I am a journalist, writer and broadcaster ... lately I've been concentrating on music, I spent many years as a music critic and a travel writer ... I gave up my last editorship a while ago and started concentrating on my blog. I was also asked to join AirTV International as a co host of a new show called Postcard ...
Fear and loathing in the world of parental alienation … those of us who can be toxic
Do you see yourself as bad-ass or are you in reality just really toxic?
I came across this human behaviour quiz from smiley California, where people like to say ‘life’s a beach – not a bitch’.
And the quiz made me realise that not only have I met every one of the types of people identified in it – I might have been them all too at some stage!
Truity.com created the Toxic Persons Test to ask the question should we be avoiding them! Or avoiding – even in our most stressed moments – being like them.
And let’s face it, if you are trapped inside the secretive, bullying, cruel and authoritarian world of parental alienation then you need all the tools to, well, recognise the ‘tools’ who are winding us up and making our lives a misery.
The test reveals your key traits and compares them with commonly loathed archetypes that exemplify these toxic traits.
Molly Owens, a former therapist who is the CEO of Truity, said: “Analysing your traits in three key areas of neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness, can help you understand what toxic behaviours you might be inflicting on the world.
She said: “We all possess some of these traits — we’re all a little bit toxic sometimes. It is important to note that all personality traits are on a spectrum, and toxic behaviour results from taking a particular trait to its extreme.”
These are the seven main types of toxic people the researchers discovered…
The Karen
Entitled people, also known as Karens, want special treatment and become aggressive when it doesn’t appear.
Karens believe themselves to be more deserving than others and demand special treatment rather than going along with the crowd. Toxic traits: Entitled, believing oneself to be deserving of special attention and superior treatment. Reactive; aggressive and angry and needy.
The Mansplainer
Arrogant people believe themselves to be intellectually superior to others.
Annoying traits, arrogant, over-confident with few credentials, assumes others are inferior and uneducated, judgmental, often “dropping knowledge” on topics they have no real idea about on people.
The Drama Llama
Dramatic people, also known as Drama Llamas, demand attention to their volatile emotions.
Dramatic, demanding attention and support from others beyond normal boundaries. Reacting with outsize emotions — needy, reactive, manipulative.
The Slacker
Lazy people, also known as Slackers, refuse to do their part.
Lazy, unwilling to exert effort to care for self or contribute to the group.
The Con Artist
Manipulative people, also known as Con Artists, use deception and dishonesty to get ahead.
Manipulative, attempting to influence and deceive others to achieve favourable outcomes for oneself; deceitful; self-interested.
The Debbie Downer
Negative people, also known as Debbie Downers, drag others down with their pessimism.
Relentlessly negative — seeing the worst aspects of every situation.
The Control Freak
Control Freaks try to impose their own inflexible ideas about right and wrong.
They believe in a single right way to do things, and insisting others comply with it.
Wow! I have seen little bits of me in many of those categories! How about you? Be honest …
Bob Dylan is the coolest man in the world, right? I think most of his fans will agree.
But we will also have to accept that not everybody sees him in that way, including my 90-year-old mother who still maintains after half a century that she can’t stand his ‘trilling’…
And as if to add injury to a personal slight, Odyssey, that hip online lifestyle magazine, for instance, put Morgan Freeman – a very cool dude indeed – at the top of its cool list.
Now, I think many of us could live with that, out of respect for Morgan if nothing else. He’s a forces vet who is, at 84, Dylan’s elder after all.
Then they put Brad Pitt at number 6. Fair enough. After all he is so cool that he did once dress up as a giant chicken to advertise, ‘el Pollo Loco’.
And he turned down a role in Apollo 13 to be in Se7en
AND was engaged to Gwyneth Paltrow
AND has been banned from visiting China because of Seven Years in Tibet.
But who the hell bent it for squeaky voiced, tattoo totem pole David Beckham? He got in at number 3 somehow.
And while we’re at it, who the hell is Kobe Bryant?
He’s classed as the 9th coolest man on earth.. and Odyssey describes him as the ‘realest’ man in the world!
WHAT?
Well, like Spartacus I stand up and shout: “No! I am the ‘realest’ man in the world!”
And, as I shout with pride, I’m joined by millions of others who have just as much right to mash the English language and blow their own trumpets…
No!, they cry! I am the ‘realest’ man in the world!
In fact Bob Dylan didn’t get a look in at all on this Odyssey cool list! He was left out in the cold, you might say.
