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Whilst searching for more information regarding matters such as the sorry state of the UK's prisons and miscarriages of justice recently, I came across a news report from 1997 which stated that paedophile gangs were operating within prisons. What had happened was that paedophiles had been sentenced, but then their young victims had ended up in prison alongside their assailants, after the victims had been criminalised and jailed for less serious offences. That was certainly what seemed to be happening at Risley Remand Centre back in the 1980s.
No matter how many shock horror reports, no matter how many lessons will be learned, pledges for change etc, matters in the prison service and mental health services do not ever improve, even in the face of so much 'expertise'. I maintain that it is because everyone who would implement change is excluded at a junior level. There are no original thinkers in the pool from which the 'leaders' and 'advisers' are drawn. The 'leaders' have only made it into the selection pool by spending their careers keeping quiet about abuse and wrongdoing. Not that Gov't wants anyone who will expose the rot. The structure is so threadbare that if one gave a loose thread a tug, the whole system would unravel.
Those who are going to effect change are also drawn from a pool of people with remarkably similar backgrounds and CVs. So I thought that in this post I'd take a look at some of those who's vision was going to effect change in the prison system.
When the Indie reported on the paedophile gangs operating within prisons, David Ramsbotham was HMI Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales. Ramsbotham was in post 1995-01.
David Ramsbotham was the son of a clergyman, John Ramsbotham, who became the Bishop of Wakefield, retiring in 1967. John Ramsbotham is one of the generation of senior clergyman whom we now know colluded with a massive child abuse problem within the Church of England.
David Ramsbotham was educated at Haileybury and the Imperial Service College. Ramsbotham entered the Army to do National Service and was commissioned into the Royal Artillary in 1953. After National Service, he retained a TA commission and then completed a degree at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
In 1958 Ramsbotham was appointed to a regular Army commission. He served in Borneo during the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, Dec 1965-66. By 1971 Ramsbotham had achieved the rank of Lt Col and from 1970-73 he served as Military Assistant to the Chief of the General Staff, Sir (Later Lord) Field Marshal Michael Carver. Ramsbotham commanded a battalion of the Royal Green Jackets in N Ireland from 1974-75. By the end of 1978, Ramsbotham had achieved the rank of Brigadier and served again in N Ireland, commanding a brigade based in Belfast from June 1978 and was appointed CBE for his service there in the operational honours of Oct 1980.
David Ramsbotham will know a great deal about shoot to kill, the torture and sometimes murder of suspects, the law breaking that was associated with internment, the miscarriages of justice in N Ireland, the internal wars between different factions of the security services and of course the identity of those who were abusing boys at the Kincora Boys Home, as well as about the activities of the paedophile child psychiatrist who was linked to Kincora, Dr Morris Fraser, who was afforded complete protection by the British establishment.
As the British Army's Director of PR, 1982–84, Ramsbotham leaked documents to a journalist which showed that prior to the Falklands War, the Army had developed a comprehensive plan for dealing with the media, but it had been overlooked; the Army was subsequently criticised for not having done such planning.
Ramsbotham commanded the 3rd Armoured Division for a period prior to March 1987. In April 1987 he was appointed Commander UK Field Army and Inspector General of the TA.
Ramsbotham stepped down as Commander of the Field Army in August 1990 and received a further honorary appointment as ADC Gen to Lilibet on 3 Dec 1990, which he held until his retirement from the Army. On 27 December 1990 Ramsbotham was appointed Adjutant-General. This period included the UK involvement in the Gulf War; he retired from the Army in July 1993. In Dec 1995 Ramsbotham became Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales.
Ramsbotham had a 'strained relationship' with the Home Secretaries in office during his tenure – Michael Howard and Jack Straw – and this contributed to his contract not being continued for the full eight years that had originally been possible.
In 2005 Ramsbotham was given a peerage and he sits as a crossbencher. Ramsbotham is Chairman of the Koestler Awards scheme as well as Vice-Chair of both the All Party Penal Affairs Group and the All Party Parliamentary Group for Learning and Skills in the Criminal Justice System. He is President of UNLOCK, the National Association of Ex-Offenders and an Ambassador for the Prison Advice and Care Trust (PACT). Ramsbotham is a Trustee and Vice-Chairman of the charity Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour.
The primary focus of the Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour (IFBB) is the commissioning of research into how food, nutrition and diet can affect brain function and behaviour. Former Trustees include Hugh Montefiore, the 3rd Earl Henry Kitchener, Baroness Susan Greenfield and Rev Nicholas Frayling.
Hugh Montefiore, Chairman and Trustee of the IFBB, was Bishop of Kingston-upon-Thames, 1970-78 and then Bishop of Birmingham, 1978-87. Nicholas Frayling is also a clergyman who worked in Peckham, Tooting and Liverpool when organised trafficking gangs operated in those areas. Montefiore and Frayling must have known at least something of what was going on.
Susan Greenfield spent a few years as the media's idea of a wonderful advert for wimmin in science and there were many articles published about the feminist scientist who wore leather and short skirts. Greenfield played the journos for all that she could, most of them had no knowledge of pharmacology or biochemistry and obviously saw Greenfield as some sort of Einstein. Greenfield's colleagues are less wowed and she has stood accused of publishing theories without the evidence to back them up. Susan Greenfield was appointed Director of the Royal Institution in 1998 and more gushing articles followed. Within a few short years there was the most enormous ding dong, with Greenfield being accused of complete incompetence and wasting millions of quid and Greenfield responding that her accusers were a bunch of old farts in possession of testicles. Then the writs began flying. Whatever went on must have been really bad because the post of Director of the Royal Institution was subsequently abolished, just in case Susan came back again.
After the disaster at the Royal Institution, Susan rocked up in the Lords as a people's peer. When reading about Susan, I had the most terrible shock. I thought that Blair rang up his mates to invite them to become people's peers, but it's worse than that. People's peers are 'self-nominated', as indeed was Susan. No wonder the people's peers are all narcissistic loonies, they've applied to be peers themselves, they haven't even been chosen. So that's why the Lords is now so obviously the House of the Sharp-Elbowed and Mediocre. I think that I might contact hundreds of dinner ladies, cleaners and service users and encourage them all to nominate themselves as people's peers. They can bang on about empowering wimmin just as well as Susan Greenfield can and they'll be able to cook a dinner for a family of five at the same time.
Lord Henry Kitchener, former President and Trustee of the IFBB, was a physicist who spent most of his working life with ICI in Cheshire and was President of the Organic Food Society. He was a Freemason who was initiated in 1947 and rose to senior rank, serving as Senior Grand Warden of the United Grand Lodge of England. In 1972 Lord Kitchener was Deputy Lieutenant of Cheshire. Which rather puts him at the scene of the crimes and cover-up re Dafydd, Sir Peter Morrison and the gang. Kitchener was a friend of Bertrand Russell's son Lord Conrad Russell (see post 'So Who Was Angry About What?'). Bertrand Russell spent the last 25 years of his life living in north Wales and was friends with the Welsh Bloomsbury set based at Cwm Croesor who knew about Gwynne, Dafydd and the gang (see post 'The Village').
Henry Kitchener was a Page of Honour at the coronation of George VI. His niece Emma Joy Kitchener, a Lady-in-Waiting to HRH Princess Michael of Kent, married Julian Fellowes of gratuitous snobbery and 'Downton Abbey' fame. In 1998 the Fellowes family changed its surname from Fellowes to Kitchener-Fellowes, because that sounds even posher and it also means that now Julian Fellowes can stress that he's related to Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, the butcher of WWI and inventor of the concentration camp.
Henry was known to have explained to people that an hereditary peerage was much better than a mere life peerage and that he took his right to sit in the Lords very seriously, although by his own admission he was 'just too lazy' to attend the Lords much before his retirement.
Every little helps – there's a paedophile gang with links to Parliament and the Royal Family to be concealed!
Because Henry Kitchener was unmarried with no male heirs, his title died with him in 2011. Julian Fellowes was outraged at this waste of a good Earldom and publicly expressed his dissatisfaction that the proposals to change the rules of royal succession were not extended to hereditary peerages, which had they been would have allowed his wife to succeed her uncle as The Countess Kitchener. Emma was in danger of remaining plain old Lady Fellowes – or perhaps Lady Kitchener-Fellowes because of course they'd changed their name – as a result of being married to Lord Julian, only a life peer himself. Which is so naff that one might as well be in trade. Here he is, common as muck:
|The Lord Fellowes of West Stafford
Fellowes stated: "I find it ridiculous that, in 2011, a perfectly sentient adult woman has no rights of inheritance whatsoever when it comes to a hereditary title". Fortunately for Julian and Emma, Lilibet came to the rescue. On 9 May 2012, Lilibet issued a Royal Warrant of Precedence granting Lady Emma the same rank and style as the daughter of an Earl, as would have been due to her if her late father had survived his brother and therefore succeeded to the earldom. Specifically it declared that Lady Fellowes "shall henceforth have, hold and enjoy the same title, rank, place, pre-eminence and precedence as a daughter of an Earl" and "succeeded to the title and dignity of Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and Broome."
Much as I am touched by the sudden outburst of the desire for gender equality on the part of Julian Fellowes and Lilibet, where 'dignity' enters into the hissy fit of a man who writes laughable dramas for TV because he has realised that his wife cannot inherit the title of a man who concealed the crimes of Dafydd, I cannot imagine. Now how was that well-known Women's Libber Lilibet persuaded to intervene in this matter I wonder?
Sir Peter Morrison, former Tory MP for Chester, celebrity paedophile and brother of Dame Mary Morrison, Woman-of-the Bedchamber to Lilibet.
|Major General His Grace The Duke of Westminster, President of the City of Chester Conservative Association when Sir Peter Morrison was the constituency MP
Carlo, Chancellor of UCNW and close friend of the Duke of Westminster.
|The man who exerted massive influence over UCNW while Carlo was Chancellor and who tried to embezzle a few thousand quid from the institution. It really is appalling as I am sure that Carlo would agree.
'These women are only bloody feminists because they're too fat and ugly to get a man.'
IFBB's Science Fellows include Kathleen Taylor, a neuroscientist based at Oxford University. One of Taylor's research areas is 'the neuroscience of belief'. I wish you all the best with that one Kathleen, perhaps your research will equal that of some of your colleagues who have told us all that MRI scans show which parts of the brain are responsible for 'love' and 'compassion' and how these areas experience increased activity after the owners of the brains have done a bit of Mindfulness. Look, the brain areas are lighting up! The MRI scanning machines are obviously in on Prof Mark Williams's research fraud as well then (see post 'The Biggest Expert Of The Lot').
Kathleen's 2004 book 'Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control' was shortlisted by MIND for their 2005 'book of the year'. In 2005 MIND were concealing the abuse and deaths of patients at the Hergest Unit in Ysbyty Gwynedd, as well as in other institutions. Both National MIND were involved, as were MIND Cymru. I rang MIND Cymru in 2005 and told one Ruth Coombs, who I think was their Director of Policy, that I had evidence of the serious abuse of mental health patients in Wales. She was all ears and asked me where. I replied 'the Hergest Unit' and I heard her whisper 'Oh my God' before putting the phone down on me. Ruth subsequently became Director of MIND Cymru and then the Head of the British Heart Foundation in Wales. See post 'The Mysterious Silence Of MIND'.
