A Brighton Boy Blogs

For anyone who read my original blog post Help Corporal Harry, I thought I’d let you know what has happened since.

1. The Facebook page has had almost 3000 likes.
2. The local and national press & media has covered the story in some detail.
3. A petition was set up to contend that “MOD should fund charities that treat ex-forces personnel in jail with PTSD” – sign the petition here
4. Harry has had some visits from PTSD counsellors, and has started to feel a little more positive in the light of all the support from the public.
5. Harry’s trial was on January 4th, at which he was found guilty of Theft of Gun, Theft of one round of ammunition and Possession of a prohibited weapon; however charges of Theft of box magazine and Possession of firearm with intent to cause fear of violence were dropped.
6. Harry’s sentencing hearing was due to take place on Monday 11th February, but has now been delayed until 18th February for reasons unknown, but hopefully connected to additional representations and appeals for clemency
7. Several Members of Parliament have been contacted; my MP, Caroline Lucas wrote back to me saying:

Dear Jon,

A belated thank you for your message and my apologies for not writing back to you sooner. I receive a vast amount of correspondence and that can create delays at especially busy times.

I have been appalled by the treatment of Corporal Killick and have written to the Ministry of Defence about his case. I urged the Minister to intervene to ensure that Cpl Killick gets the long overdue help and support he needs, rather than a prison sentence. I also argued that this case highlights ongoing failures to properly support soldiers that are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and that the Government needs to address this as a matter of urgency.

I understand the court is due to rule next week and I have asked the Minister to respond before that date. I will be in touch again as soon as I hear anything and do let me know if you need any further information in the meantime.

Best wishes,

Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion

House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

If you’d like to Help Harry, the best way is by spreading the word and raising awareness – and the best way of doing that is to visit the Help Harry page on Facebook, click the “Like” button, and then share their posts on your Facebook timeline.

Corporal Harry Killick

My friend Harry Killick was a corporal in the Territorial Army. I last saw him at his farewell dinner just before he went to Afghanistan. While he was in Afghanistan he saw active service and returned with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, having survived an attack on his patrol. Finding it harder and harder to put it all behind him, and suffering from ever more vivid flashbacks, he took a gun from the barracks with the sole intention of taking his own life, and is now imprisoned and not receiving appropriate psychiatric treatment. His family and friends have started an awareness campaign which seeks initially to ensure that Harry receives the best treatment for his PTSD and that his sentence is kept to a minimum.

Your support would be greatly appreciated. Until it is clearer what can be done to change things for the better, please publicise the social media links below so that as wide an audience as possible can be updated with news as it arrives:

1. Please go and “Like” the Facebook page  facebook.com/corporalharry, and share it wherever you can (see screenshot below). You can share it on pages as well as on your own timeline.
2. Please follow the Twitter page  twitter.com/Corporal_Harry and retweet significant tweets

How To Share Facebook Page properly

When my company first started to trade with EU countries outside the UK, we started to receive EC sales list forms from Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. Stupidly, we didn’t really register that we had to do anything apart from the declaration about EU sales on the VAT returns. Eventually we got a letter through telling us we had to pay a £500 civil penalty for failing to submit EC Sales Lists.

OK, stupid us, fair enough. So we paid it. A £500 fine, paid.

We also applied to the HMRC for the facility to submit our EC Sales Lists electronically via their web site, and when this facility eventually came through, we caught up in full with our EC Sales Lists backlog. But not before HMRC had slapped another £1000 of civil penalties on our account.

£1500 of fines for what? Had we evaded tax? No. Had we underpaid? No. Had we defrauded HMRC? No. We had merely failed to fill in a few pieces of red tape.

Let’s put this into perspective. Vodaphone underpaid their VAT by some £7bn. Yes, SEVEN BILLION pounds of underpaid VAT, and that’s perfectly OK with the HMRC. But if a small company fails to fill in a few bureaucratic forms, it’s a £1500 fine. Even after we’ve caught up with the red tape, AND paid the original fine. It’s disgusting.

What’s even worse is that although the entire case is still very much in dispute – at the independent review stage – the HMRC has now sent a debt collection company, Rossendales, after us. This rudely spoken bunch of incompetent heavies can’t even talk to us because whenever we go through their security process, the phone number we give them is apparently different from that given to them by HMRC even though it’s actually our correct telephone number.

