Never Meet Your Heroes
John Pring Disappoints
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When we heard the journalist John Pring was writing a book on the subject of suicides and welfare reform, we were reassured and relieved. At last, there is a good chance of REDUCING or even STOPPING the suicides where welfare reform may have some culpability.
But as we Weegies say…
“Aye Right”
(translation: “not a chance”)
A book really does need to be written about how to REDUCE and STOP these welfare reform deaths. But John Pring’s rehashing of a wedge from disclosure-logs at various Freedom of Information registries does nothing to help reduce these tragedies.
Then journalist John Pring gets the bereaved (some of whom are our friends) to accept his solicitation to promote his book by taking “selfies” with his book being held up by a bereft widow or son daughter. These are then boastfully displayed on Pring’s website to help him boost his sales. John, we have one word for you…
“ENOUGH”
For 14 years, there have been thousands of us campaigning and letter-writing and protesting.
Seriously, if nothing changes after 14 years of doing the same thing, then whatever you/we are doing is NOT working!
Our own experience is “just” the 60 tragedies this site narrates about friends or family members our team know and remember here as a memorial.
There are between 60 and 81,140 welfare reform deaths that we know of (fact-based source: here) . Former MP and former Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell narrates a speech which had two of our group here in tears.
John McDonnell is a very decent man.
But the "politics" of New Labour-v-Corbyn means
nobody in Labour listened to those of us who try and
reduce the welfare-reform death toll.
Original Parliamentary Hansard Source: Here
We will be forever indebted to John McDonnell, for his efforts to REDUCE the harm that has been done, but as Dr Anthony Fauci was fond of self deprecating himself, we apply a fairly well known quote…
Politics Is A Rough Trade
Calum’s List Is Non-Political
We Just Want The
Welfare Reform Deaths To Stop. Please.
We are grateful beyond words for John McDonnell. But the internal machinations in the Labour Government need to be put aside.
A Simple Truth
“Most decent people would want to see
welfare reform deaths reduced and then stopped.”
The whole team here at Calum’s List realised from events in the 1990s that at some point the shouting and protesting need to stop.
Just like the Good Friday Agreement (here). There comes a point where people of good will have to sit round a table and find a SOLUTION.
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John Pring Please Atone
We should be happy to feature the book written by John Pring.
But what sentient person could possibly imagine someone who titles their book this way would help REDUCE or STOP the welfare reform deaths?
Jobbing Journalist
John Pring Rehashes Other Peoples’ Effort
John Pring Re-Traumatises Many
Whilst He Promotes His Book Sales.
ENOUGH JOHN, ENOUGH
As well as distressing many people we know, all of whom have gone through the trauma of losing a loved one already, along comes the professional journalist who should know better and gets the traumatised relative to hold up a copy of his Opus Dei, to help boost his sales (with a few quid donated to charity to spare even the blushes of a brass-necked hack).
John, you could atone for that horrendous and wrongful “reading the room” by writing a book on…
HOW TO MAKE THE WELFARE SYSTEM WORK
Fairly, Honestly & As A Safety Net That Respects People.
Instead, your rehash of what we all know and have been campaigning to resolve for 14 years is just shove into the proverbial WORD SOUP and you bring the tragedies , trauma and distress to the boil again.
Why?
For no good reason, or none that makes sense.
Worse, Brian McArdle, who is a tireless campaigner and has his heart in the right place, now has an errand to CROWDFUND a lot of money to PAY YOU for 650 copies of YOUR book, to be sent to every one of the 650 MPs. The vast majority of whom you OFFEND with your front cover. Labour brought in welfare reform, the Conservatives and LibDem ran with it for 14 years and Labour are back with more welfare reform.
With all this, what is John Pring’s answer and effort at REDUCING welfare reform deaths?
John Pring publishes a book, the title of which WILL offend the majority of those to whom you send a copy of the thing.
What an idiotic, crass thing to do.
John Pring even offends the GOOD person along with the ones he libels with welfare reform culpability?
We Had High Hopes Of John Pring
What we got from Mr Pring was a horrific, PTSD inducing click-bait title that does nothing to help STOP further deaths. We had hoped John would focus at least half of his new book on HOW to make the system work a balanced with how folk might get out of financial dire straits.
John, we all already know the Welfare Reform system is broken. You cannot miss 81,140 deaths.
Tragedy & Source…
81,470 Deaths
How Many Are Welfare Reform Death?
