Saturday, 18 June 2011

SUPERINJUNCTIONS COVER UP THE STEALING AND SELLING OF UK CHILDREN




The Star
Council ‘tried to have horse trainer jailed’

Published on Thursday 28 April 2011 08:35

DONCASTER Council has been accused of trying to ‘imprison’ a woman for speaking in Westminster - as the row over the use of injunctions intensfied.


Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming used Parliamentary privilege to name the woman at the centre of the case as Vicky Haigh, aged 40, from Doncaster.

Mr Hemming told MPs: “Vicky Haigh, who is a horse trainer and previously a jockey, was the subject of an attempt by Doncaster Council to imprison her for speaking at a meeting in Parliament.

Mr Hemming said the court ordered she should not be jailed, but the terms of an injunction ‘gagging’ Ms Haigh prevent any further details being disclosed about why Doncaster Council took the unusual steps or the subject of her controversial Parliamentary speech.

Ms Haigh, who is due to give birth to her second child in three weeks, said she had spent more than £20,000 she had saved for her wedding this summer on defending herself in the High Court in London.

She added: “It has been so stressful.”

Mr Hemming, who previously used privilege to name former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Sir Fred Goodwin as the subject of a High Court super-injunction, revealed the case of Ms Haigh in Parliament as he spoke out about the use of injunctions, censorship and creeping privacy laws.

A council spokesman said: “This is a matter which is before the court and the council must keep this matter as confidential as it can to protect the individuals involved in the case.

“For that reason the council cannot comment further.”

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

A SUMMER DRESS TO MAKE


See Sheet Dress and 1000's of others - or share your own on Cut Out + Keep

Very easy project. Thanks to the Cut Out And Keep website for this.

THE FINAL SHOWDOWN

Saturday, June 11, 2011We'll be back!
As we are being missed so much by other bloggers like the chuckle brothers that call themselves 'Team Voice' and some States of Jersey Deputies we will be back in plenty of time for the October elections!

Amongst our future agenda items will be:

A look back at the time wasted and recorded stupid comments by some Deputies on subjects like the Napier Terms of Reference amongst other things;

A look back at the lack of work carried out by these same individuals during their term of office and why people shouldn't vote for them ever again;

A look back as to why none of these people will risk themselves on an Island Wide Vote;

We will be looking at the serial standers putting themselves forward 'again'.... Is it because some are unemployable elsewhere maybe?...

The 'new people' standing and their Manifestos and what they can deliver in real terms and what they cannot;

We will be having a really good chuckle at what the other blogs have been ranting about to date and the extremes they have even gone as reported back to us to get this Blog shut down during 2010....Including un-provable claims that so many people are involved in the cover up of child abuse though never actually taking any of this evidence to a proper Authority to take action because they make it all up.

But finally we will be updating our World Wide readers on our most avid reader whose side show has become one of the biggest clown acts Jersey has seen in the Courts/Politics ever!





So watch this space as we'll be back delivering the truth again very soon with some new writers and people in the 'know'!

Posted by Andy at 11:59 AM 4 comments:
Anonymous said...
Welcome back guys you've been missed!

June 15, 2011
Anonymous said...
Bring it on!

Trevor Pitman has been slanging off this Blog. Rico still talks about it and Ian has even built a parody of it.

You should do more posts like the one on Southern.

June 15, 2011
Andy said...
Thanks

Gazza is no longer involved and we have two new Administrators joining us this week.

Before you ask retro comments have been removed as they are old news and we want to start from scratch as it’s a fresh blog but do not worry the theme which was a hit will continue.

First analysis of changes since we went offline on the Haut de la Garenne Murder Farce is not very much and the mainstream media no longer report on the story.

The cover-up rumour mongering has become so incessant with a couple of blogs it has become a farce on its own and you can see that the interest in the story has dwindled to only a few people regularly partaking in this fantasy.

Therefore we will mainly be concentrating on the next elections and we will not be pulling any punches.

June 15, 2011
Anonymous said...
These links to the other Blogs are about right.

The Bald Truth, is he really real?

June 15, 2011

Monday, 13 June 2011

UK SECRET FAMILY COURTS STEALING CHILDREN TO MAKE MONEY



THIS HAS GOT TO STOP, EH LORD FALCONER?

THE LORD IS ANGRY ABOUT THIS.

INSTITUTIONAL CHILD ABUSE IS TABOO SUBJECT FOR QUESTION TIME

Fri, April 30, 2010 at 1:35 am | Permalink | Reply
Award winning documentary filmmaker Bill Maloney’s account and explanation for his ejection from BBC Question Time by David Dimbleby following the first ‘Leaders Debate’ 15 April 2010

By Bill Maloney



I applied to attend the audience for Question Time as a documentary filmmaker who has been investigating institutional child abuse for the last ten years. i.e. children in care, young offenders institutions, secret family courts etc. I wanted to exercise my right to speak as a British citizen and as a victim of institutional child abuse and believe it is my democratic right to freedom of speech.

There is currently a grave mistrust of our politicians. During this election campaign I have not witnessed any lower class citizens whom I represent have their right to speak up about their social concerns. This election is not just about economics, which our politicians are willing to talk about in intricate detail whilst skipping over questions on the lower class’s social dilemmas and the prejudice that is coming from the government and many middle-class voters against the lower classes.

Dimbleby Rocked By Questions Of Paedophilia And Murder
Just moments before Question Time went live David Dimbleby introduced the panel asking each of them what they would be doing the next day. Michael Gove (Shadow Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families) said it was his wife’s birthday and Dimbleby asked if he had bought her a present to which he replied, “I actually bought her four presents”. Asked what the presents were Gove replied “A linen suit, a designer hand bag and two other presents that I’m not prepared to divulge”. I shouted “Did we pay for them Mr Gove?” which raised a laugh from the panel and audience. Dimbleby concluded with Nigel Farage MEP of UKIP who made a sanctimonious remark to which I shouted, “I don’t know why you’re so flippant, you’re guilty of stealing expenses the same as all the rest”. Dimbleby shook his finger and shouted directly at me: “If you are going to behave like this when we go on air I will have to tell you to leave.”

I responded by shouting: “If you want me to leave David tell me to leave. Don’t talk to me like I’m a piece of shit! You’ve got an angry electorate here and you select only five questions from 150? This is a biased audience which does not represent the lower classes.

“I’m a documentary filmmaker and I investigate Institutional child abuse; the restraining techniques that are killing lower working class kids in Young Offenders Institutions; and paedophile rings in government that are fucking our kids! You don’t like talking about the children do you David?”

Security was then called. As I was led out I turned to the panel shouting, “I’m here about the children, not about the economy. I’ve got more bollocks than all of you! Shame on you!” My producer and wife, who accompanied me continued by shouting: “Everyone in this audience should google Hollie Greig G.R.E.I.G and realise that the government does nothing!”

The security guards didn’t touch me; in fact they looked quite shocked by the questions I had asked. We were then led out by the Producer

We submitted two questions to the show which were not selected:
1. Considering the government has given £840 billion to bail out the banks, how much have they spent on getting 3.5 million children out of poverty? Give the £3.4 billion promised to get children out of poverty which ‘breeds’ crime.
2. Considering it cost Australian taxpayers 200 million Australian dollars for the Popes visit there in 2008, how much is the government spending on the Pope’s visit to the UK? And should we allow the Pope, whose Vatican City has the lowest age of sexual consent in Europe of only 12 into the country at all?

I was hoping to hear from the political representatives on the panel of their disgust at having three children a week dying in our care institutions. I wanted to debate the brutal restraining techniques that guards and carers are using against children as young as eight. i.e. nose distraction, wrist restraints, double-seated embrace etc. There are serious injuries i.e. broken bones, suffocation etc every day. I also wanted to talk to them about institutional paedophile rings that have been and are still operating in this country. For example: google ‘Hollie Greig’.

Child prisons for profit
I would have been interested in the panel’s opinions on child poverty in this country along with the privatisation of our childcare homes and institutions, baring in mind 99% of children in care come from the lower classes. In my latest documentary Adam Rickwood & The Medomsley Heroes, I highlight the case of young Adam Rickwood who five years ago at the age of 14 was found hanging in his cell after being restrained by four guards at the young offenders institution now known as Hassockfield (formerly Medomsley) – google ‘Neville Husband’. Hassockfield is run by private company Serco, who receive £178,000 per year for each child. There are 57 places for children at Hassockfield, there are other institutions that hold up to 800 offenders. The lower class children have become very profitable to companies such as Serco. Many of the child prison guards and carers come from the military, police force etc. Many of these have severe psychological drug and alcohol problems and some of the highest divorce rates. Our childcare system has become more brutal than our adult prisons.

Vulnerable children used to pay mortages
Children from babies are being taken from poverty stricken families at birth and given to middle-class couples that receive a minimum of £380 per week per child and much more if the child is an infant or has special needs. Many foster parents foster more than one child – it appears that vulnerable parents are having their children stolen by the social services and being used to pay mortgages. The private companies who foster out our children do not have to inform their local council where the children have gone if they run away or leave care. Then we could go into institutional fostering – this is a broad intricate subject, which is never allowed to be debated passionately and openly with the involvement of past victims, their families and perpetrators by the national broadcasting companies. There is a massive movement building around the globe via the Internet on these subjects. Many former victims have now become professionals, i.e. documentary filmmakers, so the children have now become strong men and women motivated by their empathy for the unfortunate that are living it now. The victims are producing their own heroes – I use the term ‘Government Funded Child Abuse’.

As far as being removed from the Question Time audience my feelings are this:
The Questions and the debate that I managed to get from David Dimbleby in the Green Room before the show and during rehearsals would not have been allowed on air. I believe if I had attempted to debate the above issue on air the BBCs security response would have shut me down. I didn’t want to be buried under a mountain of guards while trying to get my point across. So I took the decision to challenge Dimbleby and the panel during the rehearsal. There were approx 150 people in the audience.

