The brother of ‘lost boy’ Keith Bennett has posed the question – how can police be denied access to secret documents about a murder case?

Alan Bennett said: “How can any information be seen as anything other than essential to an investigation?”

He recently met with the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to discuss the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill which is designed to force people and organisations to reveal all relevant information to police.

Alan and many others have been battling for years to get Liverpool solicitor Robin Makin to open two briefcases entrusted to him by Moors murderer Ian Brady just before he died.

It is possible the briefcases, kept securely in storage, could contain clues to where Brady and his monstrous lover Myra Hindley buried the body of Keith, who was 12 when he was snatched by the pair in Ashton-u-Lyne,

Backing the move, Alan said: “I am really confident that the part of the Bill that is of specific interest to me – and will be to other victims and their families in the future – regarding the case of Keith will not be challenged.”

Relatives have demanded that the cases should be opened and access to the hidden papers given.

Police say they want access to the Samsonite briefcases which Brady kept locked in the bedroom at high security hospital Ashworth Prison in Maghull.

He spent most of his life locked up.

Solicitor Mr Makin rarely comments on the cases.. But a district judge sitting at Manchester Magistrates’ Court had refused a police appeal to access the cases because Brady and Hindley are dead so there is no chance of a prosecution.

I have an update after contacting the Home Office again today for answers as to what happens next after the Police, Crime, Sentencing And Courts Bill was passed after the second reading yesterday.

Alan said: “The Bill will move on for more detailed scrutiny and MP’s will be able to propose amendments and some may be voted on in later debates.

“It is hoped the Bill will receive Royal Assent by the end of the year.

“I have to admit that the timescale is longer than I expected/hoped for but at least things are in motion and moving in the right direction after years of arguing for justice for victims and families as opposed to the perpetrators and their representatives having more rights than the victims and families.”

Alan said: “Keith’s story will be known to many, but what may not be known is the struggle which our family has gone through to try and seek closure.

“I have fought long and hard on behalf of my brother to bring about the necessary changes and to ensure his case is not forgotten.

“I want to ensure a positive legacy for Keith, so I was pleased to meet with the Home Secretary and to hear about the work being done to support my endeavours.”

Priti Patel said: “I can only imagine the years of pain and turmoil that the Bennett family have faced following Keith’s tragic murder – no family should have to suffer the heartache of not knowing where their loved ones are buried.

“I am determined to give police the powers they need to access all available evidence and hopefully bring some closure to families in cases like these.”

#murdermostfoul #hindleyandbrady #myraian #saddleworthmoor #lostboy #keithbennett #moorsmurders #pritipatel

Today Britain was silent as the Queen lead a sad salute to the 126,172 of us who died from Covid. We have just marked the first anniversary of national lockdown. Boris Johnson also offered his condolences to families who lost loved ones to the virus

What a tragedy this has become for the world. But this is not a time for recriminations and blame and spouting of conspiracies and lies … it’s a time to reflect on something manufactured or natural which has almost certainly changed our lives forever.

But what can we do at the moment? Riot? Set police cars on fire? Anarchy over everything ‘mainstream’? Refuse to wear masks as a personal protest? Refuse vaccines? Like headless-chicken Europe turn a true crisis into a political Viking’s head to be booted while millions wait for a jab of hope?

No. None of those are the way forward at the moment. But the Great Debate over the Great Reset must begin soon.

We are teetering on the edge of that mythological state of dystopia … Dystopia ‘an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice’.

Dystopia is a society bereft of reason … and certainly, without conspiracies and Biblical prophecy, Covid is bereft of reason. But it is here in any form you imagine.

Let’s try for an instant to find something beautiful in our crumbling lives … we did last march when we published this pohtopgraph by Alexander Petrosyan, probably one of the best photographers working in Russia today.

He was born in the Ukraine in 1965 but has lived in St Petersburg for almost half a century. And it shows … he knows his city warts and all.

Lonely Planet said ‘the sheer grandeur and history of Russia’s imperial capital never fail to amaze, but this is also a city with a revolutionary spirit’.

