SPCK Weekly: Brief for now, Full Update Tomorrow

Matt Wardman writes:

My weekly SPCK roundup should be out sometime on Saturday morning. This is just a summary.

Apologies – I have something like 20 email conversations in the last 18 hours about this, and it is getting hectic.

New developments

We have:

1. Legal developments in the USA.
2. More legal developments in the USA that we haven’t posted about yet. Basically, the spurious and dodgy attempt to liquidate the UK organisation in the United States has been skewered in a very embarrassing way and Mr Brewer has admitted to most of it (*). We’re hoping that it will hit the Houston media when Hurricane Ike has moved away.
3. The pending case hearing on the 18th September to determine procedure for the Employment Tribunals (i.e., will there be 31 cases or a small number of “test cases”).
4. Mr Brewer is phoning around starting to offer people Out of Court settlements before the Employment Tribunal next week.For God’s sake don’t sign unnecessary confidentiality agreements that can be used to keep you quiet when you don’t need to – that will take it straight back to the divide and conquer tactics used for managing the workforce (don’t send emails to each other etc.), and attempted when Cease and Desist letters – that turned out to be half way between pub rantings and pink elephants – were sent to bloggers. We have a case study of someone who refused to be intimated, and who was still paid.
5. The need to start to collect and collate evidence in the UK.
6. We are slowly moving into a new phase where a good deal of the bullsh*t and obfuscation is being stripped away, and I have some reflections for the longer term.

“Guilty, M’Lud, with qualifications”

(*) Tasters from Mr Brewer’s response to the Motion for Sanctions posted recently:

• “Brewer admits averments in paragraph 1 of the Motion that “On August 28, 2008 this Court held a hearing on the Trustee’s Motion to Dismiss this case. The Motion was granted with prejudice. The Court found that he case was filed in bad faith. The Court reserved jurisdiction to consider any sanctions motions filed in this matter.”
  
• “Brewer apologizes to the Court, the Trustee and the Office of the United States Trustee and is not opposed to providing payment to the Trustee, his Counsel, and the Office of the United States
  Trustee in an amount that is reasonable based on the circumstances of the case.”
  
• “In addition to the monetary payments recited in the foregoing paragraph and to educate himself regarding general bankruptcy principals, Mark Brewer proposes to complete Continuing Legal Education (“CLE”) in a course on bankruptcy law that includes bankruptcy specific ethics credit.”
  
• “Mark Brewer now clearly realizes the gravity of the filing of the case with the facts that underlie this proceeding. Mark Brewer has consulted with bankruptcy counsel, has realized the grave seriousness of the filing and prosecution of the case and is sincerely remorseful and is unlikely to take such action in the future, if ever.”

I leave it to the reader to choose your position on the scepticism->cynicism spectrum.

Wrapping Up

And – arguments and hostility aside – we all genuinely hope that the Brewer families in the path of Hurricane Ike this weekend stay safe.

Gathering the Evidence

Phil Groom writes:

It’s been suggested that we should have a page dedicated to pulling together evidence of the Brewers’ bad faith and other misdemeanours: things like continuing to trade under the SPCK name in direct violation of SPCK’s withdrawal of the licence to do so; non-payment of bills for goods or services supplied; questionable stock transfers; illegal termination of employment; improper accounting procedures — essentially anything that might help whoever may be involved in bringing prosecutions here in the UK to build their case.

That page now exists: Collecting the Evidence

If you’d like to contribute, please go there today. If you know someone else who you think could or should contribute please point them to the page.

Thank you.