An invitation to the Queen

"A group of grandmothers in Lancashire have written an open letter to the Queen telling her their concerns about  fracking."

"And from 2pm [today] the nanas will be delivering the letter and having what they call Nana Tea outside Buckingham Palace. They assure they will be bringing their `best crockery` in case she `pops out`."

"Here’s the letter:"

*The Grandmother Elizabeth,

*Please note that we address you in this way, out of respect for what we consider to be your noblest role and highest obligation: to protect the young.

We recently contacted you about the plight of Lancashire residents who have used every democratic channel available to them in the fight to stop fracking coming to their communities. If you recall, our elected county councillors refused planning permission for two fracking sites in rural Fylde: Cuadrilla then appealed and the decision will now be made by the Secretary of State very soon. We appealed to you as our last democratic resource and asked you, ‘What would you do Ma’am?’.

Read more https://tompride.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/grannies-write-to-the-queen-to-stop-fracking-for-the-health-of-their-grandchildren/

Secret prisoners

(John Hemming)

"Secret Prisoners - the campaign continues"

"There have been two stories related to secret imprisonment reported today. One by PA has been published in a number of outlets including This one. The other was in the Daily Mail."

"The cases have a number of common features. Someone is imprisoned `for their own good`. There are all sorts of assessments as to their capacity. In the end they have run away and are not now in the English and Welsh jurisdiction."

"In the Kathy Danby case (which relates to her granddaughter) Kathy was imprisoned for meeting her. The judge at the time said Granny (aged in her 70s) had to be imprisoned because when she met her granddaughter afterwards the granddaughter was upset and tried to run away. From a scientific perspective it is a fact that the granddaughter ran away. However, she continued running away even though she had not met her grandmother for 2 1/2 years. I would argue, therefore, that the evidence is that she runs away because she is not happy having her liberty constrained by the state."

"This is actually a common problem with care proceedings of all sorts. Children are upset when they stop seeing their relatives. Hence contact is stopped. This used to happen with hospital visiting, but the issue was studied and it was found that the psychological trauma caused by stopping contact was in fact much greater than the superficial upset cased by breaks in contact. Hence parents were encouraged to visit children in hospital and potentially stay overnight. The Danish care system recognises this as well. However, the English care system takes a very different attitude. I have seen evidence to substantiate the argument that the approach in England is wrong. I have seen no evidence to substantiate the argument that it is right."

"In the second case the courts relied on an international treaty that had not been ratified either by Canada or Zimbawe to imprison a 15 year old (now 16 year old) boy who had no right to remain in the country beyond a visit. Because he had no valid immigration status he could not be educated. Unsurprisingly he tried to escape this, but was recaptured on a number of occasions until he did a Julian Assange and went to live in the Zimbabwean Embassy. He then escaped from there to Zimbabwe."

"It sounds absurd. However, it did happen."

"In both cases reporting restrictions act to prevent the prisoner from speaking out and challenging the claims of the state against them. Where is the accountability in this?"

http://johnhemming.blogspot.co.uk/

Chris Spivey`s battle with the establishment

"A CONTROVERSIAL internet writer has revealed he has been arrested on suspicion of child porn offences. Police have refused to reveal why blogger Chris Spivey, 51, from Rochford, was arrested earlier this month. "

"But the conspiracy theorist, who claims the murder of soldier Lee Rigby was an establishment hoax, has revealed he was arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children and bestiality on his computer. "

"Grandfather-of-six Spivey insists most of the images, which include Led Zeppelin album cover artwork, are innocent and he has no idea how one "hidden" image of child porn and other images of bestiality got on to his secondhand machine. Spivey, who has accused several celebrities and high-profile politicians of paedophilia on his website, said: `I’m totally innocent of any crime. All I’ve done is expose Government corruption.`"

"It doesn’t bother me because I know they are going to get nowhere."

"In July, police raided the home Spivey shares with his daughter and grandson, arrested him on suspicion of harassment via social media in relation to posts about Drummer Lee Rigby and seized computer equipment. Officers rearrested the former tattoo artist on Monday, October 6 – he claims over the images allegedly found on the machines. "

"Spivey has filed an official complaint over his July arrest, claiming police lacked the power to raid his home without a search warrant signed by a magistrate."

"The Echo asked police to explain the nature of the two arrests and confirm the offence of which Spivey is accused, but the force failed to respond."

