Lisa Martin, Whistleblower And Femme Extraordinaire! Poem by Professor Dr. Stanley Collymore

Commentary:

Lisa Martin is British. That aside, if you’ve never heard of her before, is the remarkable young woman who blew the whistle on what was systemic and institutionalized abuse in the Orchid View care home, since shut down, where she worked as a former administrator. In that home there were elderly people that were routinely treated far worst than how most Britons treat their own dogs and some of these very vulnerable individuals died.

Not only were the residents of this particular home badly let down by the misnomer named Care and Quality Commission, the official watchdog whose remit it is to ensure such things don’t happen, but as we all now know from other likewise shocking revelations by equally courageous whistleblowers across the country the Orchid View situation wasn’t by any means unique.

In fact there is an ingrained culture throughout these homes, parts of the NHS and also the Social services across the UK where incompetent, uncaring, venal and grotesquely overpaid Jobsworths, given jobs they were wholly unsuited for and should never have been allowed anywhere near them in the first place, have literally and appallingly got away with shirking their proper responsibilities, not admitting to or even having the common decency to even say sorry for their catalogue of offences including criminal negligence, malfeasance, cover-ups and even the blatant overseering of murderous practices themselves, all in the line of duty as they saw it, only to be substantially rewarded with six-figure sums from the public purse in pay-off settlements for their horrendous inadequacies.

In marked contrast, however, conscionable whistleblowers like Lisa Martin knowing that what is going on is demonstrably wrong but that going to their superiors and acquainting them of it will change nothing and who then bring these crimes both from frustration and a sense of duty to the knowledge of the general public, find themselves ostracised, left out in the cold and what is even more shocking become unintentionally unemployed because the powers that be as well as prospective employers refuse to employ.

What a sick Britain when the likes of Sharon Shoesmith, former Head of Children’s Services at Haringey Council whose £133,000 a year sinecure as she clearly saw it didn’t mean she should have taken responsibility for the horrendous circumstances that precluded and ultimately led to the death of Baby P and justifiably sacked in my opinion by the then Government minister Ed Ball, who candidly said in a TV interview, October 2013, that he would do it all over again if he had to, gets a six figure sum in compensation for being fired from a job, given her arrogance and track record of not facing up to her contractual responsibilities, she should never have been recruit to in the first place. Now laughing all the way to the bank I understand that she is very optimistic of getting another high-powered job that puts her in direct charge of children.

In the meantime Lisa Martin having conscionably done the right thing not only by the elderly people in her care but the country as a whole, having been made redundant from her job after her disclosures is still without employment as no one will have her for spilling the beans on the wrongdoers. What a sick Britain!

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© Stanley V. Collymore
1 November 2013.