A list of Dispatches episodes shows the full set of editions of the
Channel 4 investigative documentary series Dispatches.
There have been thirty seven seasons of Dispatches.[1] Main reporters include
Antony Barnett
Episodes
1988
22 January Danger: Men at Work, about
sexual harassment of women at work; the film '
Business as Usual' about a clothing store in Liverpool, with
Glenda Jackson, later a Labour MP;
Alice Mahon, Labour MP; 25 year old Karen Wileman, an electronics assembly worker in Hampshire, was sacked when she told her employer, 44-year-old Raymond Atthill, that she was taking him to court for sexual harassment, over four years, which she won at an industrial tribunal in Southampton on 4 March 1987;[2][3] her company offered her £5 in compensation; Vivian Gay and the
Porcelli v Strathclyde Regional Council by Jean Porcelli, a laboratory technician from
Mount Florida, at
Bellahouston Academy in Glasgow, winning on 31 January 1986, on appeal, after first losing the tribunal in April 1984;[4] Dorothy Fall received £3,000 in compensation on 21 November 1986,[5] from taking Lothian Community Relations Council, in Edinburgh, to court;
Denise Kingsmill, Baroness Kingsmill; sexual harassment was difficult to fund to take to a tribunal; the Dutch government had formed a national advice centre entitled 'Hands Off'; sexual harassment of nurses had occurred at a former hospital at
Brandesburton; Clare Ruhemann of the
Labour Research Department; Sarah Howard of the
Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs. Reported by Sarah Temple-Smith, produced by Philip Clarke, directed by Dennis Jarvis, made by Diverse Productions
28 June A State of Decay; Belfast had the highest ownership per capita of
BMW cars in the UK; Paddy McGrory;
Dennis Faul of Dungannon, headteacher of
St Patrick's Academy, Dungannon; British soldiers were first brought in to protect Catholic families; since 1968, 2750 people had been killed, with around 1500 killed in the years of 1969-71 alone; Ronald Funston was ambushed by the IRA at around 8am in March 1984, in
Pettigo,
County Fermanagh; Susan Murphy; the
peace lines of Belfast; X-ray photographs at the
Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast; the local building industry had protection rackets of extortion payments, around 15% per contract; Chief Superintendent Eric Anderson of the RUC;
David McKittrick; Sylvia Deacon, whose husband in the
UDF was killed; the
Ballygawley bus bombing in August 1988; Joyce McCarten, whose 17 year old son was shot by a Protestant group in 1987;
Ken Maginnis;
Craigavon and a fan belt factory; German factory director
Thomas Niedermayer was kidnapped by the IRA in 1973, and killed; his killing was arranged by his former factory employee, trade unionist
Brian Keenan (Irish republican); since the
Stormont government was suspended in 1972, local councils had executive functions no greater than the operation of leisure centres or bin collection, such as district councils in England; Unionist
Reg Empey, the
Lord Mayor of Belfast;
Alasdair McDonnell;
North Down was Northern Ireland's equivalent of wealthy
Surrey, in England. Narrated by
Jeremy Bugler, directed by Andrew Forrester, made by Fulmar Television
12 October The Day of the Technopath, about computer data protection in the UK; former computer programmer
Emma Nicholson, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne;
Mel Croucher; computers were now running industry; Britain had more personal computers per person than any European country;
Jan Hruska (computer security) and Ken Wong, and computer viruses; Mark Drew of
IBM North Harbour, north of Portsmouth;
Tony Cleaver, chief executive of IBM UK; the
Datacrime virus; a
penetration test; Trevor Nicholas, chief information officer of Barclays Bank; Peter Sommer;
Stephen Gold; Judith Vincent of the CBI; Det Supt Don Randall of the
City of London Police Fraud Squad; City of London foreign exchange transactions were £200bn per day; the
Computer Misuse Act 1990 would soon pass through parliament, but not enough British police knew anything significant about computer security. Reported by Tony Cook, produced by John Goddard, directed by Dominic Cameron, made in association with Gamma TV
1990
14 March Gerry, about infiltration of the IRA; the IRA informer came from
Strabane in
County Tyrone, on the border with the Republic; in his teens, he met an IRA operative in the Vaccaro restaurant in Strabane, and was asked to watch the
Gough Barracks; a few months later, the IRA raided Gough Barracks, on a Saturday, dressed as soldiers, restraining the sentry, and taking hundreds of rifles; in October on a Sunday at 3.45am, there was an attack on an army depot in Omagh, where fifteen IRA terrorists climbed over the wall, with knives, and captured the sentry, who was able to sound the alarm, two of the IRA were shot and wounded; both raids were planned on the informer's information, whilst he was at school; he now realised what he had caused, so told his family (Catholic) who passed it on to the police, who interviewed him; he was watched by security services when leaving the Pallidrome club at the weekend in Strabane, where he was asked to physically point out his IRA contacts; on 1 January 1957 twelve IRA terrorists drove up through
Brookeborough, driving past an army barracks, where the terrorists fired at a policeman, and threw grenades, but were ambushed when a machine gun opened up directly at them, and two terrorists were killed, and the others mostly badly injured; the raid was investigated by James Baker of The Fermanagh Herald, who presumed that the army knew when the raid would take place; the IRA ended the border campaign on army barracks, in July 1962; in August 1969 the Troubles began, and the original IRA, was superseded when the militant Provisional Army Council was formed in January 1970; the informer had joined the Army in England in 1957, but by 1970 had left, and now worked for a building firm, when he was approached by the security services, where he was paid £2000 for five days work, and worked for the security services for the next year, giving information of the structure of the terrorist groups, and the hierarchy. On 21 July 1972, 22 terrorist bombs killed nine civilians; in 1972, there were 468 deaths in the Troubles; the security services now believed that terrorist attacks were planned for England, the informer had not heard anything; he was told to go to the Goldhawk pub in London, where he met Eddie O'Neill; the informer later left working for the security services, but two terrorists,
Hugh Doherty and
Edward Butler, had been watched in Glasgow, and the security services needed to know their whereabouts in London, so the informer proposed looking for them in Cricklewood, the Half Moon and the Goldhawk; the informer found Butler in a London pub, who was watched, later strafing
Scott's restaurant, and taking part in the
Balcombe Street siege, where the two were caught with
Hugh Duggan and
Joe O'Connell. Produced by Peter Williams and Malcolm Brinkworth, directed by Bruce Macdonald, made by Touch Productions and TVS Television
11 April Terms for Peace, about possibilities on negotiations in Northern Ireland; four soldiers were killed in County Down on Monday 9 April 1990; Margaret McCann, former wife of
Dan McCann; Sinn Fein councillor
Fra McCann believed that the only way of removing the British from Northern Ireland was armed force; Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness was looking for discussion; the British Army was stepping up surveillance, with frequent roadside checks;
Eamonn Mallie;
David Hearst of The Guardian; civilian casualties of IRA attacks were increasing, killing 35 civilians in the previous two years;
Edward Daly (bishop); the IRA would break into people's houses, in the evening, and take the family car, and physically intimidate the family, being near enough taken hostage; Sinn Fein annual conference in Dublin. Reported by
Mary Holland, produced by David Cox and Stewart Lansley, directed by Andy Mayer, made by Juniper
3 October Listen to the Children; in October 1987 children were removed from the Broxtowe estate in Nottingham, in connection with child sexual abuse, amongst bizarre sinister practices such as ritualistic slaughter; Judith Dawson, Joan Taylor, Chris Johnston, and Lesley Hughes of
Nottinghamshire County Council social services; nine people were jailed on 19 January 1989;[6] the report was published in January 1990, which possibly underestimated what had taken place, claiming that children were brainwashed; Prof
John Newson of the University of Nottingham;
Mary Midgley. Reported by
Bea Campbell, directed by Claire Walmsley
1991
12 June The Movement, about a group in the Conservative Party in the early 1990s; the Braganza Wine Bar in Soho, and the
National Association of Conservative Graduates, and their monthly meeting; two speakers are from the
Bruges Group -
Bill Cash and
Alan Sked from the LSE; Marc Glendening believed that the Conservative party should split, and pro-European Conservative MPs could join the Lib Dems; Nick Kent, who worked for
Michael Mates;
Julian Critchley; the Movement had been formed at the
University of St Andrews in Scotland in the early 1970s; Mark McGregor of Pulse; David Hoyle, who worked through David Carlisle; Russell Walters of the
Adam Smith Institute;
Douglas Smith; Le Casino restaurant in Lower
Sloane Street in Chelsea, near the 151 nightclub in Kings Road, owned by Toby Baxendale; the Committee for a free Britain was funded by David Hart, a property developer; a youthful John Bercow at the Federation of Conservative Students meeting at Loughborough University in 1984, attended by The Movement, which included some known as the 'Dundee Monsters'; the meeting featured on the front pages of 'The Sun' and 'Daily Mirror'; the FCS was closed in 1986; Michael Forsyth was made chairman of the Scottish Conservatives by Mrs Thatcher; Derek Bateman; Kathy Short;
Grover Norquist; Andrew Barnett of the Scottish Conservative students;
Biggar, South Lanarkshire, was where the pro-European Scottish Conservatives met, and at
Duddingston;
John Guthrie (politician); Michael Forsyth is sacked by Mrs Thatcher;
Teddy Taylor warns that 80% of laws are originated in Europe; a youthful
Murdo Fraser, chairman of the Young Conservatives; Adrian Goulbourn of the Scottish Young Conservatives; Lloyd Beat, who won 31% of the vote in 1992 in
Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale. Produced by David Kemp, directed by Adrian Milne, made by Hyndland Television
1992
16 December Dying to Diet, could dieting lead to an early death, notably increased heart disease; Antonia Giovanazzi; Prof David Garner of
Michigan State University said that the slimming industry was a 'revolving door' with 95% of customers not ultimately losing much weight; Astrid Longhurst, the
Slimcea Girl in 1979, who lost 6.5 stones in six months, but she soon regained around half of that; Prof
Janet Polivy of the
University of Toronto; Bernice Weston founded the
Weight Watchers franchise, with her husband Richard, in the UK in 1967; her brother was a cardiologist; aged 44 her husband died of a heart attack; cardiologist Prof
Desmond Julian of the
British Heart Foundation; psychologist
Kelly D. Brownell; Malaysian Dr
I-Min Lee, of the
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who looked at 12,000 people over 12 years; dieting can encourage the dieter to eat more fat than usual; Nicola Edmans; Prof
Michael Oliver (cardiologist) of the
Wynn Institute for Metabolic Research, and suitable levels of cholesterol; dieting affected
brain chemistry, and therefore mood; Liz Martin;
Rosemary Conley and her BBC slimming series; she proposed that metabolic rate could be increased by eating six small meals a day; Prof John Durnin of the
University of Glasgow said that your metabolic rate was determined largely by your genes; the BHF wrote to British GPs, questioning Rosemary Conley's diet advice on metabolism; Rosemary Conley was presented by the programme makers as a '
quack'; the American
Nutrisystem diet; Oregon politician
Ron Wyden found that many diet industry representatives, in the US, lacked any type of nutrition education, and were merely sales representatives; Weight Watchers UK had around 3,000 clubs for around 3 million people in the UK, turning over £20m, run by Linda Huett; British GPs would recommend people to Weight Watchers UK; medical psychologist Andrew Hill; the Weight Watchers food products was a quarter of Heinz turnover; Sue Dibb, of
The Food Commission; the
Committee of Medical Aspects of Food Policy provided most of the advice on food policy to the
Department of Health; Labour MP
Mo Mowlam; the Conservative government 1992 White Paper The Health of the Nation - a strategy for health in England. Reported by
Aric Sigman, produced by Kimi Zabihyan, directed by Carolyn Gilbey, made by Observer Films
16 February Getting away with rape, a one-hour special; David Martin Maloney was convicted of multiple rapes, in July 1993, often by taking the victim in his car;[7]Keith Matthewman; in December 1993, 33 year old Nicholas Edwards was acquitted of rape for the fifth time, being accused of raping a 26 year old nurse in July 1992; he also had multiple rape convictions going back to 1982[8] but would be sentenced to life in September 2000; Det Supt Bill Grahamslaw of the Metropolitan Police; forensic psychologist Prof
David Canter of the
University of Surrey; Prof
Sue Lees of the
University of North London; Anne Davies of the Metropolitan Police;
Nemone Lethbridge; in 1993 over 4,500 women reported rape in England and Wales, leading to 482 convictions. Reported by
Jenny Cuffe, produced by Jacqui Webster, directed by Lynn Ferguson, made by First Frame
23 November Spy in the Camp, about whether MI5 significantly influenced the 1984 Miners strike;
Stella Rimington gives the BBC
Richard Dimbleby Lecture in June 1994;
Seumas Milne, Labour Correspondent of The Guardian; Harry Newton, a personal friend of Arthur Scargill, named as an MI5 agent by
Cathy Massiter, herself once in
MI5; Harry Newton worked for F Branch, the anti-subversion division of MI5; F Branch investigated CND,
Liberty and the British Communist Party; Robin Robinson of the
Joint Intelligence Committee; Stella Rimington operated F Branch, and the F2 unit, which investigated subversive trade unions, and planted agents;
Michael Bettaney, the Cambridge- graduate MI5 agent who was convicted for passing sensitive information to the Soviets; Bettaney gave information that the NUM was being tracked by MI5; Operation Tinkerbell was MI5's communication surveillance of the
NUM;
GCHQ, in Cheltenham, conducted communication surveillance of the NUM in the strike; NUM offices had surveillance of their telephones;
Arthur Scargill; Labour MP
Mick Clapham, who worked for the NUM during the strike; Alain Simon, French general secretary from 1980-85 of the
Trade Unions International of Miners, who informed the NUM of an agent;
Peter Heathfield general secretary from 1984 to 1992 of the NUM, who thought that
Roger Windsor, chief executive of the NUM from 1983 to July 1989, could have been an MI5 agent; Scottish Labour MP
Jimmy Hood, who was an NUM leader during the 1984 strike;
Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring, chairman from 1982-89 of the
CEGB, had made calculations that the NUM would plausibly win their strike around October 1984. Reported by Callum Macrae, produced by Kimi Zabihyan, directed by Michael Davidson, made by Observer Films and Ray Fitzwalter Associates
1995
11 October Making the Grades, it investigated the
Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA). The episode received complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Commission, from two examining boards, which were upheld
1996
23 January Soccer's Foul Play, an hour long episode about the
United Kingdom football sexual abuse scandal; the
under-14 squad of Charlton Athletic F.C.; Richard Smith; Ian Ackley of Derbyshire, and his father Frank; former Southampton F.C. trainee Dean Radford; Barry Bennell claimed to be a coach from Manchester City F.C.; Bennell had worked at Stoke City and Crewe Alexandra; Bennell invited 11 year old boys into his home, to be
sexually abused over two to three years;
Ken Barnes and Chris Muir of Manchester City; Bennell was at Manchester City for seven years then moved to Crewe Alexandra to work for
Dario Gradi; the chairman of Crewe
Norman Rowlinson had suspicions of Bennell, and phoned Manchester City to ask if Bennell had been 'mucking about with kids'; Dario Gradi claims to have not heard anything disturbing; Bennell was sacked by Crewe in 1986; Brenda Dawson of
