To think many fell for the Captain Tom scam

[Binjob118]

I never understood all the fuss about Captain Tom. A rich old man walked around his garden and was lauded as a hero. Family then go on freebie holiday to Barbados whilst rest of us were locked down for Christmas. Then it turns out he was part of family scam to pay the family from book proceeds. No wonder so many people in this country are targeted by scammers, we are a gullible lot.

I never understood why everyone was fawning over him. The whole thing used to really piss my elderly mother off! She used to say "I'm sick of the sight of that bloody captain Tom!"

No they’re not. Fucking hell - imagine believing this 😂

Sorry but even the military hero stuff is totally overdone. He spent most of WW2 in India training people in motorbikes! The whole thing was nuts and people just bought into it.

Depends on your interpretation I guess

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9550/#:~:text=The%20main%20goal%20of%20this,and%20resilience%20to%20future%20pandemics.

Also, my parents came here from a country with crappy human rights

joys of globalisation eh

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/07/draft-pandemic-treaty-fails-protect-rights

I was skeptical at the time.
Covid left China in 2019, so locking down nearly three months into 2020 seemed pretty futile to me.

Plus the rules made so little sense, it was actually insulting.

At no point did I wash my shopping or quarantine my post or such like. And as an adult, I was already perfectly capable of washing my hands without 50 daily reminders or having to sing a song.

I did wear a mask in shops because I didn't want to pretend I had an invisible disability, as that seemed to be the only alternative to avoid being shouted at by randoms while out shopping.

I wasn't concerned if more than 6 of us were in the same place at the same time - not least because that seemed to be okay in an office but oddly not if you wanted to go to the pub. But then we all got subsidised pub meals to "eat out to help out". And then the PPE scandals surfaced...

And locking people into care homes and denying family visits was fucking disgusting.

But to get back to the OP... I agree with a pp, it was a triumph of marketing over substance. I don't know how much he was involved or aware of things but it would not surprise me if he had been. He was old but not stupid.

You’re casually flipping between ‘the WHO are trying to control member states’ to ‘the WHO needs to better control member states’ there….

It's all a bit shades of grey, but after @Jessforless post it did feel like a bit of a professional job. Elderly man, dressing up and representing a time when UK faced and overcame great adversity. It's all a bit tooooo good. Giving is well known to be a mood booster and it broke up the anxiety inducing doom news for a bit. The money was raised, and I don't think it was a bad thing regardless of the cheesiness and mawkishness.

Yeah; there were some greedy people who capitalised on the popularity and made a huge sum of money off the back of it, but that is the world that we live in. A lot of very famous people have "foundations" or "churches" that seem to have more outgoings than actual donations. If the money was from purchasing the book I don't see an issue, it if as made off of the Givealittle page which implied it would go to charity then surely that is fraud?

All the NHS money went where it was meant to go.

I don't think he was involved in any scam. The books he wrote make it clear he thought the money raised was going to the NHS.
I think his family was immoral and I think the daughter lied about her father's desire that the book money was for the family as this contradicts what he wrote. But as he is dead he can not contradict anything.
Shame the greed of the family has left a bitter edge on their father's reputation

I honestly didn’t think anything much of the initial fundraising beyond that it was cute. However, later when all the coverage started to feel very ethnic nationalist it became uncomfortable. I still never thought there was anything else insidious going on because so many well established organisations began to use the Captain Tom narrative. Even if it had come up I would have assumed they did their due diligence so everything must be above board.

They did, but they didn't have the proper planning permission so now they have to tumble it.

Yes, all the flag shagging, racist, Brexity fuckwits for a start.

I continue to believe ( haven't seen documentary) that Captain Tom did something out of the goodness of his heart,it snowballed from there and his daughter/family got greedy,I hope for his sake that Captain Tom was unaware of this in his final days.

Does no-one remember how horrendous it was in Italy at the very start of things? So many Covid cases that they couldn't keep up with bed provision and were throwing up wards from nothing to cope? No wonder everyone was scared!

(AIUI later analysis turned out to be that this was due to the elderly Italians having lived a long time in the first place, what with eating a Mediterranean diet, and also due to the extended family being more prevalent in Italy.)

Nobody can predict the future. We can only guess based on the past and whatever data we can gather about the present. Looking back is different, what with those 20/20 hindsight glasses we've got now - which maybe have filters on them anyway.

Isn't it the case that before the walk thing he was never referred to as 'Captain' , his daughter decided to refer to him as that as part of the grift.
As I understand it his army career wasn't his actual career it was a few years as a young man who then went on to be (probably also born into money) a very wealthy businessman that cheated on his wife with a younger woman.

He's was never the little old veteran hanging out with his old army chums down the legion to keep warm and cared for after a selfless and long career in the forces.