So by way of allowing idiots to display their idiocy to the world as indeed they should, here’s the HMRC telling me it’s under review (expected completion 18th November) and Rossendales telling me to pay up within seven days (25th October)…

Rossendales – premature debt collection letter on behalf of HMRC

HM Revenue & Customs – civil penalty appeal review

OK, I’ve talked about the dire state of our economy, which is what should really matter to all of us, particularly those in power.

But let’s look at that one incident which has caused so much jabber and the use of so many hours of broadcast time and published pages. An MP, Andrew Mitchell, who has left on his bike through the main exit of Downing Street many times previously, is stopped by a police officer and told to leave by the pedestrian exit. What a petty, jumped-up, officious little jobs-worth! Yes, I mean the police officer, not the MP. What possible justification could he have for doing this apart from asserting his own sense of self-importance? What law was he attempting to uphold? The MP concerned had every right to be angry. But what a waste of time and money over something so ridiculously petty. Endless hours of wasted airtime & pages of newsprint. Yes, police officers deserve respect just like everybody else, including bike-riding MPs going through the gate they’ve always used. But don’t demand respect when you’ve shown none.

Let’s get this straight. The police are civilians in uniform, although they sometimes tend to let the power go to their heads because, after all, power corrupts. In certain cases of course, the very power the police are granted attracts the wrong individuals into the police force in the first place, like Simon Harwood, the one who killed Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protest. They like to see themselves as “The Law” but in fact they are nothing of the kind – they don’t make laws, they don’t test laws and they don’t execute laws. That’s for parliament and the judiciary. The police force I’ve born witness to is a place of a majority of honourable hard working people whose working lives are beset by the effects of officers who get drunk on power, individuals who indulge in corruption or nepotism or violence, and those who engage in rumour-mongering, or coaching & falsifying statements. Worst of all are the ones who protect those guilty of repeated offences, which occurred in the case of Simon Harwood; if he had been dismissed earlier, Ian Tomlinson would be alive today. Although in the minority, these incidents are destroying the reputation of the police.

Don’t make the MP apologise to the police. Make the policeman concerned stand up and justify his own actions, or go and find a new job where he won’t do any more damage. Please… for the sake of the police force and its reputation, as well as for the cohesion of our society. The misuse of power destroys respect, and without respect there is no authority, and in turn no power to effect change.

So here’s a thing… you’re in a damaged vehicle at high speed… there’s an experienced driver at the wheel… and you tear him away from what he does best, replacing him with someone who smiles nicely but has never driven a vehicle before. Does that make sense? No. But nonetheless, it’s what Britain did on the last General Election.

And now? It’s exactly as Gordon Brown predicted. A double-dip recession, followed by stagnation. And what do our fine politicians do? Yes… that’s right… they engage in petty squabbling and summary tinkering which is akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Worst of all, the only thing we seem to be able to talk about is what one MP may or may not have said to a police officer in an argument over which exit to use. Don’t we have more important things to talk about? Like how to save our economy? No. Apparently not. Let’s dwell on something of no importance whatsoever instead, it’s much less scary than having to face the real issues.

But will smoke & mirrors save David Cameron and his little childhood aristocratic friend Gideon “George” Osborne? Yes. Probably. Because the people of Britain have proved that they are actually that stupid.

See also People, Politics & the State of Britain, which I wrote shortly before the General Election.

Winston Churchill's 1941 Great Declaration

In 1941, with Europe under the rule of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill sent out a message to all those who awaited or fought for the end of tyranny. It wasn’t a long message, or one that was particularly full of specific information or advice… but it was then, and remains today, an inspirational and resolute rallying call which proclaims in succinct and sparing language the absolute, unwavering belief in the triumph of the human spirit that is surely one of the most beautiful things about humanity. This was the message:

Lift up your hearts, all will come right. Out of the depths of sorrow and of sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind.

There you go. Short, precise, elegant and powerful. Inspirational, strong leadership for all the people of Europe in dark times. Unfortunately the best we can muster for these dark times is apparently David Cameron. Or Ed Miliband. Empty, vacuous PR men; weak, simpering public school boys. Men of power who waste that power; who think that a verbless soundbite is a substitute for inspiring people to do their best. Men who can’t or won’t even stand up to the greedy individuals and corporations who got us into this mess and who refuse to cooperate in the arduous task of getting us out of it and back to sustainable prosperity.