Ruth Coombs has climbed ever higher and is now 'Head of Wales' no less at the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Ruth has worked in partnership with the Children's Commissioner for Wales to produce an 'anti-bullying resource' for use in secondary schools in Wales. MIND Cymru recently featured on TV in Wales as being an organisation with a serious workplace bullying problem. This blog also received accounts and evidence of bullying and misconduct from horrified former MIND Cymru staff (see post 'A Solicitor's Letter From North East Wales MIND') and I was subsequently harassed and threatened by MIND Cymru as they tried to force me to remove my posts about them.
Robin Holden, a man with a very cosy relationship with Dafydd who formerly worked as an Angel at the North Wales Hospital Denbigh and as a senior manager for the Gwynedd Community Health Trust whilst patients died and were fitted up for crimes by the staff and when serious complaints when uninvestigated and documentation was forged, is now an executive with MIND Cymru (see post 'A Solicitor's Letter From North East Wales MIND').
The Office of Children's Commissioner for Wales was established on the recommendation of no less than that of Sir Ronald Waterhouse. Since it's creation it has been managed and run substantially by paedophiles' friends. One senior social worker employed by the Children's Commissioner was the daughter of an Angel at the North Wales Hospital Denbigh who had been a close friend of Dafydd's daughter when they were teenagers. See post 'Yet More Inglorious Bastards'.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has a long and proud tradition of appointing Commissioners who have presided over the abuse of vulnerable people, such as Dr Rachel Perkins (see post 'BMA Calling, BMA Calling'), who was the Clinical Director of Springfield Hospital when that hospital colluded with Dafydd and the paedophiles in north Wales and concealed another linked paedophile gang in south London (see posts 'Some Very Eminent Psychiatrists From London…' and 'The Most Dangerous Man In the World – Part III').
Kathleen Taylor's 2009 book, 'Cruelty: Human Evil and the Human Brain' examined human cruelty from 'the points of view of biology and sociology'. Whereas this blog has examined human cruelty as inflicted by MIND and the many people with who's crimes MIND have colluded or concealed.
The Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour seems to have spent some years disguised as something else. It began life in 1984 as South Cumbria Alternative Sentencing Options. It was founded to investigate whether nutrition could play a role in minimising recidivism in young offenders, but that aim doesn't readily come to mind if one talks of 'alternative sentencing options'. The organisation became Natural Justice in 1991, which again does not sound as though it is an organisation investigating links between nutrition and offending behaviour. Natural Justice metamorphosed into the Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour (IFBB) in 2010.
The Institute has a collaborative research programme with Oxford University. It facilitated a £1.4 million research project in three prisons funded by the Wellcome Trust. The Wellcome Trust funded Professor Mark Williams and Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore to conduct a big Mindfulness research project. Sarah-Jayne is the helpful neuroscientist upon whom Mark Williams is relying to give Mindfulness scientific credibility. Sarah-Jayne's dad is the Oxford Professor Colin Blakemore, who was formerly Chief Executive of the MRC, which gives Oxford University a great deal of funding. Colin Blakemore had to wait a very long time for his knighthood because his animal work was felt to be so gratuitously cruel, even by other researchers carrying out animal work. For further details of Sarah-Jayne and Colin Blakemore's network, see post 'They Are MYRIAD, They Are Legion'.
The Wellcome funded study for the IFBB commenced in Jan 2008 with Professor John Stein – a Trustee of the IFBB and Chair of the IFBB's Science Advisory Council – of Oxford University as Principal Investigator. John Stein was the PhD supervisor of Daniel Wolpert, who was the PhD supervisor of Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (see post 'They Are MYRIAD, They Are Legion'). Sarah-Jayne Co-directs the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme at UCL.
The Institute has been carrying out a study at Robert Clack School into whether nutritional supplements can improve disadvantaged pupils' cognitive skills and behaviour, funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. I suspect that John Stein might find that a range of cultural and socio-economic factors may be playing a part in the cognitive skills and behaviour of disadvantaged pupils, as well as in how 'cognitive skills and behaviour' are being defined.
Prof John Stein came under fire in 2008 during that row when Gordon Brown was PM about the girl from Newcastle, Laura Spence, who had been turned down for a place to read medicine at Oxford despite a string of As at A level. Laura went to university in the US in the end. John Stein angrily denied that Oxford had discriminated against Laura, a state school pupil and maintained that he and his colleagues had been working very hard to welcome state school pupils at Oxford. Laura's rejection was most likely simply a result of the huge numbers of very well-qualified students applying for a place at Oxford for medicine. Although I don't believe that most Oxford admissions tutors do actively discriminate against state school pupils and it is true that more state school pupils are indeed entering Oxford, they are nearly always state school pupils who's parents are professional middle class people, often academics. Students like Sarah-Jayne Blakemore was.
If John Stein wants more genuinely disadvantaged students to benefit from an Oxford education, he'd do better addressing the variety of interacting socio-economic and cultural factors that excludes those students rather than wasting his time giving them food supplements. That will boost the profits of Holland and Barrett, but I doubt that it will change the social profile of Oxford undergrads.
Lots of fish oil, that's what the lower classes need. Then they'd all be as clever as Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. They're only held back because they do insist on eating Big Macs and chips, Jamie Oliver will confirm that, whilst he insults their mothers at the same time for not feeding their offspring the sort of delicacies that Buddy Bear and his siblings enjoy.
In 1999, when Jamie was riding high on the success of his TV programme Two Fat Hairy Naked Chefs, Jamie was invited to cook Tony Blair a dinner at No 10. So that is why Tony Blair's kids have done so well for themselves, it was the quality of the grub that the family were served by Jamie! Euan Blair bagged an internship at the Whitehouse, subsequently pursued a career in the City and is the proud joint owner of a house worth £3.6 million. Bloody hell Jamie, you must have put something special in Blair's dinner. It was revealed in the media that Cherie is the joint owner of Euan's house, rather than Euan's wife Suzanne. That'll be because Suzanne once ate a Penguin biscuit.
Jamie Oliver went to Newport Free Grammar School and left with two GCSEs. He went on to Westminster Technical College, where he gained an NVQ in home economics. Well that's curious Jamie, because I went to a troubled shite comprehensive school, but I ended up with O levels, A levels, a BSc, an MSc and a PhD. I've never been fed food supplements and I didn't grow up in a household which possessed items of expensive kitchen machinery, but I was surrounded by books and people who discussed politics. I wonder if there could be a link. It's called 'cultural capital' Professor Stein and Jamie, Pierre Bourdieu wrote about it years ago before people worked so hard to blame disadvantaged people for their own disadvantage.
John Stein's brother is the celebrity chef Rick Stein. I did wonder if Rick flogged food supplements, but a quick look at his wiki entry reveals that he actually owns a few fish and chip shops.
On the topic of Oxford entry, I wonder if John Stein can solve a puzzle. Back in the mid-1980s, there was a lot of huffing and puffing in the media regarding certain schools having reserved places at Oxford. Oxford angrily denied any such practice, maintaining that was only back in the Olden Days and things were different now. The year that this row blew up was the very same year that Brown's cousin applied to read law at Oxford. She didn't get the place that she wanted, but was subsequently offered a place to do theology instead, which confused me, because she had not shown the slightest interest in theology. It was explained by Brown's uncle and auntie that Brown's cousin's school had a reserved place at Oxford, but it was for theology and it had been offered to her. The school in question was Tiffin Girls' in Kingston-upon-Thames. Tiffin Girls' still has an excellent track record for getting pupils into Oxbridge.
And some crumpets:
Alderman Roberts probably sold them in that grocer's shop in Grantham that we heard so much about from Thatch.
The Patron of the IFBB is the restaurateur and chef Prue Leith. Leith grew up in South Africa and her father worked for and became a Director of African Explosives, a subsidiary of ICI producing dynamite for use in mines. In 1975, Leith founded Prue Leith's School of Food and Wine, of which Caroline Waldegrave is Managing Director. Caroline is married to William Waldegrave, who's OK by Julian Fellowes, being the son of the 12th Earl Waldegrave. William Waldegrave was Secretary of State for Health, 1990-92 and while in that post he covered up the barrel of shit which was Dafydd and the paedophile gang and the linked gang in south London which was concealed by St George's Hospital Medical School/Springfield Hospital. Waldegrave was the Tory MP for Bristol West. That must have been very useful for Dr D.G.E. Wood, Dafydd's partner in crime who came from the Bristol area, qualified from Bristol University and who's father was a Top Doc who continued to live near Bristol long after Wood himself had settled in north Wales to follow a life of serious organised crime. Waldegrave's sister is Lady Susan Hussey, Lady-in-Waiting to Lilibet and Godmother to Prince William. The Lady Susan was married to Marmaduke Hussey, whom Thatch appointed Chairman of the BBC to sort out the pinkos there. Duke Hussey was Chairman when my friend, a witness to the wrongdoing in north Wales, was forced out of his job at the BBC, while Waldegrave was Health Secretary (see post 'The Turn Of The Screw').
In his autobiography, 'A Different Kind Of Weather', Waldegrave banged on about his noble ancestors and his bitter regret that he never became PM. Presumably this aristocratic complete scumbag who ignored the most serious crime in the NHS and social services thought that he would have done a so much better job than the scumbag who was the petit bourgeois grocer's daughter or the scumbag who was the son of the circus performer from Brixton who ignored the same serious crime.
In Matthew Parris's article for 'The Spectator' in which he reviews Waldegrave's autobiography, Parris mentions that he and Waldegrave were elected to the Commons at the same time in 1979. Parris wrote: 'That old charmer Edward du Cann, to whom in the days after William and I had been elected in 1979 I once confided my feelings of hurt when criticised, put a hand on my wrist. 'Dear boy,' he said, 'nice people are always hurt.'
Edward du Cann was the Conservative MP for Taunton, 1956-87 and was highly influential in the Tory Party as a result of his position as Chairman of the Tory Party, 1965-67 and as Chairman of the Party's 1922 Committee, 1972-84. Du Cann was a very rich man whom my grandfather always claimed was a crook. Du Cann was criticized as "incompetent" by a 1974 DTI report regarding the bankruptcy of Keyser Ullman bank, of which du Cann was a Director. In 1973, Keyser Ullman lent £17m to a 28 year old entrepreneur, Christopher Selmes, secured on a valueless guarantee. Mr Selmes later fled the country, leaving debts of more than £20m. The bankruptcy of Keyser Ullman was the only reason why du Cann did not put himself forward as a candidate in the Tory leadership contest against Thatcher, du Cann being yet another mediocrity who fancied himself as a future PM and had led the rout against Ted Heath, initially under the guise of robustly supporting Thatch for the leadership. Peter Morrison was a leading light in encouraging Thatch to run for the leadership.
Du Cann succeeded Duncan Sandys as Chairman of Lonrho in 1984, a position from which he was forced to resign in 1991 due to his role as Deputy Chairman of Homes Assured, a finance company which crashed. His resignation came two days before the company collapsed, owing £10 million to creditors. The Serious Fraud Office began an inquiry. Du Cann was involved in several legal disputes over debts. His Somerset estate Cothay Manor was repossessed in 1992 and his London flat in Tufton Street in Westminster was repossessed in 1993. In 1985-86, the Eagle Star insurance company began proceedings three times to repossess Cothay Manor. The amount was paid each time and the mortgage later discharged.
