The link to an excellent article from Byline Times regarding exorbitant and manipulative legal loans which catch people at their most emotionally vulnerable and go on to exploit them financially.
The article contains the following, amidst criticism of a company called RafeSetter:
In a recent remote court hearing, RateSetter’s chief commerical officer Peter Behrens acknowledged that Sophia being more than £600,000 in debt may be an example of “mismanaged litigation”. Asked what action the company had taken to ensure Sophia was not vulnerable, Behrens said that the lender had done “enough to make ourselves comfortable”.
Mr Judge Raeside, presiding over this hearing, ruled as “fair” her debt from two high interest divorce loans. But Sophia said: “I just know that a lot of people will be coming out of lockdown and divorcing. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”
The real story here is that RateSetter’s Peter Behrens is the son of former District Judge John Behrens, now retired. Behrens senior and Judge Raeside were close colleagues at the bar.
How odd then that Judge Raeside did not recuse himself from dealing with a case involving his old friend’s son and found in the favour of the company at which Peter Behrens is chief commercial officer!
Would be curious to know how many other claims involving RateSetter have come before Judge Raeside and what the result of those were.
Private Investigator Daniel Morgan was murdered in South London in 1987. His killer has never been found.
Morgan’s employer Southern Investigations went on after his death to provide stories for the Murdoch press, often obtained illegally.
The murder however set in chain a series of investigations which have revealed links between police, the Murdoch controlled newspaper company News International and organised criminal groups. Is is widely thought that Morgan was on the verge of revealing links between corrupt police officers and organised criminals. This is certainly the belief of the Morgan family.
The Metropolitan Police carried out an initial sub-optimal investigation with basic elements of police work left undone. This happened on more than one occasion as successive investigations were botched. Of course police would not have been inclined to investigate properly if they thought the murder would reveal ongoing corruption or even their own involvement in Morgan’s death to hide what he knew.
This has resulted in several re-investigations and an independent panel (the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel) headed by Baroness O’Loan which produced its long-awaited report last week. (written in June 2021).
Another element of this case worthy of note is that the police and other organisations were accused by the panel of institutional corruption.
This was defined by the panel as:
“Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit and constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”
The report into the murder makes depressing reading. It details how The Metropolitan Police systemically failed the Morgan family and then lied and attempted to cover up their failures in order to preserve their professional reputation.
Again this is a pattern familiar to anyone who has dealt at any level with the organisations I mention in this blog.
On that basis all of the organisations mentioned in this blog to date are also institutionally corrupt since they also conceal or deny failures to maintain a professional reputation. That this takes place even in the face of overwhelming evidence of incompetence, deceit and failure.
Arguably since 1987 this kind of behaviour has grown more prevalent from state-run organisations. Again the report states there was a failure in the Morgan case:
“to acknowledge professional incompetence, individuals’ venal behaviour, and managerial and organisational failures”.
The British state has a pattern of dealing with the failure of its agents and organisations. The Morgan family’s statement following the results of the panel say that:
“At almost every step, we found ourselves lied to, fobbed off, bullied, degraded and let down, time and time again.”
Again since 1987 the means by which state funded organisations deny error, evade blame and continue to practice incompetence and institutional corruption have been refined and improved with each passing decade.
The panel found that:
“culture of obfuscation and a lack of candour is unhealthy in any public service”
Danial Morgan’s brother has stated:
“police don’t like to own up to anything” and that his “experience of the police over many, many years is that they put their own reputation over anything else”.
To relate that to the wider picture again I say that this is equally true any of the organisations mentioned in this blog.
The Met has attempted to downplay the panel’s findings by claiming the conclusions it reached applied to the police 35 years ago. This is a standard diversion tactic organisations use.
Panel member Professor Rodney Morgan shot back that “institutional corruption is not used in a historic sense – it is used in a current sense”.
You may be interested to learn that Britain is the most corrupt country in the world, according to journalist Roberto Saviano, who spent more than a decade exposing the criminal dealings of the Italian Mafia.
The Ministry of Justice. A building every bit as ugly and brutal as some of the people and things that go on inside it.
