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Here's someone who really should have featured on this blog before now, but then the Corrupt Incestuous Shithouse is so big that I keep finding new residents. Introducing:
Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, 1st Baron Pakenham (5 December 1905 – 3 August 2001), known to his family as Frank Longford and styled Lord Pakenham, 1945-61, was a member of the Labour Party and one of its longest serving politicians. He held a number of Cabinet positions between 1947 and 1968. Longford was politically active up until his death in 2001. A member of a landed Anglo-Irish family, Frank Longford was one of the few aristocratic hereditary peers to have ever served in senior capacity within a Labour government. Longford was known best for his devout Christianity and work as a penal reformer.
Longford was widely unpopular among Labour leaders, was criticised for his lack of Ministerial ability, yet was moved from Cabinet post to Cabinet post. Harold Wilson stated that Longford had the 'mental capacity of a 12 yr old'. Yet people kept giving him yet more senior jobs. Even after Longford resigned from the Gov't in 1968, he was invited onto committee after committee after committee. By the 1970s Lord Longford was a standing joke and continually attacked by journos and media outlets across the political spectrum. Yet he wasn't ever blown out of public life or even simply ignored. I think that I know why…
Pakenham went to Eton, then to New College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club. He spent a short time working for the 'Daily Mail', as a don at Christ Church, Oxford and he also worked as a stockbroker with disastrous results. Pakenham and his wife Elizabeth worked for the WEA at Stoke after they graduated and then in 1931 he joined the Conservative Research Dept, developing education policy for the Tories. By the early 1970s, the Conservative Research Dept was known to be a hotbed of predatory gay men, some of them targeting under-aged boys. As with the hubs of child abuse in certain locations such as north Wales and Lambeth, there are indications that the shenanigans at the Conservative Research Dept had been going on for a very long time. For years, new staff were employed who would 'fit in' and were of the same nature as the staff already there…
Frank Pakenham's conservatism could not have been very deep because his wife Elizabeth 'persuaded' him to become a socialist. Elizabeth was from a socialist family – her brother was Harriet Harman's father, John. The Harmans were a family with a good supply of Top Docs. Elizabeth's father was the opthalmic surgeon Nathanial Bishop Harman, who also had a Harley Street practice. Nathanial Harman trained at the Middlesex Hospital, where Gwynne the lobotomist trained. Gwynne was afforded lifelong protection by the alumni network of the Middlesex. Harman became the Dean of West London Postgraduate College, an institution which disappeared a long time ago, I think because the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital squeezed it out of existence and took over its functions. My post 'Interesting Facts' detailed some of the shocking abuses and frauds which have taken place at RPMS in recent decades which have not received wide publicity. It seems that malpractice was the order of the day at that institution over decades. An article entitled 'Human Guinea Pigs: A Warning', published in 1962 in the journal Twentieth Century by Maurice Papworth, highlighted many unethical practices regarding human experimentation at RPMS. According to Papworth, experiments had been carried out without valid consent on vulnerable patients, such as children and the mentally ill.
Most of the people whom I witnessed participating in misconduct and research fraud when I was at RPMS (1986-87) are still working in research or medicine.
Nathanial Harman held a number of offices in the BMA and was a generous benefactor to that organisation. He was also a member of the GMC.
Harriet's dad John Harman worked at Tommy's as well as at his Harley Street practice and gave evidence for the defence during the trial of Dr John Bodkin Adams, the Top Doc who was almost certainly a serial killer and one on a bigger scale than Harold Shipman. Furthermore John Harman gave evidence on matters of which he had no experience. See post 'An Appalling Vista'.
As well as having a general practice, Bodkin Adams worked at All Saints Hospital. The chaplain of All Saints Hospital, Eastbourne, at the time of Bodkin Adams' arrest in 1956 was the Rev Hubert Brasier, the father of Theresa May. Before Theresa May was elected to the Commons, she was a Councillor for Merton, 1986-94. Merton was on the patch of St George's Hospital Medical School, many of who's staff when Theresa was a Councillor there were concealing the crimes of Dafydd and his gang in north Wales and a related gang in south London (see post 'The Most Dangerous Man In The World – Part III').
Here's a Socialist Feminist Who Supports the NHS who also sounds off on matters of which she has no experience:
Nanny Harriet wasn't able to do the jobs in Gov't to which she was repeatedly appointed, so eventually a Spad was sent to do her jobs for her, one Ed Miliband, who's Uncle Harry was a consultant at er, Tommy's.
Dafydd's mate and umbrella Professor Jim Watson worked at Tommy's as a 'sex therapist', after having worked as a 'sex therapist' at St George's and the Maudsley (see post 'A Galaxy Of Talent').
As well as being Harriet's auntie, Lady Elizabeth Longford was a great-niece of the Tory radical Jospeh Chamberlain and a first cousin once removed of the British PM Neville Chamberlain. Elizabeth Longford made several unsuccessful attempts at becoming a Labour MP. She was an historian, a member of the Royal Society for Literature and a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery.
Lloyd Tyrell-Kenyon, the 5th Baron Kenyon, was a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, 1953-88. Lord Kenyon was one of the biggest umbrellas for Dafydd and the gang in north Wales and Kenyon's son Thomas Tyrell-Kenyon was known to be sexually exploiting at least one boy in care in north Wales in the late 1970s. Thomas Tyrell-Kenyon faced no charges at any point, although the boy was sent to a detention centre after Thomas made a complaint that the boy had stolen off him after they had spent the night together. Part of Thomas's complaint was that the boy had stolen pornographic photos of the two of them together which Thomas had taken using a Polaroid. The boy in question later gave evidence to the Waterhouse Inquiry stating that Thomas had 'used him for sex' on numerous occasions. Thomas was not available to give evidence, having died of an HIV-related condition in 1993. See post 'A Bit More Paleontology'.
Both Elizabeth and Frank Pakenham were devout Roman Catholic converts, although Elizabeth found Frank's embracing of the RC Church very difficult at first, having been brought up as a Unitarian.
Frank Pakenham joined the British Army but his career as a soldier proved to be a spectacular failure. He was completely unable to cope with life in the Army and the consequent psychological strain soon manifested itself in physical symptoms and in the spring of 1940 Frank was invalided out of the Army as a result of what was then referred to as a nervous breakdown. Subsequently however, Pakenham, together with Maurice Bowra, raised and commanded the South Company of the Oxford City Battalion of the Home Guard. The ridiculous supervened; Pakenham was shot in the foot by the only member of his company to possess any ammunition.
Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English scholar who studied at New College, Oxford and was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, 1938-70 and VC of Oxford University, 1951-54. Bowra was gay and as an undergraduate was known to cruise for sex. Quotes for which Bowra is well-known include: 'Buggers can't be choosers' (explaining his engagement, later called off, to Audrey Beecham); 'Buggery was invented to fill that awkward hour between Evensong and cocktails' or was 'useful for filling that awkward time between tea and cocktails'; and 'Splendid couple — slept with both of them' (on hearing of the engagement of a well-known literary pair).
As an undergrad Bowra was very sociable and his circle included the Tory politician Lord Bob Boothby, who was bisexual and managed to have affairs with Harold Macmillan's wife Dorothy as well as with a great many others including a range of rent boys and, it is alleged, Ronnie Kray (see previous posts). Bowra was a friend of and shared lodgings with Viscount Cyril Radcliffe, the Law Lord who was the first Chancellor of the University of Warwick, 1965-77.
After being called to the Bar, Cyril Radcliffe joined the chambers of Wilfred Greene, later the Master Of The Rolls. During WWII Radcliffe joined the Ministry of Information, becoming DG by 1941. There he worked closely with Minister Brendan Bracken, who was Minister of Information, 1941-45. Viscount Bracken is best remembered for opposing the Bank of England's co-operation with Hitler and for subsequently supporting Churchill's prosecution of WWII against Hitler.
Bracken's first career was as a newspaper publisher and magazine editor. Many of Bracken's early magazine stories included a political flavour and he commissioned articles from a wide range of politicians such as Churchill and Mussolini. Business and politics permanently overlapped in his life, in a similar way to the career of his occasional friend Lord Beaverbrook. He needed politicians for stories and they needed the publicity given by his publications.
Bracken was PPS to PM Churchill, 1940-41 and then he was First Lord of the Admiralty, 25 May 1945-26 July 1945. Lord Louis Mountbatten was First Sea Lord, 1955-59 and had reached a senior level at the Admiralty by the time that Bracken was First Lord, so Bracken will have known about the allegations that Mountbatten was a molester of under-aged boys, as well as the other sex and spy scandals at the Admiralty of that era (see post 'The Defence Of The Realm').
Bracken's friend Cyril Radcliffe was involved in the Partition of India. Radcliffe was a man who had never been east of Paris, but nonetheless he was given the Chairmanship of the two boundary committees set up with the passing of the Indian Independence Act. Radcliffe was faced with the task of drawing the borders for the new nations of Pakistan and India in a way that would leave as many Hindus and Sikhs in India and Muslims in Pakistan as possible. Radcliffe submitted his partition map on 9 August 1947, which split Punjab and Bengal almost in half. The new boundaries were formally announced on 14 August 1947 – the day of Pakistan's independence and the day before India became independent of the UK. Louis Mountbatten in his capacity as Viceroy and Governor-General of India was also involved in the Partition (see post 'The Defence Of The Realm').
Radcliffe was born in Llanychan, Denbighshire. My post 'Anthem For Doomed Youth' details how in 1968 three students from Sussex University caused a sensation when they threw red paint over a visiting US official in a protest related to the Vietnam War. One of the students was Merfyn Jones, who later became VC of Bangor University and who grew up in Gwynedd. Asa Briggs, the VC of Sussex University at the time, was one of those with links to the security services who concealed the early organised abuse of those associated with Dafydd's gang. Briggs bore a lifelong grudge against the three student protestors and contributed to the serious fire from Dafydd's gang that was aimed at Merfyn when he became VC of Bangor University in 2003. After he graduated from Sussex, Merfyn undertook postgraduate work at Warwick University where he was involved in the student activism which revealed that Warwick was doing a few things that it probably should not have been doing. Radcliffe was Chancellor at the time. I had not realised that Radcliffe came from Denbighshire. The paedophiles' friends being what they are, Radcliffe's links to north Wales will have been used to maximum advantage.
