Ex-pilot sues for lack of care

The Official Solicitor is being sued by a former airline pilot alleging  a lack of care. after he was deemed incapable of managing his affairs. 

Leonard Lawrence, who believes his ill health is the result of toxic fumes being released into aircrafts during flights, was placed in 2004 under the Officil Solicitor’s protection after a psychiatric assessment said he lacked the mental capacity to look after his property and affairs under Part V11 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

During this period, which lasted until 2006, he maintains that his assets were improperly disposed of.

Earlier this year Lawrence was given permission to sue the Official Solicitor’s Office by the Queen’s Bench of the High Court. He is seeking damages from the Official Solicitor for his alleged failure in his duty of care to protect a vulnerable adult.” 

Lawrence, who now lives in rented accommodation in Devon, was a pilot from 1989 to 2004.  He claims that on 29 November 1991 the flight deck of the passenger aircraft he was co-piloting was filled with hot acrid fumes on take-off. An emergency landing was made and the aircraft evacuated. The plane was later exported to Russia. 

Twelve years later, and a day after a fume event only hundreds of feet above Amsterdam, he quit his job after he was: “ unable to process information being given to me by Swiss air traffic control during a flight over the country. I couldn’t and still can’t think clearly enough to fly.”

When he visited his GP, Lawrence was referred for a psychiatric assessment to Buckinghamshire Mental Health Trust and he was subsequently admitted to Godden Green Clinic. 

After being discharged he was certified in November 2004, without undergoing a medical, when solicitor’s for his ex-wife obtained a medical report from the clinic saying Lawrence was incapable of managing his property and affairs.

Although this was disputed by Lawrence’s own NHS psychiatrist it was accepted in Slough County Court and the former pilot was placed under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Official Solicitor at the  Ministry of Justice. The Official Solicitor acts as a last resort ‘Guardian ad litem’ for people who lack the mental capacity to properly manage their own affairs and who cannot find suitable people to protect them. Lawrence had assembled a number of distinguished people, including Mr Alistair Wilson FRCS, a clinical director at the Royal London Hospital, who were prepared to act as his guardian but the  county court chose to ignore them.  

Lawrence remained under the jurisdiction of the Official Solicitor until early in 2006. By then a medical diagnosis, undertaken by Professor Abou-Donia at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences in North Carolina, USA revealed he was suffering from moderate brain injury caused by chemical poisoning.  

Whilst under the care of the Official Solicitor there were three occasions on which some of Lawrence’s assets, which he estimates to be worth £130,000, were disposed of. To prevent a power of attorney - in this case the Official Solicitor - from committing fraud then any disposal of assets requires the approval of the Court of Protection.

The Manager at the Compliance and Regulatory Unit, Office of the Public Guardian has confirmed to Lawrence that ‘The Court of Protection has no  record of any application being received for him. It was clearly the responsibility of the holder of the medical certificate to ensure an application was made.’

Lawrence is being supported by the Aerotoxic Association. This is run by former airline pilots convinced they have been made ill by cabin air polluted with toxic oil fumes. The organisation seeks to bring about regulatory changes to improve air quality aboard airliners. Founder John Hoyte, who has known Lawrence for 23 years. said: “He has been badly let down by doctors who failed to diagnose and treat his illness. This was compounded by not being allowed to have someone he knew designated to look after his interests during the time he was certified. I think there needs to be a inquiry into Leonard Lawrence’s case.”

A spokesperson for the Official Solicitor said it couldn’t comment: “on ongoing litigation in which the Official Solicitor is defending a claim against Mr Lawrence against the previous office holder.” 

Author Q@A: Agents, Rovers and Cricket Loving Owners

Agents, Rovers and Cricket Loving Owners

Michael Blackburn

Grosvenor House Publishing

£12.99 or £7.99 direct from www.rovertaken.co.uk

In 2010 the Venky poultry manufacturing family from India bought Blackburn Rovers. After selling more than £40 million of playing talent, and witnessing key members of the club’s administration exiting, 18 months later the East Lancashire club was relegated. Meanwhile the new owners continued to put their trust in an inexperienced manager. Steve Kean’s recent resignation was wildly celebrated by fans and author Michael Blackburn. 

