So. Mr Howgate, have you ever been asked to leave a Church group because of your antics? Truthful answer please.

What antics?

He'll be in good company then; Charles Wesley, William Booth to name a couple and of course Doctor Barnardo wasn't exactly popular with the powers that be.

What are you seeking to establish - that Mr H is a man who sticks to his principles?

And even if he was, what does that prove, and what is it you hope to achieve by this announcement? As OTE has already suggested with other examples, I would imagine there was a time when people who spoke out against slavery were accused of just being self-serving busy bodies.

If you think he has done something wrong I would ask you spit it out, instead of your spiteful innuendo. It's not making your position any more agreeable. Unless you are just out to spoil someone's reputation.

I have been following the thread since it was first opened and had also seen the article in the various newspapers. At first, I was a little shocked and outraged at what had taken place according to the reporter Brian Radford. As time and the posts on here expressed their cumulative outrage, I began to think “is this for real?” and wondered what lay behind the story. Did WBC really know that he was close to end of life or were they chasing a potential scrounger to determine if in fact he really was in hospital. Just search through the hordes of people who have blatantly ripped off councils by claiming benefit and I have to believe that I should thank, as a person who always pays his dues, WBC for investigating. Was this a storm in a teacup and remember, we should never let a good story get in the way of the truth.
As soon as I Read the first post by I Howgate I was even more convinced that something wasn’t right. The claims seemed not quite right.
a) the money they claimed that he owed them, the reasons they would not grant him the same protection as any person claiming sickness benefits – particularly considering he was critically ill, nor
c) the reasons that they had made direct deductions from his financial support of something over a thousand pounds, some £20 of which they had accidentally admitted having taken in error before they noticed the other £1000.
I am about as highly qualified in personal financial matters as it is possible to be and have on more than one occasion provided expert evidence to courts on such matters

IH went on to say
The first time was only a matter of days before they took him to court over the money they claimed he owed them (a case they withdrew at the court doors when faced with having to explain themselves under my cross examination) and a matter of a few weeks before he went into hospital never to return alive.
Anyway, the next post compounded my belief that here we had someone who was interested in getting his name into the public domain and almost every other post is “I said”, “I did”, I’m a wonderful charity worker”.
Now, as a man of God Mr Howgate, was the hospital telephone call just a question as to confirmation that Mr Smith really was in hospital or did the caller specifically discuss with the nurse that the patient owed, was in arrears or had failed to pay council tax.
Apart from the rambling nature of the various posts, there are I noticed a few inconsistences. For example…
- did you realise that my involvement in this was called for because Sovereign Housing were seeking to evict Mr Smith from the very flat that the H&S directorate had deemed unfit for human habitation?
And the reason for eviction was the arrears that had built up against Mr Smith.
And then…

Landlord have admitted that the ceiling in his home which had been crumbling and according to Mr Smith 'the dust had been causing him breathing problems', contained (you guessed it) asbestos. The landlord had moved him out of the flat months after the problem occurred only because the Health and Safety executive deemed it unfit for human habitation, less than two months before he died.
So, despite the arrears, did Sovereign move him into a new home.
[i]Mr Smith died homeless and had even had his possessions confiscated from him by his landlord and held for supposed non-payment of rent
As a highly qualified financial expert I would be interested to hear what your qualifications actually are.
I used to be a director of compliance from a FTSE100 financial institution
Really, why did you give that one up and are you for real.
At that time (not knowing how corrupt the system was) I offered the Council to drop my usual £1,000 per day fee and straighten the process out for them for free. It may sound arrogant that I was offering this help but highly regulated firms all over England had been asking me to help them with their complaints and customer remediation processes for the past 20 years and by this time Courts across Europe had started to ask me to help them understand good process also.
Can you be a bit more specific about this one..
If you are talking about my interfering in Mr Benyon's (sadly successful) attempts to run out of town a 61 year old, homeless disabled man with autistic spectrum disorder and bipolar disorder who had spent 10 years in care just because he went to Mr Benyon for help and support; then you are correct I am that 'busy body'
Nice that you were there to save Mr Smith's soul though
The fact that I was at his bedside when he died that I had taken his acceptance that Christ was his saviour the day before and I was there to comfort the family when they arrived, sort and arrange the funeral service and try to get them the money he deserved to pay for the funeral is just part of what I do to help people out of the goodness of my heart -
Squelchy seems to have you summed up however.

