Good afternoon and welcome to all of our UK column listeners.
Today is Saturday the 9th of December.
It's 4:15 in the afternoon and my goodness, we've just had an
incredible clap of Thunder, huge downpouring, lots of torrential
rain. Luckily it's eased off, but I
know that the local river is a raging torrent.
The farmers fields are all flooded and no doubt this will
signal a drought for 2024. Maybe that's a bit cynical.
We will see. Now I'm delighted to have Debbie
Evans with me this afternoon. I've worked together with Debbie
for a very long time in the UK column and she's done some
really fantastic work. But I decided that over the
Christmas period, I wanted to put out some interviews with
women, real women, adult females that have stood up to be
counted. And they're not pulling any
punches. They're not happy with what's
going on. And so Debbie is one of the
ladies who's agreed to be interviewed by me.
And I'm calling these women gutsy women.
So that's your introduction. Debbie, welcome.
Oh. Thank you very much indeed for
that, Brian. I think my children actually
call me Gobby Granny because I I don't think sometimes they they
wince because I do go down some rabbit holes that other people
might not want to. But it's just ironic, isn't it,
that as we're sitting here and the rain is absolutely pouring
down, it was actually floods that introduced us in a way.
And one of the campaigns that I've been on for the last 20
years is, is one of water and sewage.
And I'm sure we'll come on to that.
But that's one of my feisty, my feisty personality traits, if
you like, I'm I'm a bit like a a terrier, and once I'm on a
mission, I tend not to let go. OK, well maybe we can change
events here, because I I was thinking about the title.
I went for Gutsy women, but do you think it should be feisty
women? I knew it couldn't be women with
balls because that would take us into very difficult transgender,
transgender territory. So do you think Feisty is better
than gutsy? I don't know.
I don't know how other people perceive the word feisty.
I see myself, or at least I hope, and other people see me as
someone that's strong, independent, fearless when it
comes to speaking out and honest.
Now if that makes me feisty, then I'm very happy to be
feisty. I think there are many women
that are standing up and speaking out and I'm absolutely
delighted with the amount of women actually, and it seems to
be women of a certain age and I'll put myself in that bracket
too. I'd like to see more youngsters
coming out and and becoming feisty and I hope we can
encourage some to speak out and to challenge what they're seeing
and what they're hearing because I'm hoping that we can, My
generation especially can lead the way for youngsters because
it's their futures at the end of the day.
I mean, you know, let's be honest about this, Brian.
Neither of us are spring chickens.
And we've had the luxury of a pretty remarkable life where we
haven't been subjected to conflicts, bombs and and
totalitarian regimes like so many other countries have have
been at the hands of. We've been lucky in the West and
we've had a maybe what some might call a privileged life.
And now to see all of that being destroyed right in front of our
eyes. And I look at my grandchildren
and I think what kind of world are they going to be growing up
in? And as a woman, and I know that
many women will identify with this, I think is when you become
a mum. Only a mum can know this.
I think you get this protective, almost lioness instinct with
your children and you'll do anything for your children, you
really will. You'll put your life on the line
for your children. So I think, you know now
especially women can see what is happening around them.
They can see the futures for their children collapsing in
front of them. And I think women are leading
the way I I really do. That's not to say that you
gentlemen aren't doing your bit because you are and there are
many amazing guys out there that are speaking up.
But I do think on on many topics, women, women are leading
the way. Well, I I'd certainly agree with
you on that. And part of my reason for for
doing this with women, these interviews with women who are
really standing up to do things and speak out, was that the
original foundation of the UK column occurred because of two
grand mums who decided that they weren't going to take what was
happening in those days. The key issue was the takeover
of UK by the European Union. So there was a lot of focus on
things to do with the European Union, but we also were looking
very closely at constitutional issues.
And I will say as people of a certain age, we also realised
that something wasn't wrong in the sorry, that something wasn't
right in the country. So two grandmums, but that was
Carol and Kate. But there was another elderly
lady who was very kind to us, very generous to us, called
Sheila, and they called themselves The Three Musketeers,
which always made me smile. And I can certainly say the
three of them were pretty feisty women, and they decided they
were not going to sit back and watch what was happening to
their country. They were going to do something
about it. That was when we initially were
looking at forming a a newspaper or some sort of media outlet.
But what came to our mind was really that there was a battle
going on. There was a battle for Britain
and we certainly couldn't call it the Battle for Britain
because that had happened and a lot of very good people had
stood up to be counted and fought and died for their
country. So we called it the New Battle
for Britain group and this seemed to have some traction
with a lot of people. So just to cut this bit of the
story short, it was mature women who were not going to have it.
They saw that some of the men were reluctant to stand up, so
they stepped forward. And look where that's got us
with the UK column. So Debbie for for the audience,
Let's tell the audience how we got to know each other.
Let's But you know what? Just before, before, before we
talk about floods and southwest water.
I do hope Southwest Water, while listening to this.
On the flip side, I would say too that I think women in
particular, sometimes there are only jobs that women can do.
And by that I mean that whereas we've got lots of amazing women
standing up and challenging the narrative and putting their
heads above the parapet, we also have a number of women in very
high places that should know better.
And I'm going to refer to Dame Jenny Harris, Dame June Rain,
Dame Kate Bingham, Dame Sally Davis, Dr. Allison Kay, for
example. And as a woman myself and as a
mum and a grand mum, I know that all of those women have children
and most of them have grandchildren.
And I know what I was taught when I was pregnant, when I was
a young mum, and how these people in the positions that
they're in can ignore all the red flags that they have been
shown by all of us is just simply beyond me.
So yes, we have some amazing women that are standing up and
it's only women like that. I think that can challenge those
women in high places, not just on what they've done, but on the
moral and the ethical debates on how could you, as a mother, as a
grandmother, witnessing, knowing about thalidomide, knowing about
teratogenic medicines, knowing about the history, how could you
allow this to happen? So, Mum to mum, Dame June Rayne.