In 1992 Wadham College named its Bowra Building in Maurice Bowra's honour.
I know someone who studied at Wadham College while Bowra was Warden who always cheerily referred to his old college as 'Wadham and Gomorrah'. I just thought that it was a nice little quip but I wonder if he was joking about matters of which I knew nothing.
Other high profile alumni of Wadham and Gomorrah include the former Archbishop of Canterbury who originated from Swansea, Rowan Williams, Melvyn Bragg the MIND Ambassador and Michael Foot. Not only was Michael Foot the Leader of the Labour Party while everyone in that Party sat on the barrel of crap which included George Thomas as well as Dafydd et al in north Wales (Oh, No! It's The Pathetic Sharks…'), but Footie was Lord President of The Council, 1976-79. The Lord President of the Council doubles up as the visitor for Bangor University (UCNW). While Foot was Lord President of the Council, Shirl was asked by Dafydd Wigley if she would, in her capacity as Education Secretary, hold a public inquiry into the running of UCNW by Sir Charles Evans, such was the chaos and dysfunction within that institution. Shirl refused. The chaos and dysfunction were a result of Charles Evans allowing Dafydd et al to use the College to run their sex trafficking ring as Footie and Shirl were well aware. See post 'We've Been Expecting You…'.
One other distinguished alumnus of Wadham and Gomorrah is Lord John Dyson who was a High Court judge, 1993-01; Lord Justice of Appeal, 2001-10; Justice of the Supreme Court, 2010-12; and Master of the Rolls, 2012-16. John Dyson was called to Bar at Middle Temple, as was Sir Ronnie Waterhouse. Dyson and Waterhouse knew each other well.
1940 was the year that Frank Pakenham became a Catholic as well as being invalided out of the Army because of his nervous breakdown. Elizabeth Pakenham joined the Church of Rome six years later.
Frank Pakenham embarked upon a career in politics which had begun with his election as an Oxford City Councillor in the 1930s. Oxfordshire had a major problem with the abuse of kids in its children's homes by the 1950s, which probably stretched much further back than that. This was concealed by Top Doc Dr Vladimir Kahan and his social worker wife Barbara, who became a social work adviser on children in care to successive Gov'ts from the early 1970s onward (see post 'Always On The Side Of The Children').
In 1945 Pakenham stood for election in Oxford as the Labour candidate but was beaten by the Tory Quintin Hogg, who later became Lord Hailsham and who performed a valuable service himself concealing the crimes of Dafydd et al for decades. Pakenham's obituaries maintained that Clement Attlee 'admired' Pakenham's 'passion for social outcasts and tried to harness it'. Pakenham himself stated that his nervous breakdown in 1940 gave him an understanding of people who had been rejected by society. Pakenham experienced a breakdown at a time when such an event was heavily stigmatised – I get the impression that it was particularly so among men, women were expected to go a bit mad at times by Top Docs and certain others – and I'd be interested to know how this was negotiated when Frank Pakenham entered politics, because a 'nervous breakdown' was quite a career-killer in 1940 and people were not allowed to forget that they'd had the temerity to have one.
Pakenham's obituaries tell us that Attlee was 'persuaded' to give Pakenham a peerage, to bring a 'youthful thinker' to the sparsely populated Labour Lords benches. Pakenham had really only done one thing until he bagged that peerage, which was to act as William Beveridge's right hand man when Beveridge compiled his report on the welfare state. Upon receiving a peerage, Longford was immediately appointed a Lords Whip by Attlee, which suggests that Attlee had confidence that Pakenham would be able to twist the arms of other Labour peers. I doubt that Pakenham would have built up sufficient muscle to do that as a result of his short stint working for the 'Daily Mail', his time as a stockbroker which resulted in him losing a great deal of money, him being the most hopeless soldier that the British Army had ever seen, having a nervous breakdown or even by his assistance with the Beveridge Report.
However, by the time that Attlee gave Frank Pakenham a peerage, Frank had been visiting prisons two to three times/week for more than 10 years, holding in-depth conversations with those inside. He will have learnt that some inside prison were innocent and that a great many others had knowledge of wrongdoing in high places rather more serious than the wrongdoing for which they had been sentenced. The language that is used to discuss sexual abuse has changed since the 1940s but many aspects of the problem have not changed. As at the present time, people in dominant positions in society were having sex with people in far more vulnerable positions and some of those people will have been having sex with children, including children of the same sex as them. The stakes were considerably higher for people doing this in the 1940s, because homosexuality was illegal and a prison sentence and total social ruin for one and even one's family a la Oscar Wilde was still the order of the day. What if Frank had learnt a bit about such matters during all that prison visiting?
In 1947, Frank was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster aka Deputy Foreign Secretary with special responsibility for the British zone in occupied Germany. He made headlines by telling German audiences that the British people forgave them for what had happened during WWII and was later credited by the first West German Chancellor with being among his country's founding fathers. In May 1948, Pakenham was moved to the lower-profile role of Minister of Civil Aviation and became a Privy Councillor. He continued in this post until May 1951. From May 1951 until the fall of Attlee's administration in October 1951, Longford was First Lord of the Admiralty. We're back to Mountbatten and his pals again…
After Labour lost the 1951 General Election, Pakenham became Chairman of the Society for the Mentally Handicapped. At the time the mentally handicapped were usually institutionalised – the parents of such children were nearly always advised to do this by Top Docs – and were frequently treated appallingly in long-stay hospitals whose staff were completely unaccountable. Sexual exploitation, as well as physical assault, was common. Pakenham will have been well-aware of that.
During the period of time that Labour was out of office between Attlee and Wilson, Hugh Gaitskell kept Pakenham at the centre of Labour Party affairs. Gaitskell and Pakenham had shared rooms at Oxford and Gaitskell used to refer to Pakenham as his 'oldest friend'. Pakenham remained at the centre of things even when he became Chairman of a City clearing bank, the Anglo-Irish Bank, in 1955, which caused a rumpus in the City because Pakenham had been blackballed from at least one financiers' club. However during Pakenham's nine years as Chairman, the Ango-Irish Bank grew more quickly than any other London clearing bank.
During this time, Pakenham also contributed to a series of 'learned reports' on penal reform. He Chaired a special Labour Party Committee – Harold Wilson appointed him – which in 1963 published its Report, 'Crime – A Challenge'. It recommended the abolition of capital punishment, after-care for prisoners and was the basis for the introduction of the parole system in 1965 that remains substantially unchanged today.
In 1961, Pakenham inherited from his older brother Edward the earldom of Longford and from then onward was generally known to the public as Lord Longford.
When Labour returned to power in October 1964 under Harold Wilson, Longford was appointed Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the Lords, despite the fact that Wilson had little respect for him. It was presumed that these Cabinet positions were simply a sop to Gaitskellites. In December 1965 Longford became Secretary of State for the Colonies, continuing as Leader of the House of Lords. After four months at the Colonial Office, he was removed from the post for failing to master his brief and again became Lord Privy Seal in April 1966.
Longford spoke against the 1967 Bill to facilitate abortions which did not endear him to many on the left of the Labour Party.
Wilson often talked about sacking Longford from his Gov't, which is believed to have led to Longford's resignation as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords in January 1968, although Longford's stated reason for resigning from the Gov't was because of the abandonment of the commitment to increase the school leaving age. Tony Benn, Richard Crossman and Barbara Castle all recorded their relief at Longford's departure from Gov't in their diaries. However HM Queen Lilibet continued to hold Longford in high esteem.
After 1968, Lord Longford concentrated on his campaigns and publishing. In the Lords his two main interests were Ireland and prisons policy. Longford thought of Ireland as his home, although he didn't live there. He was an old friend of Eamon de Valera, who was a Commandant in the 1916 Easter Uprising and later became Taoiseach, 1957-59 and President of Ireland, 1959-73. When in Wilson's Cabinet, Longford caused a stir by attending the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Easter Rising and being photographed next to de Valera.
In 1970 Longford became Chairman of Sidgwick and Jackson the publishers. As with his Chairmanship of the Anglo-Irish Bank, business boomed under this utter incompetent who had dirt on a great many in high places. Longford Chaired Sidgwick and Jackson for 10 years and the company benefited in particular from Ted Heath's books on sailing.
In 1955/56, Longford set up New Bridge Foundation, an organisation that aimed to help prisoners stay in touch with society and integrate them back into it. New Bridge was the first organisation concerned with prisoners' welfare. In 1990 New Bridge set up 'Inside Time' magazine, the only national newspaper for the UK's prison population. Journalist Rachel Billington, Longford's daughter, is involved with the title. Longford organised many debates on prison reform in the House of Lords from the 1950s onward.
In 1970, Longford established New Horizon, the first drop-in centre for homeless teenagers. Longford was a regular at New Horizon, dropping in until his death in 2002, chatting to the teenagers who were often rather confused by Longford's interest in them. Longford could not have failed to have noticed that huge numbers of those homeless teenagers had run away from the care system because they were being grossly abused.
Longford was a leading figure in the National Festival Of Light of 1971, which protested against the commercial exploitation of sex and violence, while advocating the teaching of Christ as the key to recovering moral stability in the nation. Longford was advised against involvement with the National Festival Of Light by his friends, but was said to have been influenced by Mary Whitehouse.
Whitehouse was a 'morality campaigner', a former teacher from the West Midlands. Whitehouse was quite preoccupied with the sort of sex education that kids in schools were receiving and the alleged deleterious effects on them as a result of the 'filth' that Whitehouse believed that she was watching the BBC screen at the time. Whitehouse was keen on quoting the views of Top Docs and psychiatrists on such matters. These will of course have been those who were colluding with Dafydd and the gang. Whitehouse launched a one-woman campaign against Dr Martin Cole, a sex therapist who produced a sex education film for schools called 'Growing Up' (see post 'The White Heat Of This Revolution'). Whitehouse alleged that Martin Cole's clinic was a front for prostitution. Cole worked with Dr Philip Cauthery, a sexologist who was also the students' doctor at Aston University. Cauthery was uncaring and lethal and was felt by many to be one of the key reasons for the high suicide rate among students at Aston. Cauthery sat on the Editorial Board of 'Forum' magazine, the small ads of which were being used by paedophiles. Cauthery was never placed under the spotlight in the way that Martin Cole was, almost certainly because Cauthery was a Top Doctor who enjoyed the protection of the medical establishment, whereas Cole was a non-clinical academic.