1) Why did you write this book?

Football used to be a laugh but in recent years I have become disillusioned with the game. After the Venky takeover I became frustrated with the way the club was heading and angry about how the story was being reported by career journalists who have little real passion for Rovers.

2) Surely Rovers relative lack of support means the second League is where they should be?

Football should never be about the numbers you get through the turnstiles. Rovers’ crowds are excellent considering the size of the town and the number of big clubs in the North West. We deserve to be in the Championship because we were relegated from the Premier League, but I have never had an inferiority complex about mixing at the top table with bigger cities with greater commercial appeal.

3) What’s wrong with agents in football?

It is important that any young person entering into contract negotiations with a multi-million pound corporation has some form of professional representation. But the financial rewards for agents, certainly at the top end, are just totally out of synch with the role they are fulfilling. Between October 2010 and September 2011 Premier League clubs paid £71.8 million to licenced agents. It is not good for the game or society or even the people they represent. 

4) Have you been able to work out why the Venkys bought Blackburn Rovers?

Mrs Desai, the Venkys driving force at Rovers, said the purchase was to gain recognition for the Indian brand in different international markets. That has worked and Venkys are now a household name. I doubt there are many Rovers fans eating chicken lollipops but I am sure there are fans of other clubs who do so.

5) What makes you believe football is a closed shop?

Football will always be great but if you want to challenge those in positions of power then don't expect a long list of people rushing to speak to you. Look at the difficulty Clarke Carlisle had when he made the recent BBC documentary "Is Football Racist?"  Carlisle is the Professional Footballers Chairman, a BBC pundit and a former Premier League player. Yet he really struggled to get people in the football world to speak publicly about the problem. I found the same thing with Rovers and no one involved with the club would answer my legitimate questions. It has been the same for the various Rovers fans groups who have emerged in the last 18 months.

6) Was the media’s portrayal of Steve Kean as a dignified man warranted? 

Anyone can be over-promoted. Anyone can lose football games. The driving ban, where his claim about having his drink spiked was unceremoniously rejected by the judge, left a bad taste and I remain totally unconvinced that he needed 24-hour bodyguard protection. He also constantly attempted to put out media messages that were clearly at odds with reality and in the end he made it really difficult for Rovers fans to do anything but dislike him.

7) Were the media accurate in reporting Rovers fans protests as foolish and violent?

The protests were justified, necessary and peaceful. It was never the organised campaign of hatred and vitriol that was reported.  It was proper football fans exasperated with the direction our club was heading. 100% of Rovers fans disliked Kean. 100% - think for a moment what that means. All the information is out there and I would urge people to read the facts and then try to tell me the protests were not justified.

Free speech in sentences

A Dewsbury man found guilty of posting an offensive Facebook message about British soldiers in Afghanistan has been spared jail after magistrates gave him a community service order.

But free speech campaigners believe his prosecution - and that of a Chorley man found guilty of posting offensive online jokes about missing five-year-old Welsh girl April Jones - should never have brought.

As well as a 240-hour community service order, Huddersfield magistrates last week fined 20-year old Azhar Ahmed £300 for sending a “grossly offensive communication.” 

His message, which said “all soldiers should die and go to hell”, was posted after six British soldiers from the Yorkshire Army regiment were killed by militants in Lashkar Gar, Helmand in March. The mother of one of the soldiers reported the message to the police.

District Judge Jane Goodwin told Ahmed: “You posted the message in response to tributes and messages of sympathy. You knew at the time that this was an emotive and sensitive issue. 

“With freedom of speech comes responsibility. On March 8 you failed to live up to that responsibility.”

Ahmed maintained that he was voicing “legitimate concerns” about British military involvement in Afghanistan and that he removed the comments when he realised they were causing distress.

A former soldier offended by Ahmed’s comments, Jim Fox - who served in Northern Ireland in the 1970s - said the Dewsbury man failed to recognise that most soldiers are young, poorly educated and apolitical. But Fox added: “Free speech is important and the courts are no place to argue over Britain’s role in Afghanistan.” 

Ahmed’s sentence came days after 19-year-old Matthew Woods from Chorley was jailed for 12 weeks after admitting making grossly offensive comments on his Facebook about April Jones.

