Hope
This website is for a very, very kind, lifelong friend. He recently had a stroke. The reason for this website is now clear: an endeavour to illustrate some hope to my friend. Perhaps help others too, who encounter one of the cow-pats that life sometimes puts in front of your feet. You can have some severe blows and carry a load of scars on your back, but still end up at a place where it is Heaven of Earth…
^^ For This Wee Soul Very Very Lucky To Be Here ^^
^^ The Good Days Far Outweigh The Bad ^^
Becoming disabled may have cost a job I truly loved, but it also brought about mischief, and accidental success’s…
Sometimes having to stay still for an hour and let the spinal discs settle down, with a huge dose of deep-heat skin-cream (rather than addle the brain with Dihydrocodeine or Oramorph) gives the grace of quiet time (and a bit of accidental meditation) to help sort things out…
Such as finding PRAGMATIC SOLUTIONS THAT WORK in order to get the funds to REPLACE what the dodgy Santander Bank plc have stuffed away into their obscure multi-million pound “suspense account.” Like one of those scams where a dodgy call centre targets the vulnerable and takes several hundred pounds from them.
That is what Santander Bank plc did… instead of giving the money advice centre back its charity money.
So in a Robin Hood sort of way, and after the SIXTEENTH ATTEMPT BEGGING FOR OUR CHARITY MONEY TO BE RETURNED TO US BY SANTANDER BANK PLC, we simply did what they and many of the unpleasant disreputable banks do not expect (disabled people are all supposed to be weak and vulnerable ~ the trouble is, disabled cops aren’t totally weak, neither are disabled prosecutors, nor disabled barristers).
Here is what happened next.
We didn’t so much as rob a bank, but instead we REPOSSESSED a bank (building).
If you have ever been screwed over by your bank we cannot quite express the total bliss of doing an entirely LEGAL bank heist…
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A Totally Legal Bank Heist
As one of our skint clients phrased what we did.
Some readers may think we are being unduly harsh on Santander Bank plc.
But when the actual series of events we have experienced and also witnessed at other banks and to other ordinary folk just trying to make a living, we reach for our North Star. That means to make best efforts to try and help constructively find a solution.
Unfortunately, there are few remedies for greed. But what there are, tend to work very, very well.
We are reaching for a bottle of bank-disinfectant. It is often called the FCA.
To help ensure the FCA have the best way of sorting out any miscreant bank or bank management, we have already compiled what one of our disabled cops did when he was fit for that job in the police… Detect and compile a case fit for the Procurator Fiscal (Scottish for Crown Prosecutor).
We now look forward to Santander Bank plc and its dubious senior management being disinfected by the FCA auditing Santander Bank plc. We have witnessed the very talented and thorough CEO of the Financial Conduct Authority, Mr Nikhil Rathi being interrogated by a UK Parliament watchdog. His polite and incisive replies were a pleasure to hear.
Mr Rathi has a skillset and a depth of knowledge that are perfect for his job as FCA CEO.
So, based on reading the FCA report that audited TSB Bank plc and the £10,900,000 TSB fine, plus £99,990,000 settlement fund for abused TSB Bank customers, we may well find something like this will happen to Santander Bank plc…
TSB Bank plc
Disgraceful Conduct
Official Report Summary
You might think that if the boss at Santander Bank plc had any humanity or decency, he would want to help reduce these debt-suicides rather than obstruct the Creditcare Money Advice Association from depositing and/or withdrawing its funds. The charity could not have been any clearer when its opened its account with the Santander Bank in the 1990s…
But NO, the Santander Bank plc could not make it any clearer… disabled charity trustees were a nuisance and Santander were not interested in helping. Though apparently the law says these money-grabbing Shylocks do have to make “reasonable adjustments.” more on that to come.
During another obligatory hour sitting still a few days later and getting the Ralgex topical pain remedy cream out, we just discovered (whilst accidentally meditating for an hour) that…
It IS possible to repossess a bank if it “harms” the community. Well the new Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 states that in the actual statute.
So this means more (disabled) “Robin Hood” style mischief to add to this list that our book-keeper kindly put together for the bank as part of an effort to get the banks to behave like… proper retail banks.
In a strange way, the spinal injury (and surgery on 1st July 1994) was a fateful injury that became a fortunate charm and bizarrely a lucky sort of disability!
At the same time the next photo was taken on the Island of Islay, an aircraft had crashed. There were times when you have to lift things in way that would cause Health and Safety to have kittens, even in the mid 1980s when HSE was less rigorous. That time up at the Twin Otter airplane crash site was a real lesson in life (caution, graphic account: here – for the sake of veracity ~ plus the way trolls infest the internet, I prefer to link to source material whenever possible).
Those days up and down the hills at Laphroaig really messed with the old spine. But a bad back was nothing compared to what the folk on that plane endured. Miraculously all of the passengers survived. Sadly, one of the pilots perished.
The islanders on Islay were amazing. They gently and calmly rallied round. Community spirit at its finest. Islay really is one of the most special of places. The islanders are amongst the most decent people I have ever been lucky enough to get to know. On the bucket list is to go back and thank Annie Anderson for gifting me some of the kind wisdom that is the essence of Ileachs to what back then was still a young cop.
^^ On The Beautiful Island of Islay ^^
That grumbling pain was eventually diagnosed as a burst intervertebral disc. It had to come out…
^^ Burst Disc Removal ^^
Gory Bits For The Curious: Here & Here
This spinal injuries became a physical disability and ended a career that was becoming one of the best jobs imaginable.
One of the hardest things to hear was when a feckless human resources manager at Strathclyde Police HQ in Pitt Street, Glasgow said…
“You are physically no use as police officer now. So best get used to the (new) daytime television and a cushy life on benefits.”
Even by Glasgow standards that was harsh. I just replied…
=> “Aye Right”
In Glaswegian “Aye Right” means something different to what it might seem (translation: here).
That single event went on to shape the rest of my stubborn, thrawn life.
Determined to prove the lady wrong and not wanting to claim benefits thankyou, it was possible to find a way to work, albeit with adjustments.
=> That is what this website is seeking to do.
=> Also to give one of my best friends hope that a stroke is not the end.
Fight It On The Beaches Hope:
Not so many folk appear know that Sir Winston Churchill was MP for Dundee between 1908 and 1922. I was surprised when the doctor started talking about a former patient who I assumed lived at Chartwell in Kent! Sir Winston was treated many times in our local Dundee hospital. The neurosurgeon who treated my stroke was cheerful and said: “Winston Churchill managed to survive eight strokes and last until he was 90 years old” (though she did say that Winston was a patient at Ninewells Hospital several years before she joined)!
Creative Commons Courtesy & Copyright Permission By Millerdl
Plus…
Land On Your Own Beaches Hope:
For example, during a life working and shoving disability out of the way, this happened…
Island Home: £5 A Year Rent
^^ Davaar Island & The Old Lookout Station + Lighthouses ^^
^^ More Details to Follow On This Website ^^
^^ Photo Attribution ~ Paul White. Alamy Fee Paid: Here ^^
Folk reading this page may have observed that my friend having suffered a stroke is different from the dafty here, mangling these words. My physical spinal disability from lifting a very robust farmers onto helicopter and getting bits of plane and people down a hill is very different from a stroke!
But in April 1999 I got hit on the head by a 5,000 ton ferry.
At Ninewells Hospital A&E a stroke was diagnosed (proof: here & here).
Please, please do not take these (or any words on this website) as a cry for pity. That would be mortifying. The medical events (spinal surgery and then a stroke) are mentioned to ensure folk who have suffered either or both know the Amadan at the end of this keyboard has experienced both physical and mental disability.
So for my friend and anyone else who stumbles upon this site and its evolution, I would like to narrate a journey of hope and with some luck, and perhaps a piece of the content here and there may help others.
If readers will forgive me as the stroke brought a friend called dyslexia (still very lucky to get off lightly) and that can cause some difficulty with words. All of these pages are checked a few times and may evolve as friends call by and correct my mudddrrr of the grammar.
For now and as a reasonable place to start, our pro bono accountant put this list together after she had completed a major audit of our old files.
Our accountant is a Daniel Craig fan ~ which manifests itself below where my words lack the extended vocabulary.
First, a summary of a life that is hopefully not been wasted “watching daytime tv” nor drawing state benefits (no disrespect for folk who have to and we know that from debt-counselled during the 11 years at the Creditcare Debt Advice charity – and another 11 years at our not-for-profit debt counselling service..
Rather than Russ McLean massacring more of the English language and given many folk (rudely) type “TL:DR” to overly long pages of text, our accountant found the excerpt and we include it here.
Moving pictures sometimes work better than screeds of text and dry narrative…
Of All People, It Was Our Accountant From Whom This
Video Upload Was Suggested ~ Rather Than Print Words!