So sad. Sadder still when you realise it’s self-inflicted…. After all, we chose them, through our democratic process. So… please can we have a proper leader now? Please?

For anyone fighting an unfair, unjustified or illegal PCN from Brighton & Hove City Council’s illustrious parking department, you may be interested to know that my appeal with the Parking Tribunal (now properly named the Traffic Penalty Tribunal) won by default because the Council didn’t even bother to present any evidence to the Tribunal.

Mine was a case of being accused of parking in a loading bay at 06:30 in the morning whilst not loading, whereas in fact I was loading – see also the original posts Testing the Parking Tribunal and Brighton & Hove Parking – criminal racket in disguise

The so-called riots in London are of course just theft, looting, arson and vandalism on a large organised scale. Disgusting and offensive as this may be, we have to ask ourselves why it has happened, and what we can do about it.

I’ve been claiming for years that our government leadership is weak, and it is this weakness that has caused this problem and goes on perpetuating it. We live in a democracy – which is actually a coalition of the meek. We’re the meek, the ones who want to live a gentle and peaceful life, with everything well ordered and civilised, where you work hard to achieve what you can, and you raise your children to have values which are not hugely at odds with those of the rest of society. The meek pay their taxes and elect strong leaders who can spend our money to organise the things that we don’t really want to have to deal with on our doorsteps – like education, social care, law and order, and defence.

So why are the riots happening? Because there are criminal elements at large who believe that in large numbers, covering their faces, they can get away with anything. So far, they’re right – because our political leadership is weak, blustering, full of hot air and with no stomach for decisive action – which sends a terrible message to those waiting in the second wave. The Police try their best but they’re outnumbered and outmanoeuvred. There are minority pockets of people all over the country who don’t care about anything except material goods, and if they think they can just take what they want, they will.

David Cameron and his government should take this as their Falklands, and either deal with it swiftly and decisively, stamping on the criminals with all necessary force… or step down, and let someone else have a go. The trouble is, we didn’t like our strong leaders because they spoke harshly to us and weren’t good media managers, so all we’re left with these days is pathetic ex-public schoolboy career politicians who would rather make us fearful of Islamic fundamentalists than to actually tackle the nation’s internal problems. Ah well, at least we only have ourselves to blame.

Brighton Parking Restriction Notice

Today is Sunday. The parking restrictions on my road are clearly displayed as Mon-Fri noon-1pm. There are very faded, patchy single & double yellow lines which haven’t been repainted for years, and a few months ago there were Council notices tied to lamp posts about lifting parking restrictions to allow more parking locally. So what was a traffic warden doing walking up & down issuing parking tickets? The Council is probably hoping that people are idiots who get scared into paying up even when they don’t have to. Hopefully they’re wrong.

A parking ticket (PCN) illegally issued by Brighton & Hove City Council

So, Brighton & Hove City Council – please tell us – what will it take to stop you and your imbeciles from wasting everyone’s time and money with these continued attempts to extort money from people fraudulently?

After I reported my parking ticket woes in my post entitled Brighton & Hove Parking – A Criminal Racket in Disguise, I appealed the PCN and got a rejection notice from the Council. No surprise there – after all they have to earn their money from somewhere, even if it’s from fraud.

Well, my fellow business breakfast club members were up in arms at the claims by Brighton & Hove City Council that I had parked my vehicle in a loading bay early one morning without any loading being observed. “But that was the morning of your presentation” one said, “I saw you unloading all your kit”. Others agreed and were outraged at Brighton & Hove City Council’s blatant attempt at criminal fraud.

So, one by one they submitted signed witness statements for me to forward to the Parking Tribunal. Unfortunately the rejection notice had arrived whilst I was away, which didn’t help, particularly as they give you a measly 28 days to bring the case to the notice of the Parking Tribunal. Not a lot when you have to gather evidence from disparate sources. But why should I be surprised when the vested interests of the multi-million pound parking racket are at stake, that everything should be stacked in their favour and run to their schedule?

So, now I await the outcome of the Tribunal and I’ll let you know when it arrives.

Some time later: Well, I have to report that Brighton and Hove City Council didn’t even bother trying to defend my appeal, and so the Parking Tribunal found in my favour by default. This indicates that the council knew all along that it didn’t have a leg to stand on & was just hanging on in the vain hope that I would shut up, give up and pay up.