Tag: Courts and Tribunals

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How Establishment Judges Protect The System

Occasionally, High Court judges get in the news for all the wrong reasons. As the text below shows I am unfortunately burdened with having to deal with a judge called Nicholas Lavender. He is known as The Honourable Nicholas Lavender. Unfortunately, I get stuck with his evil twin The Dishonourable Nicholas Lavender. He’s recently been in the news for two key issues. The first of these is his incorrect sentencing of a MP caught committing sexual misconduct, more on this below. The more recent of these two stories concerns his membership of the Garrick club, an all male organisation, which appears to contain a suspicious number of high-level judiciary. More can be seen on this here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/18/garrick-club-bastion-male-elitism

Judge Nicholas Lavender

In 2016, I was subject to a wrongful conviction. The conviction was wrongful because evidence which showed factual innocence was withheld from the court and further evidence which would have undermined the prosecution in respect of the complainant was also withheld. Such information has subsequently been located, such as the complainant publicly being named as serial complainant and compensation seeker. This has resulted in her being the subject of articles in the national press showing her patterns of behaviour for the purpose of obtaining compensation.

It was known at an early stage that the prosecution was wrongful, evidence was being withheld and the whole matter conducted by officers who we have subsequently discovered had committed prior misconduct including data manipulation and computer misuse offences. Humberside Police is still known to be in possession of a significant amount of data showing factual innocence. Efforts have been made to obtain this data via civil proceedings and judicial review.

The British court system seeks at all stages to maintain wrongful convictions by a number of underhanded methods. One of these is that efforts to obtain evidence which is known to exist showing factual innocence will be blocked via a number of methods. One of these is simply hiding the evidence and failing to show this to a defence team. This is illegal and contrary to The Criminal Procedure Investigation Act. This happened in my case. However another means of hiding evidence known to exist is for a judge to effectively act as a “gatekeeper” placing restrictions and denying access to evidence which will show the police, CPS and the court itself have missed conducted themselves in order to obtain and maintain wrongful conviction. This enables any police and legal professionals involved in a deliberate miscarriage of justice to avoid blame for misconduct in public office. 

In my own matter the judge Nicholas Lavender known as The Honourable, Mr Justice Lavender (pictured) acts as gatekeeper to block applications made to obtain data showing factual innocence which would open the way to overturn of the wrongful conviction. 

The High Court

 

As such, Nicholas Lavender knows full well that he is acting to maintain an injustice and doing so oppressively by the continual application of a series of civil restraint orders which act to limit and restrict my ability to use the civil court system to obtain information that would enable the matter to be returned to the Court of Appeal.
This has now become a personal matter for him: in the orders that he makes in relation to myself he insures that the wording he is as disparaging and borderline offensive as possible. In return I am happy to publicise his abuse of office in order to protect persons within the criminal justice system who have committed misconduct in public office. 

 

Image: The Guardian. Disquiet has been expressed over the number of senior judges who are members of The Garrick Club.

It is of course quite logical that one judge would seek to protect his colleagues within the criminal justice system via abuse of his position. This maintains the professional reputation of the criminal justice system and also the idea that mistakes do not happen. It is more important for sitting judges, and HMCTS, to preserve the professional reputation of the criminal justice system that it is for them to look into and find where injustices have happened, and correct them. 

Below is the text of a statement given to Mr Justice Lavender at The High Court in May 2023. This was in relation to his stated aim of renewing a civil restraint order against me for another three years. In any encounter I have had with Lavender. His aim is always to restrict and curtail my ability to be able to obtain redress in relation to wrongful conviction & and any other civil proceedings. 

At this hearing were Francesca O’Neil from The Ministry of Justice and Lynn Temp from the Government Legal Dept. it is telling that these two people from these organisations were invited by the court to this hearing. Because these are two people from two organisations who have the most to lose from a wrongful conviction obtained by manipulated evidence being exposed publicly. They both argued that the civil restraint order should be maintained. This is because the maintenance of such enables them to avoid civil action for failure to produce data showing factual innocence made under relevant data access legislation. 

Any application made in civil proceedings is immediately referred to Lavender, who then strikes the claim out for a variety of inapplicable and tenuous reasons and always with an order which just skims the boundaries of being personally abusive towards myself. 

