At the court case I explained why I was doing what I did, and the local press and TV got hold of the story and highlighted the problems facing local couples. However, when the judge made his closing statement, he instructed the jury to decide the outcome based on the evidence given and not to base it on what they had seen or read in the local media. I was found guilty, which was the correct verdict based on the facts and the judge said that he was disturbed by the facts with my case but the law is the law and as it was a controlled theft going on for six months he said that he had to pass a custodial sentence. James said that the situation that led him to my door would still be there when he left. The situation would, however, be much harder as now he had a prison sentence no one would trust him where money was concerned. He had been ordered to pay the money back and the state had to keep him locked up and provided him with a bed, food and water at a cost to the taxpayer of £43,000 every year, so nothing good will become of any of it.
More on James story can be seen at the rear of this book under, Afterword’s: Chapter 12. UK Housing Crisis. It makes interesting reading.
Chapter 13. Austerity
The nine years of austerity left a lot of people earning less year after year and people looked at other ways to make ends meet and many resulted to breaking the Law. Many were caught and ended up in prison. Others wanted to make the conservative government listen to their concerns and several protest brough London to a standstill. One such case was Lewis Norton aged 42 married with two teenage children, came under my wing after he had been sent to prison for 32 months for GBH. He was an exceptionally large chap who reminded me of ‘Big Daddy’ a famous wrestler from the past and he had true blue eyes and a good crop of hair that he tied back in a ponytail during the day.
Lewis was sent to me for counselling but I’m not sure that I could do much for him apart from placing him on our anger management program which he really didn’t need but it would look good when he applied for early release. Lewis had worked for the NHS at Northampton general hospital for the past twenty years as a radiologist and even with a criminal record he would get back into work as there is a shortage of radiologist across the UK. I asked Lewis to explain why he had been found guilty of GBH. He said, “I’m normally not a trouble maker and due to my size I seldom get picked on although he had to admit that he looked a prime target for any drunk or drugged up youngster who was looking for a fight.
He said that he had always been big and had once gone to the Saints rugby school in Northampton but after an accident on the pitch where he had crushed a disc, so he had decided to give up the sport that he loved. He said that both he and his wife Sharon worked for the NHS and whilst the kids were growing up, he had worked a different shift pattern than his wife so that one or the other could oversee the children. This did however put a strain on his marriage as they seldom had time together but had stuck together for the sake of the children. Neither he nor his wife was overpaid when you took into account the unsociable hours that they worked and they had both taken a pay cut over the past 9 years due to a pay freeze cap of just 1% per year which wasn’t keeping pace with inflation.
So, in real terms they were working longer for less as the years passed by. He said that the pay cap of 1% had been set by the UK conservative government after the terrible world banking crisis in 2008. The problem was that the cap only applied to certain groups which fell under the “public sector” and many workers were not part of the austerity measures. The country still paid some footballer’s thousands of pounds every week for kicking a ball around for 90 minutes every weekend and you also had bankers paying themselves bonuses of millions every year, even when their bank was making a loss. Lewis went on to state that “austerity could only work if it applies to everyone.” I said to him that I also worked in the public sector and had to stick with an increase of 1% for the last 9 years but I had to admit that I knew very little about austerity and asked Lewis to explain to me, in layman’s, terms what it was all about.
His reply really got me thinking about the measures and doubted whether they ever worked. He said “austerity is a political-economic term referring to policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. Austerity measures are used by governments that find it difficult to pay their debts. The measures are meant to reduce the budget deficit by bringing government revenues closer to expenditures, which is assumed to make the payment of debt easier. Austerity measures also demonstrate a government's fiscal discipline to creditors and credit rating agencies. Lewis went on to state that there isn’t any proof that Austerity works. There was an interesting program on the BBC a few years ago where it looked at other EU countries who had jumped on the Austerity band wagon and looked at how they were performing. Countries involved were the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Cyprus. All were forced to borrow money to save their countries banking system after the time bomb went off in 2007/2008. Greece was the first and its problems have been the longest lasting mainly down to the Greek government allegedly giving misleading financial information to become a member of the EU in the first place and then manipulated the figures to mask the extent of its deficit right up to the time when the credit crunch exposed its deep-rooted problems. All the governments in turn needed to be bailed out because they ran out of money or could not borrow it in the financial markets at a reasonable loan rate, but they have, as a result, allegedly reformed their economies. The world money lenders wouldn’t loan money unless the country took sever austerity measures to bring their borrowing down.