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/11566448.Blogger_admits_child_porn_arrest/?ref=ar

What is most alarming is that social services have got involved and seem to be working in collusion with the police to build a case against Spivey - as a potential child abuser - in order to remove his 18 month grandson from the family.

As he exposes in the blog post below, social services acted in advance of the police raid when they removed his computer, and so at the time of their assessment should have had no case to make.

http://chrisspivey.org/proof-of-the-social-services-agenda-to-steal-clayton/

Update: Chris Spivey, whose blog was temporarily shut down, has been found guilty of harassment.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3181523/Deeply-unpleasant-Lee-Rigby-troll-convicted-harassing-murdered-soldier-s-family-conspiracy-theories.html

Grandmother must stop harassing her daughter and paedophile husband

A multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) was set up in Devon (2011) in order that the various agencies with a responsibility to identify and assess risks to children could work together in one location.

The stated intent of the MASH is to improve the quality of information sharing and decision making at the earliest opportunity and to reduce the potential risk to children and young people. This was based on the premise that the value is in the collation of an intelligence assessment - gathered from information across health, education, the LA and the police - resulting in a better picture of the child and circumstances on which to inform decision making about further help and intervention. http://www.local.gov.uk/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=b769add1-d151-4f01-9df5-b00c883989d6&groupId=10180

 

So in place of Scottish Named Persons and their multi-agency teams, in Devon there is the MASH.

Here is one of the hub`s extraordinary decisions:

The grandmother of two girls made to sleep in a locked bedroom to protect them from their paedophile stepdad has been banned from contacting them.

She was summoned to her local police station, interviewed for more than an hour and ordered to sign a Police Information Notice after she alerted the Sunday Mirror to the situation last month.

Officers acted when the girls’ mother, who is married to the convicted paedophile, complained of harassment.

She now faces being prosecuted - and even jailed - if she contacts the paedophile or his wife, her daughter.

The grandmother said: "No one will listen to me. His rights seem more important than those of anyone else."

The quiz by Devon and Cornwall officers came days after the Sunday Mirror revealed the move by social services in the county to allow the paedophile to stay in the same house as his step children, on condition they sleep behind a locked door fitted with an alarm to prevent him abusing them.

The sick plan was backed by Devon Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub, made up of police, probation officers and social workers.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/gran-banned-contacting-daughter-who-5625834?ICID=FB_mirror_main

Grandmother sentenced to 3 months

"A grandmother was hauled out of a comedy show and arrested on the orders of a family court judge – simply for hugging her granddaughter. Kathleen Danby, 72, was sentenced in her absence to three months in jail by the secretive Court of Protection in April after a judge heard she embraced the vulnerable girl, 19, against the wishes of social services."

"In an extraordinary move, she was arrested on Sunday night as she watched the comedian Ken Dodd at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall.  Last night the grandmother was being held in custody, police confirmed. She is expected to be taken to court this morning. The girl’s father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has condemned her arrest as ‘absolutely ridiculous’."

"‘She’s told me she’s going to fight this but I’m concerned for her in custody. 'I don’t know what’s going to happen. She’s got a liver disease so she’s constantly on medication and she was totally knackered. I’m very angry.’"

"According to Mrs Danby, the girl was moved into care in Derbyshire in 2007 when she was 11, a year after being taken away from her father in Orkney by social services, on what she called a ‘spurious excuse’. He was banned from seeing her after he was convicted of ill-treatment for restraining her from running into a busy road while she was having a temper tantrum, she said.
She revealed that her son had been jailed twice for trying to contact his daughter – once for waving at her taxi as she travelled to school."

"He told the Mail that he faces 18 months in prison if he leaves Orkney as there is currently a warrant out for his arrest for speaking to his daughter following a court hearing in Derby last year. And under a draconian judgment kept secret from the public, Mrs Danby was banned from making contact with the girl, who has learning difficulties, apart from a monthly telephone call monitored by social services."

"In February she was accused of disobeying court orders after social workers discovered that she had met her granddaughter at a model railway exhibition, and was caught on CCTV four days later giving her a hug outside a pub. Speaking to the Mail from her home in Kirkwall, Orkney, in June, she insisted that her granddaughter wanted to have a relationship with both her and her son, and revealed that she had run away from care more than 170 times."

