One tribunal claim struck out while evidence was concealed, dismissed as “irrelevant” – and ignored when pushed on the issue. A Regional Employment Judge stating that content relating to the merits would not be relevant for a conduct hearing.
Because the fucking plank thought that evidence of discrimination wouldn’t affect a victim’s behaviour?
Fuck off, you piece of fucking shit.
Another dragged through a full hearing full of bent “evidence”, with omissions, edited shit and outright created bullshit, and a judge who said things in the room that somehow never made it onto the page. That is not justice. That is process in a robe. And it stinks. Of shit. Really rancid shit.
There comes a point where you stop asking broken systems to repair themselves.
I have reached that point. HMCTS, suck a fucking cock.
I have now seen both ends of the tribunal machine.
One case where the door was slammed while evidence was, in my view, hidden from the process.
Another case where the door stayed open just long enough for the room to fill with last-minute “evidence”, selective reasoning, judicial conduct I say was improper, and written reasons that did not record what was actually said.
So let’s not polish this.
One hearing was strangled.
One hearing was contaminated.
And both, in their own grubby little ways, showed me exactly what happens when a disabled litigant in person expects justice from a system more interested in protecting its own furniture.
This is not dogma.
It is dog-shit courts.
One Case Struck Out In The Dark
One tribunal claim was struck out before it ever had a proper chance to breathe.
That alone is bad enough.
But when you believe evidence was concealed, when you believe the process was not given the full picture, when you believe the justice system shut the door while key material was kept out of sight, the word “procedure” starts sounding less like fairness and more like a fucking trick.
Because that is how it works, isn’t it?
Do not hear the evidence.
Do not test the evidence.
Do not let the uncomfortable material get into daylight.
Just call the claimant difficult, unreasonable, vexatious or whatever other laminated label happens to be closest to hand.
Then close the file.
Then congratulate the system for its efficiency.
That is not justice.
That is administrative burial. It’s a shame the judge didn’t bury themselves with the case.
The Other Hearing Was A Sewer
Then there was the other hearing.
The one that did go ahead.
The one that was supposed to be the proper process.
The one that gave everyone the chance to pretend the system had worked because there had been days, witnesses, bundles, submissions and all the other courtroom theatre that makes rot look respectable.
But what came out of it?
What I say was bent evidence. Before the hearing. At the preliminary hearing, where we had been instructed to have bundle access. And Sweeney turned up without bundle access. A court that doesn’t follow its own fucking rules. Because it operates with impunity. And knows it.
Last-minute material.
Toilet-distance nonsense.
Timing nonsense.
Evidence landing when it should not have landed that way. Trundle-wheel measurements written on the back of Wando’s hand. Not a “what the fuck is this?” – which should have been the reaction. Instead, he relied on the fucker in his work of fiction when it finally arrived.
Context missing when context mattered.
A disabled litigant in person forced to deal with procedural grenades while fatigue, stress and disability were treated like background noise.
And then, at the centre of it, a judge whose conduct in the room told me more than his written reasons ever dared.
Spoken In The Room, Missing On The Page
This is the bit they rely on.
The courtroom gets one version.
The written record gets another.
Say the ugly thing out loud.
Write the clean thing later.
Then let the disabled litigant try to prove what everyone in the room heard, while the official document sits there with its polished shoes and blank little face.
I say things were said that mattered.
I say the judge showed his hand.
I say the written reasons did not reflect the full reality of the hearing.
And when spoken conduct disappears into a sanitised judgment, that is not a harmless omission. That is not tidying. That is laundering.
The room had a smell. Yep. That court dog-shit smell.
The paperwork wore aftershave.
Pervy, Prejudiced And Protected
Let’s say the quiet bit properly.
I experienced judicial conduct that I considered creepy, prejudicial and improper.
I saw what looked to me like a judge showing absolute intent.
Not confusion.
Not pressure.
Not a bad day.
Intent.
