Drew Payne

Wow, what amazing experience your family has had. Any chance you could get them to write a book? I'm a retired Registered Nurse, I had to take ill health retirement at the beginning of the year. I still miss my job. I worked as a District Nurse, for nearly the last fifteen years of my career. I looked after a lot of patients who had physical and mental health problems. Our District Nurse team was understaffed but the Community Psychiatric Nurse team, we worked with, was chronically understaffed. In my early twenties, I worked as a Resettlement Worker, helping people move out of a long-stay psychiatric hospital and back into the community. I really believe that living in the community is the best place rather than being dumped away in some long-stay psychiatric hospital, but it is unbelievably underfunded. It was seen as the "cheap alternative" and it bloody isn't. Those people need help and resources too, but mental health services have been the forgotten service, for funding, for far too long. It all makes me so sad and angry. In the 2000s, I worked as a Training & Audit Nurse in East London and regularly worked in a Juvenile Secure Hospital. I based Nuron Cross on that hospital. At the same time, my husband was the Infection Control Nurse covering Broadmoor. I wish I could tell some of his stories but confidentiality and all that.

Thank you. I've lived with Liam for two years and he is such a damaged soul. He didn't have the best start in life, with his nightmare of a mother, and then he made one huge wrong decision. One of the things I wanted to write about here is how people can do well in hospital (especially mental health hospitals) but when they are discharged there just isn't the support out there in the community. I saw that so many times professionally. Liam doesn't even have the support of a family.

I wanted to show how poorly supported Liam is, once he has been discharged from the hospital. In Nurton Cross, there were people around him and he had plenty of support. Here, on the outside, there is no one and his old insecurities have returned. Also, the awful Donna reminded him that people still dislike him. But I do know how this story will end.

He's stuck there, on his own, in a rundown B&B hotel. There is no one to talk to, to help him throw his thoughts, so he's going to go to a sad place. It's a terrible thing to say but his life at Nurton Cross was better.

Liam stood in front of his pale blue cotton shirt hanging off the hook on the wall of his room in the B&B hotel. He reached up and ran his hand down one of its sleeves: the cotton was still soft and smooth under his fingers. He was nearly sixteen when he bought it, his only second afternoon out of Nurton Cross. On Day Release. Aiden had egged him to buy it and… It still fitted him and would be ideal for his interviews the next day. He hadn’t worn it since he’d left Nurton Cross - it was too