Grandmum to grandmum, Dame Jean Rayne.
I would say to her, why? How could you possibly not know
that what you were doing was dangerous?
Because I know. So I think, you know.
There are some things that women can only challenge other women
on. Because we we're going to, we're
going to definitely come back on to this because this is part of
the key area that you you've spent a lot of time researching
and speaking about and warning about.
I'm going to push you. Let's let let's talk to you a
little bit. Tell us a little bit about your
background and well, where did you go to school?
For instance, what sort of school did you go to?
I was very fortunate and and and I guess I'm quite unusual for a
a, a late 1950s baby. I've never met my dad so I
didn't know my dad. So my mum was an unmarried
mother in the late 50s, which was very unusual and I was very
fortunate that she kept me and that my grandparents and her
looked after me. But I was always a bit different
from the family that I grew up with because they were very
conservative church going Christians.
I went to church twice a week, but I guess it comes back to
your word again in a way. Brian Feisty's.
I was always challenging the narrative.
I was always questioning things and I was maybe always doing
things that my mother would take a bit of a gasp at.
So I was very fortunate and I went to a private school.
I went to a school called Palmers Green High School, which
is a very small private school in North London.
And it was I was a good girl. You know, I I, I I didn't have
great concentration, but I I obeyed the rules.
And then one day in my final year at Palmers Green High
School, we all had to line up in the playground and I was the
tallest in the class. We weren't allowed to speak in
line, and I had never been. I'd never had a punishment at
school, ever. Not an order mark or a conduct
mark or anything that would warrant a conversation with my
parents and my mum. And on this occasion, my friend
in front of me talked and I bent down to listen to her.
But I got blamed for it because they thought it was me that was
speaking in in the line and I got punished for it.
And there were ongoing consequences of that punishment
and the injustice of that one incident that my mother and I
often still recount it in that my whole sense of injustice was
fired up from that one event. And ever since then I have been
pretty anti authority I have to say.
And I have challenged things. I've always wanted to challenge
things if I don't understand them or if I think that an
injustice has taken place. So I left school and I went to
nurse training school and I was very fortunate.
I mean back in that day it was an honour and a privilege to be
accepted into nurse training school.
You know, the NHS weren't begging for nurses.
There were queues of of people wanting to enter nurse training
school and I was accepted at the Royal Free.
Oh I I did do it. A year gap actually between
school and nursing and I worked in Harrods for a year, which was
quite eye opening. I did it, I loved it.
I did enjoy it when it was the House of Fraser and then I went
to the Royal Free and I did my SRN training there, qualified
three years later, stayed in nursing for some years and made
the grade that became a ward sister.
And then, like everything you know, your life changes and you
get married and you have children and your whole life
completely alters. But I went, kept going back to
nursing as and when I could. But in the end I ended up doing
many things, volunteering for a lot of things during my life.
I volunteered. Well, I I actually worked for a
charity for quite a while. I worked for Action Aid.
I ran my own charity for autism for five years, which was pro
bono, a one woman charity. I sent parcels to the Gulf
during the Gulf War and I was the English representative, if
you like, sort of organising all the truckloads of parcels that
were going to soldiers in the Gulf.
And as a result I was invited to Downing St. for lunch with the
then Prime Minister John Major, which was an experience to say
the least, just walking into Downing St. walking up the
stairs and I was so surprised at the size of the rooms upstairs.
They were like banquet halls, absolutely huge.
So I've done lots of volunteering and I've done lots
of work helping people that have had bad things happen to them,
or underdogs that haven't been able to fight their own battles
without a bit of help. And I mean, eventually I ended
up as a single parent to five children, which was a challenge
in itself. That kept me pretty busy, and
all my kids are on the autism spectrum, which presents yet
more challenges, or at least did.
And the only way when you're confronted with something like
that is to learn about everything as much as you
possibly can. And that's really when my
learning journey started with research.
And since then I've been a complete research aholic and
spend 18 hours of 24 hours researching.
So autism was my first research specialist subject.
Debbie if I can just come in here and and say I know that the
autism subject was one that you really had to fight very hard
for, for your children because there were, there was there were
incidents that you had to really work very hard as a parent to
keep your family together. Are you able to tell us a little
bit about that? Yeah, sure.
I mean the the first time, I mean it's it's been very
interesting actually listening to all of your work and
listening to the interviews that have been coming up on UK column
from people that have gone through the whole child
protection journey, family courts, CAF casts, because this
has been going on for decades. I first came into contact with
child protection because of autism because of autism
spectrum conditions back in 1996.
And one of my kids was particularly hyperactive and he
was deemed disruptive at school. And they kept looking at me as
if it was my fault, as though I was doing something to him at
home that was having an effect on his school life.
And I was trying very hard to get him support because he was
non verbal till he was 7. So he didn't speak and people
couldn't really understand what he was saying.
But the thing with autism, Brian, and I think this is where
people get confused, is that autism is neither Rain Man nor
little boy banging head on wall. That's not the picture of
autism. Autism.
Autism spectrum conditions are completely unique to every
single person, and autism on its own is a standalone
neurodevelopmental condition. It is not a learning disability
and it is not a mental health condition.
Yes, of course it can be associated with a learning
disability and often is, and it can be associated with mental
health conditions, coexisting mental health conditions.
But as a standalone condition, autism is a neurodevelopmental
condition and thus it should have experts, neurodevelopmental
experts on hand to help people on the autism spectrum.
But that's something that we don't have in existence.