Inflated property prices around the world caused a huge property bubble to burst and threw the world economy into a prolonged downturn. Lewis said that he wasn’t surprised to see that after years of austerity measures which mainly affected the working classes that countries were still in a big mess. In his opinion governments needed to raise more in taxes from the people who could afford to pay them most and this was the rich who pay a tax rate of 45% on earnings over £150,000. The previous Labour government raised the top rate of income tax from 40% to 50% in 2010 but the conservative government reduced the top rate to 45% in 2012. Effectively, the coalition government had given the "richest people in the country a huge tax cut" by scrapping the 50% top rate. Lewis who was a very clever man when it came to mathematics said that the on coming to power in 1979, Margaret Thatcher's government reduced the top rate of income tax from 83% to 60%. This was reduced again in 1988 to 40%, and the "higher rate" has fluctuated between 40 and 50% ever since.
If all income over £150,000 was taxed at 50% and any one being paid over a £million would have to pay 80%. If the UK could do this for the next 5 years, it could make a tremendous difference to the countries bank balance. All income should be included, including earnings from overseas and the Non-Dom system scrapped. Anyone holding a British passport should be taxed at the correct rate and if this were done then austerity could work for the very first time. The governments HMRC should set up a separate police force to ensure that everyone is paying their correct taxes and a law should be introduced where advisors would also be responsible for their actions. If they advise a client how to evade paying their taxes they would also be charged and face a heavy fine and/or a jail sentence. The whole system is in serious need of reform and this should be a priority for the government after the Covid-19 shambles has been sorted. Lewis went on to state that austerity didn’t work and when Boris took over he promised that he would replace the 20,000 police lost during austerity which would bring us back to the 2010 level.
Lewis was good at figures and quoted the Office for National Statistics (ONS). He said that the general government gross debt first exceeded the 60.0% (the Maastricht reference value) at the end of 2009, when it was 63.3% of GDP. The general government gross debt was £1,891.8 billion at the end of 2019, equivalent to 85.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) and 25.4 percentage points above the Maastricht reference value of 60.0% set out in the protocol on the exce
ssive deficit procedure. You don’t need to be an expert of mathematics to see that even with 9 years of austerity the UK under the conservative government ended up making matters worse. With the general government gross debt was £1,891.8 billion at the end of 2019, equivalent to 85.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) I hate to think what it will be after Covid-19.
I thanked Lewis for his reply and asked him to explain further why he had ended up sitting where he is today? He replied that he went on a NHS protest march which went past number 10 and the riot police were trying to stop us protesting in front of the houses of parliament. The police had estimated that there would be around 100,000 protestors but, in the end, there was an estimated 500,000 turned up to protest. I was at the front of the crowd and when we reached the barricade the force of protestors pushing from behind meant that the barrier soon collapsed as we were pushed forward.
Police horses were introduced but the crowd was pushing so hard from behind that the policemen on the horses started to use their batons to strike protestors on the back. They manged to hit a lady standing next to me and she hit the ground hard and I picked her up before she got trampled on. The only way to go was forward and I then came up against the horsemen and their batons. Rather than being hit I had no option but to grab the baton and in doing so I pulled the policeman from his horse and he landed badly on the curb and did some serious damage to his lower back. It was never my intention to harm anyone as all I was doing was protecting myself and the lady who I was carrying on my shoulder. However, I think the judge had been told to come down hard on any protestors as the government knew that there would be many more protests in the months ahead.
As I looked like the gentle green giant when standing in the dock it was assumed that because of my size I was a thug the judged put me away for 32 months. Lewis also stated that he wanted to get out and back to work as soon as possible as with the Brexit situation several qualified radiologists from across the EU decided to leave and move elsewhere. I knew then that I wouldn’t be inviting Lewis to my heist in Bedford but wish him luck when he gets back to working for the NHS.
Chapter 15. Covid-19
Nearly everything that happens outside the prison walls seems to find a way to land at the prison gates and Covid-19 will not be the exception. Within minutes of Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announcing the measure of financial help the government would give to the 5 million self-employed people, I can guarantee that criminals were hard at work making false claims. The Chancellor wanted to match the 80% figure he had set in place for those who had ‘proper jobs’ and were paid via the PAYE system as the government already knew who these claimants were. The problem with the self-employed was that not all of them had been in business long enough to have a track record with the governments tax department HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and would find it difficult to claim. Add to this those working in the GIG community or those on Zero Hour Contracts there is no easy way for those workers to claim either sick pay or get 80% of previous monthly wages under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. According to the latest figures available from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there were 974,000 Brits on zero-hour contracts in December 2019 – not only a record high but IMO a stain on our country.
A week after the safety net was announced the DWP received a million new claims. Without a safe way for the governments DWP’s overworked staff to check every claimant then benefit fraud will hit a record high. The true figures of how many turned to crime - as there wasn’t a safety net for them, will only show in the months and years to come. Many law-abiding people will end up with a criminal record as all they wanted to do was to survive and feed their families. Perhaps the government thinks that these people should follow the Chinese peasants and start to eat dogs which are boiled whilst still alive. What the Government should learn from this deadly saga is that the GIG community and zero-hour contracts should be banned, and everyone should have a ‘proper job’ and pay tax via the PAYE system. However, I don’t think that the conservative government will have the guts to do so, for fear of upsetting their main supporters.
