Bishop hits back over Braverman’s claims asylum seekers are faking Christian conversion


Gabriella Swerling
Mon, 5 February 2024 at 2:26 pm GMT-7·4-min read

The Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, said: 'Churches have no power to circumvent the Government’s duty to vet and approve applications' - Rob Welham/Camera Press

A bishop has attacked Suella Braverman after she said that churches were fuelling fake asylum claims.

Mrs Braverman said that during her time as home secretary she “became aware of churches around the country facilitating industrial-scale bogus asylum claims”, with migrants “directed to these churches as a one-stop shop to bolster their asylum case”.

She made her comments in The Telegraph amid a row over Abdul Ezedi, 35, the refugee suspected of being behind the Clapham chemical attack who was granted asylum on his third attempt, with the support of a priest, having claimed he had converted to Christianity and would be persecuted in his native Afghanistan.

While the Home Office is responsible for checking the criminal records and safety of asylum seekers, religious institutions are under increasing scrutiny over the legitimacy of those wishing to convert.

The Church of England has rejected Mrs Braverman’s criticism, with the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, writing in The Telegraph on Monday: “We are not politicians, and we know that to be involved in political debate can be bruising.

“But those who have claimed a link between the abuse of our asylum system and the action of bishops in parliament are simply wrong.

“It is saddening to see this being implied by former holders of senior ministerial office, who have had opportunity but not sought to raise these concerns with senior clergy before.”
Church ‘not responsible’

Dr Francis-Dehqani, who will become the lead bishop on immigration later in February, denied that the Church was in any way responsible for the criminal history of converted asylum seekers.

He said: “Churches have no power to circumvent the Government’s duty to vet and approve applications – the responsibility for this rests with the Home Office.”

The bishop also denied that church support for asylum seekers’ claims amounted to a “magic ticket” for entry to the UK, adding that the notion that a person may be “fast-tracked through the asylum system, aided and abetted by the Church is simply inaccurate”.

Writing in The Telegraph over the weekend, Mrs Braverman questioned the clergy’s role in conversions from Islam, saying: “Attend mass once a week for a few months, befriend the vicar, get your baptism date in the diary and, bingo, you’ll be signed off by a member of clergy that you’re now a God-fearing Christian who will face certain persecution if removed to your Islamic country of origin. It has to stop.”

According to Home Office guidance for officials making asylum decisions concerning Christian converts, “ultimately, evidence even from a senior church member is not determinative”.

Friends of Ezedi told The Telegraph last week that he remained a “good Muslim” who bought half a Halal sheep every fortnight despite his apparent conversion.

On Monday an evangelical church leader said priests must look for “red flags” when baptising asylum seekers because some were faking conversion.

Pastor Graham Nicholls, the director of Affinity, a network of 1,200 evangelical churches and ministries in the UK, said that church leaders “need discernment” to “test whether people are genuine in their beliefs”, adding that in some cases prospective converts were “faking it”.
Undue haste for baptism

He said “red flags” may consist of large numbers of people presenting as converts, an undue haste from people to receive some credible sign of being a Christian such as baptism, a “rather mechanical assent to believing but without any obvious heart change”, and a general sense they might not be genuine.

He acknowledged that “these things are hard to judge” and that “we cannot see into people’s souls”, but added: “There seems to be a problem of asylum seekers claiming to have been converted to Christianity to support their applications.”

On Monday Met detectives said they had arrested and bailed a 22-year-old man on suspicion of assisting an offender as the manhunt continued. Police added that the mother Ezedi is suspected of dousing with a corrosive liquid may lose the sight in her right eye.

Ezedi arrived illegally in the UK in the back of a lorry in 2016, claiming his life would be in danger if he was returned to Afghanistan.

Despite being convicted of a sex offence two years later, he went on to claim asylum successfully. He was granted leave to remain in 2021 or 2022 on his third attempt after a priest vouched for his conversion, arguing that he was “wholly committed” to his new religion.

A Church of England spokesman previously said: “It is the role of the Home Office, and not the Church, to vet asylum seekers and judge the merits of their individual cases.”

The Home Office was contacted for comment.

UK
Depth of worklessness crisis revealed as ONS finds 400,000 more dropouts

Office for National Statistics (ONS)

Tim Wallace
Mon, 5 February 2024 

UK workers

Britain’s jobless crisis is worse than previously thought as new estimates show more than 400,000 extra people have dropped out of the labour market amid record long-term sickness.

There are now 9.25 million people aged between 16 and 64 who are not working nor looking for work, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), meaning they are officially classed as “economically inactive”.

Officials have revised the figures upwards because the adult population is almost 750,000 bigger than previously expected, fuelled by greater levels of immigration.

There are 172,000 more people in work than previously realised, as well as 30,000 more unemployed. There are also an additional 414,000 who are inactive, amid a growing trend of long-term sickness.

A total of 2.8m people have dropped out of the jobs market because of their health, a record high. This is around 200,000 higher than previously estimated. In part this is thought to be due to a rise in the number of older workers, who are disproportionately likely to be unwell.

Former cabinet ministers said the figures underlined the urgency needed by Rishi Sunak to get a grip on worklessness. Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “Long term sickness has spiralled since Covid.

“The Government needs to put all their focus on bringing them all into Universal Credit so they can be incentivised back into work, and cut taxes to help incentivise those on middle incomes back into work as well. Work remains the best route out of poverty.”

Sir John Redwood, another former cabinet minister, said unless action is taken, it will affect the balance between those who are out of work on pensions and benefits and those in work who are paying taxes to pay for these.

“This encourages governments to allow more people in as legal migrants, which is cheap for the employer but expensive for the taxpayer because it will mean extra spending on social housing and health spending etc. We are already paying for the public service needs of people who are already here.”

Sir John added that the figures could also make it harder for the Bank of England to cut interest rates from a 16-year high of 5.25pc.

“Another concern is that if your income tax and working tax revenue is down and public spending is up, this leads to bigger deficits which make it harder to bring interest rates down,” he said.

Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s Governor, has stressed he is worried the tight jobs market is causing high pay rises, potentially fuelling sustained inflation.

Huw Pill, the Bank’s chief economist, said on Monday that while it remained “premature” to discuss rate cuts at the current juncture, he noted that the “outlook for monetary policy has shifted” and it was now a question of “when, rather than if” the Bank would begin loosening policy.