And yet, at 80, Bob is so hot that he is really really cool – here is some factual evidence:
He once traded a priceless Andy Warhol painting for a couch
He has both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize under his belt
He predicted his appearance in a Victoria’s Secret commercial 40 years before it happened
He’s toured with everyone from Paul Simon (not cool as far as I’m concerned) to the Foo Fighters (quite cool)
Yep, way back in 2004, Bob Dylan appeared in a Victoria’s Secret commercial with model Adriana Lima. The ad used “Love Sick,” as Lima and Dylan explored the streets and canals of Venice.
Spookily, in an interview from the mid-1960s when asked what product might entice him to sell out, Dylan replied, “Ladies’ undergarments.”
Naughty Bob!
Then in 2018 his Royal Bob-ness showed a flash of anger at audience members who were constantly snapping him and the band.He stopped singing Blowing in the Wind to berate them with: “Take pictures or don’t take pictures, we can either play or we can pose, OK?”
He stood still for several seconds cynically posing for the crowd while the band pointed at offenders.
It was definitely a case of Mr Cool, Mr Right, Mr That Told Him… but then it all went a bit t*ts up for him.
We’ve all been through it, haven’t we? We’ve all done it, made our point, stood on our dignity and immediately slid right off it!
Have you seen dignity?
Well, Bob did one of his famous tip-toe walks, and tripped backwards over a guitar amp. It looked for an agonising second that he was going to hit the deck – a band mate reached out to grab him.
But Bob recovered, regained his feet, patted his hair and carried on like nothing had happened.
What a super trooper!
Plenty of people still describe Bob as ‘the joker man’ – a label he acquired right at the beginning of his career when he was pulling Chaplain-style comedy stunts on stage, in photos and scraps of film. He was good at it and has retained his sense of humour across parts of two centuries.
Bob is a funny man. Everybody says so.
But it was no joke when he met the Pope. He tripped up the steps as the Pope waited to greet him.
Bob was wearing his best Hank Williams outfit, resplendent in big boots and Stetson. The Pope waited in his white dress and best Pope regalia at the top of the stairs.
Some high-end ring kissing was only a few steps away when Bob stumbled and nearly fell.
Again.
Quickly, as befits the world’s coolest man, he recovered with aplomb, whipped off his Stetson in reverence and the two prophets came face to face.
John Paul told Italian Catholics that the answer was indeed “in the wind” — but not in the wind that blew things away, rather “in the wind of the spirit” that would lead them to Christ.
Now that’s cool!
So, let’s give Bob massive applause for the decades of unbelievable music, lyrics, singing, theatre, performing art, literature, poetry, prose, paintings, sketches, wrought iron gates, whisky, laughter and joy…
Here is one of the greatest artists of all time good-naturedly clapping along with his audience in Madrid in 2018 to Desolation Row.
Senior judges are investigating after a dad of three was anonymously sentenced to prison in a battle over his children.
Now his hearing – deep in the sinister bowels of the Family Court system – has been highlighted as a return of the ‘hanging’ judges who are willing to ‘secretly’ take away a parents name and claim it is to protect the children.
The 15-month suspended sentence was handed down to the nameless father despite rules saying that judges they should never give prison or suspended terms without naming the individual.
The judgement came after the man repeatedly defied orders to stop trying to make contact with his sons.
Open justice campaigners have criticised the decision and senior judges launched an inquiry into the suppression of the father’s name.
The ruling by Judge Gillian Matthews QC is said to be against open justice rules from eight years ago that say no adult should be handed a prison sentence in the family courts without being publicly named.
The order that family courts and the linked Court of Protection should stop sending adults to jail in secret was laid down in 2013 after the case of Wanda Maddocks – a woman sentenced to jail anonymously after she tried to remove her father from a care home where she thought he was in danger.
Judge Matthews identified the father only as JE and her ruling is headed: ‘Anonymisation applies.’
She said the ‘judgment was delivered in private,’ and that ‘the anonymity of the children and members of their family must be strictly preserved’.
Officials said Judge Matthews’ decision would be removed from the published roll of court rulings until she had explained why the sentencing was anonymous.
When I first heard about the plight of Joe ‘Hurricane’ Dore, the bisexual hero and storekeeper of a little Texas alligator town, I was fascinated.
After all Texas is ranked as one of the worst US states for LGBTQ equality.
And Joe’s story had come to light just a few weeks after Donald Trump had moved to roll back government-funded health and welfare protection for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.
In the Lone Star State, where he has massive support, laws are described as barely meeting basic standards of equality.
So, Joe’s tale – extraordinary in so many ways – was obviously one worth telling. The Big Guys are standing up for the little guy.