So the other thing to be aware of too is that with autism
spectrum conditions, there is no intellectual impairment unless
it's associated you have an associated learning disability
with it. So for the majority of children
that are diagnosed or suspected of being on the autism spectrum,
if they have an IQ of above 70, they will be sent to a
mainstream school. If they have an IQ of below 70,
they will be sent to a special school.
So the majority of these children do not have impairments
in their IQ. They have perhaps low emotional
quotients, but their their intellect is not affected.
So most of them get, they get directed into mainstream schools
where there is no support, none whatsoever.
And my son was struggling. He was really struggling.
He couldn't process the information that he was getting.
So he was becoming disruptive in school and he was getting
himself into trouble and I fought and fought and fought to
get him support and help. The more I fought the more I
raised the not the alarm. But if you like I I I just
raised the questions. The more I became demonized and
as a single parent I found myself a target and and and it
would seem from I've. I've had many years looking at
child protection since and looking at the system and it
would seem that many single mums get targeted and I was one of
them. And with without giving us too
many personal details, but how long did it take you to to go
through that battle until you'd got the state system away from
your children? Oh, it was absolutely
extraordinary. I mean, autism in my opinion is
a genetic condition. And so my son was born on the
autism spectrum. He wasn't diagnosed on the
autism spectrum until he was 11 years old and for the whole time
really from when he was went to kindergarten, in Infant School,
when he went to year one and nursery, that was when the
problem started arising because we we had no problem with him,
although he was a handful, I will admit and he will admit
that now you know he's he's a very successful young man now
and he's doing very, very well. But he'll admit that he was
challenging as a youngster. But I fought and fought and the
more you fight, the more you ask for help, the more you get
demonised and the more they decide, well, we don't know what
it is that's causing this issue, so it must be you.
So then they start to attack you and it doesn't matter what you
do, you can be polite, you can be reasonable, you can be
measured, it doesn't matter. They will still put the blame on
you and you end up with social services on your doorstep.
It's it's it's almost like all them, the domestic police.
I've never had a good experience with social services and I've
had a couple. But what this resulted in was a
child protection meeting. You know, I I got summons to a
child protection meeting and it was only then that I discovered
how aggressive and how abhorrent these child protection meetings
were. The parents have got no rights
at all. You get summons to a child
protection meeting, you get accusations thrown at you, and
you get documents through the post or put on your table,
served to you to tell you to turn up to a child protection
meeting. You have no way of taking
support with you. You're allowed to have a
solicitor, but the solicitor can only sit there and monitor,
excuse me, the procedure. They're not allowed to speak for
you, they're not allowed to defend you.
They're only allowed to make sure that the procedure is a
lawful procedure. And I can remember going into
that meeting, and it was huge, Brian.
I mean, you had somebody from every single discipline you can
imagine, including the police. So you had child protection
police, you had CAFCAS, you had doctors, you had teachers.
You had psychologists. You had head teachers.
You had social workers. Yeah, you name it, you had, you
had them around that table. I mean, when I went into the
first child protection meeting, there must have been 14 people
around that table, and every single one of them, except for
one, except for 1:00, every single one of them pointed the
finger at me. Every single one of them
attacked me. You're telling me off for being
muted? This is an informal chat, so I
don't mind. I've now unmuted myself.
So Debbie, how how did you get, how did you get them off your
back because this this for many people is is the real issue.
They they they get involvement with social services and they
are drawn into this system and it is amazingly difficult for
them to disengage and survive as an intact family.
How did you do that and keep your children?
I didn't listen to the advice that I was given and the advice
that I was given from pretty much everybody, family, friends,
professionals, was just keep it quiet.
Do as they say. Go along with what they say.
Don't rock the boat. You could lose your kids.
That's what people were telling me to do.
And at first I was scared. I was really scared.
I was terrified that somebody was going to come through the
door and take my kids. But I decided that I was going
to provide evidence that my son was on the autism spectrum.
We got allocated A caseworker who actually I got along with
extremely well and we agreed between us that I would smuggle.
I wasn't allowed to take my son out of county.
I wasn't allowed. Everything that I did had to be
monitored. He was registered on the Child
Protection Register and therefore I was under scrutiny.
My daughter was removed at the time because she was seen to
have been making the situation worse.
So she went to my to my mother's.
Luckily, she wasn't taken into care.
That would never have happened. She went to my mother's and my
son was registered on the Child Protection Register because they
wouldn't believe me. When I said that he was on the
autism spectrum, they absolutely refused to believe me.
So I smuggled my son to a private consultant child
psychiatrist in the dead of night in the back of the car
with blankets over him. I smuggled him out of county to
Bristol from North Devon and I met the consultant who did a
three hour assessment and diagnosed my son on the autism
spectrum and put it in writing. So when I saw the caseworker the
next time, I produced the letter from the consultant and he
wasn't surprised at all. But what he said was even though
you've gone to these lengths, this is a private consultation
with a private consultant and I'm not sure that social
services child protection will accept a private diagnosis.
So we were on tenterhooks because we didn't know if they
would accept it. However, on my occasion, luckily
they did and my son was immediately deregistered from
the Child Protection register. However, it didn't stop there
because I wasn't going to let them get away with it.
So I decided that I wanted to take action against child
protection and against social services, and that I wasn't
going to let this go because the Child protection officer at the
time, who I still remember the name of, and I can still see his
face. The child protection officer at
the time had told me I was a bad mother, had told me I was cruel,
had made all sorts of assertions about my character, and I was
determined that I was not going to allow this to carry on.
So it took me 7 years to sue the local authority for clinical
negligence and it was the first case of its kind.
And we won the case. And I ended up in a meeting with
my solicitor and the child protection officer that was
responsible for making the comments and the social worker.
And they were made to apologise to me and they were made to
apologise to my son as well for failing him.
And my son received substantial damages for clinical negligence.
And that's where I thought, right, you know, when it came to
child protection, I got very involved then with autism.
