Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Dispatches

Most recents (24)

đŸ§”Tonight’s #Dispatches is heartbreaking and makes me angry. Having been in a psych hospital with a physical disability, there for my mental illness, it was awful enough. To lock away autistic women & girls indefinitely is cruel. 1/3
The friend I made when we were inside, she’s an autistic female. Been in and out for 10+ years. Yes she needed mh treatment but she doesn’t cope in the environment. These places are noisy & chaotic. As this is showing, sexual abuse, assault and rape sadly isn’t uncommon. 2/3
Most women who’ve been inside have their own horror tales. I have mine, it changes your psyche and destroys trust. For these autistic people, they will be traumatised daily with no knowing when they will be in a safe environment everyone deserves. There must be a better way 💔
Read 4 tweets
đŸ§”Last night’s disturbing #Dispatches exposed people being desperately let down by NHS mental health services in Essex. 👇
1/5
This comes less than two weeks after @BBCPanorama aired equally devastating footage from an NHS mental health unit in Manchester.
2/5
Heart-breaking testimony of the families who have lost loved ones shows us why we cannot continue as things are.
3/5
Read 5 tweets
Water companies dumped untreated sewage into England’s rivers and seas for more than 2.7 million hours last year.

Each pipe should have a permit from the environment regulator. But #Dispatches can reveal some are being used illegally.
Our #Dispatches investigation has found there are 870 sewage discharge pipes across the country without permits.

Dumping sewage from these pipes is illegal.
Welsh water has 184 and says they’re all in use.
Read 14 tweets
Illegal child labour is being used to supply cocoa beans to Cadbury – Britain’s favourite chocolate brand.

#Dispatches has been undercover in Ghana where children as young as 10 have been working gruelling hours to supply cocoa beans to Cadbury.
“Did it hurt?”

Young children bear scars from the dangerous work they do using sharp knives and machetes on coca farms linked to Cadbury. Other children are seen struggling with heavy loads, long hours and dangerous tools.
“I suffer a lot when I am farming.”

Some of the children working here have been sent by their families to live and work on the farms, stopping them from going to school.
Read 7 tweets
#Dispatches reporter @richardbutchins is investigating the harm caused by the way the Department for Work and Pensions implements the #disabilitybenefits system. 1/
One of the experts who advised the Department for Work and Pensions on the benefit system, and raised concerns was clinical psychologist Professor Geoff Shepherd. 2/
#Dispatches conducted a survey which shows many disabled people feel this system impacts their health. We contacted 80,000 disabled benefit claimants and had over 3,500 responses. 3/
Read 11 tweets
Is the NHS broken?

- Desperate staff shortages
- Outdated equipment
- Dangerously long wait times
- Delayed diagnoses
- Botched operations
- Needless baby deaths
- And 12,000 negligence claims in a single year

Can it survive? Dispatches Monday 8pm @Channel4
@Channel4 “You feel ashamed of the care you’re giving.”

Chronic staff shortages are putting patients and staff at risk, and affecting healthcare outcomes across the country. By 2024, it’s estimated there will be a shortage of 160,000 NHS staff - over 10% of staff.
@Channel4 In parts of the UK, there’s just one GP per 3,000 patients. Nationwide, that number is three per 1,000 - the lowest ratio in Europe.

Currently 10% of NHS jobs are unfilled, and there is a shortage of 40,000 nurses. By 2024, there is predicted to be a shortage of 11,500 GPs.
Read 9 tweets
In the past four years, nearly 2000 police officers, special constables and PCSOs in the UK have been accused of some form of sexual misconduct, #Dispatches can reveal.