During the rehearsal my producer and myself submitted our questions, which we were told to write down on cards. These cards were then collected from the audience. Ultimately, our questions were not selected, bearing in mind, in the green room before rehearsals David Dimbleby said the question I had asked him was a good question. That question which I had to shout from the back of the green room went as follows:

MALONEY: David! Are you telling us that out of all these people here you are only going to allow five questions to be asked in one hour – all of which are being handpicked by the BBC?
DIMBLEBY: Have you seen Question Time before?
MALONEY: Oh yes! I’ve seen Question Time before David, but as you just said in your introduction, this is an historic moment. Question Time is going out after the first ever live debate of the three main candidates who want to run our democracy. Why can’t we have an open debate? For example I would like to know when Gordon Brown is going to give the £3.4 billion that they promised to the children to get 3 million children above the poverty line, as we all know that poverty breeds crime, dysfunctional families etc bearing in mind Gordon Brown has just given £840 billion to the greedy bankers.
DIMBLEBY: Well that’s a very good question so write it down and we’ll see what we can do.

When Dimbleby left the green room I stepped forward and shook his hand I said to him “Thank you David, I’m not hear to sit and watch, I can do that at home – I just want to ask a question and open a debate.”
Dimbleby said “Good!” and walked out.

By the time we had gone through rehearsals I realised that my question had not been selected, nor that of my producer as referred to above: “Considering it cost Australian taxpayers 200 million dollars for the Popes visit there in 2008, how much is the government spending on the Pope’s visit to the UK? And should we allow the Pope, whose Vatican City has the lowest age of sexual consent in Europe of only 12 into the country at all?”

I therefore took the decision to question the panel before the show went on air. It was a very difficult decision to make on the spot and I understood the likelihood of missing out putting myself across live on air. This way I had clear straight dialogue with the panel and audience.

Being asked to leave for asking these questions did not surprise me as I had previously been asked to leave BBC Asian Network Radio a year ago for asking similar questions about child trafficking and child prostitution.

I would just like to emphasise it was David Dimbleby who gave the order for me to be ejected.

I knew I would be ejected but at least we have evidence of the lack of any intervention by any of the panel during the programme about the plight of our abused and lost children.

The case of Hollie Greig is a strong example of the cover-ups that are going on within government. The MPs expenses scandal is just the tip of the iceburg. On behalf of all abuse victims, all I wanted were our questions raised and debated as no politicians are willing to discuss these issues.

I am absolutely disgusted with the BBC, David Dimbleby and the rest of the panel. The children deserve a voice. God bless all victims.

For further information or to arrange an interview with Bill Maloney Please contact Maria Maloney Tel: 07710 416470 or email:maria@pienmashfilms.com



(THE "IMPARTIALITY" OF QUESTION TIME)