My statement began with some preliminary discussions. I then went on to say to Lavender:

—————

 

“What this suggests [I referred to other judges who approve applications made in civil and other proceedings] is that it is only you who has a problem with applications that I make, restricting such applications in order to cause unfair disadvantage. 

It also suggests that the restrictions put in place by a CRO are not immutable. That, depending upon circumstances, it is perfectly possible to make an application in any set of proceedings. The wording of the CRO should not have allowed any such applications to have been made. Whereas if I were to make a new claim, this would be immediately put before you, and you would seek any reason possible to strike it out despite the validity of the claim and the clarity of the particulars of claim.

 

It is my misfortune that any claim I make is immediately passed to you. When other judges are involved the CRO is not treated as an issue when it comes to making applications. 

 

You seek irrelevant grounds for striking such a claim out. I will discuss the reasons for this shortly, but the reasons are no different to how they were when we were last at this juncture in 2021.

 

I see that the standard invite has been sent out for today’s hearing and the usual ghouls [named above] are clearly in attendance. These are the two organisations which have a most to lose from my being able to make applications at court. Both organisations were intimately involved in a severe and prolonged miscarriage of justice. Relevant data has been obtained showing that this is a wrongful conviction on the basis of evidence showing factual innocence being withheld in order to obtain wrongful conviction. Evidence was withheld contrary to the order of the trial judge in the case. Despite efforts on my part to obtain this since directly from the organisations concerned. 

This is how you when I first crossed paths because I made an application for judicial review into both CPS and Humberside police for withholding information contrary to the Criminal Procedure & Investigation Act. The matter of the appeal into wrongful conviction is now before a London-based barrister and solicitor. 

Your actions in striking out the judicial review applications, one against each organisation, meant that the information showing factual innocence could not be obtained via reasonable means through the civil courts process.

 

You knew this full well when you made the CRO – and the purpose of extending the CRO in June 2021 – and today (because I am confident that you will decide for, however tenuous a set of reasons that you intend to extend this for a further two years) is to prevent applications being made which will produce further evidence showing factual innocence.



Rather hilariously North Yorkshire police have also decided to pitch in. Since there has been no contact with that organisation between 2019 and today it makes me question why they would bother. And it seems that this is in relation to the fear that at some point in the future that proceedings might commence against North Yorkshire police. This is not a reasonable justification for maintenance of the CRO. 

At some point in the future they may be a form of misconduct against me from any organisation. It’s hard to countenance the idea that a public funded organisation would seek to restrict a person’s ability to be able to make legitimate claims by extension of a CRO which would prevent action against any organisation or individual who commits a tort against them purely out of fear that that individual might at some point launch in action against North Yorkshire Police This is either something that I’m missing the point on or entirely or it’s spectacularly, selfish and the argument is bad on its face being made to protect an organisation but causing significant disadvantage to an individual. 

 

As I mentioned the existence of a CRO prevents legitimate and reasonable claims being brought on the back of torts committed against me. As far as I’m aware it is unreasonable in the extreme for such an organisation to request that the CRO is extended on the basis that they may be future claims against that organisation, including for torts they have not yet committed. 

 

There is an obvious interest in this matter from organisations, such a CPS and Humberside Police. They have committed clear misconduct putting their professional reputation and the careers of serving personnel at risk. 

 

At the last such hearing to decide whether this CRO should continue I spent a considerable amount of my time outlining all of the instances in which you have acted unfairly, unreasonably, or otherwise to abuse your position in order to assist organisations, such as Humberside Police and CPS in maintaining the wrongful conviction. I do not intend again to go over each of these instances in which a judgement has been made which is illogical and contrary to the evidence produced. 

Suffice to say that in all of the instances of claims I have made that have been outlined in documentation for this hearing that there has been a deliberate ignoring of key pertinent facts in the judgment made striking the claim out. 

It is of course much easier to strike a claim out if you ignore a key aspect of the particulars of claim and key evidence that supports them. You even have a set  template on which you will issue such judgements. This template is worded identically on each occasion. Particularly choice phrase that appears within these judgements is “Mr XXXXXX wastes public money and has done so for years.“



What isn’t a waste of public money is your salary. Because you are prepared to act to protect the reputation and interests of bodies within the criminal justice system that have clearly missed conducted themselves. And the evidence that they have misconducted themselves clearly exists and is presently with a London-based solicitor and counsel. 