Between 1980 and 1993 there were at least seven writs against du Cann for late payment of bills, including failure to pay water rates, to pay commission on the sale of a yacht, to keep up his mortgage payments and to clear a £137,000 overdraft.
Du Cann had a bankruptcy order served against him in 1993 and lived for several years in Alderney on the Isle of Wight. So one wonders how du Cann then subsequently wound up living in Lemona in Cyprus with enough dosh to invest in a vineyard.
Here are some clues:
On 26 March 1993 the Indie reported that du Cann had applied to have the bankruptcy order against him lifted. The order was made in the London Bankruptcy Court on 12 March 1993 on a petition over unpaid bills by the solicitors Denton Hall Burgin & Warren, who used to act for du Cann. Because of that order, an Inland Revenue petition for unpaid taxes became a formality on 25 March 1993 and was automatically dismissed at a brief private hearing before Registrar Geoffrey Pimm in London on 25 March 1993. Both the Inland Revenue and the law firm had filed their petitions in Jan 1993. Du Cann told 'The Independent' on 25 March that his solicitors would be applying to have the bankruptcy order lifted in the next few days.
A curious article in the 'Sunday Herald', 18 July 1995, about du Cann mentioned his long and glorious life – he was by the 71 yrs old – his service in the Royal Naval Reserve in the 1940s, his former close relationship to Ted Heath and his numerous dodgy deals and friendships with the rich and famous. It was explained that du Cann's wife Jen had recently died, that du Cann was living on the Isle of Wight in reduced circumstances and was unhappy at the way that the Tory Party was 'being run'. Du Cann told the 'Sunday Herald' that he had a lot to tell and he would be telling it.
In July 1995, Nicola Davies QC was supposedly reviewing the paperwork relating to the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal to determine whether a Public Inquiry was needed. Although Dame Nicola stated in Dec 1995 that a Public Inquiry would not be in the public interest, by summer 1995, Sir Ronald Waterhouse had altered his retirement plans and had embarked on a tour of the paedophiles' friends in Cheshire and Wales who were responsible for so much of the parts of the infrastructure which allowed the abuse of children in Cheshire/north Wales to occur, infrastructure which was to feature in Ronnie's subsequent Inquiry, which was announced by William Hague on 17 June 1996.
By July 1995 Dafydd et al in north Wales were moving heaven and earth in an attempt to demonstrate that I was so dangerous that I should be banged up in a secure hospital on their say so without the inconvenience of a trial, having failed dismally in their serial attempts to have me imprisoned by perjury, planting evidence etc.
Du Cann never did tell anyone anything, or at least if he did, whatever he told them received no publicity.
In Oct 2013 the 'Cyprus Mail' ran a feature on a long forgotten elderly English gentleman who had been living in Cyprus for the last 12 years and who's previous as the Chief Exec of a a wine company with vineyards in the south of France had prompted him to 'invest' in Cyprus vine yards years previously. It was Edward du Cann. Du Cann told the 'Cyprus Mail' that he used to regularly visit the south of France to 'inspect the vine yards'.
John Allen owned a villa in the south of France to which he took kids from the children's homes of north Wales 'on holiday'. Dafydd was a regular in the south of France as well, he 'held clinics' there.
For some years now Dr D.G.E. Wood has been 'holding clinics' in Cyprus.
Cheers, We're as corrupt as fuck!
Dafydd's mate and umbrella Professor Robert Bluglass has a second home in the Pyrenees. Which are located on the south west France/Spain border.
Du Cann was a board member of E-Clear, a British payment processing company, which went into administration in Jan 2010. He married three times; first, in 1962, to Sally (a cousin), whom he divorced in 1987, then he was married to Jennifer until her death in 1995. Du Cann died in Aug 2017 and was survived by his third wife, Maureen Hope-Wynne. Perhaps Maureen could let us know whence that influx of dosh came which refloated the Good Ship du Cann after his bankruptcy and public disgrace. Maureen might also tell us why Sir Edward decided at some point in 1995 that he didn't have anything to tell after all, even though he thought that he did. Unless William Hague wants to explain instead.
Sir Edward du Cann's second wife Jen was the widow of Robert Cooke, who had been Waldegrave's predecessor as the Tory MP for Bristol West. Cooke served as a councillor on Bristol City Council, 1954-57 and taught English at a Bristol public school. D.G.E. Wood went to a public school in or near Bristol, but I don't know which one. A long standing loyal protector of Dafydd and the gang was Lord David Hunt. Hunt was MP for Wirral and then Wirral West, 1976-97 and served as a junior Minister in the Welsh Office and as Secretary of State for Wales twice. David Hunt did his law degree in Bristol and is of a similar vintage to D.G.E. Wood. Before Hunt was elected to the Commons, Lilibet gave him an MBE for services to politics in the west of England. I'd love to know what those services were. Lord Hunt continues to do his best for the paedophiles' friends. Hunt's international law firm DAC Beachcroft now works on behalf of Top Doctors who have found themselves in trouble.
One of Edward du Cann's earliest scams was perpetrated when he was a Director of BAC (British Car Auctions), a company founded by David Wickins, alongside whom du Cann served in the Royal Naval Reserve. British Car Auctions group was the world's biggest second-hand car business. David Wickins was a long-time friend and business associate of both Denis and Mark Thatcher.
BAC flourished first as Southern Counties Car Auctions, but soon outgrew the name as auction sites were opened throughout the country. Among regular sellers were the Post Office, the Ministry of Defence and the regional gas boards. Potential problems with buyers were overcome by selling vehicles only as seen on the most perfunctory inspection and enforcing a foolproof payment system. Wickins also bought up several car auction businesses in the US, building a highly profitable empire which was eventually selling a million cars a year.
Wickins's long friendship with Denis Thatcher was cemented by golf and lubricated by gins and tonic in the Sunningdale clubhouse. Wickins was part-owner in a waste-disposal business called Attwoods, of which Denis was a Director, while BCA was a sponsor of Mark Thatcher's short-lived motor racing career. It was Mark who introduced Wickins to Lotus in 1983.
Lotus was famed for financial instability as much as engineering excellence and was in deep trouble at the time. The company was losing money and its recently deceased founder Colin Chapman had been implicated in the DeLorean scandal: Lotus had undertaken a redesign contract for the ill-fated car project, based in N Ireland, from which large sums of money provided by Gov't grants had disappeared. As a result, the company was besieged by Inland Revenue inspectors, who imposed an £84 million 'protective assessment'.
Mark Thatcher arranged for Lotus's Directors to meet Wickins, who took a 29 per cent stake, became Chairman, resisted the taxmen and brought in other investors, including the Bamford family. As demand for exotic cars grew with the 1980s boom Lotus's fortunes swiftly recovered and in 1986 – again through Mark's introduction – the business was sold to General Motors. In the meantime, Wickins gave Mark a job as a consultant to BCA's American subsidiary, declaring that he was sure that Mark would be a great asset.
Favoured regulars attending Wickins's car auctions were treated to lunch in his lavishly-appointed dining room overlooking the ring at Frimley, where the original field was developed into a multi-million-pound auction complex.
Upon leaving school, David Wickens took articles with the accountants Deloitte & Co, where he was posted to South Africa. There he worked on audits for Rhodesian copper mines and Zambian sawmills until the outbreak of war in 1939, when he enlisted in the South African Navy. After 18 months Wickens returned to England on secondment to the Royal Navy and brother officers Edward du Cann and the future entrepreneur and yachtsman Owen Aisher became lifelong friends.
At the end of the war Wickins was offered a permanent commission in the South African Navy, but he entered 'business' instead, in the auction trade and also in the buying, selling and floating of companies. Wickins assisted in the flotation of the Forte family's catering and restaurant business and was a generous sponsor of sport, both of major events and of individual sportsmen such as the young Nick Faldo and the jockey Bob Champion. When BCA sponsored the Wightman Cup in 1989, the year of Wickins's retirement, the Thatchers opened the doors of 10 Downing Street for a splendid party.
David Wickins also enjoyed racing International One design yachts and, later, motor cruising. He owned a string of racehorses and in retirement on Majorca he bred Great Danes.
Wickens was a 'ladies' man' and employed 'pretty girls' as pilots for his helicopters and aircraft and as chauffeurs for his cars. He was married at least three times and possibly, although his own account varied, six.
When the wider world finally got a glimpse of the sort of man that Denis Thatcher was, many people were entertained to find that he was remarkably like the satirical portrayal of him in the 'Dear Bill' letters in 'Private Eye', a gin sodden golf club bore, who's friend Maurice sold goods out of car boots. On one memorable occasion, Denis observed to Bill that 'I had no idea that those friends of Maurice's were in the Mafia'. Following the success of the 'Dear Bill' letters, in 1981 John Wells embarked upon his 'Anyone for Denis?' stage play, the catch phrase being 'Stop me and buy me one'.
It was Richard Ingrams who wrote the 'Dear Bill' letters. I wonder if he based them on David Wickins.
As for William Waldegrave, the snooty aristo who did the dirty work of this collection of wide-boys, conmen and gangsters, he is constantly constructed as a being a man with great intellectual gifts. So Waldegrave hasn't even got the excuse that he was as thick as Thatcher.
During the late 1980s and 90s, a number of people in Somerset who knew what was happening to me in north Wales, like Edward du Cann, inexplicably found themselves in possession of a great deal of money. I explained in my post 'Upper Class Twit Of The Year – Shooting Themselves' that some of that money had arrived in the form of a cheque from Coutts. William Waldegrave is someone who is involved with Coutts.
The IFBB's Trustee David Ramsbotham became an honorary Fellow of Corpus Christie College, Cambridge in 2001 and serves on the Advisory Board of the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College, London. He is also a Patron of Prisoners Abroad and the Prison Education Trust. Ramsbotham is also Patron of the African Prisons Project and President of PTSD Resolution, providing veterans with treatment for PTSD.
I can't find any mention of Dafydd on the website of PTSD Resolution, but I'd be surprised if he hasn't been associated with them at some point. It was Dafydd after all who invented PTSD and who subsequently made a mint from it (see post 'Feet In Chains'). This is not to suggest that I do not believe that soldiers suffer from severe psychological distress during or after combat, it rather suggests that I believe that they do, but that Dafydd just made it all up as he went along as he usually does and that no soldiers or indeed anyone else benefited from PTSD Dafydd-style.
Ramsbotham is also an ambassador for the charity SkillForce.
David Ramsbotham has written extensively on matters relating to prisons and the military. His 2003 book 'Prisongate: The Shocking State of Britain's Prisons and the Need for Visionary Change' sets out his 'vision for reform' of the prison system.
The discourse surrounding prisons and prison reform is remarkably similar to that which surrounds the mental health system. After a few years of involvement at a senior level, the post holder tells the world that the system is dangerous, degrading, damaging, not doing what it should and is in desperate need of 'reform'. No reform ever happens. What does happen is that the person who has just pronounced then spends the next few years clocking up a whole load of appointments with other organisations in the field, all of whom agree that Something Must Be Done and who promise a new vision.
