As we approach the 10th anniversary of possibly the most contentious and divisive war in living memory, Peter Taylor forensically investigates how key intelligence used by Downing Street and the White House to justify invading Iraq was based on fabrication, wishful thinking and lies.
What are the army leaving behind in Helmand, when they depart the region. Is it just a legacy of sexual abuse against children, an incompetent and drugged up police force, corruption at every level of government and a booming trade in ransom? Could this be what the people have to face up to when the British and American troops head home?
Right from the start of the current Jimmy Savile scandal that hit us a few weeks ago, other celebrity names have been linked to the late TV presenter, and his paedophilic behaviour, in particular Gary Glitter and Freddie Starr.
Gary Glitter was convicted in 1999 for possession of child pornography in the United Kingdom, then in 2006, a court in Vietnam found him guilty of committing obscene acts with minors, but no similar charges, or rumours, up until this point, had ever come out about Freddie.
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The BBC have pulled the plug on a documentary about the sexual exploitation of teenage models as they deemed it insensitive in light of the recent Jimmy Savile allegations, and are planning instead to show a Panorama investigation into the late TV presenter highlighting the current scandal surrounding him.
As everyone is now aware, Jimmy Savile has been accused of the sexual abuse of up to 120 boys and girls spanning almost six decades of his TV career after ITV showed an Exposure documentary featuring the statements of witnesses and victims of this abuse.
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BBC Panorama will reveal evidence of torture camps in and near Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields in a special undercover investigation to be broadcast tonight (Monday 8 August) on BBC One.
In Panorama: Mugabe’s Blood Diamonds reporter Hilary Andersson hears first hand accounts of brutal beatings, rape and prisoners being savaged by dogs, while former policemen who worked in the camps tell of how they carried out the torture and why.
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The UK is in the middle of a baby boom. Last year’s birthrate was the highest for 20 years. Nearly 800,000 babies were born; that’s one birth every 40 seconds. At the same time, though, births are getting more complex and there’s a chronic shortage of midwives in some parts of the UK. Some maternity units are struggling to cope with the demand and some women aren’t getting the care they deserve.
Panorama has commissioned a unique survey of every maternity unit in the UK to find out just how widespread the problems are. From staff shortages to ward closures, the results paint a worrying picture of a service stretched to breaking-point in some hospitals. The UK has one of the highest stillbirth rates in the developed world and new evidence suggests the cost of negligence claims against the NHS for mistakes made during labour is soaring.
This film, though shocking, really didn’t tell us anything we don’t already know; and that is that fundamentally, as a society, we and our children are falling victim to our lifestyles.
The way we live is killing us, and the way society tolerates that is frighteningly legion.
In this film, we saw spoiled children, who demand and get, via either tantrums or tears. We also saw children who speak to their parents like they’re something they’ve just stepped in. And we saw what seemed to me to be cases of parents so needing to be needed, they’re – albeit most likely subconsciously – slowly killing their kids. Read more & comment »
Some disabled people are suffering abuse and hostility for no other reason than their disability, an investigation by BBC One’s Panorama has found.
Secretly recorded footage for Panorama: Why Do You Hate Me?, to be shown on Monday, shows a wheelchair user being mocked and threatened in a bar, while in another incident a mother and daughter film an attacker smashing every window on their mobility car.
After Britain’s publicly funded banks received billions in bailouts, Panorama asks whether they are doing all they can to help everybody else weather the recession.
Do the likes of HBOS, now owned by Lloyds, RBS and Northern Rock care about first-time buyers, small businesses and the Great British public that have saved their bacon?
Reporter John Sweeney holds the banks and the Government to account.
Monday 21 September
8.30-9.00pm BBC ONE
Haringey Council filmed Baby P’s mother talking about her boyfriend four months before the toddler was found dead, Panorama can reveal.
The council has repeatedly denied knowledge that the man had access to the child – now known as Peter – claiming the manipulative mother had hidden his existence from them and made it impossible for social workers to assess the dangers the child faced.
Last night’s Panorama saw journalist and reporter Ben Anderson going undercover in the millionaires’ playground of Dubai to look at what goes on behind the scenes of the luxury developments that are endorsed by celebrities such as Jamie Oliver, Michael Owen, Freddie Flintoff, Greg Norman, Vijay Singh, Sergio Garcia and Sam Torrance.