These organisations have themselves attempted via every means possible to conceal the evidence of professional misconduct for the purpose of reputation management. Your primary concern in imposing and renewing a CRO is therefore to maintain the reputation of the convicting court, police and CPS.

In the last hearing of this nature in June 2021 I pointed out salient facts. Firstly, that evidence proving both these organisations acted to cause a deliberate miscarriage of justice and obtain a wrongful conviction has been secured. I also stated that rather than you taking the reasonable line of requesting to see the withheld evidence showing factual innocence and then making an order [to CPS and Humberside Police] to supply the missing data you instead decided to support the misconduct carried out by the state and its agents by again extending the restraint order. This is despite the fact that it was pointed out to you clearly that there has been a significant miscarriage of justice and sufficient evidence exists of this for solicitor and barrister to have received several hikes in their legal aid funding.

 

However the professional and public reputation of the CJS comes first regardless of how obvious the miscarriage of justice is.  Hence, the reason some very high-profile miscarriage of justice cases spend years languishing in prison, despite the fact that it is known where the evidence of factual innocence is and who is holding it. 

 

Maybe your role is not to assist in finding of fact but rather to support the reputation of a system in which you work while you have a little fun yourself along the way. I refer to the case of your sentencing of Labour Party Peer Lord Ahmed. Having myself been on the receiving end of your florid pronouncements, made without any form of justification about me in your judgements, I can imagine the joy you got in being able to pronounce in the Lord Ahmed case. A matter in which you spent so long proclaiming about actions that Lord Ahmed has carried out that you forgot the basic issues involved in sentencing, leading to a successful appeal and a reduction in his sentence.

 

…I doubt that I’m the only person who you have acted to complicate their appeal into wrongful conviction by the application of a CRO.

You are fully aware on the basis of evidence put before you in the two judicial review applications in 2018, that there has been a significant miscarriage of justice, but rather than make relevant orders and allow applications that would have enabled the production of the relevant information you chose instead to apply a CRO, restricting my ability to obtain evidence for the purpose of appeal.

 

You now seek to extend the civil restraint order for a second time. I’m reasonably sure that such would be on unprecedented act.

 

Certainly, it would be unprecedented restriction upon my ability to be able to correct torts and take reasonable action to protect my own interests via the civil court system.

 

In the last such hearing in June 2021, I spoke at length about several civil claims that had been shut down by you contrary to established procedure, reasonableness or fairness. The entire text of a very lengthy series of submissions made at the last hearing was made available online shortly afterwards. And on my blog this forms the most accessed page. 

 

I do not intend to repeat the contents of the submissions made in June 2021. The text of those submissions are of course freely available online. However, in this instance I will focus on one particular case which acts as a microcosm of your handling of any claim brought by myself or now it would seem also my family members. 

 

Claim number XXX was dismissed again unreasonably and without proper grounds on the basis that it was believed that I was behind a claim made by my mother in respect of XXXXXXXXX Council. Why was this unreasonable? The answer to this is very simple. Because at any point you could’ve ordered that my mother appeared by video link or took an oath in her home witnessed by the family solicitor to say that she was the person behind the claim, directing it and instigator of it. Instead you took actions to limit her ability to be able to make a reasonable claim in respect of XXXXXXX Council mistreatment of her for an entirely unfair and inappropriate reason. It was within your capability to be able to confirm that my mother was the person behind the claim at all stages. But you did not seek this information, and instead sought to strike the claim of a third-party out. Not only the claims I bring but also those brought by my relatives and immediate family are now also liable to dismissal on the basis that they will be scooped up and put in front of you by court staff.

 

This is an abuse of power. It is an absence of duty of care and a clear breach of the principles established in The Equal Treatment Bench Book. You prevented my mother from being able to take action in relation to an actual harm caused to her by XXXXXXXXX Council.

 

On this basis it is foolish for me to assume that there will be any fairness or reasonable treatment within this hearing. There has been malpractice and discriminatory behaviour known from you towards me since 2018. The point of this hearing is simply to re-establish the civil restraint order for another two years. 