Meanwhile, another person succeeds the post which has just been vacated, someone else who, like the last incumbent, has the necessary CV involving some sort of career which has involved keeping quiet for decades about state wrongdoing that has been concealed at the highest levels . After seven or eight years, they too will stand down, announce that the system is terrible, write a book and then take a senior role in organisations which promise a new vision, a new line of researching the problem etc etc.
Ronnie Waterhouse went one better than this. After a lifetime of service to a paedophile gang as a corrupt barrister and then a corrupt judge, Ronnie Chaired the monumental cover-up which was the massively expensive public inquiry into the activities of that paedophile ring and subsequently became Patron of the charidee Voices From Care, representing kids in care. One of the Trustees then nicked the funds.
So I was delighted to read in the media this weekend that there is a mental health crisis in the UK, we're all mentally ill on a scale never seen before…1 in 4… a Cinderella service…caring nurses exhausted…no community services…talking treatments needed…all a matter of funding and resources…
I think that we've been here before. I was first subjected to this discourse by a nurse called Ingrid when I sat in the North Wales Hospital, unlawfully imprisoned in Dec 1986. I told Ingrid that this was a thoroughly abusive, corrupt institution staffed by people who did not give a damn about the patients. Ingrid yelled at me that they cared and it was very offensive of me to state that they didn't. She then walked off in tears. Ingrid wasn't Dafydd, but she knew what he was doing and when after a very long time and a pitched battle on my part to finally get an investigation held into my complaint – which was Chaired by Dafydd's mate Robert Bluglass who concealed Dafydd's crimes anyway (see post 'Enter Professor Bluglass CBE') – Ingrid refused to give evidence at the hearing.
Now stop this nonsense, get a team out to the North Wales Hospital Denbigh and excavate the whole site. Bring those bodies up, admit that they were concealed there in the 1970s and 80s, not the 1870s and 80s, identify them and face the world with what has gone on. Then never again consult the BMA, the GMC or the Royal Colleges on any health or social policy matter.
'We didn't know.'
Then how did those bodies find their way there? And why were their owners never reported missing? Denis Nilsen murdering young homeless men whom no-one even realised had vanished had nothing on the North Wales Hospital.
The first Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales to be appointed was Philip Barry, who only served between 1981-82. Dafydd's empire was at full strength at this time, although there was all that dreadful publicity about Mary Wynch who had been unlawfully arrested and imprisoned by Dafydd only two years previously and was now taking the first steps on her path to legal action against Dafydd, Clwyd Health Authority and Risley Remand Centre. Other people were suffering as badly as Mary had. The Birmingham Six and many others were languishing in various prisons after having been framed and kids in care and mental health patients, many of whom had also been fitted up, were dying in Risley Remand Centre (see post 'Include Me Out').
Curiously enough, the internet seems to have been erased of virtually all details pertaining to Philip Barry, although he also held the role of Chief Inspector for Prisons for Scotland, 1980-86.
Sir James Patrick Ivan Hennessey succeeded Philip Barry and was Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales, 1982 -87. Dafydd's regime was still so much intact that in 1987 he and his colleagues embarked on a well planned co-ordinated attempt to frame me and have me imprisoned for 'attempting to stab a doctor' (see posts 'Workers' Play Time' and 'Security, Security'). The plan fell apart after Sergeant Morgan at Bangor Police Station and a senior nurse, Jeff Crowther, didn't tell the required lies. Within two years Sgt Morgan had been found guilty of indecently assaulting a teenaged girl in custody and was sacked. Jeff seemed to know that Sgt Morgan was going to be found guilty before his trial had begun. Shortly before the Waterhouse Inquiry, Jeff's wife died whilst 'in the care of' Ysbyty Gwynedd. A few weeks later Jeff had to go into hiding after an addict threatened to murder him. Jeff left north Wales not long after. Documents in my possession demonstrate that Risley Remand Centre and the Mental Health Act Commission were on board with the plan to frame and imprison me.
James Hennessey was educated at Bedford School and then King's College, Durham (now part of Newcastle University). He joined the Royal Artillary and was later being seconded to the Indian Army, 1944-46. After WWII, Hennessy joined what was then HM Overseas Service, serving initially in South Africa from 1948 in a number of roles. He was seconded in 1961 to the Office of the High Commissioner in Pretoria and took on a number of positions in the Gov't of South Africa. Hennessey retired from the Overseas Service in 1968 and was appointed to the Foreign Office, serving as Charge d'Affaires to Montevideo, Uruguay, 1971–72 and then High Commissioner to Kampala, Uganda and non-resident Ambassador to Kigali, Rwanda, 1973–76. Hennessey served as Consul-General in Cape Town, 1977-80, before ending his career as the last Governor and Commander-in-Chief of British Honduras (now Belize), 1980–81.
Hennessy's wiki entry tells us that he was appointed Chief Inspector of Prisons, taking over from Bill Pearce, 'previously the Chief Inspector of Probation for Inner London whose tenure as HMCIP was cut short by illness'. Bill Pearce is someone else who has been airbrushed out of history, but him being the Chief Inspector of Probation for Inner London at a time when the Probation Service across the UK was colluding with serious crime including the organised abuse of children and vulnerable adults suggests that the Prisons Inspectorate made an interesting choice when they appointed him. The Home Secretary at the time was Willie Whitelaw who was a faithful servant of Dafydd and the paedophiles for decades (see previous posts).
James Hennessey served a five-year term until 1987. After stepping down, Hennessy served on the Parole Board for England and Wales until 1991, joining the paedophiles' friends sitting on the Parole Board, including the Top Docs who colluded with Dafydd, ie. Colin Berry, David Mawson and others.
Hennesey was a Trustee of the Butler Trust until 1998.The Butler Trust was named after Mr Conservative Party Rab Butler, who influenced criminal justice policy for decades after he retired from politics (see post 'Rab Butler, High Table And The Founding Fathers'). The Butler Trust was set up in 1985 by Veronica Linklater, former prison governor Rev Peter Timms and David Astor, former editor of 'The Observer', to recognise and celebrate outstanding practice by those working with offenders, through an annual award scheme.
Veronica Linklater, Baroness Linklater of Butterstone is a Lib Dem peer. Her interests are in children's welfare, education and special needs, and prison reform. Linklater is the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Michael Lyle and the Hon. Elizabeth Sinclair, younger daughter of the former Leader of the Liberal Party, 1935-45, Archibald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso.
Veronica's grandfather Sinclair was a friend of Churchill and served as Churchill's Personal Military Secretary, 1919-21, when Churchill was Secretary of State for War and then moved with Churchill to the Colonial Office as his Private Secretary. In 1922 Sinclair entered the Commons and supported David Lloyd George. In 1931 the Liberal Party joined the National Gov't of Ramsay MacDonald and Sinclair was appointed Secretary of State for Scotland. When Churchill formed an all-party Coalition Government in 1940, Sinclair entered the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Air and worked with the RAF in planning the Battle of Britain. He remained a Minister until May 1945 when the Coalition ended. Sinclair lost his seat in the 1945 General Election.
Archibald Sinclair's grandson, Veronica's cousin, John Archibald Sinclair, 3rd Viscount Thurso, is also a Lib Dem politician, as well as a Scottish businessman. He occupied his grandfather's seat in the Commons, 2001-15. John Thurso had entered the Lords when he inherited his father's title in 1995, but lost his seat in 1999 when the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the Lords when abolished. After losing his seat in the Commons, Thurso was back in the Lords in April 2016, after winning a by-election to a vacancy in the Lords following the death of Liberal Party grandee Lord Avebury aka Eric Lubbock, a faithful paedophiles' friend (see post 'He Knows Where The Bodies Are Buried'). John Thurso's father Robin, the 2nd Viscount Thurso was also a Liberal Party politician and sat on the Scottish Liberal Party Executive.
The male Thursos all went to Eton and they'll all have known about the excesses of Jeremy Thorpe.
Veronica didn't go to Eton, being female, but she knew about Jeremy Thorpe. As well as Cyril Smith and no doubt all the others. Veronica was educated at Cranborne Chase School in Wiltshire, followed by the Universities of Sussex and London. In 1967 Veronica married the journalist Magnus Linklater. Magnus Linklater pompouses at length in the media and is on record as saying that 'the social sciences and humanities are automatically inferior explanatory models' to the sciences. Magnus Linklater was the editor of 'The Sunday Times' when in 1983 it made itself a laughing stock by publishing the forged Hitler Diaries. Linklater later blamed it all on Murdoch, claiming that of course he, Magnus, saw straight through the forgeries but Murdoch forced him to publish. Which sounds rather like an inferior explanatory model to me Magnus.
Magnus manages the Scottish estates of Veronica's family – like Veronica's male relatives, Magnus went to Eton and he was also Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council, 1996-01. Which neatly spanned the years of the Waterhouse Inquiry, it's publication and the immediate aftermath when the outrage regarding the blatant cover-up was at its peak. I cannot think how being Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council could be linked to Waterhouse, but I bet it was because of a few of Veronica's former jobs.
In 1967, Veronica became a Child Care Officer for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and between 1970–85, she became governor to three Islington Schools. Tower Hamlets sent a lot of kids in care into the arms of John Allen and the paedophile gang in north Wales (see post 'Tower Hamlets, Paul Boateng And Tessa Jowell'). Many of them were then trafficked back to London and Brighton, where some of them made up the cohort of high profile young men who died of AIDS in the late 1980s (see posts 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Bodies Buried Beneath Canary Wharf'). The Islington Child Abuse Scandal was in full swing while Veronica was governor of those schools and she will have known about it.
Veronica's good works knew no bounds. From 1971-77, Veronica co-founded the Visitors' Centre at Pentonville Prison and her continuing interest in this field led to her involvement with the Prison Reform Trust, 1981-82.
Baroness Jean Trumpington served as a visitor at Pentonville Prison. Trumpers was the junior Health Minister who appointed Jimmy Savile to the task force which managed Broadmoor. Trumpers was also mates with Rab Butler, after his political career, in his capacity as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. See post '95 Glorious Years'.
Veronica is a Trustee of the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.
Veronica bagged her peerage in Nov 1997. After Ronnie Waterhouse had spent a few months telling the former residents of the children's homes in north Wales that they were a bunch of lying gits who were only after compensation.
The Rev Peter Timms, who established the Butler Trust with Veronica, is a Methodist Minister and the former Governor of Maidstone Prison and Young Offenders Institute Glen Parva. When he was Governor of Maidstone Prison, Peter Timms opened the first prison wing related to the treatment of sex offenders. Peter Timms would have known George Thomas, the former Speaker of the House, who was probably the most well-known Methodist in the UK for decades and who preached across the country. George Thomas was also a paedophile who serially assaulted underaged boys. See post 'It Wasn't On Our Radar'.
Glen Parva is located in Leicestershire, the site of a long standing paedophile ring, which was concealed by politicians, Leicester University, Leicester City Council, the Leicestershire Police, local lawyers and courts, the areas schools and of course the NHS and social services (see previous posts). The Leicester gang had links to Dafydd et al in north Wales and concealed their crimes (see post 'An Expert From England')
In 1997, the Chief Inspector of Prisons walked out of an inspection at Glen Parva because conditions were so bad. After a subsequent inspection a year later, the report stated that there was 'hope for the future' for the prison but added that a lot of work still needed to be done and recommended that some staff should be moved because of their attitude towards inmates. In July 2002, four inmates from Glen Parva escaped whilst on a camping trip in the Peak District. In its annual report in 2003, the Board of Visitors revealed two serious cases of unrest at Glen Parva. On one occasion, 16 inmates barricaded themselves inside a building. The report blamed an unprecedented rise in the number of inmates at the prison and also the fact that some inmates were bored and unsettled, finding themselves hundreds of miles from home.
