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PAUL Ashcroft - stole from elderly.
I hope Cheshire County Council gets its reward
Vic Barlow6/12/2006
COUNCIL obsession with health, safety and political correctness is now so pervasive you can't lay flowers at a family grave without the health and safety "police" checking the angle of the headstone.
Hanging flower baskets are banned just in case they fall and crush someone's skull. Council drivers mustn't change wheels lest they disappear up the exhaust pipe.
God help any employee who utters a forbidden word and risks sending some unknown ethnic group apoplectic. Even school sports day has been repackaged to prevent blighting the lives of children who don't win.
Employers are besieged with rules and regulations and a visitation by the Health and Safety squad can close down a business for the most benign infringement.
So when a frail old lady has to rely on Cheshire County Council for home help you'd expect her care to be of the highest order and you certainly wouldn't anticipate any kind of danger. These are the safety experts, for God's sake, they tell other organisations how to run their affairs, how could a vulnerable old lady be at risk?
Well, if Cheshire County Council farmed out the care of the elderly to an external contractor who employed convicted felons you may have cause for concern.
When Paul Ashcroft applied to Eden Care Services, who work principally for Cheshire Social Services, he already had a conviction for stealing from his own father.
Nonetheless, Mr Ashcroft was employed and thieved from the old and infirm whose trust he exploited with impunity.
Mr Ashcroft did not slip through the net, his criminal background was well known to Eden Care Services but they chose to ignore it and a 75-year-old widow suffering from Parkinson's disease and a frail 88-year-old lady suffering from dementia became his victims.
How could Cheshire County Council, with all its pious posturing on health and safety, leave the most vulnerable members of society in the hands of an agency that employs convicted criminals?
I don't normally subscribe to the compensation culture but I hope the relatives of those poor old ladies sue Cheshire County Council.
- THE views on this page are those of Vic Barlow and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Express.
Most recent 2 of 10 user comments
Agencies should be concerned with the vulnerable they service. F.A.O.Simon.
15/12/2006 at 12:22
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