For a man who’s a repeat loser, Jolyon Maugham never seems to get used to it. Still sore from losing the case against the Institute of Economic Affairs, The Good Law Project has now issued a formal complaint against the Charity Commission over the “handling of the radical rightwing think-tank.” Christopher Snowdon of the IEA came out swinging…
It’s quite simple, Jolyon. The Commission doesn’t need to carry out a new investigation every time someone makes the same baseless complaint about the IEA. It has heard it all before and rejected it.
— Christopher Snowdon 🇺🇦 (@cjsnowdon) May 16, 2024
The fox-beater came back with an empty accusation – that Snowdon was a “repeat offender“. To which Snowdon egged him on…
What offence have I repeatedly committed? Careful now.
— Christopher Snowdon 🇺🇦 (@cjsnowdon) May 17, 2024
True to form, Jolyon couldn’t come up with any actual evidence against Snowdon. Meanwhile, The (Not Very) Good Law Project have filed a complaint to the Charity Commission against GambleAware for allegedly “promoting” gambling. As Snowdon noted, this looks like “a dash for cash from anti-gambling groups trying to knock out a competitor.” Follow the money…
Jolyon Maugham took time out of his busy schedule losing cases today to speak about “social justice” at the Open University’s Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. Guido picked up on some of Jolyon’s definitely-not-personal analysis of the legal system:
“The way our system allocates costs means that if you litigate and you lose you will generally pay the winner’s costs – so even if you have lawyers acting for free you can often not fight because if you lose you face enormous financial penalty, even bankruptcy. This critical feature of the law, the adverse cost regime, is a profound shortcoming in a thing whose main purpose is to be a safeguard.“
Jolyon is speaking from experience: the Good Law Project did not win a single case in 2023. Not that he bore the costs personally – he collected £623,895 from his hapless fans that year. Meanwhile, the government has cashed in £539,766 in legal costs from the Good Law Project since 2017 and given up only £63,738. And the gravy train keeps going: the Good Law Project is now hoovering up thousands in donations for campaigns that have already been lost…
Bizarrely the fox-beater then goes on to seemingly blame the long-standing principle of costs following the event on… a bland committee of lawyers put together to supervise a 1997 law that simplified legal rules:
“[It] is crafted by a committee, The Civil Procedure Rule Committee, who we looked at a couple of days ago and we believe to be entirely white and overwhelmingly Oxbridge-educated.“
Typical fare for a woke Durham graduate…
It’s got to be a tough week for someone who finds it “really hard losing cases”. The Good Law Project and Stonewall’s two-year campaign against the Equality and Human Rights Commission has ended in dismal failure. The EHRC in 2022 called for more “detailed consideration” from the SNP when it attempted to make it drastically easier to legally switch genders, something that Jolyon’s outfit insisted made it a “cheerleader for the Government rather than an independent monitor.” The Good Try Project went about doing its magic, as always…
Stonewall and the GLP forced a review of the EHRC’s status by the UN-run Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) to try to remove its “A rating”, which allows it to formally interact with the UN Human Rights Council and its committees on human rights. Now the review is complete and the EHRC has been confirmed again as a “high-performing, independent National Human Rights Institutions”. Now that’s done the Good Law Project can go back to funding the government in endless legal costs…
Soon enough, Jolyon will have lost more cases than he’s started. A week and a half ago, the Good Law Project announced they were challenging the Charity Commission over the Institute of Economic Affairs’ charity status due to its so-called “political campaigning and unbalanced educational research“. As Guido predicted, it’s fallen at the first hurdle…
The Charity Commission has rejected the Good Law Project’s demand to open a formal inquiry into the free market think tank, stating: “We have assessed the concerns raised and have not identified concerns that the charity is acting outside of its objects or the Commission’s published guidance.” That’s not before his gullible donors coughed up £76,000 for the doomed cause…
The IEA’s spokesperson says:
“The IEA welcomes the Charity Commission’s rapid rejection of the Good Law Project’s vexatious complaint. This publicity stunt has backfired by reconfirming the IEA is acting consistently with our status as an educational charity. ”
This has to be a loss in record-breaking time for the fox beater…
Jolyon has picked a new target to ask his donors for cash. This time Ofcom is in his razor-sharp legal claws for “unlawfully” failing to hold GB News to the same standard as other broadcasters. Jolyon is deploying his usual strategy of claiming to his donors that “legal proceedings” are underway when his outfit has actually just sent one pre-action letter. Pre-action letters are explicitly intended to try to settle a dispute without legal proceedings. As Jolyon has discovered, you don’t actually have to do anything to rake in the cash…
The Good Law Project’s legal claim rests on the fact that Ofcom chief Melanie Dawes said in an interview once that “the standard” for a channel like the BBC is higher than one like GB News and that it’s “not about the overall output of a channel, as long as for each programme there is a sufficient range of views brought to bear.” Which has always been Ofcom’s policy…
As the GLP’s own letter sets out, Ofcom is clear that:
“‘Due impartiality”’does not mean an equal division of time has to be given to every view, or that every argument and every facet of every argument has to be represented.”
Ofcom in cahoots with GB News? The 21 spats they’ve had in the last two years must all be for show…
Another case of Jolyon’s is off to a great start. The Good Law Project yesterday published Palantir lawyers Schillings’ response last month to their pre-action letter alleging that the software company issued “false and defamatory” statements about Jolyon’s outfit. Jolyon has already managed to fleece £67,023 from his donors for the non-starter…
Schillings’ response sets out:
The Good Law Project and other left-wing campaigners have taken issue with Palantir for years because they think private medical records will be freely accessed by a company owned by a libertarian. In actuality all that will happen is that anonymised medical records held by hospitals and care providers will be allowed to be shared with each other on a large-scale “federated” platform, thereby facilitating lower waiting lists and faster life-saving care. Meanwhile, the Good Law Project’s campaign to get people to “opt-out” is actually encouraging them to stop giving the NHS itself any information – D’oh!
Read Schillings’ full response below:
