In part two of our exclusive, and in-depth interview, with former Deputy Trevor Pitman we discuss, among other topics, the decision to force him, and Mrs. Pitman, into bankruptcy.
Team Voice, the Pitman's, and many others can't see the sense behind it if this decision was made on a financial basis. If however it was made on a political basis then it makes a lot more sense.
As more, and more, people are coming to the conclusion that Jersey's "justice" system is politicised and corrupt readers/viewers might see merit in that argument after viewing the interview.
Alternatively it could be that making the Pitman's bankrupt and cutting off their income DOES make perfect financial sense and if this is the case then we would be very interested in finding out how/why?
Part one of this story, and interview, can be viewed HERE.
The Viscounts Dept will receive a percentage which could have been used towards repaying part of the Pitmans debt.
ReplyDeleteThey brought all this on themselves so why all the drama?
ReplyDeleteNobody forced them to take the JEP and Broadlands to court and then end up in this mess did they?
They believed they were going to get a Human Right compliant, non conflicted, fair, and impartial hearing. It is questionable as to whether this is what they received. Still the question remains why make them bankrupt where they lose, in the region of, 90K salary and prevent them from being able to pay something?
DeleteWho actually made the decision to go for bankruptcy? Was it the Viscount? Surely his Department is simply a creature of the Court? If the Court, then who exactly?
ReplyDeleteI'm finding this a little confusing.
This is by way of a technical question. I am not questioning the political motive behind the move, just trying to pin the actual decision down to an individual.
I believe it was the Estate Agents.
DeleteIf Estate Agents wanted to help render the Pitmans incapable of repayment, it really must be about more than money on all sides. Obviously, the Pitmans are placing principle above money, but for the Estate Agents and any of their other oligarchy-supporting creditors, there must be a motive more compelling than money, and it seems sinister. It would appear to all the world this is indeed all about crushing the Pitmans and if the reason has mostly to do with protecting the Island's reputation and perpetuating ongoing cover-ups, this could be another own goal.
DeleteElle
VFC
DeleteIt was clearly political. But if it was the Estate Agents who took the decision to bankrupt the Pitmans then there is the added twist. It was they who inserted the original advertisement (cartoon) which, in my view was intended to provoke the Pitmans, which it did. Now these same people are going beyond their own commercial interest to clobber the Pitmans into the ground. Looks like an open and shut case to me.
My only qualification then would be to feel that the Viscount may be being unfairly blamed in that case.
The JEP had a lot to do with it as well.
ReplyDeleteCasual readers of the doings of the oligarchy of the island of Jersey shouldn't permit themselves to be distracted by diversionary comments such as that at 18:21 above.
ReplyDeleteThe issue here, which is why this is so serious a 'public interest' subject, is not whether Mr & Mrs Pitman were right to attempt a defamation action. In fact, for the purposes of the relevant and important debate we can take as an assumption they were wrong to have sought to so litigate. Whether they were right or wrong in their motive premise is simply neither here nor there; that isn't how the law works.
The legal issue here, and it is of deeply serious and central public interest importance, is 'did they get a fair trial?'
Even if the claimants were wrong in their primary action, if they didn't get a fair hearing, then they didn't get a fair hearing. And that's that. End of. Game over.
If they didn't get a fair hearing, that is, an Article 6 compliant hearing, then the verdict against them has no legitimacy in law, even if it would otherwise have been the 'right' verdict.
The test for the pure administration of justice is not subjective, rather, the test is established and objective and is laid down in English law in addition to the same test & principles being established at ECtHR level.
If members of the court, those presiding or officers of the court, could be shown to have direct interests or direct personal connections to those who had direct interests, in the subject matter of the case at hand, then the court and its processes were contaminated, and the relevant rulings and judgments thus null & vitiated.
That is how the administration of justice has to work; has to work in the public interest.
The quite remarkable thing to those of us observing these extraordinary events from the UK is not so much that your local judicial establishment would be politicised, incompetent, even corrupt, but rather the Crown, in the authority of which this shambles occurs, has permitted your Court of Appeal to become so obviously rotten too.
No good is going to come of this, mark my words.
I noticed just yesterday that commentators are starting to draw the connection between the failures of Jersey's Crown judicial system to work to the public good, and the 'performance' of the Lord President of the Privy Council, & head of the Committee for the Affairs of the Channels Islands, the embattled Nick Clegg.
If ever a man was out of his depth......
Its either a corrupt system or sour grapes for losing.
ReplyDeleteWhatever, moaning on the Internet is never going to change a court case result.
The interview was conducted in order to correct the misinformation broadcast by the State Media……..Not to have a moan. Please see PART ONE.
DeleteYou would have (hopefully) learnt from this (part two) interview that Mr. and Mrs Pitman are pursuing the case to the European Court of Human Rights who CAN change a court case result.