In October, the British government announced plans to help people with mental health problems to get back into work. This would see “employment advisers” visiting people in hospital, who have been admitted with mental health problems, and giving them CV and interview advice. It was piloted at hospitals in Leicester and at the Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell, London, with “dramatic results”, though the results haven’t been published yet. This isn’t a hundred percent altruistic, it is also an attempt to reduce the disability benefits bill, which is projected to increase by a third in the next four to five years, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. A jump to £63bn by 2028-29, from £48bn for 2023-24. "There is clear evidence we are really struggling with health problems," said Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall. She wants employers to “think different” about employees with mental health problems, offering flexibility to support and retain people. Now this scheme is not perfect. Why are they only offering this advice and support to people in hospital, why not to people in the community? Why aren’t they working with employers to offer people, with long term mental health problems, work experience to gain skills that make them attractive to employers? And there are so many other things too. But this is a start at supporting people and is better than nothing, which is what the previous government offered, they just wanted people to repeatedly prove how ill they were. Then, the other week, one of my relatives posted a link to this story, on Facebook, with the caption: “What absolute numpty thought this through? They get a job coach visit, why don’t they just say “get over it” because that always works doesn’t it?” Underneath people had added to the following comments: “I actually cringed watching this report.” “Who would employ someone who could be ill numerous days a month? How can a business run if you don't know how many staff are going to be there?” An ‘Oh how stupid’ emoji. “This is what you get when you vote Labour in.” To which my relative replied, “Luckily, I didn’t.” I wanted to scream at the post, “How can you say that? How can you be so prejudiced?” But employment is so important to how we identify ourselves, to our self-worth. How often do we get asked “And what do you do?” How much of our identity is made up from our job/profession? Mark Tausig argued that work is the central activity whereby most adults define their identity. I retired recently and I find it is strange to no longer belong to a profession, which had been so important in my life. Robert Drake and Michael Wallach argue that unemployment worsens mental health, while employment can improve it. They said that being employed gives us self-reliance, we are valued by others, we gain the respect of others, we have an income and employment helps us to gain community integration. We can see this in our own lives. But in the UK only 15% of people with serious mental health problems are employed. That is an extremely large number of people who haven’t got the security and value of having a job. Why aren’t we concerned about this? The evidence shows the benefit of employment. Hoare & Machin, in their study, found that participants who found employment, had greater social contact, more structured time and therefore saw significant improvements in their mental health. Another study found that the work environment improved people’s mental health. That those with mental health problems saw an improvement in their symptoms, plus improvements in their leisure and finances from being employed. And another study found that if people with mental health problems are able to find work, then it reduces the burden on society as a whole. Those people being able to support themselves, partially or fully. Saying all this, we can’t just give someone with mental health problems a job, then expect them to get on with it and their health get better. People will need support. Secker & Membrey identify that specific adjustments maybe required, such as flexible working hours, flexible work schedules and job tasks, especially in relation to the medication a person is taking, allowing the person to regain their stamina and confidence. Modini & Joyce (6) found that the literature, on mental health in the workplace, focused on the negative impacts of work on mental health. But they also found that the evidence is that work can help improve a person’s mental health. Evans & Repper argue, and rightly, that mental health services and staff should also be involved in supporting people back into work, it should be a vital role because of the benefits work brings to people and communities. Drake & Wallach (2) make the same argument, that part of treatment should emphasise the importance of work and support people into employment. But supporting people will bare positive fruits. Castle, Crosse, and Harvey conducted a study were they provided only 20 hours of support to people in gaining employment, but their study found that 21% of those people found jobs and 43% went onto volunteering or studying. How much more could be achieved if those people had an employment coach, even for one day a week? My own experience bears this out, too. In my early twenties, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I suffered from severe depression. It was so bad that I was hospitalised with it, twice, and I spent a long time taking medication for it. This was a very difficult time for me. I couldn’t tell many people I was ill, the stigma of mental illness was very high, and one of the few people I trusted to tell didn’t “believe” I was ill. I was also studying for my nursing qualification at the same time. This actually helped my mental health. I had the structure of my work placements, having to be there at a certain time. Also my studies gave me structure too, having to be at lectures at certain times, having to work on assignments with specific deadlines. My mental health was poor but that structure kept me together and kept me functioning. The only person I told at college was my personal tutor, because I was afraid if others knew I would be kicked off my course, and she supported me and kept quiet about my illness. When I qualified, I found it difficult to find my first job. As soon as prospective employers found out I had depression, they withdrew their job offers. The Occupational Health Department of the hospital I trained at told me that if they had known I had depression they would have had my training stopped. They said I was “unfit” to work as a nurse. I am so glad my personal tutor protected me from this. But all this rejection took a toll on me, my mental health deteriorated. I was being denied employment through no fault of my own. I had already proved I could safely work while having depression. It was so hopeless. I eventually found a job but I had to lie on my application. I didn’t tick the section that asked if I’d ever had any mental illness. During this awful time, I would have loved to have access to an employment adviser who could have helped me through this. Instead I navigated it all on my own. So why are we only just now looking at supporting people back into work, and in such a limited way? Since 2010, we have had the Equality Act, which makes it unlawful to discriminate against people with protected characteristics, including disability, and that includes mental health problems. But laws don’t change attitudes, not straight away. Frijters, Johnston & Shields found that having a mental health problem reduces your chance of getting employment by 30%. I had hoped that attitudes to mental illness had changed since I had depression. It seems now that ever z list celebrity is having their “struggles” with mental health problems. But my relative’s post on Facebook has made me question this. Do people still believe that mental illness is just someone faking it, using it as a way to avoid working? That a mental health problem automatically makes you unemployable? In 2011, David Cameron’s government coined the political slogan, “strivers v shirkers”. This labelled people in work as “strivers” and those receiving benefits as “shirkers”. This simplistic ignorance appalled me back then, but have we come no further? Now I doubt we have. Drew

He's starting to head towards his release but this is all new to him and strange environments change cause anxiety. He still needs the support of his nurses.

He's sixteen now. He's been at Nurton Cross for four years, and all that care is paying off. Plus, he finally has someone in his life who cares about him. Though there are strangers who just stare at you in public.