In Nov 2004, the Prison Reform Trust condemned Glen Parva for the high amount of time inmates spent in their cells and for the lack of time spent in 'useful activity' at the prison. Statistics for 2003-2004 showed that on average inmates spent just 17.3 hours a week in useful activity, and an average of just another seven hours a week out of their cells.
In Feb 2010 the Prisons Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) described conditions at Glen Parva as 'deplorable'. Their report said 'water from the prison's poorly-maintained toilet plumbing system leaked out of the pipes and seeped through the walls,' causing 'a horrible smell that fills the corridors and cells on regular occasions' and that the prison 'operates within the confines of a sprawling campus of largely shabby buildings which continue to degrade over time, despite the best efforts of the management and staff.' The Board also warned that the policy of transferring prisoners into Glen Parva from other regions 'has recently introduced an increasing level of gang rivalry, thereby adding yet another dimension to an already toxic melting pot'.
In Aug 2016, ambulance personnel called to the prison criticised staff for their lack of urgency when faced with a life threatening medical emergency. The Healthcare Centre at Glen Parva has 14 inpatient beds with 24-hour nursing cover. Many health services at the prison are provided by Leicestershire Primary Care Trust. Whose staff have concealed organised abuse and a dangerous mental health service for years.
Towards the end of 2016 it was announced that HMP Glen Parva would close and be replaced with a newly built category C adult prison. It will be completely demolished and redeveloped with a new built prison on the site.
The Rev Peter Timms is or was Chair of the Loudon Trust. The other members of the Loudon Trust are virtually entirely Top Docs working in secure mental health units specialising in 'treatment' for sex offenders. Every one of the institutions in which this lot are employed has colluded with organised abuse and the associated crime.
Veronica's and Peter Timms's mate David Astor built up a reputation as an impeccably liberal editor with integrity and a concern for radical causes. David Astor forgot any such concerns when he was called upon to help handle the family crisis which was the fall out from the Profumo Affair (see post 'In Memoriam – Bronwen, Lady Astor').
The Chief Inspector of Prisons 1987-95 was judge Sir Stephen Tumim. Tumim was appointed by Dafydd's mate Douglas Hurd and although Tumim made many outraged noises about the disgusting conditions in England and Wales's prisons, not a great deal changed. The Risley Remand Centre riots happened on Tumim's watch and although Tumim was not shy in describing the conditions in Risley as terrible and Michael Mansfield represented some of the rioters, no-one mentioned that the 'hospital wing' was full of people from children's homes in north Wales and mental health patients, who had not been found guilty of any offence (see posts 'Workers'Play Time' and 'Include Me Out'). Risley went off like a bomb in 1989, which was shortly after people in Somerset who knew what was happening to me in north Wales began to find themselves rubbing shoulders with the renegade relatives of leading Tories and their friends and in receipt of a great deal of money themselves (see post 'Upper Class Twit Of The Year – Shooting Themselves').
Tumim was the son of a barrister and was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford and Worcester College, Oxford. In 1978 Tumim became a County Court Circuit Judge. Tumim's contract was not renewed by Home Secretary Michael Howard in 1995 and David Ramsbotham was appointed.
Tumim was knighted soon afterwards, just before the Waterhouse Inquiry. He served on many charitable trusts and was close to numerous paedophiles' friends who involved themselves in supposedly worthy causes, including some of those directly associated with the cover-up which was Waterhouse (see post 'The Waterhouse Tribunal – Who Was Involved And What Happened To Them Subsequently?').
Tumim was the founding President of UNLOCK, the National Association of Ex-Offenders. Between 1996-98 he was Principal of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, leaving amidst some controversy (he was popular with students, less so with academic colleagues). He was High Steward for Wallingford, 1995-01. Tumim was on the committee and a buyer for the Contemporary Art Society. He was President of the Royal Literary Fund, 1990-03.
- Dame Anne Elizabeth Owers succeeded David Ramsbotham as Chief Inspector of Prisons and was in post, 2001-10. Blair's Gov't was so pleased with Anne Owers that her appointment was renewed in June 2006 and again in March 2008. Anne Owers had also pursued a career which involved keeping quiet about state abuses, which will have been why Home Secretary David Blunkett appointed her. When Home Secretary, Blunkett gave a Citizen's Award to a woman who lived in a village near Caernarfon who intimidated neighbours with mental health problems, who spoke out in the local press about the problem of mentally ill black criminals and who was related to someone who raped a girl under 7 yrs old, but the rest of the village were intimidated into keeping quiet about that.
- Owers was educated at Washington Grammar School, Co Durham and studied history at Girton College, Cambridge. On graduating Owers went to Zambia to teach. Owers took time out to raise a family and also undertook 'research and voluntary advice and race relations work'. She joined the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants in 1981 as a research and development officer and was appointed its General Secretary in 1985. In June 2008, Owers was appointed Chairman of Christian Aid, succeeding John Gladwin. In 2010 Owers was appointed Chairman of Clinks, a charidee supporting the work of the voluntary and community sector working with offenders and their families and also Chaired a review of prisons in N Ireland, 2010-11. In March 2012 Owers was appointed Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Prior to this, she was Director of JUSTICE.
- Owers was appointed as the first National Chair of the Independent Monitoring Boards by in Oct 2017 by Justice Secretary David Lidington. Lidington's name, in his capacity as a junior official in the Home Office, appeared on Home Office documentation in relation to Lord Peter Taylor's 1989 interim Report into Hillsborough, a Report which it seems was drafted before the Home Office stated that it was completed and which was not actually signed by Lord Taylor. Douglas Hurd was Home Secretary at the time. When porkies were being told by the Home Office about Peter Taylor's Report, the Home Office were colluding with the crimes of Dafydd and the paedophile gang (see post 'Additional Security Measures').
Owers was also a non-executive Director of the Criminal Cases Review Commission and a member of the advisory group to the Lammy Review of race and criminal justice. Like James Hennessy, Owers is a Trustee of the Butler Trust.
In 2012 Anne Owers won the Perrie Award. The Perrie Award has been presented annually since 1995 by the Perrie Lectures Committee to the person who has done most to promote an understanding of the work of the Prison Service in England and Wales and pushed forward the development of penal policy. The award and the associated lectures aim to improve the care of offenders and advance penal policy. The organising committee is made up of members from within the penal service (National Offender Management Service, NOMS) and from academia, charities and other fields.
Six years after Dame Anne won the Perrie Award, there has been a stream of scandals emanating from prisons in England and Wales. Prisoners are either out of their heads on spice or are injuring and killing themselves and in recent months it has been admitted that there is a substantial problem with the standard of 'training' of prison officers. Conditions at Liverpool Prison were damned as being the worst that the prison has experienced for decades only a few weeks ago and builders contracted by Liverpool Prison were dismissed after they raised Health and Safety concerns. The perennial problem of the prisons being full of people with mental health problems or addictions rather than villains continues.
The outcomes of the NOMS itself remain depressingly poor.
The Perrie award was named in honour of Bill Perrie (1918-1997), regarded as one of the leading prison governors of his time. Because conditions in prisons were just so great when Bill was busy being a leading governor weren't they. Previous lucky winners of the Perrie Award include Stephen Tumim and David Ramsbotham. Why does that not surprise me? Other winners include Tony Pearson (former Deputy Director, Prison Service); John Staples (former prison governor); Lord Chief Justice Woolf; Colin Allen (Deputy Chief Inspector of Prisons, 1995-02); Sir Martin Narey, former DG of Prison Service for England and Wales and a good friend of the paedophiles (see post 'The Most Dangerous Man In The World – Part V'); Alison Liebling of Cambridge University, who is one member of the network of criminologists who have kept silent about some real horrors discussed in my post 'Rab Butler, High Table And The Founding Fathers'.
As Young Mr Grace used to say on 'Are You Being Served' 'You're all doing very well!'
Former Christian Aid Chairman John Gladwin was Bishop of Guildford, 1994-04, then of Chelmsford from 2004 until he retired in 2009, whereupon he became Chairman of CAB. John Gladwin would have known about the sex abuse scandals in the Church which have now become very public.
Lucille Hughes has been involved with the senior management of the CAB in Wales for quite some time and has attracted more paedophiles' friends into the organisation. Ronnie Waterhouse was involved with the establishment of the CAB in the Royal Courts of Justice at The Strand, a CAB which was entirely controlled by a number of people who also doubled up as paedophiles' friends. When the gang in north Wales took me to the Royal Courts of Justice in 1991 in an attempt to have me imprisoned, I didn't notice the CAB of which Ronnie boasted and no-one alerted me to its presence either.
Someone who has been involved with Christian Aid in Wales for many years – I think that she was Director of Christian Aid in Wales at one point – was Branwen Niclas. Branwen caused quite a stir when I lived near Bethesda as a result of her Welsh language activism; she had a long involvement with the Welsh Language Society. She very effectively trashed some sort of Gov't office at Colwyn Bay – I can't remember which one exactly – for which she was imprisoned. I think that Branwen was at one point the girlfriend of Hywel Williams, the former psychiatric social worker who is now the Plaid MP for Arfon.
Branwen's family home ie. that of her parents, was near Tal-y-bont, down the bottom of the hill from the village where I lived. I was friendly with some people who knew her father, mathematician and teacher James Nicholas. James Nicholas died in 2013 and Meic Stephens wrote his obituary for the Indie.
James Nicholas, served as Archdruid for the Gorsedd of the Bards, 1981-84 and had won the Chair at the National Eisteddfod of 1969. He 'lent his support to the law-breaking campaigns of the Welsh Language Society and, further afield, the horrors of apartheid and the plight of the Third World were always prominent on his agenda'.
James Nicholas was influenced by the pacifist poet Waldo Williams (1904-71), with whom he had a close personal friendship. He wrote about Waldo's mysticism and attraction in later life to Quakerism, delivered a moving funeral address, edited a volume of memorial essays and gave lectures on Williams.
Nicholas then moved to Dyfed, being appointed Head of Mathematics at Pembroke in 1959 and Headmaster of Ysgol y Preseli at Crymych in 1963.
As well as Branwen, the Nicholas's had another daughter, Saran, who is a Top Doctor, a haematologist with Hywel Dda University Health Board.
Meic Stephens tells us that Nicholas 'proved a pillar of common sense and the utmost integrity while acting as Recorder' at the National Eisteddfod.
Nick Hardwick was Chief Inspector of Prisons, 2010-16. Nick is someone who built his whole career on his knowledge of the crimes of the paedophiles' friends (see post 'Yet More Inglorious Bastards') and was succeeded by Peter Clarke.
