• TPO ~ Destroying the Mythology ~ Bullet by Bullet;

• DPA ‘Data Subject’ Request received at TPO 06:40hrs 15th August 2019;

• Prelude to Phase III of  disabled FSV~FG Pension Complaint;

• Phase III ~ Disabled FSV~FG Pension Complaint ~ Time Line;

• Phase IV ~ Purposeful Obfuscation ~ Entrapment ~ Malicious Ambiguity;

• The TPO preliminary ‘opinion’;

• Phase V ~ Slaying The Dragon:

♦ Merlin Speaks…;

♦ Disabled FSV~FG responds to TPO ‘opinion’;

♦ Indictment and Retribution;

♦ Political Deniability;

♦ The Pursuit of Evidence ~ Henry V;

• J’Accuse !

Should you, Dear Reader, be minded to follow disabled FSV~FG Pension Complaint Guideline through the labyrinth of mythology, smoke, mirrors, and deceitful bureaucracy, then you ought to listen especially vigilantly to this BA Board Controller’s briefing…

The TPO is:
‘Independent ?’ ~ No, they are not.

• It is a sub-department of DWP.
DWP is its, and, TPR Parent government department.
TPO often misleadingly describes itself as being ‘sponsored’ which means it receives an annual levy from the pension industry as well as the DWP providing part of it and TPR’s annual budget and services all underwritten by the Taxpayer.
DWP services includes access to the DWP’s static IP address and databases for digital services;

In early 2020 TPO/TPR asked Government for an increase in the levy ~ denied.

  ‘Unaccountable ?’ ~ No, they are not.

• TPO are required to produce an annual statement of fiction/accounts and its operations for the scrutiny of Parliament; in particular for the Parliamentary Select Committee for Work and Pensions who can demand via the Sergeant of Arms the attendance of any Citizen or government employee to give a personal accounting.

  ‘Transparent ?’ ~ No, it is not.

• TPO investigates itself when complaints are raised against it or its civil servants who hope by claiming ‘independence’ that the Civil Service Code of Conduct cannot be applied to them personally; it can.

  ‘Impartial ?’ ~ No, it is not.

• How can it be? TPO receives an annual levy from the pension industry;

• How can the TPO claim impartiality in the conduct of its affairs when the Civil Service Head of TPO holds extensive and publicly declared shares in 28 Pension Schemes?

  ‘On your side ?’ ~ No, they are not.

• This both a false statement and a polar opposite oxymoron when TPO claim Impartiality. They are a government department ‘sponsored’ in part by the pension industry.

  ‘Not Civil Servants ?’ ~ Yes, they are.

• In the government organogram of all its departments including TPO all posts and functions are described; its civil service rank; and its associated civil service pay grade; a published document;

  ‘Legally Qualified ?’ ~  No, they are not.

• With a few exceptions, including the Ombudsman(Solicitor), his Deputy(Barrister), and the Head of Legal Services Ms.C.Ryan(Solicitor) these civil servants are unqualified in law but annually a contracted external law company provides limited ‘training’ to ensure that they follow the law and the lawful policies of TPO, which usually they do not.

  ‘Delegated to make legal decisions ?’ ~ No, they are not.

• They are delegated to carry out certain non-legal clerical duties which are not legally binding.

  ‘Senior Adjudicators ‘Determinations ?’ ~ No, they are not.

• Senior Adjudicators cannot make ‘Determinations’; they can express an unqualified layman’s ‘opinion'(just like the Bugler) which is valueless in law; only the Ombudsman or his Deputy can make a ‘Determination’ which can be Appealed to the High Court of Appeal on a point of law.

  ‘All Decisions are ‘Final’ ? ~ No, they are not.

• It is implied, or stated, that this or that decision is ‘Final’ and cannot be revisited. All decisions including Ombudsmen ‘Determinations’ can be appealed and/or revisited; nothing is ‘Final’.

  ‘Efficient ?’ ~ No, it is not.

• How can the simple Pension Complaint case file of disabled FSV~RRB lie on the Casework Director Ms. Shona Fiona Nicol’s desk for 5 years or more without a resolution and/or it being placed before an Ombudsman for a Determination?