The National Festival Of Light was co-founded by the journalist and author Malcolm Muggeridge, who was named as a dreadful old groper after he died (see post 'The Creme de la Creme') and Evangelical Christian missionaries Peter and Janet Hill were also involved. Cliff Richard was a key supporter of the NFOL from its onset and Archbishop Trevor Huddleston was also a supporter. Cliff was a close friend of Cilla, who was a personal friend of Professor Geoffrey Chamberlain of St George's Hospital Medical School, during the years when Chamberlain and his colleagues were perpetrating research fraud as well as colluding with organised child abuse, including the crimes of Dafydd's gang (see post 'Now Then…'). Trevor Huddleston was the subject of allegations that he indecently assaulted children. Huddleston didn't deny the allegations but simply packaged his behaviour as being harmless and 'innocent'. See post 'Radical Leicester And Some Other Free Radicals'.
Grassroots support for the NFOL came from Anglicans, Baptists, Plymouth Brethren and Pentecostal Church denominations. Dafydd has longstanding links with the Anglican Church (see post 'Amber Rudd, The Miners' Strike And A Memory Jogged') and the Welsh Baptist Church (see post 'A Serious Moral Collapse').
A working committee was established with Colonel Orde Dobbie (a Social Services administrator), Eddie Stride (a former shop steward and trade unionist, later the Rector of Christ Church Spitalfields), Gordon Landreth (General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance), Rev. Jean Darnall (Pentecostal Evangelist), Nigel Goodwin (a professional Christian actor) and Steve Stevens (a missionary aviator). Additional input was received from a larger Council of Reference which included well-known politicians, lawyers, doctors, trades unionists, bishops, ministers and other public figures such as actors Dora Bryan and David Kossoff.
Dora Bryan hobnobbed with all the best luvvies who ended up in disgrace, including the cast of the Carry On films and when she was older, Michael Barrymore. David Kossoff became involved with the NFOL as a result of his anti-drugs campaigning which he took up when his son Paul developed drug problems. Paul Kossoff played with the rock band 'Free' and died from complications resulting from his drug use in 1976.
Prince Charles sent 'every good wish for the success of the Festival'
On 25 September, approximately 45,000 people assembled in Trafalgar Square for the NFOL rally. A number of statements and proclamations were read out and received with applause by the crowd. Some called for a halt to the commercial exploitation of sex and violence. They warned that the 'positive values' of love and respect for the individual and the family were under serious threat. At the conclusion of the speeches, the crowd began to wind through the streets to Hyde Park, singing Christian songs as they went. In Hyde Park they joined those unable to get into Trafalgar Square. The Hyde Park rally started at 4 pm, where a number of Christian music groups proclaimed the same message. Among the performers were Cliff Richard, Dana and Graham Kendrick. Rev. Jean Darnall led the rally. The main speaker in the park was Hollywood street evangelist Arthur Blessitt.
In the days that followed perhaps the warmest support came from Roman Catholic periodicals.
After 1971 the NFL committee continued to meet and gradually evolved into the Christian organisation Christian Action Research and Education (CARE), changing its name in 1983.
Longford's anti-porn campaigning made him the subject of derision and he was labelled by the press as Lord Porn when he and former prison doctor Christine Temple-Saville set out on a wide-ranging tour of sex industry establishments in the early 1970s to compile a self-funded report, published in 1972.
Like Longford, Christine Temple-Saville will have known exactly who was sitting in prisons and how many of them had been framed with the assistance of her Top Doc colleagues (and possibly her as well) after they were witnesses to the abuse rings operating within children's homes/other care settings. Temple-Saville will have known about Dafydd, if she didn't actually know him personally. The press made much of Longford's visits to strip clubs in Copenhagen and he was accused of enormous hypocrisy.
Despite the hilarity which Longford's Report caused in so many quarters, in 1972 Lilibet made him a Knight of the Garter. That's the Lilibet who's Woman-of-the-Bedchamber Dame Mary Morrison was the sister of Sir Peter Morrison, who spent a lifetime molesting kids in care.
It was Lord Longford's support for Myra Hindley to be released from prison on parole which made him a household name and led to the soubriquet Lord Wrongford from the tabloid press, which largely opposed Hindley being released. Longford's contact with Hindley became public knowledge in 1972 and allegations of hypocrisy were frequently made against him. In 1977, 11 years after Hindley was convicted of two murders and being an accessory to a third murder, Longford appeared on television and spoke openly of his belief that Hindley should now be considered for parole as she had shown clear signs of progress in prison and now served long enough for the Parole Board to assess her suitability for release from prison. He also supported Hindley's claims that her role in the Moors Murders was merely that of an accomplice and that she had only taken part due to Brady's abuse and threats. There is considerable evidence to suggest that this was true but the facts concerning Hindley's case were lost among the hysteria, the downright lies, the corrupt practices of the police officers and lawyers involved and of course the extreme distress of the parents of the dead children who were never given the support that they should have had.
In 1985, Longford condemned the Parole Board's decision not to consider Hindley's release for another five years as 'barbaric' and his campaign for Hindley continued even after 'she admitted to two more murders in 1986'. Hindley's 'admission' to two more murders in 1986 has become part of the mythology of Hindley. I don't think that she did 'admit' to two more murders in 1986. The detectives who had worked on the case originally – some of whom were corrupt – visited Hindley out of the blue in prison at the end of 1986, told her that they 'knew' that Brady had murdered more children and asked her if she knew where those children were buried. Hindley explained that she did not, neither had she witnessed the further two alleged murders. However she agreed to accompany a police team onto Saddleworth Moor to show the police the places that Brady used to enjoy visiting lest the police wanted to excavate.
Myra Hindley accompanied the police to Saddleworth Moor in appalling winter weather, in conditions that were not conducive to a search for human remains. She told the police that it was so long since she was there that she did not recognise the landscape. The police 'search' was accompanied by full media coverage. At the same time, TV journos approached the father of one of the children murdered/thought to be murdered by Brady and/or Hindley and asked him if he wanted to kill Hindley. The distressed father obediently produced a kitchen knife from his bag for the cameras while the journos purchased him pints.
The sudden interest of Peter Topping, a clapped-out dodgy Greater Manchester policeman, in Myra Hindley and Ian Brady once more at the very end of 1986 has never been explained. Neither has it ever been explained why Topping had an overwhelming urge to conduct a police search of Saddleworth Moor at the one time of year when a search should not be conducted. No-one explained why the media were told what was happening and invited to the scene, particularly as much was made of the risk to Hindley's life from well-wishers while she was on the moor.
The year before Topping had the overwhelming urge to visit Hindley in prison, tell her that she had helped Brady commit two more murders and ask her if she would agree to visit Saddleworth Moor in a blizzard, in front of TV cameras while people were asked to describe to journos how they were going to murder her, Brady had been transferred from Gartree Prison in Leicester to Ashworth Hospital on Merseyside. Dafydd's mates were running Ashworth at the time and the place was full of witnesses to/victims of the wrongdoing of Dafydd and his accomplices (see post 'Security, Security'). Dafydd's mates also ran Gartree Prison and after many years spontaneously declared Brady insane rather than 'wicked' and had him transferred to Dafydd's inner sanctum at Ashworth.
I can remember events very well at the time because Dafydd et al were fully engaged in their efforts to deal with another Evil Young Woman – me. The very people who were busy 'treating' Ian Brady in Ashworth were fabricating evidence, perjuring themselves and holding 'case conferences' without my knowledge to which people whom I had never met were invited to tell the assembled company how dangerous I was. I had been illegally imprisoned in the North Wales Hospital Denbigh in Dec 1986, just days before Myra was in the news once more…
When this saga was being played out on TV – with all us patients in Denbigh watching it – I dared proffer my opinion that this was an unedifying spectacle and I was a little fed up of hearing corrupt Top Docs denouncing people as evil and dangerous. An Angel called Ingrid shouted at me that Myra was 'evil', that as a student Angel Ingrid had watched the trial of Brady and Hindley at Chester Assizes and that everyone in the court was in tears, including Ingrid. I am sure that listening to murder trials take its toll, but Ingrid was at the time of her histrionics in my direction overseeing a group of patients illegally imprisoned by people who were running a paedophile/trafficking ring. Some of those patients were held in a dungeon.
The lawyers involved in the trial of the Moors Murderers included Attorney General Lord Elwyn-Jones, Lord Emlyn Hooson and Sir Ronald Waterhouse. All three of these people were bent, knew about Jeremy Thorpe's shenanigans but kept quiet and also concealed the crimes of Dafydd and the gang in north Wales/Cheshire.
Why Brady and Hindley's trial took place at Chester no-one has been able to explain. They didn't live near Chester, neither did the murder victims and the murders were not committed near Chester. After the event Peter Topping maintained that it was to ensure that they received a 'fair trial'. How that was supposed to happen when Topping and some of his colleagues were bent cops, when they were receiving and passing information on to people known to the accused before the trial and by the trial being held in a location known even then as being the hub of legal and judicial corruption as a result of a longstanding paedophile gang operating in the area was not clarified.
Dafydd and the gang had links with corrupt officers in Greater Manchester Police and other corrupt professionals in the Manchester region (see posts 'Top Of The Cops' and 'A Stalker's Network'.)
For the record: Ian Brady was a deeply unpleasant man. He freely admitted to a series of crimes, including the murders of three children but always denied any involvement in the murders of two others which were attributed to him. He expressed the view that the police and legal system were corrupt and that the Top Docs were a bunch of lying idiots who didn't know their arses from their elbows. Myra Hindley was abused as a girl and experienced violence at Brady's hands. Had her trial occurred these days, much would be made of Myra's very difficult and abusive upbringing. Had I been Myra Hindley I don't think that any of that would have caused me to assist in the abuse and murder of three children, but I'm not Myra Hindley, I don't know what it was like to be her and because so many people involved in her 'assessment', the investigation of the crimes with which she was charged and the continued 'assessment' of her after she was convicted were corrupt as fuck and involved in serious crime as well as organised abuse themselves, I am not sure that much of what we read about Evil Myra was true.
