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Banana
Channel 4 News
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Comments by "Banana" (@439bananas) on "Channel 4 News" channel.

Completely agree, but the state, even the courts are useless at making feckless fathers pay.
41
@hh-ck3yw But you have to pay leisure centre fees.
18
@hh-ck3yw Well the leisure centres at Tenbury Wells and Malvern, Worcestershire, you have to pay for a swimming session to be able to use the shower facilities, whether you swim or not.
14
@Skunky Monk The problem is that many people do not have the stable job that the bank requires to allow you to buy a house, that plus the rent gobbles up money that should be being saved for a deposit. The problem does not end with owning a house either. I own my own property, but my child is disabled and his father just dicks us around for child maintenance. The list of currently needed repairs looks like this: toilet the diaphragm in the flush is shot and the soil pipe joint is leaking; the bath is completely blocked (plunging and caustic soda not clearing it); the central heating is not working (last time it did not work the problem wound up costing us more than £1,000 to sort out); the porch is leaking too. If you are dependent upon benefits, there is no landlord to fix these problems and there are no extra benefits in lieu of housing benefit to sort repairs.
10
Because you have to own a washer and dryer or have money for central heating to get them hygenically clean. So they probably work out just as expensive.
7
Not to mention the bankers who had to be bailed out by the taxpayer due to their investing in the subprime sector
7
@europeancitizen6375 The guy was desperate to resolve his issues. Sadly things that should be being dealt with by counselling, rehab, courts, DNA testing have become too expensive for ordinary people to do and so they have resorted to this. If a show is going to set itself up to do this sort of thing then they have a duty of care to the vulnerable to do so in a productive way, but of course, that is not entertaining.
4
@aubasanchez1566 What you mean some poor sap who has not cheated, who goes on the show to prove this and fails a dodgy polygraph and now has everyone who knows him thinking that he is a cheating liar, hasn't been driven to suicide?
4
People who are poor eat whatever is cheap and filling, add in the fact that many cannot afford electricity and you quickly have people living off chips and takeaway pasties from Greggs.
4
@Gooburst4771 no no no
4
I completely agree, everyone castigates the mothers, but it takes two to tango.
4
Sadly, now all too common in work.
4
It is the perpetrator's schedule that should have been moved around.
4
Because it did not amount to murder, because he chose to go and it could not be proved that her intention was to kill. It could reasonably be proved that it was her intention to disfigure.
4
I know exactly what you mean. I have a disabled son and my husband walked off, but prior to that I worked and lived in a far more middle-class area. The area that I moved to has far more of these types. One mother lives on the council estate and was reckoned to be cleaning for an old couple and the next thing you know she was arrested for defrauding them of £8k over 12 months. She tells everyone that she was innocent, but frightened so she plead guilty. The only thing we can think if she is not guilty is that she must have been defrauding the DWP or something. What gets me is that she still keeps plastering pictures of her and the kids on holiday in exotic locations over facebook. Another child that lived with her grandmother was appallingly behaved at primary school, she moves off to live with the mother and does not start the local secondary school. The mother was allegedly involved with drink and drugs and the child is then taken into council care. The child is now 15/16 and last month the mother committed suicide aged 33. Another child that happened to be in my son's class this time. The mother has 8 kids by various different blokes, she has never worked, lives in a council house, kids have been in care. Her oldest kid she had at the age of 19 and dumped him to live with the grandmother. The kid had Aspergers, but they still let him run the streets where he was getting into trouble, but despite being charged with crimes they were never tried because of his mental state, this kid winds up being killed and the circumstances around this means that there was a massive Independent Police Commission inquiry. Another of her kids that was in my son's class continually bullied my son in the final year of primary and despite going in regularly and telling the school to keep them apart they chose to blame my son, because of course I am the decent person that does not show up and shout my mouth. This child was expelled within a week of starting high school. He went onto another school where other parents I knew had children and was a nightmare there too and we believe he was expelled from there too. There were rumours all around the primary that the kid had behaved in an inappropriate way with younger children and the next thing you know his uncle was convicted for child porn. That family are a Jeremy Kyle show in themselves.