Here lies the answer…

Ms. Shona F. Nicol started working life as a clerk in the insurance industry possibly in Scotland.

She subsequently joined one of the TPO clerical ‘teams’ as a clerk in 2004.

Currently she is Casework Director, no less, appointed in 2016; a simple clerical task which entails processing and allocating incoming Pension Complaints to the various teams she is now in charge of.

She is a second tier manager which she shares with two others but is not designated as Deputy to either of the Ombudsmen.

Here is an Organogram of the Senior Management of TPO. Go Here.

 Ms. Shona F. Nicol is variously described as, or describes herself as, ‘taking the lead’ on the implementation of operational strategy; oh dear.

In addition to this role Ms.Shona F. Nicol is the complaints handler for Service Delivery failures at TPO at which she is especially accomplished.

So accomplished in fact is she that in November 2018  at an ABI(Association of British Insurers) Seminar under the banner headline ‘The Changing Landscape of Complaints’ Ms. Shona F. Nicol was described as a ‘Keynote Speaker’ and the accompanying ‘blurb’  describes the showcasing of innovative approaches taken by firms with the ultimate aim of turning complainants into ‘net  promoters’.

The Bugler is sure that the irony of all this is not lost on its Readership?

As the complainants at the TPO  well know,  Ms.Shona F. Nicol’s ‘innovative approach’ is simply to investigate her own failures as a Director of Service Delivery and perpetually conclude she has no case to answer and then send out a, by now, standard letter entitled ‘no case to answer’ suitably coated in whitewash.

But as we see now she has a new post acquisition, a deputy Mr. Burnett, who does all that tiresome Service Delivery failure business for her, but with the same amnesic results, another bucket of whitewash; a Mr. Burnett who has been at TPO for a long time but seems noteworthy in having achieved absolutely nothing.

Meantime we must return to disabled FSV~RRB as he anticipates the usual TPO obfuscation and obstruction, which he had historically and repeatedly seen applied to many others.

His was a simple Pension Complaint. He was being paid the wrong Retirement Allowance(RA) while thousands of his colleagues were being paid the correct RA. No one at TPO seemed capable of dealing with it so he made a Service Delivery Failure complaint arriving at the door of the charming Ms.Shona. F. Nicol.

What followed was simply malicious malfeasance, which is all that this is under Ms.Shona F. Nicol coming in the form of thinly disguised dissimulation of TPO’s wrong versions of their ‘laws’ presented by non-lawyer civil servants who are led and directed by this self-serving  Casework  Director.

Nicol’s style of management is applied patronage, by which she bribes with promotion her compliant grateful underlings to create an obedient ‘clique’ which she then unashamedly uses to do her dirty work at arm’s length.

Plainly her latest obedient acquisition is Mr. Burnett who fits that description to a ‘T’ , and before that Mr.Strachan.

The Pension Complaint of disabled FSV~RRB was a classic case of Ms.Shona F. Nicol at work, which was quite simply pure applied corruption in public office.

During which Ms.Shona F.Nicol used every trick in her morally repugnant ‘book’, over a time span of 5 years, to defeat the honest efforts of a disabled Fire Service Veteran to have the simple wrongs of his pension R A payments set right and brought into line with thousands of other FSVs.

But surely this should not have proved difficult with her manipulative skills?

Ms.Shona F.Nicol exhibited not the slightest forms of the human traits called sensitivity or decency coupled with compassion during all this time of her power crazed and vindictive enjoyment.

Yet even today the Nicols of this world expect the In-Service Firefighters, men and women,  to pay the final price in rescuing her from her palatial new office at the Colonnade and because the Men and Women Firefighters of today have outstandingly better moral values than Ms. Shona F.Nicol , they will pay that price for the likes of her…

Disabled FSV~RRB’s case remains on her desk to this day unaddressed, after all this time, and her malum in se actions in further delay are simply criminally scandalous but in so doing she commits actus reus which is a wrongful act, or acts, which are the necessary physical components required to confirm her crimes of Corruption in Public Office; Contempts of Court; Perverting the course of Justice; Conspiracy to pervert the course of Justice; Bribery, etc.