Busy day in the staff canteen today lads?

So we have an attention seeking charity worker? And for that he deserves all this vitriol? I think these posts speak more about you and others, than it does about the main protagonist.

What we have here is the council making a very belated announcement of denial. We have also people that insist that the events did happen. Now unless either party can prove anything, we have a stale mate. Whether 'Garvie II' is the second coming is rather irrelevant in the proceedings.

It looks a bit like that dunnit! The general secretary has been a bit quiet on this I notice! They're probably all at home on Twitter sucking up to the bossman!

ferk me...! Some people have WAY too much time on their hands.......

Ian, there's some charity working that needs a-doing, yet you're sat on here tapping away rambling posts.... Get out there and evangelise someone for goodness sake!

Is that the best you can do, at least Exhausted put some effort in to his?

It's Friday night... I've had a beer... and my head hurts from reading just HALF of that rambling crap.... I didn't go full throttle for a terrific repost and appreciate I must try harder..... but can't be ar$ed....

However if the letters of complaint Mr Howgate has submitted to the Council are anything like what has been dumped on this forum then it's no wonder he's been treated as vexatious and time-consuming complainant... It would drive a sane man to Loose Ends having letters from Mr H plopping into the 'In Tray' every other day.

Umm. It's all down to communication. Surely you realise that people express themselves in different ways. Just go and observe a public meeting. Yes, I'd doubtless find dealing with Mr H difficult but even I can see several productive ways of working with him. Are you saying we don't have professionals at WBC who could deal with Mr H in a positive way? Regrettably, the staff see themselves as 'authority' rather than 'servant'. Needs a step change.

While a number of people might give cause for the council to label people vexatious or monopolise council time, I still have no confidence that the status of vexatious is applied fairly. I know from my own dealings with the council that they can be downright obtuse 'beggars' and evasive.

The reaction some have given this person seems to be wholly unreasonable; kids in the playground stuff, and it tends to make me wonder how impartial some people are who have posted. It is also certainly true that I would be very disappointed if the hospital phone call was a set-up, just as much as if I found out that the council's announcement was false.

At the end of the day we have anecdotal evidence that councillors don't always know what is going on and do table less than accurate or candid statements. West Berks CCTV for example.

As Andy says we all know vaxatious labelling within the council is not applied fairly.

As for Exhausted posts.
Firstly props for raising some interesting points.
Secondly get a life - wife - hobby - model train set - pogo stick - anything. I'm quite sad but not to that level
Thirdly (and unrelated to Exhausted's posts but more an in-general statement) we are all (supposedly) adults here
So if people know the guy or are aware of his "antics" why not share your information rather than post innuendo as has been said? What is more childish where a game involving drinking water and listening to innuendo and then spitting it over the other people playing.

Imagine a child with divorced parents
And one parent says to the kid "there were some bad things your <other parent> used to do"
Kid asks what naturally, parent says "I don't want to tell you it's for your own good"

IF IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD DON'T BLOODY SAY ANYTHING AT ALL.

So yeah spill antics please

P.s anyone who gets "thrown out of the church" is probably an alright guy. no-one likes wearing those tight-necked jumpers anyway.
Reminds me of a youth club I used to go to. I am not religious at all (I hate it and think it's pointless but hey-ho) and in order to be allowed sweets I'd have to listen to verses from the bible as part of the youth club.
Failure to do so would result in flogging a lack of access to the tuck shop where you could buy sweeties and more importantly drinks... talk about subconcious mind control. FEED THEM SWEETS FOR LISTENING TO POINTLESS RAMBLINGS OF A MAN WEARING A DRESS.
That'll get them hooked.

Well there really is a funny thing in there - in all my years working, both 'selflessly' and 'paid' only Richard Benyon and his office has ever accused me of having my 'own agenda' - exactly those words in fact. I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now - what is this supposed 'agenda' of mine? Honestly I would really like to hear it – at least then unlike Mr Smith – who this is all about – I would get to defend myself.

And please stop calling me 'Ian'. Only my friends call me 'Ian' and I know the names of all my friends - so I am sure you are not one of them - it makes it very personal and is in my view rather condescending.