His comments were reported to the police by members of the public and a 50-strong “vigilante mob” descended on his home, Chorley Magistrates Court heard.

Chairman of the Bench Bill Hudson said: “We have listened to the evidence in what can only be described as a disgusting and despicable crime and one the bench finds completely abhorrent.” 

But campaigners said the magistrates in both cases failed to take into account an earlier ruling that the Communications Act 2003 should not be used to punish “the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humour, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it.”

This was the view expressed by the Lord Chief Justice in July when he upheld Paul Chambers’ appeal against his conviction for jokingly threatening on Twitter  to blow Robin Hood airport “sky high!” if his planned flight was affected by the weather in January 2010.

Writing on  Index on Censorship’s blog, Padraig Reidy said the law was being used in Woods’ case just in the way Lord Chief Justice had warned against - to diminish his “right to express unpopular, unfashionable and distasteful humour.”

Reidy wrote: “Woods would appear to have been found ‘guilty’ of crimes agains taste and against sentiment. We cannot allow this to continue. No one should be put in prison for making a joke that other people don’t like.”

Josie Appleton, spokesperson for the Manifesto Club, which campaigns against ‘the hyper regulation of everyday life’, said that prosecutions such as these should not be brought because there is no threat of violence.

She said: “ The last Government introduced a series of very vague laws that massively extended criminal offences to include comments on social media sites that are offensive, rude and stupid. The previously critical Conservative Party has retained these laws and we can now expect to see them more widely used, especially if proposed new laws introduce tracking for everyone’s email, Twitter and Facebook accounts.” 

It's an unfair game, says shooting film

Shooting game is not the natural and free-range activity its supporters claim it is, according to a new film by animal activists.

The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) film alleges that much of the produce is not genuinely wild but is intensively reared in poor conditions by the shooting industry.

More than 17.5 million partridges and pheasants are shot annually. Smaller numbers of hares and deer are also shot. Game meat sales have in recent years been boosted by the support of popular chefs such as Gregg Wallace, the BBC TV Masterchef presenter.

Both the British Association of Shooting and Conservation (BASC) and the Countryside Alliance (CA) claim game meat ‘is wild, natural and free range.’

According to LACS, Gunsmoke and Mirrors, shows ‘the reality of the intensive breeding and rearing conditions employed to protect this precious stock for shooting.... plus, evidence of the huge amount of wastage the industry produces making it clear that this is not about food but about sport.’

But a spokesperson for BASC said that much of the film was based on a misunderstanding of the industry.

The film quotes RSPB statistics that the UK’s natural habitat could support 1.6 million pheasants and yet sixteen times that number are released by the shooting industry annually, whilst 14 million partridges are also released. Covert filming in game farm laying pens shows cramped conditions for pheasants in the first eight weeks of their lives. Some birds also have bits inserted in their mouths and spectacles used to limit their vision.

Following the birds’ release in the countryside, the film claims the special provision of food and cover nearby ensures they do not need to seek new pastures. Consequently they are less likely to escape being shot by an estimated half-a-million people who annually pay many hundreds of pounds for the pleasure of killing the birds. Since 2007 it has no longer been necessary to obtain a game licence to shoot pheasant and the CA has recently been in the news for promoting shooting amongst young people.

Gunsmoke and Mirrors also shows incidents of dumping of birds following a shoot and disputes claims by shoot supporters that ‘99% of birds shot are ending up on the table.’

But BASC Communications Director Christopher Graffius insisted that 99 per cent of game farms were clearly following a new industry code of conduct introduced in 2010. He added that BASC had a taken a lead in criticising the three out of 300 game farms that rear birds for shooting using a cage system that didn’t meet its standards.

“The government is currently conducting its own enquiry to see if the conditions protect the welfare of the birds,” he said: “A lot of the LACS film is based on a misunderstanding of shooting.”

“Bits and spectacles are a welfare protection measure to prevent a weaker bird being picked on. Released birds quickly become self-reliant and towards the end of the shooting season they will move out of cover to start establishing territories.”