But I thought the only thing to do to counter the professionals
whenever they come up with a a challenge is to I just went back
to university. I thought, I'm going to have to
do a degree in autism because I'm going to have to become a
professional in my own right for people to take me seriously.
So that's what I did. And and Debbie, this this path
ultimately LED you to becoming an advisor to the government on
matters to do with autism. Yes, yes it it did.
I I qualified at Birmingham University and then I was a
government advisor. It albeit voluntary, I it wasn't
a paid civil service job. I was a government advisor on
the National Autism Programme Board between 2010 and 2015, and
that was serving on the board under the Secretary of State for
the majority of my time. It was Norman Lamb.
It was during the coalition. And it was also when we had a
director of social a minister for social services, social
care. Until Theresa May got rid of the
minister for social care, excuse me, and just lumped it into the
Minister of Health, into one Minister of Health.
So I was on the board because many people don't realise that
there isn't a blind act in the UK.
There isn't a deaf act, there isn't a Cerebral Palsy Act, but
there is an autism Act. There's legal parliamentary
legislation, the Autism Act 2009, and my job was to help
oversee and write the strategy, Think autism, the statutory
guidance that all local authorities had to follow.
And I was on the board for five years.
But interestingly, during that five years, I ended up with
child protection on my doorstep yet again, Brian.
I'm watching. I'm watching the clock, Debbie,
because I'm thinking to myself my goodness, we could we could
go down this this alley. And I know you've got a lot more
to say on this. And I I I know from our personal
conversations how incredible and how horrible the interaction
with social services have been for you for a family.
But I think I'm going to say on on this occasion let's just move
on a little bit from there. So I I don't know the answer to
this, so you can have to tell me.
So when you finally put all this to bed, what were you doing
before you met a man called Ian Crane?
I was fighting the water company.
Right. And this is this is to do with
an ongoing Horror Story for you, which is the flooding of your
house and your your continued battle with Southwest Water.
Tell us a little bit, but just keep it to a few minutes,
Debbie, because I want to move on to how you got involved with
Ian Crane and how you got involved with the UK column and
where that's taken your understanding of what is
happening in UK, what's happening to people worldwide.
But few minutes on your battle with with Southwest Water.
OK, so my battle with Southwest Water is now an ongoing 20 year
battle, which one of my very dear friends very kindly
reminded me was actually 1/3 of my life.
So for a third of my life I've been fighting Southwest water.
I've endured 101 sewer floods and counting.
I have a open raw sewer built outside my home and nobody wants
to take responsibility for the fact that my house is nothing
more than a blighted slum. To be to be quite frank, you
know, most of the services in our house don't work.
It's full of mould and we've had.
I've had conversations with the CEO of both Cornwall Council and
Southwest Water who know the situation, but nobody wants to
take responsibility and I won't let them off the hook.
I refuse to let them off the hook.
My house is valueless. It can't be sold.
It will continue to flood. There's no cure for it and
nobody wants to take responsibility.
So that's been my campaign for the last 20 years.
And let's put it this way, Brian, Southwest Water, it's
taken them so far. I put in a SAR.
I mean, it's a very long ongoing story, but we put in a SAR, a
subject access request for all the documentation with my name
on it over three months ago, and they're still trying to compile
it because of the volume. They know me so well.
They've red flagged me as obviously a troublemaker, but
I've challenged them and challenged them.
I won't let them off the hook. I continue to challenge them
because I'm not the only person that this is happening to.
Many people that are getting flooded today don't live
anywhere near a river, they don't live near the sea and yet
their properties are flooding with what they think is
rainwater or flood water. But actually it's not.
It's over, it's it's drains that are surcharging and it's sewage
and I see more and more and more of it happening all over the
country. So while we're talking about the
rivers are polluted and we talk about organisations like surface
against sewage, what we've got to remember is there is no
legislation currently in the United Kingdom that protects
home owners if a water company floods them with sewage.
There is no legislation. I've Anne Widdecombe has gone
very deeply into it. There seems to be a lacuna in
the law where no one wants to take responsibility.
If sewage is poured into a river, then it's the job of the
Environment Agency, AKA the Old Rivers Authority, to enforce.
But if sewage pours into someone's house, the water
company will blight your house and worse still, they won't tell
you. They'll put it on The Dirty
house register. That's called the DG5 register.
You won't be told until you come to sell your house.
And then when you come to sell it and a search is done on it,
you realise that actually who's going to want a house?
That sewer floods southwest water.
Think that it's OK if they put a sewer alarm on my home, but
homes don't have sewer alarms, they have burglar alarms.
If you were to see if you were to go to buy a house for the
sewer alarm Braun, would you buy it?
Well, the answer to that has got to be no.
And this is an amazing story of itself.
And I I hope that you will tell this story, Debbie, with me or
whoever you you feel comfortable with.
But it's it's absolutely extraordinary because where does
it come to? It comes to the fact that this
nation, Great Britain, the UK that stands on the world stage
preaching to countries, third world countries that can't feed
themselves haven't got proper infrastructure.
Here we are in UK in 2023 I had the quip at the beginning of
this recording that we had a heavy downpour.
But what will happen next next year is we'll have drought and a
house hose pipe ban. This is because we have not
updated the reservoir infrastructure so that in this
very wet and green land, we're not conserving water in a in a
sensible and practical way. We're not building new
reservoirs, we're not maintaining old ones, We're
shutting some reservoirs down and therefore we don't have
water. So that is 1 crass neglect of
infrastructure. But the other one is that we
have not spent money on our water infrastructure, not the
supply of fresh water houses, nor dealing with grey water and
and sewage. It simply hasn't happened.
And in Cornwall, and correct me if I'm not right on this, but I
will say that in Cornwall, we have an interesting situation
where there's an ongoing battle because Southwest Water and the
local authorities don't know who is responsible for which
particular segments of the existing sewage infrastructure.
And so when there's a problem, they just spend weeks or months
or years pointing fingers at each other saying, well,
actually it's your responsibility.
Southwest Water And Southwest Water points back to the local
authority and says, no, no, no, this is your infrastructure.
Or occasionally they agree and say, well, we don't actually
know who owns the sewage water structure, water infrastructure,
what a what a position for a leading world country in 2023.
And the result when when we get heavy rain, these houses are are
filled with sewage like your own.
It's incredible. Well, I can tell you that I
mapped. Myself and a friend.
We mapped every asset in this whole ward of our constituency.
All of it. We mapped British Gas.
We mapped clean water, sewerage, electricity, British Telecom,
you name it, As we even. We even map the adits, the
rivers, the brooks. We we, a Southwest Water still
and Cornwall Council still use our maps as a guideline now for
where their assets are. And I think what people need to
remember is that the water companies are not statutory
consultees for planning. So for me, if people can picture
Boss Castle, a little tiny village down the bottom of a
very steep hill in north Cornwall, a little tiny fishing
village up the hill has been built, loads of new housing
estates. And that's what's happened
essentially to me is I live in a little miner's cottage, a little
stone miner's cottage right at the bottom of the hill.
And the hill above me used to be fields with cows, but now I've
got five housing estates. Now, none of those housing
estates work at the water company was never consulted with
regards to are these housing estates going to overwhelm your
already failing infrastructure? They were never consulted.
So the water companies are happy to take the money from the
developers and to connect people to connect a new estate to old
infrastructure, but at our cost because it's us that get
flooded. So the number of developments
and and to be fair actually on one occasion to Cornwall,
Cornwall actually turned down the developing the plans, they
turned them down, but they were overturned at Westminster.
I think it was our friend Eric Pickles that decided that he
knew better than the locals, so he let the plans go ahead.
So now we've ended up with a situation where we've got
sewerage infrastructure that's probably been designed for 200
houses that's now having to accommodate 2000.
Yeah, this is the nub of the problem isn't it?
That we we've had a massive expansion to the urban
infrastructure with minimal minimal investment into sewage
and water infrastructure and now now things are coming home to
roost because these problems are appearing.
But of course what you say is true is that when the homeowner
says these things are wrong, you as one individual homeowner are
fighting a monster, which is the multi £1,000,000 southwest water
which can bring all of its big legal team in to say, well no,
it's not our problem, it's an incredible it's.
Worse than that. It's worse than that.
You know, Brian, because we're doing the job of the water
company and the council, because I've had to train as a flood
warden, I have to close the road.
My Rd. is like a river. You could literally row a boat
and that's only in 3 minutes. So we are, we are the ones that
are out there that are in the middle of the road.
We've provided videos, photos. I've been called a liar, I've
been called an exaggerator. I've been called every single
name under the sun by Southwest water.
I've seen documents that have demonised me because I challenge
them and I won't let them off the hook.
So yes, they've got this huge Bank of lawyers at Pennon, their
parent company, and they use that power, they use it on their
own customers. And yet you've only got to look
at any reports of what reports of what do what, by the way?
Pretty much nothing, because there is no regulation from off
what they're a financial regulator only.
But you look at the reports and you can see the damage that
these water companies are doing to to people all around the
country, and none of them, none of them are taking
accountability for it. And the local authorities point
the finger to the water companies.
The water companies point the finger to the local authorities.
I've got the ownership deeds of all the assets around me.
And now Southwest Water are telling me, oh, we don't think
it belongs to us, even though they've worked on an asset for
10 years. They're saying we did it as a
gesture of goodwill. No, I don't think so.
S Water. No one works on assets that
don't belong to them. It's simply ridiculous.
But all the time they've allowed my community to live like this,
Frightened every single time it rains.
We can't go on holiday. We can't go away.
We can't. Every single birthday pretty
much is ruined. You don't know what is going to
happen next If there's a A. We get flood warnings 2 three
times a week and you don't know if that flood warning is going
to result in six inches of water in your home, whether you're
going to be out of your house for nine months.
You can't invite people round, you can't go anywhere.
Your whole life is on hold. People don't understand.
With floods. I feel so sorry for all the
people that were flooded 3 months ago.
And I saw a report on the news that said, you know, they're
hoping to be in their homes for Christmas.
And I thought, no, you won't be in your homes for Christmas.
Because if your house is flooded, it's at least six to
nine months before your home is dry enough to even start to
repair. And then you've got the fight
with the insurance company. You know, it just goes from one
drama to another. The ongoing effects and
repercussions and psychological damage are huge.
But I don't know, Maybe I've got a strong spirit and I just keep
on fighting. Well, at the end of the day,
you're a gutsy woman, Debbie. This this is the key thing.
So I, I, I would suspect there's quite a few people listening in.
People who've seen you talking on UK column, listen to what you
have to talk about now. They're beginning to understand
the things that have happened that have made you into the
woman that you are. And clearly you've never been a
woman who's going to say, well, this is wrong.
Oh, well, that's the way it is. You, you've been one of the
people who've always stood up to challenge it.
So these, these are things which have formed.
You made you the person that you are.
They're ongoing battles, but you've been able to do even more
on top of that. And I'm going to push you
because we've got to. We've got to get there.
Ian Crane, Somehow you got in touch with Ian Crane or Ian
Crane got in touch with you. Now if people don't know who Ian
Crane is, he was a lovely man who also realised that things
were very wrong in the UK and the world in general.
And he stood up to be counted by setting up talks which started
very small, and then ultimately got to the stage where he could
take take over a a very nice hotel for the weekend and fill
that hotel with people who wanted to hear speakers talking
about what was wrong, what was causing problems in UK and
worldwide. And the wonderful thing for me
is that when you went to one of those events, people were
listening to very serious subjects, very often very
serious subjects, some of them quite dark in the talks.
