Crusaid and THT to merge

Not the best news we have heard. Crusaid was originally set up to be an independent fundraiser for a variety of HIV/AIDs charities. It seemed to lose its way somehow and started to apply its own agenda.

It was obvious it was having problems since it had suspended paying out grants. Those grants were heavily subsidised by other charities who carried out 90% of the necessary admin to enable them... without funding. The money raised on the "Walk for Life" is presumably being used to pay for staff. We understand that the Positive Place received not a penny from last year's walk despite fielding a substantial team.

The evidence FSL has gleaned from its supporters across South London and elsewhere supports its very clear conclusions. It seems to us that attending to these issues will save money and possibly lives:

CUTS

This news was announced at the meeting of the London HIV PPE group on 12th May. These 20% cuts are to FRONT LINE SERVICES and not to "back-office" functions despite promises from all political parties to safeguard the front line.

Dressed up euphemistically as "efficiencies" the proposals are nothing of the kind. They are a substantial and potentially life threatening collection of cutbacks.

Among the proposals: Appointments with consultants for "stable" patients will be reduced from three monthly to annually. Between these appointments blood tests will be taken by nurses (or at some clinics by phlebotomists). These will "be examined and if there is a problem the patient will be recalled".

Feedback South London persuaded the commissioner to insert a compulsion for patients first having to "elect" to go down this path. Meanwhile we asked the question "what is stable"? The routine measure of CD4 and Viral Load were trundled out and yet there is absolutely no evidence to suggest these indicate stability or anything else. Indeed recent research has established the recovery of the CD4 is no indication of health. Those Tcells are damaged and may be ineffectual.

Feedback South London suggested long term survivors, especially those having had an AIDs diagnosis, should not be treated as "stable" patients. Long term survivors are at the forefront and in the realms of the unknown. New consequences are now beginning to come to light and in addition the consequences of long term medication are beginning to become apparent.

Rest assured Feedback South London are not leaving this matter there. We are making representations at every level to seek to undo this damaging policy of the London Specialised Commissioning Group... which is now run (heaven help us) by Croydon PCT!

The PPE group was very poorly attended. We appeal to anyone who feels strongly about this issue to participate. Be prepared, however, for an environment where issues are steamrollered through. Discussion is ruthlessly guillotined etc. This group is not for the faint hearted!

Contact us for more information by emailing:

You have to type this into the address line of your email software.

link to: British Pound Exchange Rates 

Insurance Scam Persists

Despite assurances (to the contrary) Insurers continue to refuse travel insurance to people living with HIV. Worse still they continue to refuse to provide travel insurance which excludes medical cover. Therefore the only way people with HIV can travel is to accept the risks themselves.

Certain companies claim to offer cover but every company refuses to insure anyone who has been given a terminal diagnosis (AIDs) at any time despite the fact that this seems, now, not to affect life expectancy if treatment is commenced and maintained.

No matter which company you approach you will be required to go through an extended application process and your premiums are likely to be loaded.

This is a flagrant breach of the Disability Discrimination Acts.

Footnote: We are aware, now, of one company providing cover to plwha. While not equal to the cover provided generally it goes a long way towards it. We shall post details soon.

Freedom Pass Scandal

Thousands of people with disabilities have found their renewals have been lost by "london councils". The incompetent outsourcing of the process of renewing passes means the call centre that deals with the follow up has no means of progress chasing applications.

Anxious applicants have found themselves stonewalled by the call centre (if they persisted in holding on long enough to obtain an answer, which could mean a wait of 45 minutes). After months there are now admissions the applications are missing. Whether these were lost by the Post Office or the "bureau" in Hull is unclear.

Sources have revealed that over 40,000 applications appear to have been lost. Belatedly letters are being sent out inviting people to submit a further photograph and declaration. There is no evidence this will work. This morning's calls reveal the department is overwhelmed by the numbers arriving. A spokesperson quoted a figure of 8 - 900 per day! That could well be an underestimate considering the numbers reported to be lost.

There is every liklihood that come April 1st thousands of disabled people will find their passes will have expired and they have no replacement.

How come the press and media have not picked this up?

