Rob Burberry

⬇️ Made for me, by me.. But if it helps any other #trauma survivor, then that's a bonus 😊 #PTSD #mentalhealth

HALF A MILLION PEOPLE WERE DEFRAUDED Imagine you are behind on your store card payments. You are already struggling. Then the bank quietly adds an extra charge on top of what you owe. Not because it costs them that much. Just because .. they can. And because they think nobody is watching. Someone was watching. Nicholas Wilson was a debt recovery lawyer. He goes by Mr Ethical @nw_nicholas on X. His old boss meant it as an insult. In 2003 he noticed that @HSBC subsidiary HFC Bank was adding an illegal 16.4% charge onto the debts of people who were already in financial trouble. Store cards from John Lewis, Currys, B&Q, Dixons, PC World. Ordinary people. Struggling people. Being quietly robbed. He told his boss it was illegal. His boss started calling him "Mr Ethical" as a joke. Then they sacked him. He reported it to the regulators. @TheFCA ignored him for years. When a researcher separately wrote to both HSBC and the FCA asking about the fraud... ... both wrote back with responses in the exact same wording, same punctuation, same paragraphs. The bank and the regulator were sharing the same script. FCA's own independent Complaints Commissioner eventually investigated. He called it the worst case of regulatory failure he had ever dealt with. FCA's response was to appoint Ruth Kelly, an HSBC director, and Baroness Hogg from John Lewis, onto its own board. The two people they were supposed to be investigating were now sitting inside the regulator. You actually cannot make this up. After 13 years of Wilson refusing to go away, HSBC quietly agreed to pay some money back. FCA announced 6,700 victims. Wilson says the real number is closer to 500,000. HSBC has now set aside £223 million for repayments. No fine. No criminal charges. No one went to prison. No one was even publicly named. Wilson has spent the last 20 years unemployable. Blacklisted. Living on state benefits. Fighting to keep his home. Someone even anonymously reported him to the DWP for benefit fraud while the actual billion pound fraud went unpunished. The bank that robbed half a million people kept its licence. The man who caught them lost everything. Source: @guardian | @BBC | @PrivateEyeNews | @SundayMirror | @realmediauk | nicholaswilson com | @nw_nicholas and others.

He’s toast. He’s going.

The thing is - and I say this as somebody who knocked on 7,000 doors in Gorton & Denton - I really do not think Andy Burnham would have won that by-election even if he’d stood. Labour really don’t understand where the British people are right now.

As someone who voted Remain I genuinely see the prospect of rejoining the EU as a distraction and aversion to laying out domestic policy levers that are more capable of driving economic growth Also have no wish to engage in an exercise that would tear the country apart (again)

When Plaid propped up Labour, they did so on the condition policies like the Nation of Sanctuary and tree planting in Africa were implemented. They said Labour were too tough on illegal migration. We’re not getting change. We’re getting the same, but worse.

Harriet harman advising on women and girls saftey after her support of PIE is the biggest insult to women and girls this country has even seen. The PM has officially well and truly lost the plot. If he thought today's anouncment would help, he is seriously WRONG!

@MrCladding If I see the words “tough results” again….try attending a Leasehold tribunal against a corporate landlord with a phalanx of legal advisors and then we can talk about “tough results”. Gah!

@Lesleyknibb He’s a lousy prime minister of no noticeable integrity or principle. Mandelson alone should have ended him. He appears to have wanted power for the sake of power. He blows like a feather in the wind, U-turning so often he must have permanent whiplash.

@LostInSW19 @davidjmadden Please follow for DM.

@RobBurberry @davidjmadden I am a shared owner in a block with a complex ownership structure. My landlord is an intermediary landlord and therefore a leaseholder. I have never obtained invoices or accounts from them. For the managing agent, I am a sublessee, so they don't provide information either.