Jacksonville, Florida who was hugely suspicious of Bennell when boys from Staffordshire stayed at her home; Bennell is arrested in Florida in 1994; Terry Thomas of Florida Police; Bennell is sent to prison for four years; Libby Senterfit, who jailed Bennell; Keith Ketley abused boys in Ipswich, under a different name, but had a previous conviction for 18 months when in Southend; Alan Girot of Suffolk Football Association;
Les Reed of Charlton Athletic; Bob Higgins was at
Southampton F.C., where teenage boys would stay at his house; Bob Higgins went to Southampton Court, where he was found not guilty on one charge, and afterwards the other charges were dropped; Kit Carson brought Bob Higgins to
Peterborough United F.C. where teenage boys are abused, when boys stayed at his house;
Charles Hughes of
The Football Association. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Bernard Clark, directed by Ed Braman
27 March The Lost Children; the
Bristol Royal Infirmary had 500,000 patients a year; 18 month Joshua Loveday was treated in December 1994, to be operated on 12 January 1995;
Stephen Bolsin, a consultant anaesthetist had warned about too many fatalities, over five years from 1988; he had arrived from the
Royal Brompton Hospital; he spoke to Prof
Cedric Prys Roberts, of the University of Bristol, and President from 1994-97 of the
Royal College of Anaesthetists; for two types of operation, the
atrioventricular septal defect (AV canal) and
Tetralogy of Fallot, the hospital unit had high mortality rate; for the
arterial switch operation from 1988-89, seven children had died; Sian Collyer, born 18 January 1992 had the operation, and did not survive; Belinda Collyer; Michaela and Steve Willis from Devon; Hugh Ross, chief executive of the United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust; heart surgeon Sir
Terence English, President from 1990-92 of the
Royal College of Surgeons of England; medical director James Wisheart had the worst surgical results; Sir Terence English alerted the Department of Health, who did nothing for three years; after another death in June 1994, action was taken by the anaesthetist, alongside colleagues Su Underwood, Ian Davies, Steve Pryn, Sally Masey, and Peter Baskett; Bronwen Stewart and her son Ian, brain-damaged by an operation, making him blind and deaf; Prof Gianni Angelini was appointed Professor of Cardiac Surgery at the University of Bristol in 1994, who immediately made changes; Robert Loveday and Mandy Evans. Reported by James Garrett, produced by Tom Archer, directed by Alex Sutherland, made by
HTV
13 February Crash Landing, about the safety of the RAF, investigated by David Lomax; Flt Lt Simon Burgess, from
Grimsby,[9] ejected from his
Hawk aircraft on 13 February 1996, but it was too low for the parachute to open, when aged 28;[10] on 23 January 1991 a weapon had exploded on his aircraft, when aged 23 and a Flying Officer, in the Gulf War in Tornado ZA403, with navigator 40-year-old
Loughborough University-educated Sqn Ldr Bob Ankerson of
17 Sqn;[11][12][13][14][15] Ann and Terry Burgess, his parents; the aircraft had had the ailerons disconnected for servicing; the night shift at the base was short of engineering technician staff - it needed 23 but had 13, with 2 electricians instead of 3, 3 weapon technicians instead of 6, and 1 airframe fitter instead of 6; Archie Liggatt, an RAF instructor from 1980 to 1996, now an airliner instructor with
Air 2000; not enough documentation was being provided for servicing for aircraft; the
1993 Llyn Padarn helicopter crash on 12 August 1993 in a
Westland Wessex, where three teenagers were killed, which was captured on film; the mother of one of the crash victims; the wrong type of grease had been put in the clutch of the tail rotor; Geoffrey Oakden, father of crash victim Mark Oakden;
Nicholas Soames on 8 June 1996; Air Vice-Marshal Boz Robinson, station commander from 1978 until March 1980;[16] on 23 January 1996, 28-year-old Flt Lt Greg Noble took off in an RAF
JaguarXX733 of
41 Squadron in Norfolk, after limited flight hours on the aircraft, never engaged the afterburner, collided with a barrier at the end of the runway, and crashed in a fireball;[17][18][19] Paul Maynard, RAF pilot from 1980 to 1996, and Ed Smith, RAF pilot from 1976 to 1995; James Archer, RAF
Tornado pilot from 1987 to 1996 with
43 Squadron at
RAF Leuchars in eastern Scotland, where due to a chronic lack of spare parts for their aircraft, at best there were six serviceable aircraft and at best there would be one serviceable aircraft; Dispatches visited the airfield and did not see any military aircraft flying, apart from the
East of Scotland Universities Air Squadron; a current Tornado pilot at RAF Leuchars said that the squadron struggled to get four aircraft into the air, at one time;
Air Chief Marshal Sir
Bill Wratten wrote a memo indicating that spares holding and available staff were the biggest peacetime risks faced by the RAF; a current technician at
RAF St Athan said that, due to a lack of spares, items as small as a
split pin, if not in RAF stock, were replaced by an older split pin that was crudely straightened again; aircraft were
cannibalised, to keep other aircraft in service, with spare parts, which has long been a widely practised procedure in maintenance; but whilst that has been commonly heavily practised for smaller components, the RAF were now doing this with whole engines; a former RAF electrical technician said that
Kapton-insulated wiring was a danger, as in servicing, the insulation can be easily chafed, giving risk to a
short circuit; seven miles of Kapton wiring was on the Tornado, and a Tornado crashed on 2 December 1986, east of
Wortham, Suffolk next to the A143, due to an electrical fault, watched by children at a local primary school, also seeing the pilots safely eject;[20][21] the USAF removed Kapton-insulated wiring from 1988, and Canada had also removed it from new aircraft; at
RAF Laarbruch, Harrier aircraft had fires, from Kapton-insulated wiring, so the wiring was totally replaced; 22 RAF Tornado aircraft had crashed since the 1991 war. Produced by Terry Kelleher, directed by Julia Stroud, made by Platinum Film & TV Production
13 March Buying Time, about NHS timescales of treatment; Vyv Chatterley, a Bristol hotel owner, the Naseby House Hotel, was diagnosed with breast cancer, which had spread to her liver; she paid privately for the treatment
Docetaxel, licensed by the NHS in 1995; oncologist Elisabeth Whipp of the
Bristol Royal Infirmary; Pamela Charlwood of the Avon Health Authority; oncologist Prof
Karol Sikora; Prof
Chris Ham of the
University of Birmingham; Susan Edginton of Taunton; Mac Kammerling, of Somerset Health Authority, who would pay for the same treatment; Hugh Ross, chief executive of the United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust; Gillian Casemore of
Tetbury in Gloucestershire, who had the same treatment paid for by her local health authority; 36 year old Lynette Jackson of Wiltshire, who had
Paclitaxel, one of many
taxane treatments, for ovarian cancer, which Wiltshire would not pay for; Kevin Mochrie, editor of the Swindon Evening Advertiser, who raised money for Lynette; oncologist Marcus Galea of
Princess Margaret Hospital, Swindon; Alan Lear, who had
MND, with his neurologist, and the treatment
riluzole, made by
Rhône-Poulenc Rorer, which Avon Health Authority would not pay for, but adequate outcomes were not in full agreement; Lincolnshire viewed the treatment as worthwhile 'as liposuction'; Joan Jaffray had MND; Nick Payne; Kathy Groom, whose husband John had MND; the Avonex treatment,
Interferon beta-1a, made by
Biogen; Brian Wainwright and the treatment Aricept,
Donepezil; Prof Alistair Burns of
Withington Community Hospital; Harry Cayton, later the chairman of the
National Information Governance Board for Health and Social Care. Reported by Sarah Spiller (the partner of
Alex Thomson, of Channel 4 News), produced by Julian Ware and Louise Osmond, directed by Mark Rubens, made by ITN
8 May The Blair Project, about the possible direction of Tony Blair; a party in December 1996 hosted by the Sedgefield Labour group; on 26 February 1996 Tony Blair held a day symposium at
King's College London, to discuss his project;
Paul Thompson, editor of Renewal who claimed that Blair wanted a 'stakeholding economy' and a 'one nation society', and that how
Margaret Thatcher had often operated had influenced Tony Blair;
Will Hutton, editor of The Observer; Tony Blair's paternal (but not genetic) grandparents came from
Govan in
Glasgow; Tony Blair's father was fostered to James Blair, and wife Mary, who worked in the nearby shipyards; Tony Blair's real paternal grandparents were an actor and actress (with real surname of Parsons); Tony Blair's father, a university Law lecturer, moved from Communist politics to the Conservative party, and had wanted to be prime minister; the work of
John Macmurray greatly influenced Tony Blair; Sir
Samuel Brittan; Mary Picken, of Scottish Labour; Tony Blair's former prep school in Durham, and Canon John Grove, his former headteacher; Tony Blair's family moved from Scotland to Australia in 1954, then to
High Shincliffe in Durham, where Tony Blair lived from 1958 to 1975; at age 11, his father had a stroke, and when 22, his mother died of cancer; he stood in the
1982 Beaconsfield by-election, gaining many contacts; he met French president
Jacques Chirac, as opposition leader, conversing in French; his constituency surgery in Ferryhill, with his agent
John Burton;
Joel Barnett had also applied for the constituency in 1983, with left-wing
Les Huckfield, of the
TGWU, the earlier favoured candidate; in 1983,
Pat Phoenix, of Coronation Street, was, technically, the step-mother of his wife; the left-wing Scottish Labour MP
John McAllion, who left Labour in 2003. Reported by Callum Macrae, produced by Terry Kelleher, directed by David Carr-Brown, made by Psychology News
1998
29 January Too Much Too Young, about whether children were ready to read at the age of four; in Hungary, children started school at age six; in Belgium, children started at age six; the Hungarian children did much better in the Mathematics SAT test, for ages seven; Graham Last, education inspector in Barking; Sally Ward, speech and language therapist; elementary social skills, such as collaboration, and getting to know others confidently, was taught before any primary education began; educational psychologist Ann Locke; Belgian school inspector Catherine Vrielinck; Prof
József Nagy of Attila Jozsef University (
University of Szeged) in Hungary, found that most children were ready to write at age six, with some at five, and 15% at age seven; did four year olds, in the UK, have the dexterity to start writing;
circle time; Prof
Sig Prais; the bottom 30%, and mostly boys, did less well in the UK, than in other countries; Greg Brooks of
NFER; the difference was referred to as the
Matthew effect. Also broadcast on
Teachers TV. Reported by Callum Macrae, directed by David Mills
28 January Kicking the Habit, about
excessive consumption of salt and
salt and cardiovascular disease; Prof Graham McGregor of St George's Hospital; a tin of soup had 3g of salt, a slice of bread had 0.5g of salt, with
Marmite this adds another 0.5g of salt; a
Big Mac and Fries had 2.5g of salt;
Lizzie Vann, an organic food producer; Nigel Dickie;[23] Dr Michael Baxendine of the
Food and Drink Federation; cardiologist Prof
John Douglas Swales of the
University of Leicester, who researched hypertension (high blood pressure) and disputed a link to salt consumption; Wendy Wrigley of the
Co-op. Reported by Christopher Hird, produced by Tracey Gardiner, directed by Emma Handley, made by Fulcrum TV
4 February Ireland, about the
Omagh bombing; Dorothy Robinson, who believed that the British Army in Northern Ireland was a 'legitimate target', who raised money at a dinner in the US for the IRA at Rory Dolan's Restaurant Bar on Saturday 1 February 1999, giving $20,000 for the Continuity IRA; Irish Police regularly searched properties in County Louth; former terrorists Sean O'Callaghan, who served eight years, and Brendan McClenaghan, who served 18 years, and now lived in London; terrorist Paddy Fox, sentenced to 12 years,was physically beaten on Sunday 2 February 1999 in Monaghan by the IRA for renouncing the peace agreement; the Continuity IRA also renounced the agreement, setting off a bomb in Market Hill in August 1997, supported by
Republican Sinn Féin in the Republic, led by
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, a former head of the former IRA, who broke away from Sinn Fein in 1986; Prof
Paul Rogers, who researched terrorism; Micky Donnelly, of Republican Sinn Fein, was also attacked by the IRA; the Real IRA, largely from County Louth, called a ceasefire, after being threatened by the IRA, who then kidnapped one of the
32 County Sovereignty Movement; Rory Dougan; County Monaghan had known sympathies for the Republican movement, holding meetings; unionist
Ken Maginnis. Reported by Joe Layburn, produced by Steve Haywood, directed by Alison Turner, made by Just Television
25 February Surveyors; a
mortgage survey is mostly there to assess the financial worth of a property, not the structural integrity; Britain had 80,000 qualified chartered surveyors, governed by the
RICS; it introduced the RICS HomeBuyer Report in 1981; Geoff Holden of the RICS; test surveying house inspections were covertly filmed; a typical house inspection was thought to last three to four hours, but some of the test inspections took the covertly-filmed surveyors one hour. Reported by Callum Macrae, produced by Steve Haywood, directed by Tim Pritchard, made by Just Television
18 March The Crime Game,[24] about British police vastly incorrectly reporting burglary; Peter Coles, a former detective superintendent with
Nottinghamshire Police at
Hucknall CID; [25] Richard Wells, former Chief Constable from 1990-98 of
South Yorkshire Police; Trish Prescott from Nottingham; crimes were downgraded by police, known as 'cuffing'; petty criminals were taken out of prison to confess to crimes that they had not known, known to police as 'to write off', again to lessen recorded crime; Nottinghamshire Police tried this strategy; Gary Mason, editor of Police Review;
Bedfordshire Police investigated Nottinghamshire Police;
Colin Bailey, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police from 1995-2000, who admitted that in 1996 Bedfordshire Police had found much false reporting;[26] Nottinghamshire claimed to have solved 98.3% of rapes, which Bedfordshire Police could not not believe; Peter Coles alleged that 50% of Nottinghamshire's burglaries were fictitious, or wrongly recorded; David McCrone, assistant Chief Constable of
Greater Manchester Police; in 1999 South Yorkshire Police,
Dorset Police,
Hertfordshire Constabulary,
Staffordshire Police and
Gloucestershire Constabulary 'wrote off' two-thirds of its burglaries by fictitious confessions;
Leicestershire Police,
Sussex Police,
Lincolnshire Police and
South Wales Police followed close. Reported by Nick Davies. produced by Steve Boulton, directed by Mike Turnbull
25 March CCTV, about the veracity of
CCTV evidence in court; Prof Graham Davies of the
University of Leicester; there were a million CCTV cameras in the UK; Bob Lack of the
London Borough of Newham, which had a facial recognition that would warn the CCTV operator when a face was found on its database; the system had reduced unsolved crime by 35% and street theft by 70%; Richard Thomas of ACPO; Cambridge-educated Prof
Vicki Bruce of the Psychology department of the
University of Stirling, and research on facial recognition and CCTV; Alan Church, who was convicted of raiding a building society of £1,000 in central
Glasgow on 28 January 1993, on CCTV evidence; he was sent to prison for eight years; the CCTV footage was shown on
STVScotland Today on 10 February 1993; his family saw the CCTV and told Alan to go to the police, where three people picked him out in an identity parade; Alf Linney of UCL; a McDonalds is raided on 10 October 1996 at 2pm in
Ashton-under-Lyne, taking £9,500; it went to court on 16 June 1997; Margaret Bowden, mother of Brian Bowden, who was convicted of the offence on CCTV; sculptor
Richard Neave of the University of Manchester; Geoffrey Oxlee. Reported by Joe Layburn, produced by Rob Edwards, directed by Ed Braman, made by Lomond Productions
15 April, Child Contact; 150,000 children a year are part of their parents divorcing, with a third of these divorces due to the male partner being violent, with many of the women deciding not to see their former partner again, but family courts regularly allow the violent former partner to have access to the children; Lorraine Radford of the
Roehampton Institute;[27] Sir
Nicholas Wall;
court welfare officers visit families, to decide what happens; on Sunday 6 February 1994, 35 year old GP, formerly of North Wingfield Medical Centre,[28][29] Sukhdev Sandhu, on a contact visit, strangled his four year old daughter and three year old son, with a pyjama cord, then jumped from a tower block (Kelvin Flats) to his death; the couple had met at
Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, and had been married for four years from October 1988 living at Tibshelf Road in
Holmewood in north Derbyshire; the 30 year old (nursing sister) mother had been through the courts to stop her former partner seeing the children.[30] Narrated by Jenny Cuffe, directed by Leon Ferguson, made by First Frame
22 April Car Challenge, about choices in public transport; the Gallacher family have two cars; Jane, aged 43, drives the Metro to work at an infants school, and goes to keep fit; Mark drives a Ford Mondeo to take James, aged 11, to his grandmother; Mark, aged 46, works as headteacher of Birchills CE Primary School in Walsall; he was branch secretary of
MENSA;[31] Henry, aged 13, walks to the school bus; the car is needed for piano lessons for Henry, rugby matches, and going out for meals; the reporter travels to the family house from
Euston railway station by cycle; including all costs, having the two cars costs the family £108 per week; Channel 4 gave the family £108 and physically took away the two cars; the Labour government wanted to tax work parking spaces, perhaps £20 per week; a third of British children are driven to school; Jane's drive to the infant school would take 25 mins, but now she has to catch a bus into Walsall, and another to the outskirts, taking around an hour; Mark needed one bus, and finds the journey faster than the car, and comfortable; his wife much prefers the comfort of her car; the boys visit their grandparents every week; the bus did not turn up for a game of football for Mark, so he is forced to spend £17.50 on a taxi; after 6pm, the bus service was often negligible; the two boys had to play rugby in
Tamworth, Staffordshire and
Kingswinford, and it was impossible to get them both there;[32] housing estates tend to be designed for people with a car, less so for public transport; councillor Richard Worrall, of the
WM Passenger Transport Authority; the Labour government wanted road tolling, so that councils could charge drivers to enter city centres, and maybe tolling on motorways; the Wallis family - Stephen and his wife Sara, a teacher's assistant, with Charlotte aged 16 and Christopher aged 13; Stephen drives his Mercedes company car, along the
M42, to work, where he was head of the accounts department at
Zytek Automotive in
Bassetts Pole; one in ten British motorists had a company car; the Gallacher family go to the supermarket via the taxi, costing £5.50; on Saturday the family catch the bus to the city centre, then catch the train to Birmingham, then another train to the
Severn Valley heritage line at
Kidderminster; the journey has taken two and a half hours, which would take 40 minutes by car; in the 1950s most families kept travelling to a minimum. Reported by Christopher Hird, produced by Tracey Gardiner, directed by Donna Clark, made by Fulcrum TV
13 May Car Trouble: Insurance, about deviant British car insurers; 49 year old Jim Halford, a bus driver in Gravesend, injured by a drinker driver in 1998, banned for 21 months; Zurich Insurance declined to be liable; vehicle insurance companies had a series of tactics - giving a low initial offer, an eleventh hour offer, or a series of medical examinations; Tony Baker of the
Association of British Insurers; Nick Burgum, of Kent, had a shattered knee; General Accident, part of CGU, accepted liability, but disputed the injuries; General Accident meanwhile had been covertly filming his house, but paid the claim in full; Dame
Hazel Genn of UCL; the A259 near
Hooe, East Sussex, which had a horrific crash in June 1994; eyewitness Peter Gates; Barry Clark of Sussex Police; Alex, of East Sussex, was severely burned, needing amputations of her legs, and part of her left arm; her 64 year old husband John, a vicar, was killed;[33][34] a driver, off-duty policeman 26 year old Michael Dean of Swanley, was sent to prison for four years in November 1995; his vehicle was overtaking many cars at around 90mph on a 60mph single carriageway; at court, he claimed that all the 14 witnesses were making things up; Alex won £1.5m in damages in April 1998;
Walter Merricks, the UK Insurance Ombudsman. Reported by Joe Layburn, produced by Ray FitzWalter, directed by David Barrie
27 May Car Trouble: Breakdown; the British insurance industry believed that car recovery companies were charging twice as much as required; eight garages in Kent are contacted for a vehicle tow-away quote; the insurance industry believed that a tow-away should cost no more than £105, but on average it was £210; Mora Campbell was hit by a vehicle on the M6 in Cheshire in April 1998, driving home from Manchester; she called the AA, who said that it could take longer than an hour, which was not sufficient for the police, who wanted her vehicle removed in twenty minutes; she had to pay £152 up front; the headquarters of Lincolnshire Police in
Nettleham, who had a list of twenty seven garages, who operated on a rota; Inspector Greville Burgess; Inspector John Bennett of ACPO; Bill Tupman;
Gwent Police had thirty five garages on their rota list, but changed this to just one recovery company; Liz Phillips of Wales, who had her car damaged by that same recovery company, which her insurance company would not pay for; 25 year old Tony Killor was killed on his motorbike on 4 September 1995; the destroyed bike was recovered by the company; the bike was sold by the company. Reported by Joe Layburn, produced by Steve Haywood, directed by Mark Lewis, made by Just Television (the production team of Rough Justice)
11 November A matter of life or death, about train safety in the UK, notably evacuation in a fire: a
Mk 2 carriage is rested on one side; survivor Chris Bartlett; professor of fire safety engineering, Australian
Ed Galea of the
University of Greenwich; Steve Bence of ATOC; Graham Stepan and fire safety; the
Hope Valley Line near Manchester; signal Y304 on the Trans Pennine Express route; a
GNER service on the
East Coast Main Line; Jose Fernandez of
Long Island Rail Road; Lee Williams of Amtrak; survivor David Taylor. Presented by Christopher Hird, directed by Peter Minns, made by Fulcrum Productions
November Runaways, a survey found that 100,000 children would run away in one year; Graeme Brown of
The Children's Society; Rob Hutchinson of the Association of Directors of Social Services; 13 year old Aliyah Ismail was found dead on 18 October 1998, in a derelict house at 78 Agar Grove in Camden, after a methadone overdose, having run away sixty one times in her last year; the Children's Society had two refuges. Reported by Joe Layburn, directed by Lynn Ferguson, made by First Frame
2 December Tooth Trouble about unwanted effects of possibly unneeded dentistry for teenagers; every a half million British children had
orthodontic treatment, largely to
straighten teeth; dentist
John Mew, who lived in
Sussex; Ben Creed and his twin brother;[35] South African dentist Francois Rossouw of Essex; dentist Michael Fennel; Nigel Harradine of the
British Orthodontic Society, and the
University of Bristol Dental Hospital; Californian dentist William Hang. Reported by
Callum Macrae. produced by David Alford, directed by Howard Bradburn, made by 3BM Television
2000
17 February Drug Wars, about customs officers and drug; in 1999 24 tonnes of cocaine, 4 tonnes of heroin, and 400 tonnes of cannabis were thought to have entered the UK illegally; a drugs conference was held in February 2000; Operation Teak took place in May 1997 off the coast of
Funchal, where 4 tonnes of cannabis was found, worth £14m;
Brian Charrington, living in Spain, had supplied the drugs; Derek Todd, formerly of the
Metropolitan Police; Operation Funded took place in 1998, culminating with cannabis being seized at a service station by
customs officers on the
M25 motorway; Operation Stealer took place, by
Customs and Excise National Investigation Service from 1993 to 1994, where Brian Doran from Glasgow, known as 'The Professor', was watched at
The Lanesborough in London, and culminating at
Pevensey Bay in East Sussex on 10 January 1995, when the catamaran 'Frugal' arrived with £34m of cocaine from Colombia; convictions collapsed because the legal procedures of surveillance was not followed.[36] Reported by David Jessel, produced by Steve Haywood and Sam Bagnall, directed by Peter Minns, made by Just Television
24 February Tax Wars, about
Value-added tax in the United Kingdom;
Justin Urquhart Stewart of
Barclays Stockbrokers; John and Kathy Oldfield were taken to a VAT tribunal; most food does not have VAT added;
HM Custom and Excise was headquartered at
New King's Beam House; VAT consultant Ray Chappell believed that VAT inspectors were overzealous; Marion Lonsdale; Labour MP
Jim Cousins of the
Treasury Select Committee, who investigated methods of how VAT was collected, and recommended that Customs and Excise was amalgamated with the Inland Revenue; Rev Gerald Pegg of St Nicholas in
Icklesham in
East Sussex. The programme was made in conjunction with the
Federation of Small Businesses. Reported by David Jessel, produced by Steve Haywood and Sam Bagnall, made by Just Television
2 March Gayhurst Crescent goes surfing;[37]Sunderland had the lowest level of internet access in England; homes on a street are given £1,500 of computing equipment; Paul Fenech liked football; Steve Pinder found it slow; Ned Potts; Julie McQuillian had
Crohn's disease, and found much information; Joyce Charlton, aged 66, found information on a former friend who was killed a week after D-Day, with the
Durham Light Infantry, aged 18; Ken Clasper liked information on World War II; Tom Hawick found much information on
tinnitus; Linda Fenech wanted a vacuum cleaner, and ordered one;
Iceland was the only supermarket that delivered in their area; John Old; Leno Fenech said that the internet added to family life; Mick Thwaites finds an old friend; Hayley Charlton looked at the Employment Service website, which required much improvement. Reported by Christopher Hird, produced by Dominic Yeatman, directed by Don Coutts, made by Fulcrum TV
16 March Still getting away with rape, a one-hour special; in 1999 around 7,000 women in England and Wales reported rape; for every hundred rapes, six men are convicted; Prof Jennifer Temkin of the
University of Sussex; Dame
Anne Rafferty; Helen Grindrod; forensic psychiatrist Gillian Mezey; Sandy Hebblethwaite of the
CPS;
Ann Mallalieu, Baroness Mallalieu and how prosecution counsel are often inexperienced, as the prosecution in these cases is not well paid; the US had greater witness preparation; for acquaintance rape in the US, conviction rates are 60-70%, in the UK it is around 30%; Detective Chief Inspector Sue Hill of the Metropolitan Police, and how few cases of rape were probably made up; the British law system was naïve - rapists are not characters widely known for any honesty, whatsoever. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Lynn Ferguson, directed by Howard Bradburn, made by First Frame
12 October Flying under the influence, about
intoxicated British airline pilots, an hour long episode; former air stewardess Caroline Woolistone, went undercover by claiming to be a Channel 4 producer to investigate, and set up, BA pilots; at Marseille airport, having flown with BA from
Gatwick Airport; on the flight she was allowed to film in the cockpit, in Spain, a popular stay with BA aircrew, where BA had five scheduled flights a day on weekdays; Capt Chris Salmon, of BA, seen in Manchester in August 2000; he flew to Spain on BA 2488 on 25 July 2000 (which would also be a catastrophic day for British aviation) where he is filmed drinking; First Officer James Sharples downed a bottle of wine and three beers, as has Capt Chris Salmon, who has another beer and goes clubbing in Spain, drinking another three beers; no pilots are breathalysed, and there were no alcohol laws for pilots either; Dr Dougal Watson of Australia and aviation medicine, who saw the video evidence and thought that pilot Chris Salmon would fall asleep in the flight, which is exactly what occurred on flight BA 2485 to Gatwick on 26 July 2000; Prof Chris Cook of the
University of Kent and alcohol misuse in aviation medicine; BA did not allow drinking eight hours before a flight, and no more than 5 units; flying to Germany from Gatwick, with Capt Mike Philips and First Officer Jason Owen, again filming them in the cockpit; seven hours before takeoff the First Officer has consumed twelve units, as had the Captain; they stay at the Holiday Inn, going to bed at 4am; they leave for the airport at 10am; BA 2715 leaves at 11am on 2 July 2000, where Caroline films in the cockpit as they land at Gatwick; three US airline pilots, aged around 30, conduct an experiment at the
Purdue University in Indiana, on a
Boeing 727 simulator; Dr Leon Wise found alcohol had effects for 14 hours; the experiment found that flying itself wasn't impaired, but incorrect choices were made; over Britain in daylight hours, there are approximately 250 passenger aircraft in the air; Gary Purden, former BA aircrew; First Officer Mike Edwards in Spain at 5.30pm; he leaves the restaurant having drunk 12 units; the flight leaves at 6am; he has consumed 19 units by 11pm;
Malév Hungarian Airlines, the state flyer of Hungary, had 25 aircraft; Malév had the same rules as BA, but Hungary routinely breathalysed aircrew and ground staff; Dr Gabor Hardicsay of the
Civil Aviation Authority (Hungary); the US randomly tested pilots; mainline and underground British train drivers were checked;
London Underground had breathalysed around 4,000 drivers in one year; David Hyde, Director of Safety at BA; BA pilot 44-year-old Nigel King was sacked in February 1998 after being found drunk in his hotel two hours before his flight at 7am; on flight BA 631 from Athens to Heathrow, he was found to be smelling strongly of alcohol, and unsteady on his feet, subsequently collapsing in a hotel lobby;[38] he had gone out for the evening at 6pm on 8 January 1998, returning to his hotel room at 5am;[39] a Virgin Express pilot resigned on Sunday August 29, 1999 after passengers thought that he was drunk on flight TV 857 from
Madrid–Barajas Airport to Brussels, with the flight being abandoned; the passengers had overheard the Virgin Express staff mentioning that they had had trouble trying to wake the pilot in his hotel, as he was so drunk; passengers had sensed that the pilot was drunk, as he walked past them, being many minutes late, at 8.30am on Saturday 28 August, with a 'strange appearance'; Paul Skellon, a representative of
Virgin Express helpfully explained that the pilot had had food poisoning, and that 'medication' that he had taken had made him unwell.;[40][41] two easyJet pilots were disciplined in 2000; BA would suspend the eleven aircrew featured in the documentary, including Capt Richard Agar and First Officer Guy Palling, who flew a Boeing 737 from Marseilles to Gatwick on March 25 on BA 2361, and Capt Anthony Corr and First Officers Gareth Edwards and Richard Firth; two of the featured BA pilots would be dismissed in December 2000 for gross misconduct, and another resigned. BA employed around 3,500 flight crew and around 14,000 cabin crew, and carried 33 million people a year.[42] Narrated by
Haydn Gwynne, produced by Nick Aarons, directed by Howard Bradbury, made by United Productions.
13 April The Nuclear Files, about nuclear industry safety in the UK; the
Sellafield Visitors Centre; a train leaving
Dungeness nuclear power station; nuclear engineer
John Large; the train took 350 miles to reach Sellafield;
Mildred Fox and possible radioactivity reaching the coast of
County Wicklow;
Tom Burke (environmentalist); former Sellafield worker Duncan Ball; Welsh Labour MP
Llew Smith, and whether any plutonium was exported to the US; Prof
Keith Barnham of Imperial College; the melodramatic ponderous tone of the documentary was reminiscent of the 1985 Edge of Darkness. Reported by
Joe Layburn, produced by Geoff Atkinson. directed by Mark Lewis, made by Vera Productions.
2001
26 June Beneath the Veil, about Afghanistan; reporter
Saira Shah reported undercover. Made by
Hardcash Productions. Won the 2002 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
2003
April Al-Qaeda UK, about
Al-Qaeda connections to the UK, notably in
Leicester; Algerian terrorist
Kamel Daoudi left France, for the UK, on 20 September 2002 at around 8pm, being watched the whole way by security services, he travelled under a false name, on a counterfeit French passport by
Eurostar; from London, he travelled to Leicester, a place he knew well, where he had two Algerian friends
Baghdad Meziane and
Brahim Benmerzouga of 52 Prospect Hill, who had travelled to the UK illegally with a false passport, two weeks previous to the programme, these two terorists became the first people in the UK to be convicted of having known connections to Al Qaeda; Benmerzouga was followed around Leicester by the security services, where he mostly sent money, internationally, from outlets similar to Western Union; Baghdad Meziane lived on nearby Rolleston Street; five days after Kamel Daoudi arrived in Leicester, Leicestershire Police gained entry into both houses, where a false passport operation was found in Meziane's address, selling each for £750; Nick Webber was asked by Leicestershire Police to examine computers in the Islamic terrorist address, where he found software for credit card fraud, and the data from the magnetic strips of 180 credit cards; the data of the credit cards had been skimmed from garages and restaurants across the UK; the fake credit cards were sent to a group of Algerians in Spain, spending around £250,000, who were caught in Spain, the day after the Leicester arrests; the two Algerians went to court in Leicester, but the jury were not told that the group in Spain were part of an Algerian terrorist group; terrorist propaganda videos were found by Leicestershire Police in the car of Benmerzouga; Detective Superintendent Martin Morrisey of Leicestershire Police;
Alexis Debat said that MI5 had been heavily investigating Leicester from around 1998; part of the Al Qaeda group in Leicester was
Djamel Beghal, who moved to Leicester in 1997, where his wife still lives; neighbour Nisha Lakha; the group vanished in July 2000, when Beghal moved to Afghanistan to plan a suicide attack; Beghal was arrested travelling back to Europe on 28 July 2001 at
Dubai International Airport, where he admitted being told to attack the US embassy in France, the so-called
2001 bomb plot in Europe, with a suicide truck bomb, to be driven by
Nizar Trabelsi; Baghdad Meziane was originally working in
Düsseldorf, under a different name; Jordanian
Abu Qatada al-Filistini conducted 'study sessions' at the Fourth Feathers youth community centre on Rossmore Road in Marylebone; it became a European conversion centre for Al Qaeda; terrorist
Zacarias Moussaoui attended this centre; Abu Qatada was arrested by British police in October 2002; Algerians comprised the largest Al Qaeda group in Europe; the
Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or GSPC;
Mohamed Sifaoui infiltrated the GSPC, who became trusted by Algerian
Karim Bourti, who was convicted for three years for the
1998 World Cup terror plot; convicted terrorist Karim Bourti travels on the Eurostar with Mohamed Sifaoui, to go to Finsbury Park, and encounters no difficulty at security, meeting terrorist
Omar Saiki, who was convicted for four years in France, for the 1998 bomb plot, and stripped of French citizenship. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Eamonn Matthews, directed by
Rachel Rendall, made by Mentorn Midlands
21 July Beslan, about the
Beslan school siege in September 2004. Won the 2006 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
8 August Why Bomb London?; on 3 January 1996
Lunar House writes a letter to Osama Bin Laden to inform him that he is excluded from the UK; in the mid-1990s, Osama Bin Laden had training camps in Sudan, but Britain had allowed religious radicals from countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to enter in the 1990s; these included
Khalid al-Fawwaz in Willesden Green of the
Advice and Reformation Committee (ARC),
Abu Doha in Dollis Hill,
Omar Bakri, from Syria, in Tottenham, and
Abu Qatada, from Jordan, in Acton;
Alexis Debat of the French government;
Sa'ad Al-Faqih of the
Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia and how Britain was tolerant to these radical individuals, maybe too tolerant;
Pauline Neville-Jones, Baroness Neville-Jones, at the Foreign Office from 1994-96, and how Middle Eastern governments had made complaints about these individuals; the
1995 France bombings;
Jean-Louis Bruguière, and how the radicals involved moved to Britain, as it was a pleasant country in which to live; the
1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya had planning in Britain; Dominique Thomas wrote the book 'Londonistan'; the jihadist Abu Doha arrives in Britain in 1999, to recruit followers, to take part in the
2000 millennium attack plots at Los Angeles Airport, where the attacker was caught with a car full of explosives, receiving 22 years in July 2005; German
Dirk Laabs and the attempted
Strasbourg Cathedral bombing plot in December 2000; three of the attackers had been trained at London mosques; the attackers had had their mobile phones intercepted; the radical jihadist Abu Qatada arrived in 1993, and recruited in London; British intelligence agencies knew that he was dangerous, but had lived in London for eight years (he was featured on Dispatches in 2003); the main participants of the September 2001 attack telephoned Abu Qatada weeks before, and watched his extremist videos;
Abu Izzadeen (Trevor Brooks) of
Al Ghurabaa; Muhammad Sulaiman, of
Luton Central Mosque in
Bury Park;
Finsbury Park Mosque was home of the Supporters of Shariah;
Sajjad H. Rizvi of the University of Exeter; Iftekhar Bokhari of the Hussainia Mosque in Burnley, and the
2001 Oldham riots;
Oussama Kassir and terrorist
Haroon Rashid Aswat, deported from Zambia and arrested in Britain; Neil Doyle;
Andrew White (priest); Mohammed Naseem of
Birmingham Central Mosque;
Shaista Gohir, Baroness Gohir, of Muslim Voice UK, at the Living Islam festival; Sir
Iqbal Sacranie of the
Muslim Council of Britain. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Ed Braman, directed by Tom Porter, made by Mentorn
30 September Mad About Animals, about peculiar animal rights methods of intimidation; vegan Jonny Ablewhite (born 27 January 1970), who grew up in
Aldridge studying English and History at the
University of Leicester, and Kerry Whitburn, of Edgbaston; both had gone to prison; through intimidation, a research lab in Cambridge was stopped;
Mel Broughton; Staffordshire Police followed the unhinged protesters' vehicles; Gail Record shouts 'does your wife have Botox?' to unknown company employees; the protesters don't enjoy being answered back; construction workers call the protesters 'parasites'; Jon Ablewhite was a supply teacher in Wolverhampton;
Keith Mann from Rochdale, with girlfriend Paula, was sentenced to 14 years in 1994;
Devon and Cornwall Police arrest the film-maker, on suspicion of causing criminal damage, being held by police for 18 hours; two weeks later, Jon Ablewhite is arrested, where he remained in prison at the time of broadcast in September 2005; he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to blackmail; the judge, Michael Pert, described the three defendants as 'cold-blooded', and gave each a twelve-year custodial sentence at
Nottingham Crown Court in September 2005, and would be inside for six years. Kerry Whitburn, of
Yardley Wood, had been convicted of arson, when aged 18 in 1987.[43] Reported by David Modell, produced by Chris Bryer
27 April Undercover Copper, about
Leicestershire Police; police officer Nina Hobson receives an award from deputy chief constable David Lindley on 24 January 2006 at the Leicestershire headquarters in
Enderby; Sir
Matt Baggott, the chief constable, gives her the award, but 35 year old Nina was really an undercover reporter for Dispatches, having left the police five years before, being in the police from the age of 18, and joined the police again in April 2005, working as an undercover reporter for four months; Prof
Liz Kelly of
London Metropolitan University; less than 4% of reported rapes in Leicestershire were solved, and twelve other police forces had lower rates; Ian Kelcey of the
Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association; Prof Marian FitzGerald of the University of Kent and
noble cause corruption; Nina learns how police can operate subterfuge for reporting numbers of offences; the CPS now decided which offences would go to court, to reduce time for magistrates, but this now required much written preparation by the police; Sir Matt Baggott sincerely apologises. Narrated by
Joe Duttine, produced by Alexander Gardiner, directed by
Agnieszka Piotrowska and Andrew Mullins, made by Granada London.
2007
15 January Undercover Mosque, about mosques in the UK. Made by Hardcash Productions
18 June Drinking Yourself to Death, about
alcoholic liver disease in Britain; seven million people in Britain drink too much; hospital admissions for alcohol-induced liver disease had doubled in Britain from ten years, and the average age had moved from the age of 60 to 40; Jan Freeman of Derby City Hospital, who had a death from the condition of a patient aged 22;
Finsbury Square in London; the former
Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham; a large glass of wine contains 3.5 units; the
Royal Free Hospital; modest amounts of regular wine consumption will lead to liver disease, as the liver does not get the required time to recuperate;
Centenary Square; supermarkets 50% of Britain's wine, and 20% of British beer; the annual British beer trade show in April 2007, at the Olympia exhibition hall; the
Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers; the annual
London International Wine & Spirits Fair at
ExCeL London in May 2007; British wine consumption had increased by 50% in ten years; Jeremy Beadles of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association; Prof
Ian Gilmore of the
Royal College of Physicians; the headquarters of the
Brewers of Europe trade group was situated near to the European Parliament; the
British Beer and Pub Association; Alison Rogers of
The British Liver Trust; Lib Dem MP
Nick Harvey and Conservative MP
Julie Kirkbride both drank regularly. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Eamonn Matthews, directed by Charlie Hawes
15 September What's in your Wine?, about the British wine industry, and practices; in 2007, Britain drank 1.5bn bottles of wine; there are no EU laws for wine producers to list contents; five main wine producers sell the most in Britain - Hardys, Blossom Hill, Jacob's Creek, Gallo and Stowells, in total selling £1bn;
Malcolm Gluck, who wrote The Great Wine Swindle; the French
Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) label in France; organic wine producer
Nicolas Joly; Olivier Andrault of
UFC-Que Choisir;
Randall Grahm of
Bonny Doon Vineyard who had a dispute with the
Wine and Spirit Trade Association; John Corbet-Milward of the WSTA; the French produce over 300m bottles of champagne a year;
Moët & Chandon,
Veuve Clicquot and
Champagne Lanson sell the most in Britain, in total £80m, but were not the best by content; in a taste test, consumers prefer the cheaper sparkling wine; champagne producer
Anselme Selosse; Françoise Peretti of the
CIVC; soil scientist
Claude Bourguignon; organic champagne producer David Léclapart;
Emiliano Fittipaldi of Italy and his investigation in April 2008, in L'Espresso, of Brunellopoli. Reported by Jane Moore, produced by Mark Fielder, directed by Tom Anstiss, made by Quickfire
6 October The Hidden World of Lap Dancing, about regulation of lap dancing clubs in Britain; the Secrets club in Holborn in central London, on a Tuesday; the Wildcats club in
Blackpool on a Wednesday; the Halos club in
Newquay on a Friday;
Lynda Waltho, Labour MP for Stourbridge; Tracy Earnshaw of Newquay;
Dan Rogerson, Lib Dem MP for North Cornwall; Sandrine Leveque of the Object Campaign; Wade in the Water music; the Licensing Act meant that licences were now issued by less-prudish local authorities, not magistrates; Simon Hickson of
St Katharine Docks, where a Secrets club opened; Stourbridge had two clubs; the Heaven club was opposite a 6th form college; in 2008 the Barbarella club opened next to the Labour MP's office; the Capricorn Club near
Goodge Street tube station; six clubs opened in Blackpool; Prof Marion Roberts, who worked with the
local government select committee. Narrated by
Mark Bonnar, produced by Steve Boulton
23 August When Cousins Marry; half of British Pakistanis marry their first cousin; the
Mucolipidosis type IV disorder, causing blindness; the reporter's grandparents were first cousins, with five of their daughters dying in childhood, and three of her uncles being born deaf; in Bradford 75% of Pakistanis married their first cousin; 4-10% of children from these marriages had genetic disorders, with a third of children with these disorders dying before the age of five; in Birmingham, 50% of Pakistanis married their first cousin, a form of
consanguinity; a third of children in Britain with genetic disorders were Pakistani, often with kidney or liver disorders; the
propionic acidemia hereditary condition, which damages the liver; geneticist Prof
Marcus Pembrey; British Pakistanis were three times more likely to have children with a learning disability; it cost around £250,000 a year, each, to provide for such children; not many Labour MPs would discuss the subject, but
Ann Cryer did. Reported by Tazeen Ahmad, produced by Allen Jewhurst, directed by Anshu Rastogi, made by Chameleon Television
17 April Syria: Across the Lines. Reported by
Olly Lambert. Won the 2014 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
23 May The Hunt for Britain's Sex Gangs, about the
Telford child sexual exploitation scandal; by September 2010, Telford police had been operating Operation Chalice for 12 months; 14 year old girls were raped, to see 'who was the best', then taken to Birmingham, to be plied with bottles of
Bacardi; the girls were violently raped; a teenage witness recalls, whilst herself being raped by two males, a nearby locked room with other girls inside, screaming, whilst being raped by multiple males; the offenders were all Pakistani males; the parents of the girls reported them missing to the police over seventy times, but only when a girl made the first complaint 18 months later, did the police start to investigate anything; in early December 2009, with not enough evidence, DCI Edwards arrests nine male suspects in
Wellington, Shropshire; nine girls give evidence, and identify the suspects; 22 year old Ahdel Ali, known as 'Eddie', and 26 year old Mubarek Ali, known as 'Max' of Regent Street in Wellington; with three other suspects (23 year old Mohammed Ali Sultan of Victoria Avenue in Wellington), Ahdel and Mubarek are released on bail, and immediately threaten the female witnesses with violence; fifty police officers are now investigating by September 2010; DCI Neil Jamieson is leading the investigation; girls were held hostage for over ten hours, being constantly raped; one female wrote a list of names of over a hundred male offenders; police believed that there were around two hundred male offenders; the police had not encountered such offences before; after one teenage female was initially raped, a few days later, the male offender would be accompanied by his cousin, and brother, and uncle; DS Sophie Wade sees the traits of the male offenders; the police realise that there is scarce forensic evidence; Sheila Taylor identified trafficking methods, and psychological manipulation in Derby; in being trafficked, a teenage female was passed around a total of 72 males, part of nine groups across England; with mobile phone records, and copious
ANPR evidence, the Pakistani males could be tracked to a few square metres over months; when being rearrested, simpleton Ahdel Ali makes threats to the police; graphic text messages on the offenders' mobile phones will inevitably incriminate them, and could identify other possible offenders; from the text message evidence, a common place to meet the girls was the 'hospital bus stop'; the teenage girls were often referred to as 'bitch' or 'whore'; on 2 November 2010, simpleton Ahdel Ali is interviewed by police, informing the police that he didn't rape the teenage girl, but admitting that he 'had sex with her'; the CPS decides not to take the series of rapes to court as the victim could be portrayed as an unreliable witness; court begins on 16 May 2011, with nine Pakistani men on trial, seven being married, and one a grandfather, with 47 charges; seven teenage girls give evidence; girls were exchanged at the Lal Komal restaurant in Oakengates, the Dhaka Tandoori on Tan Bank in Wellington, and Thiara's Fish Bar on Haybridge Road in Hadley, by Mubarek Ali, where they were gang raped by workers at the restaurant, up to four times a week; the court lasts for four months, where the girls are constantly accused of being a compulsive liar, in legal cross-examination; the court finishes on 6 September 2011, and all the Pakistani males walk free, due to inadequate female witness testimony; on 8 August 2012 at
Worcester Crown Court, the offenders are finally convicted; in October 2012 24-year-old Ahdel Ali receives 18 years, and 29-year-old Mubarek Ali receives 14 years; six other offenders are convicted in December 2012. Reported by
Tazeen Ahmad, produced by Brian Woods, directed by Anna Hall, made by True Vision North
24 June The Police's Dirty Secret, about squalid sexual relationships between undercover police and females in protest movements, the
UK undercover policing relationships scandal; Peter Francis was in the
Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) of Special Branch, where he was known as Pete Black; in 1993 he joined
Youth against Racism in Europe, where he became a (convincing) branch secretary;
Bob Lambert (undercover police officer) who was now a university lecturer, who had infiltrated the ALF; a female ALF protester knew Bob Lambert as Bob Robinson; Bob also had a wife and two children; in late 1985 Bob's son was born; Bob subsequently met 24 year old Belinda Harvey, who was not part of any protest group; animal rights protester Helen Steel attended
London Greenpeace meetings in 1987, where she met fellow protester John Barker, who was really the police officer John Dines; Helen would know the police office for two years; the
National Public Order Intelligence Unit superseded the SDS in 2008; SDS officer Mark Jenner lived with a female protester for four years, as Mark Cassidy;
Mark Kennedy (police officer) had undercover relationships with female protesters across Europe, with one relationship being of six years; Chief Constable
Mick Creedon, of Operation Herne. Reported by
Paul Lewis (journalist), produced by George Waldrum, directed by Katherine Churcher, made by
ITN Productions
25 November Britain's Big Fat Bill, about
obesity in the United Kingdom; there were 1.5m morbidly obese people in the UK; Norma Mills was 5ft 6 and 20 stone; for her obesity she took Xenical (
Orlistat); Prof
Mike Lean of the University of Glasgow; British hospitals were seeing eleven times as many obese patients from ten years before; it cost the NHS £5.1bn; Prof
Nick Finer of UCL;
bariatric surgery at
St George's Hospital in Tooting; surgeon Paul Super in Birmingham; John Coakley, medical director of
Homerton University Hospital. Reported by
Tazeen Ahmad, produced by Charlotte Rowles, directed by Matt Haan, made by Watershed Television
2014
22 January Children on the Frontline. Won the 2015 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
24 February Secrets of Your Credit Rating, Dispatches visited the Nottingham site of
Experian, without Experian knowing; financial writer
Sarah Pennells; there are three main credit rating agencies in the UK, Experian,
Equifax and
Callcredit; in the small print of credit agreements, information is allowed to be given to some of the agencies; John and Rebecca of the
Leyland Band, who were husband and wife; teacher Ros Canning; James Jones of Experian; Experian's office in central Nottingham, with an undercover Dispatches reporter Georgia Boulton, purporting to be an employee, where the employee is trained about the Merlin and Portal systems;
credit reports are assigned via a 'potential alias', introduced in 2001, which is not a 100% identification, and can be merely a lucky guess; Damon Gibbons of the Centre for Responsible Credit; Labour MP
John Mann, Baron Mann had his credit report mixed up with another John Mann with the same date of birth, to detriment of his credit rating; the
Federal Trade Commission; Reported by Morland Sanders, produced by Steve Boulton, directed by Sarah Hey, made by Nine Lives
2018
14 May Myanmar's Killing Fields. Made with PBS. Won the 2019 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
2021
11 October Cops on Trial; a bipolar woman reports a boyfriend posting unsolicited content of her; a male police officer visits her house to interview her, views the explicit content, and gives her his
Instagram details, and they meet up socially; the officer was investigated and found to have committed gross misconduct, but he resigned before any further investigation; forensic psychologist Terri Cole of
Bournemouth University; in four years, around 2,000 male police personnel had been accused of sexual misconduct, with 370 alleged sexual assaults, and 100 alleged rapes; Alan Butler of Warwickshire Police took advantage his position; around 250 police personnel had been accused of this offence over four years; there are around 150,000 police officers in the UK; Glasgow police officer Fraser Ross battered his girlfriend for six years, but escaped jail, keeping his police pension, as he had resigned;
Police Scotland had 166 personnel accused of misconduct in four years, but none were dismissed;
Susannah Fish, former chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police;
Louisa Rolfe of the
National Police Chiefs' Council. Reported by Ellie Flynn, produced by George Waldrum, directed by Ben Ryder, made by ITN Productions
A list of Dispatches episodes shows the full set of editions of the
Channel 4 investigative documentary series Dispatches.
There have been thirty seven seasons of Dispatches.[1] Main reporters include
Antony Barnett
Episodes
1988
22 January Danger: Men at Work, about
sexual harassment of women at work; the film '
Business as Usual' about a clothing store in Liverpool, with
Glenda Jackson, later a Labour MP;
Alice Mahon, Labour MP; 25 year old Karen Wileman, an electronics assembly worker in Hampshire, was sacked when she told her employer, 44-year-old Raymond Atthill, that she was taking him to court for sexual harassment, over four years, which she won at an industrial tribunal in Southampton on 4 March 1987;[2][3] her company offered her £5 in compensation; Vivian Gay and the
Porcelli v Strathclyde Regional Council by Jean Porcelli, a laboratory technician from
Mount Florida, at
Bellahouston Academy in Glasgow, winning on 31 January 1986, on appeal, after first losing the tribunal in April 1984;[4] Dorothy Fall received £3,000 in compensation on 21 November 1986,[5] from taking Lothian Community Relations Council, in Edinburgh, to court;
Denise Kingsmill, Baroness Kingsmill; sexual harassment was difficult to fund to take to a tribunal; the Dutch government had formed a national advice centre entitled 'Hands Off'; sexual harassment of nurses had occurred at a former hospital at
Brandesburton; Clare Ruhemann of the
Labour Research Department; Sarah Howard of the
Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs. Reported by Sarah Temple-Smith, produced by Philip Clarke, directed by Dennis Jarvis, made by Diverse Productions
28 June A State of Decay; Belfast had the highest ownership per capita of
BMW cars in the UK; Paddy McGrory;
Dennis Faul of Dungannon, headteacher of
St Patrick's Academy, Dungannon; British soldiers were first brought in to protect Catholic families; since 1968, 2750 people had been killed, with around 1500 killed in the years of 1969-71 alone; Ronald Funston was ambushed by the IRA at around 8am in March 1984, in
Pettigo,
County Fermanagh; Susan Murphy; the
peace lines of Belfast; X-ray photographs at the
Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast; the local building industry had protection rackets of extortion payments, around 15% per contract; Chief Superintendent Eric Anderson of the RUC;
David McKittrick; Sylvia Deacon, whose husband in the
UDF was killed; the
Ballygawley bus bombing in August 1988; Joyce McCarten, whose 17 year old son was shot by a Protestant group in 1987;
Ken Maginnis;
Craigavon and a fan belt factory; German factory director
Thomas Niedermayer was kidnapped by the IRA in 1973, and killed; his killing was arranged by his former factory employee, trade unionist
Brian Keenan (Irish republican); since the
Stormont government was suspended in 1972, local councils had executive functions no greater than the operation of leisure centres or bin collection, such as district councils in England; Unionist
Reg Empey, the
Lord Mayor of Belfast;
Alasdair McDonnell;
North Down was Northern Ireland's equivalent of wealthy
Surrey, in England. Narrated by
Jeremy Bugler, directed by Andrew Forrester, made by Fulmar Television
12 October The Day of the Technopath, about computer data protection in the UK; former computer programmer
Emma Nicholson, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne;
Mel Croucher; computers were now running industry; Britain had more personal computers per person than any European country;
Jan Hruska (computer security) and Ken Wong, and computer viruses; Mark Drew of
IBM North Harbour, north of Portsmouth;
Tony Cleaver, chief executive of IBM UK; the
Datacrime virus; a
penetration test; Trevor Nicholas, chief information officer of Barclays Bank; Peter Sommer;
Stephen Gold; Judith Vincent of the CBI; Det Supt Don Randall of the
City of London Police Fraud Squad; City of London foreign exchange transactions were £200bn per day; the
Computer Misuse Act 1990 would soon pass through parliament, but not enough British police knew anything significant about computer security. Reported by Tony Cook, produced by John Goddard, directed by Dominic Cameron, made in association with Gamma TV
1990
14 March Gerry, about infiltration of the IRA; the IRA informer came from
Strabane in
County Tyrone, on the border with the Republic; in his teens, he met an IRA operative in the Vaccaro restaurant in Strabane, and was asked to watch the
Gough Barracks; a few months later, the IRA raided Gough Barracks, on a Saturday, dressed as soldiers, restraining the sentry, and taking hundreds of rifles; in October on a Sunday at 3.45am, there was an attack on an army depot in Omagh, where fifteen IRA terrorists climbed over the wall, with knives, and captured the sentry, who was able to sound the alarm, two of the IRA were shot and wounded; both raids were planned on the informer's information, whilst he was at school; he now realised what he had caused, so told his family (Catholic) who passed it on to the police, who interviewed him; he was watched by security services when leaving the Pallidrome club at the weekend in Strabane, where he was asked to physically point out his IRA contacts; on 1 January 1957 twelve IRA terrorists drove up through
Brookeborough, driving past an army barracks, where the terrorists fired at a policeman, and threw grenades, but were ambushed when a machine gun opened up directly at them, and two terrorists were killed, and the others mostly badly injured; the raid was investigated by James Baker of The Fermanagh Herald, who presumed that the army knew when the raid would take place; the IRA ended the border campaign on army barracks, in July 1962; in August 1969 the Troubles began, and the original IRA, was superseded when the militant Provisional Army Council was formed in January 1970; the informer had joined the Army in England in 1957, but by 1970 had left, and now worked for a building firm, when he was approached by the security services, where he was paid £2000 for five days work, and worked for the security services for the next year, giving information of the structure of the terrorist groups, and the hierarchy. On 21 July 1972, 22 terrorist bombs killed nine civilians; in 1972, there were 468 deaths in the Troubles; the security services now believed that terrorist attacks were planned for England, the informer had not heard anything; he was told to go to the Goldhawk pub in London, where he met Eddie O'Neill; the informer later left working for the security services, but two terrorists,
Hugh Doherty and
Edward Butler, had been watched in Glasgow, and the security services needed to know their whereabouts in London, so the informer proposed looking for them in Cricklewood, the Half Moon and the Goldhawk; the informer found Butler in a London pub, who was watched, later strafing
Scott's restaurant, and taking part in the
Balcombe Street siege, where the two were caught with
Hugh Duggan and
Joe O'Connell. Produced by Peter Williams and Malcolm Brinkworth, directed by Bruce Macdonald, made by Touch Productions and TVS Television
11 April Terms for Peace, about possibilities on negotiations in Northern Ireland; four soldiers were killed in County Down on Monday 9 April 1990; Margaret McCann, former wife of
Dan McCann; Sinn Fein councillor
Fra McCann believed that the only way of removing the British from Northern Ireland was armed force; Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness was looking for discussion; the British Army was stepping up surveillance, with frequent roadside checks;
Eamonn Mallie;
David Hearst of The Guardian; civilian casualties of IRA attacks were increasing, killing 35 civilians in the previous two years;
Edward Daly (bishop); the IRA would break into people's houses, in the evening, and take the family car, and physically intimidate the family, being near enough taken hostage; Sinn Fein annual conference in Dublin. Reported by
Mary Holland, produced by David Cox and Stewart Lansley, directed by Andy Mayer, made by Juniper
3 October Listen to the Children; in October 1987 children were removed from the Broxtowe estate in Nottingham, in connection with child sexual abuse, amongst bizarre sinister practices such as ritualistic slaughter; Judith Dawson, Joan Taylor, Chris Johnston, and Lesley Hughes of
Nottinghamshire County Council social services; nine people were jailed on 19 January 1989;[6] the report was published in January 1990, which possibly underestimated what had taken place, claiming that children were brainwashed; Prof
John Newson of the University of Nottingham;
Mary Midgley. Reported by
Bea Campbell, directed by Claire Walmsley
1991
12 June The Movement, about a group in the Conservative Party in the early 1990s; the Braganza Wine Bar in Soho, and the
National Association of Conservative Graduates, and their monthly meeting; two speakers are from the
Bruges Group -
Bill Cash and
Alan Sked from the LSE; Marc Glendening believed that the Conservative party should split, and pro-European Conservative MPs could join the Lib Dems; Nick Kent, who worked for
Michael Mates;
Julian Critchley; the Movement had been formed at the
University of St Andrews in Scotland in the early 1970s; Mark McGregor of Pulse; David Hoyle, who worked through David Carlisle; Russell Walters of the
Adam Smith Institute;
Douglas Smith; Le Casino restaurant in Lower
Sloane Street in Chelsea, near the 151 nightclub in Kings Road, owned by Toby Baxendale; the Committee for a free Britain was funded by David Hart, a property developer; a youthful John Bercow at the Federation of Conservative Students meeting at Loughborough University in 1984, attended by The Movement, which included some known as the 'Dundee Monsters'; the meeting featured on the front pages of 'The Sun' and 'Daily Mirror'; the FCS was closed in 1986; Michael Forsyth was made chairman of the Scottish Conservatives by Mrs Thatcher; Derek Bateman; Kathy Short;
Grover Norquist; Andrew Barnett of the Scottish Conservative students;
Biggar, South Lanarkshire, was where the pro-European Scottish Conservatives met, and at
Duddingston;
John Guthrie (politician); Michael Forsyth is sacked by Mrs Thatcher;
Teddy Taylor warns that 80% of laws are originated in Europe; a youthful
Murdo Fraser, chairman of the Young Conservatives; Adrian Goulbourn of the Scottish Young Conservatives; Lloyd Beat, who won 31% of the vote in 1992 in
Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale. Produced by David Kemp, directed by Adrian Milne, made by Hyndland Television
1992
16 December Dying to Diet, could dieting lead to an early death, notably increased heart disease; Antonia Giovanazzi; Prof David Garner of
Michigan State University said that the slimming industry was a 'revolving door' with 95% of customers not ultimately losing much weight; Astrid Longhurst, the
Slimcea Girl in 1979, who lost 6.5 stones in six months, but she soon regained around half of that; Prof
Janet Polivy of the
University of Toronto; Bernice Weston founded the
Weight Watchers franchise, with her husband Richard, in the UK in 1967; her brother was a cardiologist; aged 44 her husband died of a heart attack; cardiologist Prof
Desmond Julian of the
British Heart Foundation; psychologist
Kelly D. Brownell; Malaysian Dr
I-Min Lee, of the
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who looked at 12,000 people over 12 years; dieting can encourage the dieter to eat more fat than usual; Nicola Edmans; Prof
Michael Oliver (cardiologist) of the
Wynn Institute for Metabolic Research, and suitable levels of cholesterol; dieting affected
brain chemistry, and therefore mood; Liz Martin;
Rosemary Conley and her BBC slimming series; she proposed that metabolic rate could be increased by eating six small meals a day; Prof John Durnin of the
University of Glasgow said that your metabolic rate was determined largely by your genes; the BHF wrote to British GPs, questioning Rosemary Conley's diet advice on metabolism; Rosemary Conley was presented by the programme makers as a '
quack'; the American
Nutrisystem diet; Oregon politician
Ron Wyden found that many diet industry representatives, in the US, lacked any type of nutrition education, and were merely sales representatives; Weight Watchers UK had around 3,000 clubs for around 3 million people in the UK, turning over £20m, run by Linda Huett; British GPs would recommend people to Weight Watchers UK; medical psychologist Andrew Hill; the Weight Watchers food products was a quarter of Heinz turnover; Sue Dibb, of
The Food Commission; the
Committee of Medical Aspects of Food Policy provided most of the advice on food policy to the
Department of Health; Labour MP
Mo Mowlam; the Conservative government 1992 White Paper The Health of the Nation - a strategy for health in England. Reported by
Aric Sigman, produced by Kimi Zabihyan, directed by Carolyn Gilbey, made by Observer Films
16 February Getting away with rape, a one-hour special; David Martin Maloney was convicted of multiple rapes, in July 1993, often by taking the victim in his car;[7]Keith Matthewman; in December 1993, 33 year old Nicholas Edwards was acquitted of rape for the fifth time, being accused of raping a 26 year old nurse in July 1992; he also had multiple rape convictions going back to 1982[8] but would be sentenced to life in September 2000; Det Supt Bill Grahamslaw of the Metropolitan Police; forensic psychologist Prof
David Canter of the
University of Surrey; Prof
Sue Lees of the
University of North London; Anne Davies of the Metropolitan Police;
Nemone Lethbridge; in 1993 over 4,500 women reported rape in England and Wales, leading to 482 convictions. Reported by
Jenny Cuffe, produced by Jacqui Webster, directed by Lynn Ferguson, made by First Frame
23 November Spy in the Camp, about whether MI5 significantly influenced the 1984 Miners strike;
Stella Rimington gives the BBC
Richard Dimbleby Lecture in June 1994;
Seumas Milne, Labour Correspondent of The Guardian; Harry Newton, a personal friend of Arthur Scargill, named as an MI5 agent by
Cathy Massiter, herself once in
MI5; Harry Newton worked for F Branch, the anti-subversion division of MI5; F Branch investigated CND,
Liberty and the British Communist Party; Robin Robinson of the
Joint Intelligence Committee; Stella Rimington operated F Branch, and the F2 unit, which investigated subversive trade unions, and planted agents;
Michael Bettaney, the Cambridge- graduate MI5 agent who was convicted for passing sensitive information to the Soviets; Bettaney gave information that the NUM was being tracked by MI5; Operation Tinkerbell was MI5's communication surveillance of the
NUM;
GCHQ, in Cheltenham, conducted communication surveillance of the NUM in the strike; NUM offices had surveillance of their telephones;
Arthur Scargill; Labour MP
Mick Clapham, who worked for the NUM during the strike; Alain Simon, French general secretary from 1980-85 of the
Trade Unions International of Miners, who informed the NUM of an agent;
Peter Heathfield general secretary from 1984 to 1992 of the NUM, who thought that
Roger Windsor, chief executive of the NUM from 1983 to July 1989, could have been an MI5 agent; Scottish Labour MP
Jimmy Hood, who was an NUM leader during the 1984 strike;
Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring, chairman from 1982-89 of the
CEGB, had made calculations that the NUM would plausibly win their strike around October 1984. Reported by Callum Macrae, produced by Kimi Zabihyan, directed by Michael Davidson, made by Observer Films and Ray Fitzwalter Associates
1995
11 October Making the Grades, it investigated the
Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA). The episode received complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Commission, from two examining boards, which were upheld
1996
23 January Soccer's Foul Play, an hour long episode about the
United Kingdom football sexual abuse scandal; the
under-14 squad of Charlton Athletic F.C.; Richard Smith; Ian Ackley of Derbyshire, and his father Frank; former Southampton F.C. trainee Dean Radford; Barry Bennell claimed to be a coach from Manchester City F.C.; Bennell had worked at Stoke City and Crewe Alexandra; Bennell invited 11 year old boys into his home, to be
sexually abused over two to three years;
Ken Barnes and Chris Muir of Manchester City; Bennell was at Manchester City for seven years then moved to Crewe Alexandra to work for
Dario Gradi; the chairman of Crewe
Norman Rowlinson had suspicions of Bennell, and phoned Manchester City to ask if Bennell had been 'mucking about with kids'; Dario Gradi claims to have not heard anything disturbing; Bennell was sacked by Crewe in 1986; Brenda Dawson of
Jacksonville, Florida who was hugely suspicious of Bennell when boys from Staffordshire stayed at her home; Bennell is arrested in Florida in 1994; Terry Thomas of Florida Police; Bennell is sent to prison for four years; Libby Senterfit, who jailed Bennell; Keith Ketley abused boys in Ipswich, under a different name, but had a previous conviction for 18 months when in Southend; Alan Girot of Suffolk Football Association;
Les Reed of Charlton Athletic; Bob Higgins was at
Southampton F.C., where teenage boys would stay at his house; Bob Higgins went to Southampton Court, where he was found not guilty on one charge, and afterwards the other charges were dropped; Kit Carson brought Bob Higgins to
Peterborough United F.C. where teenage boys are abused, when boys stayed at his house;
Charles Hughes of
The Football Association. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Bernard Clark, directed by Ed Braman
27 March The Lost Children; the
Bristol Royal Infirmary had 500,000 patients a year; 18 month Joshua Loveday was treated in December 1994, to be operated on 12 January 1995;
Stephen Bolsin, a consultant anaesthetist had warned about too many fatalities, over five years from 1988; he had arrived from the
Royal Brompton Hospital; he spoke to Prof
Cedric Prys Roberts, of the University of Bristol, and President from 1994-97 of the
Royal College of Anaesthetists; for two types of operation, the
atrioventricular septal defect (AV canal) and
Tetralogy of Fallot, the hospital unit had high mortality rate; for the
arterial switch operation from 1988-89, seven children had died; Sian Collyer, born 18 January 1992 had the operation, and did not survive; Belinda Collyer; Michaela and Steve Willis from Devon; Hugh Ross, chief executive of the United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust; heart surgeon Sir
Terence English, President from 1990-92 of the
Royal College of Surgeons of England; medical director James Wisheart had the worst surgical results; Sir Terence English alerted the Department of Health, who did nothing for three years; after another death in June 1994, action was taken by the anaesthetist, alongside colleagues Su Underwood, Ian Davies, Steve Pryn, Sally Masey, and Peter Baskett; Bronwen Stewart and her son Ian, brain-damaged by an operation, making him blind and deaf; Prof Gianni Angelini was appointed Professor of Cardiac Surgery at the University of Bristol in 1994, who immediately made changes; Robert Loveday and Mandy Evans. Reported by James Garrett, produced by Tom Archer, directed by Alex Sutherland, made by
HTV
13 February Crash Landing, about the safety of the RAF, investigated by David Lomax; Flt Lt Simon Burgess, from
Grimsby,[9] ejected from his
Hawk aircraft on 13 February 1996, but it was too low for the parachute to open, when aged 28;[10] on 23 January 1991 a weapon had exploded on his aircraft, when aged 23 and a Flying Officer, in the Gulf War in Tornado ZA403, with navigator 40-year-old
Loughborough University-educated Sqn Ldr Bob Ankerson of
17 Sqn;[11][12][13][14][15] Ann and Terry Burgess, his parents; the aircraft had had the ailerons disconnected for servicing; the night shift at the base was short of engineering technician staff - it needed 23 but had 13, with 2 electricians instead of 3, 3 weapon technicians instead of 6, and 1 airframe fitter instead of 6; Archie Liggatt, an RAF instructor from 1980 to 1996, now an airliner instructor with
Air 2000; not enough documentation was being provided for servicing for aircraft; the
1993 Llyn Padarn helicopter crash on 12 August 1993 in a
Westland Wessex, where three teenagers were killed, which was captured on film; the mother of one of the crash victims; the wrong type of grease had been put in the clutch of the tail rotor; Geoffrey Oakden, father of crash victim Mark Oakden;
Nicholas Soames on 8 June 1996; Air Vice-Marshal Boz Robinson, station commander from 1978 until March 1980;[16] on 23 January 1996, 28-year-old Flt Lt Greg Noble took off in an RAF
JaguarXX733 of
41 Squadron in Norfolk, after limited flight hours on the aircraft, never engaged the afterburner, collided with a barrier at the end of the runway, and crashed in a fireball;[17][18][19] Paul Maynard, RAF pilot from 1980 to 1996, and Ed Smith, RAF pilot from 1976 to 1995; James Archer, RAF
Tornado pilot from 1987 to 1996 with
43 Squadron at
RAF Leuchars in eastern Scotland, where due to a chronic lack of spare parts for their aircraft, at best there were six serviceable aircraft and at best there would be one serviceable aircraft; Dispatches visited the airfield and did not see any military aircraft flying, apart from the
East of Scotland Universities Air Squadron; a current Tornado pilot at RAF Leuchars said that the squadron struggled to get four aircraft into the air, at one time;
Air Chief Marshal Sir
Bill Wratten wrote a memo indicating that spares holding and available staff were the biggest peacetime risks faced by the RAF; a current technician at
RAF St Athan said that, due to a lack of spares, items as small as a
split pin, if not in RAF stock, were replaced by an older split pin that was crudely straightened again; aircraft were
cannibalised, to keep other aircraft in service, with spare parts, which has long been a widely practised procedure in maintenance; but whilst that has been commonly heavily practised for smaller components, the RAF were now doing this with whole engines; a former RAF electrical technician said that
Kapton-insulated wiring was a danger, as in servicing, the insulation can be easily chafed, giving risk to a
short circuit; seven miles of Kapton wiring was on the Tornado, and a Tornado crashed on 2 December 1986, east of
Wortham, Suffolk next to the A143, due to an electrical fault, watched by children at a local primary school, also seeing the pilots safely eject;[20][21] the USAF removed Kapton-insulated wiring from 1988, and Canada had also removed it from new aircraft; at
RAF Laarbruch, Harrier aircraft had fires, from Kapton-insulated wiring, so the wiring was totally replaced; 22 RAF Tornado aircraft had crashed since the 1991 war. Produced by Terry Kelleher, directed by Julia Stroud, made by Platinum Film & TV Production
13 March Buying Time, about NHS timescales of treatment; Vyv Chatterley, a Bristol hotel owner, the Naseby House Hotel, was diagnosed with breast cancer, which had spread to her liver; she paid privately for the treatment
Docetaxel, licensed by the NHS in 1995; oncologist Elisabeth Whipp of the
Bristol Royal Infirmary; Pamela Charlwood of the Avon Health Authority; oncologist Prof
Karol Sikora; Prof
Chris Ham of the
University of Birmingham; Susan Edginton of Taunton; Mac Kammerling, of Somerset Health Authority, who would pay for the same treatment; Hugh Ross, chief executive of the United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust; Gillian Casemore of
Tetbury in Gloucestershire, who had the same treatment paid for by her local health authority; 36 year old Lynette Jackson of Wiltshire, who had
Paclitaxel, one of many
taxane treatments, for ovarian cancer, which Wiltshire would not pay for; Kevin Mochrie, editor of the Swindon Evening Advertiser, who raised money for Lynette; oncologist Marcus Galea of
Princess Margaret Hospital, Swindon; Alan Lear, who had
MND, with his neurologist, and the treatment
riluzole, made by
Rhône-Poulenc Rorer, which Avon Health Authority would not pay for, but adequate outcomes were not in full agreement; Lincolnshire viewed the treatment as worthwhile 'as liposuction'; Joan Jaffray had MND; Nick Payne; Kathy Groom, whose husband John had MND; the Avonex treatment,
Interferon beta-1a, made by
Biogen; Brian Wainwright and the treatment Aricept,
Donepezil; Prof Alistair Burns of
Withington Community Hospital; Harry Cayton, later the chairman of the
National Information Governance Board for Health and Social Care. Reported by Sarah Spiller (the partner of
Alex Thomson, of Channel 4 News), produced by Julian Ware and Louise Osmond, directed by Mark Rubens, made by ITN
8 May The Blair Project, about the possible direction of Tony Blair; a party in December 1996 hosted by the Sedgefield Labour group; on 26 February 1996 Tony Blair held a day symposium at
King's College London, to discuss his project;
Paul Thompson, editor of Renewal who claimed that Blair wanted a 'stakeholding economy' and a 'one nation society', and that how
Margaret Thatcher had often operated had influenced Tony Blair;
Will Hutton, editor of The Observer; Tony Blair's paternal (but not genetic) grandparents came from
Govan in
Glasgow; Tony Blair's father was fostered to James Blair, and wife Mary, who worked in the nearby shipyards; Tony Blair's real paternal grandparents were an actor and actress (with real surname of Parsons); Tony Blair's father, a university Law lecturer, moved from Communist politics to the Conservative party, and had wanted to be prime minister; the work of
John Macmurray greatly influenced Tony Blair; Sir
Samuel Brittan; Mary Picken, of Scottish Labour; Tony Blair's former prep school in Durham, and Canon John Grove, his former headteacher; Tony Blair's family moved from Scotland to Australia in 1954, then to
High Shincliffe in Durham, where Tony Blair lived from 1958 to 1975; at age 11, his father had a stroke, and when 22, his mother died of cancer; he stood in the
1982 Beaconsfield by-election, gaining many contacts; he met French president
Jacques Chirac, as opposition leader, conversing in French; his constituency surgery in Ferryhill, with his agent
John Burton;
Joel Barnett had also applied for the constituency in 1983, with left-wing
Les Huckfield, of the
TGWU, the earlier favoured candidate; in 1983,
Pat Phoenix, of Coronation Street, was, technically, the step-mother of his wife; the left-wing Scottish Labour MP
John McAllion, who left Labour in 2003. Reported by Callum Macrae, produced by Terry Kelleher, directed by David Carr-Brown, made by Psychology News
1998
29 January Too Much Too Young, about whether children were ready to read at the age of four; in Hungary, children started school at age six; in Belgium, children started at age six; the Hungarian children did much better in the Mathematics SAT test, for ages seven; Graham Last, education inspector in Barking; Sally Ward, speech and language therapist; elementary social skills, such as collaboration, and getting to know others confidently, was taught before any primary education began; educational psychologist Ann Locke; Belgian school inspector Catherine Vrielinck; Prof
József Nagy of Attila Jozsef University (
University of Szeged) in Hungary, found that most children were ready to write at age six, with some at five, and 15% at age seven; did four year olds, in the UK, have the dexterity to start writing;
circle time; Prof
Sig Prais; the bottom 30%, and mostly boys, did less well in the UK, than in other countries; Greg Brooks of
NFER; the difference was referred to as the
Matthew effect. Also broadcast on
Teachers TV. Reported by Callum Macrae, directed by David Mills
28 January Kicking the Habit, about
excessive consumption of salt and
salt and cardiovascular disease; Prof Graham McGregor of St George's Hospital; a tin of soup had 3g of salt, a slice of bread had 0.5g of salt, with
Marmite this adds another 0.5g of salt; a
Big Mac and Fries had 2.5g of salt;
Lizzie Vann, an organic food producer; Nigel Dickie;[23] Dr Michael Baxendine of the
Food and Drink Federation; cardiologist Prof
John Douglas Swales of the
University of Leicester, who researched hypertension (high blood pressure) and disputed a link to salt consumption; Wendy Wrigley of the
Co-op. Reported by Christopher Hird, produced by Tracey Gardiner, directed by Emma Handley, made by Fulcrum TV
4 February Ireland, about the
Omagh bombing; Dorothy Robinson, who believed that the British Army in Northern Ireland was a 'legitimate target', who raised money at a dinner in the US for the IRA at Rory Dolan's Restaurant Bar on Saturday 1 February 1999, giving $20,000 for the Continuity IRA; Irish Police regularly searched properties in County Louth; former terrorists Sean O'Callaghan, who served eight years, and Brendan McClenaghan, who served 18 years, and now lived in London; terrorist Paddy Fox, sentenced to 12 years,was physically beaten on Sunday 2 February 1999 in Monaghan by the IRA for renouncing the peace agreement; the Continuity IRA also renounced the agreement, setting off a bomb in Market Hill in August 1997, supported by
Republican Sinn Féin in the Republic, led by
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, a former head of the former IRA, who broke away from Sinn Fein in 1986; Prof
Paul Rogers, who researched terrorism; Micky Donnelly, of Republican Sinn Fein, was also attacked by the IRA; the Real IRA, largely from County Louth, called a ceasefire, after being threatened by the IRA, who then kidnapped one of the
32 County Sovereignty Movement; Rory Dougan; County Monaghan had known sympathies for the Republican movement, holding meetings; unionist
Ken Maginnis. Reported by Joe Layburn, produced by Steve Haywood, directed by Alison Turner, made by Just Television
25 February Surveyors; a
mortgage survey is mostly there to assess the financial worth of a property, not the structural integrity; Britain had 80,000 qualified chartered surveyors, governed by the
RICS; it introduced the RICS HomeBuyer Report in 1981; Geoff Holden of the RICS; test surveying house inspections were covertly filmed; a typical house inspection was thought to last three to four hours, but some of the test inspections took the covertly-filmed surveyors one hour. Reported by Callum Macrae, produced by Steve Haywood, directed by Tim Pritchard, made by Just Television
18 March The Crime Game,[24] about British police vastly incorrectly reporting burglary; Peter Coles, a former detective superintendent with
Nottinghamshire Police at
Hucknall CID; [25] Richard Wells, former Chief Constable from 1990-98 of
South Yorkshire Police; Trish Prescott from Nottingham; crimes were downgraded by police, known as 'cuffing'; petty criminals were taken out of prison to confess to crimes that they had not known, known to police as 'to write off', again to lessen recorded crime; Nottinghamshire Police tried this strategy; Gary Mason, editor of Police Review;
Bedfordshire Police investigated Nottinghamshire Police;
Colin Bailey, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police from 1995-2000, who admitted that in 1996 Bedfordshire Police had found much false reporting;[26] Nottinghamshire claimed to have solved 98.3% of rapes, which Bedfordshire Police could not not believe; Peter Coles alleged that 50% of Nottinghamshire's burglaries were fictitious, or wrongly recorded; David McCrone, assistant Chief Constable of
Greater Manchester Police; in 1999 South Yorkshire Police,
Dorset Police,
Hertfordshire Constabulary,
Staffordshire Police and
Gloucestershire Constabulary 'wrote off' two-thirds of its burglaries by fictitious confessions;
Leicestershire Police,
Sussex Police,
Lincolnshire Police and
South Wales Police followed close. Reported by Nick Davies. produced by Steve Boulton, directed by Mike Turnbull
25 March CCTV, about the veracity of
CCTV evidence in court; Prof Graham Davies of the
University of Leicester; there were a million CCTV cameras in the UK; Bob Lack of the
London Borough of Newham, which had a facial recognition that would warn the CCTV operator when a face was found on its database; the system had reduced unsolved crime by 35% and street theft by 70%; Richard Thomas of ACPO; Cambridge-educated Prof
Vicki Bruce of the Psychology department of the
University of Stirling, and research on facial recognition and CCTV; Alan Church, who was convicted of raiding a building society of £1,000 in central
Glasgow on 28 January 1993, on CCTV evidence; he was sent to prison for eight years; the CCTV footage was shown on
STVScotland Today on 10 February 1993; his family saw the CCTV and told Alan to go to the police, where three people picked him out in an identity parade; Alf Linney of UCL; a McDonalds is raided on 10 October 1996 at 2pm in
Ashton-under-Lyne, taking £9,500; it went to court on 16 June 1997; Margaret Bowden, mother of Brian Bowden, who was convicted of the offence on CCTV; sculptor
Richard Neave of the University of Manchester; Geoffrey Oxlee. Reported by Joe Layburn, produced by Rob Edwards, directed by Ed Braman, made by Lomond Productions
15 April, Child Contact; 150,000 children a year are part of their parents divorcing, with a third of these divorces due to the male partner being violent, with many of the women deciding not to see their former partner again, but family courts regularly allow the violent former partner to have access to the children; Lorraine Radford of the
Roehampton Institute;[27] Sir
Nicholas Wall;
court welfare officers visit families, to decide what happens; on Sunday 6 February 1994, 35 year old GP, formerly of North Wingfield Medical Centre,[28][29] Sukhdev Sandhu, on a contact visit, strangled his four year old daughter and three year old son, with a pyjama cord, then jumped from a tower block (Kelvin Flats) to his death; the couple had met at
Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, and had been married for four years from October 1988 living at Tibshelf Road in
Holmewood in north Derbyshire; the 30 year old (nursing sister) mother had been through the courts to stop her former partner seeing the children.[30] Narrated by Jenny Cuffe, directed by Leon Ferguson, made by First Frame
22 April Car Challenge, about choices in public transport; the Gallacher family have two cars; Jane, aged 43, drives the Metro to work at an infants school, and goes to keep fit; Mark drives a Ford Mondeo to take James, aged 11, to his grandmother; Mark, aged 46, works as headteacher of Birchills CE Primary School in Walsall; he was branch secretary of
MENSA;[31] Henry, aged 13, walks to the school bus; the car is needed for piano lessons for Henry, rugby matches, and going out for meals; the reporter travels to the family house from
Euston railway station by cycle; including all costs, having the two cars costs the family £108 per week; Channel 4 gave the family £108 and physically took away the two cars; the Labour government wanted to tax work parking spaces, perhaps £20 per week; a third of British children are driven to school; Jane's drive to the infant school would take 25 mins, but now she has to catch a bus into Walsall, and another to the outskirts, taking around an hour; Mark needed one bus, and finds the journey faster than the car, and comfortable; his wife much prefers the comfort of her car; the boys visit their grandparents every week; the bus did not turn up for a game of football for Mark, so he is forced to spend £17.50 on a taxi; after 6pm, the bus service was often negligible; the two boys had to play rugby in
Tamworth, Staffordshire and
Kingswinford, and it was impossible to get them both there;[32] housing estates tend to be designed for people with a car, less so for public transport; councillor Richard Worrall, of the
WM Passenger Transport Authority; the Labour government wanted road tolling, so that councils could charge drivers to enter city centres, and maybe tolling on motorways; the Wallis family - Stephen and his wife Sara, a teacher's assistant, with Charlotte aged 16 and Christopher aged 13; Stephen drives his Mercedes company car, along the
M42, to work, where he was head of the accounts department at
Zytek Automotive in
Bassetts Pole; one in ten British motorists had a company car; the Gallacher family go to the supermarket via the taxi, costing £5.50; on Saturday the family catch the bus to the city centre, then catch the train to Birmingham, then another train to the
Severn Valley heritage line at
Kidderminster; the journey has taken two and a half hours, which would take 40 minutes by car; in the 1950s most families kept travelling to a minimum. Reported by Christopher Hird, produced by Tracey Gardiner, directed by Donna Clark, made by Fulcrum TV
13 May Car Trouble: Insurance, about deviant British car insurers; 49 year old Jim Halford, a bus driver in Gravesend, injured by a drinker driver in 1998, banned for 21 months; Zurich Insurance declined to be liable; vehicle insurance companies had a series of tactics - giving a low initial offer, an eleventh hour offer, or a series of medical examinations; Tony Baker of the
Association of British Insurers; Nick Burgum, of Kent, had a shattered knee; General Accident, part of CGU, accepted liability, but disputed the injuries; General Accident meanwhile had been covertly filming his house, but paid the claim in full; Dame
Hazel Genn of UCL; the A259 near
Hooe, East Sussex, which had a horrific crash in June 1994; eyewitness Peter Gates; Barry Clark of Sussex Police; Alex, of East Sussex, was severely burned, needing amputations of her legs, and part of her left arm; her 64 year old husband John, a vicar, was killed;[33][34] a driver, off-duty policeman 26 year old Michael Dean of Swanley, was sent to prison for four years in November 1995; his vehicle was overtaking many cars at around 90mph on a 60mph single carriageway; at court, he claimed that all the 14 witnesses were making things up; Alex won £1.5m in damages in April 1998;
Walter Merricks, the UK Insurance Ombudsman. Reported by Joe Layburn, produced by Ray FitzWalter, directed by David Barrie
27 May Car Trouble: Breakdown; the British insurance industry believed that car recovery companies were charging twice as much as required; eight garages in Kent are contacted for a vehicle tow-away quote; the insurance industry believed that a tow-away should cost no more than £105, but on average it was £210; Mora Campbell was hit by a vehicle on the M6 in Cheshire in April 1998, driving home from Manchester; she called the AA, who said that it could take longer than an hour, which was not sufficient for the police, who wanted her vehicle removed in twenty minutes; she had to pay £152 up front; the headquarters of Lincolnshire Police in
Nettleham, who had a list of twenty seven garages, who operated on a rota; Inspector Greville Burgess; Inspector John Bennett of ACPO; Bill Tupman;
Gwent Police had thirty five garages on their rota list, but changed this to just one recovery company; Liz Phillips of Wales, who had her car damaged by that same recovery company, which her insurance company would not pay for; 25 year old Tony Killor was killed on his motorbike on 4 September 1995; the destroyed bike was recovered by the company; the bike was sold by the company. Reported by Joe Layburn, produced by Steve Haywood, directed by Mark Lewis, made by Just Television (the production team of Rough Justice)
11 November A matter of life or death, about train safety in the UK, notably evacuation in a fire: a
Mk 2 carriage is rested on one side; survivor Chris Bartlett; professor of fire safety engineering, Australian
Ed Galea of the
University of Greenwich; Steve Bence of ATOC; Graham Stepan and fire safety; the
Hope Valley Line near Manchester; signal Y304 on the Trans Pennine Express route; a
GNER service on the
East Coast Main Line; Jose Fernandez of
Long Island Rail Road; Lee Williams of Amtrak; survivor David Taylor. Presented by Christopher Hird, directed by Peter Minns, made by Fulcrum Productions
November Runaways, a survey found that 100,000 children would run away in one year; Graeme Brown of
The Children's Society; Rob Hutchinson of the Association of Directors of Social Services; 13 year old Aliyah Ismail was found dead on 18 October 1998, in a derelict house at 78 Agar Grove in Camden, after a methadone overdose, having run away sixty one times in her last year; the Children's Society had two refuges. Reported by Joe Layburn, directed by Lynn Ferguson, made by First Frame
2 December Tooth Trouble about unwanted effects of possibly unneeded dentistry for teenagers; every a half million British children had
orthodontic treatment, largely to
straighten teeth; dentist
John Mew, who lived in
Sussex; Ben Creed and his twin brother;[35] South African dentist Francois Rossouw of Essex; dentist Michael Fennel; Nigel Harradine of the
British Orthodontic Society, and the
University of Bristol Dental Hospital; Californian dentist William Hang. Reported by
Callum Macrae. produced by David Alford, directed by Howard Bradburn, made by 3BM Television
2000
17 February Drug Wars, about customs officers and drug; in 1999 24 tonnes of cocaine, 4 tonnes of heroin, and 400 tonnes of cannabis were thought to have entered the UK illegally; a drugs conference was held in February 2000; Operation Teak took place in May 1997 off the coast of
Funchal, where 4 tonnes of cannabis was found, worth £14m;
Brian Charrington, living in Spain, had supplied the drugs; Derek Todd, formerly of the
Metropolitan Police; Operation Funded took place in 1998, culminating with cannabis being seized at a service station by
customs officers on the
M25 motorway; Operation Stealer took place, by
Customs and Excise National Investigation Service from 1993 to 1994, where Brian Doran from Glasgow, known as 'The Professor', was watched at
The Lanesborough in London, and culminating at
Pevensey Bay in East Sussex on 10 January 1995, when the catamaran 'Frugal' arrived with £34m of cocaine from Colombia; convictions collapsed because the legal procedures of surveillance was not followed.[36] Reported by David Jessel, produced by Steve Haywood and Sam Bagnall, directed by Peter Minns, made by Just Television
24 February Tax Wars, about
Value-added tax in the United Kingdom;
Justin Urquhart Stewart of
Barclays Stockbrokers; John and Kathy Oldfield were taken to a VAT tribunal; most food does not have VAT added;
HM Custom and Excise was headquartered at
New King's Beam House; VAT consultant Ray Chappell believed that VAT inspectors were overzealous; Marion Lonsdale; Labour MP
Jim Cousins of the
Treasury Select Committee, who investigated methods of how VAT was collected, and recommended that Customs and Excise was amalgamated with the Inland Revenue; Rev Gerald Pegg of St Nicholas in
Icklesham in
East Sussex. The programme was made in conjunction with the
Federation of Small Businesses. Reported by David Jessel, produced by Steve Haywood and Sam Bagnall, made by Just Television
2 March Gayhurst Crescent goes surfing;[37]Sunderland had the lowest level of internet access in England; homes on a street are given £1,500 of computing equipment; Paul Fenech liked football; Steve Pinder found it slow; Ned Potts; Julie McQuillian had
Crohn's disease, and found much information; Joyce Charlton, aged 66, found information on a former friend who was killed a week after D-Day, with the
Durham Light Infantry, aged 18; Ken Clasper liked information on World War II; Tom Hawick found much information on
tinnitus; Linda Fenech wanted a vacuum cleaner, and ordered one;
Iceland was the only supermarket that delivered in their area; John Old; Leno Fenech said that the internet added to family life; Mick Thwaites finds an old friend; Hayley Charlton looked at the Employment Service website, which required much improvement. Reported by Christopher Hird, produced by Dominic Yeatman, directed by Don Coutts, made by Fulcrum TV
16 March Still getting away with rape, a one-hour special; in 1999 around 7,000 women in England and Wales reported rape; for every hundred rapes, six men are convicted; Prof Jennifer Temkin of the
University of Sussex; Dame
Anne Rafferty; Helen Grindrod; forensic psychiatrist Gillian Mezey; Sandy Hebblethwaite of the
CPS;
Ann Mallalieu, Baroness Mallalieu and how prosecution counsel are often inexperienced, as the prosecution in these cases is not well paid; the US had greater witness preparation; for acquaintance rape in the US, conviction rates are 60-70%, in the UK it is around 30%; Detective Chief Inspector Sue Hill of the Metropolitan Police, and how few cases of rape were probably made up; the British law system was naïve - rapists are not characters widely known for any honesty, whatsoever. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Lynn Ferguson, directed by Howard Bradburn, made by First Frame
12 October Flying under the influence, about
intoxicated British airline pilots, an hour long episode; former air stewardess Caroline Woolistone, went undercover by claiming to be a Channel 4 producer to investigate, and set up, BA pilots; at Marseille airport, having flown with BA from
Gatwick Airport; on the flight she was allowed to film in the cockpit, in Spain, a popular stay with BA aircrew, where BA had five scheduled flights a day on weekdays; Capt Chris Salmon, of BA, seen in Manchester in August 2000; he flew to Spain on BA 2488 on 25 July 2000 (which would also be a catastrophic day for British aviation) where he is filmed drinking; First Officer James Sharples downed a bottle of wine and three beers, as has Capt Chris Salmon, who has another beer and goes clubbing in Spain, drinking another three beers; no pilots are breathalysed, and there were no alcohol laws for pilots either; Dr Dougal Watson of Australia and aviation medicine, who saw the video evidence and thought that pilot Chris Salmon would fall asleep in the flight, which is exactly what occurred on flight BA 2485 to Gatwick on 26 July 2000; Prof Chris Cook of the
University of Kent and alcohol misuse in aviation medicine; BA did not allow drinking eight hours before a flight, and no more than 5 units; flying to Germany from Gatwick, with Capt Mike Philips and First Officer Jason Owen, again filming them in the cockpit; seven hours before takeoff the First Officer has consumed twelve units, as had the Captain; they stay at the Holiday Inn, going to bed at 4am; they leave for the airport at 10am; BA 2715 leaves at 11am on 2 July 2000, where Caroline films in the cockpit as they land at Gatwick; three US airline pilots, aged around 30, conduct an experiment at the
Purdue University in Indiana, on a
Boeing 727 simulator; Dr Leon Wise found alcohol had effects for 14 hours; the experiment found that flying itself wasn't impaired, but incorrect choices were made; over Britain in daylight hours, there are approximately 250 passenger aircraft in the air; Gary Purden, former BA aircrew; First Officer Mike Edwards in Spain at 5.30pm; he leaves the restaurant having drunk 12 units; the flight leaves at 6am; he has consumed 19 units by 11pm;
Malév Hungarian Airlines, the state flyer of Hungary, had 25 aircraft; Malév had the same rules as BA, but Hungary routinely breathalysed aircrew and ground staff; Dr Gabor Hardicsay of the
Civil Aviation Authority (Hungary); the US randomly tested pilots; mainline and underground British train drivers were checked;
London Underground had breathalysed around 4,000 drivers in one year; David Hyde, Director of Safety at BA; BA pilot 44-year-old Nigel King was sacked in February 1998 after being found drunk in his hotel two hours before his flight at 7am; on flight BA 631 from Athens to Heathrow, he was found to be smelling strongly of alcohol, and unsteady on his feet, subsequently collapsing in a hotel lobby;[38] he had gone out for the evening at 6pm on 8 January 1998, returning to his hotel room at 5am;[39] a Virgin Express pilot resigned on Sunday August 29, 1999 after passengers thought that he was drunk on flight TV 857 from
Madrid–Barajas Airport to Brussels, with the flight being abandoned; the passengers had overheard the Virgin Express staff mentioning that they had had trouble trying to wake the pilot in his hotel, as he was so drunk; passengers had sensed that the pilot was drunk, as he walked past them, being many minutes late, at 8.30am on Saturday 28 August, with a 'strange appearance'; Paul Skellon, a representative of
Virgin Express helpfully explained that the pilot had had food poisoning, and that 'medication' that he had taken had made him unwell.;[40][41] two easyJet pilots were disciplined in 2000; BA would suspend the eleven aircrew featured in the documentary, including Capt Richard Agar and First Officer Guy Palling, who flew a Boeing 737 from Marseilles to Gatwick on March 25 on BA 2361, and Capt Anthony Corr and First Officers Gareth Edwards and Richard Firth; two of the featured BA pilots would be dismissed in December 2000 for gross misconduct, and another resigned. BA employed around 3,500 flight crew and around 14,000 cabin crew, and carried 33 million people a year.[42] Narrated by
Haydn Gwynne, produced by Nick Aarons, directed by Howard Bradbury, made by United Productions.
13 April The Nuclear Files, about nuclear industry safety in the UK; the
Sellafield Visitors Centre; a train leaving
Dungeness nuclear power station; nuclear engineer
John Large; the train took 350 miles to reach Sellafield;
Mildred Fox and possible radioactivity reaching the coast of
County Wicklow;
Tom Burke (environmentalist); former Sellafield worker Duncan Ball; Welsh Labour MP
Llew Smith, and whether any plutonium was exported to the US; Prof
Keith Barnham of Imperial College; the melodramatic ponderous tone of the documentary was reminiscent of the 1985 Edge of Darkness. Reported by
Joe Layburn, produced by Geoff Atkinson. directed by Mark Lewis, made by Vera Productions.