And yet when the people socialised at coffee time or
maybe in the evening in the bar, you could just hear people
laughing and talking and interacting with with each
other. Sadly, Ian isn't with us
anymore. But Debbie, I never did know
how. How did you get in touch with
Ian Crane? But you know what?
It was one of those things where it just happened.
And my great friend and I will. I will name her because it was
really down to her. Mel Sheridan, who's also had
huge problems with Southwest Water.
She phoned Ian Crane one morning and spoke to him and she said to
me you should phone him. And his number was online.
It was very easy to get in contact with him.
And I thought, it can't be that easy, surely.
And I picked up the phone and I dialled the number and Ian
picked up and I was really surprised that it was him on the
end of the phone. And I just explained who I was
and I said I'm having an absolute nightmare with the
water companies. They're corrupt to to their boot
strings. They're cruel.
They don't care about their customers.
They've got huge, huge amount of money in their pot.
They're only worried about their shareholders.
I've got the evidence. I've done loads of work into
them and I want to expose them. And he listened to me and said,
well, I tell you what, Debbie, I've got an AV conference coming
up in a couple of months. How about you put together a
presentation, send it to me and we'll see if we can get you
included on the conference. And I was like wow, wow.
And I I literally put the phone down and I got an e-mail from
him within about 10 minutes to say this is the address, this is
the e-mail address to send a presentation to.
Please, please send it across as soon as you can.
So I put together some slides and he liked what he saw and he
agreed that the water companies needed to be have a a spotlight
shown on them and he gave me the opportunity to talk at AV.
And that of course is where I met you Brian.
And that's where it it all started because when I presented
at AV, of course I got the opportunity to listen to all the
all of the other speakers and that was really I was waking up.
But that was one of the trigger moments that opened my eyes even
more to what was going on. Thank you for that.
And that was fun times because I I remember Ian giving me a call
and saying that he's been speaking to this lady called
Debbie Evans who knew a huge amount about water and the water
companies and also things happening internationally to do
with water. I'm going to say what he's
saying. What did he say to me?
He said, well this lady knows a huge amount Brian, but I think
she could do with a little bit of help to prepare her slides
and and also have a little bit of the confidence to join in
with AV, which is alternative view if people want to know what
that is. We'll make sure there's a link
through to alternative view in the the notes for this audio.
You mentioned me, Brian, you mentioned me right all the way
through and that's really how how we got to know each other
because you took me under your wing and and gave me a few hints
and tips and and helped me help me with my presentation and
stuff. Well, that that that's true,
Debbie. But the other thing that was
happening was that every time we had a discussion, you were
talking about other things. And I'm thinking blindly this,
this lady knows all sorts of things.
And so our discussions got more and more wide-ranging.
You did the alternative view and you did really well and people
paid attention to what you had to say.
But we were able to carry on that conversation and then we
got the opportunity to say to you, well, do you want to come
and talk on a few things with UK column And I'm going to say what
an adventure that's been because no, no sooner had you come on
than life LED. I correct me if I've got this
wrong, but life LED, you LED us back in the direction really of
medical matters and then we had the incredible events of COVID
and Lockdown and this gave you an opportunity to really get
back into your your earlier professional mould as as a
nursing sister. And you realise that things just
weren't right with what they were saying about COVID and
Lockdown. What was?
What was the key trigger did? Did you have a day when you're
listening to something on the radio or watching the TV or
whatever it was? And you said this is nonsense.
What? What engaged you?
What was the first thing that made you really think that what
they were saying about COVID was wrong?
My first warning flag I think was the tests, the PCR test, the
test and trace. Because as I'd done ENT, I'd
specialised in ear, nose and throat.
So I knew that nasopharyngeal swabs were pretty dangerous and
as an ENT nurse I would prefer a consultant to do them.
It's a very delicate part of the body and if you shovel a swab of
cotton wool, bud up your nose in in the wrong in the wrong way,
you could do yourself some serious damage.
Which is why we say to children, and we watch children, we say
don't put anything up your nose. That was my first warning flag.
But my son, actually, I have to to acknowledge David here
because he came downstairs one one day and he said mum, he said
there's 98 or 99.7% of people are getting better.
Why is everybody worried? And it was like a a light bulb
moment for me. It was quite early on and he'd
been doing, he's got, I think he's got my my sort of research
genes and he'd been doing a load of research and that was the
light bulb moment. So that the PCR tests, because I
knew that they were either retrieving something from inside
the nose, so they were either swabbing for DNA or they were
inserting something high up in the nose that you wouldn't be
able to get out. So I was very suspicious of
that. The other thing that really
triggered me was that a pandemic of any, any sort would normally
burn itself out in three to four years.
So why anybody was even considering a vaccine which
would normally take 5 to 10 years to develop was also a red
flag. But those were the three things
that really got me suspicious that something wasn't right.
And that led on to you interacting, coming into contact
with other people who were doing amazing research and saying some
pretty amazing things. And one name that comes to me
instantly at this point is a lady called Anne Marie Yim.
I knew you were going to say Doctor Anne Marie and what an
absolute trooper she is. And yeah, you're absolutely
right. You know, I jumped on Telegram 1
evening and you told me about these lines that you could talk
to loads of people on a like a Telegram chat.
And there was a chat talking about COVID, the vaccines, the
roll out with Doctor Anne Marie Yim.
And I happened to catch this conversation on Telegram and as
a result I messaged her. And from that message came great
knowledge because as many of our regular audience will know, we
did many interviews with Doctor Yim and her other experts,
Professor Peron as well from France.
So we had a very much international flavour on what
was going on in Europe with COVID.