He added that as underlying domestic inflationary pressures started to wane “we can begin to reduce” interest rates.

The ONS also found more women in the workforce than previously thought. As women are more likely to take time out of work to care for relatives, this pushed up the number of people who are looking after their home or families by 108,000.

There are also an extra 142,000 students.

Tony Wilson at the Institute for Employment Studies said the increase in sickness means the economy is missing out on extra growth.

“It means the economy is underperforming. We could be doing better. We could have more people in employment, more output and a stronger economy, if we could get better at helping people to prepare for work, get into work, and help those in work to stay there,” he said.

The new data points to an unemployment rate of 3.9pc, below the 4.2pc previously estimated.

George Buckley, economist at Nomura, said the Bank “might see a tighter market which means there are fewer people available to work, and that means there is more upward pressure on wages”.

“This is helpful to the cause that the MPC will keep rates on hold for longer,” he said.

Signs of growing strength in the economy also risk pushing the Bank to keep rates high.

Britain is surging ahead of France and Germany as rate cut hopes drive the strongest growth in the UK’s services sector since May 2023, new data shows.

Activity rose for the third month in a row as expectations of Bank of England interest rate cuts this year boosted consumer and business confidence, driving a jump in new orders.

By contrast, low output and high labour costs are driving fears of stagflation in France and Germany.

However, there are also lingering signs the cost of living crisis is still hitting families’ finances.

Retail sales in January were up 1.2pc compared to the same month of 2023, according to the British Retail Consortium. This is below the rate of inflation and so indicates households spent more money to take home fewer goods. While families increased spending on food by 6.3pc, they cut back by 1.8pc on other products.

Meanwhile, EY warned refinancing debt could cost British companies an extra £25bn because of higher interest rates.

The Big Four accountant said refinancing costs have risen by as much as 6pc since 2022, as the Bank of England has lifted interest rates to bring the post-pandemic surge in inflation under control.

Higher borrowing costs will hit UK-listed companies now preparing to refinance £500bn of lending over the next three years.

It comes amid fresh warnings from the Centre for Economics and Business Research that Britain faces a record number of corporate insolvencies this year as companies which were hit hard by the pandemic shut their doors.

Ukraine-Russia war latest: Tucker Carlson says Russia is doing ‘very well’ during Moscow visit

Harriet Barber
Mon, 5 February 2024 

A serviceman of the 59th Separate Motorised Infantry Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the call sign "Skorpion" - ALINA SMUTKO/REUTERS

Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, said Russia is “doing very well” during a visit to Moscow but remained coy about whether he will interview Vladimir Putin.

In a video captured during his visit, Mr Carlson said he wanted to “talk to people, look around, and see how it’s doing... and it’s doing very well.”

When asked if he would interview Mr Putin, he replied: “We’ll see.”


Mr Carlson said in late September 2023 that he had attempted to interview the Russian leader, but that the US government had blocked the move.

“I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, and the US government stopped me,” Mr Carlson told Swiss magazine, Die Weltwoche.

The Kremlin, asked the same question, said it could hardly be expected to comment on the comings and goings of foreign journalists or provide a running commentary on them.

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman said: “Many foreign journalists come to Russia every day, many continue to work here, and we welcome this. We have nothing to announce in terms of the president’s interviews to foreign media.”

Mr Carlson has regularly sparked controversy for inflammatory statements about race and LGBTQ rights, and faced backlash when describing footage from the Jan 6 assault on the Capitol as “mostly peaceful chaos.” He was fired from Fox News last year.

British infants more likely to die before first birthday than those in other developed countries


Michael Searles
Mon, 5 February 2024 

A report found that the UK ranked 30 out of 49 developed countries for infant mortality - STURTI/E+

British infants are more likely to die before their first birthday than those in most other developed countries after an “appalling decline” in children’s health since the pandemic.

By the age of five, 20 per cent of British children are considered overweight or obese, and one in four is suffering from tooth decay, a report has said.

The UK ranked 30 out of 49 developed countries for infant mortality, which is the proportion of children who are dying before their first birthday, experts from the Academy of Medical Sciences said.

It means Britain’s children are less likely to reach one than 60 per cent of other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, as progress on improving survival rates has stalled.

There were four deaths per 1,000 births in the UK between 2019 and 2022, according to the OECD. Japan had the lowest infant mortality at 1.7 deaths per 1,000 births, while most of Europe and Australia also fared better.

The US, Canada, India, South Africa and several South American countries ranked below the UK.

The UK’s global ranking has gradually fallen from 23rd in 2015 when the infant mortality rate was 3.9 deaths per 1,000 births. While other countries improved, Britain’s rate stagnated before it fell during the pandemic back to figures not seen since 2012.
Pandemic contributed to decline in children’s health

The report found children’s decline in health had been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the cost of living crisis, but started in the years preceding 2020.

The academics said a national rise in child poverty and in mental health issues were also to blame for children’s ill health.

The number of children living in extreme poverty tripled between 2019 and 2022, the report found.

The authors said the cost to the economy of not addressing children’s poor health was at least £16.13 billion, using data from the London School of Economics.

Professor Helen Minnis, co-chairman of the report from Glasgow University, said it was clear that “we are betraying our children”.

“Child deaths are rising, infant survival lags behind comparable countries, and preventable physical and mental health issues plague our youngest citizens.

“Unless the health of babies and young children is urgently prioritised, we condemn many to a life of poorer health and lost potential. The time to act is now,” she said.
‘Disconcencerting’ report findings

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, co-chairman from the University of Oxford, said: “There are huge challenges for the NHS today, driven by the growing pressures on health and social care from an ageing population.

“Even more disconcerting is the evidence cited in our Academy of Medical Sciences report of an appalling decline in the health of our children, which makes for an even more bleak outlook for their future.

“There is clear evidence in the report that tackling childhood health conditions, addressing inequalities and providing early years social support can change the future of health and prosperity.”

A government spokesman said short-term and long-term action has been implemented to improve children’s health. This includes “dramatically reducing sugar in children’s foods, investing over £600 million to improve the quality of sport for children, and encouraging healthy diets for families from lower-income households through schemes like Healthy Start”.