3
charlie cheeseface In the end I had to have a drainage company fix it. They dismantled the pipe and discovered that it was actually limescale that had totally blocked the pipe. The drainage pipe is particularly narrow and is fifty years old. I got a grant for a free boiler, but a lot of people are nor aware that it is available.
3
charlie cheeseface The house is about 50 years old and the pipes have a narrow diameter. Problem with benefits system is that it is not set up for people who own their own homes. If I had not worked hard and bought my own home the state would pay housing benefit and these sorts of problems would be sorted out by the landlord.
3
To get the same calorific value from 'healthy' food costs 3 times the amount that it does to get from 'unhealthy foods. My husband walked out on our son and I, we manage because my son is disabled, so we are entitled to more money. But if we weren't we would be in a very difficult position. I don't pay rent because I own my own property, but house insurance if you are unemployed tops £20 per week, gas and electricity around £24 per week, water around £6 per week and that is before we talk about the internet connectivity that seems pretty much mandatory for kids at school these days. There would not be a lot left over once clothes and shoes are bought for children. Most people that I know that are unemployed are dependent upon the local food bank so their choice of food is not great. And it does not matter how cheap the food is if your cooker breaks, because there will be no way to cook it anyway.
3
@BossySwan Sorry, but life happens, frequently not in the way we would like it to. Jobs come to an end, people get ill, children and elderly parents need carers. folk get ill and have accidents and are no longer able to work. That is what we pay our taxes and National Insurance for, to act as a safety net so no one should be left destitute by the state.
3
The problem is not anything to do with dorms. In Cambridge, there is a system called supervision, this occurs in small groups and is frequently one to one and is likely to be the source of the problem.
3
Because their diets are filled with fat and carbohydrates, they eat these because they are cheap and filling. Lots of dripping on toast and porridge and chips, cheap and filling.
2
Sometimes people could get by when they planned to have kids, but circumstances change.
2
@riggedforyourpleasure2546 Apparently, he was texting her up to 50 times a day and many of the texts contained sexual innuendo. The correct thing to do would have been for her to text him and say that the frequency of the texts was uncalled for and that she did not appreciate their sexual content. I do not know if she took this step, but upon knowing this was going on, as it was a fellow student, then he should have been put on a year's sabbatical and threatened with being sent down, so that their lectures could be arranged at none mutual times and so that a time table could be drawn up for meal times so that they would not meet, additionally, counselling should have been arranged for the affected student.
2
@TheFirstWhiteRanger Not sure if you are replying to my comment. But here goes: First lady received a suspended sentence. Second parent had dumped her child with the grandparent, before taking back control of the child and moving the child 25 miles away, for some reason that child wound up in care and the mother has committed suicide. Third situation oldest kid was murdered, youngest rumoured to have behaved inappropriately with younger children and his uncle was convicted for indecent images of children. Had been to the school on numerous occasions to complain that her child was bullying mine, but the school did nothing about it as I am not as aggressive as the other mother and they seemed to find it more convenient to blame my son. The teacher gave my son a rotten report, despite the fact that my son has autism and had worked extremely hard and passed ALL his SATS tests scoring in the top 0.5% for spellings, punctuation and grammar. It was not until some of this child's other misbehaviour came out 2 years later that I actually received an apology from the particular teacher. I was not happy as those reports follow the children into secondary education and it could have potentially blighted my son's school days. It is now 3 years on and my 14 year old son has been invited to speak at a conference at Cambridge University about computer programming and he has just won an award at school for his overwhelming positivity and achievement in the face of adversity. The problem with these sorts of people, their bad behaviour is very deeply entrenched and it seems to pay dividends, so they simply will not change.
2
Such a bypass procedure would be absolute last resort, it requires surgical intervention and the administration of anti-clotting drugs. ECMOs are usually used for relatively short periods during surgery to maintain circulation, it is not likely that they have been tested as a longer term treatment. The manpower to perform such a procedure is also likely to be under extreme pressure.
2
@Mateus Marini absolutely not
2
Problem is some people have little choice. If your guy thinks the grass is greener on the other side it is nigh on impossible to stop him from leaving no matter how long you have been together or how good things are in reality.
2
Brighton But the thing is they do not behave towards their own kind in the same mean spirited way.
2
charlie cheeseface If you live in Cambridge, that would be the case, other parts of the country are cheaper.