I have in my possession 10,000 documents compiled by the associates of those involved with Brady and Hindley's case which clearly demonstrate perjury, conspiracy and attempts to pervert the course of justice over a period of many years with regard to me because I had complained about Gwynne the lobotomist, Dafydd and Tony Francis. It was documented that I had stabbed people, strangled them, 'served a prison sentence for attacking someone with a knife', held an Angel hostage and sexually assaulted a psychiatrist. The documents are accompanied by other documents written by the same people admitting that none of these allegations are true but nonetheless contain detailed plans of how I will be framed for these offences. There are also letters to 'witnesses' instructing them with regard to what they need to say about me in court. There is even a letter signed by Patricia Gaskell, the former hospital solicitor for Ysbyty Gwynedd, asking for 'more nurses down the police station to complain about [me] please'.
When Evil Myra was told that she had been involved in two more murders and was taken to Saddleworth Moor to identify the locations of the bodies, Alison Taylor had recently expressed repeated concerns about the abuse of kids in care in north Wales, Mary Wynch had made legal history by successfully suing Dafydd and the gang (see post 'The Mary Wynch Case – Details') and I had begun complaining and was refusing to go away as well.
In July 1986 Iain Muir, Deputy Headmaster of the Bryn Alyn Community School, was convicted in the Crown Court at Mold of unlawful sexual intercourse with a female under the age of 16, for which he received a sentence of six months imprisonment. The victim was resident at the school for just over three years and was 15 years old when she left.
In October 1986 DCS Gwynne Owen's report to the Crown Prosecution Service following concerns raised by Alison Taylor and complaints of abuse from children criticised Alison Taylor and accused her of 'manipulating' people to make complaints.
In Dec 1986, Gwynedd County Council informally suspended Alison from her job as a social worker, Dafydd abducted and illegally imprisoned me on 13 Dec 1986, Evil Myra was taken to Saddleworth Moor on Dec 16 and was suddenly all over the media once more.
On 18 December 1986, Professor Oliver Brooke, Prof of Paediatrics at St George's Hospital Medical School, pleaded guilty to six counts of procuring and distributing child pornography at Kingston Crown Court and was sentenced to one year in prison. Brooke was only charged with a small number of offences but was in reality a key player in a pan-European child abuse ring of which Dafydd's gang in north Wales were a part.
Now perhaps Dafydd would like to tell us all why Peter Topping decided that the world had to be reminded of Evil Myra once again just when Ollie Brooke was up in court.
Lord Longford will have known of Evil Myra's abusive childhood and he will have known that those involved with her case and shouting about Evil Myra were running a paedophile gang themselves. Longford remained schtum.
Evil Myra's public appearance on Dec 16 1986 further strengthened media and public opinion that any reports of progress by Hindley in prison were 'nothing more than a ploy to boost her chances of gaining release from prison'. Well she was Evil Myra who Manipulated wasn't she. Just like Alison Taylor and I Manipulated.
Whilst all this was going on, Douglas Hurd was Home Secretary.
In 1990, David Waddington the Home Secretary ruled that 'life should mean life' for Evil Myra, who had been told by earlier Home Secretaries and High Court judges that she would have to serve a minimum of 25 and then 30 years before being considered for parole. These were the Waddington and the previous Home Secretaries and High Court judges who colluded with Dafydd's gang as well as the linked gangs across the UK/Europe, including the gang in south London of which Brooke was a leading light.
Hindley was not informed of Waddington's decision until December 1994, and Longford later expressed his 'disgust' at this ruling. The next three Home Secretaries all agreed with Waddington's ruling. They also all colluded with Dafydd et al. Hindley appealed against her whole life tariff in the High Court in December 1997, November 1998 and March 2000, but each appeal was rejected. In Dec 1997 and Nov 1998 the Waterhouse Inquiry was underway. The Waterhouse Report was published in Feb 2000, one month before Evil Myra had yet another appeal rejected. Longford maintained that Evil Myra was a changed woman who was no longer a threat to society and had qualified for parole. He regularly commented, along with several other supporters of Evil Myra, that she was a 'political prisoner' who was being kept in prison for votes, to serve the interests of a succession of Home Secretaries and their respective Gov'ts. This was true, although the general public would still have been utterly unsympathetic if they had known. But what would the general public have said if they had been made aware that scores of the lawyers, judges, Top Docs and police officers directly involved with decisions regarding Evil Myra were colluding with child abuse, including the murders of witnesses, themselves?
In March 1996, Longford backed up Evil Myra's claim in an Oxford University magazine that she was still in prison so that the Conservative Gov't – trailing in the opinion polls since the autumn of 1992 – would win more votes. This claim was met with anger by the mothers of two of the Moors Murders victims, including Ann West, who remained at the centre of the campaign to ensure that Evil Myra was never released and once again vowed to kill Evil Myra if she was set free. Longford regularly condemned the media for 'manipulating' West and feeding her desire for revenge and was particularly critical of 'The Sun' newspaper for its 'exploitation' of West – referring to her numerous television and newspaper interviews in which she argued against any suggestion of Evil Myra ever being paroled, often threatening to kill her if she was ever set free. In 1986, Longford reportedly told West that unless she forgave Evil Myra and Brady, she would not go to Heaven when she died.
This is all deeply ironic. The tabloid press undoubtedly manipulated the parents of Brady's and Hindley's victims but then so did everyone involved in the cases, including Longford. It would have been more sensible of Longford to have kept his thoughts to himself re the need for Ann West to forgive Hindley and Brady because his relationship with Ann West was nowhere near good enough for him to make such suggestions without causing great upset. Interestingly enough, for many years, staff of the mental health services stressed to me that I was in a bad way because I hadn't 'forgiven' Dafydd et al for their oh so minor 'misjudgements' with regard to me. Not only were Dafydd et al guilty of a great deal more than a few 'misjudgements' but documents now in my possession show that while people were busy telling me that poor old Dafydd never meant any harm at all and gosh I really was over-reacting, those very people were at the time conspiring with Dafydd to lie and perjure themselves in order to have me banged up for a very long time because they were so worried at the prospect of Brown and me one day publishing all this. By that time, the main reason why I wasn't 'recovering' was that I was constantly being arrested for ludicrous offences, I was being actively denied effective treatment for a mood disorder and my property (and occasionally me) was being attacked by meatheads who had been put up to this by Dafydd et al.
Every time that I was told that my 'outbursts' and 'baseless accusations' had 'upset' staff, I was happy to write and apologise. Those letters are among my documentation as well. Along with the documents detailing the lies that would then be told about me in Court, the gloating notes regarding which members of staff I 'trusted' and who could therefore be relied upon to persuade me or even people close to me to drop complaints about the 'service'. I have seen the medical records of another mental health patient from north Wales who, like me, was repeatedly arrested after complaining about the 'services'. He too wrote apologies to staff whom he was told were 'terrified' of him and whom he had 'upset'. His letters of apology were attached to fabricated accounts of his 'crimes', giving the impression that he was apologising for committing serious offences. This man told me that one of his letters of apology was 'virtually dictated' to him by Dr Tony Francis.
Get over it world, these were not caring Top Docs and Angels who's patience was being tried to the limits by dangerous patients, they were a criminal gang. Those in Gov't throughout the many years that this criminal idiocy continued knew that.
Evil Myra died in November 2002, having never been paroled. Lord Longford had died the previous year.
Longford seemed to be very confused where homosexuality was concerned. In 1956, he launched the first Parliamentary debate in support of the Wolfenden Report, which recommended the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Longford had been a staunch public supporter of Lord Montagu and his lover Peter Wildeblood after the two were jailed for breaking anti-gay laws in the early 1950s and he visited them regularly in prison. In his later years however, Longford became a staunch opponent of gay rights and in the 1960s he stated that homosexuality was 'nauseating' and that, regardless of any change in the law, it was 'utterly wrongful'.
But then Dafydd and Gwynne at the North Wales Hospital Denbigh were subjecting gay patients to 'aversion therapy' to cure them of their homosexuality years after homosexuality was decriminalised, while they ran a paedophile/trafficking ring targeting boys in particular.
In the mid-1980s, Longford was a vocal supporter of the introduction of Section 28 by Thatcher's Conservative Gov't – despite Thatcher's close friends Sir Peter Morrison and George Thomas being homosexual paedophiles – and, during the Parliamentary debates, Longford famously stated his opinion that homosexuals are 'handicapped people'. Section 28 became law in 1988, but Longford continued to support it and fought against its repeal when New Labour came to power in 1997. Section 28 was repealed in 2003.
Longford also opposed the Labour Gov'ts plans to equalise the age of consent for gay men (at that time 18) with that of heterosexual men (16), and in a 1998 Lords debate Longford remarked that:
…if someone seduced my daughter, it would be damaging and horrifying but not fatal. She would recover, marry and have lots of children… On the other hand, if some elderly, or not so elderly, schoolmaster seduced one of my sons and taught him to be a homosexual, he would ruin him for life. That is the fundamental distinction.
Is it any wonder that with this sort of inconsistency and confusion, Longford colluded with the crimes of Dafydd et al?
The age of consent for gay men was equalised at 16 in 2000. In the years before that, there were TV debates regarding the matter. The subject was discussed on daytime shows such as 'Kilroy'. I was watching those shows in the mid-1990s because Dafydd was regularly turning up on them being touted as an 'expert'. I saw the 'Kilroy' programme which discussed reducing the age of consent for homosexuality and it was bizarre. A collection of the truly bigoted had been invited including one Top Doctor – not Dafydd amazingly enough – who reassured Kilroy and the assembled company that homosexuality was a 'mental illness' and was not found in the animal kingdom (it is). There was one Tory MP who argued against reducing the age of consent – a young Nigel Evans, the Tory MP for the Ribble Valley, who grew up in Swansea. Years later Nigel Evans came out as gay and then famously stood trial in 2014 after a number of young men alleged that he had sexually assaulted them.