Graffius pointed to a 2011 study, conducted by market research company Mintel, predicting UK game meat sales will reach £84 million this year. Dumping, said Graffius, was not necessary “as the rest is taken home by shooters, those who work in the industry or sold to the continent. ”

Graffius said game meat sales were undoubtedly benefiting from well-known chefs support. One of these is Greg Wallace, who is much admired for his plain speaking approach on the popular BBC TV cooking programme, Masterchef.  Last month Wallace publicly backed the CA’s game-to-eat campaign. Asked if he had viewed the LACS film, or taken a look at the conditions where birds are kept, a spokesperson for Wallace said: “he had not and therefore has no comment to make.”

The release of the LACS film coincides with the signing of an early day motion by 58 MPs that seeks to ‘end the suffering of game birds being shot for sport’ and which calls on ‘the Government to ensure that animals are protected from such senseless destruction.’ 

Masking the truth - are residents of Billinge being made ill by pesticides in crop spray

The use of pesticides by farmers is damaging the health of residents  of Billinge, St Helens. That’s the claim of former health practitioner Gillian Broughton, who has lived in the village for over 25 years. 

The former fell walker began collecting neighbours’ names after she and her son became seriously unwell following a local walk in June 2009. Broughton is convinced that a chance encounter with farm labourers using a public footpath on Garswood Road to spray nearby fields was behind the pair’s illnesses. According to Broughton: “I smelled what can best be described as Jeyes cleaning fluid and saw a team of three dressed like spacemen using a tractor to pull up the roots of a tree. They had large white drums from which they spraying what looked to me to be rabbit warrens at the side of the farmer’s field. I felt sorry for the rabbits.”

Fourty eight hours later she collapsed, “I never got out of bed for the next few weeks as I had a constant headache, couldn’t eat, felt totally confused and even thought i was suffering from dementia as my short term memory was so poor.” Her son Paul, aged 31, was able to briefly carry on working but following two massive rectal bleeds he was off work for almost six months. He is now back at his job as a gas fitter. Gillian however has never returned to work and complains of feeling constantly tired.

Broughton’s doctor diagnosed her with labyrinthitis, an inflammation of the inner ear. He sent her to a number of NHS specialists including a cardiologist. Nothing abnormal was discovered. 

She then approached two other doctors, Barry Durrant-Peatfield and Sarah Myhill, to see if she could find out more.

Durrant-Peatfield holds diagnostic and treatment advice clinics across the UK. His attempts to help people understand their metabolic illnesses have brought him into conflict with the General Medical Council (GMC), and he quit the body after they threatened to have him struck off as a registered medical practitioner. 

Myhill has practised in Llangunllo near Knighton, Powys since 1990. In this time she has seen hundreds of farmers and estimates that “one in three have been poisoned to such an extent that it’s affected their health in one way or another.” Throughout 2010 and 2011 Myhill was forced to practise medicine under severe restrictions from the GMC. Since 2001 she has faced the prospect of 7 Fitness to Practise Hearings, all of which have been cancelled with no case to answer.

Gillian Broughton

Following private laboratory tests, both doctors concluded Gillian had been chemically poisoned.  As this can switch on allergies Broughton, who avoids diary products, asked her primary care trust if she could receive treatment from the Brakespear private hospital that specialises in this field. She was refused. Myhill had recommended taking vitamin B12, which plays a key functioning role in the brain and nervous system and the formation of blood.

Broughton says: “My doctor ended my prescription after he read about Dr Myhill and the GMC. Since then i have purchased the product privately at a cost of around £200 a year. My son helps pay for this and other medicines as I am now living on benefits.” She’d like to go back to work and feels she is recovering slowly, estimating that she is now around 50% functional compared to just 20% three years ago.

Broughton wrote via a solicitor to the owner of the field close to Garswood Road. He has denied causing her health problems and she seems unlikely to be able to prove a direct link. She would, though, like to prevent others following in her footsteps. She has give out leaflets locally and to parents dropping off their children at the local school to ask “if they may be suffering from pesticide exposure from crop spraying.’