And Alexander’s photographs capture not only the grandeur but the squalor and despair of this city of five million souls… he also captures the city’s pride and its  memories of revolution.

Alexander, who worked for his local newspaper for many years, has been published in the best publications across the world … and he agreed to us publishing his work… we will be returning often.

Former Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield has talked openly about the reasons the government regularly fails to help our vulnerable children.

She also pointed out an ‘institutional bias against children and families’, particularly in the Treasury.

This means, she said, resources are not where spent where they should be to create the most impact on life.

Sadly, she did not mention Parental Alienation directly when she delivered her final speech as commissioner online and challenged the Prime Minister to be is serious about children.

But she demanded has put children at the heart of future plans, including the country’s Covid future.

Meanwhile, recent research headed by Longfield, attacked the disruption to children who are forced to relocate miles from their families and homes and schools by Family Courts.

More extreme cases of abuse and criminality, of a kind which most people hoped belonged to the past, happen with frightening frequency, she said. 

Longfield said the government is guilty of ‘deep-rooted institutional ambivalence’ to the 78,150 children it obliged to look after.

Meanwhile, the number of children in care continues to rise – by 21% since 2010 – but council budgets are being constantly squeezed..

As the report came out the County Councils Network admitted that 27% of its members were planning reductions in children’s services.

In 2018, 5,400 children were moved more than 50 miles from their homes; 8,000 children had at least three placements in a single year.

#parentalalienation #childcommissioner #longfield #boris

Leigh G Banks is a journalist and broadcaster and spent many years investigating child sex abuse in the UK. He worked on the Rochdale and Cleveland abuse scandals, has investigated paedophiles in churches, Satanic abuse and exposed politicians and celebrity perverts.

Here he takes a look at the racist myth that Britain’s child sex grooming gangs are predominantly Asian.

Leigh’s explosive new book, Ravine, investigates British journalism and analyses the decades he spent hunting down high profile paedophiles and low-life perverts. It will be published soon.

A Home Office report a few months ago exposed the stereotyping of ‘grooming gangs’ exploiting white girls in the UK.

The horror of grooming gangs has been used for more than a decade as a major part of a silver-bullet arsenal of hatred against the Asian population of the British Isles.

Last year’s report has been ignored by right-wing propagandists who believe their own vicious agendas and insult any truth that tries to get in their way.

The Home Office report, while not addressing all issues of grooming, gives verified evidence that makes it clear there is nothing credible in claiming that any particular ethnic group is mainly responsible for child sex exploitation.

It culled its data from police forces across the UK, local authorities and many reputable organisations.

And, damningly to the right-wing racist claims, Home Office researchers have found ‘that group-based offenders are most commonly white’.

The mythology that Asian men were responsible for exploiting white girls began in 2011 when The Times said it was exposing an establishment cover-up of sex abuse.

Times doyen Andrew Norfolk claimed that we had a ‘secret problem’ of Muslims being sexual predators of white girls. It became a firm fixture in the catalogue of grievances of the extreme far-right. 

It is also a claim perpetuated by the British Press for many years. The remedy, as usual, was to publish the report last year with no real comment.

The report makes it crystal clear that this is a scandal with absolutely no substance at all. 

It took two years to put together and concludes there is no legitimacy in claiming that Muslims, Asians, Pakistanis or any other ethnic group, are disproportionately involved ‘group-based child sexual exploitation’.

The common denominator is not immigration, race, culture or Islam. It is in fact to do with power, exploitation, patriarchy and opportunity.

And a complete disregard for children.

It really is time to call off this outrageous demonisation of cultures. We need finally to accept what credible research has been telling us for years: that child sexual abuse is not a ‘Muslim problem’ but is the shame of all our communities.

An estimated one in 13 adults in England has been sexually abused as a child. In 2019/20, police across the UK recorded more than 73,518 sexual offences .

The simple and appalling truth is that children have been – and are being – raped and sexually assaulted, often by family members and other trusted figures like teachers.

We have to stop fixating on the lurid and false distraction of ‘Muslim grooming gangs’.

