Waterways By-Laws

[Allan(nb Albert)]

 

Tragically, threats of libel suits from BW/CART are only ever that – hollow threats. Why did he not follow through on the threat? I'd be curious to know whether they/their employees ever have followed through on a libel suit.

 

You must have something ‘good’ on him to suggest he is a liar [if that was what you explicitly said], most of what I have, demonstrates all the cunning of the worst legal minds – giving an utterly false impression while employing very carefully crafted words which, when broken down in the sentence piecemeal, cannot be objected to – only the effect is deceitful and misleading.

 

He is, of course, without question a knowing party to fraud of various types described in the Fraud Act – as are Hales, Evans, Bensted, Mills and Casey [and to a lesser extent, in a different matter, the property lady McLean]. The thing they don’t appear to realise is that the Fraud Act makes it a crime to withhold information one is obliged to proffer, when knowing that such withholding of information will result in loss to others. They don’t need to actually lie; they don’t need to utter a word in fact – it is the failure to say anything when knowing that a fraud is being perpetrated by their organisation that renders them culpable under the Act.

 

I believe, actually, that they do understand this, and realise that I, at least, can prove their guilt in respect of my allegations; it was back in 2009 or 10 that their QC first claimed they would have no option but to take libel action against me for my statements in this respect, demanding that I retract the accusations before the Master we were in attendance on. The Master was a little bemused, saying he couldn’t really force me to retract what I had said, and that it was all, in a sense, priviliged being written in pleadings read only by him and the parties involved.

 

He did ask, however, whether I wished to reconsider my position, but I simply said that truth was a perfect defence to the claim of libel, and that the QC’s client knew of the evidence proving my claims. The courts have evaded the topic ever since, despite my doing all I could to air the matter in public trial. There has been a great deal, over the years, of behind-doors activity bent on maintaining the organisation's illusory reputation.

 

I was [perhaps unfairly], quite excited when Panda was threatened in solicitor’s letters about KANDA’s claims of Johnson being discredited etc, but that all fizzled out with publication of the Hildyard cross-examinations and judgment. Very disappointing.

 

Point is, this is the man, his boss, and the legal team he heads up, that remain in their identical positions as before, advising the Board, the Trustees, and the management of CART today. For CART to be enabled to shrug off the abuses of the past and truly move forward under a different ethos, these people will have to go; it can't happen otherwise.

My run in with Johnson was many years ago and related to a document he produced regarding bonus targets set for another director. The metadata for the document suggested that it was a forgery produced directly in response the my enquiry.

 

Indeed, the document had already been produced for me by the director himself and was different to the one produced by Johnson!

 

These days, Johnson seems to try and hide behind others and is very much less inclined to put his name to anything.

 

A particular case in point is his position as Secretary to the Board. The Trustees decided long ago that all documentation relating to its meetings should be published. Now one would expect that Johnson would be responsible for ensuring that this simple task was carried out as part of his duties.

 

However, CaRT's response to a complaint that they had failed to publish in accordance with Trustees wishes (with some documents remaining unpublished for over a year) is that no single person is responsible for this maladministration.

 

...... and many documents still remain unpublished.

 

 

Edited September 20, 2013 by Allan(nb Albert)

[NigelMoore]

My run in with Johnson was many years ago . . .

 

 

I seem to remember reading something about that; it just wasn’t, as I recall, sufficiently detailed to make much of a case about. It is, however, of a piece with the years of my experience; I came to regard the top echelon as institutional liars, falsehood being the knee-jerk reaction to any query, regardless of whether it really mattered or not, regardless of whether the lie made things worse than the truth – resulting in convoluted later explanations of what would otherwise have been perfectly innocuous situations.

 

What I have never been able to understand, is how the slavish adherence to the dictats of the bosses continues post-employment. It is almost as though their employee contracts contain some lifetime commitment to supporting whatever lie has been trotted out; alternatively they garner evidence of malpractice to use as blackmail – who knows?

 

That was at last publicly demonstrated by the Patrol Officer evidence in my case. Twice, he had been brought back to London from his retirement to give evidence against me; he had nothing personal against me, we had always seemed to rub along reasonably enough – and in the last court proceedings he was eagerly shaking my hand with expressions of how good it was to see me again; even gallantly kissing the hand of the boat owner whose boat was the subject of the entire action!

 

I had exhibited both his current witness statement, and his early one written only shortly after the events, drafted under Shoosmith tutelage. These both agreed on presenting a scenario in which BW had patiently waited for 4 months before serving s.8’s. It was a lie. It wasn’t even necessary to their case – the only purpose served was to make them look good; to appear to be patient and forbearing [!]

 

To make doubly sure that no reason for the lie [such as chronological distance giving rise to an inadvertent mistake] could be trotted out once revealed, I began cross-examination on the point by asking how he had been so confident of the date on which he claimed we had entered ‘BW waters’. Not content with saying [as he had claimed for a parallel instance], “as far as he best believes it had been there for more than 14 days because otherwise he would not have put a notice on it” – he claimed that he was certain of this date, because he recorded everything on a Dictaphone. From the court transcripts: -

 

MR. MOORE: Could you please go to p.48, please, Mr. Farrow, the bottom part of that, your para.27. In the second line of that paragraph you say:

“The notices were served on various vessels which all moved out on to the Grand Union Canal on or outside of the pontoon in February 2007 . . .”

after we were all evicted. Can you explain to me quite what fixed that date in your mind?

A. The date of February?

 

Q Yes.

 

A Whenever I did a boat check, my Lord, I would record all the boats. I used to do it mainly by Dictaphone when I went down there, so the dates and everything else would be on the Dictaphone, that I visited that location and what boats were there. I would then go back and it would be put on the records. That’s how I can be pretty sure that it would be February.

 

Q Is that because you spoke a date into the Dictaphone or because it had some form . . .

 

A Yes, there was a date put in for every check that I did.

. . . . . . . . . .

MR. MOORE: (To the witness) What I am suggesting though, for which I do have evidence, is that the other boats were not there for this four months that seems to be made quite a bit of. We have had Mr. Stoner make the point that the boats were there for four months before that were served with the norices, and we have it in your evidence that they were there for four months. That is based upon your recollection, your statement, that you saw them coming out with the eviction under your own eyes at some point in February 2007.

A That’s correct, my Lord, yes.

So – no excuse that it was all too long ago to remember; he claimed that his witness statements were based on hard documentary records, made at the time.

 

With respect to the other “move on” notice which he claimed had been served only after a fortnight had elapsed, he wouldn’t be shaken, and the judge told me that unless I could produce proof that this was wrong [the boat had been there hardly 48 hours], I should ‘move along’. With this, far graver claim, however, I DID have the proof that he was lying – newspaper headlines; internal BW emails; Ballymore press releases to all local councillors, etc, all testified to the fact that we entered the mainstream in June, not in February as claimed. Neither was it, as the QC subsequently attempted at ‘handing down’ to suggest, that this was a slip of the tongue between weeks and months – the date was specifically referred to by way of named month as in “February” instead of “June”.

 

Q . . . The part that I am wanting to draw your attention to, Mr. Farrow, is the eviction dates are all on 15^th June, not anywhere near February?

The rather pathetic response, after some stunned silence at being found out -

A I can’t really comment on that, my Lord. I obviously thought it was February, I don’t know why. [my bold!]

It’s rather a classic. Somehow, Nigel Johnson; Jackie Lewis; Greta O’Shea; their solicitors and even the usually very thorough QC, had all somehow slipped up on noticing that proofs of the lie had been exhibited in the bundles, and so were confident in making much of the alleged [and quite superfluous] detail in order to paint them in as good a light as possible, and me in as bad a light as possible. This detail had been claimed as the whole reason why notices were served in the first place! Pathetic.

 

It is notable that the judge took close notice of all this in his judgment; it was one of several cardinal points of wrong-doing that persuaded him that BW should bear 75% of their own costs in the action [i.e. they should shoulder in excess of £76,000 out of the £105,000 claimed], even though he made an overall finding that they were entitled to the s.8.

 

Those who’ve read the CART press releases on this case – anyone notice therein any acknowledgement and/or apology for having their employees lie on oath to the court? This whole debacle was engineered under Mr Johnson and his Legal Department’s aegis; the same people drafting the new laws for them to use against us are the very same who discount their own accountability to law. The refusal by CART to distance themselves from such antics, speaks volumes. It would be far better for them to own up to the perjuries and vow to clean out the legal department, replacing them [if necessary at all], with morally conscientious, responsible individuals.

 

Then we may be able to have confidence in a new ethos of management, not before.

[johnthebridge]

 

 

Then we may be able to have confidence in a new ethos of management, not before.

 

 

 

Nigel,

As always, your succinct points cut to the chase. Having been on the receiving end of similar treatment from one of the individuals named above, I can only agree wholeheartedly with what you say.

My "case", for want of a better word (it never went near a court), was of a more personal nature, and I have no intention of discussing the specific details here, but it involved very serious, albeit demonstrably untrue statements, made about me to a third party by a member of the then BW staff . In turn, those statements caused the third party to attempt a formal claim against me for fraud by misrepresentation. It involved quite a large sum of money, but I was able to rebut the claim utterly and successfully (by revealing the actual nature of the matter in question).

I then took the matter up with the above named. Under FoI regs. I asked this person, on fourteen seperate occasions to (inter alia) name the person who had originally made these statements, to name the person who had sanctioned the release of information (against all Data Protection regs), and to supply clear and unambiguous dates, times and fiscal details for when the supposed matter that had been so beautifully crafted by a BW staff member had actually happened. I cannot easily describe the sheer waffle that this person came up with to evade the truth, but suffice to say, they did so.

Over a period stretching to fifteen months, I attempted to obtain the truth from this individual until, ultimately, all efforts to continue contact with them were foiled by their cowardly behaviour. My e-mails were returned, blocked. This included e-mails that I sent to the Customer Relations manager.

At this point, on the basis that life is too short, I gave it all up. Some may say I should have taken it further, and I was minded to but, in the end, I had vindicated myself absolutely with the third party (he dropped the claim) and so proved, if only by extension, that BW were utterly wrong. In my mind, I am quite clear about this-staff at BW had a personal issue with me which they tried, unsuccessfully, to turn into a serious crime. It was a fit-up that went wrong. I know who those people are but, with the secretive and closed ranks mentality that pervaded BW then, and continues to do so with this lot, and which you so aptly describe, I realise I have absolutely no chance of exposing the truth.

Any apologists for them?

Edited September 22, 2013 by johnthebridge

[NigelMoore]

The metadata for the document suggested that it was a forgery produced directly in response the my enquiry.

 

Forgery seems to be one of their preferred options for short-cutting certain matters. It has been a striking element in their attempt to claim my moorings since 2005. I suspected that the ‘clinching’ document presented to Swansea Land Registry in the land claim case could not be ‘kosher’, but apart from getting a couple of opinions on it from 3^rd parties, had no possible means of proof at the time of the ‘Geronimo’ trial.

 

This document formed the primary support for BW’s claim to ownership of the land, and their Statement of Case for the Adjudicator to HMLR began:

 

 

The relevant plan it refers to is below –

 

 

The forged addition is the coloured hatching dead centre, under the word ‘DOCK’.

 

It was only upon my receiving a copy of the whole of this map under disclosure rules in my main appeal [years later], that the original could be seen to have no such hatching at all – BW had copied a portion of the map, and skilfully superimposed the coloured hatching to match the whole of the area my company had applied to register. This was the forgery on which they relied in the above Statement, with the document being included in the Adjudicator bundle, and in the subsequent High Court bundle in the ‘Geronimo’ case.

 

It is a rather extreme example of official disdain for law, that the waterways authority could stoop to such blatant perjury and fraud, and a rather extreme example of widespread corruption behind the scenes, that they have been allowed to get away with it. Any normal person would be sent to gaol for contempt of court if nothing else.

 

On my discovery of this proof of forgery, I forwarded the info to another boater fighting BW, for use in his application for Judicial Review of the Land Registry decision to register the Brent property to BW in disregard of fraud allegations by us and others.

 

Faced with the incontrovertible proof of what BW had done, all their current solicitors could do was protest that this particular section had been removed from the original Brent application, so that the court should not take cognisance of it! I would post a copy of the Statement, but as this is an ongoing proceeding, I am doubtful of the propriety of doing so. What I can do is quote sufficient to demonstrate the solicitor’s acceptance that wrong had been done [but giving the impression that it was BW’s former solicitors at fault!] –

 

“in so far as Wright Hassel suggested in their letter to the Chief Land Registrar . . . that the Terrier Plan was evidence of BWB’s ownership of the area hatched blue that was wrong.”

 

Sadly for CART [who continue defending their actions to this day, in the ongoing court action], I have it on record that Brian Casey, second only to the property department chief Stuart Mills, personally brought a copy of the forgery to me on site, attempting to convince me that it established their ownership beyond doubt. In that conversation, he revealed his knowledge of the original, so he was knowingly handling a forgery, and lying through his teeth about it.

 

This is the very same CART property department man who swore the Statutory Declaration as to BW’s title to the River Lea [granted also by the Registrar, on the grounds, as with the Brent, and the 3 Mills rivers] that the sworn testimony of such a person sufficed to remedy the deficiencies of absent deeds].

 

Mills and Casey remain as CART employees in the same department, seemingly immune from the consequences of their land-theft crimes. They have done so with the active support of Hales, Evans, Johnson and co, despite, all those years ago, my alerting all those ‘gentlemen’ that wisdom would dictate a thorough investigation into the allegations of fraud, even if only in the interest of preserving some reputation for probity of the authority.

 

The dismissive attitude of Hales was “leave it to the lawyers”. Such grotesque misprision lays him open, together with Johnson and the rest [whether or not directly involved but knowing about it] to complicity in the Fraud under s.3 of the 2006 Act.

 

Sadder still, that remains, to date, the best response Mr Parry has come up with also. He does not, of course, have the full picture [as he acknowledges, & he doesn’t slam the door closed as emphatically as did Hales] – but with the perpetrators of the crimes as his sole advisors, how is he ever going to learn the facts?

 

Those interested should read the Fraud Act 2006 for themselves –

 

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/contents

 

It is abundantly clear from the above, that the BW actions involved the present top management of CART [excepting only, for the present, the new CEO] in more than just s.3 violations; amongst potential other offences there was:

 

s.2 Fraud by misrepresentation

s.3 Fraud by failing to disclose information

s.4 Fraud by abuse of position

s.6 Possession etc of articles for use in frauds

 

I have confidence only that the Administrative Division will follow the pattern of the past years of protecting these people, and next week will refuse permission for the Land Registry Review; that will entail appeal, and most certainly engaging the police as last resort - but how much better if CART only took its public responsibilities seriously, and carried out their own belated house-cleaning!

 

Rulers should learn how to follow rules themselves, before drawing up new ones for others than themselves to follow. The fixation on making errant boaters criminals rather than mere debtors &/or rule breakers, takes on a different complexion when the architects of the new crimes are criminals themselves. Perchance they are lonely for more of their kind?

 

At this point, on the basis that life is too short, I gave it all up. Some may say I should have taken it further, and I was minded to but, in the end, I had vindicated myself absolutely with the third party (he dropped the claim) and so proved, if only by extension, that BW were utterly wrong.

 

Johnthebridge – I feel for you, but agree that ‘life is too short’ to have it messed up in perpetuity by the morally and legally bankrupt. I’d walk away myself, but despite my suggestions to Mr Parry, to date he is content to allow CART’s continuing pursuit of me to run its course. One can only trust that he will reconsider, because he has, nonetheless, confirmed his willingness to consider further [?] engagement.

 

I most sincerely hope this proves to be the case. I am not anti-CART per se, anymore than I was ever anti-BW; I was and remain, anti the corrupt and venal management. I had always promoted the view that there was nothing wrong with BW that a clean-sweep replacement of the executive could not remedy, seeing no worth in the change of status complete with existing management and ethos; only a distancing from accountability.

 

The sole value, so far as I can see, to the change in status, is the opportunity that presents, to do what should have been done long ago. It’s a big ask, and certainly it can never happen for so long as those in the know remain silent as to the necessity of reform. In a very real sense, I venture to suggest that, rather than [as some see us] being knee-jerk CART-knockers, those of us in the unfortunate position of knowing the dark side from personal long experience, in exposing that side, are actively working towards helping a new management attain the positive reputation all would wish for it.

 

No-one, and no organisation, can learn from past mistakes without first acknowledging them and determining to improve.

Edited September 21, 2013 by NigelMoore

[Ssscrudddy]

This reminds me of an incident I had with the DVLA. They wanted to fine me for not SORNing a motorbike. I had indeed SORNed it. They reckoned I should have chased it up after 2 weeks & get confirmation from them that it had indeed happened (their guidlines), & because I hadnt chased it up that was proof enough for the courts that I hadnt SORNed it.

As far as I was concerned all I had to do was post the damn thing to them, (& under some law that also relates to court summons) that was all I needed to do. It was up to them to prove I hadnt posted it.

Anyway while waiting for my turn to go into the magistrates court about it, some chap came along wanting to know how I was going to plead. They claimed to be the Clerk to the Justices & that I had to tell them. I knew it was a lie because my uncle was the Clerk to the Justices, & I refused.
In court I pleaded not guilty, the 'chap' was in fact the DVLAs solicitor.

They poo-pooed my claim the the DVLA sloicitor was going around claiming to be the Clerk to the Justices.

I also managed to pee off the magistrate because I wanted it to go to a higher court.
Something along the lines of (me) "with all due respect this isnt about whether I SORNed my bike or not, it is about the principle in law & the law doesnt say I should chase it up, & while you maybe a good law abiding person I want it to go to a proper court & let them decide if the law has been followed or not, being well aware that if I lose the fine will be a lot higher than anything you can impose"

Well I thought the magistrate was going to blow his top, but at that point the DVLA solicitor withdrew their claim, I had won.

To this day tho I hope I never end up in front of that magistrate for anything!

Edited September 21, 2013 by Ssscrudddy

[NigelMoore]

From the articles

 

Quote:

 

To further its objects the Trust may:

 

3.4 do any of the things that the British Waterways Board had power to do at the date of incorporation of the Trust (12 October 2011) that are conducive or incidental to the attainment or furtherance of the objects...

 

The interesting thing about this element of the Articles is that it takes no account of the terms of the Transfer Order 2012 [understandably, as it was drafted the year prior to the Transfer Order]. I’ve been looking at these more closely while composing a response to the Information Commissioner; some extraordinary things are coming to light, in particular the whole slew of powers [and duties] that were specifically removed from the relevant Transport Acts for the purpose of the transfer [amounting to some 3 dozen sections!]

 

Part of my argument for the ICO is that a private company’s Articles of Association cannot be taken as superior in effect to Parliamentary statute, being able neither to substitute for them nor to repeal or amend them - yet superficially at least, that is precisely what the Articles purport to do.

 

Certainly, CaRT have been effectively arguing that that the Articles supercede Parliamentary authority [shades of BW’s Mr Green at the Jericho boatyard Inquiry!]

 

The fact remains, however, that just because the Articles of Association suggest that “the Trust may . . . do any of the things that BWB had power to do . . .” doesn’t make that statement true; at the date of incorporation of the Trust, BW had many more statutory powers to do things than the Trust enjoys.

[NigelMoore]

CART are, of course, empowered by all existing BW legislation

 

Obviously I was wrong! Just goes to show - there is always the need to never accept the seemingly obvious, and to research things properly for oneself.

 

Did it occur to anyone else to question whether CART would or would not succeed to all BW's powers and duties?