It was a timely and positive story.
Its tabloid bones were simple too: The men and women of a town so tough they take hurricanes on the chin and turn alligators into sausages, were standing up for a store keeper who is glad to be gay.
But it didn’t go down that way all over town…
This is what my original story said: “People in an old Texas railway town claim their local ‘dollar’ store manager – a hurricane hero – has lost his job because of a candy bar competition.
Affable Joe Dore, a diminutive man in his early 60s, who spends his free time rescuing animals from the side of the old state Highway 24, lives with his pet cat, Dash, 30 miles away.
But he has worked at what used to be described as the old ‘five and dime’ for more than three decades.
And the store is still a five and dime in everything but name, selling just about anything you might need at a knock-down price.
Despite being bisexual – a life-style many of the Trump voters in the Lone Star State disagree with – Joe has won massive respect from them and other residents of Winnie.”
And that’s when certain member of the community of Winnie and its environs turned on me. The emails came flooding in, including this one saying: “u a very low person to turn this into something its not. u using joe’s story to cause more hate to Trump supporters. and that sir makes u worst then family dollar.that sir make u only using joe for ur on benifit.”
Those fifty miss-spelt and inarticulate words seemed to confirm my idea about the red-neck state where the women look like men except for their hair curlers and the men are all crocodile wrestlers who drive camo-ed Chevy Suburbans with Trump bumper stickers and Ted Nugent blaring through their open sun roofs.
But my impression was wrong.
A few days ago I was told that the battle for Joe to be treated fairly by his former employer is still going on with passion and heart.
In fact locals claim they are still boycotting the Dollar Tree store … and say ‘by taking Mr. Joe away from us, they took the heart of the Winnie community away too’.
One Winnian wrote to The Society saying: “They can fire someone like Mr Joe who always helped the community and it will not make any difference to them because they don’t live in Winnie.”
Despite this, Joe has told people his new job is much less stressful and that he’s happy. But he still wants to be a part of the Winnie community, even though lives 30 miles away.
Winnie is a small township which had high hopes when it was created by the railways way back in 1895.
Sadly it failed as a railway town and fell victim for decades to floods and hurricanes. And alligators in the marshes.
And it was here in this woebegone by-water that Joe took on the mantel of a super-hero.
Hurricane Joe.
It was well-deserved … for decades, come hell and high water, as the winds howled and the rains whipped, homes were trashed and crops decimated, Joe often single-handedly kept the dollar store open day and night.
People in boats and canoes trusted he would be there so they could collect everything from bottled water to life-saving equipment while hurricanes like Imelda and Ike ripped through the township.
Alligator farms suffered too. Marshes that held tens of thousands of alligators have at times been left all but devoid of them.
Hurricane Ike, for instance, pushed a 20 feet deep wall of saltwater 15 miles inland killing thousands of alligators that lived there.
Despite all this elemental horror though, Winnie still today keeps a semblance of small town dignity, hosting the Texas Rice Festival every first weekend in October. And there is a local beauty pageant too.
And the Dollar stores had retained their own quaint ways. One of them still is the Candy Bar Competition, a store-to-store ‘war’ to see who can sell most candy bars. Joe’s store had won the promotion a number of times over the years.
But it is claimed by locals there was some misunderstanding about it a few weeks ago and ultimately that’s why Joe no longer works in the job he loved.
Dollartree bosses have refused to comment on the situation, saying they are protecting Joe’s privacy.
But, despite the attitude adopted by Dollar Tree, the story is anything but private. Locals say they will continue to boycott the store until Joe gets ‘justice’..
And with that same true grit that keeps them living in this alligator-ridden area they have been getting together to hold regular protests outside the ‘dollar’ store in the horse-shoe like commercial centre of town.
Recently local writer SC Bryson wrote about what she believes has happened exclusively for The Society.
We also have recordings of Joe telling his own story which we hope to publish next week…
Sue tells the story: “The sixth day of June is a significant World War 11 anniversary. This significant day reminds us of once-in-a-lifetime sacrifice!
Southeast Texas seems to have no connection to that era, those brave people on their noble yet doomed missions. But there certainly is a vital connection…
Service and Sacrifice.
Joe Doré received a termination notice after a stellar career with this retail establishment. Many days have passed since this unexpected and unwelcome event. Winnie, Texas, was the location of this unfathomable occurrence for Joe Doré was, is, and always will be a real hero of this little town.
This is Hurricane Joe’s heroic tale.
