Sensing a theme?
Matt Wardman has alerted me to the story of Phil Groom, who is yet another blogger being censored for free speech in the UK (where's that Bill of Rights?)
Phil used to work for the SPCK chain of Christian bookshops, which is owned by people not some benevolent, holy authority, and they appear to be behaving as many 'owners' do - i.e. like pigs towards the staff.
The Brewers then started screwing people’s contracts around, trying to impose new terms of employment that didn’t comply with UK employment law. They also started to narrow down the range of stock and stopped paying their suppliers.Phil has been blogging about this and, like with Arsenal's suitor, The Brewers then started throwing the legal letters around.
Always a giveaway when there's something to hide.
Dave Walker and myself had each been independently reporting on the story on our websites and this year I set up a separate, dedicated blog to allow for more focused reporting and discussions. Unfortunately the Brewers didn’t like people talking about the way they were running things etc so they decided to try and nail us down by sending out ‘Cease and Desist’ (C&D) messages threatening legal action if we didn’t take down our websites.Now there's a very obvious irony in me defending Christian bookshop workers right to whinge but ... what's that Voltaire line again? (Or was it actually Evelyn Beatrice Hall).
Hi - thanks for this and apologies for not replying sooner. Just a point of clarification: I've never actually worked for the SPCK/SSG bookshops. My interest was/is as a former customer and as a reporter on the Christian retail scene.
ReplyDeleteI guess you may still be following the story via Matt Wardman, but if not, it's worth checking out recent developments. Latest that's emerged is that the Brewers have started selling off the properties they were given - yes, given, as in gratis, for nothing. In September they pocketed £507,000 for the sale of the Exeter shop, which is now being run as a jewellers. Various expletives come to mind but since I'm supposed to be a Christian (mind you, so are they!) I'll restrain myself...