Midlands Card Shop that Refused to Close During Lockdown Successfully Appeals £35k Fine
The owner of Grace Cards & Books in Droitwich refused to close during the third lockdown, arguing it was exempt from closure rules as it sold some food and publications. As a result, Alasdair Walker-Cox was convicted of breaking lockdown rules by Kidderminster Magistrates’ Court and fined £35,000, with an additional costs order of £9,000.
But he appealed the judgment and it has now been overturned. BirminghamLive has more.
In a video shared widely on social media in February 2021, Mr Walker-Cox’s wife Lydia was seen challenging a council official and a police officer over their decision to keep the shop open. The business was fined four times for its stance and Mr Walker-Cox was convicted of breaching lockdown rules and fined £35,000 with just under £9,000 costs after a trial at Kidderminster Magistrates’ Court last August.
But he won his appeal against his conviction and sentence at Worcester Crown Court on Friday, February 25th.
His defence argued there was a dearth of advice from the local authorities and he was a man of good character who had not acted out of “dishonesty”. Asked about his alleged “staunch opposition” of the lockdown rules by the prosecution, Mr Walker-Cox told the court: “I would say I disagreed with them, yeah.”
At his trial last year, prosecutors alleged he had “very little regard” for Covid rules in place at the time. But he told the appeal hearing some of his staff wore masks and he had not “made political comments in the media” about coronavirus regulations.
He also argued on Friday that the shop sold a small number of food products, such as cake supplies, and so could be classed as an essential business. “You either sell food or you don’t sell food,” he said. “If you want a sandwich, you go out and buy a sandwich. If you want a cake, you go and buy cake ingredients.”
Summing up its case, the prosecution argued it was “crystal clear” his business was not a food retailer or a newsagent and so could not be classed as an essential business which could have remained open. But judge James Burbidge QC agreed with Mr Walker-Cox’s defence, saying: “We allow his appeal against his conviction and sentence.”
He said the lockdowns were “difficult times” and the coronavirus rules were “open to interpretation”. He added: “We won’t criticise the local authority for bringing this case.”
The decision means both the conviction and huge fine have been overturned. Reacting to the ruling, Mr Walker-Cox told WorcestershireLive it was a “huge weight” off his mind.
“It’s been 18 months of stress but ultimately it was worth the fight,” he said. “I’m absolutely delighted – there are so many people to thank and we will get round them all but particularly Josh, Harry and Peter at Resolve Law.”
Worth reading in full.
We haven’t had a ‘Sceptic of the Week’ for a while, but Mr Walker-Cox undoubtedly deserves the title.
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Today in Wales the dictatorship announced that the mask mandate in shops will continue despite the fact that everyone ignores it
NHS is keeping it as well. Real medicine would be better than performative medicine.
I’m going to start wearing a string of garlic.
… and a beret and a striped blue and white jumper, and travel on a bicycle…?
It ensures social distancing
The NHS is about the appearance of health not actual health.
And to give Labour and former-Conservative Parties something about which to yell at each other.
I’m in hospital for a transfusion just now. Every other time they moved me about by wheelchair they insisted on a mask and during the procedure.
Today they haven’t bothed.
Dunno why not.
But you’re in a wheelchair, everyone knows the coof can’t get you when you are sitting down.
If you want to be extra safe pretend you are eating, the coof definitely won’t get you then.
Karen we are rooting for you. May God bless you.
Thank you Waterside. I have no time for God but I wish they well.
Karenovirus (Mr.).
Maybe a jobsworth manager had a day off?
I don’t think this is law, just guidance. There is some wording somewhere on a govt website that uses the word “required” but further links talk about guidance. The face covering Statutory instrument says it has been revoked. So this is just a privately decided “rule”, not law.
As we’ve just seen, plenty of prosecutors and minor judiciary don’t seem to know, or care, about the difference, and will criminalise attitudes.
All part of the ‘dumbing down’ of the Legal profession.
The NHS will be back with a cunning plan forcing staff to be jabbed as soon as they get the all-clear from Johnson!
Nothing has changed.
Have just returned from having a mammogram, the assistant looked askance when I said I was allergic to hand sanitizer, annoyed when I confirmed I was also allergic to her disinfectant hand wipes, almost apoplectic when I announced my exemption to mask wearing and I thought I was going to have to resuscitate her when I said I don’t have a mobile phone. Did have to succumb to wearing a brand new, expensive face visor, but on the plus side I was in and out in a record time 😊
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall! Hilarious!!