When Peter Clarke was appointed, Mark Leech, editor of 'The Prisons Handbook', published a highly insulting 'open letter' to Peter Clarke, giving Peter Clarke a bollocking for not being Nick Hardwick. Mark Leech seemed very cross that Clarke was not an insider with a track record of keeping quiet about Gov't failure and wrongdoing, but instead has had a career as a police office. Mr Leech reminded Mr Clarke of the great work of those giants Stephen Tumim and David Ramsbotham…
Peter Clarke was personally invited to apply for the position of Chief Inspector of Prisons by Michael Gove when Gove was Justice Secretary. Gove did insane things when he was Education Secretary, but he was suddenly overcome by a great deal of sense when he became Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor. He identified which parties were responsible for the nation's lethal, sclerotic, corrupt Prison Service and Gove did try to effect change. So that must have been why he was removed by Theresa after only one year in the post and was replaced by the drip Liz Truss and then by the former minion in Hurd's rotten to the core Home Office, David Lidington.
I mentioned the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) earlier in this post. The PRT is yet another organisation which has made zero impact since its foundation in 1981 by a 'small group of prison reform campaigners who were unhappy with the direction in which the Howard League for Penal Reform was heading, concentrating more on community punishments than on traditional prison reform issues'. PRT offers advice and information to prisoners, their families, prison and probation staff, the legal profession, students, academics and interested members of the public. PRT organise an annual lecture, which in 2005 was delivered by Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary. That'll be the Charles Clarke who was responsible for the Windbag's office throughout those years when the Windbag desperately wanted to become PM and his only strategy for this was to conceal the mountain of crap in north Wales and beg the staff of the NHS to vote Labour (see post 'I Warn You…'). The Windbag knew Dafydd's colleague Tony Francis when they were students in Cardiff. I wonder if Charles Clarke ever bumped into Tony Francis, Dafydd and co were busy making friends all over the place after Brown and I began to uncover the enormity of their crimes.
The Windbag and his wife listening to Ed's 2013 Party Conference speech:
The Prison Reform Trust carries out research on all aspects of prison. Recent studies include: prisoners' views on prison education, the mental health needs of women prisoners, older prisoners, prisoner councils, foreign national prisoners, prisoner votes and a report into how sentences make the decision to imprison offenders.
Founding members included Sir Monty Finniston and dear old Veronica Linklater, who is obviously determined to help those who have gone off the rails.
Monty Finniston was metallurgist who was a graduate of and then a lecturer at the Glasgow University. He spent WWII in the Royal Naval Scientific Service, seconded to the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada, working on the application of nuclear power to submarines. After the war Finniston was appointed Chief Metallurgist at the Atomic Energy Authority, Harwell, 1948-58.
Finniston initiated and oversaw a wide-ranging research programme into the many metallurgical problems associated with nuclear reactor design. In 1958 Finniston moved to north-east England to become Director of the Nuclear Research Centre newly founded by the Newcastle engineering firm C.A. Parsons. He was Vice-President of the Royal Society, 1971-2 and became Chairman of British Steel Corporation in 1973.
In response to complaints from industry about a shortage of qualified engineers, in 1977 Callaghan's Gov't invited Finniston to set up a Committee of Enquiry into British Engineering. In 1979 the Finniston Report was published, which addressed the concerns that engineering was of relatively low status in the UK.
Sir Monty Finniston was Chancellor of Stirling University, 1979-88. He was President of the Association for Project Management, 1984-91.
There is nothing in Finniston's biography that indicates why he would be interested in Chairing an organisation dedicated to prison reform. However, as someone who worked in the nuclear industry at Harwell during the 1950s, Finniston would know about Macmillan's cover-up which followed the Windscale accident, which occurred just after Dafydd had left his job at Windscale to study medicine at Liverpool University. Like Dafydd, Finniston will have known about the corrupt practices of Ernest Marples, one of the Ministers involved and his use of prostitutes. See post 'Those Who Are Ready To Serve' for details.
It was in 1980 that Mary Wynch finally escaped the clutches of Dafydd and the gang after being unlawfully arrested, imprisoned and then banged up in the North Wales Hospital Denbigh for a year. Like Alison Taylor and I, Mary was not easily intimidated and in 1980 Dafydd et al will have realised that there was trouble coming their way. So I wonder if someone somewhere thought that a new organisation concerning itself with locking people up, rather than as the Howard League were more interested in, community sentences, might be required in the wake of Mary's dissent? Whatever would have happened if Mary's case was used by campaigners to highlight the abuses of the Prison Service? Monty Finniston might have been willing to help.
Monty was an accommodating man after all. He was a leading light in the nuclear industry which was beset by problems with the potential to cause maximum embarrassment to Gov'ts and he helped out old Callaghan by setting up the Committee of Inquiry as requested. Monty also did Gov't a few favours when he was Chancellor of Stirling University. Stirling students were fairly politically active and there was a huge row as well as student protests when the journalist Alastair Hetherington was appointed to a Research Chair in 1982 (see post 'Life In Cold Blood'). Hetherington had no academic background, but he was the sort of appointment that Thatch's Gov't were trying to encourage universities to make, that of people with links to Gov't and industry who excelled at toadying to Important People.
Monty was Chancellor when Jack McConnell, who later became FM of Scotland, was a student at Stirling and then led the Students' Union there.
Stephen Shaw was Director of PRT from 1981-99 and then became the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman for England and Wales, 1999-10. In 2001 Shaw's remit was extended to taking complaints about National Probation Service and in 2006 was extended again to taking complaints regarding those detained in immigration centres. A whole series of disasters and scandals occurred when Stephen Shaw was Director of the PRT and nothing improved in any of the areas for which he had responsibility.
Sir Monty Finniston was succeeded as Chair of the PRT by the former Cabinet Minister, Edmund Dell, the MP for Birkenhead, 1964-79. Dell began life in the Commons as a Labour MP but in 1981 he joined Dr Death in the SDP. In 1988, Dell became a Lib Dem.
Birkenhead was part of the Liverpool branch of Dafydd's empire (see post 'These Sharks Are Crap As Well'). The lefties of Liverpool were fully complicit with Dafydd's crimes, but then so were Dr Death and his Top Doctor mates. Dr Death's former colleagues at St Thomas's were mates of Dafydd's, they weren't simply keeping quiet because it was politically expedient to do so like Eric Heffer and co.
Edmund Dell was born in London and served in the Royal Artillary in WWII. He was educated at Dame Alice Owen's School and Queen's College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Communist Party, as his future ministerial colleague Denis Healey had been before the war.
Dell began work for ICI in Manchester as an overseas sales manager, specialising in Latin American trade and eventually rose to Vice President of the Plastics Division. In 1953 he was elected to Manchester City Council and served for seven years. Dafydd's mate Professor Kenneth Rawnsley and his network dominated the psychiatric services in Manchester in the late 1950s/first half of the 60s, before Rawnsley relocated to Cardiff and continued to collude with the wrongdoing of the north Wales gang from there (see post 'The Discovery Of A Whole New Galaxy').
Dell stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1955. He was dissuaded from standing for Parliament in 1959 by ICI on the grounds that it would make promotion to the highest ranks of the company difficult. However, he eventually gave in to the temptation of Parliament and was elected for Birkenhead in 1964. He served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jack Diamond, then Parliamentary Secretary for Technology under Tony Benn in 1966 and as a junior Minister under Peter Shore in 1967.
Tony Benn knew about the Westminster Paedophile Ring and the role that Dafydd et al in north Wales were playing in it. I wrote to Tony Benn some years before he died about the abuse of mental health patients in north Wales and he simply wrote back saying 'sorry mental health is not my areas'. I wrote to him because I had been told that he was interested in disability issues. Tony Benn was rather more interested in Top Doctors. He had very good links with St Thomas's Hospital and both he and his wife were treated there.
'Please don't kill me Top Docs, just take revenge on the service users. I'm useful to you! I can campaign to prevent your failing dangerous units being closed down, I can vote for you to have an even bigger salary and never face charges of corporate manslaughter, you know us in Parliament, we're so craven that we just do exactly as you order us to…'
I really am mystified as to how politicians on the left such as Tony Benn get away with their deep and meaningful friendships with them all at Tommy's. Tommy's has a well-established reputation as being the most elite of the London hospitals, it's the place where one finds medical students who are actually titled members of the aristocracy but who just fancy dabbling in medicine for a bit. Furthermore it tends to be the Tommy's consultants who are raking it in at Harley Street.
Peter Shore was someone else who knew about Dafydd et al. Shore was an East End Labour MP and children from his constituency were being packed off to children's homes in north Wales. They then returned to Shore's area as teenaged sex workers who were infected with HIV. There were so many of them dying that in the late 1980s, that Shore helped convert the old Mildmay Mission Hospital into a specialist unit for terminally ill AIDS patients (see post 'Apocalypse Now').
In 1968 Edmund Dell was promoted to Minister of State for Trade and then moved to Employment. When Harold Wilson returned to No 10 in 1974, Dell became Paymaster General and then Secretary of State for Trade and President of the Board of Trade, 1976-78 under Callaghan.
So Dell would have been a colleague of George Thomas the child molester and Leo Abse, Thomas's mate who constantly got Thomas out of trouble, often breaking the law to do so (see post 'It Wasn't On Our Radar'). Abse himself was investigated for historical child sex offences. Dell would also have known Greville Janner, Jeremy Thorpe, Cyril Smith and the rest of them…
Dell served as a trustee of both the SDP and the Lib Dems and served as one of the SDP's three representatives during emergency negotiations with the Liberals in Jan 1988 when it appeared the two parties' merger might fall through after the failed launch by David Steel and Bob Maclennan of the joint manifesto, 'Voices and Choices'. So Dell was obviously a trusted pair of safe hands.
After Parliament, Dell had a career in business as Chairman of Guinness Peat, founding Chairman of Channel 4 and as a Director of Shell Trading. In 1991-2 he was President of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Channel 4 was packed with paedophiles' friends pretending to be daring, but none of whom dared whisper anything about organised abuse, yet alone by politicians (see post 'What's Left? The Politics Of Social Justice').
The Chair of the PRT who succeeded Edmund Dell was broadcaster and journalist Jon Snow. Douglas Hurd succeeded Jon Snow as PRT's fourth Chair in Nov 1997. So Douglas of the corrupt Home Office and Douglas of the Kincora Boys' Home cover-up when Douglas was N Ireland Secretary was installed as Chair of the PRT just as Ronnie Waterhouse finished taking evidence from the victims of Dafydd and the gang, who were told by Waterhouse and most of the world's media that they were criminals who could not be believed. Of course they were criminals, the first thing that Dafydd and the gang did in response to any complaints about them was to fit the complainant up for a criminal offence and then tell everyone that they couldn't be believed because they were criminals. Thank goodness Douglas was in post at the PRT to keep an eye on things.
Douglas was succeeded as Chair in Sept 2001 by Lord Robert Fellowes. Fellowes went to Eton as all the best penal reformers do and then worked as a banker for many years. In 1977 Fellowes was recruited to join the Royal Household as Assistant Private Secretary. He spent the next 20 years in the Lilibet's Private Secretary's Office, becoming Deputy Private Secretary to Lilibet in 1986 and Private Secretary in 1990, where he remained until 1999. Robert Fellowes would have been well-acquainted with Dame Mary Morrison, Lady Susan Hussey and Carlo then. As well as Backstairs Billy.