2001
26 June Beneath the Veil, about Afghanistan; reporter
Saira Shah reported undercover. Made by
Hardcash Productions. Won the 2002 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
2003
April Al-Qaeda UK, about
Al-Qaeda connections to the UK, notably in
Leicester; Algerian terrorist
Kamel Daoudi left France, for the UK, on 20 September 2002 at around 8pm, being watched the whole way by security services, he travelled under a false name, on a counterfeit French passport by
Eurostar; from London, he travelled to Leicester, a place he knew well, where he had two Algerian friends
Baghdad Meziane and
Brahim Benmerzouga of 52 Prospect Hill, who had travelled to the UK illegally with a false passport, two weeks previous to the programme, these two terorists became the first people in the UK to be convicted of having known connections to Al Qaeda; Benmerzouga was followed around Leicester by the security services, where he mostly sent money, internationally, from outlets similar to Western Union; Baghdad Meziane lived on nearby Rolleston Street; five days after Kamel Daoudi arrived in Leicester, Leicestershire Police gained entry into both houses, where a false passport operation was found in Meziane's address, selling each for £750; Nick Webber was asked by Leicestershire Police to examine computers in the Islamic terrorist address, where he found software for credit card fraud, and the data from the magnetic strips of 180 credit cards; the data of the credit cards had been skimmed from garages and restaurants across the UK; the fake credit cards were sent to a group of Algerians in Spain, spending around £250,000, who were caught in Spain, the day after the Leicester arrests; the two Algerians went to court in Leicester, but the jury were not told that the group in Spain were part of an Algerian terrorist group; terrorist propaganda videos were found by Leicestershire Police in the car of Benmerzouga; Detective Superintendent Martin Morrisey of Leicestershire Police;
Alexis Debat said that MI5 had been heavily investigating Leicester from around 1998; part of the Al Qaeda group in Leicester was
Djamel Beghal, who moved to Leicester in 1997, where his wife still lives; neighbour Nisha Lakha; the group vanished in July 2000, when Beghal moved to Afghanistan to plan a suicide attack; Beghal was arrested travelling back to Europe on 28 July 2001 at
Dubai International Airport, where he admitted being told to attack the US embassy in France, the so-called
2001 bomb plot in Europe, with a suicide truck bomb, to be driven by
Nizar Trabelsi; Baghdad Meziane was originally working in
Düsseldorf, under a different name; Jordanian
Abu Qatada al-Filistini conducted 'study sessions' at the Fourth Feathers youth community centre on Rossmore Road in Marylebone; it became a European conversion centre for Al Qaeda; terrorist
Zacarias Moussaoui attended this centre; Abu Qatada was arrested by British police in October 2002; Algerians comprised the largest Al Qaeda group in Europe; the
Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or GSPC;
Mohamed Sifaoui infiltrated the GSPC, who became trusted by Algerian
Karim Bourti, who was convicted for three years for the
1998 World Cup terror plot; convicted terrorist Karim Bourti travels on the Eurostar with Mohamed Sifaoui, to go to Finsbury Park, and encounters no difficulty at security, meeting terrorist
Omar Saiki, who was convicted for four years in France, for the 1998 bomb plot, and stripped of French citizenship. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Eamonn Matthews, directed by
Rachel Rendall, made by Mentorn Midlands
21 July Beslan, about the
Beslan school siege in September 2004. Won the 2006 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
8 August Why Bomb London?; on 3 January 1996
Lunar House writes a letter to Osama Bin Laden to inform him that he is excluded from the UK; in the mid-1990s, Osama Bin Laden had training camps in Sudan, but Britain had allowed religious radicals from countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to enter in the 1990s; these included
Khalid al-Fawwaz in Willesden Green of the
Advice and Reformation Committee (ARC),
Abu Doha in Dollis Hill,
Omar Bakri, from Syria, in Tottenham, and
Abu Qatada, from Jordan, in Acton;
Alexis Debat of the French government;
Sa'ad Al-Faqih of the
Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia and how Britain was tolerant to these radical individuals, maybe too tolerant;
Pauline Neville-Jones, Baroness Neville-Jones, at the Foreign Office from 1994-96, and how Middle Eastern governments had made complaints about these individuals; the
1995 France bombings;
Jean-Louis Bruguière, and how the radicals involved moved to Britain, as it was a pleasant country in which to live; the
1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya had planning in Britain; Dominique Thomas wrote the book 'Londonistan'; the jihadist Abu Doha arrives in Britain in 1999, to recruit followers, to take part in the
2000 millennium attack plots at Los Angeles Airport, where the attacker was caught with a car full of explosives, receiving 22 years in July 2005; German
Dirk Laabs and the attempted
Strasbourg Cathedral bombing plot in December 2000; three of the attackers had been trained at London mosques; the attackers had had their mobile phones intercepted; the radical jihadist Abu Qatada arrived in 1993, and recruited in London; British intelligence agencies knew that he was dangerous, but had lived in London for eight years (he was featured on Dispatches in 2003); the main participants of the September 2001 attack telephoned Abu Qatada weeks before, and watched his extremist videos;
Abu Izzadeen (Trevor Brooks) of
Al Ghurabaa; Muhammad Sulaiman, of
Luton Central Mosque in
Bury Park;
Finsbury Park Mosque was home of the Supporters of Shariah;
Sajjad H. Rizvi of the University of Exeter; Iftekhar Bokhari of the Hussainia Mosque in Burnley, and the
2001 Oldham riots;
Oussama Kassir and terrorist
Haroon Rashid Aswat, deported from Zambia and arrested in Britain; Neil Doyle;
Andrew White (priest); Mohammed Naseem of
Birmingham Central Mosque;
Shaista Gohir, Baroness Gohir, of Muslim Voice UK, at the Living Islam festival; Sir
Iqbal Sacranie of the
Muslim Council of Britain. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Ed Braman, directed by Tom Porter, made by Mentorn
30 September Mad About Animals, about peculiar animal rights methods of intimidation; vegan Jonny Ablewhite (born 27 January 1970), who grew up in
Aldridge studying English and History at the
University of Leicester, and Kerry Whitburn, of Edgbaston; both had gone to prison; through intimidation, a research lab in Cambridge was stopped;
Mel Broughton; Staffordshire Police followed the unhinged protesters' vehicles; Gail Record shouts 'does your wife have Botox?' to unknown company employees; the protesters don't enjoy being answered back; construction workers call the protesters 'parasites'; Jon Ablewhite was a supply teacher in Wolverhampton;
Keith Mann from Rochdale, with girlfriend Paula, was sentenced to 14 years in 1994;
Devon and Cornwall Police arrest the film-maker, on suspicion of causing criminal damage, being held by police for 18 hours; two weeks later, Jon Ablewhite is arrested, where he remained in prison at the time of broadcast in September 2005; he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to blackmail; the judge, Michael Pert, described the three defendants as 'cold-blooded', and gave each a twelve-year custodial sentence at
Nottingham Crown Court in September 2005, and would be inside for six years. Kerry Whitburn, of
Yardley Wood, had been convicted of arson, when aged 18 in 1987.[43] Reported by David Modell, produced by Chris Bryer
27 April Undercover Copper, about
Leicestershire Police; police officer Nina Hobson receives an award from deputy chief constable David Lindley on 24 January 2006 at the Leicestershire headquarters in
Enderby; Sir
Matt Baggott, the chief constable, gives her the award, but 35 year old Nina was really an undercover reporter for Dispatches, having left the police five years before, being in the police from the age of 18, and joined the police again in April 2005, working as an undercover reporter for four months; Prof
Liz Kelly of
London Metropolitan University; less than 4% of reported rapes in Leicestershire were solved, and twelve other police forces had lower rates; Ian Kelcey of the
Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association; Prof Marian FitzGerald of the University of Kent and
noble cause corruption; Nina learns how police can operate subterfuge for reporting numbers of offences; the CPS now decided which offences would go to court, to reduce time for magistrates, but this now required much written preparation by the police; Sir Matt Baggott sincerely apologises. Narrated by
Joe Duttine, produced by Alexander Gardiner, directed by
Agnieszka Piotrowska and Andrew Mullins, made by Granada London.
2007
15 January Undercover Mosque, about mosques in the UK. Made by Hardcash Productions
18 June Drinking Yourself to Death, about
alcoholic liver disease in Britain; seven million people in Britain drink too much; hospital admissions for alcohol-induced liver disease had doubled in Britain from ten years, and the average age had moved from the age of 60 to 40; Jan Freeman of Derby City Hospital, who had a death from the condition of a patient aged 22;
Finsbury Square in London; the former
Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham; a large glass of wine contains 3.5 units; the
Royal Free Hospital; modest amounts of regular wine consumption will lead to liver disease, as the liver does not get the required time to recuperate;
Centenary Square; supermarkets 50% of Britain's wine, and 20% of British beer; the annual British beer trade show in April 2007, at the Olympia exhibition hall; the
Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers; the annual
London International Wine & Spirits Fair at
ExCeL London in May 2007; British wine consumption had increased by 50% in ten years; Jeremy Beadles of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association; Prof
Ian Gilmore of the
Royal College of Physicians; the headquarters of the
Brewers of Europe trade group was situated near to the European Parliament; the
British Beer and Pub Association; Alison Rogers of
The British Liver Trust; Lib Dem MP
Nick Harvey and Conservative MP
Julie Kirkbride both drank regularly. Reported by Deborah Davies, produced by Eamonn Matthews, directed by Charlie Hawes
15 September What's in your Wine?, about the British wine industry, and practices; in 2007, Britain drank 1.5bn bottles of wine; there are no EU laws for wine producers to list contents; five main wine producers sell the most in Britain - Hardys, Blossom Hill, Jacob's Creek, Gallo and Stowells, in total selling £1bn;
Malcolm Gluck, who wrote The Great Wine Swindle; the French
Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) label in France; organic wine producer
Nicolas Joly; Olivier Andrault of
UFC-Que Choisir;
Randall Grahm of
Bonny Doon Vineyard who had a dispute with the
Wine and Spirit Trade Association; John Corbet-Milward of the WSTA; the French produce over 300m bottles of champagne a year;
Moët & Chandon,
Veuve Clicquot and
Champagne Lanson sell the most in Britain, in total £80m, but were not the best by content; in a taste test, consumers prefer the cheaper sparkling wine; champagne producer
Anselme Selosse; Françoise Peretti of the
CIVC; soil scientist
Claude Bourguignon; organic champagne producer David Léclapart;
Emiliano Fittipaldi of Italy and his investigation in April 2008, in L'Espresso, of Brunellopoli. Reported by Jane Moore, produced by Mark Fielder, directed by Tom Anstiss, made by Quickfire
6 October The Hidden World of Lap Dancing, about regulation of lap dancing clubs in Britain; the Secrets club in Holborn in central London, on a Tuesday; the Wildcats club in
Blackpool on a Wednesday; the Halos club in
Newquay on a Friday;
Lynda Waltho, Labour MP for Stourbridge; Tracy Earnshaw of Newquay;
Dan Rogerson, Lib Dem MP for North Cornwall; Sandrine Leveque of the Object Campaign; Wade in the Water music; the Licensing Act meant that licences were now issued by less-prudish local authorities, not magistrates; Simon Hickson of
St Katharine Docks, where a Secrets club opened; Stourbridge had two clubs; the Heaven club was opposite a 6th form college; in 2008 the Barbarella club opened next to the Labour MP's office; the Capricorn Club near
Goodge Street tube station; six clubs opened in Blackpool; Prof Marion Roberts, who worked with the
local government select committee. Narrated by
Mark Bonnar, produced by Steve Boulton
23 August When Cousins Marry; half of British Pakistanis marry their first cousin; the
Mucolipidosis type IV disorder, causing blindness; the reporter's grandparents were first cousins, with five of their daughters dying in childhood, and three of her uncles being born deaf; in Bradford 75% of Pakistanis married their first cousin; 4-10% of children from these marriages had genetic disorders, with a third of children with these disorders dying before the age of five; in Birmingham, 50% of Pakistanis married their first cousin, a form of
consanguinity; a third of children in Britain with genetic disorders were Pakistani, often with kidney or liver disorders; the
propionic acidemia hereditary condition, which damages the liver; geneticist Prof
Marcus Pembrey; British Pakistanis were three times more likely to have children with a learning disability; it cost around £250,000 a year, each, to provide for such children; not many Labour MPs would discuss the subject, but
Ann Cryer did. Reported by Tazeen Ahmad, produced by Allen Jewhurst, directed by Anshu Rastogi, made by Chameleon Television
17 April Syria: Across the Lines. Reported by
Olly Lambert. Won the 2014 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
23 May The Hunt for Britain's Sex Gangs, about the
Telford child sexual exploitation scandal; by September 2010, Telford police had been operating Operation Chalice for 12 months; 14 year old girls were raped, to see 'who was the best', then taken to Birmingham, to be plied with bottles of
Bacardi; the girls were violently raped; a teenage witness recalls, whilst herself being raped by two males, a nearby locked room with other girls inside, screaming, whilst being raped by multiple males; the offenders were all Pakistani males; the parents of the girls reported them missing to the police over seventy times, but only when a girl made the first complaint 18 months later, did the police start to investigate anything; in early December 2009, with not enough evidence, DCI Edwards arrests nine male suspects in
Wellington, Shropshire; nine girls give evidence, and identify the suspects; 22 year old Ahdel Ali, known as 'Eddie', and 26 year old Mubarek Ali, known as 'Max' of Regent Street in Wellington; with three other suspects (23 year old Mohammed Ali Sultan of Victoria Avenue in Wellington), Ahdel and Mubarek are released on bail, and immediately threaten the female witnesses with violence; fifty police officers are now investigating by September 2010; DCI Neil Jamieson is leading the investigation; girls were held hostage for over ten hours, being constantly raped; one female wrote a list of names of over a hundred male offenders; police believed that there were around two hundred male offenders; the police had not encountered such offences before; after one teenage female was initially raped, a few days later, the male offender would be accompanied by his cousin, and brother, and uncle; DS Sophie Wade sees the traits of the male offenders; the police realise that there is scarce forensic evidence; Sheila Taylor identified trafficking methods, and psychological manipulation in Derby; in being trafficked, a teenage female was passed around a total of 72 males, part of nine groups across England; with mobile phone records, and copious
ANPR evidence, the Pakistani males could be tracked to a few square metres over months; when being rearrested, simpleton Ahdel Ali makes threats to the police; graphic text messages on the offenders' mobile phones will inevitably incriminate them, and could identify other possible offenders; from the text message evidence, a common place to meet the girls was the 'hospital bus stop'; the teenage girls were often referred to as 'bitch' or 'whore'; on 2 November 2010, simpleton Ahdel Ali is interviewed by police, informing the police that he didn't rape the teenage girl, but admitting that he 'had sex with her'; the CPS decides not to take the series of rapes to court as the victim could be portrayed as an unreliable witness; court begins on 16 May 2011, with nine Pakistani men on trial, seven being married, and one a grandfather, with 47 charges; seven teenage girls give evidence; girls were exchanged at the Lal Komal restaurant in Oakengates, the Dhaka Tandoori on Tan Bank in Wellington, and Thiara's Fish Bar on Haybridge Road in Hadley, by Mubarek Ali, where they were gang raped by workers at the restaurant, up to four times a week; the court lasts for four months, where the girls are constantly accused of being a compulsive liar, in legal cross-examination; the court finishes on 6 September 2011, and all the Pakistani males walk free, due to inadequate female witness testimony; on 8 August 2012 at
Worcester Crown Court, the offenders are finally convicted; in October 2012 24-year-old Ahdel Ali receives 18 years, and 29-year-old Mubarek Ali receives 14 years; six other offenders are convicted in December 2012. Reported by
Tazeen Ahmad, produced by Brian Woods, directed by Anna Hall, made by True Vision North
24 June The Police's Dirty Secret, about squalid sexual relationships between undercover police and females in protest movements, the
UK undercover policing relationships scandal; Peter Francis was in the
Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) of Special Branch, where he was known as Pete Black; in 1993 he joined
Youth against Racism in Europe, where he became a (convincing) branch secretary;
Bob Lambert (undercover police officer) who was now a university lecturer, who had infiltrated the ALF; a female ALF protester knew Bob Lambert as Bob Robinson; Bob also had a wife and two children; in late 1985 Bob's son was born; Bob subsequently met 24 year old Belinda Harvey, who was not part of any protest group; animal rights protester Helen Steel attended
London Greenpeace meetings in 1987, where she met fellow protester John Barker, who was really the police officer John Dines; Helen would know the police office for two years; the
National Public Order Intelligence Unit superseded the SDS in 2008; SDS officer Mark Jenner lived with a female protester for four years, as Mark Cassidy;
Mark Kennedy (police officer) had undercover relationships with female protesters across Europe, with one relationship being of six years; Chief Constable
Mick Creedon, of Operation Herne. Reported by
Paul Lewis (journalist), produced by George Waldrum, directed by Katherine Churcher, made by
ITN Productions
25 November Britain's Big Fat Bill, about
obesity in the United Kingdom; there were 1.5m morbidly obese people in the UK; Norma Mills was 5ft 6 and 20 stone; for her obesity she took Xenical (
Orlistat); Prof
Mike Lean of the University of Glasgow; British hospitals were seeing eleven times as many obese patients from ten years before; it cost the NHS £5.1bn; Prof
Nick Finer of UCL;
bariatric surgery at
St George's Hospital in Tooting; surgeon Paul Super in Birmingham; John Coakley, medical director of
Homerton University Hospital. Reported by
Tazeen Ahmad, produced by Charlotte Rowles, directed by Matt Haan, made by Watershed Television
2014
22 January Children on the Frontline. Won the 2015 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
24 February Secrets of Your Credit Rating, Dispatches visited the Nottingham site of
Experian, without Experian knowing; financial writer
Sarah Pennells; there are three main credit rating agencies in the UK, Experian,
Equifax and
Callcredit; in the small print of credit agreements, information is allowed to be given to some of the agencies; John and Rebecca of the
Leyland Band, who were husband and wife; teacher Ros Canning; James Jones of Experian; Experian's office in central Nottingham, with an undercover Dispatches reporter Georgia Boulton, purporting to be an employee, where the employee is trained about the Merlin and Portal systems;
credit reports are assigned via a 'potential alias', introduced in 2001, which is not a 100% identification, and can be merely a lucky guess; Damon Gibbons of the Centre for Responsible Credit; Labour MP
John Mann, Baron Mann had his credit report mixed up with another John Mann with the same date of birth, to detriment of his credit rating; the
Federal Trade Commission; Reported by Morland Sanders, produced by Steve Boulton, directed by Sarah Hey, made by Nine Lives
2018
14 May Myanmar's Killing Fields. Made with PBS. Won the 2019 BAFTA TV Award for Best Current Affairs
2021
11 October Cops on Trial; a bipolar woman reports a boyfriend posting unsolicited content of her; a male police officer visits her house to interview her, views the explicit content, and gives her his
Instagram details, and they meet up socially; the officer was investigated and found to have committed gross misconduct, but he resigned before any further investigation; forensic psychologist Terri Cole of
Bournemouth University; in four years, around 2,000 male police personnel had been accused of sexual misconduct, with 370 alleged sexual assaults, and 100 alleged rapes; Alan Butler of Warwickshire Police took advantage his position; around 250 police personnel had been accused of this offence over four years; there are around 150,000 police officers in the UK; Glasgow police officer Fraser Ross battered his girlfriend for six years, but escaped jail, keeping his police pension, as he had resigned;
Police Scotland had 166 personnel accused of misconduct in four years, but none were dismissed;
Susannah Fish, former chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police;
Louisa Rolfe of the
National Police Chiefs' Council. Reported by Ellie Flynn, produced by George Waldrum, directed by Ben Ryder, made by ITN Productions