There was only one guest on the 'Kilroy' programme who dared support the reduction of the age of consent for gays to 16 and who faced the most dreadful hostility for doing so and that was Edwina Currie. I was so impressed with Edwina's performance on the show that I wrote to her. I received a letter back from Edwina so quickly that I have never worked out how it happened. I posted the letter to Edwina at her Commons address from Bethesda and I received a reply as far as I can remember the next day. It was a complete mystery to me as to how that could have happened. I am now even more intrigued because I now know that when I was living at that address at that time I and my friends were under surveillance by the security services because of our challenges to and interest in Dafydd and the gang.
When that episode of 'Kilroy' was screened, Edwina, Nigel Evans and indeed Kilroy himself knew about at least some of Dafydd's criminal activities in relation to the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal, which was in the news at the time.
Longford's highly publicised condemnation of homosexuality in the late 1980s made him a regular target of the comedian Julian Clary, who often satirised Longford. When Julian Clary was much younger and a new face on the comedy circuit, he used to joke about the homosexual bullying which he maintained was endemic at his school. In one media interview he described his school as a living nightmare but stated that he felt unable to tell his parents what was happening to him because it was a prestigious school and they'd made sacrifices to send him there. More recently that school has been named as being part of a child abuse ring. Julian Clary has now gone very quiet about that school and after it was named in the media simply observed that he didn't like it there very much. Clary's mum was a probation officer and his dad was a policeman.
Frank Pakenham's extended family are as interesting as he was. His elder brother Edward, from whom Frank inherited his earldom, was the 6th Earl Longford. Edward went to Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. At Eton he became an Irish Nationalist, taking inspiration from the Easter Rising in 1916 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Edward learned Irish and adopted the name Eamon de Longphort. His political views made him unpopular at both Eton and Christ Church. Edward was an Anglo-Catholic who never left the Church of Ireland.
On 13 November 1946 Edward was nominated by the Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, as a member of 5th Seanad Eireann, although he was not re-appointed to the 6th Seanad.
Lord Edward Longford became Chairman of the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1930 and continued to work for the theatre until 1936, when he founded the Longford Players. He often collaborated with his wife, Christine, with whom he was also responsible for redecorating Pakenham Hall, now Tullynally Castle, in Chinese style. Pakenham Hall was often the scene of gatherings of Oxford-educated intellectuals such as John Betjeman, Evelyn Waugh and Maurice Bowra.
Frank and Edward's dad Thomas Packenham, 5th Earl of Longford and his wife Lady Mary, had other children including Lady Julia, later Lady Julia Mount. Lady Julia Mount was the mother of Sir Ferdinand Mount, one of Thatcher's favourite 'thinkers'. Ferdinand Mount attended Eton and then Christ Church, Oxford. Mount worked at Conservative Party HQ as Head of the Number 10 Policy Unit, 1982–83, under Thatch and played a significant part in devising the 1983 General Election manifesto.
Mount was Editor of the TLS, 1991–2002 and then became a regular contributor to 'Standpoint' magazine. He wrote for 'The Sunday Times' and in 2005 joined The Daily Torygraph as a commentator. Sir Ferdinand serves as Chairman of the Friends of the British Library and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1991.
Ferdinand's books include: 'The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love and Marriage' (1982); 'Umbrella: A Pacific Tale' (199); and 'The Liquidator' (1995).
The 'Daily Mail' coverage of Frank Longford's death told us that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, paid tribute to Lord Longford's loyalty to his faith: 'I remember Lord Longford as a great friend and a man not afraid to be different. He was an outstanding Christian witness who devoted his entire life to the Catholic faith…' Tony Benn, who served in Harold Wilson's Gov't with Lord Longford, 1964-68, remembered the peer as a 'kindly and thoughtful' man who served the nation for many decades: 'He had a very long and distinguished career as a Catholic socialist statesman and a minister. His concern for people, and for prisoners in particular, was genuine. He simply did not believe that people should be allowed to rot in jail….He was a very kind and thoughtful man. I think he will be remembered as a very respected and well thought of man with a great conscience. He was just a very decent guy'. Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, said Lord Longford was a 'remarkable' man who was not afraid to stand up for his beliefs: 'Lord Longford had a rare belief in humanity and a determination to stand up for people who could not stand up for themselves. Essentially, he refused to see people who had done terrible things as terrible people.' Frances Crook, Director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said she would miss Lord Longford both professionally and personally: 'Firstly, he was one of the bravest people I have ever met because he would stand up and challenge what everybody else was saying. Secondly, he was compassionate and reminded people that nobody is beyond redemption. And thirdly he was also a wonderful lunch companion and could drink anyone under the table'.
Tony Blair said of Lord Longford after his death: 'He was a great man of passionate integrity and humanity, and a great reformer committed to modernising the law, while also caring deeply for individuals'.
Longford had a big family and many of his children – Harriet Harman's cousins – became well-known/influential or married well-known/influential people.
Lady Antonia Fraser is probably the most famous of Longford's children. From 1956 until 1977, Antonia was married to Sir Hugh Fraser, the Roman Catholic Conservative Unionist MP for Stafford, who was a friend of the American Kennedy family. They had six children: three sons, Benjamin, Damian and Orlando; and three daughters, Rebecca Fitzgerald, wife of barrister Edward Fitzgerald QC, Flora Fraser and Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni. Edward Fitzgerald QC is joint Head of Doughty Street Chambers. Doughty Street Chambers contains Theo Huckle QC, the former Counsel-General of Wales, who had sight of the 10,000 documents in my possession detailing serious crime on the part of every agency with which I was involved over 25 years but did not act (see post 'Theo Huckle QC'). Another leading light at Doughty Street Chambers is Helena Kennedy, who during her many years of working with Wimmin In Prison and Secure Hospitals has never uttered a word regarding the organised abuse of people in care settings (see post 'Close Your Eyes And Make A WISH'), not even when she worked with Professor Nigel Eastman of St George's Hospital Medical School, who was concealing the crimes of Dafydd, Oliver Brooke et al (see post 'Eve Was Framed – As Were A Lot Of Other People').
Flora Fraser married Peter Soros, nephew of George Soros. Benjamin Fraser works for JP Morgan, Damian Fraser is the Managing Director of the investment banking firm UBS AG (formerly S.G. Warburg) in Mexico and Orlando Fraser is a barrister specialising in commercial law.
Lady Antonia's husband Hugh Fraser was a younger son of the 14th Lord Lovat. He was educated at Ampleforth College – now the focus of a major abuse investigation – and Balliol College, Oxford, where he was President of the Oxford Union. He also attended the Sorbonne. Fraser was elected MP for Stone in 1945, which later became Stafford and Stone from 1950 until 1983 and then Stafford until his death. He served as an MP continuously from 1945 until 1984.
A paedophile ring operated in the Stafford area for many years and the abuse of children in care in that location finally became public in the 1980s as a result of the Pindown Scandal (see previous posts). At least one foster carer who had raised concerns about children in care in the Stafford area being abused by social work staff found himself arrested and framed for child abuse himself. Fraser had been a member of Harold Macmillans Gov't at the time of the Profumo Affair (see post 'In Memoriam – Bronwen, Lady Astor').
Hugh Fraser was the presumed target of an IRA car bomb on 23 October 1975. The bomb had been fitted to one of Fraser's cars outside his home at Holland Park. A noted cancer researcher, Professor Gordon Hamilton Fairley, a neighbour of the Frasers, was walking past the car when the bomb exploded prematurely, killing him instantly. Fraser's wife, Lady Antonia, and Caroline Kennedy – the daughter of John F. Kennedy – who was a guest of the Frasers and visiting London to complete an art course at Sotheby's, would have been in the car when the bomb detonated had it not done so prematurely.
An article about the bomb blast was published in 'The New York Times', Oct 24 1974. It stated that 'Miss Kennedy…was described by Mr. Fraser as "very shaken"… "I am fine," she said. "I am sure this has nothing to do with me." Prof. Gordon Hamilton Fairley…was killed…The leukemia specialist, who lived in the square, was professor in the department of medical oncology at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London…Recent work by Professor Fairley included treatment of acute myeloid leukemia… The work was performed with Prof. Peter Alexander, an expert in tumor immunology at Royal Marsden Hospital in London. "I can think of no greater catastrophe for clinical research than his loss," said Professor Alexander….It was evident that Miss Kennedy and Mr. Fraser barely escaped serious injury. The bomb was planted under the front wheel of Mr. Fraser's red Jaguar and exploded at 8:53. The 57‐year‐old M.P…was about to drive Miss Kennedy to her art course at Sotheby's. He had stopped to telephone another Member of Parliament, Jonathan Aitken, when the bomb went off. "Normally I would have been in the car when this happened but I was on the telephone," he said. "I normally leave the house between 8:15 and 8:30 each day."…It was not immediately clear why Mr. Fraser was singled out. He is a well‐known member of the Roman Catholic community but has not taken a prominent role in the Irish question, except to condemn terrorism at various times. Mr. Fraser is also a stanch supporter of Israel.
Scotland Yard's Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Ernest Bond, said: "We are convinced that Mr. Fraser was the target, not Caroline Kennedy. It is more than likely that the views Mr. Fraser has expressed from time to time against terrorism was the reason for this attack."
Later in the day, Mr. Fraser received a standing ovation at the House of Commons and said in a voice choking with emotion: "We can all agree that every politician in this house is at risk, from whatever party – and all parties are determined to extirpate terrorism whatever the cost."
He paid a special tribute to Professor Fairley, saying he had "probably done more for cancer research in this country than any other man."
"It might be borne in mind by the public that this innocent victim in this case was a most distinguished man and has contributed perhaps more to the saving of human life than perhaps anyone in this House or in the whole medical profession." Mr. Fraser said….
Tonight there was widespread reaction to Professor Fairley's death. Dr. Nigel Kemp, honorary scientific secretary of the Cancer Research Campaign, said that the professor, who was in his mid‐forties, was virtually irreplaceable….'
In recent years, it has been suggested that some of those allegedly targeted by the IRA and other terrorist groups may have been targeted because of their involvement in child abuse and that those behind the attacks may not have always been the terrorist cells to whom the attacks were attributed. Hugh Fraser will have known about the child abuse ring in Stafford, his father-in-law Lord Longford definitely knew about it and John F. Kennedy and his associates have also been accused of involvement in some rather sordid activities. David Ormsby-Gore aka Lord Harlech met a sticky end after he served as Ambassador to the US while JFK was President, as did many members of his family. The Ormsby-Gores didn't seem to have a habit of dying young and in suspicious circumstances until then. See post '95 Glorious Years' for details.