Mark was sitting at the table in the Visitors Room waiting for him as he always did. But Mark looked different, not very different, but enough to be noticeable. Mark’s hair was longer - it now reached down to his collar and, being longer, it seemed to be pulling it down, making the curls look more opener and shaggy. Mark’s face was different too - his chin and the bottom part of his cheeks were covered in very short but dark stubble, as if he’d missed a day or two shaving. He was dressed in a ba

Thank you. This is why I wrote this. A year ago, I saw a documentary about Ireland and the only mentions of Drew were about his death, and they called him Andrew and not Drew. I wrote this so something different would show up, on a Google about him or Ireland. Unfortunately, I just did not know him well enough. He was a friend-of-a-friend. I wish I had known him better, I wish I could write more about him and the man he was. Maybe, someone who knew him better will do that.

Thank you.

I want those Evangelical Christians, who shout hate at LGBTQ events, to be treated the same by the police as other protestors. They are so often given such an easy pass. At this year's Pride, the police had created a special area where they could shout their hate from. I don't like Just Stop Oil, they're self-indulgent and self-righteous middle-class people, who think they are "doing their part" in fighting climate change. Their "protests" aren't directed at oil firms and the politicians supporting them, they don't glue themselves to the doors of oil company HQs. Instead they disrupt ordinary people's lives by blocking roads and such. They need to read the Act-Up handbook of civil disobedience, you don't piss off the public. I agree with them being prosecuted but the sentences handed down to them are unjustly extreme. They were sentenced to four to five years in prison, the same sentence as for violent disorder, and they are not the same. Their protests certainly got out of hand but they were poorly policed and allowed to do so. No disrespect to your husband, but the London Met Police are crap and just keep failing. I support the right to protest against injustice but not to disrupt people's lives or to target and persecute minorities. Act-Up were the past masters of it, I just wish people would learn from them.

Last year Just Stop Oil disrupted London's Pride March, before that we had TERFs disrupting it too. It makes me so angry when they do this because they are ignoring the history of London Pride. For so many years, in the 1970s and 80s, we had to fight to have the march, and the police presence was so heavy as if we were a danger to the general public. But Evangelical Christians, screaming their hate, really get to me. They want to strip us of our hard won rights and they want us to cease being - their conversion shit. Yet they are still tolerated and allowed to shout their hate by the police. They get a free pass on their hatred. Hate breeds hate, and I want that we stop tolerating and making excuses for it.