Sunday, 12 June 2011

LETTER EXCHANGE BETWEEN LORD FALCONER AND FRANK WALKER

AGREEMENT
IN THE FORM OF AN EXCHANGE OF LETTERS
ON THE TAXATION OF SAVINGS INCOME
f
Senator Frank Walker
Cyril Le Marquand House
The Parade
St Helier
JERSEY
JE4 8YA
The Rt Hon Lord Falconer
of Thoroton
Secretary of State and Lord
Chancellor
Selborne House
54 Victoria Street
London SW1E 6QW
18 May 2004
Dear Senator Walker,
I have the honour to refer to the texts of respectively the "Proposed Model Agreement between each of Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Jersey and each individual EU Member State that is to apply automatic exchange of information" and the "Proposed Model Agreement between each of Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Jersey and each individual EU Member State that is to apply the withholding tax in the transitional period", that resulted from the negotiations with the Island Authorities on a Savings Tax Agreement, and that were annexed, respectively as Annex I and
Annex II, to the Outcome of Proceedings of the High Level Working Party of the Council of Ministers of the European Union of 12 March (Doc. 7408/04 FISC 58).
In view of the above mentioned agreed texts, and respecting the constitutional relationship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Jersey, I have the honour to propose to you the agreements as contained in the "Agreement on the taxation of savings income" at Appendix 1 to this letter;
_ to propose that the said agreements may come into effect on 1st January 2005, or the date of application of Council Directive 2003/48/EC of 3 June 2003 on taxation of savings income in the form of interest payments, whichever is later subject to the notification to each other that internal constitutional formalities for the coming into effect of these agreements are completed;to propose our mutual commitment to comply at the earliest date with our said internal C onstitutional formalities and to notify each other without delay through the formal channels when such formalities are completed.
I have the honour to propose that, if the above is acceptable to the Government of Jersey, this letter together with its Appendix 1 and your confirmation shall together constitute our mutual acceptanceand making of the agreements between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Irelandand Jersey. Please accept, Sir, the assurance of our highest consideration,
[signed]
LORD FALCONER OF THOROTON
States of Jersey
Policy and Resources
Cyril Le Marquand House
PO Box 140,
The Parade, St. Helier,
Jersey JE4 8QT
The Rt Hon Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor
Selbourne House
54 Victoria Street
London
SW1E 6QW
Sir, I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your letter of 18th May 2004, which reads as follows:
.Sir, I have the honour to refer to the texts of respectively the "Proposed Model Agreement between each of Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Jersey and each individual EU Member State that is to apply automatic exchange of information" and the "Proposed Model Agreement between each of Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Jersey and each individual EU Member State that is to apply the withholding tax in the transitional period", that resulted from the negotiations with the Island Authorities on a Savings Tax Agreement, and that were annexed, respectively as Annex I and
Annex II, to the Outcome of Proceedings of the High Level Working Party of the Council of Ministers of the European Union of 12 March (Doc. 7408/04 FISC 58).
In view of the above mentioned agreed texts, and respecting the constitutional relationship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Jersey, I have the honour to propose to you the agreements as contained in the "Agreement on the taxation of savings income" at Appendix 1 to this letter;
_ to propose that the said agreements may come into effect on 1st January 2005, or the date of application of Council Directive 2003/48/EC of 3 June 2003 on taxation of savings income in the form of interest payments, whichever is later subject to the notification to each other that internal constitutional formalities for the coming into effect of these agreements are completed;
_ to propose our mutual commitment to comply at the earliest date with our said internal constitutional formalities and to notify each other without delay through the formal channels when such formalities are completed.
Please accept, Sir, the assurance of our highest consideration..
I am able to confirm that Jersey has agreed to make Bilateral Agreements with each EU Member State and that this letter constitutes our mutual acceptance and making of the .Agreement on the Taxation of Savings Income between Jersey and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. as set out in Appendix 1 of your letter dated 18th May 2004 and appended to this letter. Please accept, Sir, the assurance of my highest consideration,
For Jersey
[signed]
Frank Walker
President, Policy and Resources Committee
Done at St Helier on 19 November 2004
Appendix 1
AGREEMENT ON THE TAXATION OF SAVINGS INCOME BETWEEN JERSEY
AND THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND
WHEREAS:
1. Article 17 of Directive 2003/48/EEC (.the Directive.) of the Council of the European Union (.the Council.) on taxation of savings income provides that before 1 January 2004 Member States shall adopt and publish the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive which provisions shall be applied from 1 January 2005 provided
that ..(i) the Swiss Confederation, the Principality of Liechtenstein, the Republic of San Marino, the Principality of Monaco and the Principality of Andorra apply from that same date measures equivalent to those contained in this Directive, in accordance with agreements entered into by them with the European Community, following unanimous decisions of the Council;
(ii) all agreements or other arrangements are in place, which provide that all the relevant dependent or associated territories apply from that same date automatic exchange of information in the same manner as is provided for in Chapter II of this Directive, (or, during the transitional period defined in Article 10, apply a withholding tax on the same terms as are contained in Articles 11 and 12)..
2. The relationship of Jersey with the EU is determined by Protocol 3 of the Treaty of Accession of the United Kingdom to the European Community. Under the terms of the Protocol Jersey is not within the EU fiscal territory.
3. Jersey notes that, while it is the ultimate aim of the EU Member States to bring about effective taxation of interest payments in the beneficial owner.s Member State of residence for tax purposes through the exchange of information concerning interest payments between themselves, three Member States, namely Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg, during a transitional period, shall not be required to exchange information but shall apply a withholding tax to the savings income covered by the Directive.
4. The .withholding tax. referred to in the Directive will be referred to as the .retention tax. In Jersey.s domestic legislation. For the purposes of this Agreement the two terms therefore are to be read coterminously as .withholding/retention tax. and shall have the same meaning.
5. Jersey has agreed to apply a retention tax with effect from 1 January 2005 provided the Member States have adopted the laws, regulations, and administrative provisions necessary to
comply with the Directive, and the requirements of Article 17 of the Directive and Article 17(2) of this Agreement have generally been met.
6. Jersey has agreed to apply automatic exchange of information in the same manner as is provided for in Chapter II of the Directive from the end of the transitional period as defined in Article 10(2) of the Directive.
7. Jersey has legislation relating to undertakings for collective investment that is deemed to be equivalent in its effect to the EC legislation referred to in Articles 2 and 6 of the Directive. Jersey and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland hereinafter referred to as a .contracting party. or the .contracting parties. unless the context otherwise requires,
Have agreed to conclude the following agreement which contains obligations on the part of the contracting parties only and provides for:
(a) the automatic exchange of information by the competent authority of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the competent authority of Jersey in the same manner as to the competent authority of a Member State;
(b) the application by Jersey, during the transitional period defined in Article 10 of the
Directive, of a retention tax from the same date and on the same terms as are contained in Articles 11 and 12 of that Directive;
(c) the automatic exchange of information by the competent authority of Jersey to the
competent authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in
accordance with Article 13 of the Directive;
(d) the transfer by the competent authority of Jersey to the competent authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of 75% of the revenue of the retention tax. in respect of interest payments made by a paying agent established in a contracting party to an individual resident in the other contracting party.
For the purposes of this Agreement the term .competent authority. when applied to the contracting parties means .The Commissioners of Inland Revenue or an authorised representative. in respect of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and .the Comptroller of Income Tax. In respect of Jersey.
Article 1 Retention of Tax by Paying Agents
Interest payments as defined in Article 8 of this Agreement which are made by a paying agent established in Jersey to beneficial owners within the meaning of Article 5 of this Agreement who are residents of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland shall, subject to Article 3 of this Agreement, be subject to a retention from the amount of interest payment
during the transitional period referred to in Article 14 of this Agreement starting at the date referred to in Article 15 of this Agreement. The rate of retention tax shall be 15% during the first three years of the transitional period, 20% for the subsequent three years and 35% thereafter.
Article 2 Reporting of Information by Paying Agents
(1) Where interest payments, as defined in Article 8 of this Agreement, are made by a paying agent established in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to beneficial owners, as defined in Article 5 of this Agreement, who are residents of Jersey, or where the provisions of Article 3(1)(a) of this Agreement apply, the paying agent shall report to its
competent authority;
(a) the identity and residence of the beneficial owner established in accordance with Article 6 of this Agreement;
(b) the name and address of the paying agent;
(c) the account number of the beneficial owner or, where there is none, identification of the debt claim giving rise to the interests;
(d) information concerning the interest payment specified in Article 4(1) of this Agreement.
However, each contracting party may restrict the minimum amount of information
concerning interest payment to be reported by the paying agent to the total amount of interest or income and to the total amount of the proceeds from sale, redemption or refund. and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will comply with paragraph 2 of this Article.
(2) Within six months following the end of their tax year, the competent authority the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland shall communicate to the competent authority of Jersey, automatically, the information referred to in paragraph (1) (a) . (d) of this Article, for all interest payments made during that year.
Article 3 Exceptions to the Retention Tax Procedure
(1) Jersey when levying a retention tax in accordance with Article 1 of this Agreement shall provide for one or both of the following procedures in order to ensure that the beneficial owners may request that no tax be retained:
(a) a procedure which allows the beneficial owner as defined in Article 5 of this Agreement to avoid the retention tax specified in Article 1 of this Agreement by expressly authorising his paying agent to report the interest payments to the competent authority of the contracting party in which the paying agent is established. Such authorisation shall cover all interest payments made to the beneficial owner by that paying agent;
(b) a procedure which ensures that retention tax shall not be levied where the beneficial owner presents to his paying agent a certificate drawn up in his name by the competent authority of the contracting party of residence for tax purposes in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Article.
(2) At the request of the beneficial owner, the competent authority of the contracting party of the country of residence for tax purposes shall issue a certificate indicating:
(i) the name, address and tax or other identification number or, failing such, the date and place of birth of the beneficial owner;
(ii) the name and address of the paying agent;
(iii) the account number of the beneficial owner or, where there is none, the identification of the security.
Such certificate shall be valid for a period not exceeding three years. It shall be issued to any beneficial owner who requests it, within two months following such request.
(3) Where paragraph (1)(a) of this Article applies, the competent authority of Jersey in which the paying agent is established shall communicate the information referred to in Article 2(1) of this Agreement to the competent authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as the country of residence of the beneficial owner. Such communications shall be automatic and shall take place at least once a year, within six months following the end of the tax year established by the laws of a contracting party, for all interest payments made during that year.
Article 4 Basis of assessment for retention tax
(1) A paying agent established in Jersey shall levy retention tax in accordance with Article 1 of this Agreement as follows:-
(a) in the case of an interest payment within the meaning of Article 8(1)(a) of this
Agreement: on the gross amount of interest paid or credited;
(b) in the case of an interest payment within the meaning of Article 8(1)(b) or (d) of this Agreement: on the amount of interest or income referred to in (b) or (d) of that subparagraph or by a levy of equivalent effect to be borne by the recipient on the full
amount of the proceeds of the sale, redemption or refund;
(c) in the case of an interest payment within the meaning of Article 8(1)(c) of this
Agreement: on the amount of interest referred to in that sub-paragraph;
(d) in the case of an interest payment within the meaning of Article 8(4) of this Agreement: on the amount of interest attributable to each of the members of the entity referred to in Article 7(2) of this Agreement who meet the conditions of Article 5(1) of this Agreement;
(e) where Jersey exercises the option under Article 8(5) of this Agreement: on the amount of annualised interest.
(2) For the purposes of sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of paragraph (1) of this Article, the retention tax shall be deducted on a pro rata basis to the period during which the beneficial owner held the debt-claim. If the paying agent is unable to determine the period of holding on the basis of the information made available to him, the paying agent shall treat the beneficial owner as having been in possession of the debt-claim for the entire period of its existence, unless the latter provides evidence of the date of the acquisition.
(3) The imposition of retention tax by Jersey shall not preclude the other contracting party of residence for tax purposes of the beneficial owner from taxing income in accordance with its national law.
(4) During the transitional period, Jersey may provide that an economic operator paying interest to, or securing interest for, an entity referred to in Article 7(2) of this Agreement in the other contracting party shall be considered the paying agent in place of the entity and shall levy the retention tax on that interest, unless the entity has formally agreed to its name, address and the total amount of the interest paid to it or secured for it being communicated in accordance with the last paragraph of Article 7(2) of this Agreement.
Article 5 Definition of beneficial owner
(1) For the purposes of this Agreement, .beneficial owner. shall mean any individual who receives an interest payment or any individual for whom an interest payment is secured, unless such individual can provide evidence that the interest payment was not received or secured for his own benefit. An individual is not deemed to be the beneficial owner when he:
(a) acts as a paying agent within the meaning of Article 7(1) of this Agreement;
(b) acts on behalf of a legal person, an entity which is taxed on its profits under the general arrangements for business taxation, an UCITS authorised in accordance with Directive 85/611/EEC or an equivalent undertaking for collective investment established in Jersey, or an entity referred to in Article 7(2) of this Agreement and, in the last mentioned case, discloses the name and address of that entity to the economic operator making the interest payment and the latter communicates such information to the competent authority of its contracting party of establishment;
(c) acts on behalf of another individual who is the beneficial owner and discloses to the paying agent the identity of that beneficial owner.
(2) Where a paying agent has information suggesting that the individual who receives an interest payment or for whom an interest payment is secured may not be the beneficial owner, and where neither paragraph (1)(a) nor (1)(b) of this Article applies, it shall take reasonable steps to establish the identity of the beneficial owner. If the paying agent is unable to identify the beneficial owner, it shall treat the individual in question as the beneficial owner.
Article 6 Identity and residence of beneficial owners
(1) Each Party shall, within its territory, adopt and ensure the application of the procedures necessary to allow the paying agent to identify the beneficial owners and their residence for the purposes of this Agreement. Such procedures shall comply with the minimum standards established in paragraphs (2) and (3).
(2) The paying agent shall establish the identity of the beneficial owner on the basis of minimum standards which vary according to when relations between the paying agent and the recipient of the interest are entered into, as follows:
(a) for contractual relations entered into before the 1st January 2004, the paying agent shall establish the identity of the beneficial owner, consisting of his name and address, by using the information at its disposal, in particular pursuant to the regulations in force in its country of establishment and to Council Directive 91/308/EEC of the 10th June, 1991 in the case of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or equivalent legislation in the case of Jersey on prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering;
(b) for contractual relations entered into, or transactions carried out in the absence of
contractual relations, on or after the 1st January, 2004 the paying agent shall establish the identity of the beneficial owner, consisting of the name, address and, if there is one, the tax identification number allocated by the Member State of residence for tax purposes. These details should be established on the basis of the passport or of the official identity card presented by the beneficial owner. If it does not appear on that passport or official identity card, the address shall be established on the basis of any other documentary proof of identity presented by the beneficial owner. If the tax identification number is not mentioned on the passport, on the official identity card or any other documentary proof of identity, including, possibly the certificate of residence for tax purposes, presented by the beneficial owner, the identity shall be supplemented by a reference to the latter.s date and place of birth established on the basis of his passport or official identification card.
(3) The paying agent shall establish the residence of the beneficial owner on the basis of minimum standards which vary according to when relations between the paying agent and the recipient of the interest are entered into. Subject to the conditions set out below, residence shall be considered to be situated in the country where the beneficial owner has his permanent address:
(a) for contractual relations entered into before 1st January, 2004 the paying agent shall establish the residence of the beneficial owner by using the information at its disposal, in particular pursuant to the regulations in force in its country of establishment and to Directive 91/308/EEC in the case of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or equivalent legislation in the case of Jersey;
(b) for contractual relations entered into, or transactions carried out in the absence of
contractual relations, on or after the 1st January, 2004, the paying agents shall
establish the residence of the beneficial owner on the basis of the address mentioned on the passport, on the official identity card or, if necessary, on the basis of any documentary proof of identity presented by the beneficial owner and according to the following procedure: for individuals presenting a passport or official identity card issued by a Member State who declare themselves to be resident in a third country, residence shall be established by means of a tax residence certificate issued by the competent authority of the third country in which the individual claims to be resident. Failing the presentation of such a certificate, the Member State which issued the passport or other official identity document shall be considered to be the country of residence..
Article 7 Definition of paying agent