They have to go through the Privy Council first and their case had better be a dam good one to be even by looked at by the ECHR.
DeleteThe Privy Council (who will be the subject of an up-coming Blog Posting) are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Still as far as I am aware, and mentioned in the interview, The Pitman’s are making their submission to the ECHR, with the Privy Council side of it completed.
DeleteHopefully Trevor can explain just what went on with the Privy Council, as I recall there was some kind of “confusion over jurisdiction.” Or for the more sceptical of us “making it up as they go along?”
Just to correct the comment above the Privy Council have refused to examine the case so the next stop is Strasbourg. Of course, their excuse for saying they did not have jurisdiction was incorrect - as actually pointed out by even the Viscount's advocate but there you go. Actually probably a positive thing as, in the words of a lawyer I once spoke to, the Privy Council links to Jersey appeals are not even ECHR compliant and just like buying a very expensive lottery ticket. As for the comment that 'we had better have a damn good case' - we haven't: we have an absolutely brilliant case which exposes just how deep the corruption in Jersey's 'justice system goes.
DeleteWould Mr Pitman care to explain what is stopping he and his wife from getting jobs, and attempting to pay back their creditors ?
ReplyDeleteThey had jobs and it was the creditors who lost them their jobs. The question is how does that make financial sense? If the creditors hadn’t lost them their jobs (as mentioned in the interview) they (the Pitman’s) would still be receiving more than 90k salary and would/should be in a position to pay their creditors something.
DeleteI understand that they had jobs, but what is stopping them from getting new jobs and attempting to work themselves out of bankruptcy like other people do ?
DeleteI’m not sure if you are purposely ignoring the decision of the creditors to make the Pitman’s bankrupt?
DeleteIf they owed you 100’s of thousands of £’s would you cause them to be unemployed?
You could argue the same case for anybody being declared bankrupt and most jobs will not employ people who have been declared so its part and parcel of being made bankrupt.
DeleteI think the point is that they should be trying to get new jobs just to start paying off their debts and forget the past.
Do you not see the contradiction in your argument? You say;
Delete"You could argue the same case for anybody being declared bankrupt and most jobs will not employ people who have been declared so its part and parcel of being made bankrupt."
And then you go on to say they should get new jobs.............After explaining employers don't employ bankrupts!
As was said earlier they were employed earning a joint income of around 90k I must ask the question again. "If they owed you 100’s of thousands of £’s would you cause them to be unemployed?"
Shall I put it in simpler terms would you like half a loaf or no bread at all?
I think your commentator deliberately avoids the key issue you highlight. We had fairly well paid jobs - though not as well paid as the one The individual behind Broadlands and the then editor of the JEP falsely told thousands of people was instead now giving us a fourfold increase in income.
DeleteWhat is now stopping us or anyone else just get another one? Possibly your commentator has noticed the two little matters of record unemployment in the Island thanks to the incompetence of our ministers and their policies; and the other reality of anyone who has stood up and rocked the corruption/child abuse cover up boat - let alone well known Left-leaning political figures - getting jobs even when they are well qualified due to the Establishment.
The history of this is long and certainly goes back at least - I have some documentation on this - to after the occupation. Another strand of the strategy aimed at driving people away in the hope of silencing them? Fortunately, thanks to the modern day internet links with other justice campaigners voices for truth can be head anywhere.
And will continue to be.
Sorry, just so I understand this correctly. Are you really saying that the reason you can't find a job is that the Establishment' are preventing you from doing so ?
Delete"Whatever,moaning on the internet is never going to change a court case result ", comment has some truth in it, but, If the jersey Statistics department press release is correct and 75% of the people questioned in a survey have no faith in Jersey's States politicians and only 50% have faith in the Judicial system what does that tell you about the internet. Confused ? Well look at it in a different way.
ReplyDeleteAs it is common knowledge that the main Jersey media JEP,BBC ITVchannel are clearly under the thumb of the States and generally do not release researched public interest stories, people must be getting information from Jerseys blue blooded factual bloggs and other sources to form an opinion.
Therefore change court case no, but after reading the Pitmans story on the internet, will it now be 65% who have little or no faith in Jerseys judiciary and its rulings ? The discontent grows.
Also, in that particular social survey, 60% of those surveyed did not trust the local mainstream (State) media.
DeleteWho did they ask because they never asked me?
DeleteThis blog and its stories is almost like a virtual reality because if this was a serious posting then where is the legal advice in their counter claim?
They didn't need to ask you specifically about trust in the local mainstream media. Everyone already knows what you would say and think because your comments are a robot-like regurgitation of the party line. Believe it or not, most things are not even about you.