"Eamonn Kelly, from False Allegations Action Scotland, described Mrs Danby’s case as ‘one of the most disturbing’ he had encountered."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2890554/Arrested-Ken-Dodd-held-cells-hugging-granddaughter-Fury-secretive-Court-Protection-finds-72-year-old-guilty-contempt.html#ixzz3NOkrsmoc

Update: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/judge-frees-granddaughter-hug-oap-132319490.html

See also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11323130/The-most-sinister-court-in-Britain-strikes-yet-again.html

Transparency and Accountability Bill - second reading

John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD):

 

"There are greater tensions in today’s society. One of the failures of society rests in the tension between the Executive and the legislature... It tends to be very difficult to get anything out of the Executive."

"For example, in the Ashya King case, the father talked of himself as being a refugee from the UK because he was threatened with care proceedings, and we know that there was a wardship application against the family. It was clear that the hospital would have had an emergency protection order had they not left the country. When I raised that with the Prime Minister, he did not understand that I was asking Parliament to have a collective investigation into what is going on..."

"The context of the Bill is to improve transparency and accountability in the public sector, and within that I have included a number of different elements. With regard to the super-complaints proposal from Which?, the idea is basically to give a designated representative body the power to make a super-complaint to regulators of public services to address systemic issues. That sort of thing does go on. There can be difficulties within the health service. It is far better to enable challenge from outside the system. We saw with the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Care Quality Commission the tendency for even the regulators to cover things up."

"We have too many cover-ups in Britain, and the Bill seeks to reduce their number. ... Under the Enterprise Act 2002, designated representative bodies can make super-complaints to the Competition and Markets Authority about detrimental features of private markets. This power does not currently extend to markets for public services where detrimental features can also arise. We know all about that..."

"Public services are vital to millions of people across the UK, but people’s voices are not always heard when they experience a problem..."

"Another organisation that contributed to aspects of the Bill is the Campaign for Freedom of Information. This relates to closing a loophole in the Freedom of Information Act 2000 that allows contractors providing public services to escape scrutiny. They are not subject to FOI requests in their own right and so provide only the information that they are considered to hold on behalf of the authority..."

"As the director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Maurice Frankel, said, each new outsourcing contract reduces the public’s access to information because of a loophole in the FOI Act. Information that is vital to the public may be kept secret simply because the contract doesn’t provide for access. The Bill would restore the public’s right to know.".. We need action from the Government, whoever is in government and at whatever stage, to deal with those exemptions, because what are clearly public functions are escaping accountability..."

Family court issues

"Earlier this week, a gentleman from German radio came to see me. He was concerned about the situation in Rotherham, which he had been investigating. Not only did the local authority take children into care, where they were found to be less well protected, but if they became pregnant it put them up for adoption on the basis that there was a future risk of emotional harm... At the moment, in essence, the only really effective audit on family court proceedings, particularly for public family law, is the example of international cases. The advantage of international cases is that two different jurisdictions are looking at the same case. Earlier I cited the King case, where the family went off to Spain and are now in the Czech Republic. Obviously that case was considered by the Spaniards. They were lucky because they managed to get their story out on YouTube and were not injuncted."

"There are similar cases. The Paccheri case is well known—it concerns the lady who was forced to

have a caesarean when she visited the UK whose child was then adopted. When we investigate the medical evidence put to the Court of Protection, we find, looking at the considerations by experts on the internet—that there was a good, detailed critique of the judgment, but it was published only because we found out about what had gone on; it was not published as part of an ordinary process..."

"Had detailed consideration been given to a second opinion in this case, it would have said, "Actually, this isn’t necessary." The traumatic way in which the lady was treated did not help her in the long term..."

"There are two types of international cases: those whereby people leave the UK to escape the system, and those whereby a foreign citizen’s case is decided on by the UK jurisdiction. The advantage of the Paccheri case is that the Rome family court gave a judgment that is publicly available and basically says that it does not understand what is going on in England..."

"We know what happens. The managerial priorities of local authorities determine what their staff do. If they do not do those things, we see what happens. There is the case of Joanna Quick, who wanted to recommend the return of a baby to its parents. She would not do what she was told by the management, so they fired her. One cannot blame social workers who are in that environment for doing what their management tell them to do..."

"(T)here are clearly cases when someone`s litigation capacity has been removed wrongfully. They are then stuck. They are a non-person as far as the system is concerned. If they want to appeal to the court, the application cannot be accepted because they have no capacity. People go down to the courts, but get turned away on that basis..."

"My view is that what we are doing is awful for children and families and, as time goes on. we are finding out more and more that that is the case. .."

"On the maltreatment of grandparents—I went to a Grandparents Plus event, and grandparents are not treated with respect by the system. There is evidence that each change of placement for a child taken into care, including the first change of placement, is psychologically damaging, but obviously at times we need to do that because leaving a child where it is can be worse—although the Rotherham case showed that at times that does more damage than in other circumstances. Going and staying with granny, however, is generally not that much of a problem because it is the sort of thing that has happened and the child is used to it. We should be a little more focused on families and the wider family—aunties, uncles and so on—than the current system, which is very much driven by the system. .."

Full transcript: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm141017/debtext/141017-0002.htm#14101788000002  

Grandparents win their appeal

"It was only after an exhausting 18-month fight that Lee and Katrina were finally made India’s official guardians, in a ruling enforced last August."

"Their story shines a disturbing light on how easily relatives, particularly grandparents, can be frozen out of the adoption process, and the way social workers can collude to hide vital decisions about vulnerable children. Often families have no idea why they are being shut out of a child’s life."

"For their part, the Parkers may never know the case against them. Shielded by the notoriously secretive family courts system, Essex Council has yet to explain why the couple faced so many hurdles in their attempts to adopt India. Indeed, Lee and Katrina can reveal some of the facts now only because the judge who upheld their appeal against Essex Council’s decision to have India adopted has released a copy of the judgment he made 16 months ago. "
"The only reason that the Parkers were able to halt the process is because a sympathetic professional — whom they cannot name in order to protect her identity — told them about a limited two-week right of appeal that had almost lapsed. If it had not been for their panicked last-minute challenge, India would have disappeared for ever into the adoption system. "

"The Government is trying hard to speed up the adoption process, allocating an extra £50 million this year with the aim that cases should take no more than 21 months to resolve."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2654475/The-loving-grandparents-forced-fight-tooth-nail-stop-social-services-giving-away-grandchild.html#ixzz34M55xsvy

3 months for grandmother who hugged her granddaughter

"A grandmother has been sentenced to three months in prison after she was filmed giving her granddaughter a hug. Kathleen Danby, 72, was jailed by the secretive Court of Protection, which decided she had disobeyed its order that she should not see the teenager."

"Under a draconian judgment kept secret from the public, Mrs Danby had been banned from making contact with the girl, who is 18 but has learning difficulties. She was told she could only speak to her on the phone once a month at a set time, with social workers listening in. Mrs Danby was ordered back to court when social workers heard that she had met the girl at a model railway exhibition. Police also presented CCTV footage of her hugging her granddaughter outside a pub."

"However Mrs Danby, who lives in Orkney, said yesterday that no police officers had arrived to execute the warrant. ‘I haven’t been jailed simply because I refused to go down there to court,’ she said, adding that she would refuse to go to prison simply for making contact with her granddaughter."

"‘She is 18 and can decide for herself what she wants to do, she is being denied her human rights,’ Mrs Danby said. ‘She has the educational standards of somebody half her age, and behaves like a much younger child, but she is completely lucid in what she wants.’"

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2653442/Secret-court-jails-gran-hugged-granddaughter-Pensioner-sentenced-three-months-disobeying-order-not-teenager.html#ixzz34Efq9HIh

Don`t kiss Granny if you don`t want to

 

 

Lucy Emmerson, coordinator of the Sex Education Forum, has been criticised after suggesting on the online sex education resource for teachers that children should not be forced to give granny a peck on the cheek as it may do them harm. Rather, children should be encouraged to blow a kiss, high-five or wave to a relative instead. Her proposal is that children need to learn from the very beginning the importance of consent and that their bodies are their own. Family campaigners immediately dismissed her ideas. Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said: ‘Even if the distinction is lost on the Sex Education Forum, children and young people are able to recognise that there is all the difference in the world between self-consciously– and perhaps on occasion reluctantly – kissing an uncle or aunt on the cheek on the one hand, and accepting unwanted sexual advances on the other.’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2535633/Dont-make-kids-kiss-granny-Outcry-sex-education-chiefs-say-high-five-wave-safer.html It is interesting to see who the sex obsessed core members of the SexEducation Forum are. There have been a proliferation of such charities, not-for-profit limited companies, providers and researchers: Examining some of their backgrounds it is often difficult to see where they think they get their expertise in family matters from. For instance, being the National AIDS Trust or the Family Planning Association does not give them expertise in family relationships. The Core Members of the Sex Education Forum

.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation:

NationalAIDSTrust (NAT): .