Where is the process to take down this Welsh tyrant?
Go round his house?
I get it – the visiting the house bit is a joke!
The age adjusted deaths in 2020 were lower than 2008 and every year before 2008. If someone thinks that counts as an emergency, I have a Nigerian prince who wants to give them a lot of money if they just give me their bank account details.
It was all illegal … and those who went along with it will be laughed at for a 1000 years for their headless chicken stupidity.
I don’t know. On our current trajectory the media will be such supine lying toe-rags in 5 years let alone 1000 god knows what they will make of this era.
Same as we think of medieval cures for The Black Death.
In 5 years? They already were by June 2020.
The Institute of Actuaries, a group I trust far more than any government arm, has deaths over the week to 11 Feb as 5% lower than their comparator. https://twitter.com/COVID19actuary?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
There is a lot of useful info on that link. Of course, one week does not a pattern make, but there is a clear trend: despite all the unnecessary deaths from delayed or inadequate medical treatment, death rates are back to normal and the pandemic is over.
Does that somewhat go against the hypothesis that the vaccine is killing people in droves then?
are many visiting a jabatoir at the moment?
The clot shots seem to “work their WEF magic” within 14 days
Have a look at the charts in the various posts in the link. Mortality is lower this year, 2022, than in the comparator, 2019, whereas it was consistently higher before then.
That said, there are many factors to those top-level numbers and they do not separate core deaths, Covid-influenced deaths, with Covid deaths and unnecessary deaths. They are the wrong place to look for vaccination deaths and the necessary comparator of deaths that the vaccinations saved.
It simply is impossible to determine which CoVid cases were saved from death by being ‘vaccinated’. No properly designed, blind, controlled, comparative study would be possible/ethical.
That the vaccines have saved lives is based on observational data. As more people got vaccinated deaths decreased – post hoc ergo propter hoc. But those observations were confounded by vaccination in UK being rolled out as Winter ended so since SARS CoV 2 is a seasonal virus infections, cases, and deaths would decline anyway and the same decline at the same time in other Countries where vaccination was way behind the UK. And many infected people who were nit vaccinated did not die or become serious cases. So do we claim nit being vaccinated reduces deaths and hospitalisations?
There is nothing from Government sources during this whole episode that stands up to scrutiny. Computer modelled predictions, claims and assertions are not falsifiable evidence – just propaganda.
How many Covid cases could have been saved from death by Ivermectin – probably all of them?
But Hancock, Johnson and Javid have banned its use (for the plebs that is!)
Still waiting for the explanation ( nothing to do with the ‘science’ of course).
I tried but I kept getting kicked off by twitter as I don’t have an account.
Iatrogenic death is vastly down because the medics haven’t been plying their trade and killing folk anything like as much as they normally do.
So covid vaccine deaths can be significant whilst overall deaths could be down.
Iatrogenic deaths are widely considered to be the 3rd biggest cause of death.
That is an interesting remark. It has been noted in the past in Countries where doctors have gone on strike, counter-intuitively, death rates decrease during the period of the strikes.
Although a vaccine death is de facto iatrogenic too.
I too have wondered if the drop in deaths has had some connection with the fact that people were not going to hospital in the usual numbers.
Yes that is a really good point!
Excellent observation.
There are two considerations: overall excess mortality, and excess mortality in different diseases. It is possible therefore for there to be an increase in vaccine related cardiovascular deaths, whilst deaths in other areas are lower and therefore in aggregate the all cause mortality is lower.
The preoccupation with CoVid ‘attributed’ deaths was never balanced off against the decrease in deaths from ‘flu and other conditions from which the CoVid victims would have died in the same time frame if CoVid hadn’t got to them first.
The vax is a short , medium and long-term “project”
. Measure the long-term intentions by the NHS ads warning of ‘illnesses’ – currently heart attacks, strokes, blood disorders, cancers of all kinds and of course the blood clots.
VAIDS, Immune deficiency developing over time is of course the more stealthy approach to the ‘long term’ objectives.
Yes. As I keep repeating on here these “vaccines” have been brewed to a recipe, or perhaps even recipes.