 

The rejections of legitimate meritorious claims made of the course of the last two years, which do not in any way represent an excessive number of claims but which were rejected with wording from you that I have described in this statement, was done on purpose to enable the hearing today to further extend the civil restraint order. In other words the purpose of the of this hearing is simply to rubberstamp what has been in the your mind for around two years: that myself, as claimant should be further disadvantaged, limited and exposed to professional misconduct by other persons and organisations, without ability for legal recourse to correct torts against me. This is all to protect CPS, Humberside Police and Hull Crown Court from the effects of their own professional misconduct and negligence.

 

Anything I say within these proceedings, any comments I make and any legal arguments, however evidenced and persuasive will be ignored. This is because in every encounter with you over the last two years you have presented an unrealistic picture of the merits of claims that I have brought purely for the purpose of dismissing such claims. As such all the involvement that I’ve had with you over the last two years has, from your perspective, been for the purpose of establishing a case for the hearing today, in which you’re able to again justify the reimposition of the CRO for another two years.

 

Again, this is not fair or reasonable approach to take. But your interests lie in protection of criminal justice system from exposure of its misconduct, particularly public exposure leading to loss of confidence in such bodies as work within the CJS. As such again all of your actions over the last two years have been to enable you to rubberstamp another two-year stretch of a CRO today. As the appeal into my wrongful conviction moves forward I hope you’re prepared to be on the wrong side of history.

 

I also hope you’re prepared to be in a position in which your actions in seeking to maintain the wrongful conviction & protect those responsible for it and limit and restrict my ability to make applications in civil court cases in respect of it should be exposed publicly at a point where the wrongful conviction is overturned.”

 

———————————————-

Final word.

Looking at the membership of the Garrick club, which Nicholas Lavender is a member of it is clear and logical that Lavender would seek to protect the establishment that he Is a significant part of. The more high-profile members of the club can be seen here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/gallery/2024/mar/19/garrick-club-notable-members-in-pictures

Extract from The Guardian article on High Court judges who are members of The Garrick Club. 19.3.24


Lavender uses his position as a High Court judge to protect elements of the criminal and civil justice system, which have missed conducted themselves causing disadvantage to the public and potential loss of professional reputation to the courts. As such, Lavender is prepared to misuse his position in order to protect his colleagues and the system in which they work.

This is the low standard of British justice in the early 21st-century.

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Attempted Fraud by Age UK?

Age UK used to be a charity. Used to be.  

Now only the London headquarters is a charitable organisation that gives help, guidance and suchlike to the elderly.

Like so many other organisations over the last forty years or so Age UK have given away much of their power to businesses seeking predominantly profit. This has led to significant injustice for many as services become harder to access. The example given below is a good illustration of how far things have fallen.

The social care crisis has enabled some unscrupulous activity in the care sector. As employees become harder to find firms need to be more creative about ensuring their sources of income. Some are a little too creative!

Therefore if you have an Age UK local office it is more likely this is a business run for profit as a limited company with Directors and suchlike. But they will trade with the Age UK logo and name which still makes the public think of it as a charity and not a business.

You can of course look up your local Age UK office on the Companies House website, it will be styled as Age UK Stevenage, or Age UK Bolton and so on to distinguish it from the charity and the multiple other for-profit bodies run under the same title. This will provide a list of the local Directors of the business and other useful data.

This is of course fundamentally dishonest and close to misrepresentation. It is not however the most dishonest thing about these companies which use the Age UK name, as this article will show. 

My mother is elderly, housebound and has severe medical needs. Care needs to be provided for her and we used our local Age UK for this for a period of six months or so. The service provided was… adequate. But not spectacular.

This was for home care in which carers would attend twice a day to empty commodes, make her food etc. This was of course in addition to family attending to her on a daily basis also.

The Age UK visits were to “top up” the care already being provided by relatives.

The idealised image of social care. But as the care crisis grows more severe it appears some companies are prepared to prey on the elderly.

As the service levels were not especially wonderful we said goodbye to Age UK after a time. Less impressive than anything they did to care for my mother was the tendency for workers to sit around for ten minutes in a half hour appointment after all the essential jobs were done.  