(1) For the purposes of this Agreement, .paying agent. means any economic operator who pays interest to or secures the payment of interest for the immediate benefit of the beneficial owner, whether the operator is the debtor of the debt claim which produces the interest or the operator charged by the debtor or the beneficial owner with paying interest or securing the payment of interest.
(2) Any entity established in a contracting party to which interest is paid or for which interest is secured for the benefit of the beneficial owner shall also be considered a paying agent upon such payment or securing of such payment. This provision shall not apply if the economic operator has reason to believe, on the basis of official evidence produced by that entity that:
(a) it is a legal person with the exception of those legal persons referred to in paragraph 5 of this Article; or
(b) its profits are taxed under the general arrangements for business taxation; or
(c) it is an UCITS recognised in accordance with Directive 85/611/EEC of the Council or an equivalent undertaking for collective investment established in Jersey.
An economic operator paying interest to, or securing interest for, such an entity established in the other contracting party which is considered a paying agent under this paragraph shall communicate the name and address of the entity and the total amount of interest paid to, or secured for, the entity to the competent authority of its contracting party of establishment, which shall pass this information on to the competent authority of the contracting party where the entity is established.
(3) The entity referred to in paragraph (2) of this Article shall, however, have the option of being treated for the purposes of this Agreement as an UCITS or equivalent undertaking as referred to in sub-paragraph (c) of paragraph (2) of this article. The exercise of this option shall require a certificate to be issued by the contracting party in which the entity is established and presented to the economic operator by that entity. A contracting party shall lay down the detailed rules for this option for entities established in its territory.
(4) Where the economic operator and the entity referred to in paragraph (2) of this Article are established in the same contracting party, that contracting party shall take the necessary measures to ensure that the entity complies with the provisions of this Agreement when it acts as a paying agent.
(5) The legal persons exempted from sub- paragraph (a) of paragraph (2) of this Article are
(a) in Finland: avoin yhtio (Ay) and kommandiittiyhtio (Ky)/oppet bolag and
kommanditbolag;
(b) in Sweden: handelsbolag (HB) and kommanditbolag (KB).
Article 8 Definition of interest payment
(1) For the purposes of this Agreement .interest payment. shall mean:
(a) interest paid, or credited to an account, relating to debt claims of every kind, whether or not secured by mortgage and whether or not carrying a right to participate in the debtor.s profits, and, in particular, income from government securities and income from bonds or debentures, including premiums and prizes attaching to such securities, bonds or debentures; penalty charges for late payment shall not be regarded as interest payment;
(b) interest accrued or capitalised at the sale, refund or redemption of the debt claims
referred to in (a);
(c) income deriving from interest payments either directly or through an entity referred to in Article 7(2) of this Agreement, distributed by .
(i) an UCITS authorised in accordance with EC Directive 85/611/EEC of the Council;
or
(ii) an equivalent undertaking for collective investment established in Jersey;
(iii) entities which qualify for the option under Article 7(3) of this Agreement;
(iv) undertakings for collective investment established outside the territory to which the Treaty establishing the European Community applies by virtue of Article 299
thereof and outside Jersey.
(d) income realised upon the sale, refund or redemption of shares or units in the following
undertakings and entities, if they invest directly or indirectly, via other undertakings for collective investment or entities referred to below, more than 40% of their assets in debt claims as referred to in (a):
(i) an UCITS authorised in accordance with Directive 85/611/EEC; or
(ii) an equivalent undertaking for collective investment established in Jersey.
(iii) entities which qualify for the option under Article 7(3) of this Agreement;
(iv) undertakings for collective investment established outside the territory to which the Treaty establishing the European Community applies by virtue of Article 299
thereof and outside Jersey.
However, the contracting parties shall have the option of including income mentioned
under paragraph (1)(d) of this Article in the definition of interest only to the extent that such income corresponds to gains directly or indirectly deriving from interest payments within the meaning of paragraphs (1)(a) and (b) of this Article.
(2) As regards paragraphs (1)(c) and (d) of this Article, when a paying agent has no information concerning the proportion of the income which derives from interest payments, the total amount of the income shall be considered an interest payment.
(3) As regards paragraph (1)(d) of this Article, when a paying agent has no information concerning the percentage of the assets invested in debt claims or in shares or units as defined in that paragraph, that percentage shall be considered to be above 40%. Where he cannot determine the amount of income realised by the beneficial owner, the income shall be deemed to correspond to the proceeds of the sale, refund or redemption of the shares or units.
(4) When interest, as defined in paragraph (1) of this Article, is paid to or credited to an account held by an entity referred to in Article 7(2) of this Agreement, such entity not having qualified for the option under Article 7(3) of this Agreement, such interest shall be considered an interest payment by such entity.
(5) As regards paragraphs (1)(b) and (d) of this Article, a contracting party shall have the option of requiring paying agents in its territory to annualise the interest over a period of time which may not exceed one year, and treating such annualised interest as an interest payment even if no sale, redemption or refund occurs during that period.
(6) By way of derogation from paragraphs (1)(c) and (d) of this Article, a contracting party shall have the option of excluding from the definition of interest payment any income referred to in those provisions from undertakings or entities established within its territory where the investment in debt claims referred to in paragraph (1)(a) of this Article of such entities has not
exceeded 15% of their assets. Likewise, by way of derogation from paragraph (4) of this Article, a contracting party shall have the option of excluding from the definition of interest payment in paragraph (1) of this Article interest paid or credited to an account of an entity referred to in Article 7(2) of this Agreement which has not qualified for the option under Article 7(3) of this Agreement and is established within its territory, where the investment of such an entity in debt claims referred to in paragraph (1)(a) of this Article has not exceeded
15% of its assets. The exercise of such option by one contracting party shall be binding on the other contracting party.
(7) The percentage referred to in paragraph (1)(d) of this Article and paragraph (3) of this Article shall from 1 January, 2011 be 25%.
(8) The percentages referred to in paragraph (1)(d) of this Article and in paragraph (6) of this Article shall be determined by reference to the investment policy as laid down in the fund rules or instruments of incorporation of the undertakings or entities concerned or, failing which, by reference to the actual composition of the assets of the undertakings or entities concerned.
Article 9 Retention Tax Revenue sharing
(1) Jersey shall retain 25% of the retention tax deducted under this Agreement and transfer the remaining 75% of the revenue to the other contracting party.
(2) Jersey levying retention tax in accordance with Article 4(4) of this Agreement shall retain 25% of the revenue and transfer 75% to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland proportionate to the transfers carried out pursuant to paragraph (1) of this Article.
(3) Such transfers shall take place for each year in one instalment at the latest within a period of six months following the end of the tax year established by the laws of Jersey.
(4) Jersey levying retention tax shall take the necessary measures to ensure the proper functioning of the revenue sharing system.
Article 10 Elimination of double taxation
(1) A contracting party in which the beneficial owner is resident for tax purposes shall ensure the elimination of any double taxation which might result from the imposition by Jersey of the retention tax to which this Agreement refers in accordance with the following provisions .
(i) if interest received by a beneficial owner has been subject to retention tax in Jersey, the other contracting party shall grant a tax credit equal to the amount of the tax retained in accordance with its national law. Where this amount exceeds the amount of tax due in accordance with its national law, the other contracting party shall repay the excess amount of tax retained to the beneficial owner;
(ii) if, in addition to the retention tax referred to in Article 4 of this Agreement, interest
received by a beneficial owner has been subject to any other type of
withholding/retention tax and the contracting party of residence for tax purposes grants a tax credit for such withholding/retention tax in accordance with its national law or double taxation conventions, such other withholding/retention tax shall be credited before the procedure in sub-paragraph (i) of this Article is applied.
(2) The contracting party which is the country of residence for tax purposes of the beneficial owner may replace the tax credit mechanism referred to in paragraph (1) of this Article by a refund of the retention tax referred to in Article 1 of this Agreement.
Article 11 Transitional provisions for negotiable debt securities
(1) During the transitional period referred to in Article 14 of this Agreement, but until 31 December 2010 at the latest, domestic and international bonds and other negotiable debt securities which have been first issued before 1 March 2001 or for which the original issuing prospectuses have been approved before that date by the competent authorities within the meaning of Council Directive 80/390/EEC or by the responsible authorities in third countries shall not be considered as debt claims within the meaning of Article 8(1)(a) of this Agreement, provided that no further issues of such negotiable debt securities are made on or after 1 March 2002. However, should the transitional period continue beyond 31 December
2010, the provisions of this Article shall only continue to apply in respect of such negotiable debt securities:
- which contain gross up and early redemption clauses and;
- where the paying agent is established in a contracting party applying retention tax and that paying agent pays interest to, or secures the payment of interest for the immediate benefit of a beneficial owner resident in the other contracting party.
If a further issue is made on or after 1 March 2002 of an aforementioned negotiable debt security issued by a Government or a related entity acting as a public authority or whose role is recognised by an international treaty, as defined in the Annex to this Agreement, the entire issue of such security, consisting of the original issue and any further issue, shall be considered a debt claim within the meaning of Article 8(1)(a) of this Agreement.
If a further issue is made on or after 1 March 2002 of an aforementioned negotiable debt security issued by any other issuer not covered by the second sub-paragraph, such further issue shall be considered a debt claim within the meaning of Article 8(1)(a) of this Agreement.
(2) Nothing in this Article shall prevent the contracting parties from taxing the income from the negotiable debt securities referred to in paragraph (1) in accordance with their national laws.
Article 12 Mutual agreement procedure
Where difficulties or doubts arise between the parties regarding the implementation or interpretation of this Agreement, the contracting parties shall use their best endeavours to resolve the matter by mutual agreement.
Article 13 Confidentiality
(1) All information provided and received by the competent authority of a contracting party shall be kept confidential.
(2) Information provided to the competent authority of a contracting party may not be used for any purpose other than for the purposes of direct taxation without the prior written consent of the other contracting party.
(3) Information provided shall be disclosed only to persons or authorities concerned with the purposes of direct taxation, and used by such persons or authorities only for such purposes or for oversight purposes, including the determination of any appeal. For these purposes, information may be disclosed in public court proceedings or in judicial proceedings.
(4) Where a competent authority of a contracting party considers that information which it has received from the competent authority of the other contracting party is likely to be useful to the competent authority of another Member State, it may transmit it to the latter competent authority with the agreement of the competent authority which supplied the information.
Article 14 Transitional Period
At the end of the transitional period as defined in Article 10(2) of the Directive, Jersey shall cease to apply the retention tax and revenue sharing provided for in this Agreement and shall apply in respect of the other contracting party the automatic exchange of information provisions in the same manner as is provided for in Chapter II of the Directive. If during the transitional period Jersey elects to apply the automatic exchange of information provisions in the same manner as is provided
for in Chapter II of the Directive, it shall no longer apply the withholding/retention tax and the revenue sharing provided for in Article 9 of this Agreement.
Article 15 Entry into force
Subject to the provisions of Article 17 of this Agreement, this Agreement shall come into force on 1 January 2005.
Article 16 Termination
(1) This Agreement shall remain in force until terminated by either contracting party.
(2) Either contracting party may terminate this Agreement by giving notice of termination in writing to the other contracting party, such notice to specify the circumstances leading to the
giving of such notice. In such a case, this Agreement shall cease to have effect 12 months after the serving of notice.
Article 17 Application and suspension of application
(1) The application of this Agreement shall be conditional on the adoption and implementation by all the Member States of the European Union, by the United States of America, Switzerland, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco and San Marino, and by all the relevant dependent and associated territories of the Member States of the European Community, respectively, of measures which conform with or are equivalent to those contained in the Directive or in this Agreement, and providing for the same dates of implementation.
(2) The contracting parties shall decide, by common accord, at least six months before the date referred to in Article 15 of this Agreement, whether the condition set out in paragraph (1) will be met having regard to the dates of entry into force of the relevant measures in the Member States, the named third countries and the dependent or associated territories concerned.
(3) Subject to the mutual agreement procedure provided for in Article 12 of this Agreement, the application of this Agreement or parts thereof may be suspended by either contracting party with immediate effect through notification to the other specifying the circumstances leading to such notification should the Directive cease to be applicable either temporarily or permanently in accordance with European Community law or in the event that a Member State should suspend the application of its implementing legislation. Application of the Agreement shall resume as soon as the circumstances leading to the suspension no longer apply.
(4) Subject to the mutual agreement procedure provided for in Article 12 of this Agreement, either contracting party may suspend the application of this Agreement through notification to
the other specifying the circumstances leading to such notification in the event that one of the third countries or territories referred to in paragraph (1) should subsequently cease to apply the measures referred to in that paragraph. Suspension of application shall take place no earlier than two months after notification. Application of the Agreement shall resume as soon as the measures are reinstated by the third country or territory in question.
Done in the English language
ANNEX
List of related entities referred to in Article 11
For the purposes of Article 11 of this Agreement, the following entities will be considered to be a
"related entity acting as a public authority or whose role is recognised by an international treaty":
ENTITIES WITHIN THE EUROPEAN UNION:
Belgium
. Vlaams Gewest (Flemish Region)
. Région wallonne (Walloon Region)
. Région bruxelloise/Brussels Gewest (Brussels Region)
. Communauté française (French Community)
. Vlaamse Gemeenschap (Flemish Community)
. Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft (German-speaking Community)
Spain
. Xunta de Galicia (Regional Executive of Galicia)
. Junta de Andalucía (Regional Executive of Andalusia)
. Junta de Extremadura (Regional Executive of Extremadura)
. Junta de Castilla- La Mancha (Regional Executive of Castilla- La Mancha)
. Junta de Castilla- León (Regional Executive of Castilla- León)
. Gobierno Foral de Navarra (Regional Government of Navarre)
. Govern de les Illes Balears (Government of the Balearic Islands)
. Generalitat de Catalunya (Autonomous Government of Catalonia)
. Generalitat de Valencia (Autonomous Government of Valencia)
. Diputación General de Aragón (Regional Council of Aragon)
. Gobierno de las Islas Canarias (Government of the Canary Islands)
. Gobierno de Murcia (Government of Murcia)
. Gobierno de Madrid (Government of Madrid)
. Gobierno de la Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco/Euzkadi (Government of the
Autonomous Community of the Basque Country)
. Diputación Foral de Guipúzcoa (Regional Council of Guipúzcoa)
. Diputación Foral de Vizcaya/Bizkaia (Regional Council of Vizcaya)
. Diputación Foral de Alava (Regional Council of Alava)
. Ayuntamiento de Madrid (City Council of Madrid)
. Ayuntamiento de Barcelona (City Council of Barcelona)
. Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria (Island Council of Gran Canaria)
. Cabildo Insular de Tenerife (Island Council of Tenerife)
. Instituto de Crédito Oficial (Public Credit Institution)
. Instituto Catalán de Finanzas (Finance Institution of Catalonia)
. Instituto Valenciano de Finanzas (Finance Institution of Valencia)
Greece
. Оργανισµός Тηλεπικοινωνιών Ελλάδος (National Telecommunications Organisation)
. Оργανισµός Σιδηροδρόµων Ελλάδος (National Railways Organisation)
. Δηµόσια Επιχείρηση Ηλεκτρισµού (Public Electricity Company)
France
. La Caisse d’amortissement de la dette sociale (CADES) (Social Debt Redemption Fund)
. L’Agence française de développement (AFD) (French Development Agency)
. Réseau Ferré de France (RFF)(French Rail Network)
. Caisse Nationale des Autoroutes (CNA) (National Motorways Fund)
. Assistance publique Hôpitaux de Paris (APHP) (Paris Hospitals Public Assistance)
. Charbonnages de France (CDF) (French Coal Board)
. Entreprise minière et chimique (EMC)(Mining and Chemicals Company)
Italy
. Regions
. Provinces
. Municipalities
. Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (Deposits and Loans Fund)
Latvia
. Pa.valdības (Local governments)
Poland
. gminy (communes)
. powiaty (districts)
. województwa (provinces)
. związki gmin (associations of communes)
. powiatów (association of districts)
. województw (association of provinces)
. miasto stołeczne Warszawa (capital city of Warsaw)
. Agencja Restrukturyzacji i Modernizacji Rolnictwa (Agency for Restructuring and
Modernisation of Agriculture)
. Agencja Nieruchomości Rolnych (Agricultural Property Agency)
Portugal
. Região Autónoma da Madeira (Autonomous Region of Madeira)
. Região Autónoma dos Açores (Autonomous Region of Azores)
. Municipalities
Slovakia
. mestá a obce (municipalities)
. .eleznice Slovenskej republiky (Slovak Railway Company)
. .tátny fond cestného hospodárstva (State Road Management Fund)
. Slovenské elektrárne (Slovak Power Plants)
. Vodohospodárska výstavba (Water Economy Building Company)
INTERNATIONAL ENTITIES:
. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
. European Investment Bank
. Asian Development Bank
. African Development Bank
. World Bank / IBRD / IMF
. International Finance Corporation
. Inter-American Development Bank
. Council of Europe Social Development Fund
. EURATOM
. European Community
. Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF) (Andean Development Corporation)
. Eurofima
. European Coal & Steel Community
. Nordic Investment Bank
. Caribbean Development Bank
The provisions of Article 11 are without prejudice to any international obligations that the
Contracting Parties may have entered into with respect to the above mentioned international
entities.
ENTITIES IN THIRD COUNTRIES :
The entities that meet the following criteria :
1) The entity is clearly considered to be a public entity according to the national criteria.
2) Such public entity is a non-market producer which administers and finances a group of activities, principally providing non-market goods and services, intended for the benefit of the community and which are effectively controlled by general government.
3) Such public entity is a large and regular issuer of debt.
4) The State concerned is able to guarantee that such public entity will not exercise early redemption in the event of gross-up clauses.
CONDITIONS FOR AMENDING THE PRESENT ANNEX :
The list of related entities in this Annex may be amended by mutual agreement.

