Donal MacIntyre

Your health care is a personal issue to you and your doctors. But we have been receiving reports of hospitals seemingly, selling access to your treatment records – and patients receiving relevant private and homeopathic treatment offers in the post just days after. Strange – an accident – well we are investigating. Let us know your story – your experience – has this happened to you. . Have you received unwanted advertisements through the post for health products after you’ve been to the hospital? Did you think the timing was a little bit suspicious? Or perhaps you were grateful for the introduction to something that’s helped with your symptoms. Let us know or email donal@bbc.co.uk .

Here is what one patient told us:  I don’t think it’s right that these people should send literature of this sort of material through the post. For instance, who gets hold of this material? The grandchildren say: what’s this granddad? Have you got cancer? And all this sort of thing. I think it’s an infringement of privacy that they can send that to a private address full stop..  Email donal@bbc.co.uk

Enjoy the latest edition of the Radio Show on Five Live . This week we talk to two former Mossad spies  about how they were recruited, their training and their views on the current debate about the involvement of Mossad in the murder of the Hamas gun buyer in Dubai. We also challenge the Government about its  drugs policy and NICE in relation to MS medicines. Enjoy the show.

In an extraordinary interview with Donal MacIntytre for BBC Radio 5 Live on Sunday 11 October, a former Royal Military Police (RMP) investigator claims there are hundreds of cases of abuse by British soldiers, involving death and serious injury, of Iraqi civilians which have never been dealt with or have been covered up. He claims the interests of the military are taking precedence over the interests of justice and that the Royal Military Police are out of their depth in Iraq.

Describing the allegations of abuse the former RMP investigator says: “I’ve seen documentary evidence that there were incidents running into the hundreds involving death and serious injury to Iraqis where the chain of command of the army had decided that the circumstances did not warrant a Royal Military Police investigation… and it’s of great concern that amongst those there will have been undoubtedly some very suspicious deaths and serious injuries that were never properly investigated.” He also says: “the interests of justice [are] being pushed to one side in order to serve the interests of the chain of command of the Royal Military Police and the wider army.”

He adds the military chain of command make it difficult for the RMP to operate independently by not providing resources or denying access to prevent investigations; claiming investigators who don’t toe the party line would be overlooked for promotion and receive an “adverse report”.

Talking about the Baha Mousa case, an Iraqi civilian whose death in British custody is currently the subject of a public enquiry, he says: “[it] was a murder investigation on a plate… and amazingly this investigation was closed down or put in the waiting tray for a whole year.”

He says: “the whole system of military justice is flawed… and there is a very high risk that there are other Baha Mousa’s out there because of the number of incidents that were not investigated… at all by the Royal Military Police, let alone an ineffective investigation.”

When asked about his reasons for speaking out about alleged malpractice and why he left the Military Police, he replies: “I feel that I belonged for too long to an organisation that wasn’t seeking out the truth… I believe that I was serving in something that was party to covering up quite serious allegations of torture and murder… and other investigations where the consequences could have been quite serious for the suspects, and where there are large numbers of victims, who have not received justice either.”

In a statement responding to the allegations, the Ministry of Defence denied that there is evidence of systemic failure or interference within the RMP: “The RMP is subject to regular and exhaustive inspection by national bodies such as the Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary. This provides the assurance that the RMP has the capability, capacity and competence to conduct investigations into serious crime. We must also remember that over a hundred thousand of our personnel served in Iraq and, with the exception of a few individuals, they have performed to the highest standards under extraordinarily testing conditions there.”

The Donal MacIntyre show now has a new online community outpost with a new Facebook page. Join us by logging onto The Donal MacIntyre Programme Facebook page. You can leave all your programme suggestions, tip offs and ideas there for Donal and the team. All suggestions are looked at and reviewed. We rely on your stories and tip offs to do our work. So please keep the traffic coming through.

The reporter and adventurer, Donal MacIntyre, has joined forces with Merlin Publishing in Dublin and been signed up to a two book deal. It is understood that one is a compendium diary of experiences, investigations and adventures and the other – is a ‘Madcap Weather book’ for weather and storm chasers.

Gangster Documentary is profiled by the SaltLake Tribune after Sundance Debut-

The extended film about the Noonan crime family starts its journey to cinema in Spain, France, the UK and the US.

SALTLAKE TRIBUNE Sundance Profile OF ‘A Very British Gangster’
What is it: MacIntyre delves into the world of British gangster Dominic Noonan. He blends interviews with Noonan and his minions, news reports, slick editing and a booming, energetic soundtrack full of hip-hop, rock and Brit-pop to create a portrait of a man both charismatic and scary.
Meeting Dominic: “He was quite hard with me at first. He said, ‘My brother was offered a contract to kill you. He hasn’t done the job.’ . . . He kind of respected me because I could look him in the eyes, and I’ve seen plenty of life, and he’s seen plenty of life, both from different sides. . . . In the end, we had a picture of his life and his personality and his world, rather than just a picture of his crimes.”
Rocking the Funky Beats: “Thirty percent of the making of this film went to the music, because I really feel that music . . . allows you to live and breathe and smell, really inhale the scenes, the oceans, the geography of the place.”
Gangster Lingo: “James Joyce, when he was writing Ulysses and The Dubliners, he would sit in booths in pubs in Dublin and he would listen to the locals drinking next door, and he would be recording it. We really did a kind of James Joyce eavesdropping into [Noonan's] world. Their language is so from the gutter it’s Dickensian.”
Best line of the movie, courtesy of Noonan’s crooning
godson: “Yeah, I sing mostly. Every gangster family has a singer. I sing at weddings, funerals and acquittals. Mostly acquittals.”
, 10:30 p.m., Broadway Centre Cinemas, Salt Lake City; Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. Holiday Village Cinema II
- Dan Nailen

Oregonian film critic Shawn Levy is catching as many movies as he can at the Sundance Film Festival. This week, he’ll share his thoughts on what he sees.

I spent Sunday watching documentaries and came up with a great mix.

First up was “A Very British Gangster,” a portrait of the crime lord of Manchester, England, a sadistic, saucy, cruel, sentimental and gay fellow named Dominic Noonan. It was longish but beautifully made.

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“This woman wasn’t missing deadlines or snorting with a baby in her right hand. This didn’t affect her professionally,” said Donal McIntyre, the British documentarian behind the 1999 fashion-industry exposé “Undercover: Fashion Victims.”

“I hope she gets better for her own health. But the people who gave her these contracts are as immersed in the world of excessive alcohol and drug abuse as she is,” he said. “She’s probably a hotter property now than ever before. If not for the media firestorm, she’d still have all her contracts.”

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