Dale Farm is a 400 strong gypsy/traveller site in Essex, UK which the local council and central government are trying to evict on very weak legal grounds. The eviction order came into force at midnight on Thursday (1/9/11) and water and electricity supplies to the site were immediately cut off. Today (2/9/11) road access to the site was also cut off. However there seems to have been no attempts so far to start the actual eviction.
Tomorrow the English Defence League (EDL) are threatening to hold their largest ever demonstration in near by east London. Anti-fascist groups have promised to meet them with an equally large counter demonstration. Both of these marches have been banned by the police/Home Office. So there is a possibility that the EDL march could be used as a distraction to cover the start of the Dale Farm eviction.
However Baslidon council who are in charge of the eviction have promised the Dale Farm residents that they will be informed, in writing, of exactly when the eviction is going to take place. Personally I don't think a promise from Basildon council is worth very much at all at this point but I don't think they're in a great rush to start the eviction. Instead they're going to try to leave the effective siege of the site in place for a while in the hope wearing down the residents and breaking their will to fight back. After all this waiting and not knowing when the eviction will start gets very frustrating and tiring after a while.
Friday, 2 September 2011
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Thank You And Goodnight.
It is now 01:01. At 00:46 I checked my email. While I didn't understand most of it - including that spat between Britain's National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Basildon council over the Dale Farm eviction - I think that I was wonderful and you were terrible.
If you want to discuss that further we can talk about it in the morning but before then I need a little lie down because I've still got a bathroom to clean.
01:05
If you want to discuss that further we can talk about it in the morning but before then I need a little lie down because I've still got a bathroom to clean.
01:05
It's True What They Say...
...After a while you get used to "The Killing."
or at least I would've done if I hadn't wasted the last 20 minutes of last weeks episode snapping a rat's back with a hoe before putting on some leather gloves to pick it up and snap it's neck as it bit onto my trouser leg as if it was his last moment on earth.
Anyway it's 22:40 on 1/9/11 and I'm going to need to upload some clever words before I edit and continue this post.
22:41 after my Internet connection being twattish and gay.
Edited at 00:02 on 2/9/11:
Obviously we were talking about the US remake of "The Killing." I am aware that the Scandinavian original has been shown frequently on BBC4. Unfortunately my father who is a deaf man and therefore needs to watch all TV programs with subtitles is curiously resistant to TV programs with foreign subtitles so we had a complex debate about the possibility of starting the colourful start of series one of the French TV show; "Spiral". Somewhere in the process of this discussion we touched on my little brother who reviews TV shows for a living so can discuss, at length, the angry arguments over how the American version changed the name of the killer in the final episode.
Oh and is this reportable?: On Sunday August 28th 2011 at around 20:25 - just as the BBC2 drama "Page Eight" was coming to a climax the family of black rats at #50 Beechwood opened up on the common wall with a hammer drill. After five minutes they stopped but opened up again at around 20:34 for about 30 seconds. When they opened up for a third time at around 23:03 my deaf father decided that this was too much so went round to have a word. Although I'm not aware of the incident I believe one of the black women blamed the noise on another black women who was only down for the Carnival. The masculinity of the man of the house is still being debated at great length.
And I've clearly been on the Kronenbourg so for 9.4bn points can anyone guess which character with the tattoo of a cross on his spine and an obvious sniff habit I most closely resemble in the US version.
00:18, saved by my spell check.
or at least I would've done if I hadn't wasted the last 20 minutes of last weeks episode snapping a rat's back with a hoe before putting on some leather gloves to pick it up and snap it's neck as it bit onto my trouser leg as if it was his last moment on earth.
Anyway it's 22:40 on 1/9/11 and I'm going to need to upload some clever words before I edit and continue this post.
22:41 after my Internet connection being twattish and gay.
Edited at 00:02 on 2/9/11:
Obviously we were talking about the US remake of "The Killing." I am aware that the Scandinavian original has been shown frequently on BBC4. Unfortunately my father who is a deaf man and therefore needs to watch all TV programs with subtitles is curiously resistant to TV programs with foreign subtitles so we had a complex debate about the possibility of starting the colourful start of series one of the French TV show; "Spiral". Somewhere in the process of this discussion we touched on my little brother who reviews TV shows for a living so can discuss, at length, the angry arguments over how the American version changed the name of the killer in the final episode.
Oh and is this reportable?: On Sunday August 28th 2011 at around 20:25 - just as the BBC2 drama "Page Eight" was coming to a climax the family of black rats at #50 Beechwood opened up on the common wall with a hammer drill. After five minutes they stopped but opened up again at around 20:34 for about 30 seconds. When they opened up for a third time at around 23:03 my deaf father decided that this was too much so went round to have a word. Although I'm not aware of the incident I believe one of the black women blamed the noise on another black women who was only down for the Carnival. The masculinity of the man of the house is still being debated at great length.