2
charlie cheeseface I borrowed a flexible rod, but it did not work, the limescale was solid had to have a plumber with specialist equipment to fix it.
2
charlie cheeseface Some areas have something called care and repair, I tried them, I can not remember whether they operated or not in our area or if it was the usual case of you own your own house so no go.
2
charlie cheeseface I tried them the answer was no. I live in a small town and I don't know anyone else that both do not work and own their own home, but not be loaded. There is a loan scheme where we live, you can borrow money with no interest, but my income was deemed to be too low for this. My son has damaged a piece of kit that he needs for school, I am hoping to be able to get a grant to repair it. Some people in our community have had flood grants, but we did not flood.
2
charlie cheeseface Problems with that: I receive income support and that benefit would stop and my son has autism it means that our home is his refuge, if he does not have that refuge he becomes overstimulated easily and can go into meltdown. I have to go to quite long lengths to keep him happy and calm. He is very sensitive to light and sound, if he senses any disturbance he can be up at 4am. He is very dependent upon routines and if those routines are disturbed it is then very difficult to get him back on track. Because of this it is not worthwhile taking respite care, on the few occasions where I have been ill he has had to go to my parents overnight, my parents response is that they do not know how I have managed to cope. Our situation is not conducive to having lodgers, I have not even had a boyfriend over the last 14years, it is just too much hassle. My ex did not get that with our son's condition he had to be consistent. He messed us about repeatedly with contact and our son started to scream the place down so much when he kept showing up that the neighbours called the police and CAFCASS put an end to child contact because they felt that he was unable to understand his son's condition and act in his best interests. Also at the moment because my son is at home because of corona I am unable to go to the food bank because it is open when he is doing lessons at home. Last time I was able to go was in the half term holiday and before that it was Easter.
2
@Greg Hallanan It depends on where you live in the UK London/Cambridge sky high rent, so if you are a hospital porter you're going to struggle. Preston dirt cheap, but high unemployment.
2
I am terribly sorry to hear this. So many people fail to wear masks, that as an asthmatic, I have now bought a FFP3 respirator and for all of those that say it is selfish because it does not filter exhaled air, my answer is that those that do not wear masks do not care about my health, at least by not catching the damned virus, I can not be passing it on to other people.
2
@garycooper9207 I completely agree. It is now so bad that there are not just food banks, but hygiene banks too. Because of course where there is a lack of money for food then inevitably hygiene has been restricted beforehand. I agree that benefits should not be so generous that people can afford luxuries such as drinking and smoking, but it has gone way beyond that now. Even the working are poor. My son was 16 in February and they were originally going to be paying DLA until he was 17, but then Christmas time they moved the goal posts and his DLA has come to an end and I have to apply for PIP. I am bricking it and hoping that we get past first time and don't have to appeal. We are lucky here because the food bank is run by the local church and so they don't have the usual 'must be referred by a social worker, can only receive 3 food packages per year' type proviso that many food banks have. They realise that people are poor and that there are enough stigma with being so poor as to need a food bank without putting barriers in people's way. Thankfully, they are still paying me income support and have not tipped me on to universal credit. The job centre that administers our rural market town is 23 miles away and a real pain to get to, so at least I have been spared that.
2
Cambridge University has a legal duty of care to its employees and students. This means that if an employee is behaving in a questionable manner then it should be investigated, because quite frequently, as you point out people who get away behaving badly towards one person, will go on to behave badly towards others. As for the police, forget any idea that they will want to be involved unless it is on the very severe end of the scale of bad behaviour. We can all agree that male or female, when our kids enter tertiary education, they will meet lecturers; supervisors; demonstrators who may well try it on with our kids. That is fine, what is not fine is when someone is unwilling and gets groped or worse or they are bullied or disadvantaged for rejecting someone's advances.
2
Nightingale hospitals should have been used to treat all COVID patients and should have been staffed with military medics and auxillary jobs like cooking meals, cleaning floors making beds, laundry, washing people, feeding people and toileting people should have been done by the army. Hotels and university accommodation should have been requisitionned for the purposes of housing personnel or for the forced isolation of people coming in from other countries.
2
The relevant question is: where are the fathers of her children and why are they not paying for their kids?
