Loose Ends and a Lost Cause?

Phil Groom writes:

1. Loose Ends from the Cartoon Competition: Two New Entries

First from Mousey:

From Mousey: There must be countless ways to sort your cistern

Second from our photographer in Durham, a peek inside the abandoned Brewermobile. David Keen said the Brewers were left with no room for manoeuvre, but I can see — OK, let’s not go there. A precaution against swine flu, perhaps?

Phibreman strikes again: Inside the Brewermobile

Thanks guys!

2. A Lost Cause?

OK, perhaps I am unduly pessimistic: perhaps someone does care. Be that as it may, somehow I missed this photo of the Winchester shop window from my last post, but it seems to sum up the state of the place most aptly:

Winchester's Shop Window - Who Cares?

Cistern Disease: Cartoon Competition Still Open

Phil Groom writes:

Remember this from last year?

Cistern Disease

The shops may be closed but the Cartoon Competition is still open, if anyone else is feeling creative. You never know, it might help Phil W & J Mark Brewer to loosen up a bit…

A message to all our supporters

David Keen writes

the following was sent to the 475-odd members of the We Support Dave Walker Facebook group earlier this week:

Subject: 1 year on

Dear all,

This Wednesday, 22nd July, was 1 year to the day since Dave Walker and Phil Groom both recieved their ‘Cease and Desist’ legal threats from Mark Brewer. An awful lot has happened during that time, not least of which has been the support of hundreds of you for Dave, former SPCK bookshop staff, and others who have suffered at the hands of the Brewers.

The good news is that plenty has been achieved.
– Firstly, Mark Brewer failed to get his St. Stephen the Great charity declared bankrupt in the US, a court case in which Dave’s posts were cited as evidence.
– In April this year the UK Charity Commissioners took over the running of the St. Stephen the Great charity, after a formal investigation.
– Even though the Brewers had moved all the bookshops into a new organisation (ENC Shop Management) the CC’s are now taking possession of these shops as St. Stephen assets.
– 30 former staff, whose tribunal against SSG was being heard earlier this year, will now have their cases settled by the Charity Commissioners.
– In the meantime Durham Cathedral has (at last) served notice on the Brewers tenancy of the Cathedral shop.

As you may know, though the SPCK posts remain absent from the Cartoon Blog (see them in full at http://opendebatenotlibelthreats.blogspot.com/), Dave has mentioned the saga a couple of times on his Church Times blog. At no point have any of Mark Brewers threats been acted upon. Instead it’s Mr Brewer himself who has gone very quiet.

Thankyou again for your support of Dave, and for those of you who have blogged, commented and emailed in support. We may be at the beginning of the end – both the end of SSG’s dismal foray into UK bookselling, and the end of the bookshop chain themselves. Any further developments will be reported at https://spckssg.wordpress.com/

Your fellow supporter

The Day we lost Dave

Phil Groom writes:

Yesterday I backtracked to J Mark Brewer’s attempts to silence my own blogging: Cease and Desist: One Year On

Today, a simple reminder that this is the day we lost Dave Walker from the ‘Save the SPCK’ campaign last year. Here’s Dave’s final SPCK Bookshops post from his Cartoon Church blog:

Tuesday, 22 July 2008
‘Cease and desist’ demand from Mark Brewer

This morning I was sent a ‘cease and desist’ demand from Mark Brewer relating to the posts I have made about the former SPCK bookshops. The demand says ‘Confidential – not to be redistributed or posted’, so I am not posting the text.

The demand says that if I do not remove all SSG-related material by noon today, July 22, 2008, an injunction will be sought against me and legal action taken for damages for libel.

I have therefore removed all of the SPCK/SSG posts on this blog, as, although I believe I have not done anything wrong I do not have the money to face a legal battle. The removal of these posts is in no way an admission of guilt.

To say I am not happy about the decision I have been forced to take here is an understatement. I feel as if I have let many people down who have relied on this site over the last year or more.

I am not allowing comments on this post, though I can be contacted as usual. I cannot of course stop you writing about this elsewhere.

LABELS: BLOGGING, SAVE THE SPCK

Then that post disappeared. Then the blogosphere exploded.

As most readers no doubt know, all of Dave’s missing posts have been reinstated (without comments, unfortunately) at opendebatenotlibelthreats.blogspot.com, from where this post has been retrieved.

The rest, as they say, is history…

Cease and Desist: One Year On

Phil Groom writes:

J Mark ‘Bully Boy’ Brewer

Where were you on July 21st 2008?

Whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a date permanently etched in my memory, it’s a date I certainly won’t forget in a hurry: it’s the date J Mark ‘Bully Boy’ Brewer (shown right, screen grab from Fox News), Principal of Texas law firm, attorneys and counselors, Brewer and Pritchard PC,  issued the first of his now notorious ‘Cease and Desist’ messages, threatening me, my friends and my colleagues with legal action if we didn’t stop reporting on his abuse of his staff and his mismanagement of the former SPCK bookshops.

Of course, those weren’t the terms he used: he was — and sadly, still seems to be — a man in denial, a man who wanted to hide the evidence of his misdemeanours and was preparing the way for his equally notorious bankruptcy scam on the Texas courts.

His threats if I failed to comply with his demands were all-embracing:

If you do not do so; i.e., remove your websites by noon GMT July 22, 2008, I will seek an injunction against you, your colleagues, associates and companies.  I also will take legal action against each of you for damages for libel.  In that event, I will also subpoena all records relating to the persons whom you have allowed to post defamatory material on your website in order to add them as defendants.

Mark Brewer

Unfortunately for Mr Brewer but fortunately for me, I was on holiday at the time, without internet access. The first I knew of Brewer breathing threats (if not quite murder) against me was when my friend Clem Jackson, Editor of Christian Marketplace (CM) magazine, left a message on my mobile to tell me that he and Dave Walker had also been threatened. Since there was nothing I could do about it short of abandoning my holiday, which I wasn’t inclined to do, I phoned Clem back and left him a message to suggest that perhaps Mr Brewer needed a holiday too (OK, that’s the response I wish I’d made: honestly can’t remember what I really said).

Dave’s and CM‘s responses to Brewer’s threats are well documented: Dave took down his Save the SPCK posts, the offending report in CM was removed and my forthcoming column for CM — ironically enough, introducing this blog — was pulled at the last minute (please note that no criticism of either Clem or Dave is implied or intended in that observation). I, on the other hand, had the luxury of my holiday to reflect on what was going on, came back to see the groundswell of support for Dave, and decided — with the encouragement, help and support of friends too numerous to mention — to stand my ground. Two friends in particular stand out, however: David Keen and Matt Wardman — to them I am especially indebted.

I am glad that I did stand my ground and I take this opportunity to thank David, Matt and all my other blogging friends because now, one year later, we see the tables comprehensively turned on J Mark Brewer: the Charity Commission have taken over the St Stephen the Great Trust, have seen through the ‘ENC Shop Management Company’ scam and have seized control of the shops.

Wresting the shops from Brewer’s personal control, however, is but one part of the battle: former employees and many suppliers remain unpaid; and whilst the Charity Commission have seized control of the premises, photos taken in Winchester yesterday (watch this space) testify that they are not quite on top of the company correspondence.

For my own part, then, the fight goes on, for the same reasons I gave to the We Support Dave Walker facebook group back in August last year:

What’s this all about?
To me, the key things are:
• Justice for the (ex-)SPCK/SSG booksellers and unpaid suppliers
• The right to free speech
• Keeping information available

What do I hope to achieve?
• Payment of unpaid wages and invoices
• Honest reporting and open discussion
• Full reinstatement of Dave’s missing posts and comments

To conclude for today, however, a few links, including last year’s C&D discussions here, in date order as I eventually posted them:

• Mark Brewer says, “Remove this page. Immediately.” July 31, 2008
• Other pages Mark Brewer says I must take down August 1, 2008
• “these things” which Mark Brewer says I must stop doing August 2, 2008

The original C&D correspondence, in pdf:

1. Demand to Cease and Desist 21st July 2008
2. Second and Final Demand to Cease and Desist 22nd July 2008
3. Please Remove this Web Page Immediately 22nd July 2008

An excerpt: the so-called ‘Legal Demand’ with the pages/links he wanted me to take down:

Legal Demand

I hereby demand that you cease and desist from doing any of these things any more. I specifically demand that you deactivate your webpages, websites and/or blogsites devoted to me, my brother, my family, SSG and/or SSGCT IMMEDIATELY. These include:

1. https://spckssg.wordpress.com/tag/mark-brewer/
2. www.unicorntreebooks.blogspot.com/
3. http://www.christianmarketplace.org.uk/engine.cfm?i=45&cmid=4091 *
4. http://www.christianbookshops.org.uk/news.htm#ssg060208 (Betrayed by the Brewers: Lies, Damned Lies and St Stephen the Great)
5. http://www.christianbookshops.org.uk/spckdonate.htm (Support SPCK’s Booksellers, and the Phil Groom administered “fund”)

* Although the CM article was taken offline, it couldn’t be taken out of print: reproduced here: Breaking the Silence

For comparison: Cease and Desist: 6 Months On

Silence is golden, but my eyes still see…

Phil Groom writes:

Today, 6 months on from Dave Walker’s announcement of his Cease and Desist letter from J Mark Brewer, we mourn Dave’s silence; but whilst that silence may be golden to J Mark Brewer and his cronies, our eyes still see. 

It was fun to shop at the SPCK ... until J Mark and Philip W Brewer wrecked it.

Here’s how Dave told what happened, courtesy of Stephen at Cease and Desist:

TUESDAY, 22 JULY 2008
‘Cease and desist’ demand from Mark Brewer
This morning I was sent a ‘cease and desist’ demand from Mark Brewer relating to the posts I have made about the former SPCK bookshops. The demand says ‘Confidential – not to be redistributed or posted’, so I am not posting the text.

The demand says that if I do not remove all SSG-related material by noon today, July 22, 2008, an injunction will be sought against me and legal action taken for damages for libel.

I have therefore removed all of the SPCK/SSG posts on this blog, as, although I believe I have not done anything wrong I do not have the money to face a legal battle. The removal of these posts is in no way an admission of guilt.

To say I am not happy about the decision I have been forced to take here is an understatement. I feel as if I have let many people down who have relied on this site over the last year or more.

I am not allowing comments on this post, though I can be contacted as usual. I cannot of course stop you writing about this elsewhere.

And we did.

(Thanks to the Tremeloes for this post’s title)

Cease and Desist: 6 Months On

Phil Groom writes:

Today, January 21st 2009, marks exactly 6 months to the day from when J Mark Brewer sent out his first Cease and Desist message in an attempt to silence the bloggers before his spurious bankruptcy filing was raked over in the Texas courts.

Fortunately for me but unfortunately for him, I was on holiday at the time, cruising the Thames on a narrowboat: the first I heard of it was when Clem Jackson, my Editor at Christian Marketplace, left a message on my mobile to tell me that the Bruisers, sorry, Brewers (never could spell), were getting uppity and threatening him, Dave Walker and myself with libel action unless we took down certain pages from our respective websites.

With no internet access there was nothing I could do anyway and I wasn’t inclined to cut my holiday short simply to respond to Mark Brewer’s attempts at intimidation — but I’ve told the story up to that point before so rather than retell it here, I thought I’d simply repost his first Cease and Desist letter here, in full, to allow us to compare what he wanted with what we’ve delivered:

From:   Brewer@bplaw.com
Subject: Demand to Cease and Desist
Date: 21 July 2008 18:04:17 BDT
To:   Phil Groom, Clem Jackson

Sirs:

I just visited your site dedicated to the destruction of my personal reputation and that of Saint Stephen the Great/Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust.  I am absolutely appalled and devastated by what you have written as well as by what you have encouraged and allowed to be posted on your various sites – especially after your last written communication to me, below which ended “Assuring you of my prayers.”

You have successfully blocked my efforts to get my and SSG’s side of the story out.  You have done this with your sites and Mr. Walker’s with whom you obviously collaborate.  No matter what I say or do not say, the three of you continue your relentless attacks on me and the charities.  You have now broadened your attacks to include my wife, my daughter and my religion.  You will obviously stop at nothing.  You must, therefore, be stopped.

When I do not respond to your vile and defamatory words, you pretend that you are such an important person that ‘how dare anyone not answer you.’  When I do respond, you hold me up to even greater ridicule and invite others to do the same.  I am dumfounded that any Christian ethos purportedly allows one to do that.

You now are doing your best to interfere with the Charitable Trust’s efforts to salvage what remains of the business of the bookshops, scornfully mocking these efforts at every turn.

This is not right and you have gone way too far.

Your statements are false and I categorically deny them – both for me, my family and SSG/SSGCT.  Nearly all of them are defamatory per se.

I therefore am going to say this as clearly as I can:  I am a private individual and I value my privacy.  I am not a public figure such that you have the right to drag my name and my family’s names through the mire.  I do not consent to you contacting me about your alleged enquiries.  I do not consent and object to you maintaining websites about me, SSG, SSGCT, ENC Management, my brother, my wife, or my daughter.  I do not consent to you posting blogs on the internet.  I do not consent to you defaming me to any other party or person by “sharing” your false allegations.

 Legal Demand
I hereby demand that you cease and desist from doing any of these things any more.  I specifically demand that you deactivate your webpages, websites and/or blogsites devoted to me, my brother, my family, SSG and/or SSGCT IMMEDIATELY.  These include:

1. https://spckssg.wordpress.com/tag/mark-brewer/
2. www.unicorntreebooks.blogspot.com/
3. http://www.christianmarketplace.org.uk/engine.cfm?i=45&cmid=4091
4. http://www.christianbookshops.org.uk/news.htm#ssg060208 (Betrayed by the Brewers: Lies, Damned Lies and St Stephen the Great)
5. http://www.christianbookshops.org.uk/spckdonate.htm (Support SPCK’s Booksellers, and the Phil Groom administered “fund”)

If you do not do so; i.e., remove your websites by noon GMT July 22, 2008, I will seek an injunction against you, your colleagues, associates and companies.  I also will take legal action against each of you for damages for libel.  In that event, I will also subpoena all records relating to the persons whom you have allowed to post defamatory material on your website in order to add them as defendants.

Mark Brewer

You’ll find my original responses to Mark’s allegations and demands in the following series of posts:

• Mark Brewer says, “Remove this page. Immediately.”
• Other pages Mark Brewer says I must take down
• “these things” which Mark Brewer says I must stop doing

It’s interesting looking back: up to this point, I hadn’t been collaborating with anyone. But I am now — not with Dave Walker, sadly, but with dozens of other bloggers; and whilst I was reporting relatively light-heartedly before, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve become relentless since: both the very opposite to what Mark wanted.

As for Mark’s wife and daughter, up to this point I hadn’t even been aware of their involvement; but I am now — and I can find no words adequate to describe my feelings about the kind of man who drags his own wife and daughter into the sort of double-dealings and dishonesty we’ve now witnessed.

Meanwhile, of course:

1. We have more pages than ever tagged “Mark Brewer”;
2. The Unicorn Tree Books Blog is still going strong;
3. Whilst the specific Christian Marketplace report Mark took exception to has gone, there are plenty of others still there;
4. My report Betrayed by the Brewers: Lies, Damned Lies and St Stephen the Great is still there — with a follow up;
5. And the Support SPCK’s Booksellers page and fund remain open…

All in all, it strikes me as a fairly spectacular own goal for Mr Brewer. So I’ll say it again: if you’re reading this, Mark, and you’d like me to Cease and Desist, there are three initial steps you need to take:

1. Pay your former employees
2. Pay your suppliers
3. Withdraw your threats of legal action

But now there are some further steps:

4. Give your ill-begotten gains from the sale of the Exeter shop to SPCK;
5. Cease and Desist from your plundering of the former SPCK bookshops;
6. Give (as in freely, without expecting any sort of remuneration) the shops to people who, unlike yourself, can be trusted to run them with honesty and integrity according to a Christian ethos.

Six steps for six months: seems reasonable to me; and then there’s the small matter of making a donation to the Save the SPCK Booksellers fund yourself, Mark, by way of reparation for demanding its removal… 

Cease and Desist: Dave Walker faces a Facebook Block

Dave Walker: I have been blocked from making facebook notes

Phil Groom writes:

Strange but true: facebook have issued their version of a C&D against Dave Walker. Apparently he posted too many notes. “How many notes?” you ask. Seven. Er, yes: seven, as in 7, as in rhymes with 11 but is 4 less…

“Gosh,” you say, “what was he doing? Was he on speed to post so many notes in rapid succession?”

Actually, it took him an entire month. 30 ÷ 7 = 4.29. On average, one note every four and a quarter days, although he did post two (yes, two: truly shocking!) on October 1st. And that, it seems, was too fast for facebook…

This time, thank heaven, Dave hasn’t simply deleted everything he’s ever said about facebook and nor has he deleted his facebook profile. But if you share my sense of bemusement about what the facebook admins are playing at, I suggest you head on over there and:

1. If you’re not already in it, join the We Support Dave Walker group
2. Show Dave some facebook love by writing on his wall
3. Write a song about it
4. Send facebook some feedback asking them to remove Dave’s block

But please be polite about it: remember that facebook, like WordPress, is a free service. Aggressive reactions are likely to be counter-productive. For my own part, my message to facebook is, “C’mon guys, please: get up to speed!”

Maybe the Brewers have taken over facebook the way they thought they’d taken over Amazon? Will facebook block me for stirring things up? Watch this space…

J Mark Brewer, I salute you again – but still briefly

Phil Groom writes:

Yes, still briefly, but nonetheless, as I said last time, credit where it’s due: this time, at long last, to Pauline Edwards. In her own words:

I HAVE BEEN PAID,
A great big THANK YOU to Phil Groom, Asingleblog, and everybody else who has stood by me. The one good thing that has come out of this is, this is not just a blog, it has become like a family, and I am still standing by everyone else, who are still waiting for there wages. A big THANK YOU to this blog, without this blog, I never would of known of what was going on. Mr Brewer, I am a women of my word, and I will let Acas know I have been paid, and will drop the case. Mr Brewer can you pay all my fellow brothers and sisters as well?

I’d love to offer you a longer lasting sign of respect, Mark, but as Pauline herself points out there’s the question of all her “fellow brothers and sisters as well”. Phelim McIntyre poses much the same question:

Hurray! A small victory but a victory at least. Now what about all the other employees owed wages/holiday pay and goodness knows whatever else financially? What about all the suppliers owed money? What about the landlords who are owed rent? What about other bodies owed money? Any chance of Mr Brewer paying them?

Your call, Mark. Your opportunity to salvage something of your reputation and, perhaps, the reputation of Brewer and Pritchard, PC, which you’ve been taking down with you…

I’ve said this before but I think it bears repeating: there are three main things I’m looking for out of this fiasco:

1. Payment for your workers
2. Payment for your suppliers
3. Withdrawal of your threats of legal action against Dave Walker, myself and the various other people to whom you’ve sent ‘Cease and Desist’ messages

Another thing I’d like to see, of course, would be for you to recognise that you and your brother, Philip, simply don’t have the appropriate business acumen or people skills to manage a chain of Christian Bookshops. Once you acknowledge that, the way is clear to start giving (yes, giving) the remaining shops and stock to people who do have the expertise needed.

And let’s face it, running a chain of Christian Bookshops was never really what you wanted, was it? You wanted to establish a series of outposts for your Orthodox mission movement: the bookshops and their staff never actually had a chance, did they?

Do me a favour, please, Mark: face up to the truth and make me redundant. Make this blog redundant. Make the poverty of your workers and suppliers history.

Finally, for now, a special note of appreciation and thanks to ‘a concerned party’ for letting us know that Pauline’s payment was on the way despite the trauma and nightmare of facing Hurricane Ike. May all who read this spare a moment to think of and/or pray for all those affected by that tragedy.

Cartoon Competition

Cease and Desist!

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been dealing with some pretty heavy stuff. I figured it’s time for some light relief: our Dave is a cartoonist, so what could be more fitting than a Cartoon Competition?

Here’s the scenario: you’ve just come back from holiday (I wonder who that might be) and you find someone’s slapped your toilet with a “Cistern Disease: Do Not Flush” notice. Do you:

1. Wait a while, keep your legs crossed and hope the smell doesn’t get too bad?
2. Call a plumber and get a new loo fitted?
3. Nip next door and use the neighbour’s?
4. Call in the professional toilet cleaners?
5. Lift the lid and flush it away regardless?

I’m sure you can think of some other possibilities. Get drawing, people: I want to see how this one pans out!!

ASBO Jesus :: asingleblog :: lingamish :: and all you other arty types: your call! Hey, there might even be a prize: still working on that one; but what better prize than to know that you’ve contributed to the final destruction of the dreaded C&D notice??

Post your cartoon on your own blog and leave a comment here to let me know, please.

Can’t draw? No worries: borrow one of these photos and do something appropriate with it in your photo editing package…

Competition closes when we get an entry from Dave Walker!

A Case Study
Cease and Desist Letters, and a Case Study from Brewer and Pritchard P.C. (bplaw.com)

Where Next?
If you’ve received a C&D, before you flush it away, consider submitting it to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. That’s where mine have gone now…

Just One Entry So Far…

Cistern Disease