Freedom? What freedom?

Free citizens, living in a democratic, civilised Western country are subject to the local council's ideas about how families should function....
What a sad, sick joke. The idea that Britons are a free people is now just that - an idea.



Arnhem hero kidnaps wife from a care home
By Alan Hamilton



SIXTY-TWO years ago as a young soldier at the Battle of Arnhem, Dennis Cramp fought for his country. Now, at the age of 80, he has another fight on his hands: for the right to have his wife spend her last years with him at home.

Maria Cramp, who suffers from dementia, has spent the past three months in a care home. But her husband, determined that they should be together in their house in Accrington, Lancashire, mounted a daring rescue mission.



Unable to stand life alone, Mr Cramp took a taxi to The Hollies home in nearby Clayton-le-Moors, wheeled his wife out in her wheelchair and took her home.

But, like the British paratroopers in Holland in 1944 who underestimated the firepower of the German defence, Mr Cramp reckoned without the blitzkrieg tactics of Lancashire County Council’s social services department. Within four hours of his apparently successful repossession of his wife, it went to Blackburn County Court, where a judge granted it an order giving it legal custody of Mrs Cramp. Its officials took her back to The Hollies.

Mr Cramp was told that, if he tried to rescue his wife again, he could face arrest. The guardianship order is for six months, but will be reviewed in two weeks when the court will decide who should look after Mrs Cramp.

Mr Cramp was distraught yesterday. He had been told that his wife would be released from the nursing home last week, but at the last minute social services assessed her case and decided that she should remain in care for a further six months.

“I feel desperate. Why can’t we be together? Why can’t we die together? This is all wrong,” Mr Cramp said. “I have shown I can care for her. For the past four weeks she has been coming home once a week.

“It is obvious she wants to be with me; she indicated she wanted to stop with me and not go back to the home. She was cheerful, sociable — everything you would not expect of someone they wanted to detain.”

Mr Cramp said he remained determined to overturn the order, which he described as diabolical, given that the council had closed 32 of its 48 care homes to save on running costs.

A spokeswoman for Lancashire County Council said that it would not comment on individual cases, but added: “We act on the advice of a team of professionals who decide on the most appropriate course of action to take. If a family wishes to pursue a course of action that we feel is not in the best interests of a person, then we have no option but to apply for a guardianship order.”

To Dennis Cramp and his comrades involved in the disastrous Operation Market Garden to try to gain entry to Germany by the back door, the attempt to take the Rhine crossing at Arnhem proved a bridge too far.

Now, for one survivor of the battle, The Hollies may prove to be a similarly insurmountable obstacle.

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