2
If one person was infected, then they would further isolate that individual and the remaining people would be subject to further testing using a very sensitive technique called PCR to establish whether anyone had contracted it. Given that there are people in the video wearing surgical masks, that would reduce the risk of transmission.
2
This is already happening in Bristol where large numbers of people live in vans on the streets.
1
Gave themselves a massive pay rise, have a nice tax payer subsidised dining room, but can not give the nurses that we all relied on so much during all of this, who put their lives on the line a pay rise. And don't want to know about the poor. Pigs at the trough comes to mind
1
@davelong9055 Please be so kind as not to stereotype all claimants. You do not know their backstories and most of us are only an accident or serious illness away from the merciless state.
1
It is crazy to expect disabled people to vacate specially adapted properties. Where children have disabilities they frequently need attention during the night which is going to disturb any sibling sharing a room.
1
I believe that she is a lecturer at Cambridge University and a writer too.
1
It was not rape, apparently, the guy was sending the woman up to 50 texts a day, many containing sexual innuendo. If she has texted him back and has proof that she has made clear that his attentions were unwanted, then the University should act in an appropriate manner to resolve the matter.
1
@samrowbotham8914 Unfortunately, the university is simply not supportive towards victims and are probably more likely to view them as bringing the university into disrepute by taking such a matter to the police then they are the perpetrator. To be fair it can be very difficult to prosecute such cases where victim and perpetrator are known to one another before the attack, in normal cases, but where you have the possibility of wrecking your education too, it becomes unlikely that such victims would press ahead with such a case.
1
@samrowbotham8914 OK I see what you are saying, but when you are talking about students that are the best of the best and have worked extremely hard to get there or their parents have paid exorbitant public school fees, you can see the imperative not to rock the boat with the university.
1
@samrowbotham8914 I don't, the problem is the way the institute behaves towards the victim. As seen here, even where the victim has absolute proof, it is the victim that suffered and could not go to certain lectures. Can you imagine how bad it would have got if she had involved the police, I can not imagine that they would be at all sympathetic to any time lost to a trial, can you?
1
@samrowbotham8914 Completely agree, but where it is an institute, there are ways of applying implicit pressure. So for instance, a tutor might say that the victim should carefully consider the negative effects of stress and time off attending court upon final grades or assessments and they are likely to point out that such claims where it is one person's word against another's are difficult to prove and they will question whether in that light that such a course of action is worth sacrificing grades for. To gain a conviction for perverting the course of justice, then the police would have to have very good evidence that there was a direct threat against the victim, rather than simply saying that the stress of a court case together with time off could negatively affect grades.
1
@samrowbotham8914 I assume that you must be in the USA as sedition as a criminal charge has not existed here since 2009.
1
Exactly and even where there is support it leaves the dads with so much that they are able to go out and do the same all over again.
1
Should be referred to IPCC.
1
@bennathan7353 But the level of aftercare they give is cursory, this is part of the problem. Ordinarily, rehab costs in excess of £30K, a figure that most people could not afford. I applaud the attempts to get anyone off drugs, but the problem is that a lot of these folks do not want to come off drugs and this leads to a high rate of recidivism, which somewhat defeats the object of the exercise. The other part of the story is the fact that it is televised and all and sundry know who this person is. If you owned a business and were looking to employ people would you want to employ an ex drug addict who could easily relapse and cost your company money? Where as anyone whose recovery is not televised is not obliged to reveal their status as an ex addict and can easily fob off any questions about career breaks with a bit of pony.
1
@WoodysOpinion101 People are either tempted because they want to be in the limelight or because they genuinely want to resolve their problems but do not have the financial means to pay for: legal redress; counselling; DNA testing; rehab etc and think that this will provide a resolution. The problem is that the show has not poured enough funds into clearing up the aftermath.
1
@jenisbetzke6228 If that is true that is horrible, but maybe it counts as reportage of troubles in another land where the laws and regimen are VERY different to our own.
1
This is it, all they do is force people to apply for jobs that they are not even suitable for. Thankfully I am on legacy benefits and I am hoping that they don't end for me. But I have heard some appalling stories. I live in a very rural area, with limited transport links, just signing on is a £5 odd round trip on a bus. People who have elderly parents in the area can not just up and leave them.