100% correct……
Hey Mike,
Never mind those crooks from Lagos, I have a bridge over the Firth of Fourth (or is that the Fourth of Firth?) going cheap which our Dear Leader Nichola can sell you.
Ten, or more, years ago it was supposed to collapse within days.
Now we have a weather impervious Brand New Edifice which cost a mere £4 billion (fill in the blanks) and has to shut down for global warming winds. The old ‘un is still going strong.
Firth of Forth.
Nicola.
Who will be left with a brain to do the laughing?
No laugher allowed in Schwab’s “Brave New world”.
But you’ll be 😊 happy.
Taxpayers’ money should be spent on win-win actions that do good in the world, not these lose-lose actions that do only harm.
That applies, too, to lockdowns and other forced Covid actions that have done so much damage to this country. The many smug gits enjoying WFH clearly haven’t yet realised that they’ll be paying most of the bill.
Many years ago my Local Council decided, for no reason whatsoever, that my unemployed Co-Tenant (all signed and sealed rental contract in both our name) was in fact my lodger.
As an unemployed Co-Tenant the Council was responsible for paying his half of our joint Council Tax.
Lodgers do not pay Council Tax so I was deemed to be responsible for paying the entire amount.
Cut a long story to short; I forced the Council to take me to the Magistrates Court where we went 5 (five) and I won, with no legal representation, as I knew I would since their positiin was so stupid.
The Magistrate expressed their displeasure at this waste of their time and offered me my costs (declined as minimal).
This was all over a couple of hundred quid, paid immediately after Magistrates finding in my favour. It could have been something important like my housing, childrens education or indeed the Council taking them into “care” 😱.
Congratulations Alasdair
New research from Sweden has proved that the gene therapies actually alter people’s DNA. It took just six hours for the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA to enter the nucleus of a liver cell and become incorporated in, and alter, the DNA. The effects for victims are that their altered DNA leads to a greatly increased risk from cancer and a badly compromised immune system – and God only knows what else. The myocarditis is a separate issue from this, it’s caused by a different pernicious aspect of the gene therapies. According to scientists, the long-term effects of altered DNA are impossible to gauge or estimate. Every repair and regrowth in a human body is controlled and regulated by the DNA. Your eyesight, hearing, sense of taste, everything, is renewed and kept in working condition by your DNA. Altering a person’s DNA is like denigrating their soul. It’s like erasing their memories. It may even be like changing their very personalities. It also seems the Globalist knew what they were doing. Chile has recently introduced legislation that is posited as giving protection to mutant’s right to work – we’re actually talking about human mutants here. There is also a… Read more »
Very frightening and necessary post – ‘happy and owning nothing’ = brain dead, vax stuffed morons, slaving for the rich elites – Gates and Schwab’s bottom line!
How ever did we get this far into this Manifest Evil being inflicted on the world by Psychopaths?
I’m pleased for them, and fair play to the magistrate, but this is pretty disturbing:
“Asked about his alleged “staunch opposition” of the lockdown rules by the prosecution, Mr Walker-Cox told the court: “I would say I disagreed with them, yeah.”
At his trial last year, prosecutors alleged he had “very little regard” for Covid rules in place at the time. But he told the appeal hearing some of his staff wore masks and he had not “made political comments in the media” about coronavirus regulations.”
The idea that “making political comments” or being “staunchly opposed” to insane and arbitrary laws could count against you in a court of law is worrying.
Point of order, he was convicted by magistrates, and exonerated by an actual judge.
Magistrates are just LARPing, they rely on a randomly trained clerk to advise them on actual points of law. Given that the “law” changed on near daily basis, and was conflated with, or contradicted by, verbally announced “rules” by whichever Minister was looking for some press time, it’s no wonder there were so many shoddy prosecutions and careless convictions.
Maginates do not set precedence so their indivdual findings have little long term significance.
Indeed, they’re not precedent-settings courts of record, but their rulings can be referenced as persuasive. It’s great to see this one overturned.
Bloody good show on taking it to some adults after being yelled at for failing the “Don’t you know there’s a war on!” attitude-test at Kiddie Court.
And as we know, cake remained essential at all times.
Sweden more or less let everyone get on with life with only a few restrictions and they got a better covid result than most of the nations that went full retard on covid.
Boris should be taken out and shot.
