05/12/2011 Inside Out London

which some people may find I think he was desperate. I think

he was at the end of his tether. He desperately needed help and he

turned to the people we have always I am in the street where police

were called to the aid of a young man who was threatening to take his

own life and train out for their help. It was in the early morning

in February 2008 when Christofer Walker made this distressing call

It is harrowing because it is money child. I do not want to listen to

it any more. Christopher's mother has been trying to find out more

about the circumstances surrounding her son's death. He was pretty

desperate. He wanted somebody to help him. He did not have been a

credit on his mobile and the police is the only number you could call.

He specifically for the police. Christofer knew the local police

and had been in touch with them before. He was a kind and gentle

man. He was independent. He was marginally autistic. He was

slightly unusual and people like that are generally bullied and

taken advantage of, but he got on with life. He was facing eviction

from his form and that upset him. A was that what was upsetting him the

most? I really do not know if that was it. He talked to his

grandmother and then went back to his flat. He talked to work late at

night and then got a meal. And then something went wrong. We do not

know all went wrong. To this day, Christofer made this emergency call

at 125 in the morning. The police operator correctly lob his call as

the Dean and immediate response - be raised priority which could be

given. It means the police unit should arrive at the house within

As we come here, the operator asks an ambulance service to attained.

The vehicle is dispatched immediately. The pill that

Christofer has over does don't wear for his heart condition and there

is no antidote. The ambulance arrived quickly, by 131 in the

morning. But they had not been told which of the flats Christofer lived

in. He did not get any response from any of the flat. The police

should have been the within 10 minutes. The police despite richer

decided to downgrade the call from an immediate response to resolution

without deployment. It means the police will not attained. What

happens next was a crucial delay. The ambulance driver was unable to

If the police had been there, the police have the power to use force

to enter the flat. Once more, they had not passed on his phone number,

so crucial minutes went by any. When eventually the ambulanceman

got hold of a neighbour he managed to get access to Christofer. By

this time, Christofer was extremely groggy. It was over and all were

later before he left for hospital. If they had been able to do their

duty as they were meant to do, Christofer would have done what

they had asked him to do. If they had just said, Christofer, we need

to get you to the hospital, he would hold on immediately. At that

point, Christopher's only hope was that his stomach was pumped

straight away. This delay of over one or were made that was simply

too late. He died at the hospital. In mental illness charity has

listen to recall and the case has raised alarm bells. He was clearly

asking for help and we now understand that the police did not

attained at all. The coroner said that the police's failure to not

attained had not affected the outcome. But after a complete to

the Police Complaints Commission, they have admitted that there was a

fault. We have apologised privately to Christofer's mother. It is clear

that this scene should have been attended. It is useful to know some

context. In the last month, we have deal with 215 calls relating to

suicides. How do you react to them? The investigating inspector told us

that if we knew what the other units we're doing in the town at

eight we may not be impressed. you explain that? No, I cannot.

What I am saying is that when you have an immediate priority, we need

to find the resources to deal with that. Since his death, the Police

Complaints Commission would investigate if briefcases of the

similar fashion. -- bereaved cases. The deaths you refer to where

between 2009 and 2010. What we have done subsequently is introduced a

new technology. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has

now made OECD's of recommendations. They say that the system for

vulnerable people needs to be clear or and more consistent. Because

someone who has the mental health problem and feeling suicidal, there

is this feeling that this is not as important as some other emergency

situation. Be need to get away from it. The allegation is that maybe

the police do not treat suicide cases like this as a priority

because of the mental health issues? I totally refute that. We

treat each case on its own merits. For Carlisle, it has been agonising

for her to relive the events of that nature. It was the very

difficult decision for us to take. We hope it will bring about change,

particularly regarding the police's attitude to people with mental

health problems. We do not want another family to have to suffer

what we have suffered. Matthew Hill there on the tragic

case of Christofer Walker. And if you would like details of

organisations which can offer advice or support, you can call the

BBC Action Line. The number is 08000 566 065. Your call is free

from a landline, but mobile operators will charge. The lines

Next tonight, a controversial attack on a man who was voted one

of our greatest ever Britons. Isambard Kingdom Brunel is prepared

for the brilliance of his engineering, but historian Adrian

Vaughan believes we have conveniently airbrushed out a side

of Brunel which tells a very different story. Do you want

history or do you want a fairy story? People should remember that

Brunel was not Superman, he did not do everything on his own, he did

not think of everything on his own. He had help and when he did think

of everything on his own, it was a dog' breakfast. I am Adrien Vaughan

and I am a volunteer signalman on the North Norfolk Railway. I have

been on the railway for most of my working life and have written over

30 books about its history, including the work of a certain

Isambard Kingdom Brunel. I do not think we have got his history quite

right, so I am going on a journey to some of his great landmarks,

from Paddington station... The stage and began to lead sideways.