1
Exactly what I am thinking. My son is disabled and my husband did a bunk when he was 10 months old. But when I did work I had savings.
1
The guy's redundancy money would have been capped at around 20 weeks pay, which would equate to around 7 months pay because it is unlikely that he breached the tax threshold. How long that lasted in reality depends upon what he did with his money. He may well have not had savings to rely on, in which case he probably would have found it difficult to stretch it beyond a year and then he will have found himself on the draconian universal credit. Sad to say at his age, he probably has very little chance of a job.
1
This is exactly why these people are in quarantine for 14 days. They will likely be tested for the virus using a technique called polymerase chain reaction, this amplifies the number of any virus present to detectable levels, it is a technique that is used in forensics to look at low copy number traces of DNA. So they are going to be pretty sure that these people are OK by the time that they go back into the general population.
1
You can not create jobs just by having qualifications. People have to have money to spend on goods and services. What gets me about these stories are the people that claim they were earning £50,000 and £80,000 per year and yet they do not appear to have the savings to see them through 9 months.
1
LOL, that is so funny.
1
@dragonfly6908 But that is people on Universal Credit, how about people on legacy benefits?
1
There is something even worse than simply dying at home that the poor could do. If they are poor and dependent on very low wages, they may well continue to work despite the symptoms of the condition until they are simply too ill to work, during which time they will have infected lots more people. When folk are poor, even staying at home can be a risk. Many people who are poor live in overcrowded places, they live in shared houses, it only takes one infected person in a shared house and before you know it they are all infected and taking it into their respective workplaces for other people to catch.
1
@NotFoxUK Standard of proof there at that time was 'beyond reasonable doubt', same as a criminal law court, it is due to be changed to 'on the balance of probability'
1
@NotFoxUK "innocent until proven guilty" for crimes that could result in a custodial sentence, with other courts than there is a lower standard of evidence of "on the balance of probability", this is for cases that would not result in a criminal record, such as wrongful dismissal or disability discrimination and the like. Cambridge University applies the higher standard of evidence and this is why they upheld the complaint made by this lady, because her harasser had sent her up to 50 texts a day containing sexual innuendo, most harassers at Cambridge are a little more savvy then this and make sure there is not an evidence trail and therefore get away with their behaviour.
1
@NotFoxUK Not very frequently, unless there is a long history of this sort of thing the courts generally give a suspended sentence or community service and community service in Cambridge seems to consist of blokes standing around on Midsummer Common in high vis wear with the words Community reparation on the back, all just smoking, drinking tea and shooting the breeze, they never appear to be doing much work.
1
@NotFoxUK This is why a charge of rape or sexual assault has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt in the UK and this is part of the reason why there have been guys who have raped multiple women and got away with it time and time again, because any previous is not made known to the judge. All the guy says is 'she liked it rough'. The situation of the university dealing with it should have been that they effectively separated both parties without detrimenting the victim. The guys guilt was established to the standards of criminal law, he should have been punished by either having to take a sabbatical and return after the victim had completed her degree or provision should have been made for him to study elsewhere.
1
charlie cheeseface The blockage problem was fixed by a bloke with what looks like a spring that shoots out of a drill. It scoured the inside of the pipe of limescale.
1
charlie cheeseface Tried that one, no chance, the only thing available is a disabled facilities grant and that does not cover repairs. My son has autism and Deficits in: Attention; Motor co-ordination and Perception with Pragmatic Disorder. His condition means that he is very clumsy, he has broken or damaged God only knows how much stuff.
