Tomorow, Jacqui Thompson will find herself in court, where she will be desperately hoping for a route, any route, to prevent her home being sold from under her, making the family homeless, by Mark James, the Chief Executive of the local council.
How we’ve arrived at this point has been well documented, both here at Madaxeman and on Jacqui’s own blog. Mr. James won the libel case and is therefore entitled to press his claim for damages, and everything is all very above board and ship shape…
The only problem is, I don’t believe it is.
I was a witness at the original trial at The Royal Courts of Justice, and can only conclude we turned up on a morning when Justice had popped out for its shopping. I’m an intelligent man, but I cannot even begin to comprehend how the judge came to conclusions he did given the evidence before him. I consider myself to have borne witness to a HUGE miscarriage of justice, though of course the law, quite properly, has little regard for what I think…
What is beyond question though is that Mr. James should not have had access to council funding for his countersuit. The Derbyshire Agreement and years of established practice make it clear that a council cannot sue a member of the public, and nor can it have a member of staff sue on it’s behalf. So, you might find yourself wondering why the council provided an indemity to cover Mr. James’ expenses in bringing his counterclaim – something it plainly should not have done if the counterclaim were indeed purely a private matter…
The Wales Audit Office came to a similar conclusion, which has resulted in the council “suspended” (not removing, and with no clear guidance on what suspension actually means) a clause in it’s constitution used to assist Mr. James in bringing his action. To actually remove it of course would be to admit wrongdoing, where as to leave it in place would be unacceptable to the Wales Audit Office… So we have this fudge…
This is a fudge that should no longer be tolerated. If the council has engaged in wrong doing, it should simply own up to that and move on. The persecution of Jacqui Thompson should cease immediately, and the constitution should be clarified – or what is the point of it?
Noone, with any sense of justice at all, can be happy at the prospect of the Thompson family now being made homeless, whereupon the council will rather ironically come under a duty to rehome them anyway! This is madness, and it needs to be brought to an immediate halt.
madaxeman 
Law ? The high court case was illegally fundedfor the claimant which could surely not have been known of by the judge. The claimant was the one who clearly should have lost It is absolutely disgraceful in view of this which was known in this latest case again found against this lady. The whole shebang should go to the European Court of Justice before the chance is lost because of Brexit.
Comment by costarhymer — March 25, 2017 @ 3:27 pm |