Cops on Trial. Tomorrow at 10pm on @Channel4 1/
@Channel4 Two weeks ago, the sickening details of how Sarah Everard was kidnapped and murdered by a police officer shocked the nation. But this abuse of power and authority by serving officers is not a one off. 2/
@Channel4 #Dispatches received responses to Freedom of Information requests from 39 police forces revealing the shocking scale of the abuses. 3/
Read 10 tweets
The @FT is reporting that @Channel4 is to be #privatised. "The UK government is lining Channel 4 up for privatisation by the end of 2022 and will launch a consultation on its future within weeks." from @alexebarker @MattGarrahan
@FT @Channel4 @alexebarker @MattGarrahan @catrionalewis of #NineLivesMedia, told the recent @PSBfuture conference that if @Channel4 were to be privatised, she thought @Channel4News, award-winning investigative current affairs programme #Dispatches+ #Paralympics would be the first items to be dropped.
Public service broadcasters including @Channel4 make over 32,000 hours of UK-made original TV productions a yr, compared to just c230 hours by streamers. Govt stats show UK's creative industries contribute almost ÂŁ13m to UK economy every hour.
Read 6 tweets
1/. We know SAGE recommended a circuit-breaker lockdown on 21 Sept

We know that on that day, the PM & @RishiSunak met controversial anti-lockdown scientists Anders Tegnell & Prof Heneghan & Prof Gupta

Now we know Prof Gupta advised a full #HerdImmunity strategy. #DISPATCHES
2/. We know that the PM did NOT “stick to the science like glue”

Every epidemiologist & virologist will tell you #HerdImmunity is an ‘outcome’ never a ‘strategy’

And yet the govt briefed @Peston that it was their ‘strategy’ on 12/3/20 & it appears the strategy didn’t go away. Image
3/. Could it be these repeated blunders were not really ‘mistakes’?

@sarahkendzior writes of the Trump admin:

“They cover up crime with scandal & cover up malice with incompetence. They want to project an image of being inept, instead of as having a cruel & well-defined plan.”
Read 23 tweets
Second Wave: Did the Government Get it Wrong?

Two thirds of UK Covid deaths happened since September. #Dispatches charts the rise of the second wave & examines the extent to which the Prime Minister decisions could be blamed for those tragic deaths.

Tonight, 10pm on @Channel4
@Channel4 Boris Johnson was advised in September by government scientific advisors to enforce a two week lockdown.

But the PM went on to seek advice from three outside scientists known to be lockdown sceptics. The most controversial of them has agreed to speak to us.
@Channel4 “That was disastrous. There’s no doubt that caused thousands of extra deaths.”

Despite being warned the new Kent variant of Covid was 70% more transmissible, Boris Johnson was insistent on not cancelling Christmas 2020. Did his delay in imposing a full lockdown cost lives?
Read 7 tweets
Just jaw-dropping corruption: the Queen's cousin, Prince Michael of Kent, filmed at business meeting where clients were told he could be hired for £10,000 a day to make representations to Putin's inner circle. via @JCalvertST @Arbuthnott @tomhcalver thetimes.co.uk/article/facf79

Enthusiastically corrupt?

Prince Michael of Kent was willing to push the boat out to help the fake gold-trading company House of Haedong gain access to the Russia market via his contact with Vladimir Putin.

via @thesundaytimes @C4Dispatches
Interesting descriptor for Prince Michael of Kent on Google.
Read 6 tweets
The Queen’s cousin, Prince Michael, appears willing to use his royal status to seek favours from Russian president Putin, & use a royal palace & his links to the Queen for personal profit - #Dispatches & The Sunday Times reveal. 1/

Royals For Hire Monday at 7.30pm on @Channel4
@Channel4 We set up a fake South Korean gold company, the House of Haedong, and asked Prince Michael to make a speech that trades off his royal status and gives the company royal support in order to impress its investors.
He said “the idea makes me very happy.” 2/
@Channel4 He said he was willing to accept $200,000 from our fake company in return for making the speech.
#RoyalForHire
3/
Read 10 tweets
Private equity firms are taking home billions of pounds as high streets die and thousands are unemployed.

#Dispatches studied the accounts of 10 well known brands including HMV, Cath Kidston, Debenhams, and Toys ‘R’ Us, that entered administration in the past three years. 1/
Nearly 29,000 jobs were lost, but we can reveal that across their broader investment portfolios, the private equity owners disclosed nearly a billion pounds of profit during the period of ownership. The 10 brands owed almost ÂŁ50million in unpaid taxes when they collapsed. 2/
“Things stopped being replaced. They would break down. There was water coming through the ceiling.”