All payments to the local Age UK were of course up to date and bills were settled in good time. However when we said we no longer required their services two additional bills arrived which were over and above the work already paid for. These bills amounted in total to around £1,200 being requested when clearly all the due invoices had been settled and no additional work had been carried out. This was queried by me with the office who were adamant that the invoices represented monies due.

The local branch continued to press for payment of sums not owed. They even claimed in a letter to me that they were a charitable organisation and this is the reason the invoices should be paid, which I was able to quickly disprove by a check on Companies House, as I described above.

Eventually the matter was taken up by the firm as a civil action with my mother named as the Defendant and Age UK’s local business as the Claimant.

And this is where things start to get interesting and murkier still.

An initial hearing was due to take place in the matter in August 2021. Directions were issued by the Court that Age UK failed to comply with, in other words they failed to supply evidence, documents, a Statement and so on to the Court. The hearing was by telephone. No-one from Age UK took part in the hearing and the Court’s efforts to contact the Claimant by phone for the hearing failed. 

As a result of this the Claim was struck out by the District Judge. 

However Age UK applied to resume the claim and a further hearing date was set for September 2021. Age UK’s application for the case to be re-heard sounded impressive and worrying: in short if you believed what was written in the Application the business was tottering on the edge of bankruptcy due to the non-payment of these supposed sums owed.

What cost dignity in old age? Well if you deal with the businesses that trade under the Age UK name it could be higher than you think!

Again prior to the hearing in September 2021 Age UK had failed to enter any Statement and failed to comply with the directions of the Court. The fact that on the second go around they were still failing to produce any evidence showing that any sums were owed is telling: the claim was an abuse of process to try to obtain payments Age UK were aware were not owed, and the misuse of the civil system was to make my mother fearful of the proceedings such that she paid up to stop them.

What’s more a day before the hearing they issued a Notice of Discontinuance to stop all proceedings, recognising that severe costs would be awarded against them for their vexatious misuse of the civil court system.

And vexatious misuse is exactly what the local branch of Age UK tried.

They had no intention to go forward to a hearing with this matter but rather by the threat and then the issue of civil proceedings they sought to frighten an elderly lady in ill-health into paying sums they were fully aware were not owed.

Nor do I think my mother is the only elderly person or their family that businesses operating under the Age UK title have tried this sort of thing with: its a nice little earner when a client says goodbye to try squeezing them for funds one last time. Perhaps this is common practice in the care sector?

Had my mother not been so frail that she pushed all financial matters to family to sort out she would likely have seen those final two duplicitous invoices and paid them without thinking.

In any event she would likely have paid the sums they claim were owed at the threat of Court action. And she would certainly have paid them at the receipt of papers from the Court. In this way Age UK sought to misuse the civil court system to obtain around £1,200 they were not owed from a vulnerable elderly lady.

In a way the most disturbing thing about this is that no evidence was laid before the Court to show the sums were due. Even when their case was struck out Age UK considered it worth a punt to apply to re-start the case on the off chance this forced a payment from fear of proceedings without them having to show evidence of it being due.  

However we kept our nerve and called their bluff right up until the second hearing, just before which they folded.

Does this not raise some interesting questions?

That the charity based in London’s good name is being abused by organisations focused totally on profit, often by underhanded means. I am certain that there will be some financial kickback to the charity for this in the form of a ongoing licence to private businesses to use the name.

More to the point that the businesses who licence the name Age UK are at least partly presenting themselves as charities and not businesses.

Finally of course are the actions of the local office which are clearly bringing themselves and the charity into disrepute.

This is very much the way in modern Britain: rapacious companies prey upon the vulnerable, use intimidation and misuse the law to try to enrich themselves.

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HMCTS Under Fire From The Information Commissioner’s Office. Again!

Hard to think of two more poorly run institution than HMCTS and it’s parent
organisation The Ministry of Justice.

This is a very simple post detailing a simple but significant error. So no lengthy explanation as to what’s happened on this occasion!

HMCTS shared my personal financial details with a third party.

That’s it. That’s basically all that can be said in the post.

But wait!

Stop and think for a few moments and we can see this is matter is actually considerably more significant and serious than it first looks.