Robert Fellowes was the brother-in-law of Diana, Princess of Wales and is the first cousin of Ronald Ferguson, father of Sarah, Duchess of York. Major Ron entertained the nation when media reports appeared in 1988 featuring Major Ron's visits to the Wigmore Club. The Wigmore Club was a health club and massage parlour in London staffed by girls who, dressed in starched white 'medical' gowns, allegedly offered à la carte sexual services to members.
Dafydd: Could you have got me a job there by any chance? That could have been a high risk strategy, unlike those whom you usually trafficked, I am someone who would have known who Major Ron was.
I heard something even better than that about Major Ron years after the Wigmore Club revelations. I used to work with someone who had spent their youth in the posh bits of London hanging out with posh people but not the sort of posh people who toadied to the Royal Family. This person used to watch the polo matches and was part of the crowd of young people who's role it was to go onto the field and stamp the turf back down half-way through the match. I was told that Major Ron's predilection for underaged girls was so well-known that my friend and her mates all sported home made badges saying 'Major Ron's Kiddie Sex Club' to one of the polo matches just to see if anyone challenged them. Not one person dared mention it. Major Ron's first wife Susan died in a car crash in Argentina in Sept 1998. After the horrific details of the lives of the kids in care in north Wales had been heard at the Waterhouse Inquiry, but before Ronnie published his Report reassuring the world that a paedophile ring had existed in north Wales, but it only involved a few Welsh sheep-shaggers who at most worked as teachers or social workers.
Major Ron was polo manager, initially to Phil the Greek and later, for many years, to Carlo. Major Ron had to resign as Carlo's polo manager, as well as from his position with the Guards Polo Club after the business at the Wigmore Club. Which seems ridiculous considering that Peter Morrison's associates were killing witnesses in north Wales.
In 1999 Robert Fellowes left his job at Sodom and Gomorrah in The Mall, bagged a peerage and returned to banking. He became Vice-Chairman, and then Chairman, of Barclays Private Banking. Fellowes is also a Company Director and a Trustee of the Rhodes Trust, the Mandela Rhodes Foundation and the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. He is also Vice-Chairman of the Commonwealth Institute. Fellowes was Chairman of The Voices Foundation, 2004-12.
Who better to Chair the Prison Reform Trust? Here's the great radical himself:
Robert Fellowes is a distant relation of Julian Fellowes, but I don't expect Robert Fellowes admits that to anyone, although Julian Fellowes will tell as many people as possible.
The inquest on Diana Princess of Wales and Dodi was carried out by Thomas Scott Baker. Thomas Scott Baker was a curious choice of coroner because Diana and Dodi's inquests were the first that he'd ever performed. In 1995, Thomas Scott Baker was the judge who jailed Susan Brooke, a woman from north Wales, for abducting a baby from Ysbyty Glan Clwyd after receiving an 'assessment' on her from Dafydd et al after she'd been detained in Bryn Golau Ward in the North Wales Hospital Denbigh. There are so many features of Susan Brooke's case that are so worrying that I have previously blogged quite extensively about it, 'So Who's Path Had Susan Brooke Crossed?', 'More On The Susan Brooke Case' and 'Update On Cases Of Susan Brooke and Sara Thornton'.
A mate of Dafydd's with no previous experience performing inquests on Royals who've died amidst allegations of foul play might be all in a day's work for Lord Fellowes, but I find it rather worrying.
The Prison Reform Trust's nemesis, the Howard League for Penal Reform, was founded 1886 and focuses on penal reform in England and Wales. It receives funding from the Legal Services Commission and holds Legal Aid contracts in order to represent and assist young people in custody. There does not seem to be quite so many flaky people involved with the Howard League for Penal Reform as there are with the PRT, but there are a few who are worth a mention.
The Chief Executive is Frances Crook, who joined as Director in 1986. Frances Crook graduated in history from Liverpool University, subsequently qualified as a teacher and worked in secondary schools in Liverpool and London until 1980. She won't have been able to avoid knowing about some kids being neglected or abused then.
Crook was the campaigns co-coordinator at the British Section of Amnesty International, 1980-85, and served as a Labour Councillor for East Finchley in the London Borough of Barnet, 1982-90.
Crook has been a school governor and Chaired various local community organisations. She was a Governor of the University of Greenwich for 6 years and Chaired the Staff and General Committee, retiring in 2002. Crook served on the Board of the School Food Trust, 2005-08, the non-departmental public body charged with overseeing the implementation of national standards for school food to every school in England and Wales.
In 2009 Crook was appointed an NHS non-executive Director of Barnet Primary Care Trust and in 2010 she was appointed a Senior Visiting Fellow at the LSE.
Lord Alex Carlile QC, was appointed President of the Howard League for Penal Reform in 2006.
Alex Carlile is a barrister who grew up in Ruabon near Wrexham and in Lancashire. At one point he practised from Chambers in Chester when Chester was a hub of corruption among lawyers. Carlile was the Liberal MP who later held paedophiles' friend Emlyn Hooson's old seat, Montgomeryshire, 1983-97. Hooson was a big friend of Ronnie Waterhouse. In 1995 Alex Carlile was the last person to dare ask questions in Parliament regarding Mary Wynch's case. Carlile was given a brief written answer informing him that Mary had been finally shafted by the Home Office the year previously, that no-one was admitting to anything and if Carlile knew what was good for him he'd say no more about it. He didn't and he picked up his peerage in 1999 (see post 'The Mary Wynch Case – Details'). Carlile's domestic life hit the press in Jan 2007 after he left his wife and began a relationship with a much younger barrister, Alison Levitt, leaving his wife distraught. Alison Levitt is Head of Business Crime at the London law firm Mishcon de Reya. Perhaps Dafydd and Robert Bluglass will be seeking her services soon.
Carlile was Chair of the 2006 Inquiry into physical restraint, solitary confinement and forcible strip searching of children in prisons, secure training centres and local council secure children's homes. On 11 May and 6 June 2011, Lord Carlile held a follow-on Public Inquiry in the House of Lords. He put together an expert panel to advise and to give evidence to the Inquiry. This expert panel who gave both written and oral evidence consisted of Nick Hardwick (Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons), Paul Cook (G4S children's services), Eric Baskind (British Self Defence Governing Body, Liverpool John Moores University), Malcolm Stevens (JusticeCare Solutions), Laura Janes (Howard League for Penal Reform), John Drew (Youth Justice Board for England and Wales), Sue Berelowitz (Office of the Children's Commissioner) and Carolyne Willow (CRAE).
With the experts that Alex drew together, is it surprising that nothing has changed?
Alex was highly effective at one thing however. He defended Paul Burrell, Diana's butler, against charges that Burrell had nicked a load of Diana's frocks, as well as a few other goodies. Things looked bad for Burrell, until someone somewhere found good cause to put Lilibet in the witness box if the trial went ahead, whereby Lilibet immediately realised that she had forgotten that Burrell had been given all the goodies, no question about it. If only Alex could have got such a result for Mary Wynch!
The legal firm whom Diana used to represent her in her divorce was Mishcon de Reya, who employ Alex's wife Alison Levitt.
Alex was educated at Epsom College and King's College London. He was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1970 and Alex is now a bencher at Gray's Inn. Alex knew Sir William Mars-Jones, who concealed Dafydd's crimes for years.
Now I've named more big wigs who oversee the activities of the paedophiles' friends, I'll finish off this post by identifying a few others who were witnesses to the wrongdoing themselves.
Firstly, Dr Vicky De Hoxa. I don't know where Vicky is now, but until about 10 years ago she, her husband Robert and their friends ran a Christian healing centre at Bala. Vicky and her husband Robert were both Top Doctors, as was their business partner, I think he was called Peter. There was quite a demand for the services of Vicky and her colleagues, because a lot of people in Gwynedd simply could not get NHS treatment. Vicky heard some real horror stories and I gave her a blow by blow account of what was happening to me. Vicky did not accuse me of lying but she did become obviously very frightened by what she was hearing. She told me that after speaking to me and others, she could only conclude that there was 'something evil' at the Hergest Unit. There was, it was the staff. Vicky told me frankly that there were mental health units which were as dangerous as the Hergest Unit and the Gov't would not close them down because under the provisions of the Mental Health Act, there has to be 'hospital places' for sectioned patients. Vicky also admitted that when units become as troubled as the Hergest Unit, good doctors simply won't work there. Vicky and Robert's own daughter was a Top Doctor in Leicester.
Vicky and her friends suddenly left north Wales some years ago, not long after they arrived. They didn't give anyone much warning and a lot of patients were quite bereft. Vicky and her colleagues had invested much money into the Centre and it doubled up as a hotel. They had moved to Bala with the intention of beginning a long term project. There was a rumour going around that Vicky et al had sold the building because the business partners had fallen out with each other. I'd be very surprised if that was true, I saw no signs of friction among them, they took their Christianity seriously and I think they had all known each other for years. I think it very much more likely that Vicky and her friends fled, because they found something evil. The remains of the Westminster Paedophile Ring. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they had been threatened. There were witnesses talking to Vicky, including me.
Another person who knows a great deal about the abuse of patients and crime in Ysbyty Gwynedd is Romy Lawson, who used to work at Bangor University. I used to share an office with Romy and I knew that one of her closest friends was a nurse who worked in the A&E Dept at Ysbyty Gwynedd. Romy and her friend, Clare, knew what was happening to me and to other patients. Romy was always very careful what she said in front of me, but one day I was burrowing about in some cupboards and Romy and her friends did not realise that I was there. They were having an intense discussion about the neglect and abuse of mental health patients at the Hergest Unit and how Clare and the other staff in the A&E would call out the mental health staff when suicidal patients turned up in A&E, only to be told by the Hergest staff that they would not treat them. Romy was also discussing how the police were begging the Top Docs to treat suicidal patients, but Top Docs were snapping 'we will not treat them'. The discussion moved on to how many Hergest patients were killing themselves after being refused treatment. I felt uncomfortable eavesdropping, so I showed myself and said yes, that is what is happening, they are unlawfully refusing to treat anyone who has complained. The room went silent and the conversation was changed to another subject.
I know why. It was because people were dying and Clare and her colleagues were implicated because no-one would blow the whistle. Romy doesn't work at Bangor any longer. When Brown and me began publishing with regard to what was happening in the mental health services Romy emigrated. Just before Operation Pallial re-opened the investigation into the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal. Romy is now Professor Romy Lawson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.
If anyone visits Perth and bumps into Romy, how about asking her and her old pal Clare to make a statement about those patients whom they knew were being left to die? Romy might know a lot more as well. For years she worked as a warden in the halls of residence and told me how often she'd had to look after suicidal students because there was no functioning mental health service in Bangor. Romy commented that all she could do was 'mop up the blood' while she waited for the student's parents to come and take them home.
Just one more thought re Romy. She wasn't Welsh, she was from Manchester. She had grown up with a famous next door neighbour – the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, the notorious James Anderton (see post 'Rab Butler, High Table and The Founding Fathers'). Anderton was infamous for having an obsession with gays and prostitutes while his police force had been taken over by serious organised crime. Before Anderton retired, worrying stories appeared about him in the media suggesting that he was, er, mad. Anderton's supporters robustly denied them, maintaining that these were smears from Anderton's foes. So I asked Romy what he was like, as she had lived next door to him for years. She rolled around laughing and said 'he was completely mad'. I asked if she meant that he was extreme in his anti-gay views. She replied that no, he's mad, everyone knew it, we all kept away from him and he had his whole garden rigged out with special lights to catch evil spirits.
I could understand why Romy as a teenager was so entertained by her mad neighbour who was the highest ranking police officer in Greater Manchester. However, as competent adults in her 30s, she and her friend should not have been colluding with a bunch of maniacs at the Hergest Unit who were known to be leaving seriously ill people to die if they had made a complaint against the hospital.
Another rather more unlikely witness. Someone who works at Pentraeth Automotive near Menai Bridge who was a friend of Tony Francis. I don't know his name, but he is either the owner of the garage or the senior manager. There were complaints about his behaviour towards women and it was Tony Francis who was reassuring everyone that he knew this man – he certainly did, Tony and his wife Sadie always had top of the range cars purchased from Pentraeth Automotive – and that it was the women who were the problem not the man at the garage. Which is what Francis said about me when I complained about Gwynne the lobotomist and Dafydd.
I heard another interesting account of the business practices of Pentraeth Automotive, this time involving 'the boss', a man called Ken. When I was working in a truly appalling care home on Anglesey in 2000, I witnessed a care assistant slap an elderly lady, catch the elderly lady's skin with her fingernails and draw blood. I reported the assault to the care home owners and I was given a written warning for 'breaching confidentiality' when I admitted that I'd told another care assistant what happened. I walked out a couple of weeks later when I witnessed yet more abuse of patients. (I have blogged about all of this in a previous post.) Before I witnessed the care assistant assault the old lady, the care assistant told me that she and her husband purchased a car from Ken at Pentraeth Automotive on an HP agreement and within weeks couldn't afford to pay for it. Ken announced that he would repossess the car. I thought oh well, fair enough, if you haven't got the dosh. Not so. The slapping care assistant and her husband had an enormous row with Ken, let him know that they had the details of his many illegal practices and thus Ken let them keep the car without paying for it.
Why did the slapping care assistant not have the money for the car? Because her husband was keen on hard core porn which he was having imported at great cost. The slapping care assistant and her porn addicted husband had a teenaged son who was a student on a catering course at Coleg Menai. Because the family's income was all going on porn, the Coleg Menai student applied for a hardship grant. He bloody well got it as well, I didn't know any others who did. The slapping care assistant told me that she knew that her son had his head screwed on right because when the hardship grant arrived, he used it to buy some 'good name trackie bottoms'.
I thought that the whole saga involving this family was hilarious – except for the slapping of a bedridden old lady – and I gave a full account to Brown. Brown told me that he agreed with the slapping care assistant, her son knew what he was doing. We didn't have good name trackie bottoms, we didn't have a hardship grant yet we weren't importing hard core porn from Europe either. Neither did we have a car that we weren't paying for. We haven't scarpered to Australia and been given jobs as Deputy VCs either.
After making a merciful escape from the dreadful care home, Bryn Ceirios at Pentraeth, imagine my surprise when some months later I saw a feature in the local paper, placed by Coleg Menai, about their 'star adult learner'. It was the slapping care assistant, the mum of the young man with good name trackie bottoms and the inhabitant of the house full of grumble vids fresh from Europe. Well Dorothy Griffiths, my real problem with you is that you violently assaulted an elderly lady and then did a deal with two negligent home owners to ensure that you remained in your job while I was the one who received a warning. However, the events involving Ken at Pentraeth Automotive, the European porn, the hardship grant and the good name trackie bottoms were certainly interesting, but what is most interesting of all is how with a track record like that, you managed to persuade Coleg Menai to award you their star learner gong and feature you in the local paper. Oooh let me guess – you had a load of shit on them???
The Top Doctors continue to make regular media appearances, firmly in denial regarding their own contribution to the parlous state of the NHS. BBC News Wales has featured Dr Mark Taubert, dispensing his wisdom about the difficulties of predicting how long terminally ill patients have to live. Dr Taubert is a palliative care specialist treating cancer patients, so I can understand that he can't be precise when patients ask him how long they've got left, but it was a real laugh at the Hergest Unit to witness the Top Docs refuse to waste their time treating severely depressed people because they're only going to kill themselves anyway. Do you know, the Top Docs were right, loads of those patients killed themselves. Years ago I asked Dafydd why there was such a high suicide rate among his patients. He put on a grave voice and told me that four out of ten severely mentally ill people end up killing themselves. Not only did Dafydd get the stats wrong, but he failed to address my point – why were there just so many people killing themselves in north Wales? Not that anyone gave a stuff, because 'they all kill themselves anyway'.
Dr Mark Taubert isn't Dafydd, Dr Taubert is a senior lecturer and Clinical Director at Velindre Hospital, which treats cancer patients in Cardiff. Welsh politicians love Velindre, they do like to pop down for a photo opportunity. Rhodri Morgan always managed to make it over to Velindre, as he refused to address the genocide in north Wales.
I found some interesting media coverage regarding Dr Taubert. Dr Taubert knows how to drum up a bit of good publicity for himself. In 2016 Dr Taubert achieved headlines after he wrote to David Bowie, thanking him for being an inspiration (what else??). What had Bowie done that was so inspirational? He'd died. Dr Taubert didn't write to Bowie before his death, because David Bowie wanted a bit of privacy and no-one knew that he was dying. So Dr Taubert got in on the act and wrote to Bowie after his death. Not that he sent the letter to David Bowie – Dr Taubert uploaded his letter to David Bowie on the BMJ blog, so the world could read what he'd written to Bowie! No-one wrote back to Taubert and said why are you writing letters to dead people on the BMJ blog you publicity seeking tosser, but Duncan Jones – Bowie's son – and Benedict Cumberbatch did write back to Dr Taubert thanking him on behalf of the dead rock star. This guaranteed full media coverage.
Dr Taubert's letter to David Bowie observes that Bowie 'chose' to die at home and Taubert ponders on his own patients making such choices. Not only has Taubert wisely kept schtum about the multi millionaire Bowie choosing to live in Switzerland and not risk his neck with NHS Wales – Bowie probably heard about the circumstances in which Anne Clwyd's husband died at the University Hospital in Cardiff – but Taubert fails to mention that most terminally ill patients do not have the choice of dying at home. There is huge pressure on people to die in hospital, where one's final hours can consist of being dumped naked on a bed with one's glass of water out of reach. Even if things are not as grim as that, the real biggie for cancer patients is that they can't get the pain relief that they need if they stay at home and there's bugger all home support available to nurse the dying. So unlike millionaires in Switzerland, they don't have 'choices'.
Mark's letter to David Bowie waxed lyrical about Bowie's music and stage personas. It didn't mention the years that Bowie spent with a serious drug problem, which would have caused him to be refused treatment if he were an NHS patient in Gwynedd. It didn't mention the bisexual swinging with the sort of young people whom Dafydd and the gang trafficked to London and Brighton and it didn't mention the incredibly acrimonious divorce between Bowie and his wife Angie, which resulted in Angie threatening to go public about a great many things but being gagged by David and his expensive lawyers.
David Bowie was one of those who played at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert on 20 April 1992, following Mercury's death from AIDS. Like Bowie, Mercury kept his condition very quiet, although there are indications that he had known that he was HIV positive for a long time before he told even close friends.
The proceeds of the Tribute Concert were donated to AIDS research. My post 'Apocalypse Now' details the establishment of the first specialist AIDS hospice in the UK, the former Mildmay Mission Hospital in the East End. Most of the young men who died there were rent boys, many who had been trafficked from children's homes in north Wales. The Top Docs and AIDS researchers knew that. These witnesses to serious crime died surrounded by staff who ensured that no-one ever found out how they had become infected. The Mildmay did have some celebrity patients and I wondered if one of them had been Freddie Mercury, judging from the account that I read.
The dying rent boys at the flagship AIDS ward at UCH/Middlesex Hospital were filmed shaking hands with Diana, with the viewers being told that they had no-one in the world because their families had rejected them for being gay. No, they had been taken away from their families and sent to Dafydd and the paedophiles. Those who did have families who rejected them were rejected because they were sex workers rather than because they were gay. The celebs were not filmed shaking hands with Di. People worked very hard to give them complete privacy.
Most of the stars who played at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert knew that many of those with whom they had often had sex were kids in care. They might not have realised the brutality that had been involved in coercing the kids into prostitution, but they did know that they were underage and they did know that they weren't living at home with families. No-one bothered to enquire further.
Lastly, I think it is time that I exposed someone upon whom many patients and relatives in north Wales pinned a lot of hopes but who has let them down very badly. Donna Ockenden. Donna Ockenden conducted the 'independent investigation' into the Tawel Fan Scandal at the Betsi. Donna wrote an interim report about Tawel Fan which was hard hitting (see post 'The Tawel Fan Scandal') and she then conducted a second investigation, promising to leave no stone unturned and expose just how bad the situation was, if necessary. We all waited with baited breath. Donna produced her final report a few weeks ago. It was damning, but like every other report into care scandals in north Wales, it did not admit just how bad things are in mental health in north Wales. Patients and relatives accused Donna of a luke-warm response or even a cover-up. I presumed that Donna was going to return to do a bit more work in north Wales. No. Donna has gone. So I'll brief readers as to the evidence that Donna ignored.
After Donna wrote her first report she stated that she wanted to hear from any mental health patients in north Wales who were not happy with the 'services'. I was one who contacted Donna. I spoke to her on the phone and she reassured me that she had serious concerns about the Betsi and was determined to expose any rot that there was. I e mailed Donna masses of evidence – witness statements, e mail correspondence, insulting letters to me from NHS personnel refusing to investigate the most serious of complaints. I also forwarded evidence relating to another patient in north Wales, with their permission, who had become too ill to do this themselves. They had been imprisoned on the basis of the perjury of Hergest staff and then refused all NHS treatment.
Donna was given documentary evidence of perjury, perverting the course of justice, conspiracy, assault on patients, unlawful imprisonment, destruction of evidence by NHS senior managers and unlawful denial of NHS care. Donna asked me if I would meet her and a surgeon from England who was assisting with the investigation in an hotel in north Wales to discuss what had happened to me and others. Some days later, after I sent yet further evidence of serious crime on the part of the NHS and social services in north Wales, Donna e mailed me and asked if we could postpone the meeting until she'd had a chance to meet with other patients and relatives. I never heard from her again. I subsequently had to leave Wales for my own safety, but Donna had my e mail address. Neither did she or her surgeon colleague contact me again regarding the evidence pertaining to the other patient that I sent her. He ended up going abroad for life-saving treatment because the NHS flatly unlawfully refused to treat him.
So Donna has written her report and she's gone. She was given documentary evidence of serious organised crime. Donna, you should not have fled, you should have taken it to the police. We tried the police ourselves again and again, but we were just threatened when we did so. You and the surgeon have just buggered off and left patients in north Wales to die.
Donna's background is in midwifery and senior NHS management. She has also worked in the United Arab Emirates. I recommend that readers visit her website and note her numerous senior and advisory positions. Donna is described as a 'catalyst for change'. She hasn't been in north Wales, she got the hell out of there and abandoned the patients to a bunch of gangsters.
There's something nasty in the woodshed in north Wales. It's so nasty that no-one will go near it.