Shot out of a big clown cannon into the London super sewer.
Sweden still has an entry ban from the UK. Sweden is still in on the Covid Scam:
Changes in the entry ban from 9 February 2022From 9 February 2022 all covid related entry restrictions are lifted when entering Sweden from another EU/EEA country + Switzerland. From the rest of the world the entry ban is still in effect until 31 March 2022.”
“From January 1st 2021 UK citizens need to be covered by an exemption, or be living in an exempted country or a so called approved country, in order to be allowed to enter Sweden.”
He’s not the right calibre.
ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC NEWS!!!
I take it that a Newsagent was classed as essential because of those that still get their propaganda the old fashioned way?
Poor fools!
This time a good result for our side.
But another bad result for the rule of law. It is now completely clear that the courts are operating, not in accord withe legal provisions, but with an eye to which way the prevailing political wind is blowing.
So we no longer have a reliable legal system. It has become a political punch-bag…
Legislation – invented – is not law (common & Natural) discovered.
Legislation being an invention is open to interpretation of it is poorly drafted, which is why there are appellent Courts and Justices.
…but if they all ignore both the words and intention of the legislation, and base their interpretation on the latest media coverage, then the whole system is no longer fit for pupose.
I think more and more of us are realising this each day that passes.
In fact we now have a Government that seems to be ‘at War’ with the British population and their entire way if life while simultaneously trying to join in a European -US war with Russia over Russian protection of ethnic Russian regions of the Ukraine!
Somehow it all seems planned – I wonder what the ‘plan’ is?
“When the lights go out because of the Green Loons and the UK price of petrol goes to over £2.00 – blame the Russians!”
But then Johnson always has to find someone else to blame for the consequences of his own behaviour!
I assume that the argument that cake-making counted as an essential service relied strongly on the precedent set by No.10 that cakes were essential work meeting items…?
Good for them, may hippos forever belch in the faces of Kim Jong Johnson and Fart Hancockwomble.
I can never resist an open goal.
’At his trial last year, prosecutors alleged he had “very little regard” for Covid rules …’
Just like the people responsible for making the rules. When are they due in Court?
Anyone here fancy taking Neil and his luvver to court?
What did she see in him? Promises of a slow boat to China, paid for by Gates?
My parents live in Droitwich. Next time I visit, I’ll go and buy some cards there.
Why was Amazon.com considered essential?
Heroes. Hats off to them both.
Good news!
If the courts the police and the judiciary stood by the people we could beat this developing creeping tyranny …but 80% of them do not.
How have the Met Police got away with simply dismissing binning the criminal enquiry raised into vaccines injuries and deaths and the questionable use of Midazolam in Care Homes without looking at the mountains of evidence and personal testimonials assembled by the Lawyers ?
Where is the Rule of Law and ‘due process’ in this country now?
Great news. Now time to go onto the offence and sue the authorities for loss of business.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
It doesn’t take too many brave people to stand up to the stupid, malignant forces of the state to expose their stupidity and malignancy. But it does take somebody to make that stand. Kudos to the Walker-Coxes for being two of those somebodies.
Odd that the owner’s opinions on Covid are deemed relevant by the prosecution.
I believe these regulations created strict liability offences, which means that accused’s state of mind does not matter.
Thought crime.
Sounds like a sensible judge – wow
Even if you accept that non-essential shops had to close (I ( don’t) It should have been far simpler than that …… WH Smiths was allowed to remain open and they sell basically the same products as Mr Walker-Cox. But of course, they would have been far harder to “take on.” As usual, the bullies targeted what they thought would be an easy victim.
“Fight the Power”! Congratulations to the Walker-Coxes!
Never give in, do not comply with b.s. orders, regulations , ” guidence” or laws. Learn from Ukrainian true libertarians! Tyrants, bullies and so-called “experts” must be resisted. Truck Fudeau, f Putin, damn Ferguson et al.
I have nothing but enormous admiration for this couple that battled against closure and the destruction of their livelihoods for 18 months and those that helped them. Conversely I hold the vindictive local council and police in utter contempt. They should be liable for damages.
Sounds like the original magistrates had ‘traffic warden syndrome’ par excellence.
Do they really want to destroy businesses at this time or should they be being as tolerant as conceivably possible to ensure that as few businesses go under due to Central Government incompetence the past 2 years?