LORD FALCONER'S OBSESSION WITH SUICIDE

Lords Hansard text for 7 Jul 2009 ... Lord Falconer of Thoroton: It is not a crime to travel abroad to be assisted in dying in a country where assisted dying is lawful

The Times July 8, 2009 Amendment to relax law on assisted dying is thrown out by peers ...The amendment was sponsored by the Labour peers Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Baroness Jay of Paddington, the former Leader of the Lords, and had been criticised by Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and other church leaders. Debating the issue, Lord Falconer told peers that 115 people had travelled from Britain to Switzerland for help to commit suicide and, although there had been investigations, no one had been prosecuted. “It is absolutely plain that the law is being marginalised,” he said. “The law is not being applied by the Director of Public Prosecutions because it plainly no longer fits the current situation.

“The result of the law not being applied is we have horror of people going early to commit suicide abroad without their loved ones there.”

The Bishop of Exeter, the Rt Rev Michael Langrish, who has a 30-year-old daughter with Down’s syndrome, said that the amendment would be “a legislative milestone on that slippery slope to introducing assisted suicide here in the UK by incremental degrees”.

Strongly opposing the amendment, Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, a crossbencher, who herself is severely disabled, said she “ticked every box” which would enable her to ask someone to travel abroad with her under the terms of Lord Falconer’s amendment.

She said: “By going with this amendment we turn the traffic lights from red to green on state-sanctioned assisted dying, albeit in another country.”

She added: “If this amendment were to succeed, I believe it would place a new and invidious pressure on disabled and terminally ill people, who think that they are close to the end of their lives.

“Some will consider death is preferable to fighting, with support, to live with dignity.”

The Labour QC Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws gave warning that “legal changes made for benign reasons have had unforeseen and negative consequences.

“And the consequence that concerns me is that with this legal amendment we create a climate in which the terminally ill and disabled and the elderly and the sick feel even more profoundly vulnerable or feel there is an expectation that they should take steps to end their life,” she said.

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, who was Health Secretary in the last Conservative Government, warned that agreeing the amendment could “open the way to a shift in perception across the board”, including on the allocation of resources. The health service bureaucracy has to be able to rule that kind of resource allocation out by saying that is not something we will consider.”

He added: “Bureaucracies themselves do not have souls. Bureaucracies given broad signals can move quite quickly in ways that individual people looking at hard cases had not envisaged.”

But the Labour peer Lord Warner, a former Health Minister, supporting Lord Falconer, argued that his suggestion was a “narrow and focused amendment”.

He told peers: “It would be much more in line with the 21st-century reality of a number of Britons who are going abroad to end their lives, whether we like it or not.”



Telegraph - 30 Nov 2010 ... An inquiry into the issues and laws around assisted dying led by the former justice secretary Lord Falconer will be launched today

********************************************
Mystery helicopter fuels Dr Kelly conspiracy theories by Eliot Seftom Daily Mail May 15th 2011

The revelation that a mystery helicopter landed at the site where the body of Dr David Kelly was found has breathed new life into conspiracy theories surrounding the apparent suicide of the UN weapons inspector who apparently committed suicide in 2003 after being unmasked as the whistleblower behind claims that the Tony Blair government lied in order to make the case for war in Iraq.

The Daily Mail reports that flight logs for the helicopter, obtained under a Freedom of Information request, are heavily redacted - to the extent that the purpose of the flight and who was aboard has been totally obscured.