How are those unsubstantiated claims helping our children?

#sex #racism #childsex #grooming #asians #muslim #rightwing #courts

A REVIEW OF THE NEIL YOUNG FILM PARADOX

Last night – well 3am this morning actually – I was feeling a bit despondent, so I was flicking through YouTube looking for music to lift my mood … I went through the usuals, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and of course His Royal Bobness.

Then I rekindled my relationship with the lumpy bumpy Pork Pie hat-wearing happy hippy baggy jeans-wearing, overweight, scraggy haired Darryl Hannah pulling, goofy looking wild god of rock’n’roll Neil Young. Wow!

In fact we’d just watched Hannah’s strange film Paradox, about Neil and his band, the Outlaws.

Paradox? Rather B*ll*x! A throw-back to 60s and 70s Grateful Dead happenings without any real charm – except for Neil and the Outlaws, particularly the central section when they play an extended version of a song I’d not heard before and have forgotten the title of. Something like Seeds of Life.

Stunning! Incredible! Outrageous! Powerful! Worth watching the whole film for…

Anyway, it got me thinking… what are people doing to our world?

All my life, it’s been my job to expose cant and criminality, lies and the lairs of corruption, power and politics, abuse and control.

And today, as I sit locked down in my penthouse prison high above my chosen mountain city of Poprad in Slovakia, I started to think about the European politicians playing with the lives of 746 million people, playing Russian roulette with Covid-19 and the jabs which might save us.

Who do they think they are?

Well, I’ll tell you – they are the very people I’ve spent my life exposing: Self-serving, controlling, lying, cheating, pocket-filling bl**dy clots who don’t give a flying Zeneca f*!k about me and you hiding like clean thieves behind moronic masks!

And then I started to think about all the New Age keyboard warriors who think they are pundits who deny the truth in the Free Press and devour the idiotic agenda-driven lies and dangerousness of social media and Donald Trump without a thought.

Those who had the chance at free speech but thought that just meant you were free to spout obscenities and insults at anybody and anything in a recrafting of languages that are an insult to our writers, historians, publishers and readers. By the inarticulate patwah now used as hieroglyphics they are literally rewriting the very basics of communication. Their very own language.

So, as I surfed through Neil Young vids on Youtube, I suddenly I heard the first notes of Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World … I flicked it full-screen.

It was Eddie Vidor and his band… then 3 minutes 50 secs later (stick with it) Neil Young strode on stage and took over.

He played the life out of a song going back to the Eighties as the Berlin Wall came down. It became an anthem of politics in Europe – an anthem of honesty in power and the struggle for all kinds of freedoms we all deserve.

Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World.

Well, let’s us all keep on doing that as the world is reset, as we face dystopia and potential death.

Let’s all get up and rock!

For almost two decades I featured new music from aspiring artists on my radio shows, Leigh G Banks’s The Trip and Leigh G Banks’s The Dinner Party.

Last year I changed tack and now have a cable TV show and make documentaries, so radio has taken a back seat.

For now.

Meantime, performers are still sending me their work for promotion – and we have used a few over the past few months on the Preservation Society site.

Here’s another one … can’t tell you who he is, cos he is a Masked Singer called The Foole … here’s what he has to say about himself. And one of his songs.

The quite beautiful Don’t Call it Love…

“The Foole is an artist and a concept.

In olden times, the Fool or court Jester, under the guise of entertainment, would also make social statements and speak truths about the human condition.

Born out of the streets of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, this masked multi-instrumentalist  puts the emphasis solely on the music and the stories that are being told.

Stories of love lost, lingering feelings for past relationships, struggles with one’s mortality, infidelity, and a few upbeat romps that everyone needs to distract from mundane and sometimes negative world views.

Much like The Beatles later work, no two songs are alike in mood, sound or story,except  the sounds you hear were written , performed, engineered and produced by the man behind the white mask with  a little help from his friends. 

The Debut album “…from this point of view” while a thoroughly modern sounding recording, pays homage to the great artists of the past and present; The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Prince, Radiohead, and David Bowie.