As for the innocent Top Doc who was accidentally killed when the bomb detonated 'prematurely' – he worked at Barts, which was also involved in the facilitating of an abuse/trafficking ring thanks to the presence of Dafydd's mate Professor Linford Rees in that institution (see post 'A Galaxy Of Talent') and the previous presence of Lady Juliet Bingley (see previous posts'). Furthermore Gordon Fairley's colleagues at the Cancer Research Campaign were involved in large scale research fraud (see post 'Oh Lordy, It's CR UK').
That bomb could have been targeting any number of people.
Sir Hugh Fraser remained in Parliament until his death in March 1984 and Bill Cash retained the seat for the Tories at the subsequent by-election.
In 1975, Lady Antonia began an affair with Top Swearer Harold Pinter, who was then married to the actress Vivien Merchant. In 1977, after Lady Antonia had been living with Pinter for two years, the Frasers' union was legally dissolved. Merchant spoke about her distress publicly to the press, but she resisted divorcing Pinter. In 1980, after Merchant signed divorce papers, Lady Antonia and the Sweary One married.
Harold Pinter talked posh but famously originated from Hackney. He frequented leftie luvvie circles and the world was entertained when it became known back in the 1980s that Lady Antonia and Harold were planning the revolution over a series of dinner parties at their place in Holland Park. I wonder why that particular plan failed.
Swearing Harold found time for an affair with Joan Bakewell in his busy timetable.
In a review published in 1958, borrowing from the subtitle of The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, a play by David Crompton, critic Irving Wardle called Pinter's early plays 'comedy of menace', a label that people have applied repeatedly to Pinter's work. Such plays begin with an apparently innocent situation that becomes both threatening and 'absurd' as Pinter's characters behave in ways often perceived as inexplicable by his audiences and one another.
|The Earl of Longford
Harold Pinter was a friend of Tom Stoppard, who was married to Top Doctor Miriam Stoppard of 'Dear Miriam' fame, before Tom ran off with Felicity Kendal and then hit gold with Sabrina Guinness, Carlo's old flame, whom it was alleged turned down Carlo's offer of marriage. Probably because she was older and rather sharper than Lady Di and knew what she would be letting herself in for.
I always think of Miriam as being someone who answered the readers' problems in the 'TV Times' magazine – I think that they took Miriam on when they got rid of Katie Boyle – and then the 'Daily Mirror' and who wrote owners' manuals for menopausal women, dispensing bad advice in the process, but there are far more sinister aspects to Miriam's CV.
Miriam was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Her father Sidney was a nurse and her mother Jenny worked for the Newcastle school dinners service. Male nurses were a rare thing in those days, except for in psychiatric nursing, so it is probable that this was the field in which Miriam's father was employed. Newcastle and the surrounding area was the location of the paedophile/trafficking gang which supplied Dafydd's gang with staff and children and the psychiatric services in Newcastle were a key part of the gang (see post 'The Newcastle-upon-Tyne Connection?').
Miriam trained as a nurse at the Newcastle General Hospital (Royal Free Medical School) and went on to study medicine at King's College Durham (which became Newcastle University in 1963). It is unusual for nurses to subsequently train as Top Doctors, although these days it does sometimes happen. When Miriam did that it was virtually unheard of, not least because of the dreadful attitudes that Top Docs held and often still hold toward Angels. There were only a very, very small number of examples and in every case the Angel and/or her family knew of enormous wrongdoing in high places and quietly used that as leverage.
So Miriam, how did you or your dad or one of your close friends get to know the monster of the medical establishment who was based in Newcastle, Lord John Walton, who spent his entire career concealing the crimes of Dafydd and his associates in Newcastle (see post 'Little Things Hitting Each Other')?
It just got better and better for Miriam. After qualifying as a Top Doc, Miriam worked at the Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary and then as a senior registrar in dermatology at Bristol Royal Infirmary. Where Miriam will have got to know the Bristol contingent who propped up Dafydd's partner-in-crime Dr D.G.E. Wood.
Miriam became Research Director and then Managing Director for Syntex, the drug company most well-known for producing the oral contraceptive pill. Syntex's submission of a fraudulent toxicology analysis of naproxen largely led to the Food and Drug Administration's uncovering of extensive scientific misconduct by Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories in 1976. They never mentioned that in the 'TV Times' on the 'Dear Miriam' page.
Miriam became well known during the 1970s and 1980s as a television presenter on scientific and medical programmes such as 'Don't Ask Me' and 'Where There's Life'.
'Don't Ask Me' was a science show made by Yorkshire Television which ran from 1974 to 1978. It attempted to answer science-based questions and contributors included Magnus Pyke, Rob Buckman and David Bellamy. Those behind the scenes included Adam Hart-Davis. Buckman was one of those Top Docs who was a member of 'Footlights' in the late 1960s and worked with John Cleese and Graham Chapman (who had a penchant for picking up teenaged boys for sex as discussed in previous posts) and who starred in things like 'The Pink Medicine Show' in the 1970s.
Rob Buckman emigrated to Toronto, Canada, in 1985 and initially stayed with his cousin, journalist Barbara Amiel, who was married to Conrad Black, the press baron who at one time owned the Daily Torygraph. Black went to prison for fraud in 2007. In 1994 Buckman was named Canada's Humanist of the Year and he was President of the Humanist Association of Canada and Chair of the Advisory Board on Bioethics of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Buckman was a founding member of the Centre for Inquiry Canada. Buckman practiced medical oncology at the Princess Margaret Hospital, held a Chair in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and held an adjunct Chair at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in the US state of Texas. Buckman died in his sleep while flying from London to Toronto on 9 October 2011. The cause was unknown, he was 63 and remarkably few questions were asked about that death. Buckman pegged out just as Operation Pallial re-opened the investigation into the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal and the Macur Review of the Waterhouse Inquiry approached.
Rob Buckman undoubtedly knew about much of the abuse and wrongdoing which has been discussed on this blog, but he kept quiet, which was just as well because his brother Laurence Buckman, a GP, was Chairman of the BMA's GP's Committee, 2007-13. Buckman was educated at University College School in Hampstead – Trumpers' husband Alan Barker was Headmaster there. It was Trumpers who appointed Jimmy Savile to the management board of Broadmoor when she was a junior Health Minister (see post '95 Glorious Years!'). Laurence Buckman studied medicine at UCH and is the London President of the Jewish Medical Association.
It was when Laurence Buckman was a 'negotiator' for the BMA that the GPs laughable contract leaving them far richer despite doing less work was 'negotiated'. Buckman became very upset when it was alleged that it was he who had helped bag the GPs big bucks. Buckman sought to expel this notion in an interview with the 'Jewish Chronicle' in 2009. It was stated that 'He is regarded as a tough negotiator at the Department of Health. It was no coincidence that he was once dubbed "Red Robbo in a white coat", a description he did not enjoy any more than when the editor of 'The Lancet 'said his behaviour was "shameful" and that he was guilty of "insulting cynicism about politicians and their constituents". To which he responds: "If you put your head above the parapet, you must expect to be shot at."
Well Laurence, I and my friends were threatened with guns and being shot at because we dared put our heads up above the parapet when we complained about your people-trafficking colleagues. I don't like people threatening to kill me and then trying to do it, so now you've got this blog. Furthermore, you've been somewhat rash putting your own head above the parapet and mouthing off constantly about the nation's hard-working and modestly paid GPs and stating in that interview with the 'Jewish Chronicle' that 'there are 8000 fewer people dead' as a result of that GPs contract. You had no evidence for such a statement and one look at what has happened to general practice since you gave that interview demonstrates that you are a lying bastard.
Laurence Buckman got his 'first experience of NHS and Health Department bureaucracy in 1992 when he joined the BMA GPs committee'. In 1992, the Gov't was doing all that it could to conceal Dafydd's role in the Westminster Paedophile Ring. Dafydd's gang included Dr D.G.E. Wood, who was a leading light in the Royal College of GPs. Buckman will know him.
So how did the turd Buckman ever find himself in a position where he was able to order about a Gov't who loathed him?
Since Buckman gave that interview to the 'Jewish Chronicle' in 2009, his brother died for no good reason in an aeroplane mid-transit. Buckman must be a worried man by now.
David Bellamy, Rob Buckman's co-presenter on 'Don't Ask Me', was a botanist based at Durham University. Bellamy was friendly with one of his colleagues who lectured at Durham who was the mother of a particularly dreadful forestry student at Bangor University, Louis Standen. I and my friends had the Standen Experience when he moved into our house in 1984, just as we found ourselves surrounded by so many difficult people, a number of whom I have now been told were gifts from the security services. Standen was an absolute bloody nightmare, was highly abusive, had a record of sexually aggressive behaviour towards girls before he ever arrived at Bangor and freely told us that it was his mum and her connections that secured him the place on the forestry degree at Bangor. After graduation, Louis was involved in a series of events bizarre even by his standards and years later hit the headlines when he was part of a spectacularly ineffective anti-nuclear protest while dressed as an elf or some such character. It was reported in the press that Louis was employed as David Bellamy's chauffeur at the time. The last that I heard of Louis he was living in Glastonbury predicting the end of the world and touring festivals to dispense his wisdom regarding this matter.
Louis Standen's parents were both involved with Radical Causes – his dad was the novelist and literary figure Michael Standen – and they hobnobbed with many of the activists previously named on this blog as having colluded with or concealed the crimes of Dafydd et al, such as Tony Benn (see post 'No Cuts').
Durham University was stuffed with people who knew about the organised abuse ring in the north east and its links with the gang in north Wales. Professor Eric Sunderland was appointed Principal of UCNW/Bangor University in 1984, after the paedophile gang in north Wales sent up a distress flare. Eric had spent most of his career at Durham University and proved a remarkably loyal friend to Dafydd's gang, although Eric was heavily camouflaged (see previous posts). Eric Sunderland took up his post at Bangor the same year that Louis arrived at the University.
David Bellamy was well-known for fostering/adopting children.
Adam Hart-Davis, the behind the scenes mover and shaker for 'Don't Ask Me' is linked to people who have kept quiet about research fraud, dodgy practice and abuse (see post 'Upper Class Twit Of The Year – Shooting Themselves').
Miriam has a company, Miriam Stoppard Lifetime, through which she flogs her books and health products. In August 2012, writing in the Daily Mirror, Stoppard supported UCL's Institute of Child Health research which suggested reviewing the recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding until six months, adding that the appearance of teeth should signal the end of breastfeeding. I think that Miriam should probably stop telling other women what to do, it hasn't been that helpful…
Nevertheless, Miriam was named Journalist of the Year at the Stonewall Awards on 6 November 2012.
Miriam was married to Tom Stoppard from 1972 to 1992; one of her sons is the actor Ed Stoppard and her sister is the 'social justice activist' Murreil Hazel Stern, mother of the Champion Of The Oppressed Baroness Oona King (see post 'We've Been Expecting You…'). Oona's dad is the academic and African-American civil rights activist Preston Theodore King. Preston King has taught at a number of universities within and outside of the UK, including Keele University. Keele had a problem at the time that Preston King taught there, in so far as some staff were concealing organised abuse.
In 1997, as the Waterhouse Inquiry got underway, Miriam married the industrialist Sir Christopher Hogg.
Hogg began his career with Philip Hill Higginson Erlangers Ltd (now Hill Samuel & Co Ltd); from 1963–66 and then worked for Courtaulds from 1968 onwards, which at the time was Europe's largest textile company. He became a Director in 1973, was appointed Chief Executive in 1979 and became Executive Chairman on 1 January 1980. He retired as Chief Executive in 1991.
Courtaulds owned the British Cellophane factory in Bridgwater which for many years was Bridgwater's biggest employer. Cellophane closed down in 2005 which caused much grief in Bridgwater. People were perplexed as to why the factory had closed. By then the Cellophane factory was owned by Innovia, who decided to close one of its two plants at either Bridgwater or Tecumseh, Kansas. British economic development officials offered a $120,000 tax break over three years to Innovia to preserve the Bridgwater plant, while Kansas offered $2 million if it kept the plant at Tecumseh open. As a result, the profit-making Bridgwater factory closed in the summer of 2005, while the loss-making factory in Tecumseh remained open.
By the time that the Cellophane factory was closed, the dreadful Ian Liddell-Grainger had succeeded Tom King as the Tory MP for Bridgwater. Liddell-Grainger's claim to fame is that he is a great-great-great grandson of Queen Victoria. Before becoming an MP, Liddell-Grainger was commissioned as a Major in the TA with the 6th Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, commanding the machine-gun Platoon and then X Company of the Battalion in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Liddell-Grainger served on Tynedale District Council, 1989-95. So he knew about the trafficking gang in the north east linked to Dafydd's gang.
Liddell-Grainger succeeded Tom King as MP in 2001, after King was given a peerage. King picked up his peerage the year after the Waterhouse Report concealed the barrel of crap in north Wales/Cheshire which King knew about and knew that some of his constituents knew about as well (see posts 'Those Who Are Ready To Serve' and 'Upper Class Twit Of The Year – Shooting Themselves').
Christopher Hogg served as a member of the Dept of Industry's Industrial Development Advisory Board from 1976-80. Hogg was a member of JP Morgan's International Advisory Council, 1988-2003 and served as a Non-Executive Director of the Bank of England from March 1992 for a four-year term and as a Trustee of the Ford Foundation from 1987-99.
Hogg was appointed to the Bank of England when Robin Leigh-Pemberton was the Governor, 1983-93. My post 'Upper Class Twit Of The Year – Shooting Themselves' describes how from the late 1980s onward, people known to me in Somerset who remained silent about what was happening to me in north Wales found themselves in possession of a great deal of money after their company was inexplicably cultivated by a bunch of over-privileged tossers who were members of the Dangerous Sports Club. A leading light in the DSC was Robin Leigh-Pemberton's son Tommy. Tommy Leigh-Pemberton was shot dead in Nairobi when he was doing something that he should not have been, which would have resulted in much bad publicity for his father had it been widely known, so the circumstances of Tommy's death were concealed (see post 'The Village').
Lord Kingsdown's son – Tommy's brother – the Hon. James Henry Leigh-Pemberton is a British banker and the incumbent Receiver-General for the Duchy of Cornwall. Robin Leigh-Pemberton was the Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall. James currently serves as the Executive Chairman of UK Financial Investments. James Leigh-Pemberton was educated at Eton and started his career at S.G. Warburg & Co before becoming a Managing Director at Credit Suisse Investment Banking in London. On 7 July 2008, James was appointed CEO of Credit Suisse's businesses in the UK. He currently serves as the Executive Chairman of UK Financial Investments. James Leigh-Pemberton is also a Trustee of the Duke of Cornwall Benevolent fund and The Royal Collection Trust.
Christopher Hogg joined the board of Allied Domecq in 1995 and was Chairman, 1996-March 2002. He was a Non-Executive Director of Reuters Group from 1984 and its Chairman, 1985-2004 and later served as Chairman of the Financial Reporting Council, 2006-April 2010. Hogg was a Non-Executive Director of Air Liquide, 2000–05, and of SmithKline Beecham, 1993-2000. He was a Non-Executive Director of GlaxoSmithKline from 2000, and its Chairman, 2002-04. Hogg Chaired the National Theatre, 1995-2004.
Hogg attended Marlborough College and Trinity College, Oxford. He attended IMEDE Business School (Lausanne, 1962), before going to Harvard where he completed his MBA.
Frank Pakenham's heir, Thomas Pakenham, the 8th Earl Longford, is a journo and historian. After graduating from Belvedere College and Magdalen College, Oxford in 1955, Thomas Pakenham travelled to Ethiopia. On returning to Britain, Thomas worked on the Editorial staff of 'The Times' and later for 'The Sunday Telegraph' and 'The Observer'. He is the Chairman of the Irish Tree Society.
Patrick Pakenham, another of Frank Pakenham's children, was a barrister who died in 2005. Patrick had a difficult life, particularly after he developed manic depression, which resulted in him being admitted to nursing homes on three occasions and prevented him from continuing his career. Even before Patrick became ill, he seemed to have had some very bad experiences. He was 'treated badly' – one presumes that it must have been very badly – as an Army cadet which resulted in him having a breakdown and then in 1963 he was involved in a boating accident in which two of his friends died. In 1982 Patrick and his father set up the Help Charitable Trust and Patrick began visiting mentally ill prisoners. So like his dad, Patrick knew just how grim the prevailing situation was/is. I presume that Patrick was admitted to 'nursing homes' during his periods of illness because no-one was going to risk his neck in NHS long term psychiatric care. Dafydd is of course for other people…
Patrick's sister Judith is a poet. She formerly worked for Chelsea Labour Party but left the Party in 1999. Since 2001, Judith has helped campaign for Occupied Palestine. In 1963 she married Alexander John Kazantis; then in 1998 Judith married lawyer and writer Irving Weinman, who was active in Jews4Justice4Palestines. Judith and Irving lived in the Brighton area, but then Longford's children – or at least some of them – were brought up in East Sussex.
John Allen owned brothels in Brighton and London to which he trafficked kids in care from north Wales. The firebomb which killed five witnesses to the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal in April 1992 was thrown into a building in Brighton (see post 'The Silence Of The Welsh Lambs').
Another of Frank Longford's daughters is Rachel Billington. She has written plays for BBC Television's 'Play for Today' series and several radio plays and has contributed to film scripts. Rachel Billington also works as a journo for newspapers in both the UK and the US and worked for three years as a columnist for 'The Sunday Telegraph'. Rachel Billington was President of English PEN, 1998-2001 and is now Honorary Vice-President. During her time as President Billington initiated PEN's Readers & Writers programme which sends books and writers to meet readers in schools, prisons and other institutions which lack resources. Rachel is a Trustee of the Longford Trust which was set up in memory of her father. As well as being involved with the prisoners newspaper 'Inside Time', she is a Trustee of 'The Tablet' and of the Siobhan Dowd Trust, set up to encourage reading among disadvantaged children.
Rachel is married to the film, theatre and television director Kevin Billington. Kevin was educated at Bryanston School and Queen's College, Cambridge. He worked for the BBC as a radio producer in Leeds, 1959–60 and then for television in Manchester, 1960–61, before working on the early evening 'Tonight' programme and on documentaries for the BBC and ATV until 1967. Billington's theatre work includes several productions of plays by his brother-in-law Harold Pinter. His TV work includes 'A Time to Dance' (BBC 1992), adapted by Melvyn Bragg from his own work of fiction.
Another of Longford's sons, Michael Aidan Pakenham, was educated at Ampleforth and Trinity College, Cambridge. Michael was briefly a reporter for the Washington Post before joining the Foreign Office to pursue a career as a diplomat in 1965. He served in Nairobi and Warsaw before being seconded to the Cabinet Office, 1971–74 as Assistant Private Secretary and then Private Secretary, to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancashire, Geoffrey Rippon, then John Davies, who at that time had special responsibilities for the co-ordination of British policy towards the EC. Geoffrey Rippon was one of those who played a role in the unlawful arrest and imprisonment of Mary Wynch (see post 'A Few Of The Relevant Politicians Re Mary Wynch's Case').
In 1974 Michael Pakenham was at the CSCE in Geneva, then was posted to New Delhi, 1974–78 and Washington DC, 1978–1983. He was Head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Department at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1983–87; Counsellor (External Relations) to the UK Permanent Representative to the EC, Brussels, 1987–91; Ambassador and Counsel-General to Luxembourg, 1991–94; and Minister in Paris, 1994–97.
Pakenham was then seconded to the Cabinet Office again as Deputy Secretary for Defence and Overseas Affairs 1997–99, then Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, 1997–2000 (also Intelligence Co-ordinator 1999–2000). Finally he was posted to Warsaw as Ambassador to Poland, 2001–03.
Since retiring from the Diplomatic Service, Pakenham has been Chairman of Pakenvest International; senior adviser to Access Industries; non-executive Director of the Westminster Group; a Trustee of Chevening House; and a lay member of the governing Council of King's College, London and its Vice-Chairman since 2009.
Pakenham married Mimi Lavine (born Meta Doak) in 1980; they have two daughters. They also have two step daughters, Dr Lisa Nagy of Martha's Vineyard and Lindsay Lavine Webster of Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Longford's daughter Catherine Pakenham was a journo who died in car crash in 1969.