Joe Doré was born in August, 1957. He looks like an ordinary discount store manager but no one can see his invisible Superman attire beneath his work clothes. His apartment is his sanctuary from the hard work that occurs everyday at Family Dollar/Dollar Tree.
He is modest, intelligent, hard-working, compassionate, knowledgeable, honest and friendly. He knows every local customer’s name, and often, those of their family members. He has worked for this company for nearly thirty years.
The store is a success because of him, and the employees that he trained, guided and nurtured. He created a loyal base of dedicated customers too.
We all love him.
His customers call him Mr. Joe or Uncle Joe. People could buy necessary items from other establishments, and from online stores, but they would not receive genuine Texas hospitality and concern.
Joe also rescues turtles and wild birds from impending death, and he would do so much more.
But he is totally dedicated to the Winnie and Stowell customers who regularly shop at his store.
He continued serving these small communities while he battled cancer and diabetes.
Hurricanes are devastating natural disasters. Residents stay glued to their television sets, computer screens and smartphones as they try to forecast which direction, and what dot on the map, the swirling white mass, on millions of screens around Southeast Texas, has decided to plunder.
Mandatory evacuations are issued after the professional prognosticators have all come to agreement. People hastily gather necessary provisions and lots of money, and then they flee.
But some brave souls steadfastly guard their plots of Texas soil, and everything on it. Joe Doré is one of those individuals who choose to face Death, without blinking. And he has done it many times in recent years.
He smiles as he provides the local citizenry with bottled water, canned goods, cleaning supplies and other commodities that are crucial hurricane survival tools. His heroic presence is quite calming. This store manager is not a newbie. He has been an outstanding leader for nearly thirty years.
This remarkable manager guided his store through very unsettling times. Family Dollar was open during multiple hurricanes and tropical storms that caused as much devastation as a hurricane would have meted out. This venerable store manager carried on with routine business, in the dark, while the store utilized generators. The competitors were closed up, and their employees had evacuated.
Mr. Joe did not leave his customers in dire straits. Autumn of 2019 brought national attention to Winnie, Texas. 80% of this town flooded, but people could still purchase their necessary supplies although their means of transportation changed from cars and trucks to boats and speed boats.
Joe Doré won two very significant awards during his long tenure. He received the Store Manager of the Year award for Region One which represents approximately 800 stores. He also received The Chairman’s Award from Mr. Howard Levine, the owner of the Family Dollar stores.
He spent nearly every waking moment…building this Family Dollar store into a genuine small town success story.
Why did he have to move on?
This Hurricane Hero now needs his own hero!! Well, lots of them.”
And his has them in the often water-logged town of Winnie and maybe what has happened there is something which other people in the America can take on board to unite the States.
Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas, said: “Texas has a way to go to secure basic equality for LGBTQ+ people. Although 70 percent of Texans believe that discrimination against LGBTQ+ people is wrong, many are not aware that their LGBTQ+ neighbours can be refused housing or denied public accommodation simply because of who we are.”
Let’s take a lead from an unknown alligator town where the winds blow high and help us all to become equal.
Thank you Sue and also Gracie who helped us research some of the issues in the story.
If you see him don’t be a stranger – he’s not behind the door at coming forward himself.
And in fact he was part of the world’s first cyber Covid-lockdown band just over six months ago!
Now everybody, including Dylan, is following him – and the other Pauls!
Yep, four strangers named Paul O’Sullivan from across the world are now rocking all over the internet.
And this year Paul and his mates released their first album.
Not in any particular order, one Paul O’Sullivan is from Baltimore (USA), a second is from Pennsylvania (US) and another Paul is from Rotterdam (Netherlands).
And then of course there’s our Paul!
Recognise him yet?
This group of Paul O’Sullivans ended up becoming best mates after meeting on Facebook.
Paul from Baltimore said: “One night, I was kind of just indiscriminately adding Paul O’Sullivans on Facebook and a good amount of them accepted my friend requests. Eventually, their stuff started showing up in my news feed. And I was like, ‘Wait a minute, we’re all musicians.’ ”
Eventually the Pauls decided to form a group and called it ‘The Paul O’Sullivan Band’.
Pennsylvania Paul is on drums etc, Baltimore Paul and Rotterdam Paul are on guitar and vocals.
And our Paul is on bass.
He has said: “In this world, sometimes you think everything’s been done. Particularly with the internet, everything’s been covered, everything’s been done. Well actually, this felt like a first. And it still feels like a first.”
Last year they put out a single and when the world went on into lockdown becauser of COVID-19 they to record a remote album.