1
@ThereIsOnlyOneStuart It is extremely scary, as of course I already know what it is like to need emergency treatment through not being able to breath and obviously I assume that if I was to contract it that I would not survive. In many ways though, I am lucky that I live in a rural town, I am able to go out in my garden and in the first wave we were not so badly affected here. Problem is that this has left people complacent. I am guessing that if you know people that have either been very bad or passed away as a result then everyone around them is more careful afterwards, here you do see many people in the street and shops that do not wear masks, People have such a poor understanding of epidemics. They nearly always hit cities and ports first and spread outwards from there. Places like London, which were badly hit during the first wave are now likely to have a much greater population of people that are immune to it and so it is likely to transmit more poorly there than in communities that do not have many immune individuals. People forget that side of the story, so people that you talk to will say it is fine here, it is all in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, it is only now that it is starting to spread here and even so people are, 'once the jab is here, we will be fine'. Even my own parents don't really understand that they need 2 doses of that jab for a decent level of protection and that you need a decent percentage of the population to be innoculated to offer protection, because there will be members of the population for which the vaccine is not 100% effective. Today I read that 72% of the BAME population are unlikely to have the jab. So I suspect that a reservoir of the disease will continue to do the rounds in areas with big BAME populations. After innoculations in the rest of the population, then new mutations will emerge from areas of low vaccine uptake and eventually there will be a mutation that will beat the vaccine and we could be back to square one again. How long that would take to happen is anyone's guess.
1
Coronavirus is spread by droplet infection, the same as 'flu and the common cold. Common route for infection is through the eyes, so swimming goggles are not as daft as they sound.
1
@matthewlipton2998 Not much use getting your eyes covered without mouth and nose, so I take your point.
1
Yes, and the style of wig denotes seniority. They are made of horsehair and are periodically sent away for washing and restyling. Family court judges, no longer tend to wear them unless it is a big case in case a child is called as a witness.
1
@pippipster6767 I thought that those acting as a 'normal barrister' wear a short style wig, whereas Queen's Counsel wear the full bottomed style.
1
Sadly, the courts do not seem to enforce maintenance orders once they are 12 months old. Disgusting really
1
Not really the sort of things that you learn at Cambridge. You learn who is who and how to network and improve your career prospects that way. In Cambridge, there are a lot of small group and one to one supervisions and lots of opportunities to harass people in these circumstances. It is simply the structure of learning there that has existed for centuries and is part of what makes it one of the World's leading universities.
1
I am a single parent, not by choice, but because my husband di a bunk when our son was only 10 months old. If he had not done a bunk we would not be living in our current impoverished situation.
1
@stuartireland5974 Thank you for saying that
1
@TBOTSS Yeah always wear sunscreen, prevents trolls from getting freckles!
1
@davelong9055 They have no little choice over what they eat. So they eat what is cheap and filling, not necessarily what is nutritious. Chips and dripping on toast being my favourites, not that my waistline likes them too much
1
Sadly, there are many predators out there, that make a woman's life a misery. It starts with you passing this course, geting a decent grade, getting grant funding, keeping your job, not being bullied is dependent on you playing ball and being my sexual plaything and ends with the institute doing as little as it can get away with to resolve the problem in exchange for a non disclosure agreement or a bunch of threats. All to protect their reputation.
1
@lindipearson9633 Well, it is set to get worse with the coronavirus lay offs. I agree that immigrants should not be entitled to dole money and ideally no one under 25 should be on the dole, but employment is now going to be genuinely scarce and one of the problems if you don't pay a reasonable level of benefits is that it starts to cost other areas such as health and judiciary and those costs are greater than simply paying benefits in the first place. I am in a difficult position myself because I am 50 and have no job and have not worked for the last 15 years because I have been looking after my disabled son. My husband left when he was a baby and the cost of care massively outweighs what I could make in wages. The problem is that the state is probably going to expect me to find work at some stage, but employers are not too interested in people with complex backgrounds like this. Besides which the nature of my son's disabilities will most probably mean that he needs enhanced support to get him into work. He has autism, but is brilliant with computers, but his problems mean that he would be unable to drive or cope with public transport, this means for him to work I need to find a job that would fit around his working hours within a few miles of his workplace.
1
I know, I simply do not believe that people who are earning £50,000 and £80,000 per year do not save any of that for a rainy day.
1
@globalmuffin2 I think when you are earning that sort of money though, you can still manage a reasonable life and have savings. Don't eat out so often, have supermarket curries instead of takeaways, TK Maxx, just one modest holiday per year, keep an eye on what you need second hand from CEX and decent second hand shops. If I could have savings on earnings of £17,400 per year 15 years ago, so can someone on £50,000 today.