The Paul Foot Award 2021 has been won by journalist Jack Shenker for his article (link below) on cleaners at The Ministry of Justice, specifically one of their number called Emanuel Gomes.
Gomes was told to attend work at The Ministry of Justice at Petty France in London’s St. James daily during the early part of the pandemic in 2020.
He was paid just over £9.00 per hour.
The offices were empty. All Ministry staff had been relocated to work from home. The necessity of cleaning empty offices has never been satisfactorily explained.
Despite concerns no PPE was given to cleaners at MoJ. No sick pay was available and so Mr. Gomes continued to work regardless of contracting Coronavirus and becoming ill.
MoJ denied there had been an outbreak of the virus at the Ministry, despite compelling evidence to the contrary. This is of course standard for MoJ: deny, lie and evade.
Seven ancillary staff appear to have contracted the virus but still attended work due to lack of proper sick pay.
Emanuel Gomes died on the evening of 23rd of April 2020.
Ministry of Justice cleaning services are contracted out to OCS – “a facilities management company privately-owned by the Goodliffe Family, who are worth £191 million and appear on the Sunday Times rich list… taxpayers send the firm £17.5 million per annum, and in return OCS provides the ministry with security, catering, cleaning and other services.”
Was going to write a length diatribe on how badly served we are by Civil Appeals Office at The Royal Courts of Justice but a short explanation, a couple of screenshots and a reproduced email do the job just as well.
This is a blog entry about how a civil appeal matter has received suboptimal service by HMCTS staff, how it’s taken some five months to identify claimed issues with documents supposedly not being sent, but in fact these documents were supplied. How is this related to the shady post of Dismissal List Manager which HMCTS dislike revealing the details of?
To start with here are the screenshots. I’ve been waiting for a response from Civil Appeals Office on this matter since November 2020, their last communication to me prior to this taking some two months to be sent.
Joseph Goswell states his position is in the Case Management Section at Civil Appeals office. He writes:
What is stated to be wrong with the application… Rather a tight time limit for a letter sent to an Applicant on 11.2.21!
In actual fact none of the stated errors with the application exist. All the documents required in the matter were supplied in September 2020. See the reproduced email below.
One thing Joseph Goswell doesn’t tend to advertise is his other job at HMCTS – Dismissal List Manager. This is certainly not the post he mentions in the above letter.
It is noted that HMCTS are very shifty and refuse to answer reasonable data access requests for what a Dismissal List Manager actually does. For more on this bizarre refusal to address a perfectly legitimate question see the link below:
Ludicrously it is claimed no data exists on the role and the responses given to the data access request above are so vague as to be meaningless. In a position paid for out of the public purse why such coyness unless there’s a vested interest in keeping the data secret.
However we can theorise that this role may be someone within HMCTS whose purpose is to frustrate claims at an administrative level for the purpose of enabling them to be dismissed. This seems to tally with the letter content written above in which non-existent issues are identified with a bundle. Of course if HMCTS would like to explain what this role actually is then I’d be happy to include the data here.
My email in response to the letter from Civil Appeals Office states:
I refer to your email below.
I note the delay in response to any issue arising out of this matter and that there has been no communication from your office since November last year. I note that the email prior to that took some two months to receive a response.
The core bundle was filed and served on 2.9.20. Since that point CA have not identified any issue with the bundle which would make it non-compliant.
You state that there is no index. A copy of the index was supplied (index.doc). This shows the reference number for each of the following documents which corresponds to the number starting each document. As was a copy of the sealed order being appealed against (4). The Judicial Review claim form is at (12) and the grounds for JR both follow on from this. In other words all of the grounds you give for the bundle being in error are in fact present and correct and have been with your office since September 2020.
I note further that there has been no communication from CA since September 2020 in relation to the bundle supplied. We are now some five months gone from September 2020. Perhaps you could explain why this is so if there are thought to be errors? For your convenience I have attached a copy of all correspondence so far with CA office.
To go from September 2020 to February 2021 without identifying errors in a bundle and reverting to the Claimant five months later and only at the point at which the Claimant chases the matter up represents an unacceptable service level failure for which I now make a formal complaint to The Court Manager. The errors you state exist with the bundle are not present, as I have shown.