She has subsequently been contacted by a number of people. Christine Hughes has lived on Royden Road, Billinge since the 60s. In 1994, aged 53, she got breast cancer, since when she has experienced bladder cancer and, two years ago, a second illness with breast cancer. She says: “Gillian is not the first person to raise this as a concern. In the 90s the local vicar’s wife surveyed the road and found that 12 women from just eighty houses had cancer. We live backing on to fields where pesticides are commonly used. 

“When I got the leaflet I rang Gillian. What concerns me is that my doctor has never really tried to find out what might have caused my cancers and has simply asked me if I smoke or drink. I also think the parish council should call a meeting to discuss this issue.”

Billinge Parish Council did not respond to The Big Issue in the North’s request for comment. 

Claire Wildman, who lives in the nearby village of Rainford, contacted Gillian Broughton after her 58 year-old mum died of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). This is a rare form of cancer associated with the chemical industry and which was made infamous following the subsequent deaths of many thousands after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986. According to Claire her mum “had always thought that the strong smells which came from the fields from spraying could not be doing anyone any good.” 

However, months after her mother’s death, Claire claims that when she attended an open meeting of Rainford Parish Council the concerns she raised were heavily cricitised by councillors.

Claire is aware of three other local cases of AML and feels more should be done to inform “people of the dangers of pesticides.’ Christine Hughes agrees and would “like to see farmers make residents aware of the days when they are going to be spraying.”

This is a priority too for Georgina Downs from Sussex who has run a vigorous campaign for over a decade to highlight the dangers of pesticides, which were estimated in a 2008 World Bank report to kill 355,000 people worldwide each year. Downs herself was left seriously unwell following spraying in the fields next to her home.

Broughton contacted her to seek advice before she started leafleting. According to Downs the Billinge resident is “one of thousands who have contacted me nationally in the last eleven years. It is heartbreaking to hear what so many people have had to suffer through no fault of their own, especially those who have been poisoned because their houses adjoin fields that are regularly sprayed with mixtures of toxic chemicals.”

Downs’ campaign has been calling for a ban on the use of pesticides in the locality of residents’ homes, schools, playgrounds, and public areas. Ms. Downs states, “There has never been any assessment in the UK of the risks to health for the long-term exposure for those who live or go to school near pesticide sprayed fields. Under EU law the absence of any risk assessment means that pesticides should never have been approved for use for spraying in the locality of homes, schools, children’s playgrounds and public areas. Therefore the use of pesticides in the locality of such areas must be banned without any further delay.”

Four years ago Downs won a landmark legal ruling in the High Court that the UK Government’s pesticide policy did not comply with European legislation. This was bizarrely overturned by the Court of Appeal when her arguments were substituted by a Government funded report from 2004. Downs’ legal case is now before the European Court of Human Rights. 

Georgina Downs’ UK Pesticides Campaign is at www.pesticidescampaign.co.uk

Housing plans for former chemicals site sparks local Littleborough opposition

Plans to build 174 homes on the site of a former chemical works are causing concerns amongst Littleborough residents who fear it remains unfit for human habitation. 

One of them, a builder has questioned whether the proposed ground cover will be strong enough to prevent a surface break and the possible release of toxins.

Paint and coatings multinational Akzo Nobel ceased operations at its Hollingworth Lake location eight years ago. The site was sold three years later to Woodford Land Ltd whose plans for new houses, business units, a restaurant and hotel were wrecked by falling property prices.  

Countryside Properties(CP) has now received approval from Rochdale Borough Council to start construction. The company must purchase the land before going ahead.

Peter Evans, former Littleborough Lakeside councillor, claims former Akzo Nobel (AN) employees “have openly alleged that AN deposited chemicals down the underground former coal mining shafts and also left behind buried drums on the site.” 

An AN spokesperson said they had no remaining liability at Littleborough and had undertaken remedial work in all but the ‘island site.’ Rochdale Council has identified this as being ‘historically used by AN for tipping waste materials until it was partially capped in 1970 and later landscaped.’ According to the Council the remedial works undertaken by Woodford included the former waste area.

The Akzo Nobel spokesperson did however confirm “it was possible that drums had been buried on the Littleborough site many years ago. If there are any still there thenthey do not pose a risk as the site has been cleaned.” 

Any chemicals poured down the mining shafts he said had also been removed before the company departed. 