What is clear is that the helicopter was hired by Thames Valley police and landed 90 minutes after Dr Kelly’s body was found on Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire on the morning of July 18, 2003.

The existence of the helicopter was not mentioned in the Hutton Inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, which concluded in 2004 that the government was not guilty of any wrongdoing. The report was widely criticised at the time as a "whitewash".

Dr Andrew Watt, a clinical pharmacologist who has previously raised doubts over the official version of events, said: "If the purpose of the helicopter flight was innocent, one has to ask why it was kept secret." He has written to the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, who is currently considering whether an inquest should be held into Dr Kelly's death.

The release of the Dr Kelly's post-mortem files last year - which confirm that his wounds were self-inflicted - was supposed to have put to bed conspiracy theories surrounding the whistleblower’s death.

However, a group of doctors was not satisfied with the conclusions and they are currently pursuing a court action to force a judicial review in the event that Grieve decides not to open a coroner’s inquest.


Comments
Hide comments

Thames valley Police should be able to account for their action. I have always though that Dr. Kelly, at a crucial moment when Blair wanted to get into the war, was a lone authorative critical voice speaking out. Who had the motivation and the means to to "take him out" and mobilze a Thames Valley Police helicopter?

Posted by Peter Gardiner at 3:14pm on May 15, 2011

Robin Cook who resigned his cabinet post over the Iraq war was also a critical and much more important voice. His death was in sudden and lonely circumstances. Let`s look into the circumstances of his death at the same time.

Posted by argonaut at 4:42am on May 17, 2011







Saturday, 11 June 2011

THE PAEDOPHILES AND CRIMINALS HATE THIS MAN



The removal of part D of the Napier report, they tried to cover up the illegal suspension of Graham Power. please listen very carefully to what Deputy Hill is saying in this video.




The criminal prosecution against me - initiated by William Bailhache - has plainly collapsed.

It was unlawful - a malicious prosecution.

Worse - so direct and immediate were his improper motives - the policing action he initiated - the raid, arrest, charging etc - was quite obviously - a criminal enterprise.

That is not some empty assessment of mine.

We now have affidavits from witnesses of no-less calibre and stature - than the former Chief Officer of the police - and the former Deputy Chief Officer of the police - both of which - in sworn testimony - powerfully indicate that William Bailhache is a criminal.

But - even without such direct and powerful evidence - the law says that public authorities - when making decisions - such as the decision to prosecute someone - MUST be objective, and fair, and not conflicted.

Therefore - the decisions of the Office Jersey Attorney General - and specifically, the decisions of William Bailhache - in respect of charging and prosecution against me - were - unlawful.

End of.

So - given Graham Power's affidavit - I, in order to - quite reasonably, and in accordance with my human rights - have this absurd, corrupt, malicious prosecution and oppression against me ended immediately - went to court to have the decisions of William Bailhache quashed.

I notified the court secretariat of this in proper time - sent them the relevant statement - and sent them copies of the affidavits of Mr Power and Mr. Harper - and said to them - quite specifically - that they would have to provide me with an objective and impartial judge - one who was not corrupt nor conflicted.

And that is not some unreasonable demand of mine - all people are entitled to a non-conflicted judge.

But they tried to tell me that I would have to wait until next Friday to make this urgent quashing application - because that was the earliest occasion upon which William and Philip Bailhache's and Michale Birt's friend - Christopher Pitchers - could get to Jersey.

Not good enough, I said - I want to have my quashing application rejected today - not next Friday.

So I went to court today - hoping that their hubris would win-out - as usual - and, sure enough - even though they knew I was coming to court to argue that the unlawful decisions of William Bailhache be quashed - they ensured that William Bailhache would be the judge.

Isn't that great?

I mean - really - you know?

How much would you have to pay to make that kind of thing happen in a law-abiding jurisdiction?

Perhaps they imagined his presence would - in some way - intimidate me - and deter me from pointing out that he is a criminal?

Hell - I long ago ceased to be surprised at the stupidity of these people.

Anyway - he argued that I would have to wait until his fiend could hear the application next Friday - and I argued - correctly - that if the Jersey judicial system could not provide me with a non-conflicted judge today - in accordance with Article 6 of the ECHR - then the Jersey judicial system was broken.

I'm right - he's wrong.

Now - I know - and they know - and they know that I know - and I know that they know that I know - that their criminal enterprise against me has collapsed.

And the spectacular self-immolation of the Jersey judicial system today just adds to that stark conclusion.

Samuel Beckett could have written the script.

Stuart.

Friday, 10 June 2011 23:20:00 GMT+01:00

Thursday, 9 June 2011

I MISSED THIS ONE - LORD FALCONER IN JERSEY DEBATE

Channel Islands future to be examined at Jersey conference
July 28, 2010
A group of leading constitutional thinkers will be travelling to Jersey in September to examine the question of the Channel Islands' future independence at a conference organised by the Jersey and Guernsey Law Review.

This is a unique opportunity to hear from an exceptional group of participants who are prepared to share their expertise and experience, and to debate the future with an audience of interested Channel Islanders.

The Rt. Hon Lord Falconer, PC QC, The Rt Hon Lord Hoffmann, PC, HSH Prince Nikolaus of Lichtenstein and Sir David Simmons, former Chief Justice of Barbados, are among the group of 16 experts assessing the island's constitutional position and examining future options at the conference entitled 'Dependency or Sovereignty? Time to take stock'.

Charlie Falconer was the Justice minister I repeatedly wrote to, when I was going through being tortured (and I do not use that word lightly) in the secret family courts of Stafford and Wolverhampton. I begged him to do something about the use of a syndrome that was being used against me called Parental Alienation Syndrome, which had been invented by an American paedophile psychologist called Richard Gardner, and I asked him to make the family courts not secret any more as the secrecy was hiding corruption.

I noticed afterwards that every time I appealed to Falconer and Straw things got even tougher for me. Falconer also got together a select committee to question wether it was in the best interests of children to keep the family court secret, and they came to the conclusion that it was. This did not surprise me, as they had some very dodgy characters on that select committee, one of the men was in charge of a children's home, and he had KNOWINGLY employed a convicted paedophile and allowed him to molest a little girl at his home. There were other people who were involved in discrediting Operation Ore on that committee. To ask me to believe that Falconer did not deliberatly choose those bad characters is like asking me to believe that the moon is made of Stilton.

There is also the little matter of the murder of Dr David Kelly and the dodgy dossier.

All in all, it looks like Jersey has got the right man for this little task though. Falconer and the Bailhache brothers probably get on like peas in a pod.

THE BRITISH BRAINWASHING CLUB IS DOING MY HEAD IN!



Accusation that anyone not taken in by their propaganda is mentally ill. Charming!

And talking of conspiracy theories ...



One minuit Gadaffi is the darling of the Western world, with all the leaders wanting to practice their best funny handshake on him, the next he is being called a terrorist and accused of ordering women to be raped.

We will get the truth one day, but probably not from the BBC.

Tuesday, 7 June 2011

WHO IS CHRIS WITTWERS LEGAL TEAM?


I have had a row on Facebook this morning, because I am so concerned about the safety of Chris Wittwer, who is in jail - I understand he is in Exeter jail, shortly to be moved to an open prison.

The whole thing is very curious, because we have not only been told that the reason the jail location wher Chris has got to be kept secret "for Chris's own safety" but that we can not be told the identity of Chris's legal team either!

Think about it. The only people who would want to harm Chris Wittwer are paedophiles! Chris Wittwer is naming and shaming paedophiles, so that anyone who has children can check to see if there is one living near them, and keep their children safe. All the people Chris names and shames have already been placed on the child abuse register, so the police know where all these people live.

I have been thrown me off one of the Chris Wittwer support groups, for being too insistant on the need for more transparency. The person who threw me off is well aware that I am a survivor of the Staffordshire Pindown child abuse and also the secret family court abuse. I have repeatedly tried to warn Chris about some very bad people who mucked up the Mothers For Justice and other grass roots websites, and I greatly fear that they are involved in the stitch up of Chris Wittwer, who should not be in jail, if he had had proper legal advice and representation.

THE GAGGING OF COLIN SMART


This is a story we are not supposed to tell. It is about a man named Colin Smart, a mild-mannered, rather bookish character who spent his working life in local government looking after children, and who rose in the early 1990s to become the Director of Social Services for the city of Sunderland.

One of the few things which has always been certain about this story is that while Colin Smart was doing that job, he came across something that worried him a great deal. We know, too, that this was something to do with the abuse of children, that he made a fuss about it and that somehow, in the midst of that fuss, he ended up taking early retirement. For the most part, the rest has never been revealed.

Colin Smart, of course, knows the whole story. However, he is not allowed to tell it, because shortly after he retired, his former employers at Sunderland City Council took him to the High Court where, under threat of losing his pension and paying out a fortune in damages, he signed an undertaking never to speak publicly about what he knew. Being an honourable man – and also a frightened one – he has kept to that undertaking.

Nevertheless, with the help of others who have been involved, we have been able to piece together most of what happened. It is an alarming tale, about a man who thought he saw signs of a scandal, who was moved to expose it and to rescue its child victims and who was then frustrated and obstructed at every turn until finally he was stripped of his power and silenced. It is, in other words, the anatomy of a cover-up. And that is the first clue.

Cover-up has become part of the story of child abuse, particularly in the children’s homes which were swept by a wave of rape and assault during the last three decades. Over and over again, somewhere in the midst of this wave, a lonely figure would appear, yelling for help, only to be ignored or submerged by the powers that should have reached out a hand.

In North Wales, it was Alison Taylor, the manager of a children’s home, who spent five years banging on the door of her employers at Gwynedd Council, the police, the Welsh Office, the Department of Health, and the Social Services Inspectorate. All turned her away. Undaunted, she compiled a dossier of 75 separate allegations, won the backing of two local councillors and finally secured the conviction of four men for an orgy of abuse. As a result, the Government finally ordered the vast public inquiry which has now heard nearly 300 former residents of homes make detailed complaints of physical and sexual assault against148 adults. By that time, however, Alison Taylor had been suspended and sacked.