Click Here
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News Flash
John, there are many GOOD people in the DWP. They are not all, as you put it, a…
“Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid The Evidence”
We know this as at MANY in the DWP have helped members of our crew get back on their feet.
John, what do you think your tomb of knowledge with clickbait, hate-inciting title will do to those good DWP employees who have helped the disabled people at Calum’s List create 203 jobs over the past 29 years?
I know as one DWP employee told me. She is…
“Mightily pi55ed off that a jaded, ignorant hack like Pring is tarring the majority of good DWP workers with a few bad apples in the barrel.”
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Time To Try A Different Approach
Time To Talk Peace
What John Pring knows only too well as he earns a living from it at “Disability News Service” is that everyone has tried shouting and demonstrating for 15 years.
John, all of that shouting and threatening politicians patently did not work as people are still killing themselves where money and benefits are an overwhelming worry.
Your book would be salvageable from pulping. But you will have to do a lot better in your atonement.
When we all heard the gratuitously offensive inflammatory title of your book, the aroma of schoolboy wannabe politician wafted through the air.
Why did you write this book?
Could it be click-bait for increased book sales?
For sure that title will appeal to some folk.
But what have you achieved? Serious question?
What are you aiming to do with your inflammatory words?
This rehash of other peoples’ effort and a splattering of Freedom of Information requests does not cut it.
Add that to the distasteful faux press junket in the form of visiting families of the bereaved! (cynical hack within many journalists DNA).
Of course there is a handy copy of your book for the widow to hold up and have a “selfie” photographs taken. These pepper your your website in a way that made me feel nauseous to the point of actuation.
Using the bereaved to promote this pile of self aggrandising pulp friction (yes that word is spelt with the letter “r” in it, because this pile of detritus will cause friction plus heat, but is unlikely to save even just one life).
How low can you go? Perhaps only a “journalist” knows the answer to that question?
John, whilst we are in the arena for questions, may I put THREE for you, that you appear to have failed to answer. The first question was likely killed as a result of the appalling title of your “book” as displayed with a mock “ripped up note” on your cover.”
Question 1). John, you are an intelligent man: so what politician do you think will respond AT ALL to your opening rejoinder…
Question 2). John, as the title of your book serves to insult every politician, who gets the money from the book sales from buying every politician a copy when the whole exercise is pointless?
Please say that you are sending EVERY penny of profits to a Food Bank or mental health charity and that you promise not to touch any of that blood money?
Question 3). John, in what way will your book STOP the suicides?
I write this as a disabled person who has NOT profited from making this topic a monetary business.
Normally the next part would remain private. However, such is my disappointment in the feckless exercise and lost opportunity of writing a book that we are now expected to crowdfund to pay YOU for (yes with a nominal fiver going to a charity). Then those books of HATE on the cover are sent to the people you HATE in some self-deluded expectation that the recipients will read the rehashed pulp and actually do something to fic the problem.
This next part is what you SHOULD be aiming to persuade politicians to join with you in achieving and is why I am so disappointed in you. We share many similar disabilities. It ain’t a competition. I just don’t want you using your own disabilities to write a limp rejoinder and excuse at the banning of your book from our offices and homes.
a). In my case I was able to SAVE the State £291,149.41 in UNCLAIMED benefits (including DLA) during my 29 years of disablement following spinal injury as a police officer.
b). Even though termed the “unemployable” word, I still managed (with reasonable) Equality At 2010 adaptations to create 203 jobs for able-bodied and disable alike during that 29 years.
c). At some point, following the anger and petitions and demonstrations, someone is going to need to sit down with a government minister and work together to make the system FAIRER and more PRODUCTIVE – for ALL parties in the DWP/Claimant relationship. John, does the title of your book do any of this?
There is a body of work behind me that I am more than willing to speak with a government minster about.
John, the days of hating and anger and dissonant use of the words “Violent Government” such as the way you do in your book, demonstrates the capacity to achieve very little of any moment. So why did you bother writing the thing?
I can also attest to the fact that IF you sit down with a politician of good will, then present a solid case, 40 jobs are created. In fact revise that 203 to 243 jobs in my time as a disabled person.
With all of your hate and destructive rehash rather than bring hope and something constructive, you either ignorantly, or with wilful blindness, bring feckless hatred and put people in harm’s way.