	Big Talk Education .
	Childnet
	National Children's Bureau
	NSPCC .
	The National Youth Agency

	Deafax
	Image in Action
	KIDS

	Accord Coalition
	Apause
	ATL
	ATSAC
	The National PSHE CPD Programme, provided by Babcock 4S,
	Bodysense
	BISH Training .
	CWP Resources (The Christopher Winter Project)
	Cornwall Learning .
	Esteem Resource Network
.
	Loudmouth
	National PSE Association for advisers, inspectors and consultants
	PSHE Association
	Romance Academy.
	The RSE Hub
	.
	Services for Education
	Sexpression:UK
	SHEU
	Streetwise
	Straight Talking
	Tender .
	Teaching Lifeskills

Worcestershire Health & Care NHS Trust (sexual Health Service)

British Humanist Association

Church of England Education Division

The Methodist Church

The National Secular Society

	Brook
	Bpas

Centre for HIV and Sexual Health

FPA

	The Institute of Health Promotion and Education
	MBARC

 

 

FFLAG

Family Lives

	One Plus One  Medical Foundation for AIDS & Sexual Health. Shropshire council Terrence Higgins Trust
	Relate

The NCB, one of the core members, reported on their website that the new survey conducted by the Sex Education Forum, based at the National Children`s Bureau (NCB), found that children and young people are not being taught about consent in school...

The survey results, released to coincide with the publication of a new resource for teachers on consent, showed that many young people did not know that under-16's are entitled to receive confidential contraceptive and STI treatment; with less than half confident that a 15 year old could get a HIV test without a parent or carer being told, and only a third aware that a 14 year old could get contraception confidentially.

So whilst family relationships are being portrayed as dangerous we can see what this survey is really about - the relentless sexualisation of children, and the resources provided to teachers to assist with that.

http://www.ncb.org.uk/news/new-survey-finds-children-and-young-people-aren’t-being-taught-about-consent-in-school

  

Further into the National Children`s Bureau website we find this statement:

 

 

Elaine Simpson, Chair of NCB

Elaine joined Serco at the end of 2002 to run the then new large Education Walsall contract, which had been compulsorily outsourced to Serco. In 2004 she was promoted within Serco to the role of Managing Director of the Education business which grew well under her leadership. Before leaving Serco in July 2012, Elaine was Global Director of Children's Services, focussing on the capitalising of the many business opportunities available in the education and children's services market, enhancing and maintaining Serco's pre-eminent position in this market.

Prior to joining Serco she spent twenty-five years in Local Government working in senior roles across a number of North-West local education authorities in the UK. For the last five years of her time in Local Government she was in Sefton where she was Chief Education Officer.

Business opportunities in the education and children`s services market?  This gives the game away doesn`t it and explains the growing number of charities and other associations clustering around children ?

So does this statement:

We work with children and for children, to influence government policy...

Don`t they all?

 

A couple`s fight to look after their granddaughter

 

 

The above article appeared on the Channel 4 website Tuesday 10 December 2013:

Katrina and Lee Parker, two grandparents from Colchester, Essex, discovered that when their daughter was not able to look after their granddaughter there was no automatic right for them to be able to step in and take care of the little girl.

 

In fact for the Parkers it turned into a year long battle with Social Services who were determined that the little girl should be adopted.

The Parkers believe that the wider public do not understand how the system works against families and although they have been gagged to a great extent from speaking out about their case they feel it is important that people know about how it works against grandparents and in secret.

"There is a lot of misunderstanding in society that grandparents somehow have rights," Katrina Parker said.

They were particularly angry at Social Services who did not inform them that they had obtained a care order or keep them informed about meetings or provide them with information in order for them to be able to put up a fight to have their granddaughter returned to their care. The reporter goes on:

What is disturbing about this case is that the Parkers were initially – and wrongly it turns out – excluded from even applying to the family court to take part in the care proceedings and to prevent the adoption.

They were saved by a judge who gave them the right to appeal. We are not allowed to know why the judge granted that appeal.

One commentator on the article has this to say:
This is the same across the whole of the UK. Parents, Grandparents are slowly but systematically broken down so as to paint a picture of an unreliable family who couldn’t possibly provide for the child. The outcome is to be able to convince a judge that adoption is the only outcome, and it works. Every way you turn, you are headed off by social workers it is a well orchestrated method. This is not isolated to one area, so one must ask the question, is this a national strategy and delivered as training.
　

Read More