Fifteen years ago, Will Powell saw his ten-year-old son die. Within days, he began to suspect that doctors who had looked after the boy had been negligent. He filed a complaint. Within months, he began to suspect that somebody was tampering with the boy’s medical records. He filed more complaints. He spent 15 years fighting for the truth. Now finally he has it – and he was right.
The government has lifted the income of the poorest fifth of the UK population, but official figures show that up to 12 million men, women and children still live in poverty, usually ignored by the media. In the first of a three-part series, Nick Davies traces the life of one man who lives on the poverty line.
Official figures show the gap beween rich and poor, which widened dramatically under the Thatcher and Major governments, remains unchanged by Labour policy. In the second part of his series on the poverty line, Nick Davies explores an old English village with new English problems.
The government says East Europeans may not claim the same benefits as other EU workers. In the final part of his series on the poverty line, Nick Davies meets destitute Poles in London and discovers a secret city.
Somewhere in some dark corner of this country, there is an impoverished and homeless man who does not know that he has been given a bank account full of cash which could change his life.
There is an old saying that a camel is really just a horse which was designed by a government committee. So it seems to be with NOMS – the new National Offender Management Service which is due to merge prisons with probation.
Maybe nothing really changes. Several hundred years ago when red-faced judges and pot-bellied politicians were happy to procure power by ordering men to be hanged by the neck and left dangling to rot by the wayside, there was a popular rhyme: “Little villains oft submit to fate, so great ones may enjoy the world in state.”
The prisoner is on the phone to his sister. He is due in court soon and he is hoping for a short sentence. She doesn’t see it that way: “You don’t want to come out. You’ll get right back on it. Lola’s on it, Tedda’s on it.”
Here’s a story about just how hard it is for a bad system to mend its ways, even when a lot of people are trying to do the right thing. It’s about a young man from Birmingham, which is important in itself, because the local prison at Winson Green is now the showcase for the prison service’s drive to improve life for its mentally-disordered inmates.
Concluding his investigation into mentally-disordered prisoners, Nick Davies looks at the soaring number of children who have been locked up in prisons which cannot deal with their often alarming mental health problems.