And I've clearly been on the Kronenbourg so for 9.4bn points can anyone guess which character with the tattoo of a cross on his spine and an obvious sniff habit I most closely resemble in the US version.
00:18, saved by my spell check.
British Intelligence Can Not Be Trusted.
Discuss.
Not only have I changed my routine because my grandmother's in hospital I also told everyone that I've changed my routine. So even though it made the police helicopter very angry I had no problem attending this afternoon's (1/9/11) meeting with the consultant, Dr Tan (Anglo-Chinese).
The second surprise of the afternoon was that what was billed as a quick chat with the consultant actually turned out to be a multi-disciplinary case conference with the nursing discipline and the physiotherapy discipline also represented. Crucially the psychiatric discipline was not represented which seemed a little remiss considering that like it or not dementia is classed as a psychiatric disorder. The business of the meeting though was no surprise; My grandmother must be put in a nursing home and her house must be sold to either the Notting Hill Housing Group (NHHG) or the Whitgift Estate. The opening pitch in this sale was that my grandmother suffers from dementia which is an irreversible condition that leaves her unable to care for herself and therefore requires 24 hour nursing care.
It was at this point that my father collapsed under the weight of complex medical terminology. It was lucky then that I was on hand to bring up the fact that the CT scans disprove the current vascular dementia diagnosis. Therefore what the multi-disciplinary team actually have is an elderly patient with a clutch of psychiatric symptoms that could equally be caused by a variety of psychiatric disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder, drug addiction or whatever words we're making up to label mental health problems these days. I then brought up the fact that my grandmother's results on the standard NHS memory test (whose medical acronym I appropriately enough can't remember) actually show an improvement thus disproving the assertion that my grandmother's condition is irreversible.
I also brought up the fact that there is, what was tactfully termed, "A factual inconsistency" between what both the Heavers Road and Queens memory teams had written in my grandmother's notes and what had actually taken place. My alleged refusal to allow my grandmother to be prescribed with anti-dementia drugs was cited as an example. As this part of the conversation was not had in a direct way the consultant initially challenged this by explaining that anti-dementia drugs are not licensed in the UK to treat my grandmother's condition but ended up only further underlining the fact that my grandmother's treatment is up to now is very hard to justify medically.
Eventually we ended up in a discussion of whether or not an independent psychiatric assessment was needed. The consultant was very opposed to this arguing that a non-specific infection (slightly elevated white blood cell count on blood test) would mean that any psychiatric assessment would be inconclusive at best. So I argued that my grandmother should be kept on the ward until that infection clears and a psychiatric assessment could be carried out. The consultant felt it would be a better idea to transfer my grandmother to another facility that is less equipped to moniter this infection and preform any psychiatric assessment there. This was mainly NHS code for; "Get her off my ward now!!!!!"
At this point everyone's pagers went off and the conference was hastily concluded with an un-solid promise to meet up again in a week in order to give physiotherapy time to conclude that there's nothing more they can do for my grandmother until she's been seen by a psychiatrist. Ideally one with experience in treating torture victims*.
As for the Paris conference on Libya it was a bit of a strange one. Britain and France called the summit during the fall of Tripoli so it was meant to be an opportunity to celebrate the collapse of the Libyan government and then divide up Libya's assets. As Muammer Qaddafi used the opportunity to appear almost live on a still functioning Libyan government TV station it was obvious to all that the Libyan government has yet to collapse. This left all the delegates at a loose end and desperately trying to make small talk which is possibly the most dangerous situation it is possible to have in international diplomacy.
So the French hosts threw a bit of a tantrum and what we got was a very media friendly spectacle of delegates from over 60 nations being sat in groups at tables of descending levels of importance (top table to back of room etc). This is very similar to the listening exercise rather then a public inquiry that Britain launched yesterday (31/8/11) to discover the causes of the August riots. Of course they could have used the opportunity to discuss how best to re-construct Libya after the war. However despite six months of meetings no-one in the Libya contact group has given that a second thought.
Also I personally think Sarkozy's current problem is that he's just angry that his actions against gypsy/travellers keeps getting compared to Britain's crimes at Dale Farm. There is of course many crucial difference and just think if I had more time I could try and explain them in something resembling coherent English so someone could attempt to translate them into something resembling coherent French.
*This shouldn't actually be too difficult to arrange. Croydon is also home to the Home Office reporting centre which deals with undocumented immigrants claiming political asylum often on the grounds of torture. So there are actually quite a few psychiatrists knocking about who have treated torture victims before.