Ms.Shona F.Nicol and her obsequious clique have done more to harm Public confidence in the TPO than any single member of the Public will ever do, and on that she is to be congratulated, managing to turn every user from a ‘net promoter’ into an acerbic and accomplished ‘complainant’…now that takes some doing.

Shortly, in conjunction with the Information Commissioner Ms. Shona F.Nicol and her cohorts will be required to release all those disabled FSV’s secret ‘Data subject data’ she has accumulated on the DWP/TPO database, no doubt impugning many disabled FSV’s in internal emails as she went, data during this time which will expose her criminality for what it is, corruption in public office; and for prosecution…for criminality has consequences…

Disabled FSV~FG lodged the first of many DPA ‘Data subject’ Requests – Recorded Delivery @ 06:40hrs on 15th August 2019, to be published shortly …TPO have 40 days more or less to respond. Then when they do not, or it looks like only half the anticipated documentation is sent… then off to the Information Commissioner we will go; we know the road to Wilmslow…

The following objectives and comments are expressed by the Bugler on behalf of disabled FSV~FG and his Pension Complaint to The Pension Ombudsman.         

N.B. Please note the change of nomenclature from ‘Stage’, which has ended, to ‘Phase’.       

The Objectives:

1. The First objective of this phase was, without delay, to take this carefully prepared Pension Complaint forward to The Pension Ombudsman; the documentation including all the correspondence at Stages I & II but in addition because this was now entering the pure legal phase of this Complaint it unusually included two Barristers’ Opinions described by one, as the ‘opposing forces’, of legal argument;

2. The Second objective, with these unusual inclusions, was to transparently present to the Ombudsman the high level legal arguments advanced for and against the Complaint; in effect foreshortening his/her legal work to arrive reasonably quickly at a ‘Determination’, which is not ‘Final’, as the TPO staff will have it, the majority of whom are not lawyers but civil servants, but is simply another legal step.
The TPO’s ‘Determination’ is always subject to ‘Appeal’ if needs be, on a point of Law.

3. The Third objective, was to have TPO agree to ‘investigate’ this Pension Complaint which would activate in full the Pension Ombudsman Regulations in conjunction with the Pensions Act 1993(as amended) which would ‘lock’ TPO to the Law, though if this did not succeed, then disabled FSV~FG could always fall back to the position of invoking the Statute law which insists that ultimately Pension Complaint ‘shall’ be placed before one of the two Ombudsmen.

4. The Fourth objective anticipated that the usual obfuscating and delaying tactics regularly used by TPO civil servants against all Complainants(just to help their statistics of ‘success’) would be used once more, employing principally, the exhaustion of the IDR Procedure (this is simply a TPO policy with no legal effect);  the 3 year Statutory legal ‘Time Barring’ Statute; and the more banal ‘pass the parcel game’; all supporting these pernicious ploys; but which can be overcome by using the law.

5. The Fifth objective was to anticipate, once more, that cWarren would as usual, for a third time, engage

in criminality as he had previously done to mislead TPO, whether or not with Masonic complicity inside the TPO, which was another consideration, but which could also be neutered by the Sixth objective.

6. The Sixth objective was for disabled FSV~FG to enforce his legal right to have his Pension Complaint placed exclusively before the Ombudsman or his Deputy for a ‘Determination’.

Bugler Comments:

7. It will be especially helpful to those following the deep legal detail, the ‘art of the law’ in this Pension Complaint of disabled FSV~FG to read, as primers, the already published ‘Opinions’ on the Bugler. Go Here.

8. Respectfully and repeatedly, the Bugler asked pro bono Barrister JMCB to attempt to write his Opinions in plain English and repeatedly JMCB with great reluctance struggled with this concept.

The point he made repeatedly, and understandably so, was that by doing so he could digress from the actual Law and as a consequence arrive at the exact point where these pension clerks started from which was their ‘notion’ of their ‘law’, as opposed to the actual law.