HIV CHARITY WELCOMES GROUNDBREAKING STEP
TO PROHIBIT THE USE OF
PRE-EMPLOYMENT
HEALTH QUESTIONNAIRES 

New legislation looks set to remove a significant barrier in recruitment for HIV positive people by outlawing the use of pre-employment health questionnaires

NAT (National AIDS Trust) are today celebrating a significant step forward towards the end to discrimination in recruitment for people living with HIV.  Last night saw the introduction to the Equality Bill of a ground breaking clause that received cross party support and will for the first time see the prohibition of health questionnaires prior to an offer of employment. 

Until now, employers have been able to ask job applicants whether they have a disability, are taking medication or have a medical condition – even if it has no relevance to the role.  NAT has worked with politicians from all parties to secure this outcome, playing a key role in the campaign to prohibit the use of these questionnaires that have enabled less scrupulous employers to filter out applicants with a disability or long term health condition.

Deborah Jack, Chief Executive of NAT, comments:

“We are delighted that the Government has listened to NAT’s concerns and that the Equality Bill will prohibit the use of pre-employment health questionnaires, bringing the UK into line with international best practice around recruitment and disability.

Many employers do not realise that someone living with HIV can have an active career and be an asset to their organisation – even if they are the best candidate for the job, people are turned down because employers makes incorrect assumptions about their health.  In a difficult economic climate and with a reformed benefits system it is more important than ever to remove the discrimination which prevents so many HIV positive people from entering paid employment.  In the past, irrelevant and intrusive questions have deterred people from applying for jobs and provided opportunities for unfairness and prejudice, we are therefore today celebrating the Bill’s prohibition of questionnaires that will remove one of the key barriers to disabled people entering the workplace.”

NAT are now calling on the Government to make sure this Bill reaches the statute books before an election is called, so that these new measures prohibiting the use of health questionnaires become a reality for people living with HIV.

Notes:
1 – The Equality Bill debate in the Lords on pre-employment health care questionnaires can be found at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100119-0008.htm
2 – NAT worked with Rethink and THT on this issue.  Their joint submission to the Work and Pensions Committee on the issue of pre-employment questionnaire is available at: 

Click link here to see the NAT website at:

South London HIV Partnership

We are unable to report any activity by this quango.
It no longer corresponds with us
and we are unaware of any services offered by it.
Most certainly the most significant services do not appear to be on offer.

If anyone knows different please do contact us and let us know.

So far as we can make out the only services now on offer in South London are those at the clinics.

This post has been here for several weeks and nothing has been heard. We can only assume, therefore, there is no service.

Feedback South London

Yes. We are still active and continue to represent service users at a variety of levels. We have no funding but we are doing without. Perhaps we shall look for new sources of funding but we can continue irrespective of funds.

Improved contact details will appear soon on this site.

O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
But when we've practised quite a while
How vastly we improve our style.

—J.R. Pope,

A Word of Encouragement (updating Sir Walter Scott's Marmion)

Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive
But when we've practised quite a while
Perhaps we should perfect our style?

Our version after considering recent events.

Safety Scandal:

South London Hospital Trust
and Lewisham Hospital Trust are named!

click to see the story in the Observer (29th November 2009)

About Feedback South London

An ad hoc group of plwha in South London and organised at the behest of the South London HIV Partnership who undertook to fund it. To ensure its independence the funding was to be paid to and held by a third party organisation chosen by the group. The chosen organisation was to provide admin support. At present over 200 people subscribe to FSL. Around a further 3,000 people have used its services.

SLHP broke its promise and various stakeholders of the SLHP picked up the tab for a while until they carried out a review into service user "involvement" and decided to withdraw the funding. SLHP then resumed funding for the group.

This year SLHP tried to vary the terms and to create a formal contract with the group as though it were a commercial entity despite the acknowledgement, of their own senior management, that the triangular arrangement arrived at was "a good model".

Recently SLHP have tried to say FSL is not an SLHP service. Its members are not. They are its service users. The admin support to it most certainly is and this includes any of the tools used by the organisation providing admin support.

Admin support was first provided by UKC. When they went into liquidation the arrangement was moved to The Positive Place. SLHP again stopped the funding after a while. From that point on FSL became an entirely independent group without any formal arrangment for funding. Sadly The Positive Place is now in liquidation. However this is a Members Voluntary Liquidation which means the Company pays all its bills and is able to deliver a substantial sum to a new or existing Company.

Charity Commission faces inquiry.

We understand the Charities Commission is embarking on an internal inquiry into its behaviour and involvement during the last months of the Positive Place.