He was the first Englishman I met who was also called Drew. I had met several men called Drew when I visited America, but he was the first other English Drew I met. Growing up, I hated my first name, and the very common abbreviation of it, which people frequently called me by. I felt trapped by my first name and dreamed of when I could be old enough to change it, though I had no idea what to, my choice of name would change almost month from month. Then, in my middle teens, I read an American novel where one of the characters was called Drew. At the end of the novel I found out that Drew was a different abbreviation of my own first name. Drew was different, unusual and I really liked the sound of it. I wanted to be a Drew. When I came out and later moved to London, I decided to change my name to Drew. I was entering a new life, a life were I would finally live as my real self, so I needed a name that was my name, a name I liked and was comfortable with, a name that suited me. Drew was that name. In Britain, Drew is a rare name, I’d not met anyone else with that name, it made me different and more memorable. Drew would help me be different and to embrace my difference. I’d been known by my new name for eight years when I met another Drew, during that time I’d not met any other British men with the same name as me, so meeting Drew was a surprise and a delight, finally someone else shared my name. We weren’t close, I didn’t know him well. He was a friend-of-a-friend. He was a friend of my friend Tim and Tim introduced us one Sunday night. I often went with Tim for a drink, at the South London gay pub The Two Brewers, and Drew was part of Tim’s circle of friends. He just seemed to appear one Sunday evening. He was tall, thin framed, with short, neat dark hair and an equally short, neat moustache. His plain featured face always seemed to wear a serious expression, his lips held together in neither a smile or a frown, and his dark eyes seemed to watch everything before him. But when he smiled, which wasn’t often but worth it for those moments he did, his whole face lit up with that smile. He was the tall, quiet man who stood at the edge of the group. I liked him but I wasn’t attracted to him, but if I had been I would have kept my feelings quiet because Tim was very attracted to him. I could see that in the way Tim behaved towards him, how Tim showered him with happy attention, but Drew didn’t return Tim’s feelings. He wasn’t nasty or standoffish with Tim, as I had seen happen before, he was friendly and warm towards Tim, but he just didn’t return Tim’s affection. I’d seen this happen before, Tim always seemed to fall for men who weren’t interested in him, and it was all so sad. Tim was a good friend and I hated seeing him chasing after affection that was never returned. Tim deserved a boyfriend of his own. Then one Sunday evening, Drew wasn’t at The Two Brewers pub, but he hadn’t been there other Sundays because of his work, the way I missed some Sundays because of my work. The following Thursday I met Tim and he looked terrible. I asked him what was wrong. Three days before he’d spent half a day in a police station, making a police statement. I was shocked and asked what about. He said Drew had been murdered and he had been the last person to see him alive. That weekend, London’s two gay weekly newspapers contained stories of Drew’s death, calling him Andrew Collier. Over the following weeks, the mainstream newspapers also reported Drew’s murder because it was the fourth one by the serial killer Colin Ireland. Ireland’s three previous murders, all of gay men, had been unconnected by the police, so he killed Drew to make the police take notice of him. He wasn’t caught until he’d killed for a fifth time. Drew’s murder was caught up in all the press coverage of Ireland’s killings, Drew himself being left behind. Drew’s murder shocked me, so sudden and so cruel, but the aftermath of it shocked me more. Tim was so hurt and brought low by it. I watched his grief and it was so unpleasant to see. Tim didn’t wear his heart-on-his-sleeve, no public displays of high emotions from him, but I saw how much it affected him and it was hard to watch. Up to then I had read a lot of detective fiction and fancied I wanted to write detective stories. But the plots I created saw murder as little more than a puzzle, the character’s murder having little to no emotional effect on the other characters, no one really mourning or shocked with grief. Drew’s murder showed me how messy and horrible murder is, how it effects and hurts the innocent and, in Drew’s murder, the guilty showed so little remorse. Tim showed me how a murder disrupts and hurts the lives around it. I felt guilty and shamed for wanting to create silly puzzles from something so painful and disruptive. I abandoned that stupid idea. I didn’t go to Drew’s funeral, it seemed prurient and voyeuristic to do so, I hardly knew him, he was a friend of a friend. I don’t know if Tim went, I don’t know if he was even told when and where it was, I didn’t ask him, I didn’t know how to. Back then, I didn’t know what to do about Tim’s grief, I just didn’t have the skills. I lost touch with Tim twenty years ago, when I moved from South to West London. It was only a short move in distance but was such a big change in my life, and Tim was lost in that change. A stupid loss. Drew was murdered in 1993, he was 33, six years older than me. His death left such a deep effect on me, such a pointless and horrible death. He was a gentle man, a warden in a sheltered accommodation scheme, he had a cat, he was tall and dark haired, he had a smile that lit up his whole face, which he used sparingly. In the years since his death the person he was has been forgotten. Now, if he is remembered, it is as passing reference in a true crime podcast or TV series, that dwells on the gruesome nature of his death, but makes no reference to his life. It is so unfair. Drew

"Jonathan and David" is my way of showing that Pearl has a deep Christian faith, but she is still a very skilled nurse who delivers unprejudiced care. She doesn't buy into some Christians' homophobia. She's based on someone I used to work with. The important people, Aiden and Janet, know all about Liam and Ed's relationship and they are encouraging it. It is important to both boys.

I love using flashbacks, in my writing, and I love playing around with linear narratives. Ed and Liam are two damaged souls who have found something in each other that really helps them. They need each other.

Sorry I didn't reply to you straight away, I've been having problems logging onto GA in the last couple of days. But I was also very humbled by your feedback. Thank you for it. I do worry that my writing isn't working and such. Your feedback has done me the power of good, especially as I'm in the final stretch of this story. There are only a handful of chapters left to write. I'm sure, from previous comments, you've seen that I once worked in an Adolescent Forensics Hospital, for a short time. I based so much of this story on that experience and the people I met there.

Yes, his release is soon(ish). Though he has to wait until he's eighteen, as per his sentence.

The shirt hung on the end of the rack straight in front of him, and it was beautiful. It was a pale blue cotton shirt. Its small collar was held in place by a button at each corner. The front of it was held closed with small white pearl buttons, so smooth and bright. Its full, long sleeves had their cuffs buttoned closed with the same pearl buttons. Slowly he reached out and touched one of the sleeves. The cotton was smooth, soft and gentle under his fingers. It felt so fine. So different from t

Thank you. I started writing my story when I saw that fundamentalist Christians were still using the same tactics today. My story happened forty years ago, it should be history, no longer happening now, but it still is. I am so angry about this, these people are still preying on vulnerable people.