There is another son, Kevin Pakenham, who is a banker.
Now for a brief news round-up:
On Saturday morning on Radio 4 an Angel from north Wales rang a phone-in programme to tell Radio 4 about her hard life as an advanced practitioner in north Wales, how the patients don't appreciate her and how she is doing the job of a GP because of 'the crisis'. This Angel mentioned that among her many patients, there are people with mental health problems. The Angel failed to mention that she works for a Health Board that is in special measures as a result of staff being filmed undercover seriously abusing elderly mentally ill patients and that the regional NHS has such an atrocious reputation that no GPs will relocate there, which is why the Angel has been given the responsibilities of a GP. From what the Angel said on the radio, it sounded as if she works near Wrexham. She forgot to tell Radio 4 that many of her colleagues facilitated one of the biggest paedophile rings in the UK. The journo asked the Angel what her salary was and commiserated with her being 'low paid'. The Angel giggled and said that she didn't want to reveal her salary on air. That will be because as an advanced practitioner the Angel be on at least £40k which is rather more than most people in Wrexham – which has one of the biggest homelessness problems in Wales – will be earning, even if they're commuting to Chester every day in pursuit of a higher salary.
BBC News Wales Online reported that the Welsh Ambulance Service are having yet another trauma, this time regarding the number of their staff who are so stressed out that they are all off sick. I was interested to note that the rep who was angrily spinning the latest sob story demanding that the Welsh Gov't Act Now was exactly the same man who in 2017 was brimming over with praise for the Welsh Gov't after they had awarded the staff of the Welsh Ambulance Service a generous pay increase.
There was a very much more interesting interview on Dominic Lawson's Sunday morning Radio 4 programme 'Why I Changed My Mind'. Lawson interviewed the paediatrician Dr Waney Squire. Dr Squire has suffered very badly at the hands of the medical establishment because she dared to challenge the notion of 'shaken baby syndrome'. Waney Squire's work was thorough and based on very sound science but because she challenged her colleagues and defended parents who stood accused of murdering their children, she was investigated by the GMC and struck off. Lawson concentrated on Squire moving from a position of accepting the notion of shaken baby syndrome to believing that it did not exist. It was an interesting interview, but Lawson missed the worst aspect of Dr Squire being struck off, which was that once she was put out of action, there was not one Top Doc in the UK who dared question shaken baby syndrome and give evidence in defence of accused people protesting their innocence. So if Dafydd accuses any readers of this blog of shaking a baby and killing him/her and they are had up for murder, they will find that there is not one Top Doc in the UK who will dare speak in their defence, because if they do, that Top Doc will probably be struck off.
Dafydd is still practising.
It was reported that a 'doctors union', the HCSA, is demanding the resignation of Charlie Massey, the Chief Exec of the GMC, in the wake of the saga involving Dr Bawa-Garba, the junior doctor who won her appeal against being struck off after a little boy died in her care following a string of errors (see post 'We've Been Expecting You…'). The HCSA is the Hospitals Consultants and Specialists Association, which represents senior doctors. It was made very clear that in the case of Dr Bawa-Garba, her patient died because there was no consultant for her to seek advice from, the consultant on call 'not realising' that he was on call and was therefore moonlighting at another hospital elsewhere. Dr Bawa-Garba's nursing colleagues told the media that the hospital involved, the Leicester Royal Infirmary, had been dangerous for years because there were never consultants available from whom junior staff could seek advice.
No wonder the HCSA is after Charlie Massey's blood – the blame for the sacrificing of Dr Bawa-Garba has been placed very firmly on them. Are any of them now going to fulfil their legal obligations and ensure that they are available for their junior staff when they are on-call?
Charlie Massey should of course resign, but not because of Dr Bawa-Garba. Charlie Massey should go because Dafydd is STILL on the medical register.
Perhaps the HCSA would like to consider the following scene from An Everyday Story Of North Wales Folk. Some years ago two people known to me set up a community charity and one of the other people involved in the charity was a Top Doctor, a paediatrician from Ysbyty Gwynedd. The two people whom I knew became increasingly worried about this paediatrician as it became clear that he was a serial liar and seemed very exploitative towards vulnerable people. One evening he was at a meeting with others from the charity to discuss matters relating to the charity and his bleeper went off. The others at the meeting said 'ooh do you need to go?' The paediatrician said 'no its OK, I'm on call but I'll just switch this off and ignore it or I'll be disturbed all evening'. He was as good as his word. He switched his bleeper off and did not bother to even find out who was trying to get hold of him or why. He was the consultant on call that night.
The paediatrics dept at Ysbyty Gwynedd was known to be so unsafe that local Top Doctors had an agreement that if their own children were taken ill, they would not be admitted to Ysbyty Gwynedd.
Would the HCSA like to let us know whether they would be happy for their kids to be treated by Dr Ali Bates of Tregarth, who could not be arsed to answer his bleep when he was on call? Ali Bates switched that bleep off because he had better things to do back in about 2003. If anyone was harmed or died as a result, Ysbyty Gwynedd will have lied, in the way that they lied after all the other patients had suffered at the hands of their dangerous, negligent staff and the Welsh Gov't will have backed them up all the way.
Keep screaming and stamping your feet Top Docs, just keep it up. I worked at Hammersmith and St George's and lived in north Wales for decades. I have many more anecdotes that I have not yet blogged about and I've only touched the surface of my 10,000 documents so far on this blog…
The other news item that caused a stir recently was the report that Vince Cable was going to put the Lib Dems on a firm footing and would then resign as Leader. Only the next day Vince stated that he would not be resigning after all.


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Bluestone National Park Resort's very own Danielle Greep will be representing the county with the hope of winning the title and going forward to the Miss World finals in Bali later this year.
But Danielle, from Narberth, needs the support of the people of Pembrokeshire who can vote by text and help her represent the area globally.
"I'm thrilled to have been selected at Miss Pembrokeshire and even more excited at the prospect of becoming Miss Wales and being able to represent West Wales and Wales as a whole at the Miss World finals," said Danielle.
"The competition has moved into the 21st century and is much more about the work and aspirations of the entrants and not just judged on the catwalk as many might think."
Danielle, who works as a Personal Assistant to Bluestone's Commercial Director, Pamela Joseph, has been with Bluestone since 2009, she's also spent time in Australia working and is trained in beauty and complimentary therapies, having studied at Pembrokeshire College.
Danielle worked at The Well Spa at Bluestone before moving into administration. A volunteer with the Samaritans and named the UK World Skills Aromatherapy Champion, Danielle likes to keep busy while helping others.
Danielle is currently raising money for the Bobath Children's Therapy Centre for Children with Cerebal Palsy. She has already had a charity cake stall at Carmarthen Showground and took part in a skydive for charity at Swansea Airfield on 30th March.
Help support Danielle's bid to represent Pembrokeshire and Wales by texting Welsh 14 Danielle G to 64343.
Texts cost £1 plus standard network charge. Votes can be made until noon on Friday, 12th April. You can find all terms and conditions of the voting on her Miss Wales Facebook page, Danielle Greep – Miss Wales Finalist 2013, or follow her on twitter @DMGreep.
Categories:Events and Whats On, Staff

subset: commoncrawl


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West Bloomfield School on Newtown shooting
Dear Parents,
As you may have already heard, there has been a horrific shooting at a school in Connecticut earlier today, Friday, December 14. While we know that this is far away from West Bloomfield Schools, we understand the emotions that everyone goes through when they hear such horrible news.
I am certain that your children will hear about this tragedy through the local news and other sources. Your child may have questions and concerns. I have attached a handout from the International Center to Heal Our Children (ICHOC) to help you discuss this tragedy should your child have any questions. Because this type of situation is hard for adults to comprehend, it is even harder for children to understand. It is suggested that you limit your child's access to media coverage of this event.
Be assured that the District has numerous protocols in place to keep our schools safe. The District has a comprehensive safety plan that includes an active Crisis Team comprised of social workers and psychologists who are trained to handle the aftermath of emotions in response to crisis situations. In addition, our schools practice multiple safety drills throughout the school year. Safety and security of your children and our staff continue to remain the top priority for all of us in the West Bloomfield School District.
We understand that your children are your most precious treasure. We promise to do everything possible to keep them safe.
Thank you.
Gerald D. Hill, Ph.D.


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I've been seeing dipped furniture everywhere -- furniture that's been partly "dipped" in brightly colored paints. While I think it's a pretty cool way to perk up a piece, I'm wondering if this trend is here to stay or just a passing phase.
Either way, it's a lot of fun to look at. Click through to see 5 more dipped furniture ideas below!
Hmmm ... hot pink was a pretty bold choice for these table legs, but I love how it livens up the space.
If painting good wood makes you nervous, why not just do it halfway?
I've spotted this side table several times in my browsings, and I have to say, I think it looks awesome!
These colorblock dipped chairs are so cool!
Still not sure how you feel about this trend? Keep it simple by doing a small stool for starters.
So tell me what you think, are you on board with dipped furniture or is this look a little too weird for you?
Images via Gloss White, Apartment Therapy, SF Girl By Bay, Apartment Therapy, Digital Sherpa, Little Green Notebook


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Pelosi Statement Celebrating Earth Day
Washington, D.C.--Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today in observance of the 37th annual Earth Day, which will be celebrated on Sunday, April 22:
'As we celebrate Earth Day, we must rededicate ourselves to address a challenge as local as our neighborhoods and as global as our planet - global warming. The science is clear; we can no longer wait to take action to solve this crucial issue that not only threatens our environment, but our economy and our national security as well.
'Global warming is already underway, but it is not too late to slow it down and reduce its harmful effects. Democrats in the House are taking bold action to combat global warming and achieve energy independence, beginning right here in the Capitol. Through our 'green the Capitol' initiative we will lead by example, operating the House in a carbon neutral manner.
'With bipartisan support, during the first 100 days of the 110th Congress the House rolled back tax cuts and subsidies for Big Oil and invested in clean, alternative fuels, renewable energy, and energy efficiency. We established a Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to raise the visibility of this crucial issue and gather critical information to solve this challenge.
'The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.' On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children's children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature.'