If you see Paul say hello and tell him to get in touch with Leigh at the leighgbankspreservationsociety.blog, we’d like to chat with him!
Claudia Levy, the once-blonde bombshell who tried to blow a hole in Dylan’s sale of his songs, has earned quite a bit of celebrity off him over the years.
She was pictured at the launch of Scorese’s bleary Rolling Thunder fantasy film, for instance.
She also did an interview with Ray Padgett in Flagging Down the Double E’s.
It read, in parts, like a mash-up of Tangled Up in Blue and Highlands … “I first met Jacques in the grocery store. I don’t know why I gave him my phone number.
“I met Bob in the Dante Café, where I was working as a waitress … I said, “You look very familiar to me. Are you a dancer?” … I could see he was writing and it looked to me like he writing poetry or something … so I said, “Oh, are you a poet”? He said, “Well, I like to write.”
She drops names like fame bombs too… Allen Ginsberg, Jack Elliott, Abbie Hoffman, Joan Baez, the list goes on. And it’s all absolute fact I’m sure, just as she admits ‘The thing is, I was basically quite extraneous. I just watched everybody more than anything. I was having the time of my life’.
And what a fabulous time it all was for Claudia, just as it would have been for anybody who got the chance to jump on Bob’s almost psychedelic bus and dance and pose and sing and create theatre and film and music and poetry along with some of the most avant-garde names of the mid-mad 1970s.
I know many people disagree with me, but I found Rolling Thunder by Scorsese – one of my favourite film-makers – a bit misleading to say the least. People say I didn’t get the joke… and maybe I didn’t.
But the film does not really tell you what it was like for people like Claudia and the crew, hangers-on and ‘helpers’. The footage for instance is attributed to a rather angry film-maker who in reality is Martin Von Haselberg, husband of Bette Midler.
And, some say, Martin was actually playing the part of Jacques Levy whose influence on the tour was massive and included filming!
Then there is, of course, a politician who turns out to be the actor Michael Murphy.
Then Sharon Stone claims to have burst into tears when she realised that Bob’s Just Like a Woman was not based on her.
All I can see is that these non-people, misleading characters and bitter-sweet fantasies were ham-fisted attempts to capture Dylan’s mystical use of masks and white faces on this strange-days tour.
But what masked the real reason for Claudia to go after seven million of Bob’s $300m back catalogue? Was it the mask of greed? Opportunism? Or a genuine belief that Jacque’s estate was owed that money?
I’m sure it has to be the last one.
However, In January of this year, Dylan lawyer, Orin Snyder, called the Levy lawsuit ‘a sad attempt to unfairly profit off of the recent catalogue sale’.
“The plaintiffs have been paid everything they are owed,” Snyder said. “We are confident that we will prevail. And when we do, we will hold plaintiffs and their counsel responsible for bringing this meritless case.”
It is certainly true that when Bob was having writer’s block in the 70s he enlisted Jacques to help out. Until then Jacques had mainly been famous for directing the New York production of Oh! Calcutta! British drama critic Kenneth Tynan’s sex-mad review of everything a bit below the belt, so to speak.
Jacques had done the rounds and certainly wasn’t short of money. He’d earned a few million for sure.
He died in 2004 and an obituary in the UK Guardian newspaper had this to say, “much of Desire’s success lay in the interplay between Dylan and Levy and since then Dylan and his musicians have often reworked Levy’s contribution. In 1975, Levy effectively stage-managed Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue.”
But a few days ago the desire for a bit more dosh floundered: A judge in New York ruled in Bob’s favour.
Judge Barry Ostrager of the Supreme Court said the agreement drafted between Dylan and Levy in 1975 made it clear that he was not a participant in ownership of the material, and that his profit participation would consist of a share of songwriting royalties.
The court noted that Levy’s estate has continued to receive royalties from the co-written songs, before and after Dylan’s catalogue sale with no ownership conferred.
Ostrager quoted from the ’75 agreement, which describes Levy as an “employee-for-hire” as a lyricist — noting that the word “employee” was used for Levy “approximately 84 times” in the contract.
“We’re pleased with the decision,” Dylan’s attorney, Orin Snyder, said. “As we said when the case was filed, this lawsuit was a sad attempt to profit off the recent catalogue sale. We’re glad it’s now over.”
And so, what was a grand collaboration – between one of the world’s greatest artists and one of not such grand reputation but certainly of dignity, style and ability – has been tarnished by unnecessary exposure to the iron will and steel of America’s judicial system.
And a woman who certainly had quite a lot has been shown in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t have it all.