The first single “Don’t Call it Love” is a response  to when the one you love decides to leave, and they say “but I still love you “…the one left behind thinks…”if you love me you wouldn’t leave”, so “Don’t call it Love”  is a song that could easily fit any playlist that includes such huge artists as Adele and Coldplay,etc.

There are tracks on this album that may be challenging  for some to listen to, from the hauntingly beautiful ballad “Hey Suicide” which talks to suicide as if it were a character or a person.

Then there’s “The Fool”, about a friend of the famed “Major Tom” in the song “Space Oddity”  the Foole laments with pain ” I miss Major Tom, now that he is gone now” as a tribute to  losing the character and the artist David Bowie that created him.”

The Songs

PRELUDE TO ROK U

THE FOOL

LOVE LIES  BLIND

DON’T CALL IT LOVE

PAIN IN MY HEART

JUST NO GETTING OVER U

HEY SUICIDE

TAK ME HOME

U MAKE ME SMILE

I WILL ROK U

All songs written, performed , produced and engineered by The Foole except

Aldo Vaccaro Lead guitars on Prelude to ROK U and I WILL ROK U

Chris Jackson back Vocals on PAIN IN MY HEART,JUST NO GETTING OVER U, HEY SUICIDE,TAKE ME HOME, U MAKE ME SMILE, I WILL ROK U

Tony Moretta  solo guitars on Prelude To Rok U and I WILL ROK U 

middle solo and back vocals on Hey Suicide and I WILL ROK U

Kelly Noseworthy back vocals on THE FOOL , HEY SUICIDE, TAKE ME HOME, U MAKE ME SMILE, I WILL ROK U, JUST NO GETTING OVER U

TRACY GOULDING back vocals on I WILL ROK U, and HEY SUICIDE

WEBSITE thefoole.com

FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/nicki.thefoole.1/

TWITTER  @thefoole1   INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/thefoolemusic/

Has lock-down really got you feeling blue? How do you think about life AND yourself after a year of uncertainty, health threats, financial worries, loneliness, not seeing family and friends …

And does it show in your body, mind and spirit?

Well, we’ve just come across a website that addresses all these issues – and much, much more – with a bit of intelligence, seriousness and real practical pampering ideas. But it also packed with loads of humour – and even looks at the funny side of getting back into the dating scene!

This is the site, Mammas HQ https://www.mammashq.com.au/blog

Visit it – yep, it’s for women who want to improve themselves, look and feel better and become more positive and confident.

The owner, Sara B, has been through the mill – Covid, a bad break-up and she ended up a single mum.

Sara says: “I’ve always been good – without knowing it – at taking the time to pamper myself with a face mask or going to my local salon to get my nails, hair and other beauty treatments done.

“This is definitely something I struggled with when I had my son two years ago and just like everybody else I still need me-time!

“That’s when I had the idea for Mammas HQ!”

Another brilliant feature on Mammas HQ is her blog about the trials and tribulations of dating…

Like she says ‘dating is self-care too!’

The Preservation Society is going to feature Mammas HQ regularly, it’s such a good idea and really supports the world’s women.

#Mammas #me-time #pampering #allbymyself #changes #beauty #hair #makeup #divorced #splitup

Now a friend of Sarah Edwards has spoken out about the disrespect in the UK towards Sarah’s death and her family.

Her friend said (see full report in link below) : “Her abduction and murder is not, in my opinion, a symptom of a sexist, dangerous society. When something awful like this happens there is a rush to look for reasons and apportion blame. If the suspect police officer in custody is eventually tried and found guilty of her murder, then I will hold him alone responsible. I will not be blaming ‘men’ or ‘the police’ for the actions of one individual. There will always be the odd psychopath out there – male or female – and there can be no accounting for that fact.”

The murder of Sarah, a 33-year-old marketing executive, has not been been treated with dignity and sorrow – it has become synonymous with law-breaking vigils, violent clashes and the demonisation of men by calling for a 6pm curfew.

A Government source said it would be a “massive curtailing of basic freedoms and rights” and would never work.