And the convenient magic trick is always the same. The parts that expose the attitude do not make it into the written reasons. The bits that show tone, demeanour, hostility, impropriety or prejudgment get left behind in the room like cigarette ash after a dirty meeting.
Then the institution asks you to respect the judgment.
Respect?
Respect is earned.
A court does not get respect because it has a crest on the wall and a complaints portal that eats suffering and shits out reference numbers.
A judge does not get respect because he can say one thing in the room and leave another thing on the page.
That is not authority.
That is protection. And it isn’t a misunderstanding. It shows one thing. This is deliberate. When you say something but won’t write it down, it’s because you know it’s problematic. It shows you know you are a disingenuous little dickhead in stupid-as-fuck glasses.
HMCTS Will Not Be Asked To Mark Its Own Shit
So here is the promise.
I will not be back to HMCTS begging for justice from the same machine that helped damage my faith in it.
I will not keep asking the Ministry of Justice to investigate why justice now looks, to me, like a rigged admin exercise with a crest stapled to the front.
I will not keep feeding complaints into official inboxes so they can be minced into reference numbers, template replies and institutional excuses.
Because I have learned the lesson.
HMCTS protects process.
The Ministry of Justice protects the brand.
Tribunals protect confidence in tribunals.
Judges are protected by fog.
And disabled litigants in person are told to mind their tone while the building quietly strips them for parts.
No more.
I am not going back to that counter with my bowl out.
You Damaged The Faith
They have succeeded in one thing.
They have damaged my faith in the justice system.
And that matters.
Not because I am special.
Not because I am the first person this has happened to.
Not because one angry claimant with a blog should make anyone in Whitehall choke on their lunch.
It matters because when courts make people believe the lawful route is bent, blocked or pointless, they create a danger far bigger than one case.
They create the conditions where people stop believing the law belongs to them at all.
They create the conditions where citizens look at courts and see not justice, but management. Not fairness, but containment. Not law, but theatre with consequences.
That is what pushes people towards the thought that if the system will not deliver justice, they may have to find their own route to a correct result.
That danger was not created by swear words.
It was not created by blog posts.
It was not created by disabled litigants who finally stop being polite about the machinery chewing them up.
It was created by dog-shit courts.
By bent-looking process.
By concealed evidence.
By judicial conduct sanitised on the page.
By hearings where truth gets strangled, laundered or ignored.
By institutions that act shocked when trust collapses after they have spent years kicking the legs out from under it.
My Way Means The Record
Let me be absolutely clear, because the professional pearl-clutchers will be desperate to twist this.
I am not talking about some fantasy hard-man bollocks. I would never write something like that down. Just like Sweeney.
My way is the record.
Publication.
Evidence.
Appeals.
Timelines.
Names.
Documents.
Receipts.
Search engines.
Public scrutiny.
The thing these systems hate most is not disorder. It is memory. A searchable record. A public trail. A claimant who refuses to let the official version bury the lived one.
That is what I mean by dealing with it my own way.
Not asking HMCTS to investigate HMCTS.
Not asking the Ministry of Justice to admire its own arsehole and call it accountability.
Not pretending a complaints process is a justice process.
I will build the record.
I will publish the record.
I will preserve the record.
And I will let the public decide what kind of justice system needs this much darkness to function.
The Correct Result
It might not be the tidy way.
It might not be the respectable way.
It might not be the way preferred by people whose entire professional personality is built around saying “with respect” while doing something rotten.
But it gets closer to a correct result than asking the same institution, again and again, whether its own shit smells.
The correct result is not revenge.
It is exposure.
It is memory.
It is proof placed where it cannot be quietly filed, reframed or forgotten.
It is every concealed document named.
Every bent-looking procedural move described.
Every spoken judicial moment preserved.
Every omission dragged back into daylight.
Because if the courts want public confidence, they can start by behaving like institutions worthy of it.
Until then, they get this.
Not deference.
Not silence.
Not another complaint swallowed by the same machine that caused the damage.
They get the record.
And they can fucking read it like everyone else.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project