The letter from The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) finding against HMCTS can be seen below.

But the operative paragraph from it is simple and plain:

The nub of the issue.

Why should this matter?

Personal data in the care of such as HMCTS and MoJ has the potential to cause significant damage if released inappropriately. Release to a third party with no requirement for or rights to such data can and does cause significant issues.

The simple fact is that the incompetence of County Court staff knows no bounds.

Indeed the vindictiveness of their management towards anyone who has received appalling service from HMCTS also knows no bounds. In this matter an out-of-court settlement was agreed upon to be paid fourteen days from the agreement. Some three months after this agreement I was still awaiting payout.

HMCTS and MoJ are simply two organisations which have ceased to function in any meaningful way and the amount of time spent on damage limitation, denying errors have occurred and attempting to maintain an image of professionalism would be better spent actually running courts efficiently in the first instance.

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HMCTS & The Two Year Delay

Anyone who’s been unfortunate enough to have to deal with HMCTS County Court staff will rue the day they ever did.

Customer services for HMCTS reply robustly to any complaint made!

Lazy, incompetent and incapable of even basic administration of claims. Their inability to do the job with promptness and accuracy is matched only by their wheedling and evasions when caught out.

Most of these people of course would not last five minutes in a commercial operation. But there’s no place else you can go to for civil court services.

The third rate service provided to court users therefore comes with a “like it or lump it” aspect.

So how long do you think a simple application in existing civil proceedings might take to be dealt with? Three weeks? Two months tops?

Try two years and three months!

Here’s how this came about…

An application was made in an existing claim to Sheffield County Court in May 2019.

Here is the proof of posting for this.

Note the date: 10.5.21

And here is the letter from Sheffield which states that this application has been received.

Again note the date. Also the claim number! Edited to remove my address.

And finally see the date on the Court Order which has resulted from this application…

All told this simple application has taken a period of two years three months to be actioned by HMCTS.

So what have they been doing in that time? Well the pandemic isn’t really an excuse as they had ten months pre-pandemic to sort the application. Then of course we’ve not been in lockdown for more than four months of the last year. So the pandemic isn’t an excuse.

I suspect as with most civil cases the file has been kept in poor condition with bits missing and documents lost. Again this comes down to the competence of civil court staff to do the basics of their job. A knuckle-dragging approach to fixing problems also doesn’t help.

They are – well it rhymes with mooseless pluckers – as there can be no possible excuse for a matter being left some two years three months before being actioned.

But of course anyone who’s dealt with County Court staff in the last twenty or so years knows what a set of mooseless pluckers they are.

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Judicial Bias on Legal Loans Issue?

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.

Divorced From Reality: How Legal Loans Racked Up Half a Million Debt for a Standard Divorce

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.

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The Rise of the Liars

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”.

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The Mendacity of HMCTS

This post details the extent to which HMCTS will seek to lie and mislead in order to avoid admitting a clear service level error made by court staff, particularly when such an error is serious enough to amount to a breach of a person’s right of access to justice or human rights.

Below is a copy of an email sent earlier today to Customer Investigations at HMCTS. They are the final stage of appeal in the event that court staff make serious errors in the handling of civil claims. 

It follows two separate instances of the Court Manager at Leeds Combined Court, Joanne Town, seeking to deliberately mislead in her replies to a complaint. The original complaint was that court staff failed to notify me of a hearing taking place into two claims – they only informed me of a third taking place on the same date in November.

Joanne Town states that these two claims were not heard on the relevant date. All available evidence including an Order from the hearing proves her wrong but she maintains her position twice over.

This behaviour and the original error of the court failing to inform me of dates for two claims to be heard represents sufficiently shocking behaviour that I share the email I have sent to Customer Investigations in its entirety below. 

The email begins… 

I refer to the issue below as a formal complaint to Customer Investigations. 

