An Iraqi immigrant who was on the ‘hey diddle diddle (fiddle) falsely claimed at least £35,000 in benefits over 10 years has walked free.
Majid Hussain claimed income support, housing benefit and a council tax reduction for more than a decade despite having over £36,000 squirrelled away in a bank account.
He had denied three counts of benefit fraud but was found guilty at Exeter Crown Court and was handed a nine month suspended sentence.
The court had heard during the trial how Hussain, of Exeter in Devon, arrived in the UK as a mature student in the 1980s funded by Saddam Hussein’s government.
He was left around £18,000 by his father but said that the money had been put into a Royal Bank of Scotland account for use as a trust fund to pay for his children’s education. The unemployed 62-year-old didn’t declared the savings when claiming benefits he reckoned that under Sharia law he did not consider the money to belong to him. More of this old cobblers later. While claiming benefits, his stash doubled to £36,000.
Hussain, who has never worked since he arrived in the UK, received at least £35,000 in benefits between 1997 and 2010 though the exact figure can never be determined because records do not go back far enough.
The father of four stopped receiving income support after the existence of the account was revealed in 2010 at which point he immediately began withdrawing money from it. Sharia law went out the window at this point then.
However, all’s not lost for this geezer as he is still receiving disability living allowance because he suffers from Crohn’s Disease, kidney problems and muscle pain.
Death by guitar?
A nurse who it is alleged risked a patient committing suicide by leaving him alone with a guitar is facing punishment from her governing body. Apparently Christine O’Meara’s error could have allowed the man to hang himself with a string from the instrument.
The patient was on suicide watch at the Guild Lodge Care Home in Preston, Lancs, after previously trying to kill himself by strangulation and driving into a brick wall. I play the guitar and I find taking a string out of the guitar gives it a life of its own and controlling the twisting turning string without losing your eye is hard enough without trying to fashion a noose out of it.
No money for elderly but shed loads for foreign paramilitaries
Britain is spending £15 million on training Ethiopian paramilitaries that have been accused of human rights abuses including summary killings, rape and torture.
A government security force known as the “special police” operating in the eastern Ogaden region will be supported as part of a UK-funded “peace and development programme” lasting five years.
Link to what these paramilitaries get up to.
PERCY WELLER 