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Shameful treatment of mentally ill
IT isn’t entirely coincidental that two major pronouncements on the way society treats the mentally ill were published this week (see page 3).
It is a wonder that there have not been more reports in recent times.
Such is the shameful way officialdom often treats vulnerable people with learning difficulties.
One report by Sir Jonathan Michael sets out case histories showing how NHS staff badly treated mentally ill patients who died in shocking circumstances.
The other report is more parochial – it’s by an Ombudsman who found Camden council guilty of “maladministration”, as a result of which a mentally ill woman was wrongly made bankrupt by Town Hall bureaucrats.
Annoyed that she had fallen behind in council tax payments, officials hounded her through the courts until she had been made bankrupt.
Amazingly, the Ombudsman points out, while these officials were unaware of her vulnerability, a few corridors away in the Town Hall their colleagues had her down on their books as a client who needed protection.
Neither department knew what the other was doing!
It is not all gloom and doom, however. Society treats the mentally ill better than it did 50 years ago.
Reforms have been introduced by government agencies to match rising expectations.
But restless campaigning bodies seek, quite rightly, to speed up the process.
Unfortunately, it seems to be in the nature of large institutions to reform at – sometimes – an annoyingly slow pace. Far too slow for our vulnerable citizens.
Never mind Glasgow, look to your neighbour!
DON’T think too much about Glasgow East – that’s our advice to Labour in central London.
Take a look at what happened in one of the most significant election results in years in Westminster’s Church Street Ward – not all that far from Camden (see page 2).
Astonishingly, the seat, safe for Labour for 44 years, became Tory on Thursday when Labour votes collapsed.
Labour’s core voters deserted them.
Leading Labourites are in denial. They pin the blame on Gordon Brown’s personality.
But it’s his Blairite policies that are sinking the ship.
Calls for change in themselves are asinine. But change to what? A radical shift, such as higher tax for the very rich, windfall tax on our foreign-owned energy companies and a massive council housing programme, all promoted by trade unions at the Warwick conference this week, would probably bring voters back.
Meanwhile, the Tories are, quite rightly, setting their sights on Labour wards in Camden, once considered untouchable – but no more!cal bigotry over commonsense.
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