CMS has got us in its sights, making us homeless and even driving us to suicide, claims Bosnia vet
A former soldier has been waging a 11 year private war against the UK’s child maintenance service.
He claims forces people are constantly in the CMS sights because they are easy targets.
And their treatment by the agency is literally driving some of them on to the streets and sadly in to mental break-downs.
Former Para Craig Bulman (main picture) says the child support authorities destroyed his own life. Now he fights cheek by jowl with war heroes who are also being driven over the edge.
He says he can prove that many of his former colleagues are being made homeless as the CMS ‘steals’ their houses to pay ‘fictitious’ arrears.
The ex Red Devil who survived action in Bosnia and Northern Ireland said: “Post traumatic stress disorder used to be something you saw in battle fields but now squaddies and ex forces people are becoming victims of it at the social care offices.
“I left the army due to the shocking treatment I was getting off the CSA and a nasty divorce I was going through. The CSA had interfered in a private arrangement my first ex-wife and I had between us.
“She wanted to continue with our private arrangement and my children were financially worse off when the CSA got themselves involved.”
And Liberal Democrat Defence Spokesman Jamie Stone agrees with Craig saying the Government should be making it easier for veterans, service personnel, and their families to connect. There should be readily available access mental health care for them too.
He said: “Veterans are struggling to access vital mental health support. We are letting them down.”
Mr Stone then related the story of army vet, Mark Lister. Mark is a Combat Stress volunteer in the Highlands who served as a Forward Observer in the Royal Artillery for eighteen years.
He told the MP that one of the things that stood out was the stark difference between combat trauma experienced by a soldeir and trauma experienced by a civilian.
Mark said: “Only a veteran is going to know how to help another veteran. We don’t want to have to explain the ins and outs of the Gulf geography. We don’t want to go through explaining all that. We just want to speak about our trauma with someone who gets what it’s like.”
Craig Bulman said: “We should be getting right behind this, finally we have proof of what’s been said for a decade.”
And Craig welcomed what he described as a positive response from the director of a Catholic mental health project.
Ben Bano, director of Welcome Me As I Am, insisted that those who have served in the army, as well as those currently serving, are at a higher risk of mental health issues.
Ben said: “The lack of resources to address the mental health issues of armed services personnel and veterans is of particular concern. Mental health issues are often complex and manifest themselves for years after the experience of traumatic episodes.”
The number of suicides among those in the UK armed forces has steadily risen in recent years, according to Craig.
Ministry of Defence statistics show that just one person took their own life in 2014, However, nine killed themselves in 2017. There were five suicides in 2018.
At the same time, Craig says, two out of four MoD mental health centres were rated as inadequate or needing improvement by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) between April 2017 and January 2019.
A report published sometime ago by MPs on the Commons Defence Committee said it was a ‘scandal’ that the NHS budget of more than £150 billion earmarked less than £10 million to veteran-specific mental health services
Another child maintenance campaigner told the Preservation Society: “Any individual working for the CSA or CMS and DWP – and any MP linked to these organisations – need to be held accountable in court for these people and families.
“A new Freedom of Information request needs to go in and MPs need to be asked an updated question – what are the latest figures.
“A public enquiry needs to be held as soon as possible, before more suffer at these organised failures.”
Craig sees the armed forces as easy targets … he said: “I guess the armed forces do have a high divorce rate due to the operational tours during the Bosnia campaign regiments were doing back to back tours so this was putting a strain on marriages. “The thing which is disturbing in the armed forces we are often exposed to dangerous situations and if your mind is not focused on the job then you are a liability.”
However, another study says that two in five parents are still failing to pay their ex-partners.
The charity Gingerbread, which supports single-parent families, says that payments can lift single-parent families out of poverty and it is “simply not acceptable” that more than 100,000 children nationally are not receiving maintenance.
The CMS is supposed to take money directly from these parents’ earnings or their bank account if they try to avoid payments, and can eventually take them to court.
Across Great Britain, 33 per cent of the 139,300 parents who had to pay through the Collect and Pay scheme failed to pay their child maintenance. Recently this figure stood at 38 per cent.
A spokesperson from the Department of Work and Pensions said that: “We’re committed to improving the way CMS works and we have new powers to tackle people who don’t pay what they owe.
“Every day we use civil enforcement action to secure payments on behalf of children and the amount being arranged is up 20 per cent over the past year.
“We’re also doing much better at getting child maintenance debt legally recognised, through Liability Orders – and that’s important because once that happens we can take really strong action like forcing the sale of property.”
But things are getting tougher for absent parents.