An informed source mentioned there is every prospect this is not the only inquiry they will face. There is the prospect of an investigation by the Charity Tribunal and also the Information Commissioner although papers have not, at this stage, been served on the latter two.

They certainly have to explain how they participated in events in such a way that they assisted people,with not even membership of the Positive Place, to masquerade as trustees: ordering goods, services and equipment after the Company had gone into liquidation.

Joan Ruddock MP

It has come to our attention that Ms Ruddock continues to claim she is a patron of "the Positive Place" on her website. The Company is in liquidation but the trustees, up until it was liquidated, have asked us to point out that Ms Ruddock is not a patron of the Positive Place and they have been unable to find any record of her ever being appointed as such. In the Company's Memorandum and Articles of Association there is no provision for the appointment of patrons.

It would be interesting to hear from Ms Ruddock detailing exactly what involvement she has had in this charity. It is important that MPs and especially government ministers are seen to be telling the truth and no evidence can be found of any involvement by her in supporting this charity apart from an annual Christmas Card. We do not know whether or not this was paid for out of the public purse.

Some might think her other interests are at odds with the objectives of the Positive Place. Her recent attachment to people who conspired against the charity is not consistent with the kind of behaviour one might expect of a patron. They held their illegal meeting at Goldsmith's College. We note that Ms Ruddock has connections with that College.

Meanwhile we do recommend you take a look at:

We are at a loss to understand the vast amount of money spent on postage stamps and also franking machine charges. Thousands of pounds are charged and yet we understand MPs send letters from the House of Commons and do not have to pay. It is difficult to understand how an MP has sent out around 50,000 letters on constituency business. If this were ministerial work the department concerned would have dealt with it.

Then there is a series of "banners". What are these for? Surely these are campaigning tools? Thousands of pounds are again involved.

A camera at £140.00. How can this be justified?

USA BAN

on PLWHA

ended

January 2010

Stop Press . . . .

week ending 31st October 2009

During the course of this week a letter was received, by the Solicitors representing the legitimate board of the Positive Place, in which the Charities Commission has at last admitted a series of errors in its actions and declares "there are lessons to be learned". More details will follow soon.

There remain a number of issues to be answered and until the Charities Commission responds to them further public comment would be inappropriate.

The Positive Place

a statement from the board of trustees (until liquidation)

1.

Some of you will have read elsewhere a series of defamatory items which purport to relay events at the Positive Place. Unfortunately a group of ne'er do wells have employed the services of a computer hacker to hijack the domain of the Positive Place. For reasons that will become apparent below it has been decided it is not worth expending money to resolve the issue since the legitimate trustees (John, NIgel, Timo, Alan, Sara and Patricia) intend the legacy of the company to be a sizeable fund to deliver to the charitable cause the Positive Place was set up to support.

What really happened at the Positive Place.

In September last year the present board assumed responsibility for the Company. Some of those elected at the AGM on 27th September had been co-opted to the board during the preceding months in order to enable them to prepare a rescue plan for this failing company. At the end of September 2008 the Company was running rapidly into the buffers. It was spending many times more than its income and golluping up its reserves at a frightening rate.

As soon as the new board was elected the restructuring plan was put into action. Most of the staff were made redundant. For the short term the plan was to staff the Company largely with volunteers. The management would be carried out on a voluntary basis. The idea behind this was to buy time to enable additional funding to be obtained and a revised business plan to be implemented. A number of initiatives were begun.

The company was saddled with a "contract" with the South London HIV Partnership which provided funding of only £95,000 for services costing more than half a million pounds per annum to deliver. Two managements had failed to budge SLHP on this and to improve the level of funding for the work. The SLHP contract was heavily subsidised out of the Charity's reserves. This was an unlawful use of the charity's reserves. The Board had to take urgent action to remedy this.

2.

The board negotiated with SLHP who made a series of promises which they then proceeded to break. Funding for a number of additional groups was promised but it never materialised. In the meantime the SLHP piled on never ending demands for statistics, reports, meetings et al which clearly the resources they provided could not fund. As the board delved deeper it became apparent that in fact there was no contract. Despite an arduous tendering process it had not proved possible to agree the terms. Eventually SLHP produced a draft contract which was manifestly unfair to the Positive Place. They demanded the Positive Place sign it or lose its funding but they never actually completed their side of the contract. SLHP never committed themselves to the contract. The Positive Place served notice on the SLHP that the contract proposed and was an unfair contract and that it was signed under duress.

