•  An Op-ed.

Regularly ‘The Morning Bugler’ receives queries, comments, criticisms, and requests for the inclusion of a Reader’s particular views, usually in the form of op~eds.  

Sometimes they request anonymity for perfectly reasonable reasons. In this case protection of a former Judge’s pension because as we know the establishment recently tried to short change the veritable Judges themselves.

The usual  ‘good house rules ‘ are applied to the content, without where possible, in any form, censoring taking place.

A free and untrammelled press is the life blood of mature publications, aka, ‘The Morning Bugler’.

Prior to this publication the genderless writer of this op~ed suggested that if TMB published the thoughts the Bugler might be minded to provide a suitable Headline.

These are the uncensored  comments…

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“Have we placed our Trust  in Criminals?

Here is something rather more sordid than Windrush.

Here we have brave men and women risking their lives in public service, going into terrible dangers, such as Grenfell and when they get injured, but survive, are then retired on grounds of ill health – which is fine, and HMG and the Fire Service Unions did a good job of saving the tax payer huge legal fees in cases having to go Court  to decide compensation by taking the whole business of compensation out of the Courts, with the State accepting liability.

This law was set out in a Statutory Instrument, 1992 SI192 making provision for generous compensation to ensure those we expose to danger on our behalf are fully compensated.

No story in that. Nothing wrong.

Indeed, since pension fund managers owe their highest duty of care, a fiduciary duty or one of trust, to those whose pensions they administer, all those being so retired were fully entitled to rely entirely on integrity, honesty, and due diligence being exercised on their behalf to make absolutely sure that every penny provided by law be paid. 

That is the law and to make quite sure everyone understood it and applied it,  the Home Office issued a plain language Commentary for all non-lawyers and lawyers explaining precisely what the legal language of the legislation meant.

So all should have been fine except it crossed no-one’s mind that greedy people on performance pay and constantly told to ‘do more on less’ would think,

“Ah, if we just put the Commentary in a drawer and never let anyone read it or know of its existence, then what the eye does not see the heart will not grieve over and what our brave firemen and women do not know about will not worry them.

They think we are honest and on their side so why would they not just accept and be happy to rely on what we tell them as being correct? “.

Indeed, what a wheeze,  by simply giving them their damages provided by law  in respect of pain and disablement, and then simply giving them the pension due to anyone simply taking early retirement by choice, we avoid huge payments in respect of what a court would award, and the SI provides by way of compensation for lost career and loss of future earnings.

And there is no-one to question it.  

So that what was done and for years no-one noticed until, quite by chance a lawyer, asked by a friend to look at one problem, happened to spot another, that the wrong pension was being paid. 

What is so grim is that it is becoming perfectly clear that it was never just an error but a deliberate policy of criminal deception which some of the evidence is beginning to suggest was not just a ‘rotten apple in a barrel’ but that the Ombudsman and Ministry may well have been involved in what may blow up into an immense criminal conspiracy to defraud. 

We hope not.

We hope that those in power will be very quick indeed, to right a terrible and long lasting wrong – it is a wicked thing that was done and has yet to be righted; though the resolution for far too many has been that the poor, injured and short-changed, forced to retire early pensioners have simply died, having lived his or her life out in penury.

In this writer’s opinion HMG needs to find a truly  independent lawyer they can trust, and someone firemen and women can trust, to sort all this out, which is by any yardstick a national disgrace and shame. “.

N.B. The Bugler hastens to add this was not our dear friend Judge ‘Nelson’ Butler having an attack of death bed conscience… God forbid he would recognise the Truth.