It is further poor service that the attached letter of 11.2.21 states you require these errors correcting by 18.2.21 when you have been sat on these issues for so long. However as stated above each of the documents you claim not to be present is in fact present within the bundle.
A further copy of the bundle is attached to this email.
Please inform me of the progress of this matter, and the progress of the complaint alongside the name of the Court Manager to whom the matter has been referred.
Email of 12.2.21 ends.
So there are the following issues arising here:
Let’s assume there WERE errors in the bundle supplied to The Court of Appeal… why does it take five months for these to be identified?
More to the point why wait until an Applicant emails the court five months later before informing of these?
..and then give a total of seven days in a pandemic (five if we discount the weekend) for these to be corrected when these matters have been left to lay on file for five months now?
Admin staff can see that all of the documents they claim were not supplied were in fact attached with the original bundle. So why do they claim they were not?
Why has there been no communication on this claim for some three months?
Why is there seemingly no data on the post of Dismissal List Manager which can be made public?
Why does Joseph Goswell not use his correct title in the letter to me of 11.2.21?
Suspect the answer to the above questions can be found in the shady and little-stated other position of Joseph Goswell as “Dismissal List Manager”!
Is the handling of this matter standard HMCTS incompetence or is the role of Dismissal List Manager a shadier one than we can imagine and one in which civil claims are subject to interdiction and mishandling to frustrate them?
As always anyone or any organisation cited in this blog post has a right to corrections which I will be happy to make on receipt of relevant evidence.
UPDATE TO THE ABOVE: 19.9.21.
I have today been contacted by email by another person who has had a very similar experience with the same people in the same department as I have.
The experience relayed by this person is interesting. Goswell’s position as “Dismissal List Manager” suggests a specific purpose: does HMCTS have a policy of purposefully frustrating and delaying certain types of claim which might prove embarrassing or politically sensitive to the organisation? More data needed but at least three persons to my knowledge have had experiences which suggest so.
Has someone ever asked you “Does my bum look big in this?”. Did you feel inclined to answer honestly or fib a little to offer some comfort and solace while still being truthful?
The simple fact is that lots of people lie on an almost daily basis. The majority of these are “white lies” which are popularly thought to do no harm, but despite this have a habit of coming back and affecting us in all sorts of ways.
However we used to expect more from people in public positions. The popular myth of the lying politician has of course been around for generations. But often this was more a matter of an MP having been caught out when circumstances rapidly change, or they were simply poor communicators, as opposed to them directly seeking to deceive. Once being caught out as a liar would end a political career either via resignation or sacking. Not any more.
I have dealt with public bodies for the best part of thirty years now and I have detected a drop in standards from state-run organisations which roughly parallels the drop in standards in public life generally.
Sorry to ruin your day by reminding you of these mendacious b******* (pt. 1)
Here’s my theory.
When Tony Blair’s New Labour came to power in 1997 and Blair walked into Downing Street for the first time there appeared to be – to the casual observer – a public demonstration of joy as people lined Downing Street cheering and waving flags. Hooray for the new dawn for Britain!
Except that this wasn’t the case. Those people were all Labour Party activists and not members of the public. But we were supposed to think these were happy Londoners expressing gratitude. Thus the New Labour Goverment of 1997 – 2010 started its term in office with a cynical little deception.
And so it continued. The rise of political spin and outright deception marred any beneficial policies New Labour brought. The 1997 cohort of MP’s still present in opposition continue to practice the same spin and evasion when caught out not doing their jobs that they’ve practiced for years. For more details of the long term effects of this spin and deception ask the average Iraqi citizen.
Some time past mistakes made by organisations such as HMCTS in handling claims were few and far between. Staff were trained, diligent and in a job more or less for life. When a mistake was made an apology was issued and a correction made quickly. Thus mistakes were learning experiences which made staff better employees and future errors less likely. However from 1997 onwards I remember I detected there was a shift: mistakes became something to be covered up like guilty family secrets. Court Managers became adept at avoiding addressing the key aspects of a complaint (“we have investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong”) in order to avoid blame.