They added: “We’re also investing an additional £2.3 billion a year into mental health services, the number of children seen by NHS dentists rose by 14 per cent last year, and we’re taking steps to reduce youth vaping and introducing the first ever smoke-free generation.

“Cutting waiting lists is one of the Government’s top five priorities. Despite ongoing pressure on the NHS, we have cut the total waiting list and the number of individual patients waiting for treatment compared to the previous month.”

UK

Labour plans to give ethnic minorities and disabled ‘full right to equal pay’

Amy Gibbons
Mon, 5 February 2024 

Labour wants to make it easier for minority groups to bring a claim against their employer - william87/iStock Editorial

Labour is proposing to put race on the same footing as sex in equal pay claims in order to “root out” inequality.

Under the reforms, ethnic minorities and disabled people would have a “full right to equal pay” enshrined in law, bringing their legal protections on par with those of women.

In the party’s view, this would make it easier for people from minority groups to bring a claim against their employer because they would no longer have to prove “direct discrimination”.

But Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, suggested the change would be pointless because it is “obviously already illegal to pay someone less because of their race”.

She claimed the plans would “set people against each other”, create a “bonanza for dodgy activist lawyers” and waste millions on “red tape”.

Currently, while everyone can sue on the basis of discrimination, women have a right to equal pay for work of “equal value” written into the Equality Act 2010.

This means they are entitled to make a claim if they suspect they are being paid less than a man for a job deemed to have equal worth, even if it is technically a different role – for example, a cashier versus a warehouse worker.

‘Pointless red tape’

Labour would expand this right to include black, Asian and minority ethnic people, as well as disabled people.

It is already illegal to pay these groups less based on their protected characteristics, but they currently have to prove “direct discrimination” to sue. The reforms would allow them to make an equal pay claim instead.

Writing on social media, Mrs Badenoch said: “Labour’s proposed new race law will set people against each other and see millions wasted on pointless red tape.

“It is obviously already illegal to pay someone less because of their race. The new law would be a bonanza for dodgy, activist lawyers.”

Darren Newman, an employment lawyer, suggested that making an equal pay claim can be more complicated partly because it requires “finding an actual comparator – rather than a hypothetical one – employed on ‘equal work’”.

In a blog post, he wrote that most equal pay cases “eventually boil down to the question of whether the pay is discriminatory” anyway, adding: “It is not at all clear that an equal pay claim is better than a discrimination claim. It is, however, undoubtedly more complex.”

Racism ‘sewn into fabric of system itself’

The move forms one of the central policies in Labour’s proposed Race Equality Act, designed to deliver economic growth that “everyone can have a stake in”.

Separately, the party would enact existing “dual discrimination” laws, aimed at streamlining the process for people who wish to sue on multiple fronts. For example, the reforms would allow a black woman to make one claim for sexism and racism, rather than two.

But Mr Newman said it would be “nonsense on stilts” to claim this was beneficial, adding: “The idea that a claimant in these circumstances has to bring two separate tribunal claims is gloriously wrongheaded. There is only one act of discrimination and only one claim, even if it can be expressed in two different ways.”

The measures, written into the Equality Act, are currently lying dormant. The change would probably be made through secondary legislation. Labour said the reforms would also benefit women going through the menopause because they could bring a claim on the basis of sex and age at the same time.

However, some critics said the proposals did not go far enough.

Dr Shabna Begum, the head of the Runnymede Trust, an equality think tank, told The Guardian: “The plans fall short of addressing the formidable scale of inequalities that shape the experiences and opportunities of people of colour.

“Committing to address structural racial inequality needs to understand that racism doesn’t simply arise when the system fails – but that racism is actually sewn into the very fabric of the system itself.

“Labour must use the Race Equality Act as a platform to commit to an ambitious, cross-governmental approach supported with sustained investment addressing the unacceptable – and in some cases worsening – disparities in health, housing, wealth and policing, faced by so many communities of colour.”

What are the laws for equal pay? Labour expected to grant equal pay rights for ethnic minorities


Lola Christina Alao
Mon, 5 February 2024 

Labour said any changes they would make if they won the next general election would be gradually introduced to give employers time to adjust (Getty Images)

Labour has outlined its plans to extend full rights to equal pay to ethnic minority workers and disabled people if it wins the next general election.

Women currently have stronger protections on pay than other groups. Under the party's new plans, equal pay claims on the basis of ethnicity and disability would reportedly be treated in the same way as those made on the basis of gender.

Keir Starmer is expected to reveal updated plans for the draft Race Equality Act on Monday. The proposed changes would also enact protections against “dual discrimination”, in which people face prejudice due to a combination of protected characteristics, according to The Guardian.


However, Minister for Equalities Kemi Badenoch said this would "be a bonanza for dodgy, activist lawyers".

She said the proposed legislation would "set people against each other and see millions wasted on pointless red tape".

"It is obviously already illegal to pay someone less because of their race," Badenoch added.

Labour said any changes they would make if they won the next general election would be gradually introduced to give employers time to adjust.

The party has also established a race equality taskforce, led by Baroness Lawrence and co-chaired by shadow equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds.

"It has never been more important to deliver race equality," Ms Dodds told The Guardian on Sunday.

She added: "Inequality has soared under the Tories and too many black, Asian and ethnic minority families are working harder and harder for less and less. This is holding back their families and holding back the economy.

"We are proud of our achievements in government, from the landmark Equality Act [in 2010] to strengthening protections against discrimination. The next Labour government will go further to ensure no matter where you live in the UK, and whatever your background, you can thrive."

When was the equal pay act?

The original Equal Pay Act was passed on 29 May 1970, and came into force on 29 December 1975.

Who does it apply to?

It established that men and women should be paid equally for the same work, or work of a broadly similar nature.

How is it different from the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and Race Relations Act 1976?

The Equal Pay Act, Sex Discrimination Act, and Race Relations Act are now all combined.

The Equality Act, came into force in October 2010, and merged and replaced the following legislation:

Equal Pay Act 1970;


Sex Discrimination Act 1975;


Race Relations Act 1976;


Disability Discrimination Act 1995;


Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003;


Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003;


Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006;


Part 2, Equality Act 2006 and the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007.

The Equality Act legally protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society.