It will not be just individuals that break the Law either as there will be employers who have placed staff on the governments furlough scheme yet having them work. It was noted on the UK’s Business Forum on the 22nd of May 2020 that a company asked staff to go back to work but they were asked not to clock in or out.
Was the Coronavirus an unwanted gift from China?
The more I read about Covid-19 the more I believe that Coronavirus (Covid-19) was a man made in China and will kill around half a million people across the globe. It was originally alleged that the virus resulted from Chinese peasants eating dogs and other wild animals but IMO this virus escaped (possibly by accident) from the Wuhan Institute of Virology whilst still being developed. The Chinese Communist Party knew as early as December 2019 that the virus was out of the bag and started to try and contain the spread within Wuhan. This they did very well but forgot to tell the world that a coronavirus had been released until much later. The virus itself is very complexed and is different in its makeup. A person in Norwich who tested positive would have a slightly different formula than someone in Cardiff. The symptoms would also be different with some suffers not having a cough or high temperature where others did. It had also been noted that certain blood groups were more likely to suffer than others. Scientists say it is highly likely that the virus came from bats but first passed through an intermediary animal in the same way that another coronavirus – the 2002 Sars outbreak – moved from horseshoe bats to cat-like civets before infecting humans. All these differences make me believe that Covid-19 was being developed as a possible biological weapon and was released by accident before being fully developed.
It is also alleged by other critics that the new Coronavirus was man made and aimed at certain Black, Asian and minority ethnic, (BAME). Could the DNA of the virus have been designed to attack groups such as the Muslim population where the highest concentrations are found in the northwest provinces of Xinjiang, Gansu and Ningxia, with significant populations also found throughout Yunnan Province. Brainwashing camps were forced to close once the western world was made aware of their existence. The more I read about this pandemic the more I believe that it was man made.
Bearded men carry ‘more germs than dogs’, study finds
Could one of the reasons for BAME men being shown as positive simply be down to the fact that many have excessive facial hair, which must be the ideal hiding place for Covid-19. Professor Andreas Gutzeit, of Switzerland’s Hirslanden Clinic, said “men with beards carry more germs in their facial hair than dogs carry in their fur.” I also noticed that female fatalities were also high and perhaps a simple kiss on the cheek could transfer the virus from husband to wife. Before my email list gets swamped, I do know that many men have beards as part of their religious beliefs, but need their beards be that long?
I also believe that the virus was being developed by China as a form of biological warfare in retaliation to America banning the G5 Huawei in the country's next generation of super-fast wireless networks, and also in retaliation to the trade tariffs placed on imports to the USA from China.
Several critics also stated that according to www.ceicdata.com China's labour productivity dropped by 6.26 % year on year in Dec 2019, compared with a growth of 6.77 % in the previous year. Some fear that the bubble had burst and the People's Republic of China and its communist party where trying to hide the countries poor performance.
What concerns me and many westerners is the way the Chinese authorities dealt with Dr Li Wenliang who had posted to a group chat with other medics about some patients showing signs of a new Sars-like illness in early December 2019, well before Chinese authorities admitted to the outbreak of a novel coronavirus to the rest of the world. According to the Guardian newspaper police detained Li a few days later for “spreading false rumours” and forced him to sign a police document admitting that he had “seriously di
srupted social order” and breached the law. Officers said eight people had been disciplined for spreading rumours in relation to the virus, but it was not clear whether Li was one of those. A week later the 34-year-old doctor developed a fever and later published his account online. After being diagnosed with Covid-19 at the end of January, he died in early February of the virus. His death sparked outrage in China, particularly among internet users. Censors were overwhelmed by a wave of critical posts, including some blaming the government.
China is also accused of hiding the findings of a coronavirus expert - known as "Bat Woman" - after she quickly identified the genetic make-up of the new strain that has infected millions. Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli is one of the world's top researchers on coronaviruses and has discovered dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves. She studied samples taken from some of the first people to become infected with the new and then-mysterious respiratory illness in China in December 2019 and found it was like SARS. It was identified as a novel coronavirus and within three days she completed its gene sequencing, finding that it was 96 per cent identical to a virus found in horseshoe bats in Yunnan. But she was "muzzled”, and her team was ordered not to reveal any information about the new disease, which was already spreading rapidly as China kept the world in the dark. Could an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology release the deadly virus to the inhabitants of Wuhan?
The Bedford Heist Page 7