This is entirely parallel to the New Labour age of spin and public relations managment style Government. Anyone remember “A good day to bury bad news”? That one was a big hit back in 2001.
Arguably in the last few years the efforts made to avoid admitting clear errors have mutated into something far more corrosive. Such as Court Managers and Area Directors now deny – in the face of clear documentary evidence – that an error in a claim has occured at all.
The rise of political lying has been very well documented in the last few years and started in ernest with Tory Chancellor George Osborne and Michael Gove who clearly sought to decieve and deployed mendacity as a deliberate political weapon. It seems we now have a Government who are happy to issue untruths on a daily basis secure in the knowledge that the world moves on so fast that by the time their comments have been fact-checked and the truth known that the public will largely have swallowed the lie.
So it is now with public bodies. In many cases the organisation – and I speak of such as MoJ and HMCTS etc. – as I have the majority experience of these two – are so chaotically run that more and more daily errors occur and it is impossible to catch all of these and correct them. For example case files are returned to storage incomplete and disordered as staff run around a a blind panic with no clear idea what they are tasked with.
Sorry to ruin your day by reminding you of these mendacious b******* (pt. 2)
The end result of all this is clear. Any trust remaining in public institutions vanishes. No learning from an error occurs and so it is repeated.
Management cannot address every error as it occurs and so they outright deny such a problem has happened, even when it is clear the whole system is close to collapse. The rise of political lying gives them an example to follow and once again sets the tone for how those employed by the state act. It’s Nelson putting the telescope to his eyepatch and saying “I see no ships”.
I write in relation to the Julian Assange extradition attempt by the US government. This has received a ruling today which has stated that Assange cannot be extradited to America on the basis of mental health concerns.
It is widely considered that the case against Assange has been cooked up as revenge against Wikileaks publication of atrocities by the US military in the Middle East. That such was designed to frighten any journalist in the future from exposure of similar state backed horrors.
As this post will detail The Ministry of Justice in the UK is quite prepared to commit abuse of process to also persecute those who publish material which exposes its wrongdoing and incompetence.
Assange in transit in a prison van from Belmarsh high security prison where he has been held.
The ruling in the case is that extradition cannot take place as America cannot guarantee the safety of Assange in a US prison in the light of his apparent suicidal ideations. These thoughts probably stem from his continued persecution for many years over Wikileaks publication of video footage of atrocities committed by the US military against civilians.
The points made regarding the safety of the US prison system of course apply equally – if not more so – to British prisons. Belmarsh was the choice of prison for Assange on the basis of the additional security given to inmates there.
The other thing that struck me about the judgment is that the extradition to America was refused not on grounds which assert and re-enforce the freedom of the press or the ability of such as Wikileaks to publish material which challenges authority but on the grounds of safety for the defendant.
The decision was made by a District Judge. Anyone familiar enough with the British legal system will likely be aware that the judge has chosen an anaemic third way in order to dismiss the case for extradition. No wonder the decision is likely to be appealed! Rather than outright confrontation of the prosecution case which was designed both as an act of revenge against Assange and a threat to any future journalists exposing official misconduct the judge chose a way which avoids these prosecution arguments being confronted and carefully debunked.
If a decision was made to extradite on the basis of the case put on behalf of the prosecution then the risk to press freedom in future would have been grave. As it is the case has been a warning shot to anyone thinking of publishing contentious material regarding state backed misconduct.
The judge has accepted the proposition advanced by Assange’s legal team that an American prison is not sufficiently safe for someone with suicidal thoughts.
Were he still alive Jeffrey Epstein would also likely agree that an American prison is an insufficiently safe environment for people who have – like Assange – embarrassed or risk embarrassing those who hold the levers of power in America.
We don’t have to look to a high-profile case such as this to see official misuse of power in an act of revenge against those who publish material which would embarrass authority, as our own Minisry of Justice in Britain are quite prepared to carry out misconduct in public office in this way.
In May this year I was sent material in error by MoJ. This was a letter intended for the Metropolitan Police in relation to Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against an individual in the Kent area.
The data sent to me in error constituted a considerable Data Protection Act breach and covered the name, address, date of birth and bank details of the individual and other compromising data. Such data in the wrong hands could have resulted in considerable fraud committed against the data subject by the misuse of his personal details. I informed both The Information Commissioner’s Office and the data subject about this.
I also posted – with no small amount of schadenfreude – the tweet seen below. No aspect of the content of this tweet breached revealed data on the data subject and thus was not actionable. It simply and quite rightly embarrassed MoJ as an organisation which is incompetent in the handling of personal data.
Despite the fact that MoJ were wholly in the wrong over this entire matter they decided to go on the offensive and instructed West Yorkshire Police to arrest me in relation to offences under The Data Protection Act.
Police, having seen no evidence of any offence committed in civil or criminal law, nevertheless took the word of MoJ as gospel and in so doing broke the law themselves not least by committing a wrongful arrest.
I was arrested and held in custody at the police station. It was relegated much later in an email chain from the Head of Security at MoJ that the purpose of this was “to give him a shock”. I’d embarrassed MoJ in public with the tweet and reported the data breech to ICO. Consequently MoJ wished to revenge itself and were prepared to commit misconduct in public office to do so.
Of course the other thing the emails between MoJ and West Yorkshire Police also reveal is the sudden loss of interest in the matter when I was arrested – the arrest being the short, sharp shock MoJ was aiming for. An internal investigation by police also admits there were no grounds for arrest and no offence had been committed.
The point of my explaining all this shabby behaviour and breach of duty of care from two shifty little organisations is clear. Just as Assange has been intimidated and subject to abuse of process because of what he published so have I.
Such actions from organisations such as MoJ and West Yorkshire Police serve to wholly undermine public confidence in the organisations themselves and damage their own reputation. Further it exposes the organisations as being comprised of the inept, the incompetent and the petty-minded.
If MoJ or West Yorkshire Police would like a right of reply to the content of this article then I am happy to publish any point of view they may give. I may equally produce further evidence in response which confirms the facts already stated above!
This blog post is best avoided being read on a full moon for reasons which will shortly become obvious.
In a meeting due to take place tomorrow, Friday 18th December the Ethics, Integrity and Complaints Committee of Leicestershire Police will discuss the reasons why the number of supposed rapes recorded by police are high while the number of prosecutions for the offence are low.
Current Labour Party leader Sir Kier Starmer is known to be one of the individuals behind the mantra of “we believe the victim”, a post-Saville call-to-arms which led to a turnaround in modern policing resulting in the prosecution of thousands of men for supposed historic sexual offences. Many of these men were geriatric and due to the passage of time since the supposed offences their accusers unable to produce physical evidence of wrongdoing. In the post-Saville climate however one person’s word against another remains sufficient to enable a wrongful conviction; particularly over something as emotive as a sexual offence allegation.
Some fifteen years ago the proportion of wrongfully convicted men in gaol was around one in twenty. The figures are likely presently significantly higher.
Yet an accusation of rape remains one of the problematic offences for police to investigate. The number of offences compared to the number of convictions carries a massive disparity. The Leicestershire Police report to be discussed tomorrow helps explain why.
You can read the leaked report into the matter below. It gives an insight into the level of lunacy currently practiced in the British Police overall.
In short the statistics for such offences given to the public are wrong. Police have known they are wrong for some time and that they provide a wholly distorted and prejudicial view of the true extent of rape offences. The report explains why this is so.
The most memorable part of the report concerns a complaint by a woman of assault by a werewolf. An actual werewolf. Not just a hairy bloke. The matter took some four months to investigate at a cost of goodness knows what to the taxpayer.
🐺 – 🌕
The matter of supposed rape by a supernatural being is still recorded as an offence.
More serious is the extract below:
In short when a false claim of rape has occurred police do not obtain a retraction (failure to do so keeping the non-offence as a recorded offence) and police do not appear to seek to obtain a retraction as it would leave the complainant open to prosecution for wasting police time. This stops false accusers and compensation-seekers from being prosecuted and would enable them to “have another go” at a later date. The lucrative gravy-train of false allegations thus rolls on and everyone on the criminal justice system benefits. Except the poor bloody defendant of course.
If enough false accusers were to be prosecuted the well of complaints that the British police have been supping from since “We believe the victim” was introduced would shortly run dry.
This approach however is too common-sense. It would however solve the problem of false statistics and keep innocent men out of gaol.
This blog is in danger of becoming a post largely carping on about service level failures by court staff at HMCTS.
Having said that the errors they make are sufficiently numerous and serious in consequence that they’re like busses: there’s always another one along in a minute. This makes it very easy to produce material for this blog. Although I’m likely to get bored of telling you about all of these errors long before HMCTS stop making them.
Doncaster: the County Court here fails to serve the people of the city well.
The kind of service level failures court staff specialise in would – in any normal workplace – result in disciplinary proceedings. But HMCTS is presently sufficiently desperate to retain any form of staff to keep at least a semblance of function in civil courts that even the most spectacularly gaff-prone employees are retained. Better the devil you know than someone even more slackly incompetent.
The end result of this for court users is of course loss of time, expense and waste of effort.
And so it has been today in relation to a claim at Doncaster County Court, (already noted for more than its fair share of errors in handling this particular claim) at which yet another service level failure has take place.
In several occasions in the past both parties have been all set for trial only for the trial to be cancelled when all are in attendance. Grounds: over-running of a prior matter, file in poor condition etc. On one occasion the file was even lost!
There’s always an excuse for appalling service but the basic grounds ultimately come down to two things: an inability on the part of court staff to administrate claims properly and the failure of District Judges to deploy appropriate oversight of a case or to get a grip on case management issues.
An application in this claim was made in April 2020. Estimated time to hearing was 12 weeks, which of course came and went without any Notice of Hearing.
Two other hearings In the same claim took place in October and November at which the application could have been scheduled to be heard. Needless to say it wasn’t even though the District Judge made clear she was aware of its existence.
This is a critical fact: that staff failed to schedule the application in a way that would have dealt with it reasonably at an appropriate time within the claim, saving the parties time and effort. Having acknowledged receipt of the application they simply forgot all about it
…until the point I sent them a timely reminder in relation to the application. This brought a further hearing date. Which again drags all the parties over to Doncaster for what ultimately ends up as a futile exercise.
When the matter of the application could have been heard within other hearings in the same claim but wasn’t because court staff forgot about it we have clear evidence that the civil court system has collapsed and cannot now administrate in even the most basic respects.
How do many legal professionals react to their cases being so poorly run? Often by keeping their heads down and accepting the situation. To speak out in public or in the court itself would perhaps cause damage to careers and lead the judiciary to take against them on future appearances. And so nothing in the civil system improves.
HMCTS service standards are… well not very good at all really!
A Freedom of Information Act request to The Ministry of Justice produced the following data.
Payments made for poor service from HMCTS increasing year on year.
The data largely speaks for itself. Payments made to court users for poor service increase year on year as HMCTS falls apart.
Poor customer service by HMCTS is costing at least £292k per year in payments made to disgruntled court users. This is of course not counting the time taken to correct errors they have made which also counts as a loss to the public purse and creates delay overall in the system.
Most importantly if you’ve been in receipt of poor service from a court make sure you complain. And don’t be fobbed off: they’re experts at dissembling and denying. Of course at every stage also request to be compensated. It’s only when the budget for payment of compensation exceeds what The Ministry of Justice is prepared to pay out that service standards will improve.
Yesterday one of my cases was assessed and received judgment from Mr. Justice Warby, who just last week delivered an initial appraisal of the Coleen Rooney v. Rebekah Vardy case which is presently before him.
Sir Mark David John Warby, styled The Hon. MrJusticeWarby
As one might expect based on his reputation the judgement in my claim was incisive, carefully worded and hit all the correct notes.
It makes something of a change to deal with a judge who is focused on the best and most natural route for a case in line with the Overriding Objectives as opposed to the way some more local judiciary handle cases!
In March 2017 Mr. Justice Warby was appointed Judge in Charge of the Media and Communications List and is to be appointed to The Court of Appeal from 2021.
Legal Babble 