Craig said: “ I am seeing a lot of cases from the early days of the CSA where people no longer have access to bank statements and evidence to support they have made payments and the children are now in their 30s. “I do not just help Veterans and Armed Forces I have been helping members of the public. In 2016 I was in a Facebook group where we were heavily involved in compelling the National Audit Office to investigate the CSA/CMS over their false arrears issue. As you will know the NAO will not investigate individual cases but due to the high volume of complaints, they received about false arrears from our group they decided to investigate.”
Craig says: “I have been fighting against this very corrupt and despotic governmental body the Child Support Agency since 2010. They have an absolute shocking history and are responsible for thousands of suicides as a result of their draconian behaviour. “I have had a terrible experience with this abhorrent government. They started abusing their powers against me in 1996 just before I was deployed to Bosnia. They interfered with a perfectly amicable private arrangement between my ex-wife and I, their unwarranted and unwanted intervention caused a lot of bad feeling between my ex wife and I which ruined the relationship between me and my children.
“In 2010 things got very bad between the Child Support Agency and me.
“I was made homeless they ruined my career and were responsible for pushing me to suicide causing a severe psychiatric injury. I was paying for my children voluntarily, they did not need to take such harsh enforcement action against me; they abused their powers when I challenged them.
“I have created a step by step guide of how to deal with the Child Support Agency; many people have used it and have had some excellent results.”
It’s almost like we ex-pats have been punished for leaving the clammy shores of the UK.
Some of us fled Britain for sun, sea and sangria, others left for health reasons or cheap property. Some for life style. Still others retired to Europe and some, like us, came out for business reasons.
But it was always seen as part of the deal that we could go ‘home’ again to see family, friends, check on your property, even. And in some cases get your ‘travel wagon’ MoT-ed.
Then Brexit happened, the parting of the ways. Next Covid stopped the world in its tracks. It just got harder and harder to cross the revised politics of the world to get back to Blighty.
And it only got worse when, a few weeks ago, it became clear that UK ex-pats who’d had their vaccine double-jabs in the now alien climes of Europe would still have to self-isolate – possibly at vast expense – on their return.
And it was all because nobody had bothered to make sure that Europe’s hi-tech health paraphernalia would recognise the UK’s.
Or visa versa.
Anyway, the problem appears to be solved, thanks to new Government promises, NHS doctors and their staff.
Ministers plan to recognise foreign jabs from August 1.
At the moment restrictions on quarantine-free travel to and from amber list countries is difficult because the Government only recognises people who have been vaccinated by the NHS.
But the Department for Transport is to holding a formal review of the rules for arriving travellers this week.
However, all you have to do is phone your UK surgery, give the practice details of your foreign jabs and they will register you on the British NHS computers.
We’ve just done it. And job done – hopefully.
We’re now waiting for them to get back to us with confirmation that we are welcome back in the land of our birth.
This is, as far as we can understand, the reality of the situation and far beyond the stuffy press release from Boris and his bonkers band …
‘Ministers are preparing to ease travel rules for expats returning to the UK. The exemption from quarantine currently only applies to people who were vaccinated under the UK programme, but the Government plans to recognise foreign jabs.’
Slovaks protest over Covid passports while we ask, were we just a herd of vaccine fools?
While good old Blighty blisters under summer heatwaves rarely seen before the Brits moan about it being hard to get away for a fortnight in the sun!
And, on the other hand ex-pats, like us, who want to go home, are being made to self-isolate because the NHS doesn’t recognise the jabs we legitimately had in Slovakia or the rest of Europe!
But be you a thwarted holidaymaker or a despairing returnee, one question very few seem to be asking our leaders is: “How long am I going to be protected by my jabs – the rest of my life or just a few weeks?”
It’s an important question that nobody knows the answer to – and for good reason. The vaccines haven’t been around long enough for us to work it out.
But this lack of knowledge, something we can do little about at the moment, and massive distrust is leading to major protests and dissent across the world.
And a few days ago the protests hit the parliamentary building in Bratislava… hundreds of people protested over a vote on new anti-Covid measures.
The anti-vaccers, object to an amendment that will allow the government to draft different measures for people who have been vaccinated and those who haven’t. Police at one point were said to have used tear gas to control the crowds.
So, who is right? And what do we actually know about how long the vaccine will keep us safe?
There is no doubt in most peoples’ minds – official and man-on-the-street – that vaccines have weakened the link between infection and hospitalisation.
But vaccines are definitely not the silver bullet against this slimy fatty blob (yes, the coronavirus bug has an uncanny resemblance to many of our politicians!) that has spent the best part of two years sucking freedom from our blood.
We simply don’t know how long protection lasts for those who are vaccinated. It’s a mystery.
However, two studies say that infection-induced immunity might last months or longer and vaccination may lengthen this immunity.
Well, nobody told me that when I bared my flaccid arm to a pneumatic young lady in a matching white coat and mask in an over-bearing utilitarian multi-storey school in the Slovak mountainside city where I was living temporarily.
According to one of the studies – Trusted Source, carried out for Nature – immune cells in our bone marrow keep a “memory” of coronavirus and protect us.
The other study decided that immune cells strengthen for about a year after infection.
“The data suggest that immunity in convalescent individuals will be very long lasting.” both studies suggest.
So, would it have been better to take it on the chin, or in the chest to be more accurate?
As the unprecedented vaccination programmes continues across the world, let’s look at the evidence: Vaccines for other viruses like influenza – which itself has many variants – give just a fleeting protection and need to be renewed every year.
However, others, for measles, mumps and rubella, give us lifelong protection.
Things are so uncertain that Pfizer is charged with producing 85 million booster shots for Australia in the next year.
Yale Medicine, one of the largest academic multispecialty practices in America, had this to say: “Though researchers know the vaccines have been effective against COVID-19 thus far, there is no track record to provide data for the future, which is the only way to know for sure.”
They say a vaccine is protective as long as we are measuring it.
Yale’s infectious diseases specialist Jaimie Meyer, MD, MS said: “The three coronavirus vaccines authorized for use in the United States provide a high degree of protection for at least three months, based on clinical trials.
“however, a report in The New England Journal of Medicine said that Moderna vaccine remained high for six months after the second shot.”
So, have the conspiracy theorists got lucky?
Are vaccines just a shot in the dark? A pernicious, dangerous, unknown invasion of our 60,000 miles of veins?
Yep, there are still nagging doubts about how long protection from the coronavirus vaccines will last. Will it wear off gradually or suddenly?
Will we burn and crash?
Or will we just need a booster shot?
Unfortunately, nobody can answer these questions.
All we do know for certain is that almost 40 million of us in the UK got so frightened of getting coronasvirus that we allowed Boris to get his people to stick a needle in our arms and fill us full of unknown drugs.
No wonder so many today – particularly on social media – are calling him the biggest Prick in good old blighted Blighty.
Arms wrapped tightly around my driver as he weaves our moped through cars to an orchestra of horns.
The wind whips through my hair and the smells that fill it are heady, awakening my senses with sweet perfumes and spices that quickly flit to a stomach-turning sewer and rot.
The roads are unfinished but the buildings beautiful; brightly decorated with paints of burnt orange and turmeric yellows.
It is Diwali and the country seems to be draped in chains of flowers. Smiles light up the faces of everyone I see.
The days are long and warm – cows, men and dogs alike seek shelter under beautiful sweeping trees that remind me of ones I knew from books as a child: Jungle Book or Pocahontas.
I smile.
I get the feeling that if I’d visited 50 years ago, the view would be the same. I feel refreshed seeing the respect paid to the land they live on and the animals they share it with.
There is no abundance so things are cherished.
As I whip through these scenes on my humble moped people stop and stare. Other times as I walk by they are frozen in the presence of this white female.
This is not something I haven’t experienced before. I am no stranger to the predatory leers from the men not acclimatised to the scantily clad Western woman. I ease my discomfort by likening their glances to that of a teenage boy – and in India it is no different.
Other places I have visited the women stare too, but with open disgust and disgrace at my little bikini or summer dress.
But here it is not the case. Here something has changed. As I pass the ladies in their brightly coloured saris, a smile creases their cheeks and a glint appears in their eyes. I see hope appear as they take in my appearance, I smile back…I think I know.
Every time I pass I know I am inspiring, affirming. Please do not assume at this point that these women aspire to a bikini (although I think this isn’t necessarily untrue) but it is more what it stands for, it is more the freedom of choice and ownership of her own identity.
In fact, for some I believe it is the identity of her own and not just sharing that of the man stood beside her. I ponder this idea my whole journey, I reflect on my own rights and that of the women of my country … our triumphs and our downfalls.
And I compare it to those that I see around me here, in India.
As my brain chews over this thought I see a billboard ‘educate the girl child to better your country’ and to the side of this two girls in school uniforms stand in a bus shelter laughing.
It is then that I know I am witnessing the beginning of a revolution, I am riding along the wind of change that is propelling India into an equal future.
There is a long way to go but at least the ball is beginning to roll.
