UK

The forces of power are being used increasingly to silence the brave people who keep our vulnerable freedoms alive.

Andrew Gilligan – February 17, 2013

For Peter Golds, a Conservative councillor in Tower Hamlets, east London, the price of opposing the Islamic extremists who exercise significant control over his borough has never been small. Regular threats are made against him.

Prominent allies of the independent executive mayor, Lutfur Rahman, barrack him as “Mrs Golds”, “Zionist scum” and a “------- poofter” at the council’s own meetings. But in the last few months, at a cost to taxpayers of up to £100,000, Peter Golds has been deliberately targeted for professional destruction – for supposedly leaking information to this newspaper.

Laura Donnelly – January 6, 2013

It was the scandal that shamed the NHS. Hundreds of hospital patients died needlessly. In the wards, people lay starving, thirsty and in soiled bedclothes, buzzers droning hopelessly as their cries for help went ignored. Some received the wrong medication; some, none at all.

Over 139 days, the public inquiry into the Stafford hospital scandal has heard testimony from scores of witnesses about how an institution which was supposed to care for the most vulnerable instead became a place of danger.