In analogy,  it is rather like taking a Monet painting and asking its creator to use plain colours, dispensing with ‘shades’,  to convey all the beauty of its nuances so we could all understand what Monet’s glorious creativity was hoping to achieve.

If such a creation could be achieved then in drawing the analogy of  all the legal nuances in this case, the Art of Law, would be entirely lost to the lay person and the resultant whole becomes incomprehensible.

So the Bugler suggests it is best left to those who know, professionally practice, and enjoy the nuances of pure law by ending with a quote from Monet…

“Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”.

On the 26^th September 2017, fortuitously responding to an invitation to supply ‘information’ to the Parliamentary Select Committee for Work and Pensions(SelCom) the Bugler sent the attached folio to reinforce how deliberately difficult it is made for a legally unsupported pensioner with even a simple error, which they have identified, to get a fair hearing with TPO. Go Here.

On the 10^th of October 2017, disabled FSV~FG’s Pension Complaint was placed before TPO and was received by the Casework  Director Ms.Shona F.Nicol who then passed the case file to Mr. Strachan one of her  promotees with the title of ‘Senior Jurisdictional Adjudicator’.

On the 28^th of October 2017, disabled FSV~FG received a phone call, at an inopportune moment  from Mr. Strachan apropos his Pension Complaint . Go Here.

On the 23^rd November 2017, correspondence with SelCom illustrates and confirms the criminality and duplicity of Ms.Shona.F. Nicol Casework Director  at TPO and the task which lay ahead for disabled FSV~FG in seeking Justice over his Pension Complaint. Go Here.

On the 14^th December 2017, such was his concern at the delay that pro bono Barrister JMCB sent an unsolicited letter to various responsible persons and authorities; only the Chair of the Parliamentary Select Committee for Work and Pensions Mr Frank Field DL;MP acknowledged and replied.Go Here.

On the 12^th February 2018, disabled FSV~FG responded to an email from Mr. Strachan on the 24^th January 2018 Go Here. 

On the 9^th March 2018, disabled FSV~FG responded to an email from Mr. Strachan on the 12^th February 2018.

It was on or about this point that Mr. Strachan referred the case back to the Casework Director Nicol without any decision or information being passed to disabled FSV~FG. Go Here.

On the 5^th September 2018, leaving an unaccounted delay from early March to early September, Mr. Strachan then sent an email to disabled FSV~FG in which he made these rather odd statements… “ As I mentioned in my last email, your case was with Fiona Nicol following a receipt of an email from Mr. Burns. However, Ms. Nicol’s has asked that I progress the complaint as far as I am able.”

Mr. Strachan gives no indication of the contents of Mr.Burns’s email nor does Mr. Strachan explain what ‘as far as I am able’ actually means, but clearly he intends that ‘the buck’ stops with Casework Director Nicol for this unexplained delay.

However, hoping that disabled FSV~FG’s memory had failed him in the meantime he returns once more to ‘ when did you get to know’ theme of entrapment, probably prompted by Ms. Shona F. Nicol.

Mr. Strachan alludes to an email it is alleged  was sent to Ms.S.F. Nicol from Mr.Burns on or about this time, no such records exist in the Bugler’s Archives. Go Here.

On the 19^th September 2018, being disinclined to play further time wasting ‘games’ disabled FSV~FG ignored the entrapment question until he received yet another email from Mr. Strachan, prompted again by Ms.Shona F.Nicol no doubt, asking the same entrapment question again, to which he replied on the 21^st September 2018. Go Here.

On the 21^st October 2018, after yet another purposely long time wasting period during which Mr. Strachan pursued the same question once more; but at no point did he send all his correspondence with the LFRS to disabled FSV~FG which he was required to do, at which point  disabled FSV~FG then did a complete round up of his involvement with TPO.

In effect stating…’ if you and TPO wish to ‘hang yourselves’ be my guest because I will continue to pay out the rope for you to do it’. Go Here.

On the 13^th March 2019,eventually, TPO responded after 525 ‘dying’ days, or if you prefer, I year, 5 months, and 9 days with an preliminary informal ‘opinion’, which carries no weight in law, by a Mr. Coutts, one of their ‘Senior Adjudicators’, a layman civil servant with no legal qualifications, who expressed his briefest ‘opinion’(a 7 page response to a 57 page submission so he was only short 50 pages of ‘opinion’) on the Pension Complaint without considering the Barristers’ Opinions because he was clearly unable and incapable of doing so. Go Here.