Now that a form of words was available it was then possible for the Positive Place to examine the SLHP view of the contract and from this it was possible to identify that SLHP appeared to be in breach of their own proposed contract. Consequently a breach notice was served on them. This identified 19 breaches of the "contract" including 17 which are "serious" breaches. Their "contract" gave them 5 days to remedy the breaches or alternatively they could serve notice they wished to go to arbitration within 7 days. SLHP did neither thus effectively admitting its breaches. The board therefore served notice of termination of the "contract". This was served on SLHP by hand. SLHP failed to respond but made announcements that it had terminated the contract (the day after they had been served with this formal notice delivered by hand). SLHP at no time ever served any kind of termination notice on the Positive Place. At no time did they ever serve any kind of breach notice on the Positive Place.

Despite what you may have read elsewhere the SLHP contract provided only for groups and only for a limited number of people. The actual times of opening paid for under this contract should have been 7.6 hours per week. The Positive Place was open 13 hours per day. The number of people to be catered for in the groups was set at 8 - 12. The numbers actually attending groups averaged 28. More people attended the newly created drop-in facility than the contract provided for in groups. The Positive Place was over performing by 500% and yet the SLHP obdurately failed to reward this although their contract provided they should.

3.

The imposter trustees have declared they would deliver all manner of services. Given funding the legitimate trustees would willingly have provided a whole range of services. There simply was no funding whatsoever available to provide those services and it became apparent there is unlikely ever to be funding for them. Unlike the maverick group the legitimate trustees had the responsibilities of governance and the legal constraints that apply to those responsible for governing a limited company.

Elsewhere an individual has claimed the Positive Place had 11,000 members. This is untrue. The Positive Place had 47 members. It had over two thousand persons on its list of service users. At any given time around 200 persons would be actively using its services.

So where would the Positive Place go now?

There was some funding which would carry TPP for a short time and work was proceeding on modifications to the building which would enable new licensees to occupy surplus office space. Indeed two organisations had made a preliminary agreement to occupy large areas in return for £18,000 per annum each. Other smaller lets were in the offing too. The first objective was to create an entity that could survive until better and more stable funding could be achieved. (The building cost around £140,000 per annume simply to stand there). Unfortunately the activities of the group who later pretended to be trustees frightened the prospective licensees away. On the day the prospective licensees came to inspect the new partitioning that maverick group decided to organise a mass trespass requiring us to call in the police to have them removed. It was on this day the group concerned thrust some scruffy sheets of paper in the face of the chairman, John, which purported to be a requisition for an Extraordinary General Meeting. The requisition was invalid. It was not signed by members. It did not conform to the Companies Act, albeit it claimed to conform to an obsolete version of that act. It provided defamatory material which the board is not required to circulate (under the Companies Act) and it proposed a motion which could not legally be put to the members at an EGM. It was established that the signatures had been obtained under false pretences by making scurrilous defamatory allegations directed towards the trustees and in particular directed towards the chairman.

On that day those, who have elsewhere made such disingenuous claims to be working in the interests of the Positive Place, destroyed any hope of a future for the Positive Place. That was not, however, the only problem faced by the Positive Place.

4.

Audit and Staffing issues

SLHP had demanded some extensive work be carried out on the Company's quality standards. As a part of this an audit was carried out of the qualifications of staff members who provided professional services and volunteers who provided them free of charge (such as Alan, the vice chairman and clinical director). While Alan's qualifications were impeccable and he was a properly accredited counselling psychologist and psychotherapist it proved impossible to find any evidence to support the claims of the only paid member of staff providing such work. It is now known that as soon as the questions began to arise this staff member began to plan a process to attempt to bring down the management of the Company in his own selfish interest. Documentary evidence of correspondence he thought he had deleted was discovered on the Company's Computer system in which he clearly set out a process to attack the operation of the Company and to seek to discredit the trustees. The first major tranche of this occurred while he was off sick and his accolytes organised a deliberate disruption of an outreach group. They then began a program of bombarding the Company, through a third party, with anonymous complaints in an attempt to deluge the administration of the Company. There is clear evidence that members of this grouping were involved in the campaign organised by the imposter trustees.