Not only have I changed my routine because my grandmother's in hospital I also told everyone that I've changed my routine. So even though it made the police helicopter very angry I had no problem attending this afternoon's (1/9/11) meeting with the consultant, Dr Tan (Anglo-Chinese).
The second surprise of the afternoon was that what was billed as a quick chat with the consultant actually turned out to be a multi-disciplinary case conference with the nursing discipline and the physiotherapy discipline also represented. Crucially the psychiatric discipline was not represented which seemed a little remiss considering that like it or not dementia is classed as a psychiatric disorder. The business of the meeting though was no surprise; My grandmother must be put in a nursing home and her house must be sold to either the Notting Hill Housing Group (NHHG) or the Whitgift Estate. The opening pitch in this sale was that my grandmother suffers from dementia which is an irreversible condition that leaves her unable to care for herself and therefore requires 24 hour nursing care.
It was at this point that my father collapsed under the weight of complex medical terminology. It was lucky then that I was on hand to bring up the fact that the CT scans disprove the current vascular dementia diagnosis. Therefore what the multi-disciplinary team actually have is an elderly patient with a clutch of psychiatric symptoms that could equally be caused by a variety of psychiatric disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder, drug addiction or whatever words we're making up to label mental health problems these days. I then brought up the fact that my grandmother's results on the standard NHS memory test (whose medical acronym I appropriately enough can't remember) actually show an improvement thus disproving the assertion that my grandmother's condition is irreversible.
I also brought up the fact that there is, what was tactfully termed, "A factual inconsistency" between what both the Heavers Road and Queens memory teams had written in my grandmother's notes and what had actually taken place. My alleged refusal to allow my grandmother to be prescribed with anti-dementia drugs was cited as an example. As this part of the conversation was not had in a direct way the consultant initially challenged this by explaining that anti-dementia drugs are not licensed in the UK to treat my grandmother's condition but ended up only further underlining the fact that my grandmother's treatment is up to now is very hard to justify medically.
Eventually we ended up in a discussion of whether or not an independent psychiatric assessment was needed. The consultant was very opposed to this arguing that a non-specific infection (slightly elevated white blood cell count on blood test) would mean that any psychiatric assessment would be inconclusive at best. So I argued that my grandmother should be kept on the ward until that infection clears and a psychiatric assessment could be carried out. The consultant felt it would be a better idea to transfer my grandmother to another facility that is less equipped to moniter this infection and preform any psychiatric assessment there. This was mainly NHS code for; "Get her off my ward now!!!!!"
At this point everyone's pagers went off and the conference was hastily concluded with an un-solid promise to meet up again in a week in order to give physiotherapy time to conclude that there's nothing more they can do for my grandmother until she's been seen by a psychiatrist. Ideally one with experience in treating torture victims*.
As for the Paris conference on Libya it was a bit of a strange one. Britain and France called the summit during the fall of Tripoli so it was meant to be an opportunity to celebrate the collapse of the Libyan government and then divide up Libya's assets. As Muammer Qaddafi used the opportunity to appear almost live on a still functioning Libyan government TV station it was obvious to all that the Libyan government has yet to collapse. This left all the delegates at a loose end and desperately trying to make small talk which is possibly the most dangerous situation it is possible to have in international diplomacy.
So the French hosts threw a bit of a tantrum and what we got was a very media friendly spectacle of delegates from over 60 nations being sat in groups at tables of descending levels of importance (top table to back of room etc). This is very similar to the listening exercise rather then a public inquiry that Britain launched yesterday (31/8/11) to discover the causes of the August riots. Of course they could have used the opportunity to discuss how best to re-construct Libya after the war. However despite six months of meetings no-one in the Libya contact group has given that a second thought.
Also I personally think Sarkozy's current problem is that he's just angry that his actions against gypsy/travellers keeps getting compared to Britain's crimes at Dale Farm. There is of course many crucial difference and just think if I had more time I could try and explain them in something resembling coherent English so someone could attempt to translate them into something resembling coherent French.
*This shouldn't actually be too difficult to arrange. Croydon is also home to the Home Office reporting centre which deals with undocumented immigrants claiming political asylum often on the grounds of torture. So there are actually quite a few psychiatrists knocking about who have treated torture victims before.
More News Will Appear Here Soon.
Breaking with the ward round routine my grandmother's consultant, Dr Wallace Tan has summoned my father into hospital to discuss my grandmother's care at 15:00 today (1/9/11). At this point I have no further information.
However according to surveillance reports I should be occupied between 15:00 and 17:00 on a Thursday cleaning the bathroom. So I suspect this is not going to be the moment where Dr Tan announces that he's suddenly seen the error of his and his colleagues ways and is going to start giving my grandmother appropriate care.
Anyway is the tension at the Paris conference on Libya up to the levels the Brits require or do I need to go and set something on fire?