 On the 5^th of June 2019, Barrister ~ Mr.John Merlin Copplestone Brice ~ Inner Temple once more publicly expressed his disquiet in the Latin phrases ‘Reductio ad  Absudum’(Reduction to Absurdity) and Res ipsa Loquitur (the Thing speaks for Itself), to the ever silent Mr. Arter TPO; to the new incumbent CEO Mr.Charles Counsel, who true to the tradition of The Pension Regulator, fails to Regulate or to publicly react ; and finally to their political bosses the Pensions Minister Guy Opperman MP and to the W&P Select Committee. Go Here.

On the 6th June 2019, (D-Day), disabled FSV~FG responded to the TPO ‘opinion’ covering once more those inescapable details Coutts of the TPO had failed or manage to avoid addressing.Self evidently Coutts had been handed the poisoned chalice and he knew it, and in anodyne language which would have befitted a standard letter, he did as little as possible to incriminate himself whilst attempting to please his Master because it can only be his Master Ombudsman Arter who assigned this sensitive this task to him; he made a very poor fist of it as he dallied between a ‘rock and a hard place’…Go Here. 

When disabled FSV~FG responded to the TPO the Bugler thought it might help with the continuity of readability  to remove his Appendix ‘A’, and combine this with the relevant part of the letter entitled ‘ Fire Service Pension Schemes-Scrutiny dated 26^th September 2017 in which the Bugler responded to the Parliamentary Select Committee for Work & Pensions invitation to provide ‘information’.

Naturally there will be from time to time some overlapping of thoughts and more importantly evidence. The Bugler will be grateful for your forbearance.  

When read together they provide a detailed resume of the misconduct of individuals and mostly government and local authority departments which you and the Bugler pay for in our Taxes.

There are in the region of 120+/- indictments contained in these collated documents; the numbers of those persons involved and accountable in law, both civil and criminal, continue to grow by the day.

Now whether this Indictment should form the basis for a governmental, and/or, a Serious Fraud Office, and/or, a Metropolitan Police inquiry, all instituted by you the Reader through many of the polling media available today, is a matter you may wish to consider in the light of the fact that they all exist to serve us, rather than we, existing to serve them.

The long overdue time to indict has arrived and with it the need to for retribution, ‘pour les encourager les autres’, to encourage the others, has also arrived . Go Here.

When disabled FSV~FG’s rebuttal was sent to TPO it was also in some cases, with the addition of the two sections of evidence/complaints amounting to over 120+/ indictments,  targeted on and circulated to those in political office including the ultimate Minister responsible the Pensions Minister Mr. Guy Opperman M.P.

To ensure that the documentation was passed directly to the Minister a sympathetic 3^rd party Member of Parliament was used.

This also ensured that the Minister, under ‘House Protocol Rules’ was required to respond to this M.P. thus avoiding  in the future any denial of knowledge, which also supported all the previous documents sent to the Minister, none of which drew either an acknowledgement or response, but this did.
For some lecturing pompous nonsense. Go Here.

Firefighters, it is commonly assumed, are mindless heroes but we are also quick to learn, or die.

As a consequence of this inquiry from the Ministerial office Mr. Arter, in buying more time, for which we have an inordinate supply of ‘self hanging’ rope, decided that he would send a boy to do a mans’s job, Mr.Burnett his newly promoted deputy to Ms.Shona F. Nicol, but this promotion holds a curious tale.

In a single step Mr. Arter confirmed Ms.Shona F. Nicol has a complete lack of management nous in evaluating the person she picked, or was encouraged to pick, to be her deputy.

Because as Minister Opperman will agree, as a jockey

himself, Mr.Burnett simply fell at the first fence whilst clutching his overfull bucket of whitewash. 

He really must do better than this epistle which was a particularly vacuous piece of scribing simply not worthy of comment.