Why is it legal to extract extravagant service charges but not provide a corresponding amount of service

@LostInSW19 @davidjmadden My goodness, I would casting a forensic eye of the Statement of Accounts... #SharedOwnership #Leasehold is #Fleecehold #BuildingSafetyCrisis

@davidjmadden Our block has a 6k pa service charge now. It is a no-frills block in zone 3: there is no concierge, no gym or anything else. There is a lift. That's it. It was sold as 'affordable' housing and most of us are shared owners. It's a racket that has made our flats unmortgageable.

I have followed @wharfgirl for a long time, but of late her posts make sobering reading. When I read them I feel I’m on #RepossessionWatch. The fall out from #Grenfell is more than just the #BuildingSafetyCrisis, it has made leasehold being known as #fleecehold

@Keir_Starmer I don’t think you’re on my side

I don't know what the conventions are on sharing children's work, but when you're a cartoonist and your 6yo's homework is to draw the PM, and he comes up with this cracking image, it feels like there's an obligation.

Reform UK will END all overseas spending from devolved budgets. It’s time to put Wales first. Vote Reform on May 7th.

This is one of the most jaw-dropping, chilling interviews I have seen. Watch this Rabbi from London, respond to question about the terror stabbing in Golders Green!

I decided in January to start buying meat from Butchers rather than supermarkets. 4 months in what have I found 🤔👇

I moved to Poland in 2007. I learned how to speak Polish fluently. I respect local customs & contribute in different ways. I am not under any illusion that I am Polish or ever could be. Thank you Poland & Poles for this wonderful place.

Today’s main evidence was from Claudia Birtles who was irreverent and unbelievably devoid of an empathy. She is VC‘s Care Coordinator now known as lead professional. In charge of case since first diagnosis in Nottingham of May 2020. She’s in charge of looking after his care plan, attending multidisciplinary team meetings and see that things are going according to the clinical plan. Examination of the notes today reveal the MDT’s seem like a chat, there’s no agenda, no template, no organisation and there seems to be no structure to these meetings. There were no minutes taken and hence no documentation. As you and I both know if something isn’t written in the medical notes it basically didn’t happen. Throughout the whole of evidence there was a feeling of lethargy, no curiosity, not challenging the Psychiatrists with their flawed management who themselves were of the poorest professional standard that I have come across. Basically there is no plan in place. It seems like a clinically stumbling stroll. The care coordinator is meant to know their patients really well yet knowing lack of concordance, there is no suggestion of a community treatment order (CTO) after Sec-3. Just repeated recording of lack of concordance with medication with no plan to pursue. He’s not taking medication and hence section after section repeated x4 with absolutely no improvement in management. What does improve is Birtles self management where she puts in the notes that VC is not to be visited singularly because she felt unsafe and the irony here that really upset me is that she didn’t give a second thought to the safety of much younger students. She never contacted University to alert of risks. Today’s evidence was particularly upsetting because at the end of every sentence that this Care Coordinator came up with she could have insisted on a different therapeutic direction like depot, but didn’t insist. Devoid of the vision of what might happen. Had there been a different course of Mx, depot, assertive outreach, any change of clinical direction ,VC I’m convinced would’ve missed our children. Claudia Birtles treated the whole 2 year management like some paper exercise with no positive intervention by herself. Selfish, lazy unprofessional but more importantly to me she had the opportunity to change VCs course and she didn’t. As for her totally inappropriate smiles and laughter, showed a total lack of empathy for the bereaved or respect for the Inquiry process. @bbcemt @BBCNews @GBNEWS @nottslive @nmcnews @wesstreeting

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but looks like the fantastic & one of its kind Bar Polski in Holborn has closed down. A special place & Polish institution in heart of London for 30 years, another everyday symbol of our #PolesinUK presence here - gone. Absolutely gutted.

@moving_charlie I feel so defeated and numb. My flat is unsellable and will remain unsellable for the foreeable future until leasehold is gone for good. I feel like I’m being held to ransom by successive govts who always cave to vested interests and keep this freeholder gravy train going. Sigh.