1
@globalmuffin2 I am a single parent, my son is disabled and my husband walked out when he was 10 months old, so I am dependent upon state benefits, which are a little more generous because of my son's disabilities. So far we have always been able to manage. How long that will be so, we don't know. But when I did work, I was careful with my money, and I have little choice now. Back 16 years ago, my work mate used to spend £90 per month getting her hair coloured, I only pay £20 even now to cover my greys, it was all being done on credit cards and then people used to moan that they were unable to afford their own home. Most people earning less than median earnings would struggle to save much, but £50,000 is a reasonable wage.
1
Even where people are married, marriages break up
1
Unions need to have subscription rates for zero hours jobs like these, so that bad working practices can be stamped out.
1
Many of these people rent and a standard clause in many rental agreements is that you will not run a business from the premises. I own my own home and having paid for the survey and started to buy it I discovered that there was a restrictive covenant which means I can not run a business from my home. With renters it can be restrictive covenants or the landlord's insurance that can be the problem.
1
@misschief4283 People do not go to the police because it would destroy their own career, no one employs a trouble maker.
1
@misschief4283 When you say you have studied at Oxford or Cambridge, your first real employer will want to take a reference from your tutor, it is just the way it is. When anyone does not want to spell someone out as a trouble maker they simply give a neutral reference of Miss X studied natural science tripos at this institute between 1988 and 1991 and achieved a 2:1. The lack of substance raises questions in the employer's minds and any follow up may result in the candidate being spelt out far more explicitly as trouble. Add in the fact that many students go on to be employed in research within the university in which they have studied or go into academia at another university, it is transparent to see why they do not take matters to the police.
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@misschief4283 Quite clearly, you have never studied or worked for Cambridge University. You absolutely do not stab them in the back by bringing the university into disrepute. Going to the police would be deemed just that. University has proctors that uphold the university's laws as determined by the university equivalent of parliament, the Senate House. The standard of proof is the criminal standard of proof ie 'beyond reasonable doubt' rather than the civil law standard of proof 'on the balance of probability' Both students and employees are permitted representation through recognised unions. As for trained, they have no shortage of law experts themselves. As I am sure you are aware many incidents of bad behaviour happen in private and as such that can make them very difficult to prove, either as an in-house case or within the law courts. In this incident, the university upheld the complaint as there were texts sent from the perpetrator's 'phone to the complanent's 'phone. Despite upholding the complaint the university failed to impliment a suitable solution that would keep the two apart without detrimenting the victim. I am not excusing the university, but the vast majority of complaints that it deals with would not meet the evidential threshold that is set by the Crown Prosecution Service and in those sorts of cases the most that the police can do is issue a caution, most people are aware that you can refuse to accept a caution and so if the person does this, they walk off without any criminal record whatsoever. Unfortunately, that is the way that it is, the law sadly, does not always punish those that do wrong and to be fair, if you ever are involved in a criminal trial, it is a very draining and long process.
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@misschief4283 Actually, I did work for them and I am not sure how you think I have contradicted myself. A lot of what goes on there is not ideal. Your question asks, why are they handling these issues internally. The reality is that it is about reputation and damage limitation , as far as they are concerned. It is not great for them if you students or staff involve the police and matters come out in open court, because whilst the victim of sexual assaults and rapes would be anonymous, the perpetrator would be revealed as a member of the university. In this case as it is harassment, she probably would not be anonymous. You perhaps think that there is a conflict when I said beyond reasonable doubt and then said about the evidential standards of the CPS. Well sorry, but the CPS can be a law unto themselves too. They are at least partially funded by the taxpayer, so they are obliged to only take forward cases that they feel confident in getting a conviction in. It constantly remains a mystery as to why they drop many of the cases. Sometimes I wonder if it is simple overload. The police are frequently frustrated as to the number of cases that get dropped. The reality in this case is that whilst the perpetrators texts and attention were unwelcome, if they simply consisted of nothing more than sexual innuendo, then the CPS may take the view that this is too low down the criminal scale to bother. I have personally had experience of this as my ex tried to run me over and nothing came of the police investigations, he did not get so much as a caution. He went on to attack wife number 2 and he was charged with the offence and initially bailed, when new evidence came to light and he was remanded in custody. Wife number 2 then rescinded her statement and the CPS did not carry it forward, despite the fact that they are supposed to do that in cases of domestic violence. I can only assume that she was frightened into taking this course of action.
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