On 11.11.20 a hearing took place at Leeds Combined Court in [REDACTED]. I was unable to attend this hearing. Also in the same hearing two other claims were heard. These being [REDACTED] & [REDACTED]. I was not notified that these claims were to be heard on that date at the same time as [REDACTED]. A formal complaint was therefore made to Leeds Combined Court. It is a fundamental aspect of access to justice that a Claimant should be able to attend hearings in relation to claims he has brought. Indeed CPR enshrines such rights. Article 6 of The Human Rights Act states the right to be a fair and public trial or hearing at which I am allowed representation if a public authority is making a decision that has a impact upon my civil rights or obligations. The failure to notify in respect of two claims in which I was Claimant taking place on 11.11.20 thus activates my Article 6 rights. By failure to inform of hearings taking place on 11.11.20 HMCTS has breached my Article 6 rights. 

Firstly as can be seen from the email below no communication was received as sent on 7.12.20 by Leeds Combined Court. A copy of a letter dated 7.12.20 has been sent to me by email today in relation to my query regarding a level two response. 

The onus of the complaint to Customer Investigations is as follows: 

The response provided on 23.11.20 and that dated 7.12.20 both state: 

The court did not receive any applications or fees on [REDACTED] & [REDACTED] to set aside, vary or discharge the order of Mr. Justice Lavender dated 27th February 2020 and as such these cases were not listed on the 11th November 2020 these files were not forwarded to the Judge

Further that the position as outlined above is the same argument outlined by the Court in its defence in the 23.11.20 email. There has therefore been no review of the appeal to the first stage complaint response. It would additionally appear that no further investigations into the matter have taken place by Leeds. A simple check of the Order of 11.11.20 would have shown Joanne Town that the statements she has made are wholly factually wrong. 

I attach further a copy of an Order made on 11.11.20 in the matters of [REDACTED], [REDACTED] & [REDACTED]. This clearly shows that the matters of G00LS437 & [REDACTED] WERE heard on 11.11.20. I attach also a Notice of Hearing in respect of the 11.11.20 which is the only Notice of Hearing received in relation to any proceedings on this date. 
I was therefore not informed of the hearing of two other claims on 11.11.20. 

As a consequence of this both the email seen in the attached Word document from Joanne Town of November and the PDF of 7.12.20 also attached have deliberately and purposefully set out to misrepresent the facts, mislead and are a clear breach of the duty of care of the Court Manager to act with good faith in relation to service users. 
When you have a Court Manager who is prepared to mislead in such a way but is so easily caught out I would suggest that it’s pretty much the beginning of the end for HMCTS as an organisation. If you are incapable of honesty and integrity in your dealings with the public then any confidence in the organisation will vanish. The errors seen in the original complaint are compounded by the mendacity of the Court. 

I have additionally noted that Joanne Town has acted to respond to both the first and second stage of the complaints and as such there has been no actual second-stage review of the issues raised: the PDF of 7.12.20 simply repeats the response put in the original of 23.11.20. 

Consequently I appeal the second stage response on the basis that both that and the first stage response are wholly mendacious and fail to accept that a serious service level failure amounting to a breach of my Article 6 rights has occurred. The situation is no different to that of [REDACTED] in which the same Court Manager was aware that no action was taken in a claim for over a year but failed to respond to complaints in respect of that service level failure. 

As a consequence of the error by court staff I have had to make an application in respect of [REDACTED] & [REDACTED] which has also cost me money. 

In respect of this matter I seek a financial settlement appropriate to the breach of my rights by Leeds Combined Court in failing to notify of the hearings into [REDACTED] & [REDACTED] and the mendacious response of Court Manager Joanne Town. I have also lost time and amenity chasing this matter and have been vexed and harassed by the behaviour of the Court in respect of the original failure and the mendacious responses provided. I seek compensation in relation to these matters also. 

The behaviour of the Court Manager is sufficiently shocking that I believe others should be aware of this and as such the content of communications in this matter thus far – including this email – will be published online. 

I await your urgent response.

Letter ends.

Posted on

Crime Recording Standards, Werewolves & Other Inexplicable Phenomena

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.

The file is at http://www.leics.pcc.police.uk/DOCUMENT-LIBRARY/Transparency/Meetings/Ethics-Integrity-and-Complaint-Committee/2020/18th-December-2020/Item-8-Recording-of-Rape-Offences.pdf

Click to access Item-8-Recording-of-Rape-Offences.pdf

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.

Posted on

Doncaster County Court: Consistently Poor Service Standards

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!
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