And one thing led to another. And I think where I was
fortunate was that because I'm a nurse, I can translate some of
that lingo and jargon that people were hearing and perhaps
not understanding, so I could translate it and make it more
simple for people to understand. So yes, Doctor Anne Marie Yim,
Professor Peron, Harvey Seligman, all of those
interviews can be found still on the UK column.
And I mean, how right were they? You know, I remember Doctor
Seligman saying right at the beginning, Brian talking about
shedding for example, and he was studying the Pfizer data in
Israel. This was right from the get go.
So we were well ahead of the curve.
And you know, taking yourself back to when you interviewed
Nicola and Tony, we were well ahead of the curve then.
We were seeing serious adverse reactions from very early on,
even before other people were seeing them and looking at the
NHS long term plan as I did, in great depth and seeing what was
coming in the future and what is happening now is something
that's fundamentally, completely different from the NHS that I
trained in. So everything, everything that I
am familiar with, everything that rings home with me, that I
feel safe with. That's not happening in the NHS
at the moment and I'm horrified because for nurses of my
generation and I can imagine there'll be quite a few
listening today and they'll be saying exactly the same.
It was not like this in my day and the the the change has been
phenomenal. I mean it's it's completely
different to to how it was then. And and what you're talking
about there is, is the whole of the medical system, but in
particular the NHS. Yeah, the NHS is is.
It's unrecognisable. It's completely unrecognisable.
Not only do you not know who you're seeing when you go in,
you don't know what you're being told, you don't know if you're
going to get seen. When I trained, the patient was
always the centre of our radar, it was patient centred care and
today the NHS is not functioning as a health service at all.
It's not providing a service to people.
What it's actually doing is making people sick.
In my opinion, you know, it's making people sicker than they
should be and it's not offering them the correct help and
treatment that they're needing quickly enough.
So we're testing, we're spending all of this money in this
country at the moment on testing everybody for cancer, testing
them for disease, testing them for viruses and then what do we
do with them When we do discover that there is a problem, we put
them at the end of a 7.8 million waiting list.
So we're we're happy to test healthy people but we're not
happy to treat those ones that need help and in particular you
know those that are suffering with serious adverse reactions.
We were right ahead of the curve from the get go with that
because we could see that people with serious adverse reactions
were were not being acknowledged by doctors, They weren't being
seen by professionals. They weren't being able to
access the tests, the treatment that they needed and were often
having to pay huge amount using their savings.
Some of them are having to remortgage or sell their homes
in order to get private medical treatments because they couldn't
access NHS treatment. So, you know, for me
particularly, it was interesting speaking to Vanessa Bailey when
she was telling me that a friend of hers needed medical treatment
in Syria and was seen, treated and and left with whatever they
needed within 25 minutes. This all took place in 25
minutes here. You know, if you're admitted via
an ambulance, you could be stuck on a trolley for 12/24/48 hours.
So what kind of health service is that?
It's not the one I trained in. In fact, now in 3rd world
countries you seem to be able to access better healthcare than
you do here in the UK as a developed, as what we call a
developed country. Debbie Let's let's jump in the
deep end because your and our personal experience of what
happened during the COVID, so-called Pandemic and Lockdown
was an amazing thing. You were researching and you
discovered a lot of things and then subsequently you've also
started to see a lot of things happening.
Part of that is what is happening in the medical world,
but a lot of it is broader than just the medical world we're in
the we're in the last few minutes really.
But you've come a huge way. You're a fighter.
What is it? What is it you think you're
fighting at the moment? I believe we're fighting not
just a physical war that we see around us, an information war,
but we're fighting a spiritual war.
What I see is satanic. What I see is demonic.
I cannot. I mean the people that are doing
this, the people in control of this narrative, to me my
personal opinion is they don't have souls and they don't have
consciences and and I believe that I I very much believe that
walking around as there are angels in human form and I'm
very fortunate that I've met so many, especially since working
with the column. But there are also demons in
human form too, people that are anti humans, anti humanists,
people that don't don't want to care for other human beings.
So I believe that this is, this is evil, this is dark, and this
is satanic. And I think it's biblical.
I think we're living in biblical times.
Well, I wouldn't disagree with that, that at all.
And that won't surprise you, I don't think.
But it's clear that something very nasty is operating both in
the UK and worldwide. There seems to be money, plenty
of money for wars and munitions and weapons.
We can support the war in Ukraine.
We can support the horrific. Scenes of the bombing in Gaza.
But we can't look after elderly people.
We've also seen many elderly people die as a result of the of
the lockdown where they were locked into so-called care
facilities and denied access with their relatives and young
children. All the things that might be
expected to keep an older or an elderly person sprightly and
interested in life. We've got the demise of the NHS,
where we can't get basic medical treatment for people.
We've got the sexualisation of our children in schools, young
children in schools. We've got the other utter
breakdown of politics. There's something really
unpleasant at work in in UK and when we're getting into it, and
you've been doing some and some incredible research on on this
over the last few months, is that we're seeing this network
of global bodies that seem to be able to pull the strings to get
nation states to jump to their tune.
Can you tell us a bit more about the network that you're seeing?
Other networks, absolutely huge. I mean, you know, I think most
people that are listening to this now will immediately
recognise The Who, the World Health Organization, the United
Nations, the World Economic Forum, the, you know, the, the
banks, I mean, they're all in it up to their neck.
And this is for control and this is to frighten us.
You know that for the last four years, the population of the
world, I don't know anybody that hasn't been affected.
That's some in some way, shape or form by what we've seen in
the last four years. Wherever you are in the world,
people have had information thrown at them, cascades of
information, info, demics, and and now they're frightened.
So many people are frightened. And I think the key to all of
this is these globalists want us to be frightened.