Caroline Nokes, Tory MP and chair of the Women and Equalities Committee said: “You can’t go around slapping curfews on one gender.”

Then Patrick Strudwick, former UK LGBT editor for the news website Buzzfeed, stuck his two-pennorth in and tweeted: “’It’s horribly telling that, so often, as soon as a woman realises you’re gay you can sense a reduction in hyper-vigilance. The threat level has fallen. U often find myself making my gayness very clear ASAP for this reason. I don’t know if straight men realise the extent of this.”

Here family and children’s campaigner Sophie David has responded: “In our a society we are constantly told to be ourselves, except if you are a heterosexual man.

Every other gender and preference is protected. But not straight men.

It is like a constant message drilled into a man’s head – they just aren’t good enough.

And we wonder why male suicide is so high.

Why should a normal man have to think to appease others?

Men shouldn’t have to skulk around, heads down, frightened to say a word to a woman because she might take it the wrong way!

Here is another way of looking at it: a woman would never emasculate a man to make herself feel better or safer. Dehumanising someone else for your own selfish needs is lower than low.

Sarah Everard was murdered by one sick individual and its awful but I’m sure that in her life she loved the men around her, father, family, friends.

One excuse of a man does NOT represent the whole of male society. We are living in truly despicable times when social media is giving people ridiculous ideas to spout, often to the detriment of basic human rights!

People are painfully selfish nowadays. I would never expect all men to avoid me so I feel ‘safe’. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

It’s up to me to take whatever precautions I feel necessary!”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/13/this-is-not-what-sarah-would-have-wanted/amp/?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3GF5HUmyENYZ84tZYIJYN-jGf51nq93xBUdRLfs3scznifCrWu74pP0gE

#Saraheverardmurder #men #riots #vigil #curfew

Slovakia’s health chief Marek Krajčí has resigned for ordering Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.

He had been coming under pressure from the country’s four-party ruling coalition.

Slovakia followed Hungary in buying Sputnik V which doesn’t have EU authorisation.

“Two coalition parties made my resignation a condition for them to stay in the coalition. In such a situation, I think there was no point arguing… I am not glued to my seat at the ministry,” Reuters quoted Mr Krajci.

Slovakia and Hungary have sought out Sputnik V as the EU grapples with limited supplies for its vaccination campaign.  

Like the Czech Republic, Slovakia is registering weekly per-capita death rates among the worst in the world. 

200,000 Sputnik V doses have arrived in the country and another 800,000 doses are due to be delivered by the end of April. A million more are scheduled for May and June.

Foreign Minister Ivan Korčok, of Freedom and Solidarity, was among the most vocal critics of the vaccine purchase, taking to Facebook to call Sputnik “a tool of hybrid war [that] aims at casting doubt on the workings within the European Union.”

Meanwhile, with the European vaccine roll-out facing delays, both Slovakia and Czech have started to look outside the bloc’s borders for solutions. 

In search of an answer to the pandemic, some are putting their faith in a drug for which there is no positive evidence. 

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/coronavirus/2021/03/how-covid-sceptics-were-duped-wonder-drug-ivermectin

Issues relating to ivermectin had been raised in the run-up to Interpol’s announcement that there were major busts of criminals peddling fake Covid-19 vaccines and masks in countries including South Africa and China.

Slovakia received a delivery of 9,000 doses of ivermectin after the Health Ministry temporarily approved the medicine for the treatment of coronavirus patients last month.

But doctors lack the basic medical information necessary to prescribe it.

“A doctor needs to offer the patient information on the indication, contraindication, dosage of the medicine and potential side effects of the medicine,” the association wrote in the letter, as quoted by the TASR newswire. “The Health Ministry has not made any of that information available to healthcare workers in Slovakia.”

Meanwhile, a new app that will serve as a virtual waiting room for Covid vaccination in Slovakia is currently in the making and should be ready in a few days.

The app comes after much criticism of the ministry when vaccination registration turned into an online hunt for vacant slots. The ministry will provide the option to sign up for vaccination using your birth number.

#slovakia #Marek #Krajčí #vaccine #covid #ivermectin #sputnik