On the supporting material that accompanied the invalid requisiton for an EGM the group had included a substantial passage concerning the staff member concerned and attempting to intervene in the then proceeding disciplinary process. Such an intervention is expressly forbidden by the Memorandum and Articles of Association and would have rendered the Company ungovernable if permitted.

The Staff member concerned was given a substantial amount of time to deliver proof of his qualifications which he was unable to do. He produced a series of certificates which, on examination, were demonstrably the product of a "diploma mill" in the USA. Such certificates can be purchased by anyone on the internet. They are worthless and indeed he admitted to their invalidity during a discplinary hearing. The member of staff was found to have been guilty of gross misconduct and was dismissed. On appeal that decision was upheld.

Rumours were put about that the board had treated this member of staff unfairly by not paying him during a recent sickness. This is untrue. He was not entitled to be paid except for SSP during his illness but the board made him an ex-gratia payment to bring his pay up to his normal salary level.

5.

The group of troublemakers who had served the invalid requisition for an EGM then, using stolen data, circulated a notice purporting to call an EGM. The notice itself was even more invalid than its preceding requisition. Since the "requisition" had been signed by 12 persons the notice had to be signed by 6 (all of them members). It was signed by 3 persons who were not members.

No attempt was made to obtain lawful access to the register of members. This was available, on demand, to any member of the Company. A copy could be purchased. No attempt was made to purchase a copy. This probably explains why a significant number of members failed to receive the "notice" while a substantial number of service users and former members of staff did. The trustees were deluged with complaints concerning the data protection breach.

The meeting was not lawfully called.

The notice purported to put forward a motion seeking the removal of certain officers of the board and the removal of their membership. It did not, incidentally, call for the removal of directors. No director was named in this motion.

Only the board is able to appoint or dismiss its officers. Only the board is able to appoint or dismiss members. The motion was not viable and could not lawfully be put to the members.

Had a proposal to remove directors been legitimately put it would have required a special notice be served 28 clear days before the proposed meeting. This was not done. (the day of the serving and the day of the meeting do not count towards the 28 days)

No directors were removed. No officers were removed. No members were removed.

A later notice delivered a day before the unlawful EGM put forward proposals for the appointment of directors.

Only members of the Company may be nominated to be directors. The people who "appointed" themselves at this meeting did not qualify.

No directors/trustees were appointed.

Under the Memorandum and Articles directors may be appointed ONLY at an Annual General Meeting (or be co-opted between AGMs by the board). They must be nominated 42 days before the AGM (to the Company Secretary). They must be elected by means of a secret ballot irrespective of the number of candidates. An attempt has been made to misrepresent the Companies Act in order to justify an emergency situation legitimising the appointment of directors. The Companies Act does not make any such provision. It provides a framework for situations where a Company's own rules permit such emergency appointments.

No directors/trustees were appointed.

6.

Even had emergency appointments been permitted there was no emergency. Had the removal of three directors been valid (which it was not) there remained three directors which is sufficient. There would be no emergency. An emergency, for this purpose, would be an inadequate number of directors to satisfy the Company's rules.

No directors/trustees were appointed.

The "minutes" of the unlawful EGM were kept under wraps but extracts were misused by the imposters to disrupt the effective management of the Company and to try to obtain access to the Company's funds. The legitimate trustees were able to fend off these attacks and to protect the Company's funds. It was not until after the legitimate EGM held on 22nd September that access to those notes was obtained and they reveal:

A large number of persons attended who admitted they were not members of the Company. Only members may attend an EGM.

A significant proportion of those who attended are not and never have been members of the Company.

A further proportion of those who attended were not current members.

Nominations were accepted at and during the meeting and from non members.

Reference is made to proxies but there is no evidence of their identities which renders then null and void. They were also in the hands of a non-member who was not entitled to attend rendering them doubly invalid.

A quorum of members was not present. The meeting could not make any decision.

No directors were removed. No officers were removed. No members were removed. No directors/trustees were appointed.

The record shows that non members were permitted to vote. This was unlawful.

The record shows that no secret ballot was conducted to appoint directors.

No directors/trustees were appointed.

The legal argument goes on and on. There are literally hundreds of reasons why nothing the unauthorised EGM did was either legal or valid.

The Company's lawyers (two seperate firms) examined the process and determined the orginal board remained the lawful directors of the Company. The advice of senior counsel was obtained and this delivered a similar opinion.

7.