They want to cause confusion, chaos, disruption, and we must
not allow that. We must not allow that we see
them. I mean, I I heard Ben Ruben on
the news and and I've heard other people, a professor, Chris
Flowers was saying in my recent interview with him when he was,
he was, he was directing a message actually to Professor
Jonathan van Tam. And the message is the same.
We see you. You know, are they really that
stupid that they don't think that we see what's going on with
these global organisations? There's just one big revolving
door because the conflicts of interests are absolutely
immense. I mean, you know, Bill Gates,
he's not a country, but he's the second biggest donor for the
World Health Organization. He's got the ex chair of the
MHRA in his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
He's got his fingers pretty much in every pie and especially in
the United Kingdom's pie. You know, we've got Bill Gates
infiltrating everywhere and it's network within network, but it's
always the same names that keep coming up and the same
organisations And the reason that they've made it a spider's
web is to try to confuse us, is to try and make it difficult for
us to be able to join the dots. And we've always said that
whatever dots we join on the column, we always encourage
other people to take the information that we're giving
them and check it out for themselves.
Join your own dots, find your own truth.
But clearly what I can see is this massive web, Internet, web,
a web of deception, a spider's web of organisations within
organisations within organisations, so many
organisations and actually government departments springing
up all over the place that nobody's ever heard of, that you
can't possibly track everything all of the time because it's so
complicated. But that's the name of the game,
isn't it? Make it as difficult as you can.
But it remains to be said that we see you, we know what you're
doing and we will stand up, we will rise up against it and I
don't think things are going to get easier anytime soon.
However, I think that the majority of certainly our
audience at the UK column, we're prepared.
We know what is coming up, so we can be prepared.
And I think we have to be prepared because someone's going
to have to be there for people that aren't prepared.
There are going to be some people that are really scared.
Moving forward. I don't think 2024 is going to
be a very easy year. And some people are going to be
very scared, very fearful and very surprised.
And it's going to be people like us and outlets like us that can
maybe just try and reassure people to you're OK, things are
OK, you'll be OK as long as you're prepared.
Be prepared for everything. And now's the time to do it.
And I always say at the end of my blog, Brian, have you got a
plan? Because perhaps now is the time
to start thinking about 1:00. Brilliant.
Thank. Thank you very much for that
Debbie. Now our our interview, our
discussion is going to go out over the Christmas holiday
period. So I have two questions for you.
One is people are there at home Christmas.
I'm not sure which day this particular interview will go
out, but I'm just going to say the Christmas holiday period.
So the first thing I'm going to ask you is what should people be
doing and saying to their families they're together with
them this Christmas? What would you suggest people
should be doing as families and friends who were together at the
Christmas holiday period? Well you know my kids have have
instructed me that on Christmas Day I'm not to say anything
controversial and I'm to keep Christmas Day as because I mean
you know from for many of us Christmas can be quite
stressful. You've got people coming from
all over the place, you've on a time, it all has the Turkey done
and dishing everything up on time and it can be quite busy.
So my kids have said to me, mum, can we just make Christmas Day a
day where we enjoy each other and we respect each other's
opinions and we don't say anything and we just enjoy being
a family for the day and we forget about all of this just
for one day. And so I've promised that I
won't talk about anything that could be considered
controversial or upsetting to anybody on Christmas Day.
That doesn't mean to say though, on Boxing Day, I can't.
And I think what I'm finding now is that more people than not are
asking questions. And very often something will
come up in a conversation that you don't need to bring anything
up and you just listen to what they're saying and then gently,
gently, really gently talking about what actually is happening
and asking questions. You know, there's nothing quite
as it diffuses everything. If you ask somebody a question,
if you say what do you think about what's going on at the
moment, or do you think they're going to get rid of cash and get
that other person's opinion? And then you've got the start
the the icebreaker for a conversation.
What I've learnt is, because I'm quite gobby, is that I've got to
learn to with my family, shut up a little bit because they get a
bit tired of me going on and on and on.
So I think I've learnt to hold my tongue at certain points and
learn, discern who's the right person to tell when's the right,
when, when's the right time. But certainly have those
conversations and if nothing else, you know, refer people to
the front page of the Times this week.
Because if Oliver Dowden saying get prepared and buy your
candles, that's always a conversation breaker.
Are you going to buy your candles?
Have you bought torches? Well, the Deputy Prime Minister
says we should. What do you think that's all
about? You know, try to make the
conversation as as friendly and as gentle as possible.
And don't make it hostile. Because we're living in, we're
living in hostile times. We don't need to to make them
worse. Brilliant.
Now the last question is, what do you say as a gutsy woman, to
other women out there to get them to stand up and fight?
What do you say? I say to every single woman out
there, you know, you know deep down that your children's future
is in jeopardy. Your grandchildren's future is
in jeopardy. Your cousin, your sister.
We've all got children in our family.
We owe it. We owe it to the next
generations coming along. We have to stand up.
To tell the truth. Well, we have to say no.
Women, stand with me and just say no.
Be brave. You know we are.
We are a strong race. The human race is strong.
We need other humans as well. Humans need humans.
So join me in a campaign to stand up.
Just say no, be brave, stand firm and don't be scared.
Brilliant. Let's end there.
We're going to say thank you very, very much to all the UK
column listeners who've joined us today.
And it's been fascinating to hear.
You're talking about yourself, Debbie, and the amazing life
that you've had. You've come through all those
trials and tribulations and here you are at the end of 2023,
still fighting and we're delighted to have you as part of
the UK column team. So thank you very much.
And I'm delighted to be part of the team.
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity and the platform
to tell my story. And hopefully, if you're out
there and you're listening, you'll stand up, say no and be
brave. Great.
And so the audience, enjoy your Christmas break, be nice to
yourself, be kind to your family and other people and make a
little bit of time to say some prayers because that's a very
important thing to do. We'll leave it there.
Bye, bye.