Plans for collider ‘to smash particles together to unveil Universe’s mysteries’

Nina Massey, PA Science Correspondent
Mon, 5 February 2024 



Researchers are developing plans for a new collider that could smash particles together at a greater force than currently possible in a bid to shed light on some of the Universe’s biggest mysteries.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research’s (Cern) Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will complete its mission around 2040, and experts are looking at what could replace it.

Early estimates suggest the new machine, called the Future Circular Collider (FCC), would cost around £13.7 billion (15 billion Swiss Francs).

It is expected to be installed in a tunnel measuring some 91 kilometres in circumference at a depth of between 100 and 400 metres on French and Swiss territory.

Using the highest energies, it will smash particles together in the hope that new findings will change the world of physics, and understanding of how the Universe works.

On Monday, Cern announced that a mid-term feasibility study did not find a “technical showstopper”.

Among other things, the review was also able to identify the ideal location for the infrastructure of the project, and the size of the proposed tunnel.

In 2012, the LHC detected a new particle called the Higgs Boson, which provides a new way to look at the Universe.

However, dark matter and dark energy have remained elusive, and researchers hope the new collider will be able to answer some of science’s greatest unanswered questions.

Cern’s director general, Professor Fabiola Gianotti, said: “The FCC will be an unprecedented instrument to explore the law of physics and of nature, at the smallest scales and at the highest energies.”

She added: “[It] will allow us to address some of the outstanding questions in fundamental physics today in our knowledge of the fundamental constituents of matter and the structure and evolution of the Universe.”

Addressing critics who suggest the project is very expensive, and there are no guarantees it will answer outstanding questions about the Universe, Eliezer Rabinovici, president of the Cern council, said the aim was to build “discovery machines”, and not “confirmation machines”.

Prof Gianotti added: “We build the facility, and experimental facilities not to run behind the prediction, [or] correct calculation.

“Our goal is to address open questions, then of course, theories develop, and ideas on how to answer those questions.

“But nature may have chosen a completely different path. So our goal is to look at the open question and try to find an answer, whichever answer, nature has decided out there.

“It’s true that at the moment, we do not have a clear theoretical guidance on what we should look for, but it is exactly at times where we lack theoretical guidance – which means we do not have a clear idea of how nature may answer the open question – that we need to build instruments.

“Because the instruments will allow us to make a big step forward towards addressing the question, or also telling us what are the right questions to ask.”

If approved, the FCC could be running by the early to mid 2040s.

Professor Tim Gershon, elementary particle physics group, University of Warwick, said: “The so-called Future Circular Collider is Cern’s proposal to address this challenge.

“It will provide the ability to measure the properties of the Higgs Boson in unprecedented precision, and in so doing to look at the Universe in new ways.

“It is hoped that this will provide answers to some of the most important fundamental questions about the Universe, such as what happened in its earliest moments.

“The latest report on the ongoing FCC feasibility studies is encouraging – in the most optimistic scenario the new collider could start to produce data in just over two decades from now.

“But there is still a very long way to go.”

RAF hero soars again – 102 years old, doing 210 knots flying a Spitfire


Eleanor Steafel

The Telegraph
Mon, 5 February 2024 

Jack Hemmings joined the RAF in 1940 at 18. It has been 84 years since the grandfather-of-three, first took to the skies - Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

It’s almost impossible for younger generations to imagine the skies being filled with the roar of Spitfires, let alone fathom the idea of signing up to go to war.

Jack Hemmings, 102, doesn’t recall feeling frightened when he joined the RAF in 1940 at 18 – he trusted the training would prepare him for whatever the war threw at him.

Going to war “made me grow up a bit, I suppose”, said Jack, a Second World War veteran and former RAF Squadron Leader, who on Monday became the oldest pilot ever to fly a Spitfire.

A bomber pilot, he was stationed in Kolkata with 353 Squadron to protect the Bay of Bengal and the coast of Burma (as it was then known) until 1946, and received the Air Force Cross for “exemplary gallantry while flying”.

Last month, Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff, implored ministers to “mobilise the nation”, suggesting the country’s defences could be strengthened by bringing back conscription, which was suspended in 1960.

What could younger generations learn from that of Jack? “Who’s to say that our generation was any better than theirs?” he said, speaking before his flight in the Heritage Hangar at Biggin Hill airfield. “But by and large I think the present generation are a bit scatty.”

Jack Hemmings in the Heritage Hangar at Biggin Hill airfield

 - Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

He added: “Going to war, your mind is concentrating on what you’re doing, which is your part in the war […] You apply your mind to your task and do it as well as you can.”

Back then, you relied on your squadron and your training to get you through, he said. “You’re trained to meet all circumstances. If there’s a new circumstance, that’s what you’re trained for – to work out what the problem is, put it right and get back.”

On the airfield at Biggin Hill, as the Spitfire roared into life on Monday, you could feel the judder of its powerful Merlin engine. But as soon as you take flight, Jack said, soaring into the air at 210 knots, aiming for the clouds, it’s a different story – there is a great sense of peace that comes with being airborne. “Once you’re on the ground and away from controlled airspace, the sky is yours, you get all sorts of emotions.

“Sometimes it’s just pleasure at a lovely outlook. Other times it’s relief when you maybe weren’t quite sure where you were.”
Now it was his turn to find out what all the fuss was about

It has been 84 years since Jack, now a grandfather-of-three, first took to the skies.

He might not have been fazed by much at 18, but at 102, you could have forgiven him for being somewhat daunted by the prospect of clambering into a cockpit on a freezing, windswept airfield and taking flight.

But as soon as the signal came to board, he bounded out of his wheelchair and strode towards the aircraft in his khaki flying suit with the vim and vigour of a man at least 20 years younger.

In 1940, he would have rolled his eyes at the Spitfire lads, he said, deeming them “fighter boys” and “kids”.

Now, it was his turn to find out what all the fuss was about.

Speaking before the flight, he wondered if he might find a Spitfire – a slip of a thing compared to the aircraft he flew in the war – easier to handle.

“I expect I’ll find it vastly more manoeuvrable but of course there will be limits on the manoeuvres we can do. I’m sure they’ll want to keep it fairly straight and level.”
Jack is one of just two remaining members of his squadron

Not that he planned to pass up the chance for a few aerobatics – it seems you’re never too old to use the heavens as a playground. “I love aerobatics,” he admitted, smiling broadly. “I suppose it’s the pleasure of starting off straight and level and upsetting that situation and putting it right.”

Taking to the skies in the two-seater Spitfire - Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

This year will mark 80 years since the Battle of Kohima – the turning point of the Japanese offensive into India, where Jack was stationed. He is one of just two remaining members of his squadron.

Did he expect his former comrades to be in his thoughts when he took to the skies? He is far too pragmatic for all that. When you’re in the air, he said, “you’re busy doing what you’re supposed to do”.

“I’m not going to sit there and think of other times. This time is the important one.”

Monday’s flight was by no means the first time in 80 years Jack had been airborne. He bought a small aircraft after his retirement. On his 100th birthday in 2021, he performed an aerobatic display in a Slingsby Firefly – a surprise gift from his wife, Kate.

Mr Hemmings described his flying skills as 'a bit rusty. Not surprisingly, as I am rusty' - Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

In 2022, he flew a 1947 Gemini – the same model he took to Africa in 1948 in what was the first British mission to assess humanitarian needs in isolated communities dotted across the continent.

Setting out with a map, a compass and only the River Nile as their guide, he and his friend Stuart King, who had been at D-Day, visited more than 100 mission outposts which were separated from vital resources by jungles and deserts.
Jack wore a look of pure contentment on his face

They crashed on a Burundi mountainside; a moment Jack (who once nicknamed himself “Crasher Jack”) remembers vividly.

“The surprising thing was we smacked the ground at 100 miles an hour, into a totally undeveloped hillside.

“We could have gone straight into an enormous boulder or tree but we went into rough ground and didn’t burst into flames and the lid in the door opened quite simply.

“Neither of us was injured except I had a bruise on my thigh where it hit the throttle and Stuart had a cut on his little finger. It couldn’t have been more minimal.”

They founded Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), the world’s largest humanitarian air service, which still flies all over the world delivering aid and medical help in low income countries.

Coming into land after his 30-minute flight, Jack wore a look of pure contentment on his face.

His co-pilot, Barry Hughes, had handed over the controls mid-flight. “I don’t think he’s lost his touch,” said Mr Hughes.

How did Jack find it? “Absolutely delightful,” he said, beaming as the propellers slowed and the roof of the cockpit lifted.

“Slightly heavier than I expected. We were flying at about 210 knots which is faster than I used to fly in my Air Force days. I was a bit rusty. Not surprisingly, as I am rusty.”

Paris Olympics chief faces legal probe over pay: source

Alexandre HIELARD
Tue, 6 February 2024 


The probe into Tony Estanguet adds to the legal woes of the organising committee (Bertrand GUAY)

French investigators have opened a legal probe into the pay of Paris Olympics chief organiser Tony Estanguet, a legal source said Tuesday, in an embarrassing development six months before the Games begin.

The enquiry by magistrates specialised in financial crimes began "last week" and will look into the manner in which Estanguet receives his pay as head of the organising committee, the source said on condition of anonymity.

The triple gold medal-winning Olympic canoeist had so far been spared the legal problems that have embroiled other members of the Paris Olympics organising team.

His annual remuneration of 270,000 euros ($290,000) before tax and bonuses was made public in 2018 after a furore over reports that he would receive almost double that amount.

But according to revelations in the investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaine last October, Estanguet uses his own company to bill the organising committee monthly, instead of drawing a salary.

The arrangement is to avoid a salary cap imposed on charities with the same status as the organising committee.

A spokesperson for the committee said it was "astonished" by news of the investigation, given that Estanguet's package had been approved by the board and officials in the economy ministry.

The probe is a major blow for the 45-year-old, the public face of the Paris Olympics, who is seeking to focus attention on preparations for the sporting events at the July 26-August 11 Games.

The Olympics have been repeatedly tarnished by corruption in the past, either over the manner in which the Games were awarded or through the lucrative construction and services contracts that are part of the event.

- Legal woes -

The Paris organising committee was already the subject of three separate investigations into the possible misuse of public money and favouritism in the awarding of contracts.

The offices of the committee and Games infrastructure group Solideo have been searched by police, as have the homes of two other senior figures in the organising committee, Etienne Thobois and Edouard Donnelly.

Those cases revolve in part around sports management or events companies founded by senior Games staff before they started working for the Paris 2024 organising committee.

Around 20 different contracts are under the microscope, totalling tens of million of euros, one judicial source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

France's Anti-Corruption Agency had flagged possible problems with Estanguet's pay arrangement in a report in 2021 because of the organising committee's status as a charity.

The spokesperson said that his pay had been approved by the organisation's pay committee, composed of independent experts, and approved by the Economic and Financial Controller General in the economy ministry.

Given that Estanguet usually chairs the board, it had met without him when discussing his remuneration, the spokesperson said.

- Nearly ready -

Organisers of Paris 2024 have been determined to showcase a different sort of Olympics, shorn of the common problems of vast over-spending, wasteful infrastructure investment, and corruption.

The 2016 Rio Olympics left the city near bankrupt, while large-scale graft allegations shocked the general public.

The former Brazilian Olympics boss and the governor of the city were both convicted afterwards.

Several businessmen have also been found guilty of bribing a Tokyo Olympics committee member in a scandal that soured the mood over the 2020 Games held in the Japanese capital a year later due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the legal problems, the Paris Games appear broadly on track, with almost all of the main building work finished and the budget over-spend relatively small compared with past editions.

This week will see the committee unveil the medal designs, while a brand new venue which is set to host the basketball and rhythmic gymnastics will open its doors at the weekend.

The athletes' village is set to be inaugurated by President Emmanuel Macron on February 29.

The French sports world, including football, rugby and tennis, has been shaken by a string of scandals in recent years.

The head of the French Football Federation, Noel Le Graet, stepped down last year after accusations of sexual harassment, while the head of the rugby federation was convicted of corruption.

alh-tll-adp/gj

How Orwell fared in Burma’s imperial police – and the bedroom

Nakul Krishna
Tue, 6 February 2024 


Burma Sahib is Paul Theroux's 30th novel - Hamish Hamilton

Paul Theroux’s 30th novel, about George Orwell’s years as a policeman in Burma, is part of a well-populated genre: Tan Twan Eng on Somerset Maugham in Malaysia, Colm Tóibín on Thomas Mann in America, Damon Galgut on EM Forster in India. Burma Sahib also joins the many books published last year to mark the 120th anniversary of Orwell’s birth, of which the ones that have provoked the most attention are DJ Taylor’s Orwell: The New Life and Anna Funder’s Wifedom, the latter a decidedly unsympathetic portrait of Orwell as husband.