In a country that penalises journalists who report stories that negatively reflect the economy, or insult the government, with massive fines and in the past, even imprisonment, Ben had to maintain a low profile, hence his undercover filming and posing as a potential buyer. And what he discovered there were migrant workers in their thousands living in conditions that we wouldn’t keep a dog in, and if we did, we’d be fined. Read more & comment »
Last night’s Panorama special revealed the inside story of the “kidnap that never was” and disclosed the truth about the mother of Shannon Matthews who was yesterday found guilty of kidnapping her daughter in order to claim a reward for her recovery. This article isn’t only about the programme though because I feel we as a society need to address the issues raised in this programme that pertain to how Karen Matthews and her family lived.
A Panorama investigation into monitoring by the UK electronic intelligence agency – the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) – of the Omagh bombers has uncovered details of a Home Office meeting in 1999 chaired by the head of MI5, Sir Stephen Lander.
Meeting minutes include reference to a discussion of the case for and against using telephone intercepts as evidence in court proceedings.
The minutes reveal “an unsuccessful two year Police/Security Service job where use of intercept material may have resulted in a prosecution but where the suspects later went on to carry out a major terrorist act. This might conceivably have been avoided if the intercept material could have been used”. Read more & comment »
An internet predator jailed for grooming three underage girls on line for sex – including a BBC Panorama researcher posing as a 14-year-old – has an emotionally unstable personality disorder and is likely to re-offend without intensive treatment.
Panorama’s One Click From Capture (BBC One, 8.30pm, Monday 26 May) details how the programme’s initial contact with “Swimcoach3″, late last year, ultimately led to the jailing at Bristol Crown Court last Tuesday of 43-year-old security guard, Roger Kenneth Manning, from Cullompton in Devon.
Concerned at the speed with which Swimcoach3′s contact with their “Jane” was escalating, the Panorama team alerted police when Manning asked to meet for sex. Read more & comment »
The Government will need to make big reductions in the numbers “on the sick” in Britain’s former industrial heartlands if it is to get anywhere near its ambitious UK-wide target of a million off Incapacity Benefit by 2015, according to Professor Steve Fothergill of Sheffield Hallam University.
He tells BBC One‘s Panorama that in the Incapacity Benefit hotspot of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales – where nearly one in five of working age population is on the sick – around 3,000 new jobs would have to be created.
Across the South Wales valleys 35,000 new jobs would be required.
And Professor Fothergill and his team have just completed a major research project, interviewing more than 3,000 Incapacity Benefit claimants, that reveals it is not simply job creation that may prevent the Government reaching its target.
The new research has uncovered that nearly two-thirds of Incapacity Benefit claimants have no skills or qualifications at all.
Meanwhile, new figures provided to Panorama by the Department for Work and Pensions estimate the annual cost of paying Incapacity Benefits, plus associated Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit, has reached a staggering £16billion – that is more in a single year than the whole estimated cost of staging the London 2012 Olympics.
However, some Incapacity Benefit claimants have high expectations of what they might earn should they return to work.
Of the minority who said they would like a job, about a third of men and one in six women said they would need at least £300 a week after tax to make it worthwhile coming off Incapacity Benefits and going in to work.
That would mean a job paying around £20,000 a year.
Employment & Welfare Reform Minister, Stephen Timms MP, denies that getting people “off the sick” will lead to an increase in the unemployment figures as those on incapacity benefit simply shift from one benefit to another.
He tells Panorama: “I see no conflict at all between continuing to keep unemployment low and reducing the numbers of people on Incapacity Benefit in the way that we’ve set out.”
Panorama reporter Shelley Jofre meets a number of Incapacity Benefit claimants from Merthyr Tydfil including: Trevor who has been left without a medical assessment for 10 years, Peter and Rita who have recently been shifted from Incapacity Benefits on to Job Seekers allowance, and Calvin who has not worked for 20 years.
The programme examines whether any of them can be persuaded to find a job and, if they can, will any employer be willing to take them on?
Panorama: Britain On The Sick, BBC One, 8.30pm, Monday 19 May 2008
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