But then, in returning to this curious tale of promotion, what can you expect from an old man, a part time clerk, coming near his time, ironically with his pension topped up by his grateful chums Arter and Nicol for ‘services’ rendered.

Nevertheless we kicked over a few wasps nests and you can bet your bottom $dollar we will be kicking over quite a few more before we quit.

It is useful that these innately arrogant civil servants underestimate our capacity to overwhelm and win.

That is what the Fire & Rescue Service regularly do for a living in good causes.
For more asinine TPO twaddle. Go Here.

In the meantime, as ever a busy little beaver, Mr. Coutt’s informed his chum clerk Warren of disabled FSV~FG rebuttal, who then engages his new ‘boy wonder’ solicitor to reply on his behalf.

A yet another ‘boy wonder’ who has yet to respond to the 10 Questions that the Bugler publicly posed to him asking how it was he acquired his new post without engaging in any of the tiresome principles of Equal Opportunity  law which no doubt in his, as yet unpublished CV, he will claim to be an employment law specialist? Go Here.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers will march forward to the continue the search for deep hidden evidence of criminality held on the data servers at Lancashire County Hall and on the DWP data servers at Poplar London; aided as necessary by the resolute Dame Elizabeth Denham CBE,  the Information Commissioner; an iron-clad  Canadian  from the Province of British Columbia.

And now the call to arms, to all English Patriotic Firefighters of a new generation from your English Brothers and Sisters of a bygone day who need your help…from an Irishman, who one day long ago, admired England.

KING HENRY V:
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

But, as is the human condition, when the finger of accusation is pointed, the little cosy coteries of superficial ‘loyalty’ within these organisations, departments, and offices rapidly start to creak, groan, and fracture under load.

It is no longer a sly amusement; a snigger at the desk; an office horse laugh; a smirk; it becomes a deadly serious ‘game’ of consequences because the realisation sinks in that there will be a price to be paid for all this ‘enjoyment’.

Gradually the individuals involved begin to realise that this ‘team loyalty’ is not even skin deep; it is a false description for a bog of corruption in which they are because they realise that this is ‘every man for himself’ on a sinking ship; the suspicious glances grow; the muted and whispered conversations in corridors die out; the distrust grows by the minute, about who is about to sell out, or indeed who has already sold out?

Where, and who, does the Bugler get all this inside information from?

Underlying all this grows the instinct for the self-survival of their employment. Who is to keep up the payments on the new car, pay the mortgage or rent, or for the next ‘foreign’ holiday, if I am found guilty of ‘Misconduct in Public Office’ and I am sacked as a consequence of all these unholy ‘games’?

Will the department stand by me and defend my actions? Can their loyalty to me be trusted and counted upon?

After all I was only doing my duty, or as they told me to…

Now where did we all hear this before?

From Auschwitz-Birkenau, to Buchenwald, to Sobibor, because the human condition is still the same freed from existence of an official moral compass; the enjoyable abuse of power over the weak; the vicious jackboot on the neck; the sadistic smirk as money was spitefully stolen without compunction or compassion; from honourable hard pressed and terminally ill Fire Service Veterans; by cruel and venomous deeds from their needy Widows and Beneficiaries, as they were inhumanly driven down the LFRS ‘Hardship Road’; as fat, lazy, complacent, and corrupt  politicians like Driver, O’Toole, DeMolfetta with their all party political counterparts stood idly by, knowingly giving winks and nods to corrupt sociopaths like Winterbottom, Judge ‘Nelson’ Butler, Holland, Kenny, Warren, Mattinson, Hamilton, Harold, Gardiner, Hutchinson, Lister, and Wisdom with their willing and promotionally bought lickspittals…all beneath contempt.

Corrupt Nazis to a man and woman…the very obscenity of evil which good women and men fought and died to overcome…

All of this is the measure of today’s British Establishment by an Irishman who ironically has fought for 13 years to bring Justice to his English comrades and their families; and how will it respond to these abhorrent injustices perpetrated on the innocent ; and how, and to what measure, will it punish those responsible when held guilty; because it is upon the International stage of opinion that this Nation will ultimately find itself judged…