Justice? Big Money and Big Pharma.

Well hello good reader and I apologise, it is three weeks since my last confession, three weeks in which a lot has happened to me and during which time I have learnt a lot.  Three weeks ago I caught a plane to Manchester.  My main reason for going was to find out as much as I could about a recently settled court case that I wrote about some weeks ago.

It concerned a case of gross sexual abuse on two boys of the 1955 intake at St. Bede’s College in Manchester by the then Rector, Monsignor Thomas Duggan.  Unfortunately these men had agreed to a settlement pre-trial thus averting any media publicity which would have shown up the school and the Diocese of Salford in bad light.  I wanted to know why they had settled and for how much but after meeting with legal types I became no wiser and I still do not know why, only that I suspect they settled for little money knowing the calibre of their legal team.  Why they did not come to me in 2011 after the Bishop’s apology instead of going to the firm of callow practitioners they fetched up with is beyond my ken.

So having learnt nothing from my assays on the front of house legal boys I delved into my contacts in the Manchester courts service and again have learnt nothing as yet but I did stumble upon a case that will shortly be on your screens or in the headlines of your newspapers, a case I wrote about with little knowledge some time ago.  What the discovery of further evidence did, albeit anecdotal evidence at the moment, was to remind me, that the quality of justice in British courts and I suppose in courts throughout the world, is as good as the amount of money you pay for it.  The justice the two old Bedians got was not justice as you and I think, which is the truth prevailing over everything else to reach a right and just conclusion, but because these two lads did not have a pot to piss in, they got what their pockets allowed, Sweet FA.

The justice I stumbled on in my trek round legal Manchester was the justice allied to a big financial pocket.  The justice aligned to lots of money is not a revelation of the truth and nothing but the truth but is a cocktail of whatever lies and untruths your money can buy.  Because the evidence I tripped over is still only anecdotal but from an impeccable source and only awaiting confirmation, I cannot really explain the details but suffice it to say that like every man, justice has its price.  If your pocket is big enough you can buy all the justice you want.

All you have to do is to look at the politicians and the Royal family of Britain to see what you can buy.  Look at Ted Heath and Jimmy Savile and realise that justice is just a coat hung on a rack, if you can afford it you can get it, tailor made to your own warped and addled being.  The case I tripped over concerns rich men, the Catholic Church and abused children and hopefully sometime in the very near future I will be able to write freely of this typical, topical cocktail in more detail.

Well after a few days jousting with Mancunian lawisms, I visited a restaurant in North Manchester where I had the most amazing meal of my life.  I had the tasting menu of 12 courses which with amuse bouche and other little surprise delicacies was probably more like 15 courses, where the chef displays his finesse with a whole range of edible materials, slurped down with a glass of wine perfectly suited to each particular dish he puts before you.  The experience was incredible and well worth the massive amount of spondoolicks expended.  The restaurant is called Aumbry with chefs Mary-Ellen McTague and husband Lawrencer Tottingham, ex Sharrow Bay and Fat Duck sculpting food with surgical precision whilst on the night I was served by two of the most knowledgeable waiters I have had the pleasure of meeting.  Two young ladies who knew everything about the food and most impressively everything about the 13 wines that came with it.

This epic event was followed by two days of energetic and at some times frantic packing and waste disposal as my daughter, husband and five grandkids vacated Manchester for warmer climes but for three months are acclimatising by moving into our house in Roscommon while myself and my much put upon first wife are relegated to a tiny cottage upstream of our comfortable abode.

The move has obviously discommoded our very quiet and home-loving dog who at the age of 12 has gone on two recent walk-abouts, disappearing for a couple of days at a time.  On his first perambulation he was delivered back by the postman in true Wells Fargo tradition and on his second he was captured by some form of a do-gooder who almost held him at ransom until we produced a photo of said dog.

Eventually after over a week of toing and froing between houses by realising there was something in  house 1 that we needed in our house 2, we have eventually enough of implements now in house 2 that should ensure our survival whilst leaving a plethora for seven people in house 1 to exist.

 I awoke yesterday full of fear and trepidation.  I had an appointment with my diabetic consultant, the only medical practitioner that I have actually time for.  Fear and trepidation was foremost because in early October 2013 I had shaken myself down and decided to withdraw from my daily beanfeast of drugs that Big Pharma had pressured my various doctors into prescribing.  I was shovelling eight pills a day down my oesophagus and decided to forgo this diet and do without any medication to see what affect it would have on my system.  Now that was seven months ago and I had told none of my doctors, yesterday was my day of reckoning, I felt well enough but only the results of tests will prove how close to death I had become.

The system in the diabetic clinic is that you sit with the diabetic nurse in an examination room whilst she collates all the various test results and puts them on the computer screen, asks me a load of questions and has everything ready for the consultant as she flits between examination rooms.  The nurse after spending a few minutes tapping out the results turned to me and said “well Mr Malpas, you have probably the best control over your diabetic condition than any patient on our list, every test is perfect, you deserve first prize for being our best patient”.  I then dropped the bombshell, she looked at me in amazement, she was gobsmacked but attractively so.  She just looked at me and could not speak for nearly a minute, all her years of training crumbling before her.  I had to repeat the gospel three or four times before it sank in properly.  ‘Incredible’ was all she could say.  When on medication my situation was always stable, I was in control of my condition although I had been a Type 2 diabetic for 20 years but now my tests on blood sugars, liver and kidney function and cholesterol levels had all improved through lack of pharmaceutical aid.  After 30 minutes of baptism the reawakened nurse raced off to fetch Dr Lourens.

It was Dr Lourens who had planted the seed in my head about 18 months previously who said that because of the control of my diabetic condition, that if I lost weight I would probably discover I was not diabetic.  I was then and up to a year ago 120kgs in weight, I am now 105kgs, a loss of 15kgs or 2st 5lb in old money.  Whether it is the loss of weight or the lack of drugs, I feel a lot better than I was.

Dr Lourens entered the room, having been primed by the nurse, with an expectant look on her face but she had to ask the question as she studied the results.  “What medication are you still taking” she asked.  “I am taking nothing” I answered.  Her arms went up in delight, like a professional footballer who had just scored a goal, she was delighted.  The seed she had sown had grown and become a reality, I was no longer a diabetic.  But she was not going to let me go that quickly, she wanted more tests done that would indicate my freedom from toxicity was complete.  She thought I had been too brave by dispensing with everything but she was without doubt delighted.  She had turned water into wine.  We fixed a date for November this year so that these other tests could be carried out and I left the two lovely ladies after one hour and ten minutes.  I pitied the other patients waiting in the queue, most of whom did not look as lithe as I.