“I Shall Use My Time”
^^ “I Shall Use My Time” ^^
The dissonance, the jarring mix and use of words by poet Jack London hit us, along with the meaning that our accountant was making in terms of her suggestion that at least one of the crew here has “used his time” as opposed to wasting 28 years.
Bearing in mind this page and website is from an old geezer who finds computers a severe challenge and needs the grandkids to work an iPhone, technology is something with which he struggles daily (does not use emails).These websites are built by the principle of: “Old Monkey See ~ Old Monkey Do!”
The “embedding” of HTML coding for video (looks like the HTML coding text: clock here), has a novelty value as it seems to be working on this page.
So as a cheeky follow-on with the Youtube “embedding” technology and aware of how well accountant’s sneaking in a bit of favourite poetry under the guise of a Daniel Craig movie, please forgive this Dino-Sore-Russ from a wee treat.
Here is dame Judi Dench (official Instagram: here), a lady that this wee soul adores. Judi is speaking words that give profound meaning to what happens when a person who has strengths to help others, then becomes weaker.
For disclosure ~ I come from a family with a father and grandfather, both who served in the Royal Navy; a brother who served as a firefighter and a son who also served as a firefighter. Plus two cousins, one of whom is a paramedic and the other was an ambulance driver. Along with one of the Old Bill writing these words.
All of these family members have paid an all too frequent a price of back injury. As years progress, an acceleration towards premature decrepitude.
So these words really, really strike home.
It is easy not to hear them with the National Treasure of Judi Dench speaking and Daniel Craig leaping all about the place. But worth listening out for what is said all the same…
^^ The Words Mean A Lot To The Old Blue Light Brigade ^^
& we do not mean Marlene Dietrich type of blue lamplight here.
Mercifully most folk will only be “disabled” for a few seconds when the number 26 bus squishes them and closes the final chapter of a life. As for this web-blog, I promise the rest of it will be lot more cheerful!
My point is no matter what life throws at you and until the final few seconds, please keep your hope alive. Fill every day with a full measure of life.
The picture of that island paradise is real an on my honour, it only cost £5 a year. Fortunately that allowed a significant amount of rent to be saved.
Though the new home back in 1985 on that island was just £5 for a reason. It was a dilapidated old coastguard station…
^^ Before Renovation ~ With Help From Friends ^^
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^^ After Renovation ~ With Help From Friends ^^
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^^ Before Renovation ~ With Help From Friends ^^
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^^ After Renovation ~ With Help From Friends ^^
Island life was and is subline.
Fancy coming to live on an island?
If, like the wee dog looking through the hatch, you are curious about the journey, I have been taught not to overload each page, lest folk get weary. It is incredibly hard to work out what is too long or too short.
But for now, I’m going to end this introduction page with something that started out being written on the lucky keyboard in this photograph. Please ignore the temperamental computer on the right. It was either put an emji on the ruddy thing, or throw it out of the lighthouse window and into the sea (it’s the only photo I have just now of old “lucky” computer and keyboard…
^^ Old Lucky Keyboard ^^
The Lucky Computer Is In The Middle ^^
Please ignore "old jobbie" computer on the right.
This is just one example of things you don’t expect to happen when you become less able than you once were.
A friend phoned in 2012 and the keyboard upon which these words are being typed, also wrote the following constitution (with some help form friends and Evoc forms)…
One of the secrets of life that the writer here discovered is that in spite of any disability, when a group of friends come together (disabled and/or able bodied), then truly awesome things start to happen….
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One of Those Events
Being 1000 Tons Of Ship Arrive
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^^ TS Queen Mary Saved From Being Scrapped ^^
What happened next is a whirlwind.
These sorts of adventures don’t happen to ordinary folk.
But when the Big Man talks, things start to get very real.
Best of all?
Hope starts to return…
^^ Robbie Coltrane Was A Giant of A decent Human Being ^^
Thankyou for the hope Robbie. Heartbroken you won’t see the ship sail. But perhaps from wherever you are now, you will visit for a wee dram somehow.
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The Next Part Of Our Adventure of Hope Away From Stroke
Will Appear Here Soon.
Please check back regularly, or even follow on social media…
Click Here
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Any Question or Suggestions
Please Get In Touch:
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I was lucky enough to be “best man” at my friend’s wedding.
He was the one who got me to put in paperwork to become a plod. A job I loved. But alas, I got a spinal injury lifting a heavy farmer onto a helicopter; then another spinal injury pulling a very water-logged person out of Campbeltown Loch at 2am on a Saturday/Sunday and ended up with an angry disc in my back.