In South Wales, several years later, it was Karen McKaye who was thrown out of her job after demanding that children’s complaints be investigated. Her refusal to be silenced finally provoked a major police inquiry into events at the Taff Vale children’s home in Cardiff. Now, 32 other homes in the area are also being investigated. Three men are awaiting trial over alleged incidents at Taff Vale. In relation to the other homes, in April, Robert Starr was jailed for 15 years for indecent assaults, and three others have been arrested.

In Warrington, Elaine Bowerman spent a decade trying to persuade her union, Nalgo; her employers, Lancashire County Council; and the police to do something about the indecent assaults and violence which she said were being inflicted on children with learning difficulties at Massey Hall School where she worked. She complained, for example, of the occasion when she had seen brown fluff blowing across the lawn and discovered that it was a boy’s hair which had just been pulled from his head by a senior member of staff. Eventually, she went to the parents of some of the children to warn them – and was sacked for gross misconduct.

By March 1996, Elaine Bowerman had apparently lost everything – the struggle to expose the truth as well as her job. Then two boys from the school approached her at home. She put them in touch with police who re-opened their inquiry. In June 1997, they charged Robert Boyle, aged 50, with indecent assault on pupils at the school between 1982 and 1995. He was said to have handled boys’ genitals in the showers, although he claimed he was simply examining them for medical reasons. In April, he was acquitted by a jury at Warrington Crown Court.

However, the jury convicted him of lying about his past in order to get his job. When the judge sentenced him for this offence, the Crown disclosed for the first time that in 1977, Boyle had been convicted of six assaults on young boys. He had caught them stealing, the court was told, and given them a choice of being punished by the police or by himself. He had then beaten their bare backsides with a gym shoe or a baton. He had also fondled their genitals, claiming that this was for medical reasons. He had concealed this throughout his time at Massey Hall. Elaine Bowerman, who had consistently claimed to have seen Boyle indecently assaulting boys in the showers at the school, was not called as a witness. Other staff against whom she has made allegations have not been charged. She remains unemployed.

In Colin Smart’s secret history, the most significant hard facts are the ones that have emerged most recently. Last August, the NSPCC completed an inquiry into the care of children at a council home in Sunderland called Witherwack House. They produced a detailed report, which was confidential, but the Guardian has obtained a copy.

The NSPCC team bluntly named 23 men and women who had been identified to them as abusers who had physically and sexually assaulted children at Witherwack during the 1970s and 80s. Their report noted the frequency with which particular names recurred and the way in which different witnesses, including a former member of staff, independently described some of the same incidents. “These allegations are consistent in nature,” they commented.

They described, for example, the care worker who had had sex regularly with a 14-year-old girl with the eventual result that she had had to have an abortion; the boy who had been burned across the back with a heated metal tray; the string of boys who had been used for sex by a woman worker; the boy who had been beaten with a snooker cue; the boy who had been kicked by a man wearing heavy boots; the apparently endless beatings and punchings; the numerous times that children had been pinned to the floor with their arms stretched high above their backs; the two different boys who complained that staff had incited an older boy called Darren Rowe to rape them; the supervising officer who had failed over and over again to heed the complaints of the children in his care.

They described, too, two girls who, from the ages of eight and seven, had become sex objects for one particular care worker who used to bend them over a bed and rape them every week or so. Both of those two girls, now young women in their 20s, have been haunted by the experience. One has lost the ability to cry. The other obsessively cuts the flesh on her arms and occasionally tries to kill herself. In an account of her abuse, she wrote: “I felt I was just put on this earth to suffer.”

The NSPCC team made it clear not only that they found these allegations credible but also that the responsibility for this went beyond the abusers themselves: “It seems regrettably impossible to avoid the conclusion that, during at least some of the time that Witherwack was open, Sunderland City Council did not meet its legal duty to promote and safeguard the welfare of at least some, and possibly many of the children and young people who lived there.”

Now, go back in search of the first hard fact in this hidden story, back more than six years before the NSPCC published that report, to April 1991, when an astute local reporter, Nigel Green, heard about a woman care worker who had been sacked by Sunderland City Council for some kind of sexual assault on a boy who was in her care in a council home called Witherwack. In search of confirmation, he sent a fax to Sunderland City Council, whose press officer took it to the man who had recently taken over the city’s social services department – Colin Smart.

Smart was clearly an outsider in the city. He had been in the job for only two months, and he belonged to none of the tribes that run politics in the north east – the Catholics in Jarrow who settle politics in the social club after Sunday mass, the masons who recruit councillors and officers from every local authority in the region, the Labour party who are so strong that they can run a city like Sunderland as a one-party state.

Nevertheless, his position was reasonably secure. He was deeply experienced in his work. Unlike most directors of social services, who tend to be professional civil servants, Smart was a career social worker who had specialised in child care. He had also spent the last 17 years running the much smaller social services department in neighbouring South Tyneside, so he knew a little bit about how the tribes worked – enough to know that this reporter’s fax could cause trouble.

A senior official who worked in the council says that Smart reacted swiftly to the fax. He called a meeting of officials and, although he was not able to uncover much detail, he established very soon that this woman had indeed been sacked; furthermore that two other care workers at Witherwack, both men, had also been sacked at the same time; that this had all happened more than three years earlier in October 1987; and, most significant, that the police had never been told about any of their alleged offences against the children. Smart was obviously alarmed – the failure to tell the police was not only improper but arguably unlawful. He was also obviously frustrated, because for reasons which were not then clear, he was quite unable to find out any of the detail about what had happened.

Most of those who were at the meeting assumed Smart would now follow the well-beaten path to the door of the various councillors who controlled the city, and that they would make sure that the affair was kept within their control. However, they did not know their man. Colin Smart had a history of standing up for himself. Years earlier, he had been a member of the Committee of 100 and when magistrates had ordered him to renounce Bertrand Russell’s campaign of direct action against nuclear weapons, he had refused and been punished with six months in jail. Now, instead of going to the councillors, he went straight to the police.

It is not clear whether Smart realised at that time quite how much trouble this would cause him, specifically whether he realised that the three Witherwack workers had been sacked without a word to the police because the council had wanted it that way and had insisted that the police should never be called in without their permission. Whether he knew it or not, the fact is that Smart triggered a crisis which was to unfold with increasing force over the next ten months as Smart fought to uncover the truth, while powerful figures in the council resisted him.

Whether he was oblivious to the danger or simply courageous, Smart not only called in the police but proceeded to set up a small team of officials from his department with an instruction to find out the whole truth about the three sacked worker – and to report back directly to him.

Those around Smart feared he was politically weak. He told one of them that he had turned down an invitation to join the masons when he first became a director of social services, in South Tyneside. Now, he was working in a city with 34 lodges, including one called the Civic Lodge, which was entirely devoted to officers and councillors – Smart’s colleagues but not his tribesmen. Some of those who worked with him began to suspect that the truth about the three sacked workers was being deliberately concealed from him.

It was some months before the team came up with anything concrete and, when they did, the result was alarming. Smart had been led to believe that the problem at Witherwack was simply that three workers had been sacked for some isolated sexual incident. Now his team reported a cluster of complaints of beatings and indecent assault against various workers, not only the three who had been sacked. The workers were said to have attacked girls and boys in the home and also to have enouraged older children to batter smaller ones who caused trouble. A 14-year-old boy was said to have conducted a campaign of sexual assault on other children while social workers took no action to stop him.

More than that, the team reported, the home had adopted a regime of systematic physical abuse, whose methods were an uncomfortable echo of the “pin-down” scandal which had just erupted in Staffordshire. Difficult children were violently restrained and locked in an empty room for days at a time. One boy had been squashed on the floor with a heavily-built woman worker on his back and his hands pulled up behind him for so long that eventually he had vomitted. And the evidence suggested that this culture of violence enjoyed the approval of some councillors – which appeared to explain why Smart had found it so difficult to uncover its details.

When Smart now met with his team, the position was clear: four years earlier, the council had sacked the three staff for cruelty and sexual assaults during a summer camp, and had then not only failed to tell the police but had also failed to take any steps to discover whether these three might have been involved in other incidents or whether other care workers might also have committed offences against the children of Witherwack. And, despite the Staffordshire scandal, the council had left their “pin-down” regime intact.

Once again, Smart now acted without giving the councillors a chance to intervene. He went back to the police and told them what his team had discovered; and then he went right to the top – to the Department of Health in London to ask for the Social Services Inspectorate to mount a special and urgent inquiry into Witherwack and other children’s homes in Sunderland. To avoid any possible interference from the tribes, he asked them to use inspectors from outside the area.

These decisions, according to a senior figure, provoked an undeclared war in the city council, with some councillors and officials now colluding to find a way to remove Smart from his job. There was nothing discreet about some of the fighting. At one point, a councillor distributed around the building some beer mats which were supposed to promote a campaign against drinking and driving: the councillor had scratched out the message and left only the headline slogan – “Get Smart!”

The children at Witherwack were soon caught in the cross fire. As soon as he had found out about the regime of violence at Witherwack, Smart had ordered it to stop. He did so with all the authority of the Department of Health, who had been alarmed by the pin-down scandal in Staffordshire and had asked all local authorities to ensure that there was no such regime in their area. But as the weeks went by, Smart was informed that the violence in Witherwack had not ended. Indeed, the evidence was that it had got worse. Furthermore, he was told that after he had instructed staff to change the regime, the home had been told behind his back and without proper authority to carry on as before.

The politicking evidently served only to drive Smart deeper into opposition. He told his team to trawl back through the files of all children in their care to see whether there were any other signs of unchecked abuse – unexplained injuries, for example, or unresolved complaints or any pattern of allegation around any particular care worker.

In the meantime, he had the police – led by an outstanding detective named David Wilson – and the Social Services Inspectorate digging out the truth. Towards the end of the year, the SSI produced a first draft of their report in which they confirmed that Witherwack House had been running “a repressive regime” with “inappropriate and high levels of physical restraint and a failure to protect children from abuse”. It added: “Inspectors read on file and were told by children of a number of incidents where restraint seemed to border on assault. These included complaints from children about restraint which were not fully investigated.”