DeleteIn Royal Court No 1 today the case re Kilhey v Grafters before Commissioner Clyde Smith continued....as always in this court it was almost impossible to hear the proceedings but Deputy Baker (or his double) was present, presumably as a Director of Grafters. He did not speak but his lawyer made several representations regarding summonses made or to be made including one to the Data Protection Commissioner who had failed to turn up be represented for this hearing...the outcome was that the case (2009/474) will proceed at 10 am on Monday 9 June when the DP Commissioner is expected to show up. What it was all about this observer has little idea but feels obliged to comment about the case here "in the public interest" since it appears that a States Deputy is involved. But has the case been reported in the accredited media or elsewhere?
ReplyDeleteTom Gruchy.
DeleteDeputy James Baker is not an opposition politician, so in the eyes of the State Media, one would presume his, or his buisness' court case, would NOT be in the public interest. Personally I've seen/heard nothing about it in the State Media yet I can read all about the Pitman's financial affairs deemed to be "in the public interest."
Tom Gruchy.
DeleteWas any of the State Media present in the court?
there was nobody in the "press" box but a very young chap was taking notes from the public seats - no idea who he was....
ReplyDeleteunfortunately I missed the continuing Social Security Appeal hearing taking place at the Employment Tribunal premises behind the Ann Summers shop at the same time...this was open to the public although it concerned the affairs of a member of the public - not a States Member. Generally such proceedings are not published and the decisions are never made public although they are concerned with policy matters of very great "public interest". Strangely one States Member was present during this hearing - the appeal was rejected - and I hope that he will publish more information in due course and I do not know if the "accredited media" were there. The Social Security Department employed a specialist lawyer from outside the Island to represent their case too - the appellant represented himself....is that non-equality of arms "in the public interest" and should we all be made aware of it?
ReplyDeletefor some views from an anonymous Jerseyman on the current political scene and more related matters your readers should refer to the current www.tomgruchy.blogspot.com posting...
ReplyDeleteGetting back on topic surely the only motivation for making the Pitmans bankrupt was to divert them from doing it to themselves? The Remise "stunt" would have given them greater opportunity to shorten their length of bankruptcy and also reduce the amount of debt that had to pay back. Why else would they attempt to beat their creditors to it ? the Remise, had it succeeded, would have been more advantageous for them and therefore, less advantageous for their creditors The debt, following their failed case, had been hanging around for over a year and it didn't seem anyone was in a hurry to do anything until the Pitmans filed for Remise, in effect forcing their creditors to take the action in order to protect as much of the liability as possible. From what I can see no one has benefitted from this farce but, in the final analysis, it looks like a self inflicted wound from a pair of politicians that took themselves too seriously but never considered the consequences of their egos.
ReplyDeleteThat isn't the topic actually. It is what you & the Jersey establishment spin-doctors would like the topic to be, but it isn't.
DeleteThe topic of these recent postings is, 'is the judicial apparatus of Jersey free of bias, non-partisan, non-politicised, are all people treated equally by the said apparatus and does it deliver proceedings that comply with the requirements of Article 6 of the Convention?'
The questions of whether the Pitmans were correct to have initiated a defamation action, of whether they were correct to have attempted the less severe means of addressing the debt, and of what their present employment activities might be, are all irrelevant to this present discussion.
The topic here, and it is a topic of vastly greater 'public interest' importance than the petty details of their finances, is 'did the administration of justice in Jersey treat these two people fairly and objectively throughout the whole process?'
If the Jersey judicial system treats anyone unfairly, if it even gives the appearance of treating certain people unfairly, then the administration of justice in your island is failing, and is not performing to established and accepted national and international standards. And that would be a matter of grave and broad public interest importance.
My understanding of the case is that it is not in fact usual, in fact it appears to be unprecedented in your island, for the judicial authorities to give pro-active consent to access for publication of the details of the financial statements in a bankruptcy case. That is a prime example of bias by the system. However, of greater concern yet, it is my understanding that one of the members of the tribunal, a so-called 'Jurat' had an evidenced history of involvement in the concealment of child-protection failures, that this history was not declared at the outset and it follows the Jurat did not recuse, and this even though the then Deputy Pitman had a known, active, public role in politically opposing Jersey's history of child-protection failure, thus rendering anyone with an obverse history, such as the Jurat, objectively biased against Deputy Pitman.
As a legal practitioner I can state with utter confidence that that was not a fair or lawful process. As another reader has already remarked, what is deeply concerning in this scenario is not, perhaps, that your local and strange judicial cliques should act in such ways, but that Crown authorities in London have permitted even the Jersey Court of Appeal to become so overtly politicised too. The rights or wrongs of the Pitmans' original defamation action are simply immaterial at law. The original tribunal was contaminated, contaminated even if, and this is being very generous to the tribunal, only with 'unconscious bias'. Ipso facto, it's finding was not lawful. And that is an end on it.
That your Court of Appeal upheld the finding is in many shocking ways the most damming feature of the whole saga.