However this is meant to be about Mr Smith and the terrible way the Council and Mr Benyon and Sovereign housing treated him and you seem intent upon making this a personal issue about me so if you prefer I will stop being open (using my own name) and I can be closed like the Council and Sovereign and you (who now smell a lot like a Benyon Stooge to me) and log out, coming back into the debate under a synonym - perhaps a whole series of them just to keep you off the sent of whom I really am? Would you prefer that and could we then get on with talking about the absolutely appalling way Mike was treated?

But really, really do tell me about this personal agenda of mine first - I would love to know!

Truth - you want the truth - you can't take the truth!

But here goes you asked for it!

There are three 'church groups whom I have left on unfriendly terms these are:

Newbury Baptist Church, the Newbury and Thatcham Foodbank and of late the Loose Ends soup kitchen.

My departure from the Baptist church (of which i am still a member and in fact received a very pleasant call from their minister yesterday about renewing active participation in the church) was because the Secretary of the church at a time when the church had a minister wrote to me (and I have the email) telling me that if I spoke to either the Charities Commission or the Inland Revenue about the tax fraud and breach of trust that I had spotted the Church was involved in that they would bring me in front of the membership and have me drummed out of the church. I decided that rather than blow the whistle on the church that I would try my best (whilst protecting myself and my family from the bad company and the potential implication that I might be seen as complicit in the tax fraud) to follow the parable of the fig tree in the vineyard. And God was good to his word, by the time that little over a year had passed most of the people who had been involved in the tax fraud and breach of trust had been 'cut back' - they had lost their jobs or their position in the church and hence why now is a good time to think about seeing whether the church will accept correction and I might then return. However I stopped participating of my own accord and was not 'asked to leave'.

The Foodbank invited me to a steering meeting and then told me that they were not going to put any mention of Christ in their trust - but that they were going to run the charity as a 'Christian charity' I pointed out that this was dishonest, a breach of trust as well as Charities Commission rules and that they had already received funds which were earmarked for Christian charities and therefore that money had to be spent on Christian purposes. I was told that the reason was that if they admitted openly that they were Christian that ‘big funders’ like Greenham Common Trust would not support them. From a Christian point of view I believe that we should have faith in God and not in worldly organisations and if these organisations do not want to spend their money on Christian activities then that is their right and we as Christians should not con or trick them into doing so - that was fraud. My point was that they could not have both Christian funding and secular funding by pretending to both that they were not doing the other type of charitable work. The foodbank here locally did not like that but they did put Christ in their trust deed - becoming the first openly Christian Foodbank in the 330 of the time in the UK. However they decided that they would hide God under a bushel and would tell staff not to evangelise. My stance on this was that if you were Christian you needed to comply with the great commission of Christ – ‘to preach the gospel to all nations’ That was the last thing that Christ asked us to do and it was the most important thing he did. Had I not done that with Mr Smith then he would have died not knowing God and that in my view would have been a terrible loss. Hence I stepped down from the Foodbank as in my view it was not entirely of God and not entirely honest. I was not asked to leave and indeed I have apology letters from the two senior trustees of the foodbank. The Chairman of CTNA supported my position throughout indeed claiming that he and his wife were crying Halleluiah through out my first correspondence with the committee. He also went personally to the trustees and told them that they owed me an apology and the way they had behaved was not acceptable.

Loose Ends decided that they were going to ask me to allow a personal who had been arrested by the police for a serious assault that I witnessed free use of the soup kitchen – in spite that meaning that if I attended at the same time I would be breaching that person’s undertaking not to interfere with a police witness. They then told the whole volunteer group that we were not allowed to engage with Loose ends client’s outside of session – which meant to me that I would be forced to stop trying to help Mr smith and his ex-wife whilst he was in hospital and considering that it was Loose Ends Staff who first asked me to help him and I felt – as my wife did that feeding people and not helping them was only delaying the inevitable – we both resigned. Again I was not asked to leave

Is that enough truth for you? If not just ask and I will add to this.

"Vent their spleen"?
Come on Andy, it's just a discussion!
Surely we can have some fun debating those less serious issues as well??
Vent their spleen indeed!!!
(Oh sorry, have I diverted the thread..................anyway, back to the vitriol!)

Better than venting their bladder which would probably be more messy.
Or their colon.

You didn't notice I was being flippant; exaggerating for effect?

No, sorry!
Anyway, must go and vent my colon!