For these reasons John, I am so utterly disgusted with the opportunity that you have thrown away. Just to have a grandstanding rant on the backs of others.
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Pring’s List
John, in the mid-1990’s way before welfare reform suicides became a newsworthy issue, a good friend committed suicide. His business had collapsed and several folk had lost their jobs. Rather than just give his widow and two young children the usual “warm words” of comfort, I thought a reasonable way to remember my friend was to establish a registered charity to help reduce suicides due to money problems.
I wrote to all the coroners and procurators’ fiscal in the U.K., to find out how many “debt related suicides” there were. Shockingly for those times in the 1990s the number was 404 debt-related suicides each year.
For a while I was very angry with banks and money lenders. Indeed I managed to pay off the mortgage early (which, ironically is how I have managed to minimise my reliance and that of my family on state benefits.
Then something unusual happened with our Money Advice Charity. This may take a moment to get to.
During the 1997 election I will always remember walking to work along Gainsborough Road in Felixstowe and after turning the corner into the main street of the town, I was accosted by a herd of political activists and the candidate for MP, Mr John Selwyn Gummer.
It was one of those rare times when a politician really wants your vote and we ALL get to let the politician know what matters in our own lives.
Ironically, Mr Gummer got re-elected on 1st May 1997, but when he retired, Thérèse Coffey the erstwhile DWP Secretary of State for Work & Pensions was elected. BUT (and this, Mr Pring, is where you and I differ) the proper and pragmatic way to effect change is what happened 8 weeks ago on 4th July 2024 when that constituency voted out Thérèse Coffey (she was retiring anyway) and…
The voters sacked the Conservative MP and elected Labour politician Jenny Ridell-Carpenter (source: here).
I quote this as it is the way democracy works, whether you and I like it or not John..
During that walk to work in 1997, John Gummer and his political activists were making best efforts for my vote. Quite flattering that one vote is important to a politician. But then if Thérèse Coffey was still DWP Secretary of State, a few votes would have mattered!
By this point I had stopped walking. In my hand were about 30 letters addressed to the Money Advice Charity. I held these out to Mr Gummer. He declined to accept them.
Normally the letters to our Money Advice Charity were horrific.
But a week before, I had sent out five hundred fundraising letters.
As Mr Gummer was not keen on opening what I had inferred were written evidence of the harm being done by the banks, I started opening up the envelopes myself and showing the letters within to Mr Gummer, right outside of the Underwood Hardware Shop!
This is when something unusual happened. John, maybe there is some redemption here for both you and I, as the time for shouting at politicians is over. God forbid what you are doing achieves what I know will likely happen one day!
Back to 1997 and the first envelope contained a letter from a bank. Plus a cheque for £500 from Barclays Bank to help the Money Advice Charity!
Mr Gummer looked perplexed, but not as much as I. What should have been in my hand was a cry for help that I would struggle to answer.
The next letter contained a personal cheque to the charity for £1,000 and a hand written letter from Sir Bruce Pattullo, the Governor of the Bank of Scotland.
Within 18 months, in memory of an Argyll mentor who helped me turn being disabled into being of some use to society (and had tragically died in 1996 – of natural cause) ended up with a personal £2,000 cheque from the next Governor of the Bank of Scotland, Sir Alistair Grant.
But on that day in Felixstowe, just before the 1997 General Election, I had opened 8 letters and every one had contained a cheque from a bank, donated to our Money Advice Charity.
For once, there were no cries for help. Instead, there was help for the cries.
That threw me a curveball as my anger with the banks’ was wondering where to go?
Meanwhile, John Selwyn Gummer displayed an unknown talent. He could read documents that were upside down (from his angle on the pavement looking at the letters and bundle of cheques in my hands). That was not his main talent. Our former and future MP had a finely honed skill for adding up numbers from upside down cheques.
John Selwyn Gummer then uttered three sentence that I shall never forget…
“Calum, that seems to be £10,500 in your hands sir. Does that happen every day? I am not understanding your point to me as a past and possible future Member of Parliament. Are you complaining about people sending you money?”
Not often am I speechless. But such were the bizarre circumstances. I will never quite know why what happened then or next as I was a Labour Student Union President and not overly fond of the Conservatives at that time (and am completely non-political now).
The MP actually had someone in his office help our Money Advice Charity.
All I wanted in the 1990s was for the debt-suicides to stop.