Despite these assurances a local builder, who did not wish to be named, said: “I am concerned the plans are for 200 mm of crushed stone and 600 mm of top soil to be used to cover a potentially dangerous site. I believe there should be a two metre covering of clay, which will cost a lot more but will prevent surface breaking.”

The lack of a complete map of the underground workings has also raised concerns. Evans believes the council is willing to overlook regulations requiring a minimum cover over any cavity of ten times its depth. Evans and Barry Cropper, a magistrate and local resident, fear there may be a major underground fall and they want a more extensive survey undertaken before the housing building programme commences.

Rochdale Council’s spokeperson said: “The majority of UK mine workings are not recorded and it is common to redevelop former colliery sites.”

Rochdale councillors having agreed to support the plans and the way is clear for Countryside Properties to build the new houses in the next three years.

Author Selma James on her latest book

SEX, RACE and CLASS

The perspective of winning

A selection of writings 1952-2011

Selma James   

PM Press

American Selma James is one of the co-organisers at the Crossroad’s Women’s Centre in Camden, London. This was opened by the Wages for Housework Campaign in 1975, and is possibly the oldest women’s centre in the UK.

‘Invest in caring not killing’ is Selma James strategy for revolutionary change and this selection of her writings since 1952 includes a redefinition of the working class to include sectors previously dismissed as ‘marginal.’ 

Why did you write the ‘Woman’s Place’ pamphlet in 1952? 

Marxist historian CLR James asked me to write it after I told him about the important role played by housewives in the production process. I was a housewife as I was married to a machinist, had a young son and worked in a factory.

I felt that as well as looking after children, housewives worked by repairing men who had spent at least 8 ½ hours of their lives every day on a soul-destroying production line.

Why did your ‘wages for housework’ proposal to a 1972 women’s liberation conference prove explosive?

It was because it meant dealing for the first time with housework. Which was absolutely central to every woman’s life - including those who had found work as professionals, as they had done so in order to escape it!

The question was how do you deal with this as a political movement? Some women said ‘make believe it does not exist.’ But this was not an abstraction or an idea or a TV series. It was life and that’s a very explosive fact. If we raise kids, we have a right to a living wage.

Isn’t your belief in exploited sectors organising autonomously a recipe for permanent division?

No, it is a recipe for unity. Unless we admit and address the divisions amongst us they will never go away and we will spend our time cutting each other up. When you address the divisions you have an independent movement in which problems and experiences are recognised and tackled.

What’s behind your statement that ‘with women there is no separation between living and working?’

We work for 24 hours a day, do two-thirds of the world’s work but receive less than 10% of world income and own under 1% of world assets.

Work we do includes constant relationship building between sister and brother, father and infant and that requires hard, physical labour in which you give yourself away. That is the work of reproduction and in the Third World it also means growing the food and then processing it as the people you love need that food and this is the only way to get it to them.

When many western women’s organisations scoffed at participating in the UN Decade for Women (1975-85) you were heavily involved, why?

The idea that all government’s were meeting together to discuss women and we would not be there to influence them, to protest or to tell them we love them as we need something from them?  It’s absurd.

People with power can turn it down. Those without it or not much - we are not so delicate.  Women from third world countries walked and scrapped together bus fares to get to those conferences. In Kenya in 1985, women we met said ‘thank you for coming, because we work so hard and you will tell them about how hard our life is.’ We had to be there!

Our work also helped develop international links. These have proved essential in the subsequent development of the Global Women’s Strike network that seeks to gain recognition and payment for all caring work. Funds for this would be met by returning military spending to local communities.

Why was former Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere’s 1967 ‘Arusha Declaration’ republished for the first time in 2007?

Julius Nyerere based himself on the power of the people by using the traditional collectivity of African village life in a modern context. He sought to keep capitalist markets at bay whilst attacking poverty.  But he also honestly said the divisions between men and women were partially responsible for what was keeping the village poor. Women were not appreciated and men were often lazy.  Nyerere explained what his government was going to do to tackle corruption, which even President Chavez in Venezuela, who I admire, has not really organised against.

Arusha was a historic landmark document and we felt it was a tragedy that it was not available to even the Tanzanian people. That’s why we published it.