Theroux’s Orwell, 19 years old when the book begins, is a more likeable figure. He still goes by the name his parents gave him: Eric Arthur Blair. Not long out of Eton, he opts for the Imperial Police over university, and in 1922 ships out to Burma, full of romantic notions acquired from Kipling. Orwell ends up serving there for a little over five years, over which period he acquires the sense of writerly vocation and the anti-imperialist political convictions that make it impossible for him to carry on.

Orwell’s time in Burma was the basis for at least three pieces of published writing. The longest of them, the 1934 novel Burmese Days, is gripping, if a trifle melodramatic. If Theroux’s speculations are right, that novel’s main character John Flory is a composite of real figures whom Orwell knew in Burma. The two widely anthologised essays that drew on Orwell’s Burmese experiences – ‘A Hanging’ and ‘Shooting an Elephant’ – are the basis of two of Theroux’s best chapters. (The veracity of the latter essay has been questioned, but Theroux evidently believes that Orwell’s famous account of the episode was substantially true.)

Beyond that, even Taylor’s dense biography admits that “much of Orwell’s time in the East is shrouded in mystery”. But the mystery gives Theroux just the gaps he needs for a story that is both credible as history and enjoyable as fiction. Theroux’s Blair has many of the traits of the more familiar mature Orwell, chief among them a desire not to be thought eccentric.

Despite his growing cynicism about the imperial project, some of his bitterest thoughts are directed at the “pansy Left”, whose convictions about the evils of imperialism betray their ignorance of the violence and disorder of Burmese society. And even as he obeys his superiors’ orders, Orwell is cultivating a secret inner life, fed by his reading (Kipling, Wells, Maugham, London, Huxley, Forster and Lawrence), his study of Asian languages, and his careful attention to his tropical surroundings, as he learns to tell a peepul tree from a neem, a teak from a tamarind.

George Orwell - ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images

Theroux is not shy about probing into Orwell’s private life. Taylor’s biography stops at noting that the unpublished poetry from those years suggest that “bought sex was a subject of which Orwell possessed a more-than-abstract knowledge”. Theroux is much less coy. His Blair, a teenager struggling to grow a moustache when the book begins, manages to sustain multiple sexual relationships with his Burmese housemaids, the “tarts” at local brothels, and the well-read wife of a fellow colonial.

The prose in these passages courts embarrassment (“her perfumed breasts, and the slippery tang of her sex”). And while Theroux’s ear for English speech is generally acute, there are moments of anachronism and Americanism: would a young man steeped in the language and literature of an English public school really use the word “snitch” rather than “sneak”?

But against these lapses we must hold up Theroux’s many fine passages. Here, for instance, is young Orwell being woken up by the crowing of a rooster: “the morning sun slatted through the bamboo blinds and gilding the folds of his mosquito net”. And here is Orwell taking in the full sensory blast of Rangoon: “the tickle of manure, as the street was thick with horse-drawn carts; the reek of sweat from the soaked backs of hurrying barefoot man pulling rickshaws… the stink of hot oil and burnt food.” Admirers of Theroux’s travel writing will find many such examples of his old capacity for precise lyricism – restrained, no doubt, by Orwell’s own stern example.

Burma Sahib is published by Hamish Hamilton at £20. To order your copy for £16.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books

AUSTRALIA
Roger Davies died with nine broken ribs. Police deemed his death non-suspicious and sent him to a pauper’s grave


Christopher Knaus

 Chief investigations correspondent

GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
Sun, 4 February 2024 

Family photos of Roger Davies, a homeless man whose body was found, showing signs of violence, in an abandoned house three years after he died

Composite: Supplied

LONG READ

In the shell of an abandoned house, beneath cobwebs spun across blackened walls, the skeleton of Roger Davies lay forgotten amid the rubbish.

Davies had come to this burnt-out home in Granville, western Sydney, seeking shelter, a place to squat alongside other rough sleepers fleeing Australia’s broken housing system.

Instead the 42-year-old army veteran found a shocking and premature end, an experience common to Australians experiencing homelessness.

Davies’ body then lay on the ground floor of that abandoned house for three long years, 140 metres down the road from the local police station.

Passersby noticed an overpowering smell but did nothing and Davies was discovered only by chance in April 2015 when a woman arrived to scavenge through the refuse.

She found Davies, still dressed in the blue shirt and brown pants he died in, a watch hanging loosely from his skeletal wrist.

Upstairs, police would later find an unanswered plea for help: an application for emergency housing filled out in Davies’ name about one month before he is believed to have died.

In shaky handwriting, Davies told the department he’d been seeking public housing for years and was now becoming desperate.

“Getting robbed all the time,” he wrote, indicating he was facing “violence and/or harassment from another person” in the squat house.

The deaths of Australians experiencing homelessness are largely invisible. No government in the country attempts to count or understand what is driving them, putting us at odds with other western nations.

In an attempt to shine a light on this crisis, Guardian Australia has spent 12 months identifying and investigating 627 homelessness deaths.

The investigation involved analysis of more than a decade of non-public death reports to state and territory coroners, a review of inquest findings since 2010, and dozens of interviews with rough sleepers, victims’ families, researchers and advocates.

The Guardian has found that, on average, people experiencing homelessness are dying at an average age of 44. That is vastly premature and a life expectancy gap of more than three decades.

It is the first time the life expectancy gap has been measured at a national level and, despite the data’s limitations, the finding is broadly in line with studies in Perth and Sydney.

The investigation also found suicide and overdose, known as deaths of despair, are primary drivers of death. Researchers say such deaths are inextricably linked to the despair and hopelessness of homelessness.

The investigation identified a wide range of systemic failings contributing to deaths, including gaps in health and mental healthcare, the critical undersupply of public housing and failures of the justice system.

A postmortem examination would find Davies sustained fractures to nine ribs about the time of his death.

Despite the signs of potential violence and Davies’ handwritten complaints, police records show officers formed the opinion there was “no evidence of suspicious circumstances”.

“There is an absence of any severe physical injury, large amounts of blood loss, known conflicts or possible motive for any person to seriously harm the deceased,” the investigators wrote.

Instead, police formed the opinion Davies had overdosed, despite no record drug paraphernalia being found at the scene and no toxicology report or other supporting evidence.

The investigators said they had based their opinion on his “history”.

Davies’ family were told nothing of his death for more than two years, neither by police nor the state government.

Police knew Davies was from Adelaide and had the names and dates of birth of his brother and sister, but documents suggest they first called their counterparts in South Australia seeking a family contact number on 20 November 2017, two and a half years after the body was found.

“He had been put in a pauper’s grave by the time we found out … before we even found out that he was deceased,” said Davies’ sister, who asked not to be named.

“There was no closure, there’s never going to be any closure, and up until now with you, there’s no one who’s cared.”
An invisible crisis

Nobody really knows how many rough sleepers are dying in Australia. It’s a hidden crisis – there is simply no national data.

Guardian Australia has spent 12 months identifying and investigating 627 homelessness deaths like Davies’ using 10 years’ worth of non-public death reports to state coroners, an analysis of inquest findings since 2010 and interviews with dozens of homeless Australians, victims’ families, frontline support workers and researchers.

The findings are stark.

They show Australians experiencing homelessness are dying prematurely by a margin of more than three decades. The average age of death is 44.

Suicides and overdoses are major drivers. They accounted for one-fifth and one-third of the 627 deaths, respectively.

Researchers and homelessness groups describe such cases as “deaths of despair” and say they are inextricably linked to the trauma and loss of hope associated with homelessness.

Indigenous Australians were also vastly overrepresented among the 627 deaths. About 20% involved an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.

Other rough sleepers are victims of extreme violence.

They have been found dead in parks and squats, and on the street shot, stabbed or bashed to death, including one man who was found in the Domain, in the centre of Sydney, with slash wounds to his neck, and a Tasmanian man who was bashed horrifically and set on fire while sleeping rough, an attack later connected to his sudden epilepsy death.Interactive

In many cases, people experiencing homelessness died in ways that were either preventable or directly linked to systemic failures across the housing, health and justice sectors.

In two cases identified by the Guardian, rough sleepers presented to hospital as suicidal, associating their suicidal ideation with their lack of housing.

Medical notes in one of the cases show a man known by the pseudonym of Channa, a 26-year-old from the northern rivers in New South Wales, told hospital staff: “It is hard to find a reason to live when you have nowhere to live.”

No emergency housing was available and Channa was discharged. He was found dead a short time later in a suspected suicide.

In four other cases, rough sleepers died after police enforcement of minor public order offences, such as drinking in public or public nuisance, a practice experts have long urged against. The arrests either led to the use of force or to deaths in custody.

These are people, like you and me, and they deserve to be treated equally and with compassion

Nick Ware, lawyer

In Western Australia, Guardian Australia has spoken to two Indigenous families who say their loved ones died by suicide after being evicted from public housing.

Davies’ case and many of the 627 deaths investigated by the Guardian are policy failure writ large, the horrific reality of Australia’s inaction on housing its most vulnerable and providing them with wraparound support.

Documents show both federal and state governments have failed to take even the most basic step to investigate the crisis.

In 2021 governments across the country rebuffed or ignored requests from the homelessness sector to establish an annual count of homelessness deaths, a measure adopted by other western nations to inform policy responses and drive accountability.

For Davies’ family, this lack of interest is not new.

Davies’ sister remembers her brother as kind and protective, someone who lost his way after family trauma and discharge from the military.

She says police showed little interest in investigating his death, despite clear evidence of perimortem rib fractures and his handwritten complaints of robberies and violence.

Police documents show they declined to send items found at the scene to forensics and only interviewed two rough sleepers who had a past association with Davies before arriving at the conclusion that he overdosed.

“They wanted it to just go away,” Davies’ sister said. “I got told at the start that pretty much there was no foul play. And then it would seem that that’s not the case.

“It didn’t really seem like it mattered much … And that’s not just the police, that’s also with the media.

“No one really gave a shit.”
‘It was a dark, dark place’

When Beatrice Christian became homeless in Perth in 2018, she sought safety in numbers. She and eight other rough sleepers stuck together, watching each other’s backs.

Christian, a Koori woman, still refers to them as “my little gang”.

Five years later only three of them are still alive. “One, I went to her funeral only two weeks ago,” she says. “She was the baby of the gang.

“Another old gentleman passed of pneumonia about a month ago, I think. There’s only three of us left and their health isn’t the best either, they’ve got the stigma around them as well. They get treated as drunks.”

Studies in Australia and abroad have shown that even a single period of homelessness is profoundly harmful to a person’s physical and mental health.

“It almost drove me to suicide a few times,” Christian says. “It was a dark, dark place.”

The level of unmet demand for support is vast. Every day in 2022-23 there were nearly 295 unmet requests for help to specialist homelessness services.

Christian says she struggled to get proper healthcare. Doctors stigmatised and disbelieved her due to her homelessness, she says, and a note made on her file years ago saying she was suffering drug-induced psychosis.

But Christian is a survivor.

At 54, she has lived longer than most Australians experiencing homelessness, something she attributes to her securing housing in 2020 with the help of the Perth-based advocacy group Daydawn.

“My health would have deteriorated a lot quicker out there than it is now,” she said. “It’s slowly progressing but I would have deteriorated – I would have been gone a long time ago.”

Davies also complained of his failing health while sleeping rough.

Both his and Christian’s cases expose gaps in the health system, a problem experts say is compounded by the lack of funding for specialist homelessness healthcare services.

Davies’ handwritten housing application, seen by Guardian Australia, suggests he suffered an infection while recovering from gall bladder surgery “under a bridge”.

He also complained of struggling to walk on his prosthetic leg and of his difficulties in keeping the area clean while sleeping rough.

“I need a new prosthesis due to 2 bad blisters on either side of my knee causing me great pain to walk,” he wrote. “Having to buy new prosthetic socks every fortnight because I haven’t been able to wash them.”
‘Uncomfortable truths’

No government in Australia bothers to collect data about the life expectancy gap between people experiencing homelessness and the general population.

In an attempt to address this failing, Guardian Australia engaged researchers at the National Coronial Information System, who have access to non-public death reports made to coroners, to examine known homelessness deaths between 2010 and 2021.

In the 627 deaths they could find – nowhere near a full count of homelessness deaths – they found an average age of death of 45.2 years for men and 40.1 years for women.

That represents a life expectancy gap of more than three decades between the median age at death for the general population, which is 79 years for men and 85 years for women.

Despite the limitations of the data, it is the first time the life expectancy gap has been shown at a national level.

The finding is in line with a much more comprehensive but localised study in Perth, which found the median age at death was 50, and a study limited to three homelessness services in inner-city Sydney, which also found a median age of death of 50.

It also accords with government data in England and Wales, where the average age of deaths for people experiencing homelessness is 45 for men and 43 for women, and in Scotland, where deaths are most common among women aged 35 to 44 and men aged 45 to 54.

In 2021 the lack of Australian data prompted David Pearson, the chief executive of the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness, to pen a letter to the then health minister, Greg Hunt.

He warned that homelessness deaths and Australia’s failure to collect even the most basic data about them was a “national emergency that requires urgent national leadership”.

Pearson urged the Morrison government to commission the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare to develop a reporting framework that would allow hospitals, coroners and health and homelessness services to report on the deaths of rough sleepers they come in contact with.

He said Hunt had not responded and that the Morrison government, despite having a minister for homelessness, had referred him to state governments.

“The commonwealth said it was a state issue,” he said. “Most of [the states] didn’t respond. Some of them said, ‘Let’s have some further conversations’, and then nothing happened.”

The Perth study, led by University of Notre Dame Australia’s Prof Lisa Wood, has shown it is possible to count homelessness deaths.

Her Home2Health research team, operating with threadbare funding, compares hospital and other death records with a pool of more than 8,500 people known to have experienced homelessness in the city, built from client lists of local homelessness services.

By cross-checking the known group against hospital records and the WA register of births, deaths and marriages, they identified 360 deaths between 2020 and 2022, with a median age at death of 50 years.

“I can’t help but think that it’s such an uncomfortable truth that in some ways it’s less confronting for governments and others if it remains hidden,” Wood says.
Preventable tragedies

The stories of Australia’s homeless dead reveal failure after systemic failure.

In the case of Terrence Malone, the missed opportunities to divert him from a premature death are almost too many to count.

Malone, an Indigenous man loved deeply by his children, spent much of his life helping others.

He worked as a firefighter and spent 16 years as a psychiatric nurse in Toowoomba, a career that ended after assaults and threats on his life triggered bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders and alcohol dependency.

Malone moved to Brisbane but was left on the streets after police impounded his van and shelters kicked him out due to their zero-tolerance alcohol policies.

It is really dangerous to be experiencing homelessness

Deborah Di Natale, Council to Homeless Persons

In mid-2014 he was accepted by an alcohol rehabilitation service in Toowoomba but was told he could not start until he was off painkillers prescribed for a shoulder injury. The injury required surgery that the local hospital repeatedly delayed and refused to prioritise to get Malone into rehab.

Just months later Malone was imprisoned for the first time in his life on minor property offences and later had his parole revoked over a missed appointment.

Parole officers, having made an underwhelming attempt to find him, deemed his whereabouts unknown, a regular problem for rough sleepers entangled in the justice system, and ordered that he be found and locked back up.

Before he went back behind bars Malone told police – who had no real difficulty finding him – that he was suicidal and had made prior attempts on his life.

A Brisbane correctional centre failed to flag him as a suicide risk. Prison officers gave him razor blades and left him alone in a cell without regular observations.

Malone was found dead the day after his admission. He was 54.

Nick Ware, a lawyer and former police officer, represented Malone’s family at the subsequent inquest, which found that the death could have been prevented.

Ware says Malone’s death left an indelible mark on him: “It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that these are people, like you and me, and they deserve to be treated equally and with compassion.”

Similar tragedies are repeated all over the country.

The Council to Homeless Persons chief executive, Deborah Di Natale, describes premature death as a “stark reality” of homelessness.

“It is really dangerous to be experiencing homelessness,” Di Natale said. “We also know that people without homes are at increased risk of death due to untreated illnesses – respiratory illnesses, mental health-related deaths and addiction-related deaths.”

Despite this, rough sleepers’ deaths rarely make their way into public discourse.

Di Natale says silence is fuelled by stigma and false assumptions. “We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that these people are loved by their families, their communities and their [support] workers,” she says.

The housing application found next to Davies’ body shows he was in a desperate state. His handwritten words show a man of failing physical and mental health, all linked to housing.

“I’m thinking of suicide, I’ve been trying to get housing since all my stuff at a bedsitter was thrown in the charity [bin],” he wrote.

New South Wales police did not answer specific questions about the case – a spokesperson said it was a historical matter and they would not be able to review the material in time for publication.

They referred Guardian Australia to the coronial findings. The coronial inquest was not critical of the police investigation.

A Department of Communities and Justice spokesperson said destitute funerals were facilitated by NSW Health but that NSW Police were responsible “for undertaking all necessary investigations before providing advice to the coroner that senior next of kin enquiries have been exhausted and that a deceased is destitute”.

Investigators told the coroner they attempted to contact Davies’ relatives in 2015, but that phone numbers on NSW police systems were “not current”. They also said the number they eventually obtained for Davies’ brother in November 2017 from South Australian police only would have been available from June 2017 onwards.

Davies’ sister is clear-eyed about what she wants to come from her brother’s death.

She says more housing must be given to those who need it most, with wraparound support services to address their mental and physical health.

It is what housing and homelessness groups have been calling for for years, an international best-practice model known as “housing first”.

“The housing system needs to become more available for people who need it and less available for people who are just taking advantage of [it],” Davies’ sister says. “I realise that some people have drug issues and stuff that makes it hard, or make people’s priorities a bit of a mess …

“I think that they’re the ones who perhaps need the help the most. If they had somewhere to stay every night and somewhere to get off the drugs that was safe, perhaps they would. But if they’re out there, then they’re not going to want to.

“It starts from the ground up.”

• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org