The one lesson I learnt was that after the anger and petitions and shouting, at some point…
Ordinary folk like you and I, need to sit down with other people… the ones who hold power in political office… who have their hands on the levers of control.
At that time, we all need to have the forensic skillset to talk things through and calmly find a solution.
The Money Advice Charity lasted for 10 years and PTSD from my earlier career in the police had meant that burnout phase had been reached and breached.
Besides a move to Dunfermline East and a new MP, Gordon Brown had promised “boom and bust” had ended and that our request to teach youngsters about money management in schools would be worked on. So we closed that particular charity in 2007 (just before another financial crisis).
The point to all of this?
Back in the 1990s, the banks were “the enemy.” But when efforts were made to engage with the banks, more than enough funds were ingathered to SOLVE several thousand cases. There were at least three folk in that client base during that 10-year lifespan of the charity who came up afterwards and explained how they were set to “leave” via the Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas, or similar exit route One of those three even volunteered for the Money Advice Charity to help others.
More remarkable as that person was an out-of-work journalist. We are still friends. Yesterday, 31st August 2024, my friend said he was glad he gave up journalism as he had watched one of the anniversary documentaries of Princess Dana’s death. My friend works full time for a Money Advice charity (not the one we registered as that only ran for 10 years) My fried got over the money worries and now has three grand-children and a life he loves. A solution was found.
John Pring, that is my point! We need to find solutions.
We need to speak with those who have the authority to change the law and who will listen.
If necessary we show the solutions. I am keen to do that and have a body of work behind me that shows folk with disabilities can make a positive difference in society.
Sadly, all I can see is you have risked creating hatred against a politicians and a real and proven risk of this tragic set of events happening again.
How about the idea we name this tragic incitement of hate and production line of journalist click-bait word-soup to the eventual result as…
Prings List
Click Here
John, how does that make YOU feel?
I am being deliberately ironic
If I said you risk incitement to have harm done to politicians, would YOU be offended?
I am pretty sure you do NOT want to place politicians in harm’s way.
Nor John Pring, would I believe you want my colleagues placed in harm’s way either…
Funeral of Police Constable Keith Palmer GM
Photo Courtesy of Katie Chan
Killed Whilst Defending Politicians
Click Here
How Do We Stop Welfare Reform Suicides?
John Pring, we have been campaigning for FOURTEEN YEARS now.
So enough with making your living at the “journalism” of the dying of others and the “book publishing” on the backs of “Freedom of Information” requests.
IT IS TIME FOR THE GROWN UPS
TO SPEAK WITH GOVERNMENT MINISTERS
I guarantee there ARE solutions to the welfare reform tragedies.
That solution is NOW in discussing this issue constructively with MPs.
Not producing clickbait to promote your website.
It is difficult to say how disappointing the crew here are in what you have done.
PLEASE rite another book and make it about SOLVING the welfare reform issue.
Perhaps you might also like to promote your next book on how to REDUCE and eventually STOP the welfare reform deaths.
Thank you.
End of Segment
A Brief Quote
It Is Perfect For Many Disabled Folk
“We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
From Tennyson
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Bona Fides
Calum McLean When Fit & Able
Over 30 Years Ago
The Words Above Are Better
When Spoken By Dame Judy Dench
The words are particularly poignant to former members of the civilian emergency and particularly the military services in the UK. Why? Well it is worth carefully listening. It conveys the degradation from being fit, health and able.
John Pring, your book with that bloody terrible title does too little, too late to REMEDY the tragic matter of welfare deaths or REDUCE welfare reform suicides.
FAR WORSE: The title on your cover onwards You put politicians into harm’s way and far too close to what happened with Jo Cox and Sir David Amess for comfort. something else…
^^ These Words Mean A Great Deal ^^
^^ To Disabled Emergency Service Workers ^^
Please forgive the lighter note of this clip with Dame Judi Dench. For 12 years this website has struggled with the gravitas of the welfare reform subject. Every now and then, a change in tempo helps relieve the burdens.
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For Reference
The Inquiries Act 2005
Inquiries Act 2005: Official Source: Click Here
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A Few Good Men & Women
There are some good people that restore our faith in human decency. They make a vital difference. Below we discovered an incredibly emotional speech. The small team at Calum’s List were moved beyond words…
Original P.arliamentary Hansard Source: Here
Thank you.
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End of Segment
Coronial Law
Regulation 28
Coronial Law Regulation 28: Click Here
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The original list