Edited at 16:12: I've returned from the hospital with a very long story to tell. While I'm not happy I am comfortable with this story so it can wait until the Paris summit has broken up.
However according to surveillance reports I should be occupied between 15:00 and 17:00 on a Thursday cleaning the bathroom. So I suspect this is not going to be the moment where Dr Tan announces that he's suddenly seen the error of his and his colleagues ways and is going to start giving my grandmother appropriate care.
Anyway is the tension at the Paris conference on Libya up to the levels the Brits require or do I need to go and set something on fire?
Edited at 16:12: I've returned from the hospital with a very long story to tell. While I'm not happy I am comfortable with this story so it can wait until the Paris summit has broken up.
Operation Oil Theft: Month 6, Week 2, Day 3.
Subtitle; Doh!
Overnight (31/8/11 - 1/9/11) Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) delivered 280 million Libyan Dinar of banknotes to Libya. This is the first tranche of banknotes with a face value of 1.9bn Libyan Dinar to be delivered and Britain is celebrating the delivery as an Eid gift from Britain to the Libyan people.
The problem is that no actual wealth has been transferred to Libya. Back in 2010 the Libyan government ordered these banknotes from Britain's Royal Mint to replace old and damaged banknotes already in circulation in the Libyan economy. Then when the war started Britain simply refused to deliver these banknotes to the Libyan government. Now Britain has begun shipping these new notes to the rebel's Transitional National Council (TNC) without any plans to remove the old notes they were meant to replace from circulation.
So what Britain's actually done is devalue the Libyan Dinar making the Libyan people about US$1.5bn poorer. This is actually quite similar to Nazi Germany's plan to destroy the British economy during the second world war by flooding it with counterfeit banknotes. The TNC are actually thanking Britain for this so Transitional National Council is the correct term because they are the council managing Libya's transition from a nation to a failed state.
Overnight (31/8/11 - 1/9/11) Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) delivered 280 million Libyan Dinar of banknotes to Libya. This is the first tranche of banknotes with a face value of 1.9bn Libyan Dinar to be delivered and Britain is celebrating the delivery as an Eid gift from Britain to the Libyan people.
The problem is that no actual wealth has been transferred to Libya. Back in 2010 the Libyan government ordered these banknotes from Britain's Royal Mint to replace old and damaged banknotes already in circulation in the Libyan economy. Then when the war started Britain simply refused to deliver these banknotes to the Libyan government. Now Britain has begun shipping these new notes to the rebel's Transitional National Council (TNC) without any plans to remove the old notes they were meant to replace from circulation.
So what Britain's actually done is devalue the Libyan Dinar making the Libyan people about US$1.5bn poorer. This is actually quite similar to Nazi Germany's plan to destroy the British economy during the second world war by flooding it with counterfeit banknotes. The TNC are actually thanking Britain for this so Transitional National Council is the correct term because they are the council managing Libya's transition from a nation to a failed state.
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
The Dale Farm Eviction's Going Ahead.
Today (31/8/11) an application for a injunction to prevent Basildon Council evicting 400 gypsy/traveller families from the Dale Farm site in Essex was rejected by the High Court.
So at 00:01 tomorrow (1/9/11) Basildon council will interfere in the contractual agreements between the residents of the site and the power and water companies to cut off water and electricity supplies to the site in order to make life as difficult as possible. However it is unlikely that the actual eviction will begin tomorrow in order to avoid embarrassing Britain as they attempt to portray themselves as great humanitarians at the Paris conference on Libya.
According to local rumour on Friday (2/9/11) the police will then close off all roads in and around the site preventing people for leaving. If previous evictions are anything to go by during the day on Friday or possibly Saturday (3/9/11) the bailiffs will then drive bulldozers and other heavy machinery onto the site and then proceed to destroy all the mobile homes and vehicles on the site with little or no concern for the people in them. This process could last from anywhere between several days and several months depending on the level of resistance the occupants of the site put up.
So at 00:01 tomorrow (1/9/11) Basildon council will interfere in the contractual agreements between the residents of the site and the power and water companies to cut off water and electricity supplies to the site in order to make life as difficult as possible. However it is unlikely that the actual eviction will begin tomorrow in order to avoid embarrassing Britain as they attempt to portray themselves as great humanitarians at the Paris conference on Libya.
According to local rumour on Friday (2/9/11) the police will then close off all roads in and around the site preventing people for leaving. If previous evictions are anything to go by during the day on Friday or possibly Saturday (3/9/11) the bailiffs will then drive bulldozers and other heavy machinery onto the site and then proceed to destroy all the mobile homes and vehicles on the site with little or no concern for the people in them. This process could last from anywhere between several days and several months depending on the level of resistance the occupants of the site put up.
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