Tag: united kingdom

The most outrageous benefits scandal of all: How taxpayer-funded firm set up to help the disabled is now handing its £4 BILLION stockpile of cars to people who are obese or ‘depressed’ – and even letting friends and relatives use them

The way Aaron Hooper told it, he was so disabled he didn’t have the strength to grip a knife and fork or move more than a few metres without a wheelchair.

The 31-year-old was sufficiently convincing for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to put him on disability benefit and he was awarded a brand-new car under the Motability scheme, which offers anyone in receipt of a ‘qualifying mobility allowance’ a free car, scooter or powered wheelchair in exchange for a portion of their disability benefits.

It was only when his mother came under investigation for suspected benefit fraud that a different picture of his physical abilities emerged.

DWP staff not only observed him walking a mile unaided through the Devon town of Axminster with a guitar slung across his back but also lifting heavy weights at a local gym.

It was his exploits in the fitness centre’s car park that were most telling, however. In a video the gym uploaded to Instagram, Hooper can be seen demonstrating his strength by pulling his car several metres across the tarmac using a rope attached to the tow hitch of the vehicle.

Hooper’s case is not just a salutary tale about the gullibility of the civil servants who police our bloated benefits system, but a reminder of the perks available to some of the 2.8 million people currently economically inactive due to ill health.

Last year, a record 815,000 claimants made use of the Motability scheme. This represents an astonishing increase of more than 170,000 customers in just 12 months thanks to a surge in people claiming disability benefits, which boosted Motability’s turnover to a whopping £7 billion.

This boom has proved extremely lucrative for the scheme, which enjoys a uniquely privileged position. Not only is it a private company, jointly owned by Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest, but enjoys a guaranteed revenue stream in the form of state-funded benefits and has a de facto monopoly.

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Spies, Secrets, and iCloud: Apple’s Legal Showdown in London

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in London is the one that will consider Apple’s appeal against the UK’s Home Office secret order to include an encryption backdoor in the giant’s iCloud service.

As things stand now, pending the outcome of the legal – and political – wrangling, iCloud users no longer enjoy the security and privacy benefits of the Advanced Data Protection (ADP).

This affects iCloud Backup in the following categories: iCloud Drive, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Safari Bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos, Wallet Passes, and Freeform.

Meanwhile, the tribunal itself is “secret,” and the date it will consider Apple’s attempt to avoid the permanent breaking of encryption, and of the trust of its users worldwide, has been set for Friday, March 14.

But privacy activists like Privacy International (PI) want these hearings to be public, since the outcome of the UK’s anti-encryption push potentially affects millions, possibly billions of people around the world.

Secret as it may be, the IPT – which is believed to normally deal with national security issues – announced Friday’s closed-door meeting, a move that is described as “unusual.”

Unusual perhaps, but not illogical – Apple’s appeal against the original secret order was also apparently meant to be secret but has in the meantime been “leaked” to the public.

The original order came from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who targeted the US company with a “technical compatibility notice.” The end result of compliance was giving UK’s spies and law enforcement access to data, by compromising iCloud encryption.

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United Nations judge convicted of forcing young woman to work as slave

A Ugandan judge who sits on a UN court has been convicted of enslaving a young woman while she was living in Oxford.

Lydia Mugambe, 49, took “advantage of her status” over her victim in the “most egregious way” by preventing her from holding down steady employment and forcing her to work as her maid, while providing childcare for free, prosecutors said.

She was found guilty on Thursday at Oxford crown court of conspiring to breach UK immigration law, people trafficking, modern slavery and conspiracy to intimidate a witness.

Mugambe collapsed in the dock as the guilty verdicts were read out and the judge ordered that the court be cleared after there were audible gasps in the public gallery. The Ugandan judge was escorted from the court by two dock officers.

Mugambe was appointed two years ago to the UN court that deals with residual matters from the criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

She is understood to be a PhD research student at Oxford’s law faculty while on sabbatical from her main role as a high court judge in Uganda.

At the trial, Caroline Haughey KC, for the prosecution, said that Mugambe had “exploited and abused” the victim by “taking advantage of her lack of understanding of her rights to properly paid employment and deceiving her as to the purpose of her coming to the UK”.

The jury accepted the prosecution’s case that Mugambe had engaged in “illegal folly” with John Leonard Mugerwa, who was Uganda’s deputy high commissioner in London.

The pair were found to have conspired to arrange for the young woman to come to the UK. Prosecutors said that Mugambe and Mugerwa had participated in a “very dishonest” trade-off.

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Surrey Pride founder, 41, is found guilty of raping 12-year-old boy he met on gay dating app Grindr

The founder of an LGBTQ+ group has been found guilty of raping a 12-year-old boy he met on Grindr.

Stephen Ireland, 41, who co-founded Pride in Surrey in 2018, was convicted at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday of raping the child at the flat he shared with David Sutton, 27, in Addlestone on April 19 2024.

Ireland along with Sutton, who was a volunteer for Surrey Pride, stood trial for a total of 38 offences between them, including conspiring to sexually assault children, arranging the commission of child sex offences and conspiring to kidnap.

The court heard the boy, 12, had met Ireland at his flat after messaging on dating app Grindr during which Ireland had suggested they kiss and watch pornography.

The child told police they had sex in the flat, smoked a bong and that pornography was played on a laptop, jurors heard. 

The trial heard how the pair discussed targeting children outside school gates while pretending to be a talent coach or music manager and how to avoid CCTV.

Ireland allegedly said in one of the messages ‘all I’m thinking of is making out with a 13’ and in another he told the volunteer ‘every day passes and I wanna do something terrible with you’, the court heard.

Sutton and Ireland also described themselves as ‘pedos’ in messages. 

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London council chiefs spend £140million to send homeless people out of the capital by snapping up hundreds of properties in deprived areas elsewhere in England

Councils in London have spent more than £140million snapping up homes outside the city to relocate homeless people.  

Local authorities in the capital have acquired more than 850 properties across England since 2017, with many in the most deprived areas of the east and southeast of the country, The Guardian reported. 

Bizarrely, some London councils have already bought properties in the Midlands and are planning to send some people as far as Liverpool and the northeast. 

Officials identified 704 people living on the streets of the capital between October and December last year – a 26 per cent rise on the previous year.

Meanwhile, a total of 4,612 individuals were found to be sleeping rough, a five per cent increase on the year before.

People are deemed to be living on the streets if they have had been seen rough sleeping on several occasions over a period of three weeks or more. 

In order to deal with the scope of the problem, and faced with an extreme shortage of social housing and skyrocketing private rents, more than a dozen local authorities – and the housing companies they partially own – have invested heavily in property outside of London’s boundaries. 

The non-London residences are used to house homeless individuals or families either as temporary emergency accommodation or permanently as a privately rented home. 

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Alleged Criminality In UK Peer-Related Contracts Probed Behind Closed Doors At COVID Inquiry

Potentially incriminating evidence relating to the PPE firm linked to Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband will be heard in a private, closed session of the UK Covid-19 inquiry, it was confirmed as the module examining contract procurement began.

On Monday, the inquiry began four weeks of scrutiny of government decisions to purchase personal protective equipment and the use of the so-called “VIP lane” that gave priority to companies with connections, which was previously ruled unlawful by the High Court.

However, inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett announced in preliminary hearings for the latest module that there would be a risk of prejudice to potential criminal proceedings if “sensitive evidence” was heard in public.

Opening the latest round of hearings on Monday, Hallett said: “It is not my role, and indeed I am forbidden by the Inquiries Act, to attribute civil or criminal liability to any individual or company.

“I am aware that there are criminal or civil investigations into some of the matters that will be touched upon by this module, and in one case [related to Mone] I have agreed that some evidence will be heard with special restrictions applying to make sure I can hear the evidence without prejudicing any possible criminal investigation.

“The information that I receive [in the closed session] will become public as soon as any criminal investigations are resolved.”

The inquiry heard this week that the government’s 2019 expenditure on PPE had been £146 million, which was just 1 percent of the 2020 cost. In total, the government spent £14.9 billion on PPE between January 2020 and June 2022, plus a further £26 billion on track and trace measures and £700 million on ventilators.

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A Disastrous British-Led Operation in Ukraine: ‘The Krynky Landing’

UK military operation planners became central to an investigation after a failed mission that involved Ukrainian troops attempting to establish a foothold on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast. This operation dubbed “Krynky Landing” initiated in October 2023, aimed to seize and maintain control over a section of territory held by the Russians, before pushing toward Crimea, and reaching all the way to the Perekop isthmus. It ended in tragedy in July of 2024.

As a result, an estimated 788 Ukrainian soldiers who defended Krynky in Kherson Oblast are now reported to be either dead or ‘missing in action.’

Not surprisingly, both Ukrainian officials and their NATO supervisors are keen to bury this story, as well as the massive number of Ukrainian casualties incurred during this military debacle.

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Veiled Threat: Possessing Pics of Muslim Women Without Hijabs Should Be Made a Crime, UK Lawmakers Say

Leftist lawmakers in Britain have argued that being in possession of pictures of Muslim women without their hijab headscarves should be a crime akin to child pornography.

Impending legislation originally intended to crack down on revenge porn should include the prohibition against having images of Muslim women’s faces without their hijab if the photos were taken without their express permission.

The Women and Equalities Committee in the House of Commons argued that such pictures should be considered “non-consensual intimate images” and, therefore, come with similar penalties as possessing child pornography, including lengthy prison sentences, the Daily Mail reported.

If government ministers sign off the committee’s proposal, it could become a crime in Britain as early as this year.

At present, the law defines “intimate” images as those in which a person is seen fully or partially nude, is engaging in a sexual act, or is seen using the bathroom.

Responding to the call to criminalise some pictures of Muslim women without hijabs, David Spencer of the Policy Exchange think tank said: “Tackling the problem of ‘revenge porn’ is clearly important – but expanding this to so-called ‘culturally intimate’ images risks extending the criminal law too far.

“The police cannot be expected to wade into so-called ‘cultural’ issues when officers are already struggling to deal with the volume of stabbings, sexual assaults and thefts that occur every day. The Government should be cautious about creating yet more criminal offences.”

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Who is Peter Mandelson, Starmer’s pick for U.S. ambassador?

Peter Mandelson, Keir Starmer’s choice for British ambassador to the US, co-owns a business that helps companies “see opportunities in politics, regulation and public policy”.

Mandelson, who has a long history of favouring corporations in often scandalous situations, looks set to keep his shares in this company while supposedly representing the UK.

He founded his lobbying company, Global Counsel, in 2010, creating a lucrative business from his political contacts built up while a minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. 

Mandelson stood down from Global Counsel’s board last year – probably in preparation for a post with Starmer’s government – but remains one of the two largest shareholders of the firm, owning over 25% of the company. 

According to Companies House he is a “person with significant control” of Global Counsel. 

I asked the Foreign Office if Mandelson must give up his ownership of Global Counsel to be ambassador. 

They did not answer directly, telling me: “There is an established regime in place for the management of interests held by ambassadors or High Commissioners. This ensures that steps are taken to avoid or mitigate any actual, potential or perceived conflicts of interest.”

The Foreign Office would not give any more detail of this “regime”.

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Pensioner, 93, who has dementia has been convicted of not insuring her car… despite her living in a care home and no longer having a driving licence

An elderly woman with dementia has been convicted of failing to insure her car – despite her living in a nursing home and no longer having a driving licence. 

The pensioner, 93, from Dudley in the West Midlands, was prosecuted by DVLA in September last year when they found out that the insurance on her Ford had expired.

In a handwritten letter the woman explained that due to her diagnosis she had not driven since November 10, 2023, but the vehicle had been ‘kept on the drive’ during this period, the Evening Standard reports.

She admitted to having ‘overlooked’ making a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN) for the motor, but said her disease had caused her to hide mail – leaving her family unable to access her letters.

The woman also revealed she had been recovering from a stroke in a care home since November.

As prosecutor DVLA could have decided to withdraw the prosecution on the grounds it wasn’t in the public interest.

But, due to the fast-track design of the Single Justice Procedure, this was not considered.

The pensioner was convicted on a guilty plea at Taunton magistrates court last month. 

She was given a six-month conditional discharge, meaning no financial penalty, but still has a criminal conviction.

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