Irrespective of the above the liquidation process began way back at the beginning of June when the trustees sought the advice of the Company's auditors. They recommended a members voluntary liquidation and recommended a number of insolvency practitioners to organise it. From those recommendations a liquidator was appointed and his instructions were given in July. From that point on the trustees made no decision and committed themselves to no expenditure except and unless the proposed liquidator approved it. Anyone pretending to stand for the board would be required to observe similar restrictions or face an accusation of seeking to deprive the Company's creditors of what is rightfully theirs. The Companies Act makes it very plain that once an insolvency situation has been identified the directors/trustees first duty is to the creditors.

Necessarily the process of liquidation is commercially sensitive until the members have had their say. For news of this to leak out put the Company at substantial risk. The imposters deliberately made the details public in an attempt to undermine the board. What this achieved in fact was effectively to end the lease on the premises. Under the terms of the lease the landlord was entitled to recover the property as soon as he became aware we had even consulted an insolvency practitioner.

8.

The Company was fortunate in that the efforts of the trustees (and in particular the chairman, vice-chairman and Company Secretary) had enabled them to recover the cost of redundancies and rebuild the reserves to the point where the Company could make a declaration of solvency. Any delay would prevent that declaration from being made. The massive costs incurred by the occupation of premises far too expensive for the purpose would swallow up any reserve in a matter of weeks. The imposters tried and tried to delay the process thus putting the reserves at risk.

From a reading of the published material originating with the imposter trustees it is clear they were well aware of the ongoing liquidation process so they appear deliberately to have set out to defraud the Company's creditors. They used a number of ruses along the way and managed to persuade a junior administrator at the Charities Commission to assist them. They conned an MP who should have known better. Her involvement is to be the subject of further action. The Charities Commission are currently examining the complaint concerning the publication of a simplistic "view" which they have since modified and should further modify. That "view" was grossly misused by the imposters. The Charities Commission have at every stage stated they were not in a position to intervene and that they had made no decision concerning the status of directors of the Positive Place. They did, however, stipulate the liquidation process was proper.

9.

The actions of the imposters in obtaining stolen data and using it, in breaking into the Positive Place's premises, squatting and in ordering services purporting to be directors of the Company are all most certainly unlawful. The legitimate board will be powerless to protect the imposters from the consequences of their actions. Already the bills for their profligate and wasteful spending have started to arrive. It has to be expected the liquidator will refuse to honour those demands and the group concerned will be required to pay for their misdemeanours. They are jointly and severally responsible for their activities and while we know most of them do not have two brass farthings to rub together... one or two of them have assets.

Meanwhile everyone involved has recognised the legitimacy of the liquidation process which is well under way. This includes a firm of solicitors latterly engaged by the imposters which sought to obtain some sort of involvement for their clients. That firm, formerly the Company's solicitors, was under instructions by the legitimate board which had instructed them not to intervene in this issue.

The liquidator has advised us a decision concerning the disposal of the balance of the reserves will be put to the members in due course. He was given a clear directive at the EGM which appointed him.

Meanwhile the Company is now in the hands of a liquidator and effectively this means there are no trustees.

10.

The True purpose of the Imposter Trustees

Most of those involved in the purported takeover of the company had been obtaining services with a monetary value from the member of staff who had to be disciplined. These are services for which the Positive Place is not funded and which he had no right to deliver. There is a question mark over the legitimacy of much of this activity. In particular the legitimate board was concerned that certificates had been issued to certain of this group for the purposes of obtaining insurance and other services and grants and in which the former member of staff claims medical credentials to which he was not entitled.

Their purpose was to protect the goose they thought was laying the golden egg. It was not. It placed them at risk of criminal prosecution. In the case of the insurance fiddle we believe that is bound to come to light in the course of time. The next time this dangerous driver has an accident the insurer is bound to delve a little deeper. Fortunately, for the person concerned, the Positive Place will not be in a position to help them.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

(106 - 43 BC) wrote:

The Welfare of the people is the ultimate law.

The people's good is the highest law.

The strictest law often causes the most serious wrong.

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?

It is a true saying that "One falsehood leads easily to another".

Advice is judged by results, not by intentions

While there's life, there's hope

Henri Frédéric Amiel 1821 – 1881 AD wrote:

Truth is not only violated by falsehood;  it may be outraged by silence

Lisa Alther: 1944 – ? AD wrote:

To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle.