This Is What We Offer As British 'Justice'

I have just read about the appalling case of David Bryant, a 66-year-old retired fireman who was falsely accused of historical abuse by some compulsive liar called Danny Day (who has waived his right to anonymity, so I am free to name him). This opportunist is the latest to take advantage of the 'guilty until proven innocent' approach to justice which our once widely respected police force and judiciary have adopted since Jimmy Savile's death.

Mr. Bryant's nightmare is about as bad as it gets. For full details you can read the excellent account by Matthew Scott on his Barristerblogger website (click here).

Most right minded people will be shocked by what happened to Mr. Bryant. However, this appalling miscarriage of justice comes of little surprise to anyone who has first hand experience of being targeted by some greedy, lying misfit.

I have lost all faith in British justice with regard to historical abuse 'investigations'. Why? Because so little investigation takes place. The police start with an assumption of guilt and then set about fitting any 'evidence' they find to that end. Anything they come across which isn't compatible with their preconceived conclusions about what took place, they simply ignore.

Via their 'trawling' method in so called investigations they basically advertise for anybody who would like to add their own complaint to the ones they already have. In my case, they used a successful businessman, who is unhealthily obsessed by the whole tawdry topic, to advertise on their behalf. I quote from a Facebook page he controlled:

'Simon Warr's trial has been postponed until October 13th 2014 but the police have asked me to inform you that they are still open for statements.' 

And this is what we offer as British justice.

The police work hand-in-hand with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and yet the CPS was established in 1986 precisely to ensure innocent defendants could not be railroaded by the police into Court. Is it not too much to ask that the police operate independently of the prosecution and defence teams and investigate alleged crimes fairly and with a balanced, open mind?

Such is the police support, even encouragement, of a complainant that when they subsequently ascertain that the complainant was telling them a pack of lies, as happened in my own case, they cannot take steps to prosecute the liar without compromising themselves. So the liar gets off scot-free and almost always remains anonymous, despite the fact he or she has committed what can only be described as a most heinous crime.

Meanwhile the falsely accused, the target of their appalling lies, has his or her life - and certainly career - ruined forever. And this is what we offer as British justice.

I dread to think of the number of (usually) white, elderly, formerly prosperous men who are in prison or have served sentences for an historic crime, or crimes, of which they are innocent. What do we expect when even judges are failing to alert juries that they must never convict on prejudice alone, that real evidence is required? They rarely, if ever, tell juries that the complainants stand to get their hands on a substantial amount of money if they are believed, in most cases far more money than they could ever have dreamed of. Are we to think that tens of thousands of pounds in compensation money will never tempt some liar to make a false allegation? And all this is what we offer as British justice.

What the police cannot prove via quality evidence, i.e. proving the offence or offences actually took place, they make up for in quantity. And it doesn't matter a jot whether or not the various complainants have had ample opportunity to discuss between themselves details of what they are going to allege. Yet still these separate allegations, deriving from multiple complainants, are treated as if they are all uncontaminated and spontaneous. And this is what we offer as British justice.

Everyone wants to see those who abuse children, whether recently or many years ago, punished. But in their unintelligent, illogical modus operandi of automatically believing all complainants, the police are wasting valuable resources which should be being used to target real offenders. At the same time they are casting doubt in the minds of the public about the complaints of genuinely abused people who step forward. And this is not just in any society.

The NHS: the Case for Radical Surgery

The health service is in need of major surgery. I have rarely bothered my doctor during my adult life and I have tended to use the local pharmacist if I need some medical advice. This stated, I have recently been irritated by a cough which seems to have hung around much longer than usual and so I made a few abortive attempts to secure an appointment with a local G.P. I have been told there is a long waiting list - weeks to wait, indeed.

I grew up feeling immense pride that my country had an NHS, a glorious creation of post-war Britain that offered free health care for all. But, of course, it never has and never will be free. Its running has to be paid for by someone and that, of course, is every taxpayer.

With the growth of population and the increased number of those using it who make little or no contribution, coupled with those who use it as a result of their own totally irresponsible behaviour or lifestyles, mean that the NHS no longer functions properly and is unlikely to do so ever again. Its very structure means we will continue to pour billions of pounds into it and it will, nevertheless, always be short of funds. It has become unwieldy and is the one of the world's last communist-style organisations. Do you remember communism? It was based on good intentions but was always doomed to fail.

The NHS is totally and utterly anachronistic but no politician is prepared to address the issue for fear of the inevitable public backlash. A few years ago debt-ridden Hitchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire was taken over by a private firm. The outrage was immediate: 'this is the end of civilisation as we know it... shock/horror/ bloody Tories'.

Why can't we have some grown up discussions about the future of our failing NHS? Why can't we learn from the way our neighbours France, the Netherlands, Germany run their health services? These countries have combined public and private to create a more efficient, fairer system.

In France, for example, you have to pay 23 euros to visit the local doctor. Good. This would encourage people to stop wasting our GPs' time having to attend to superficial issues that could be dealt with by the local pharmacist. It would also stop people missing scheduled appointments. And why shouldn't a patient make a small contribution to professional help/advice?

In France everyone has to purchase health insurance, which means less income tax at source and might even encourage the sloths among us to eat and drink less. If everyone had to pay something towards their medical treatment it might well mean the greedy, selfish among us would follow a more responsible lifestyle.

NHS staff are overworked. Our waiting lists for operations may have shortened during the past decade but we have spent an absolute fortune achieving this and the lists are still much longer than those of our European counterparts.

Here in the UK we have the most nationalised health service in the developed world and, at the same time, one of the most inefficient. And yet, we carry on regardless.

The NHS was a marvellous - is a marvellous - idea in theory, but in practice it needs major surgery.

Brexit: The Big Issue

I participated in a TV debate on the topic of Brexit yesterday evening and, as is customary on these shows, there was a lot of anger being vented on air and a few people were being openly rude to each other as soon as the cameras stopped rolling. How on earth have we got ourselves worked up to such an extent about leaving our European partners and why are we so divided about the issue?

Alastair Stewart hosted the C5 debate 

Look no further for the genesis of the whole debacle than our erstwhile Prime Minister Tony Blair and his sidekick Gordon Brown. It was their policy, as soon as they took over the reins of government, not only to flood our country by permitting whoever wanted to come here to settle but also by actively encouraging as many migrants as possible to relocate to Britain. Just like his policy to invade Iraq was ill-thought through, so was his immigration policy.

Gordon Brown & Gillian Duffy

The UK has always had racists living among us but, overall, in my lifetime we have prided ourselves on being a tolerant, inclusive country. Blair/Brown couldn't see how trampling over all immigration rules would ultimately stretch tolerance levels and engineer the increased popularity of the politically far right. While they were in charge of the British government, the topic of immigration was out of bounds among New Labour ministers and we citizens were fed the impression that even to discuss the topic suggested racism. How utterly puerile (remember Gordon Brown referring to Gillian Duffy as a 'bigot' because she had the temerity to bring up the subject).

The vast majority of the Brexit voters based their decision upon their frustration at the speed of immigration with which this small island has had to cope during the past eighteen years, some towns having their population almost doubled.

We are now paying the price because, as a protest, many have voted for leaving Europe and my bet is levels of immigration will be unaffected and the topic will continue to dominate the political agenda just as much as it has been doing. Meanwhile, as we all argue and throw insults among ourselves, Tony Blair will continue to make himself richer.

Thoughts on Sir Cliff Richard

I imagine there are few people in this country of ours who do not feel sorry for Sir Cliff Richard. Ever since the police raided his home, in the glare of maximum publicity, in August 2014, he has been living under a dark shadow, doubtless uneasy in mind, angry, frustrated. Although he was never arrested, he was under police investigation, with its concomitant daily anxiety and endured all the misery of the media circus, for nearly two years before being informed that no charges were to be brought against him.

I have first-hand experience of what a lengthy bail term feels like as I had to endure 762 days of it during 2013-2014, only then to receive an immediate and unanimous acquittal by a jury. When you have been falsely accused, such allegations are the first thing that you think about when you wake up in the morning and the last thing on your mind at night before you, eventually, fall asleep.

The whole experience is tortuous. While on bail, not only do you have to consider the worst of all possible outcomes, you also have to deal with the poison which is spat in your direction on a regular basis from the online untutored mob, many of whom have never met you and for whom any allegation means certain guilt. Being accused of child abuse is a particularly challenging experience and elicits the most appalling lies and insults via social media, just when you are feeling at your lowest.

No one accused of a crime, particularly alleged child abuse, should have his or her name made public until that person is at least charged with an offence, although there are those who feel someone should keep anonymity until a guilty verdict is announced in a court. I feel this particularly applies to famous people like Sir Cliff, because, with the present preposterous system of handing out vast quantities of cash to any malicious opportunist (and there many) who claim to have been abused, these celebrities are like sitting ducks. If we are to pay out compensation money, it should go straight to the medical professional who has been called in to help the victim. This would ensure that only the genuinely abused come forward.

Even if you are found not guilty, or charges are dropped, the internet search engines will be most reluctant to remove the references to groundless allegations that have been made or, at the very at least, agree to replace earlier negative coverage of a case with news that the person has been acquitted by a jury after all the evidence has been heard or that no further action is to be taken. So much for the right to be 'forgotten', even when your name has been cleared in court.

Once you have been the innocent victim of a false allegation, it is like being branded on your forehead for the rest of your life. The reputation of one of this country's finest entertainers has been tarnished forever and it is a modern day disgrace. I wish Sir Cliff every success with his ongoing civil action against those authorities and institutions that have made his terrible ordeal so much worse.

A Teacher's Report

Dear Mr and Mrs Parent, (I apologise if I am being presumptuous:  it could of course be Mr and Mr/Mrs and Mrs/Ms and Ms or even Miss and Miss),

Anyway, I'm sorry I was unable to see you both at the meeting last week - a colleague told me you became very frustrated that you had to wait in the queue for so long. The parents before you were admonishing me for having marked their daughter's class work in red ink. They told me that it had been tantamount to an assault on her self esteem and she had been sleeping uneasily on account of it ever since. They refused to accept my apologies and kept telling me, in no uncertain terms, as no doubt you could hear from where you were standing, that I should have known that red ink is strictly verboten in modern day schools and that, basically, my insensitivity was partly responsible for the fact that their daughter had suddenly become disillusioned with her schooling and was staying out late at night, instead of doing her home work. Once again, my apologies that you felt it necessary to make a premature exit, evidently irritated, judging by what I was told you shouted in my direction.

I do find these meetings frustrating at times - I mean, what I am I supposed to say to a parent whose opening gambit is: 'Why does she have to learn French anyway?  We never go there and, besides, everybody speaks English.' No wonder some of the children, sorry, young adults, in the class are reluctant to do any work.

Let me give you some details about your son and his progress this term:

I teach him only one subject, French, which I'm surprised he opted for, as young adults usually go for the 'soft' subjects these days, which present them with only a modest challenge . As our industrial competitors are churning out multi-lingual physicists and chemists year upon year, here in the UK we seem to concentrate on the 'lightweight' subjects, which prospective employers neither need nor want, but which, with the minimum fuss, work or brainpower, the young adults have a good chance of passing at GCSE. (The more passes at GCSE, the higher the school is in the league tables, hence schools discouraging their young adults from choosing rigorous courses).

Anyway, I see your son three times a week, as part of a heterogeneous (mixed ability) group, for 50 minutes at a time. As there are 29 other young adults in the class, this means that, if I did nothing else during lessons, I could spend about five minutes per week with him as an individual, to teach him, sorry, facilitate his learning, and, very important I am led to believe by those in the know, to understand him as a young adult. But, as you are no doubt aware, there are some young adults in his class who demand much more of the teacher's time, due to the fact that they have never had any proper behavioural boundaries set for them at home, and they have not yet been diagnosed with ADHD, at which point we can resort to a daily pill, prescribed by the local doctor, to keep them compliant. This inevitably means that some young adults will be left with none of my time at all and, unfortunately, that applies to your son.

I'll be honest, I can't recall the last time I  spoke to him but I know which boy he is because he regularly chews gum during my lessons. At least he doesn't use his mobile phone to send text messages to others in the room as I'm teaching, sorry, facilitating learning, which a number of his friends do. When I and a number of my colleagues suggested these 'phones should be banned from school classrooms, we were told by management that the young adults needed them in case there was an emergency at home and, besides, we should be considering ways in which mobiles could be used as part of the teaching and learning process. Mobiles, we were told, could be an important part of their 'virtual learning environment' (whatever this means).

Accordingly, it is difficult for me to offer any honest and accurate assessment of your son's progress, or, for that matter, of many others in his class, which is why at parents' evenings I usually opt for vague generalities and try to avoid names, because I'm likely to have forgotten them. (On one occasion, at last term's meeting, I had absolutely no idea which young adult's parents I was talking to but managed to bluff my way through to the end).

I teach twenty five lessons a week. Despite my best intentions, some of these lessons are pretty tedious, as to plan a perfect lesson can take hours. There are just not enough hours in the day to do this for every lesson I teach. If I'm told a member of the school management team is to observe me, I ensure that my benchmark grades are clear, my lesson plan is thorough and that my teaching is totally inclusive. No matter how well I feel the lesson has gone, there's always some criticism - last time I was told I hadn't done enough 'paired work'.

Schools these days are full of middle-management types. They tell us regularly that all the young adults have to be totally clear about their "learning objectives" and all we teachers have to plan precisely for each young adult's individual needs. It's called ''differentiation''.They believe that learning simply cannot take place unless every young adults' needs have been catered for.

What one might consider real work -  vocab and grammar tests, answering unprepared oral questions in the foreign, sorry, target language, executing prose translations and writing 300 word essays in the 'target' language  - these are all considered hopelessly old-fashioned and bordering on young adult abuse. Instead, they like almost anything involving interactive whiteboards, scissors and glue and answering 'bitesize' questions that have been given to them a week beforehand. And, of course, at the top of the list - the powerpoint presentation - vital in the encouragement of 'cooperative learning'. When computers arrived in the classroom 15 years ago, they were to be the panacea in education. We were told that standards would soar. A decade and a half on and we are still waiting, despite each young adult now in possession of a laptop.

This doesn't restrain the technological bullies: if this lot had their way, we human learning facilitators would become surplus to requirements, so the young adults, after staring at a screen at home until the early hours, could carry on doing so as soon as they arrived at school. The techno bullies think that young adults should be permanently ''plugged in''. The idea that this may be an assault on their brains is to think the unthinkable in modern British schools. The result so far is your son, like the vast majority of his contemporaries, is digitally fluent but has serious difficulties coping with even basic speaking, reading and writing in French (and, so I am led to believe from a colleague, in English as well).

Many in this class, and I see no reason why this doesn't apply to your son, are of the firm opinion that anything that isn't fun is not worth learning, which is backed up by management, who seem to think we learning facilitators are equivalent to circus performers. We are told, if the young adults misbehave, it is our fault because we have not made the lesson entertaining enough.That's why I show your son's class lots of films from YouTube. As long as it has a tenuous connection with France, or the French culture, I can get away with it.

All work for young adults needs to be 'scaffolded', i.e. done for them. The very notion of giving a young adult a task they might fail is considered another example of young adult abuse. Every task must be able to be completed within about ten minutes and we can't even mark the young adults' work without recourse to a prescribed formula.

As far as lesson plans are concerned, we learning facilitators are no longer able to stretch the young adults' minds, instead we must adhere to a specific exam-oriented formula (with about 70 exams per young adult in year 11, we spend only a modicum of time feeding their minds but, instead, are constantly weighing them, if you understand the analogy).

I am sorry to inform you that, having hardly spoken to your son this year, when he returns to school in January, he'll be attending class only on rare occasions because all young adults in year 11 spend practically all school time in the exam hall during their final two terms. Part of the reason I have had little to do with your son in the scheme of things is because he is not in the GAT (gifted and talented) group, nor does he have EBD (emotional and behavioural difficulties) nor does he have SEN (special educational needs).

This endless use of acronyms (actually, it has just occurred to me an acronym has to spell out an actual word, not that any teacher under the age of 50 would know this because grammar hasn't been taught in schools since the 1970s)....this endless use of 'initials' is another obsession in modern day schools - we are deluged by them - AFL (assessment for learning, whereby in a History lesson, for example, instead of taking 5 minutes to give the young adults the principal details appertaining to the Battle of Waterloo, there now has to be some sort of dramatic re-enactment of the event); LSA (Learning Support Assistant); BESD (behavioural, educational and social difficulties); ADD (attention deficit disorder - an acronym!), plus its offshoot ADHD; EAL (English as an added language) and ECM, which stands for 'every child matters'. Yuk! Oh, and I nearly forgot, TUP, i.e. 'Thumbs Up Plenaries', whereby at the end of each lesson the young adults acknowledge whether or not the lesson objectives have been achieved by the use of their thumbs pointing up or down.

There is no point complaining about any of this because any teacher who dares to put his head above the parapet is accused of ''breaching protocol'' and would have to face the consequences. Even if that teacher is a particularly effective one, this cuts no ice. Indeed, I often wonder whether it'd been better had I been useless throughout my career because, this being the case, the school would by now be offering me early retirement, affording me a generous lump sum and subsequent healthy pension. I recently met one of my ex-colleagues, generally regarded as inept in the classroom throughout his undistinguished career, who told me he was now teaching only three days a week at a local junior school but, with his generous pay-off from us, supplemented by his pension, he was taking home more money than when he was working full time.

I digress. I apologise if I seem a bit of a curmudgeon but, having been working in schools for more than three decades, I'm finding it difficult to reconcile myself to the myriad initiatives which flood my life as a modern day learning facilitator. Common sense and trust in face-to-face communication are being forced out of the profession. As playwright G.B. Shaw once stated: 'common sense is not so common' and, as for communication, it must ALL be done electronically nowadays.

The status quo is just fine for a lot of middle and senior management: it allows them to wield power, justify inflated salaries and be recognised by their peers as being "outstanding" teachers (even though they rarely stand in front of a class, being too busy in their cosy offices with their one-to-one interviews).  Never mind. They never really liked teaching children, sorry, young adults, that much anyway.

To sum up, your son is making satisfactory progress, I think. My report is principally based on the fact he rarely comes to my attention.

Yours,
Simon Warr, M.A.

P.S. Would you forbid him from bringing gum to school? I did mention this to my young Head of Department and he told me it could be a cry for help.