To the SS Great Britain... It is as if he hadn't heard of propellers.

And Clifton Suspension Bridge. It is a very long-lived fairy-tale. I

am going to set the record straight. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, 1806-1859,

creator of the Great Western Railway, creator of Paddington

station. Had he got one hand extended, it would be wonderful, we

would be able to shake it. But unfortunately he has not, so I must

just pat him. Well done, is a bad. Well done for creating the very

first, I run glass industrial unit in the world. But his design was

not perfect. Brunel made one strange error of judgment in

designing this superb station. He made these three arches and they

are very beautiful. If you can imagine taking away those that are

going across, it is very essential to that station, he did not put

them into the original station, because he did not want to spoil

the symmetry of the Archers. That was great, except that over a

number of years, the station began to lean sideways because there was

nothing to tie them in and keep the columns upright. So all the columns

you see holding the roof up are not by Brunel, they are made of steel

and not cast iron and they were put in about 1906 and in the 1920s

before the First World War intervened. They brought the roof

back straight again. Not many people know that. It is time to

board the train to take me along the Great Western Railway to

continue my journey. There are so many more, a little-known facts I

would like to share with you. I started to research Brunel, to

write a book about him, and to my amazement I discovered that he was

doing some very silly things. This is a terrific surprise and I

believe it has even surprised a lot of other people who said that I had

denigrated a great man. I have not really, I just told the story

straight. In 1833, Brunel was appointed Chief Engineer for the

Great Western Railway, to devise a route from Bristol to London. He

had no previous experience in railway construction. He laid a

piece of track to try out his new idea of putting big Telegraph poll

size to pieces of wood into the ground. That was every 15 feet all

the way to Bristol. His idea was that if he drove these deep into

the grounds and then nailed the track members, the track could not

possibly move because it would be held in position. That is a

nonsense, because the weight of the train running over the track

crushes it where it is not supported. Where it is supported,

it is held up. You have got a 15 ft of roller-coaster, doing this. How

Brunel could have been so silly, but that was him. And that was not

the only delay he caused. We are just going into the tunnel now.

3312 yards of blood, sweat and tears of thousands of navvies,

choking on the fumes of gunpowder as they blasted their way through

Box Tunnel. Brunel had terrible trouble getting this built because

he was such a bad employer that no reputable contractor wanted to work

for him because he would not pay them when they had finished the job.

The Great Western Railway was 18 months longer in the building

because of Brunel. Now I am in Bristol. There is so much of

Brunel's work to see. But I was not quite expecting to meet the man

himself. Mr Vaughan I presume. A pleasure to meet you, sir. Welcome

to the SS Great Britain, perhaps my greatest achievement. I believe it

is a wonderful thing. It will be my pleasure to give you a guided tour.

I would be privileged. His weight. The SS Great Britain was designed

by Brunel for a transatlantic service between Bristol and New

York. She was the first, iron hold, screw propeller steamship to cross

the Atlantic, which she did in 1845 in a record time of 14 days. A as

you are aware, the design for the ship changed several times before

it was finally produced and finish. Brunel's indecision about the

ship's design becomes clear as soon as I am let loose to investigate by

myself. Here we have in front of us what seems to me to be the evidence

of Brunel's not being quite knowledgeable about modern

developments in ships. The ship has got a nice, long, straight looking

Hull, but here we have this semi circular cut-out and this is proved

that the ship was originally designed as a paddle steamer. It

would take the extended box shape that the wheel goes around in, that

drives it through the water, so they build the dock for a paddle

steamer and the captain who had designed this dock came to Brunel

to say that a screw propeller ship had arrived in Bristol docks. As

soon as Brunel saw it, he was immediately captivated that this

was the new technology, this was the way forward, the screw

propeller. He redesigned the hull, but we have this as a silent

witness for Brunel changing his mind, which was something he often

did. And it is not just the captain who we must credit for the design

of the SS Great Britain. Becchio of the ship, which was revolutionary

at the time that it was done, was patented by Mr Thomas. William

Paterson, the owner of the shipyard, helped to design the lines, how its

curved out. They all put their peas in and Brunel took their advice.

The extra pairs of hands a Brunel time to concentrate on this. Brunel

made a lot of mistakes in his early days on the Great Western Railway.

It is therefore a wonderful to be able to come along to a marvellous

thing like the SS Great Britain and say nice things about Mr Brunel

because now I am standing underneath this fantastic propeller,

which is truly an amazing piece of technology. It is all down to him

and nobody else. He designed this all on his own. I have learnt about

Brunel from his own letters and diaries, so it is a real treat to

enter into a treasure trove of archives was at the SS Great

Britain. This is an absolutely charming drawing done by him as a

child. This is 1812. He was six. is signed. This is the Brunel

Institute. The collection opened in November last year and anyone can

come to have a look at Brunel's notes and drawings. What we can

tell from the sources in the archive is that Brunel was a man of

an astonishing range of abilities with astonishing charisma, a force

of personality and energy it. it was Brunel's force of

personality that could jeopardise his projects. I do not know why he

was always abusive to the contractors. He always had to abuse

them. I have often wondered why he was like that. What is recorded by

the abusive episodes. If you go to the Public Record Office, you can

read page after page, it goes on forever. He is always abusing

people and when they do a good job by him, he turns around and says, I

am not paying you. It is not what I say, it is what he says. But he did

have a softer side. He talks about Clifton Bridge, my first child, my

darling. He was a very sensitive man. What is so striking is the

emotional engagement with his work. Well, Brunel might have talked

about Clifton Suspension Bridge as being his darling, but I dispute

whether the bridge we have today is his at all. Up here on top of the

tower we have got three names. Isambard Kingdom Brunel started it.

John Hough sure, William Henry Barlow, completed it. That was in

1864. That is the small print of the Clifton Bridge. Because the

truth is Brunel did not design the Clifton Bridge, it was dying --

designed by the others. 24 year-old Brunel designed his Bridge in 1831,

but the project ran out of funding and was abandoned 12 years later.

Only part of the towers had been completed. Brunel died in 1859. As

a memorial to him, the bridge was opened in 1864. But the new

engineers did not use his design. They added a third Tia to the

suspension chains, so straight away Brunel's design has been altered.

The other thing they did was to incorporate the latticework girder

that forms the footpath railings. That is part of the bridge. The

third thing they had to do was to take away Brunel's idea of a wood

and it substructure underneath the bridge. That was taken away and

underneath there is a wrought iron, riveted, latticework girder as a

stiff neck underneath. The design is completely different to the one

that Brunel first put together in 1830. But someone is not going to

let the sun set on this argument quite yet. It is historian and

Brunel in busiest, Professor Mark Horton. This is the story of the

bridge, pretty well OK apart from one small detail. It was designed

in 1831, rather than 1830. This is the extent of the mistake. It is a

very long-lived fairy-tale. It is not. Like Cinderella. This is this

great monument to his engineering genius. Well, I am afraid, I think

not. If you want a monument, which of course we do, to Brunel's great

engineering genius, you should go down and look at the Royal Albert

Bridge. There is a bridge and he designed it. He also designed this

bridge. The bridge was designed by the others and in their paper to

the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1867, they describe what was

wrong with Brunel's Bridge and what they had to vary and rearrange.

This is all Brunel's Bridge. No, it is not, it is theirs on the side of

Brunel's proposed bridge. I totally disagree. Goodness, I think the two

of us could argue this matter until the cows come home. But it is

nearly the end of my trip and there is one last place I am dying to

visit before I get on the train back to Norfolk. Brunel designed

the original station in Bristol in 1839. This is a photograph I took

of it in the 1960s. Look at it now, a venue hall used by the people of

Bristol and beyond. I have to admit it is an artistic triumph, but as

for his engineering work... His track was a joke. The Clifton

Suspension Bridge has got nothing to do with him. If they had put his

desire up, it would have fallen. The SS Great Britain was a great

triumph, a tremendous work. But he did not design it on his own. I

would argue that Bruno should be remembered as much by his blunders

as for his brilliance. I think it is time we set the record straight.

-- Brunel. That is where we must bring things to a close. If you

would like to keep in touch, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Inside Out is back at the same time next week uncovering more stories

from your local area and exploring the issues are making the headlines.

From all of us here, thank you for Hello, I'm Ellie Crisell with your

90 second update. Big changes to the way the European Union is run.

That's what the leaders of France and Germany want to save the

Eurozone. The treaty would mean stricter rules on debt and could go

ahead without Britain's support. Full story at 10pm. It sold

investments to the elderly which lasted longer than their life

expectancy. Today, the HSBC was fined �10.5 million. There could be

even bigger pay-outs in compensation. Lisa Horne's car

windscreen was smashed by a rock dropped from a bridge. She said it

left her scared to drive. Essex police called it attempted murder.

Rising costs for the London Olympics. Spending on the opening

ceremonies has doubled after the PM saw the plans. Security costs are

also up sharply - to more than half-a-billion pounds. And, is this

the world's most expensive car crash? Eight Ferraris, three

Mercedes and a Lamborghini, amongst the wreckage in Japan. No one was

seriously hurt. Hello I'm Riz Lateef with the latest from London.

"Anger towards police" was a major factor in this summer riots

according to a report into the causes. The Deputy Mayor says he's

not surprised as most of those involved had criminal records.

Labour's mayoral candidate, Ken Livingstone, says he'll cut fares

by 7% - claiming Transport for London has surplus cash. They deny