"Everyone's happy, everyone's just joyous to be here," Pumper, club member of Sapphic Riders, at this year’s London Pride March. The sun was bright and hot, the crash barriers were all in place and the pavements were filled with spectators, as the 2024 London Pride march slowly but brightly moved through the capital. Yet, at the beginning of the march, was a small but noisy group of bigots trying to shout down the parade. Eight Christian protesters, stood at the beginning of this year’s London Pride march, surrounded by several police officers in a fenced-off section next to the parade route, shouting abuse at the marchers. Their banners’ proclaimed: “Men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet” and “be not proud for the lord hath spoke… a man’s pride shall bring him low” (??). As, a man in the group, using a loudspeaker, shouted at the people in the parade. Their presence wasn’t warmly received. Marchers, as they passed the bigots, they flipped their middle fingers at the group and drowned them out with chants. Why where those people there? What did they think they’d achieve? Did they really expect marchers to turn away from their “wicked ways” and join them in their protest? If they wanted people to hear their “message” and become Christians, why where they being so offensive and rude? Shouting homophobia at a Pride march is no way to persuade people to join your religion, so why do they do it? Every year, the London Pride march has a group of bigots, standing somewhere along the route, shouting abuse at the people marching by. At last year’s march, Pride 2023, the cast of Heartstopper, from their float, flipped the middle finger and shouted back to anti-LGBTQ+ religious protesters, to the delight of other marchers. But why do these Christian homophobes do it? What do they think the result will be? All they do is make marchers angry and hurl abuse back at them. But is that the point? When I was an Evangelical Christian, way back in my teenage years, Christian leaders and ministers repeatedly told me the world hated me just for being a Christian. It was such a bunker mentality; we were “hated” because we were right. The more we were “hated”, therefore the more we were right. It ignored the fact that maybe people hated us because we had deliberately upset them. I was repeatedly told the story of the early Christians being thrown to the lions in the ancient Roman Colosseum, for the “entertainment” of the Emperor. The story was, those early Christians had such strong faiths that they were changing the Roman world, and the Emperor and the pagans were afraid of them, that’s why they were being thrown to the lions. There was no mention that they were easy socio/economic scapegoats and even easier victims. But this victim narrative was very strong, if non-Christians dislike you and are angry at what you say then you are a strong Christian. I knew Christians, back then, who would say deliberately offensive and upsetting things to prove how strong their faith was. This seems to be the mentality behind these Christians, screaming their homophobia to Pride marchers, showing “the world” how strong their Christian faith is, how they are not afraid of the lions heathens Pride marchers. It certainly doesn’t seem to be any attempt to convert any of the marchers. Their hate-filled shouting and truly obscure and nonsensical banners don’t present them as an attractive or even welcoming religion. Their behaviour is 100% off-putting. Those homophobic protesters are the pimple on the bum of London Pride, the annoying little voices trying to ruin a wonderful day. But there were only eight of them, compared to the approximately 1.5 million people who attended this year’s London Pride and the 32,000 who took part in the march, so why worry about them? Because their homophobia is still tolerated, even allowed in public, and homophobia doesn’t end with just shouted words and poorly worded banners. During this year’s Pride month, we saw numerous acts of homophobia. Pride flags, painted on the pavement in Forest Gate, East London, were vandalised and completely painted over with red paint. A banner advertising Pride in Luton was ripped down and destroyed three times (7). Homophobic and Transphobic violence stands at a five year high. I am not saying those eight people were responsible for all these acts of homophobia, but their words certainly encourage them, whether those people will admit it or not. Such loud and public displays of homophobia will only encourage others who want to act upon it. Why do we allow this public display of hate at every London Pride march? We wouldn’t tolerate bigots shouting racist abuse at Notting Hill Carnival. We certainly don’t tolerate antisemitism. Police previously removed far-right protestors from challenging a march against antisemitism. The police have dispersal powers were they can remove people causing an offence or nuisance from a certain area, for up to 48 hours. They were very quick to use these powers on antimonarchist protestors at the King’s coronation, and they were only holding up placards saying “Not My King”. If I stood outside the Evangelical Christian Spring Harvest festival, with a megaphone, shouting at people about their homophobia, I am sure I would be quickly removed by the police. Why do we still tolerate bigots shouting homophobia at London Pride marchers? Why do we still give Evangelical Christians an easy pass on their homophobia? Drew.

I am disgusted at the levels of corruption and selfishness demonstrated by this current government, which has been there for too long. Politics now just seems to be a stepping-stone, in people's careers, to something better, even if its a seat in the House of Lords. I grew up in the 70s and there were so many politicians who went into politics to make a difference, to improve other people's lives. There are still some politicians like that but they so often get drowned out by the scandals and greed of this rotten government or get forced out because they don't swear to agree with their party's leader (as Bojo did). Please God, no! Not government by the "person on the street"! I've heard those vox-pop people too and they scare me. Their levels of ignorance are breathtaking. The amount of people who say they are voting Reform because they "like" Farage, not even knowing how far right he is. Or the ones who still "don't know" after six weeks of campaigning and fourteen years of disgusting Tory government. I worked with the public, for years, and no one got poor underestimating the intelligence of the public. I want politicians who are educated (and not just a degree in "Political Studies"), intelligent and have proven experience in another field of employment/work. I'm looking forward to having a Chancellor who was an economist, rather than the last two who were a hedge fund manager and someone from "the media". I did hear Martin Lewis asked once if he wanted to be Chancellor and he said no. I don't blame him, he's doing such a job doing what he is does.

Thanks. It was a pig to post, with ALL the links in it.

On social media, I have made no secret of the fact that I dislike this Conservation government, they are the worst government in my memory, and I lived through Margaret Thatcher. I want a change, I want a Labour government, and I am not alone in this. The polls show that Labour is well ahead of the Tories and are on track to be elected as our next government. But can we be sure of this? We elect our governments under the First Past The Post system and this does not mean that a political party’s seats in parliament reflects the national share of votes it received. At the last election, in 2019, the Conservatives won 43.6% of the national vote but won 52.6% of the seats in Parliament. And there also the large amount of “safe seats” in this country. Nearly 14 million voters live in constituencies that have not changed party hands since the Second World War. Even if the Conservatives lose this election, they will still be the official opposition and still hold a lot of power. Do they deserve to be the official opposition, were they can squabble and try and push their agenda on the government, through official questions in parliament and the large number of parliamentary committees they will have seats on, and these committees wield so much power? This Conservative government have wasted their power and harmed the country, in the last fourteen years they have been in government. At best, they have been mediocre, but for the majority of their time in office, whichever prime minister was in charge, they have failed. Their policies have wrecked the country. Austerity. This was a policy to “pay for” the bailout of the banks following the 2008 credit crunch, caused by the banks’ investment arms. In reality, it made the poorest people in our country pay for it. It saw benefit caps, including the two-child benefit limit and the bedroom tax, stripping money off the most vulnerable in our society. It also caused a slowing in life expectancy improvement, an extra 57,550 people in England died in the five years from 2010. Under funding of councils. This is a direct result of the austerity policies because it saw a cut in councils’ funding. Local authority “spending power”, the amount of money councils has to spend from government grants, council tax and business rates – fell by 17.5% between 2009/10 and 2019/20, before partially recovering. However, in 2021/22 it was still 10.2% below 2009/10 levels. Earlier this year council leaders called on the government for an extra £750m funding just to help them provide their basic services. Councils provide adult and child social care, public health, sexual health services, registration of births, deaths and marriages, ceremonies and citizenship, environmental services, housing, especially housing homeless families, libraries and archives, and parking. So many vital services. Rise in Food Bank usage. Between 2010 and 2021 we have seen an over 4,000% rise in the number of food parcels distributed, being 2.5 million food parcels given out in 2021. This is nothing to be proud of. This is a sign of the rise in poverty. Cost of living crisis. This has only thrown more people into poverty. 600,000 more people, half of them children, are living in absolute poverty. This is the joint highest increase in 40 years. 7.2 million (11% of the population) now live in food insecurity. Yet the government has done nothing to ease this, they just seem to stand by and shout about the inflation rates, ignoring the fact that prices are not coming down. State of the NHS, which is now on its knees. Many people have said that the NHS is in the worst state it has ever been, but there is a lot of evidence to back this up. The NHS needs £4 billion of additional funding in 2024–25 just to provide its current services. It’s waiting list stands at 7.5 million procedures, affecting about 6.3 million different patients in England. In February 2020 there were already 4.47 million cases on a waiting list for consultant-led care. This disgustingly large number of people stuck on NHS waiting lists is not due to the Covid lockdown alone. There is also the NHS’s chronic shortage of staff, which this government has done nothing to address. 8.4%, or 121,000 of full-time equivalent NHS roles are vacant, and yet we haven’t seen any attempt by this government to fill these roles. To add to this, 10.7% (154,000) of staff left their NHS role in the year ending September 2023. Is this government just letting the NHS die on its feet? PPE Scandal. This government has thrown away billions of pounds on PPE (Personal protective equipment). During the pandemic, 75% of the £12 billion spent on PPE, in the first year of lockdown, was spent on PPE that’s price was over-inflated or was substandard. But £4 billion was spent on PPE that was so substandard that it was unusable and had to be destroyed. The government has not made any attempts to claw back this money, especially the £4 billion that was so substandard that it didn’t meet requirements. But the scandal doesn’t end there. In June this year, £1.4bn worth of PPE was destroyed without any explanation. But this PPE was of a high standard from a reputable manufacturer. All in all, this waste of money is breath-taking. RAAC concrete scandal affecting public buildings. A lot of buildings, including many public buildings, were built with RAAC concrete in the 1980s because it was cheap. But it only had a life expectancy of 30 years. Problems were noticed in 2018 when ceilings in schools started collapsing. Now, a large number of public buildings, including schools and hospitals, are effected by crumbing and potentially dangerous RAAC concrete. Yet this government has done nothing about it, they don’t even seem to be treating it as an emergency. Liz Truss’s Prime Ministership. She was our shortest serving Prime Minister, lasting only 45 days in office, yet during that time she managed to wipe £19 billion off our economy. She achieved this by proposing an unfunded budget that would have given millions to the richest people in our country. A crazy policy that was discredited decades ago. Rise in taxes. Taxes, under this government, are the highest they have been since 1948. Yet our public services are chronically underfunded. Failure to grow the economy. In 2023, our economy grew by 0.1% overall, though in the second half of 2023, the economy shrank by 0.3%. But in 2023 the US economy grew by 3.3% and even the French economy grew by 0.8%. The Failure of Brexit. This has totally failed. Not even the most optimistic Google search can find real benefits of it. Yet this government through the country into it based only on fantastical beliefs and a very questionable referendum, which was fought on many lies. This government has failed to such a breath-taking high degree and damaged and destroyed so many people’s lives, lives they promised to protect as our government, that they do not deserve to even serve as the official opposition. They deserved to be reduced to a fringe party, to be ignored as they squabble on the side-lines. And we can do this. Tactical Voting could be the way to achieve this. Instead of voting for the candidate of the party you follow/agree with, but to vote for the candidate of the centrist/left-wing party are most likely to beat the Conservative candidate. In reality it is voting for the Labour or Libdem candidate, which ever one stands the best chance of winning that seat. But how do you find out how to use your vote tactically? Stop The Tories is a website coordinating this. You enter your post code and if your MP is Conservative, it will recommend the candidate to vote for to most likely unseat that MP or to vote for to make sure the Conservatives do not win your seat. Stop The Tories are coordinating for people who want to tactically vote, it is the best tactical voting website, they are doing far more than just saying, “Don’t vote Tory”, and they are not misleading voters, like some websites that claim to be for tactical voting. From everything I have read and heard, Stop The Tories are one of the best tactical voting sites. It is the only one I will use. Tactical voting isn’t new. After the last General Election, in 2019, a YouGov poll found that 32% of voters (nearly a third) had tactically voted. If nearly a third of voters did it then, why not more this year? It is a way to send a very firm message to the Conservative Party. Many famous Conservative MPs could lose their seats at this election. Jeremy Hunt, Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt, Johnny Mercer, Iain Duncan Smith and Jacob Rees-Mogg are all at risk of losing their seats, with their majorities within the reach of Labour or the Libdems. But, with tactical voting, Suella Braverman, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak could also lose their seats. Wouldn’t that be something to see, on election night, the current Conservative leader, the most disastrous Prime Minister we’ve ever had and an MP who fancies herself as the next Conservative leader, all losing their seats? But the main reason to tactically vote is to ensure the Conservatives, not just lose power, but are so beaten that they cannot form the official opposition, and are locked out of power. Do they deserve anything less with the way they have treated the country? There has been calls against tactical voting, saying it’s pointless and doesn’t lead to change and that it shouldn’t be allowed. But tactical voting is coordinating voting, in this case against the Conservative Party, who have failed in government. The Conservative Party have used underhand and dishonest tactics during election campaigns. In the 2019 election campaign, during a leaders’ debate, the Conservative Party rebranded their twitter account as "factcheckUK", pretending to be a fact-checking account and of sending out misleading anti-Labour tweets. A Conservative politician called the outcry against this as “nonsense”. In this election campaign, the Conservatives pulled the same stunt during the leaders’ debate, changing their twitter account to “Tax Check UK”. How can they be trusted? We are well overdue electoral reform, but the Conservative Party has stood in the way of this. Stop The Tories state that one of their aims in getting the Conservative Party voted into third place is so that they cannot block any long overdue electoral reforms. Tactical voting could achieve this, why aren’t we working hard for that? Drew

My government doesn’t trust me at my word. Before 2023, all I had to do to vote was take my polling card to the polling station, have one of the election officials check my name off against their list of registered voters and then I would vote. Now I have to show photo ID to vote, but not any photo ID, only one of the nineteen legally approved photo IDs. Why the change in the law? There’s been no voter fraud scandal. There has been no large-scale electoral fraud in Britain, and since 2019 eleven people have received convictions for it and four people have received police cautions. This is hardly an epidemic of it, 11 convictions out of 46,000,000 voters in the UK. But since 2019, 18 members of parliament have been suspended from parliament for offences that include: misusing campaign funds, harassment, comparing Covid vaccinations to the holocaust, antisemitism, domestic violence, sexual offenses, sexual assault and a rape arrest. All of these are serious offences. In the same time period, an additional 10 MPs resigned before they could be suspended. This is 28 MPs breaking the rules, out of 650 MPs, since 2019, a little under three times the number of people convicted of electoral fraud. Also, since 2rd June, Robert Largan, the Conservative candidate for High Peak in Derbyshire, has been under investigation by the police for election fraud. So why do we need to show ID when we vote? On the evidence, we need to tighten up regulations on MPs’ behavior. There have already been some high profile cases of people being turned away from polling stations for not having the required ID. Boris Johnson was turned away, in May, when he tried to vote in the local elections because he didn’t have the required photo ID. This was Boris Johnson and the chance that it was a publicity stunt is high, he hasn’t featured in newspaper headlines for quite some time, and he returned with the required ID. Adam Diver, a former British soldier, was turned away from his polling station when he tried to use his military ID to vote, a government issued ID. This is because the government has set a very narrow, and very bias, list of approved photo ID, we can only use one of nineteen different forms of ID. This list of approved voter ID is neither fair or equal. Of the 19 forms of ID 10 are available to adults, 8 forms are available to the over 65s only, and only one form of ID is specific to young people, but the breakdown of these approved IDs is even more worrying. Of 10 forms of ID available without age restrictions, not all of them are available to everyone. Of them: 1 is a Ministry of Defense Form (but not military ID), 1 is the Blue Badge disabled parking permit, 1 is an immigration document, 1 is the EU citizen’s ID, 1 is available to Scottish citizens only, 1 is available to Welsh citizens only. This leaves only four forms of approved ID available to general voters, one form of approved ID is specific to young people, while 8 different approved IDs are only available to the over 65s. This law was passed by the Conservative Party and is obviously bias towards the age group who traditionally vote for them, the elderly. This is gerrymandering of the worst sort, rigging election regulations against your political opponents. This isn’t only my opinion. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a minister in Boris Johnson’s government and the one responsible for rallying MPs to vote for this law, said, "Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding that their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.” He actually admitted that this law was intended to disenfranchise the voters who didn’t vote for the Conservatives. This is unacceptable, a law that is intended to discriminate against a section of our society. Our government should be governing for all of the country, not just the section of the country who they think will vote for them. This law first impacted the May 2023 local elections. A report from then found that 14,000 people were turned away from polling stations because they didn’t have the right ID, about 0.25% of total voters. The report also found 4% of people who did not vote said it was because of not having the required voter ID. But it also found that the number of people turned away from polling stations for not having the right photo ID was probably much higher because almost 40% of polling stations used “greeters”, who told voters what ID was needed before they entered the polling station. That 14,000 was only the number turned away inside the polling station, if they didn’t enter there, because they didn’t have the right ID, then they weren’t counted as being turned away. In reality, it was probably a much larger number of people who didn’t vote because of the need for voter ID. A poll earlier this year found that 14% of voters were still unaware of the need for voter ID. But there are big holes in this voter ID requirement. You don’t need any photo ID to use postal voting. All you need is your address, your National Insurance number and the date of the election you want to cast your postal vote in. You don’t need to provide any photo ID, let alone one off a small, approved list. You can also apply for an official voter photo ID, to be used just to cast your vote, called a ‘Voter Authority Certificate’. To obtain one of these you’ll need a recent, digital photo of yourself, your National Insurance number and your address, nothing more, certainly not photo ID. This gives the lie to the claim that voter ID is to stop voter fraud. Here are two ways to vote where you don’t need any one of the 19 required photo IDs. But this law was never about voter fraud, it was about gerrymandering, about reducing the ability to vote for people who won’t vote for the Conservative Party. We are well overdue voter reform in this country. When the new government comes into office, they need to repeal this dishonest law, The Elections Act 2022. Drew.