A month later, at the end of January 1992, Smart’s small team reported back to him the results of their general trawl through the files of children in Sunderland’s homes. The result was devastating. They had found signs of systematic mismanagement, of consistent failure to heed complaint and they had produced a list of suspicious incidents which had apparently not been handled properly. It covered just about every children’s home in the city, it identified more than 50 girls and boys as possible victims of physical and sexual violence and some 30 staff as possible abusers.

Smart had uncovered a scandal. More than that, as he made clear to colleagues, he believed he had uncovered signs of an endemic failure in the system of care to which he had devoted his career. He and his team had found children who were living in dirty rooms with broken furniture and carpets that were sticky with filth; children who sat down to a supper of nothing more than an apple or a biscuit; and who faced a thrashing if they stepped out of line. In their draft report, the SSI, too, had seen signs of structural weakness, complaining of the staff’s inadequate training, of incomplete records, poor buildings and weak management.

Eight months later, Smart wrote an article for the Guardian, headlined Kids In Crisis, in which he disclosed none of the facts about Sunderland but expressed the feelings of a man who had spent his career in a system which, he now believed, was damaging the very people it was supposed to be helping. “It is debatable,” he wrote, “whether the majority of children now in residential care have been more harmed by the circumstances which brought them into the system, or by their time with social services.”

Having reached this point of despair, Smart had no moral alternative but to fight on. He took his long list of possible victims and abusers to the chief executive. He took, too, a short list of named individuals whose continued interference in council business, he argued, would mean that children in the city’s care would never be free of abuse – not because they themselves were child abusers but simply because they were playing politics with the welfare of the children.

And he issued an ultimatum: the council must re-investigate his long list of worrying incidents in the homes; they must expand his trawl through children’s files to ensure that they knew about all of these incidents; they must tackle the alleged abusers to ensure that none who were guilty continued to work with children; they must help the victims with therapy and counselling; they must set up proper inspections for the homes from now on. Smart wrote to the chief executive and offered him him a choice: either he supported Smart in his war against the council, or Smart would resign. A few days passed. Then Smart got his answer: the chief executive accepted his resignation.

After only ten months in his job, Colin Smart went home. His supporters hoped that they might yet win, with the police and the SSI on their side. Over the next few months, they watched as the council wrestled to regain control.
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75. The local press were fed a steady trickle of disinformation – that the Social Services Inspectorate had been conducting a routine inquiry; that it was the SSI who had noticed that the police had never been called in to deal with the three sacked workers; that the council had called in the police as soon as this was discovered; that Smart had left because he could not cope with the demands of the job.

The police were soon sidelined. Detective Chief Inspector David Wilson, who had now charged the three sacked workers with more than 20 offences, found himself being attacked by Nalgo, the union which represented many of those who were accused of abuse, and, more important, by councillors, some of whom had the ear of senior officers. The pressure to sack Wilson reached the point where the Chief Constable had to issue a public statement, underlining his confidence in him. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, for whatever reason, Wilson was moved off the inquiry.

The Social Services Inspectorate was neutralised. Their report was published and accepted in Feburary 1992, but by then the council had commissioned their own report from a retired civil servant named Emlyn Cassam. When he published his findings, in May 1992, he confirmed the problems, criticised the council’s failure to deal with them but, crucially, he strongly advised the council not to dig out the history of abuse in the childrens’ homes. This “picking over the bones” would be bad for morale, Cassam said, and it would distract resources away from current abuse. The most that they might do, he suggested, was to set up a hotline so that those who had been abused could make contact if they chose to. Following his advice, the council stopped all attempts to dig out the truth. Ignoring his advice, they did not set up a hot line.

Colin Smart, however, did not give up. At home in the autumn of 1992, he prepared his own report – five volumes, four about child abuse in Sunderland, covering 230 pages, and one about the care of the elderly, covering a further 70. Late in December 1992, he sent them off to the police, the SSI, the Department of Health and the Secretary of State, who was then Virginia Bottomley. Mrs Bottomley wrote back to thank him. Smart passed a message to the council to say that he would be happy to discuss the reports with them. They didn’t write back to thank him. They sued him.

They issued a writ for breach of confidence, complaining that he was using confidential information about clients of the Social Services department, putting the good work of the department at risk, potentially perverting the course of justice in the trial of the three care workers and risking the confidential relationship between government departments. They said he must surrender all of his information, undertake not to disclose it to anyone else and pay them damages.

But an internal memo about Smart, marked private and confidential, which has been seen by The Guardian, makes it clear that the council had another, rather different reason for gagging him. By this time, two former residents of Witherwack were suing the council. According to the memo to senior councillors, written by the director of administration, Colin Langley: “The solicitors acting for our insurers in respect of the claims by former residents of Witherwack, are concerned about the effect upon the conduct of those cases and the implications for further claims. I have, therefore, agreed with them that High Court proceedings be taken against Mr Smart for the return of any documents and to restrain him from any further publication of council documents.”

Smart went to court, in March 1993, aghast at the prospect of paying damages, confused by the law, indignant that the council were using public money to keep the public in the dark. His lawyers warned the court that this was a perversion of the court of justice. The judge hesitated and the two sides struck a deal. Smart would hand over his information and sign an undertaking not to discuss publicly what he knew; the council would drop their demand for damages and let him off with paying £5,000 out of his savings towards their costs. Smart told friends he felt stitched up, but his feelings made no difference. He was now gagged. A couple of opposition councillors called it a cover-up. So did the Sunderland Echo. The council were unmoved.

One small part of the truth was revealed, in October 1993, when the three sacked workers from Witherwack finally found themselves in the dock. The court heard how staff had given the children ‘speedies’ (knuckle-punches to the head) and power punches to the body, how they had made them run a gauntlet of kicks and blows between two lines of other children. The jury heard of the boy who had been brought back after running away and been made to eat cigarette butts off the floor before being given his dose of power punches; of the staff whose training consisted of being told “Shut your gob and watch your arse.”

The proceedings were liberally scattered with hints of official collusion. June Parker, a nurse who had worked at the home, said:“I think even the civic centre knew what was happening.” One of the accused had told police: “I am guilty of silence. I needed a job. What was I supposed to do?” The trial judge damned the council. “You may think the conditions at Witherwack were appalling and the policy not to employ trained staff in 1985 unfortunate. You may ask why conditions were so bad or why this behaviour which clearly was criminal was not reported to the police earlier.” Later, he answered his own question:“The reason for the delay was the hope on the part of the council that the case would never be resurrected. The evidence proves that the council were inept and happy that the problem would simply disappear.”

At the end of the trial, one of the accused was acquitted but the other two care workers, Kevin Roffe and Glynis Tamblin, were convicted and given suspended sentences of 12 months each. And that was it. One trial, two convictions. If the judge wanted to know why the council had concealed this crime for three years and allowed the poor conditions to persist so long, no one was about to tell him. If Colin Smart wanted to know the truth about all the worrying incidents he had listed – if he wanted to know whether his 30 suspected abusers were still working with children – no one was about to find out.

It was not that the council did nothing. The new director of Social Services acted on just about every recommendation that was made to him. Nevertheless, the council left the dark heart – the history of child abuse in their homes – untouched. The SSI were long gone (and several of their inspectors were now working for the council). The police had stopped their inquiries. The council had stopped theirs. No one resigned. No one was blamed. And Colin Smart could not even open his mouth to complain.

There was, however, just one loose end. The children. By now, they had grown up. Some had found work and settled down. Others had bounced from one kind of trouble to another: one wing of Wakefield Prison housed three former residents of Witherwack. None of them had forgotten. Some of them had tried, but none of them had succeeded. And every so often, one of them would feel a surge of pain and go to the police to make a statement or to a lawyer to make a claim for compensation. The police would make inquiries and say there was not enough evidence. The lawyers would file suit. And almost unseen, a strange thing began to happen.

Each time that one of the former victims made a move, another victim emerged to give support. Two of them were already suing the council. As they moved forward, three others came forward to join them. When they succeeded, winning a total of £23,000 from a council which still refused to admit liability, more came forward.

There was the girl who had been sent to Witherwack when her mother died, who had done her best for a few years until one day, when she was eight years old, when one of the careworkers had walked her into her room, stripped off her knickers and raped her. The man enjoyed this so much that he fell to repeating the experience every week or so. There was the man who, as an eight-year-old, had been continually roughed up and hassled by a worker who simply could not stand him and who eventually devised a cunning new torture, by inciting an older boy to bugger him. Twenty six former residents joined together to fight.

They decided to go public, to campaign for a proper inquiry. They went to the Sunderland Echo who backed them with a series of tough stories and set up a hotline for survivors. They went out into the street and gathered signatures. They marched on the city hall. They set up more legal actions, all suing in support of each other. One quiet night, a small group of them turned up on Colin Smart’s doorstep and asked for his help. Even though he was gagged, he agreed to write to the Secretary of State.

The council resisted. The new director of Social Services said it had all been investigated already. The new vice-chair of the social services committee said: “This is not a case of new evidence but a case of new publicity. The allegations were fully investigated in 1992.” But the former residents of the children’s home kept pushing and eventually, in April last year, they persuaded the council to ask the NSPCC to conduct an inquiry.
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When they delivered their report, in August last year, with its damning list of 23 suspected abusers at Witherwack alone, the NSPCC advised that the council should admit publicly that children had been abused and should express their formal regret. The City Council called a press conference at which the director of Social Services expressed his regret, albeit in limited fashion. And Northumbria Police announced that they were re-opening their inquiry into abuse at Witherwack and other homes in Sunderland. The man appointed to lead it was David Wilson, now a Detective Chief Superintendent.

Now, finally, the truth has begun to emerge. For the former residents there is still a long way to go – evidence to be gathered, trials to be held, justice to be done – but in an arduous story of frustration and despair, the NSPCC report was a moment of triumph. From his place on the sidelines, Colin Smart is still watching in silence as the cover-up finally cracks.