I understand technically he was a veteran and could have legitimately used his Captain title but the point is he didn't for most of his life and actually wouldn't it have been a bit odd if he had.
My grandfather like most peoples served in the war then went back to being a headmaster, he never called himself by his army rank or claimed to be ex military.

A whole other thread probably is the unquestioning 'hero' and martyr status given to any ex services person similar to the automatic adoration of NHS workers- it's a grifter's golden ticket.

I feel you are making an awful lot of assumptions about him here. I don’t think appearing on a game show years ago is any kind of indicator of guilt, and to make him guilty because ‘ she couldn’t have thought much of him’ because she lied about him is really stretching too far. I’m not particularly a fan, but I think we don’t really have any evidence that he himself was a scammer, so should not make assumptions.

We washed our shopping and also quarantined the post. It feels silly looking back but at the time I was terrified. Even DH who is mega chill was terrified. But I have 2 auto immuine conditions and a child with heart problems. I was so so scared.

I feel so grateful things were fine for us physically. Emotionally- well that is another story. DS1 started self harming at the age of 11. Thanks be to God he is now alot better.

Cap'n Tom- I fell for it at first but then when the bloody publicity went on and on and on and the daughter had her face everywhere i started to think the nation was being played.

Of course he was "in on it" - he went along with his daughter's grifting, and seemed happy to be referred to as "Captain" Tom - even though most retired army people would say that was entirely inappropriate (esp from someone who'd only done 5-6 years in the military, after being conscripted during WW2) - usually only those who reach the level of Major would keep using their title after leaving the armed forces.

As others posters have said, there are loads of better causes than 'NHS Charities Together' that could have benefitted from that original £28m, but at least that money didn't go to him/ his family, it was the money that came later that they creamed off for themselves.

If it wasn't obvious at first that his daughter was a greedy self-interested scam artist who'd used her marketing/ promotions background to push this non-story into the limelight, it was pretty clear by the time his family dragged him off on holiday to Barbados (at a time when Covid restrictions were still in place - undoubtedly causing his death from Covid a few weeks later).

I sincerely hope all the (150,000?!) people who sent him birthday cards, and the two universities who gave him honorary doctorates, and those who presented him with a gold Blue Peter badge, or named buses/ trains/ animals after him, are all feeling a bit embarrassed now.

I never did the whole plandemic was surreal- empty hospitals where i live i was in every single one of them as in and out patient and a visitor at the time, nurses finding time for dance routines while claiming to have ptsd from treating ill people,.like they didnt see that coming when they signed up to be nurses, people queing up in car parks to get injected witg fast tracked approved by Bojo injections-i wouldnt have a sandwich he approved nevermind any untested injections, people clapping like trained seals on doorstops when nhs was turning away patients,cancelling appointments, stopped doing routine bloodtests etc- even midwives when WFH mode,dentists disappeared completely- then rolling out a pensioner- british people just like to be fleeced i guess.

I meant i didnt follow any of the brainwash -masks, injections or tests. I had fewr prn alarms going off as soon as it startwd and Hancock was rubbing his hands with glee as he has shares in the pharmaceticals,.he kindly also gave contract to his BIL etc. was it Bojo that gave taxpayer funded contract to a guy down in the pub? Insane level of nepotism they were not even ashamed of it

Or maybe there were less deaths as those elderly people who would have died from flu and other diseases didn’t, or people there were far less accidents because far less people travelling etc. There’s so many ifs, you can’t just blindly attribute it to people dying earlier than they would have anyway. So of those people could have had years left if they didn’t catch covid

I didn't think he was the hero he was made out to be - I do think there was some good intention in there but it was quickly taken over by greed/a 'what can we get out of this?' approach.

Well I don’t think many army captains go round asking their friends and people in the community to call them captain. But it was his title and yes no doubt used in the media to assist his fundraiser as he was a veteran. Nothing wrong with that, and not like he made the title up, just not much opportunity to use titles in every day life.

Sorry but you have to wonder about any country that thinks going out in the evening and banging pots and pans does something to support the NHS rather than just waking up NHS shift workers desperate for sleep. I mean it makes less sense than the Salem witch trials. It is not as if you actually want to pay your doctors a decent wage either, quite the contrary considering the years of study, having to be clever to begin with, and the hours. In case you hadn't noticed, that is why your doctors are leaving the country. The other deluded belief is that other countries envy the NHS when most of them can't believe how bad it is.

Virtually everyone lost their fucking minds at the time, so not surprised people fell for it.

Well, not all of us. I'm still horrified by how utterly insane this country went. My partner and I did not go along with it. We did not hide at home, rat on our neighbours, CLaP fOr tHe NhS, disinfect our shopping or take the pointless vaccine.

Still paid for the fucking madness though. We took a serious financial hit due to our sectors, missed saying goodbye to much-loved grandparents (who didn't die of covid) and now have no faith at all in the common sense of most people.

So yeah, if the Captain Tom bollocks helps some people see what gullible twats they are, great.