Carry On notion and there were many Babs Windsor-esque jokes; to Claire's credit she did make a comment to the effect that nurses are 'not there for that'. But that was the only comment that she did make. The old lech was duly prepared for his bed bath on screen and then three butch male Angels arrived on stage. We pissed ourselves laughing in our house because we presumed that was the punchline. It wasn't. After all the grimacing and mock horror, the male Angels left the stage and three absolute Barbara Windsors were paraded on, complete with ludicrous hats, mini-dresses and suspenders and gave the old lech his bed bath.
Claire joined in the fun and there were no more comments about Angels' roles in real hospitals.
I don't want to come over all Milli Tant here, but there was – and is – quite a serious problem with Angels being sexually harassed at work. This blog has documented cases of Angels running prostitution rackets in hospitals and shagging their way up the promotion ladder like there's no tomorrow, but I have also been friends with Angels who have told me that because there is so much of that going on, life for Angels who are not involved can be very difficult. One Angel went as far as to tell me 'sometimes I can understand why nurses are seen as such slags because many are and it means the rest of us aren't taken seriously at work'. The same Angel made some very insightful comments about gender roles and gender stereotyping in the healthcare and why such a toxic situation had arisen. These matters were being discussed by Angels at the time yet Claire Rayner, while pretending to be the sort of Thinking Angel who took an interest in such debates, would join in the fuckwittery with only a quick passing comment.
There was so much that Claire Rayner could have discussed eg. the organised sexual abuse of children and vulnerable patients, the dreadful workplace bullying in the NHS, research fraud and dangerous practice, the culture of simply lying when harm to patients had occurred, the cronyism and nepotism that underpins the whole system. Claire could also have blown the whistle on Jimmy Savile because she bloody well knew about him and I think that she knew about Dafydd and the associated gangs as well.
Not a word.
Rayner did know. She trained as an Angel in the UK in the 1950s at the Royal Northern Hospital and then Guy's in London. In 1957 Rayner married her husband, the actor Desmond Rayner. She continued nursing in London and worked as a midwife and nursing sister. Rayner knew all about the matters of which I have provided details on this blog. She personally knew some of those who provided a lifelong umbrella for Dafydd. Like everybody else, she kept quiet because Claire wanted to make it big as a Sensible Nurse and she wasn't going to do that by being honest about the crime and corruption. So it was debates over natural vs caesarean births – but only when that became widely discussed – for Claire and similarly non-controversial but topical subjects.
So how did Claire begin her journo/writing career? By a letter to 'Nursing Times' in 1958, on nurses' pay and conditions. She then began regularly writing to The Torygraph on themes of patient care or nurses' pay. She began writing novels soon after her marriage and by 1968 had published more than 25 books.
Nurses in the 1950s saw some shocking behaviour on the part of healthcare staff. Rayner didn't mention the worst excesses.
After the birth of her first child in 1960 Rayner focused on a full-time writing career. Initially writing articles for various magazines and publications, in 1968 she published one of the earliest sex manuals, People in Love, which brought her to national attention. Describing the "explicit content", the same reviewer commended Rayner on her "down-to-earth approach to the subject".
But Claire did not write about the organised abuse rings which were then a feature of the welfare system and were concealed by the Top Docs, particularly psychiatrists.
By the 1970s, writing for 'Woman's Own', Rayner had established herself as one of four new and direct "agony aunts". Her advice in the teenaged girls' magazine 'Petticoat' caused controversy. In 1972 she was accused of "encouraging masturbation and promiscuity in prepubescent girls". I never read 'Petticoat', so whether Rayner did encourage such things I do not know. Although I'd have thought that masturbation was harmless enough and not anyone else's business.
Rayner's direct and frank approach led the BBC to ask her to be the first person on British pre-watershed television to demonstrate how to put on a condom and she was one of the first people used by advertisers to promote sanitary towels. I remember it well, it caused my friends and I much entertainment and was also the beginning of Brown's analysis of the medicalisation of sanitary protection: 'Dr Whites', 'Lil-lets were designed by a doctor' etc. Lil-lets were probably designed by a greedy old sod who saw a market. As did Claire Rayner.
The BBC's sex education/Dr Whites' expert did not mention the elephant /paedophile in the studio/dressing room/caravan at the time:
After beginning to appear on Pebble Mill at One in 1972, Rayner started an agony column in 'The Sun' in 1973, but left to join the 'Sunday Mirror' in 1980, when she also made her second television series of Claire Rayner's Casebook. She left the Sunday Mirror shortly after the appointment of Eve Pollard as Editor – did Claire fall out with that particular Glenda? – and joined the 'Today' newspaper for three years. Rayner was named medical journalist of the year in 1987.
1987. Peak Dafydd and Savile! Mary Wynch had won the first part of her case and Alison Taylor and I wouldn't shut up… Savile was also in the process of becoming the General Manager of Broadmoor at that time (see previous posts).
Rayner was probably best known as an agony aunt on TV-am in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She made it her personal aim to reply to every letter she received. This was an unfunded project by the station. So Claire will have been one of the agony aunts of that generation who later admitted receiving letters from the victims of sexual assault who's letters were never mentioned because the names of some well-known people had been given in some of those letters. By the time that Claire was on TV-am, I had written to Esther about Dafydd et al. Esther did not reply. Esther received at least one letter about Savile which was ignored.
Rayner became President of the Patients Association – which was dominated by Top Doctors rather than patients who were not Top Docs as well – and through her extensive charidee work and writings was awarded an OBE in 1996 for services to wimmin's health and wellbeing and to health matters. Well that was a nice gift in the year that William Hague announced that the Waterhouse Inquiry would be held.
Rayner had a very personal reason for supporting Sense's Older Person campaign, wearing hearing aids in both ears and also having AMD, a sight loss condition common in older people.
Between 1993 and 2002, Rayner was one of the Patrons of the Herpes Viruses Association and Chaired a Press Briefing in June 1993 aimed at destigmatising genital herpes. When tendering her resignation, Rayner cited the fact that she was Patron of 60 organisations as the reason for trimming the list. I knew a man in Bethesda at that time with herpes. He was so Destigmatising about it that he gave it to quite a few other people, including I suspect those who attended the sex parties along with him in Chester. This man was bisexual but he was very condemning of those who had sex with children; however he was having sex with rent boys and at least one former patient of Dafydd's and I don't think that it would ever have occurred to him to ask himself why they were having sex with the likes of him for money…
Rayner was appointed to various UK Gov't committees on health and was the author of a chapter in The Future of the NHS. Despite being President of the Patients Association, Rayner used private health care. She wasn't going to risk her own neck was she. She was a member of the PM's Commission on Nursing and the Labour Gov'ts Royal Commission on the Care of the Elderly. In 1999 Rayner was appointed to a committee responsible for reviewing the medical conditions at Holloway Prison, at the direction of Paul Boateng, who was then the Minister for Prisons. The recommendations of this committee 'led to far reaching changes in the provision of medical care within Holloway.'
Holloway was notorious for housing numerous women who were so severely mentally ill that the other prisoners identified them as being 'muppets'. The muppets also had a terrifyingly high rate of self-harm and suicide. Most of those muppets had been abused as children in care or in the psychiatric system. The plight of the muppets did eventually receive widespread media coverage and everyone felt a warm glow around their hearts when the muppets were transferred to long-stay secure mental hospitals. Back into the arms of those who had turned them into muppets in the first place…
Paul Boateng would have known a lot about the muppets. Boateng's wife Janet was a Lambeth social worker and was Chair of Lambeth Social Services when Tyra Henry was murdered in the care of Lambeth in the 1980s. Lambeth had a massive problem with a paedophile ring which had infiltrated its children's homes and that ring was linked to Dafydd's gang in north Wales. Children in care from Lambeth were sent to children's homes in north Wales. Esther Rantzen's sister Priscilla was a social worker for Lambeth and Priscilla's boss Valerie – now Baroness – Howarth was appointed Chief Exec of ChildLine. Before Paul Boateng was an MP, he was a lawyer working for Birnberg & Co. Who when Boateng worked for Birnberg, acted for Mary Wynch when she sued Dafydd et al. See previous posts.
No wonder Paul Boateng put a safe pair of Savile-friendly hands like Claire Rayner on that Holloway committee.
Rayner was a lifelong Labour Party supporter until 2001, when Rayner resigned from the Labour Party and joined the Lib Dems for fear of the changes to the NHS proposed by Miranda. Claire was a prominent supporter of the British republican movement, although admitted her dual standards on accepting her OBE in 1996. Dame Helen Mirren succumbed as well, but her excuse for accepting after a lifetime of saying that she never would was 'that it was for her parents'. Who I think were dead by then.
Lilibet: It's OK, you don't have to worry. When my gong arrives, I really will send it back to you. Thanks for the thought anyway!
Rayner was Vice-President (and formerly President) of the British Humanist Association, a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society Scotland and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. In the weeks leading up to her death, Rayner had the following to say about Pope Benedict's XVI's state visit to the United Kingdom:
|I have no language with which to adequately describe Joseph Alois Ratzinger, AKA the Pope. In all my years as a campaigner I have never felt such animus against any individual as I do against this creature. His views are so disgusting, so repellent and so hugely damaging to the rest of us, that the only thing to do is to get rid of him.
Pots and Kettles Auntie Claire. Furthermore, Savile met Popes and picked up gongs from the Catholic Church.
Rayner, whilst a Patron of the Down's Syndrome Association, had her position promptly terminated after labelling parents as "selfish" for having a disabled child:
|The hard facts are that it is costly in terms of human effort, compassion, energy and finite resources such as money, to care for individuals with handicaps (and to hell with political correctness; there is more to these dilemmas than mere "learning difficulties").
We can't waste valuable NHS resources on useless eaters like that.
Rayner and her husband had three children together: writer and food critic Jay Rayner; electronics reviewer, angling and motoring journalist Adam Rayner and events manager Amanda Rayner.
Thank God none of them are disabled and they are therefore able to labour for their food and contribute usefully to society by writing about the sort of food that a lot of people cannot afford, expensive hobbies and by managing Events. Claire was no doubt proud of them.
Claire suffered from Grave's disease.
Anyone for euthanasia, post-Credit Crunch?
Rayner never recovered from the emergency intestinal surgery that she received in May 2010 and died in hospital on 11 October 2010. She told her relatives she wanted her last words to be: "Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I'll come back and bloody haunt him."
Ah, Claire she was wonderful! Along with the doctors.
Claire Rayner was a prolific author of fiction and her output was nearly as impressive as that of Barbara Cartland. Some of her titles were:
- Soho Square (1976)
- Flapper (1988)
- Blitz (19
- First Blood (1993)
- Second Opinion (1994)
- London Lodgings (1994)
- Paying Guests (1995)
- Lady Mislaid (1968)
- Death on the Table (1969)
- The Meddlers (1970)
- The Running Years (1981)
- The Enduring Years (1982)
- The Virus Man (1985)
- Children's Ward, the Lonely One, Private Wing (1988)
- Dangerous Things (1993)
- The Final Year (1993)
- The Doctors of Downlands (1994)
- Children's Ward (1995)
- The Private Wing (1996)
- The Legacy (1997)
- The Inheritance (1998)
- The Murdering Old Psychiatrist (unfinished)
Among Claire's 'non-fiction' titles is a volume called 'What Happens In A Hospital', although I suspect that should probably have been listed under 'fiction'.
The self-promotion in relation to the Welsh Labour leadership campaign continues. Mark Drakeford was 'delighted' to receive the support of UNISON, which in the light of Drakeford's Health and Social Services policy simply consisting of asking the NHS how much money they would like and how often followed by an assurance that there will be no action taken against anyone no matter how great the scandal/wrongdoing/disaster, was nor surprising.
I was sent an article from the 'Western Mail' in which the Baroness of Ely styled herself 'A Socialist For The Digital Age' and most entertainingly stressed that she is worthy of being FM because she is 'not an insider'. Full details of the Baroness's biography and doings can be read in previous posts, but here's a very brief resume:
The Baroness's dad was the Rev Bob Morgan, who was Labour leader of South Glamorgan County Council. The Rev Bob was mates with all the Labour big wigs and movers and shakers and was also involved in charidee work with the molester George Thomas, aka Viscount Tonypandy, a long-serving south wales Labour MP and one-time Speaker of the House. The Baroness knew many of these big wigs at a young age and joined the Labour Party when she was barely out of nappies. The Baroness became actively involved in Labour Party politics in her teens and is a friend of the Windbags. When the Baroness was elected as the MEP for mid and west Wales in 1994, she was the youngest MEP to take her seat. I have found out that a few people in the Labour Party in Wales were not too happy with the way in which the Baroness obtained the nomination for that seat. The Baroness served on the Welsh Labour Party Executive for 10 years and was a founding member of the Yes for Wales Cross party group which campaigned for the Welsh Assembly to be established. So the Baroness knows Ron 'I was looking for badgers' Davies, former Secretary of State for Wales, very well indeed. As well as everybody else in the Labour party in Wales, in Westminster and in the Lords. What with not being an insider.
In 2003, there was a big row and accusations of cronyism when the Windbag's former long-serving SPAD Jan Royall was appointed as Head of the European Union's office in Wales at a salary of nearly £90k pa. The job was not advertised externally and there were complaints from the Tories, Plaid and politicians from European parties. Hans-Gert Poettering, leader of the European Christian Democrat and Conservative group, raised the matter with Romano Prodi, the then President of the EU Commission, on the grounds that the move was "an inappropriate political appointment.". The Vice-President of the European Commission at the time was the Windbag, who stated that:
|"I was not involved in the appointment in any way since such procedures and posts are not in my portfolio. I understand that there were other applicants for the post and, in accordance with all the proper rules, Jan Royall was appointed on merit."
Among the melee, there was one person who defended Royall's appointment: one Eluned Morgan, now the Baroness of Ely. The Baroness said that Royall 'had been appointed on merit and maintained that an individual's affiliation to a political party should not be a reason for excluding them from applying for jobs.'
The two main opposition parties in the Assembly, however, were concerned that Ms Royall's high profile connections with leading Labour politicians, including the Windbags, would be a barrier to impartiality in the job.
They were particularly concerned that it would be a factor in the run up to the following year's European elections and repeated their demand that Ms Royall should step down immediately.
Ms Royall, who was expected to represent the EU in Wales and Wales in Brussels, refused to respond to the demands for her resignation and turned down all requests for interviews.
Where is Jan Royall now? She's in the Lords of course, along with both Windbags and the Baroness of Ely. Jan was Secretary General of the British Labour Group in the European Parliament (1979-1985) and Policy Adviser/Personal Assistant to the Windbag as Leader of the Opposition. Jan became a member of the latter's Cabinet when he was European Commissioner for Transport (1995-1999) and Vice President of the Commission (1999-2002). Jan was then responsible for the Commission's relationship with the European Parliament before becoming Head of the European Commission Office in Wales (2003-2004). Jan joined the Lords in 2004 and became a member of the Privy Council in 2008. Having served a Government Whip and Government Spokesperson for Health, International Development and Foreign and Commonwealth Office (2005-2008), she became Government Chief Whip in the Lords in 2008. Jan entered the Cabinet in 2008 as Leader of the Lords (2008-2010) and held the titles of Lord President of the Council (2008-2009) and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (2009-2010). She was elected as Leader of the Opposition in the Lords in May 2010 and became a member Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet at the same time.
So Jan Royall was Lord President of the Council, 2008-09 and therefore the visitor to Bangor University during that time. Er, would you know anything about the havoc prevailing at Bangor University then Jan, with that massive effort by the paedophiles' friends to overthrow the Vice-Chancellor via highly questionable means, including that plan to fit him up for a criminal offence? A plan which was largely orchestrated by one Prof Fergus Lowe, who was as nasty as the other paedophiles' friends but not so thick and he didn't knock off at 3-30 pm either as was the habit of so many, so Fungus was rather more capable than most of them. See previous posts…
Here's Tony Francis's friend, delighted that another one of his cronies has bagged a senior position, while Romano Prodi elbows him out of the way:
Someone who is not in any way an insider, but who knows a lot of people who are:
The 'Western Mail' also published the Baroness's economic policy for Wales. It can be summed up by 'er, um, er, well, I would increase employment and encourage growth sort of, er, I think'.
How the Baroness will increase employment and encourage growth when all she has ever known is that well-known model of business among Wimmin who tick all the right boxes in the Welsh Labour Party which consists of 'applying for a pot of money' she did not explain.
Readers in England who don't believe me, you have missed out. It was hilarious, wherever you went throughout the 1980s and 90s in Wales there would be a Woman who was Empowering Someone who would explain that they would be applying for a pot of money, which would fund the Co-ordinator and the Support Workers for This Project. Not only would the jobs never be advertised, but when the pot of money was being applied for, there would be an open discussion among the Wimmin with reference to the named Wimmin who's jobs the pot of money would be funding.
When I finished my PhD, I really thought that I had waved good-bye to the world in which everyone was in hot pursuit of a pot of money. So imagine my surprise when I finally bagged a post-doc job and word got around that I was quite keen on community-things and I began receiving phone calls from Wimmin (who had previously refused to come near me what with me having Complained About The Paedophiles' Friends) asking me if I had a pot of money that they could apply for. It was funny, but I did draw the conclusion of 'Christ no wonder we're all in such a mess'. I even received requests for a pot of money when I was between contracts working for no pay myself. I was friends with a PhD student who knew what was going on and had an excellent sense of the ridiculous, who would also be rolling around with laughter at the notion of the pot of money.
One day a social worker became very angry with me because I did not have access to a pot of money with which to give £300 each to a number of Service User Representatives to enable them to attend a Service Users' Conference. I explained to the Service User Representatives – who had been told by the social worker that of course there would be a pot of money – that no, I had bugger all money myself, I wasn't even getting a salary for my work at that time. They snapped at me 'we really cannot believe that'. My PhD student friend with the sense of humour – who was living in't shoe box in't middle of t'road himself – commented that the VC was obviously sitting upstairs in his office lighting his cigars with the £50 notes which had been earmarked for the proverbial pot of money…
Bore da Professor Jones, we're here to discuss the University's research strategy…
Someone should have taken a leaf out of the rocker Bill Drummond's book and set fire to one million. Jane Hutt would be horrified, that would keep Chwarae Teg going for at least three months.
The Baroness raised concerns about the sexist behaviour of one in possession of testicles the other day, namely Sir Roderick Evans. The crime for which the Baroness was castigating Roderick Evans was but very trivial, certainly in comparison to the rest of Sir Roderick's life's work, but the Baroness failed to comment on that.
Sir Roderick Evans, or the Honourable Mr Justice Roderick Evans to use his legal title, was called to the Bar in 1970 and was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1989. He became a circuit judge in 1992, serving as resident judge for the Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court from 1994 to 1998 and as resident judge for Swansea Crown Court from 1998 to 1999. In 1999 he was appointed a Senior Circuit Judge and Honorary Recorder of Cardiff. Sir Roderick was appointed a High Court Judge of the Queen's Bench Division in 2001 and between 2004 and 2007 he was Presiding Judge for Wales. He retired from the High Court in April 2013.
Sir Roderick joined Dafydd's mates as a member of the Gorsedd of Bards in 2002 and since 2011 he has served as a member of the Parole Board. Bluglass and Colin Berry served on the Parole Board. Sir Roderick holds Honorary Fellowships and Awards from Aberystwyth (2003), Swansea (2007) and Bangor (2010) Universities. In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.
Sir Roderick Evans is Pro-Chancellor of Swansea University Council and is also a member of the Swansea University Court.
So not only has Sir Roderick worked with the maggots who have crawled all over the criminal justice system in Wales for the last four decades while they concealed a network of organised abuse and associated serious crime, but he was Presiding Judge for Wales when Judge Huw Daniel broke the law in court re my own case in 2004 and when that certificate of indictment was forged stating that I had pleaded guilty to a charge of violent disorder at Caernarfon Crown Court when I had not even been charged with such an offence. Ever.
In 2004 Rhodri Morgan was FM. Who's friends and family run Swansea University.
Sir Roderick: Do you remember that case in the late 1990s in which Dafydd got a rapist off of a prison sentence by giving evidence that the rapist had PTSD? I think that it was at Swansea Crown Court. Your Court Sir Roderick! The rapist was later revealed to have a string of convictions and he assaulted the TV journos on camera after the case. The rapist worked as a solicitor. He left the court as a pillion passenger on his mate's motorbike without wearing a crash helmet.
Since March 2016 Sir Roderick Evans has been Standards Commissioner for the National Assembly of Wales. The Standards Commissioner is an independent person appointed by the National Assembly for Wales, to safeguard standards, to uphold reputations, and to address the public's concerns about the collection of ex-social workers and Councillors who ignored a vicious paedophile ring for many years.
Meet the Commissioner Sir Roderick Evans:
The Baroness's biggest problem with him? That's Sir Roderick didn't find much wrong with a You Tube clip made by UKIP's Gareth Bennett about Labour's Joyce Watson 'which featured Ms Watson's face superimposed on a woman in a low-cut top'.
In the last few weeks, Simon Thomas, who was until very recently a Plaid AM and before that a Plaid MP, was found guilty of producing indecent images of children and is currently awaiting sentence. The adult son of the Baroness's colleague and Labour leadership rival Mark Drakeford – Drakeford is a former social worker and Councillor – was jailed for eight years for the violent, prolonged 'punishment' rape of a young woman. He also groomed an underaged girl online.
Sir Roderick is investigating a spoof You Tube clip and the Baroness actually thought that it was worth her while bothering to comment about it.
The Baroness's husband is a GP in south Wales. There is currently an investigation underway into the deaths of 26 babies in the care of Cwm Taf Health Board. I had heard that the maternity care in that Heath Board was dangerous six years ago. Did the Baroness's husband know about this as well?
Here's another one for the Senedd and the Baroness's husband. In the late 1990s, one of the UK's Experts in 'Control and Restraint' in Mental Health nursing was one Mike Williams. He was paid a lot of money to go all over the country sharing his expertise. Mike Williams worked as an Angel in the North Wales Hospital Denbigh for decades. He was the charge nurse in Bryn Golau Ward when I was illegally imprisoned there in 1986/87. Mike witnessed Dafydd turning up at gone midnight to 'visit' me, when I was in bed. Mike knew that I had been unlawfully arrested and imprisoned. He did not let me out. Mike was told by another Angel to put me in the Dungeon but he realised that I had a brain and he was treading carefully.
Mike had worked at the North Wales Hospital since the mid-1960s. He knew about the lobotomies, the abducted babies, the disappeared, the forged documentation, the trafficking gang and of course that dungeon. Mike knows about the murder of Stephen Bagnall as well (see post 'Hey, Hey DAJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?').
One of the UK's 'experts'. It wasn't a coincidence. Everyone who had the gen on that trafficking gang flourished. They are also the people who are Upholding The Standards.