Former employees of Debenhams, bought in 2003 by a private equity consortium, told #Dispatches that after the takeover the business underinvested in the upkeep of its stores. 3/
Read 9 tweets
#Channel4 #ConditionCritical

Half the people in this unit are younger than me. Think about that. Working age NHS staff saying this.

Most nurses feel the pandemic has had a negative effect on their mental health.

How are we caring for them?
#dispatches

If anyone knows the @ handle of the doctor leading this programme please let me know.

I would just like to find a more personal way of recognising the hardship, grief and greenshoots. Especially for Nathan and all new medics and nurses and with her own family
Thank you THANK YOU @SaleyhaAhsan and Nathan and all your colleagues.

I know there are gainsayers out there but they are a tiny spit in the great sea of our gratitude.
Read 4 tweets
The virus has exposed not only gross incompetence, but cronyism & corruption at the heart of government

With contracts for chums and billions of tax-payers money siphoned off to the private sector

And unnecessary lives lost

Thread âŹ‡ïž

1/ #Dispatches #bbcnews #r4today
Testing and trace is a vital component of infectious disease control

Against the advice of public health experts, the government outsourced both elements of the process to favourable private companies, with no expertise

Resulting in a dog’s breakfast of incompetence

2/
Deloitte was given the contract, of undisclosed value, to set up off-site testing centres & run the new Lighthouse Laboratories, bypassing existing NHS infrastructure

Deloitte then went on to outsource the running of the testing centres to numerous other corporations

3/
Read 12 tweets
“The revelations from C4 #Dispatches...are breath-taking. It amounts to criminal negligence. Pure & simple.” @globalhlthtwit on #LockdownChaos

To understanding how the #ContractScandal fits into a much bigger & more sinister plan👇#Palantir #DidoHarding #SERCO #HerdImmunity
This diagram👆shows how the US & UK govts appear to have a joint/parallel #COVID19 strategy allowing the military-backed data-mining company, #Palantir, to control heath data

Parler, the SM platform is funded by the Mercers who funded #CambridgeAnalytica who worked with Palantir
“It’s very hard not to be speechless about this.”

Dr Tom Lewis on viewing #Dispatches footage taken by an undercover journalist exposing unsafe practices & “VIP processing” for paying customers, in the Randox testing labs. #LockdownChaos #COVID19 #coronavirus #Palantir #COVID
Read 6 tweets
@channel4 #Dispatches in Randox labs is quite something.

Basic SOPS (standard operating procedures) not in place. Leaking samples
Not adequately separated
Not upright

I am astonished
Who, apart from Dido Harding inspected this operation who has specialised lab QA background?
Randox “reported” a problem to T&T re “red top” tubes leaking in particular.

To whom exactly? How often? Where is the incident log? There must be one in a well run lab.

How were these samples tracked? And corrected with a retest of the individual? Protocol?
When was the Incident log inspected? How often? By whom?

What about the absence of reported incidence.

(In well run labs there will be incidents. Absence of incednce reporting is a bad sign, not a good one).

When was a Serious Untoward Incident called? Root cause analysis?
Read 5 tweets
On 3 February, The PM made his #GreenwichSpeech.

In it he said #COVID19 shouldn’t “trigger a panic & [measures] that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real & unnecessary economic damage.”

Finally, #Dispatches have aired it on TV.
As #Dispatches makes clear, this speech is all about Britain going it’s own way - an English exceptionalism that regards WHO advice as “medically irrational” & thinks a #HerdImmunity strategy will avoid “real economic damage”.
#Covid #COVID19 #Dispatches
Hancock claims he was aware of the dangers of #COVID19 & told the PM “from the start”.

The #GreenwichSpeech was attended by political journalist & was the 1st time the PM talked about COVID.

The clue to #herdimmunity has been in front of us all the time.
Read 4 tweets
Has there ever been such a damning & devastatingly well sourced exposure of a Prime Minister's failings as tonight's #Dispatches?

Boris Johnson & Dominic Cummings are responsible for so many deaths through their arrogance & negligence.

They should be in jail, not in No. 10.
Boris Johnson & his ministers were so full of Brexit swagger they simply couldn't recognise that a disease already wreaking havoc in other countries could possibly be a threat to Britain.

Self-inflicted ideological blindness.

British exceptionalism at its worst.

#Dispatches
Double whammy for Boris Johnson's govt tonight, with #Newsnight following #Dispatches with news that the UK deaths announced today were higher than for all EU countries *combined*.

A "world-beating" achievement, @BorisJohnson.

Is that why you professed yourself so proud today?
Read 7 tweets
Boris Johnson told Italy’s Prime Minister he ‘wanted herd immunity’, #Dispatches has learnt. The government denies herd immunity was ever a strategy. THREAD 1/
We’ve learned that on the 13th of March Boris Johnson called the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Conte recounted the call to one of his health ministers, Pierpaolo Sileri. He told us: 2/
The government has denied herd immunity was ever a strategy. No one from the government agreed to be interviewed but they told us: 3/
Read 4 tweets
If Britain had locked down a week earlier, around 8,000 hospital deaths up to the end of April could have been avoided, #Dispatches has found. THREAD 1/
Britain's official Covid-19 death toll stands at nearly 40,000. But how many lives could have been saved if lockdown came earlier? We asked a Leading Health Analyst, George Batchelor, to work out the figures. He said: 2/
Batchelor’s figures show that if Britain had locked down on March the 16th. A week before the decision was actually taken, more than a third of hospital deaths by the end of April could have been avoided. That's around 8,000 lives. 3/
Read 6 tweets
THREAD: One of the world’s biggest tobacco companies @InsidePMI claims it wants to end smoking and switch people to “reduced risk” products. It has hired expensive PR, advertising and lobbying firms to help it “Unsmoke The World” #SmokeScreen #Dispatches
@InsidePMI Tonight we show the “Unsmoke” campaign is in fact a marketing drive for its new heated tobacco product Iqos and a blatant attempt to detoxify its brand so it can influence policy and regulation #Dispatches #SmokeScreen
@InsidePMI Iqos releases fewer cancer-causing chemicals than cigarettes but does have health risks. Experts fear glossy advertising and glamorous launch events will entice non-smokers to start using it too, addicting them to nicotine #SmokeScreen #Dispatches
Read 13 tweets
When you are poor, and I mean poor, it’s like you’re watching life move around you but you’re not moving with it, you’re somewhere else, you’re excluded from regular life, most things aren’t for you, Holidays, days out, going out with friends, even public transport #Dispatches
80% of the supermarket you can’t shop in, the internet, restaurants, cafes, clothes shops, even chemists. You exist on the fringes of society. You don’t even acknowledge most things because they simply aren’t for you. You learn how to be very creative, even when it’s exhausting
I invented ‘mitten monopoly’ teaching a 4 year old how to play monopoly is HARD, but snakes and ladders won’t see you through 3-4 hours of darkness in the evenings in winter,with no heating, so you turn it ‘fun’ by candlelight wearing mittens, he loved it, I hated it #dispatches
Read 19 tweets
A few comments:
1. Having a mobile phone these days is not incompatible with grinding poverty.
2. Relationship breakdowns happen. Unpredictably.
3. Getting a job when you have childcare responsibilities is hard, even if the kids are at school some of the time.
#Dispatches
Moreover:
4. Mental health issues aren’t always easily visible or obvious.
5. People in poverty may have a pet. It may be the only thing motivating them to keep going.
6. Many of us could live on a budget for a short time. But not 365 days a year.

#Dispatches
Also:
7. Lack of hope is paralysing, and makes it impossible to live further than day to day.
8. It’s hard to lift yourself out of this situation in current system. Work can end up making you worse off.
9. Maslow’s hierarchy applies. Hard to plan when cold/hungry.

#Dispatches
Read 4 tweets

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