Read the intro, above the video...the topic clearly is about the "decision to force them in to bankruptcy"...not the validity of the case. Surely a well trained legal mind understands the concept of answering the question that's been asked? Also - the repeated appeals have already dealt with the suggestion of bias, unconscious or otherwise, and considered the points before dismissing them. If, as claimed, this is an obvious and overt corruption of justice than Strasbourg will respond accordingly and the Pitmans will be exonerated and reparation will follow.
Delete'Repeated appeals'? One actually. And this had to be done via the friends of one Michael Birt who had allowed the non-Article 6 ECHR compliant court to sit. Remember the Jersey 'appeal court' not only stated that it was none of their business to consider the evidenced fact of Jurat Le Breton's dishonesty in refusing to consider evidence against a paedophile friend (non ECHR compliant in itself) in the same document they criticised us for not initially appealing to them! Incredible. They even lied about the extent of Le Breton's involvement in the Jervis-Dykes cover-up seeking to play down the extent to which he was highlighted in the Stephen Sharp Report - never mind the 6 appendices. Then you had the Privy Council falsely claiming that they had no jurisdiction to look at the legal failings of Birt and his 'court'. Just simple facts I'm afraid. They call it 'the Jersey Way'.
DeleteVFC.
ReplyDeleteChanging the subject a bit. Would you know if Stuart Syvret will still be giving evidence to the COI, now that he has been refused legal representation? Also as agreed, is he still going to give you an interview on this subject?
Stuart's evidence will be submitted to the COI, how it is submitted is still a little unclear. Yes I will be interviewing him soon.
DeleteRe: some comments posted here.
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit frightening to learn that having a dirty court and backroom deals between creditors, officials and the media is not as important to some as the idea of the plaintiff's resultant inability to repay a corruption-complicit creditor.
Corruption complicit creditor...How do you make that assumption?
ReplyDeleteNow this is very, very spooky.
ReplyDeleteThe Committee of Inquiry had published on its web site a number of applications for things like 'Interested Party' status, and legal funding, and things like that.
In a nutshell, the rulings of the CoI were to, basically, tell every non-establishment applicant to bugger-off, and to say 'yes' to every establishment applicant, including the big powerful players with a direct interest because they look as though they're the 'bad guys' already, going by the long history of already published evidence. So this public inquiry is saying 'yes' to the Jersey Chief Minister, Health & Social Services, the cops etc, and saying 'no' to people like Mike Higgins, Syvret, the JCLA, Daniel Wimberley etc.
But why have those applications and the rulings that were published by the CoI on their web site now suddenly gone?
There's only one real answer to that, their spin-doctors told them their rulings were too embarrassing and too incredible.
But isn't it a bit too late for that now? Did you VFC or anyone download them?
Like Syvret would have said, Couldn't. Make. It. Up.
I had a look on the COI website yesterday and read the documents you mentioned. Went on again today in order to study the documents and they had, as you point out, disappeared.
ReplyDeleteThankfully Stuart (Syvret) took the opportunity, while the documents were up, to download them. I must say that it all appears a tad bizarre. It could be the documents have been taken down because they broke data protection guidelines by publishing people's phone numbers, e-mail addresses, home addresses and so forth.
Stuart has furnished a number of us with the documents which we can now study. My initial reading of the "rulings" published (now taken down) on the website did raise some alarm bells and it appears, what you say is correct, in that those who have the most to answer and stand accused of being part of the cover up have been granted legal representation and Interested Party Status. Where those who have been attempting to expose them have been granted nothing.
Like I said, I'll need to study the (vanished) "rulings" in order to make a more clear judgement.
If they were subsequently taken down because they broke Data Protection law, then it doesn't say much for the COI lawyers that they went up in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that the Viscount released information about the Pitman's financial affairs although I am not sure, at this stage, whether it should be viewed as malicious and pro-establishment. The Pitman's financial affairs appeared in fairness to be well managed. The main liability, aside from the litigation liabilities, was the mortgage. And the other non litigation liabilities were relatively nominal. Unless all services such as water are pre-paid it is nearly impossible to avoid incurring debts that, in the event of becoming bankrupt, remain payable at the time the bankruptcy is declared.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the public interest element of the disclosure related more to the obscene cost of the case itself, a case which ought to have been relatively straightforward and low cost to progress as it mainly hinged on whether the advertisement was defamatory. What the Pitman case shows is that the minimum cost of a contested case in the Royal Court is likely to be £100,000 for each party represented.
What I think your readers should know is that the government, the judiciary and the civil service in Jersey is facing some very grave problems that are unlikely to get better without positive action.
I am yet to see any of these blogs have an impact on this Government, the judiciary or the civil service though.
ReplyDeleteSo much talk about changes coming and how people are being badly treated but nothing ever happens and its 2 years since the Pitmans lost their case.