Thousands of people have done well out of Margaret Thatcher’s right to buy, including Labour’s Angela Rayner. But not everyone has been so lucky. Amongst the least-lucky are those leaseholders who purchased high-rise flats under right-to-buy and are now facing sky-high service charges. Amongst those, are the leaseholders in Verulam House in Hammersmith Grove who are facing service charges of between £17,500 and £21,500 for window replacements which they say are not needed. One of the problems for right-to-buy leaseholders is that although they are the ones picking up the bills, they have little say in the matter because they will always be in a minority.
Although residential leaseholders now have extensive rights to take over the management of their flats, they can only do this by acting collectively. For example, the statutory ‘right to manage’, introduced by the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, can only apply where a majority of qualifying leaseholders are on board with it. But this is of no help to right-to-buy leaseholders where the majority of flats in a high-rise block are still owned by the local authority and let out as social housing. The most, to which those right-to-buy leaseholders are entitled, is the right to be consulted over proposed service charges under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. But even this right to be consulted, is cut down for right-to-buy leaseholders because they do not have the same right to nominate their own contractor as is enjoyed by other private leaseholders. And even the prices may be higher as councils are constrained in their choice of contractor because of the need to comply with rigid procurement regulations, which means that they cannot shop around for the best deal.
I discovered the power of a targeted mailing list when my book shot to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list for business law books on the day it was published. A new book on cemetery and crematorium law was also an unlikely best seller. Hardly a mass market. But it had a couple of things going for it.
Until the book went into print in June 2021, nothing had been written on cemetery and crematorium law for almost 20 years. The industry standard had always been Davies Law of Burial and Cremation, but that hadn’t been published since 2002 and there is still no indication as to when the next edition will come out. In the meantime, something had to be written to fill the gap.
The second thing was that the marketing of this book had been specifically targeted to those in the cemetery and crematorium industries, who were most likely to need it. The book itself had been commissioned by the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, which represents this industry, and which meant that I had access to its mailing list.
Within minutes of the mail shots going out, the orders started coming in. More than 100 books were sold on the first day. Over the following months, sales of the book tapered off as the market became saturated. But it is still making sales.
At £39.00 for the paperback, the book was not cheap. But by law-book standards, it was not overpriced.
A 900-strong mailing list might seem miniscule compared with the 60,000 strong mailing lists boasted by some writers. If only! But I’m not complaining.
The book reached the people it was intended to reach. Although I only had access to the ICCM mailing list, there will of course also be other mailing lists for a book of this type. For example: funeral directors.
If you are thinking of putting together a mailing list, there are some things which you need to watch out for.
You can’t just throw together a list of email addresses without breaking data protection law. And the penalties for that can be severe. The essence of data protection is that you can only use somebody’s personal information if they have expressly given you permission to do so. And they can withdraw that consent at any time. One way of making sure that you don’t fall foul of data protection legislation is to use a compliant platform such Mailchimp. It won’t cost you anything.
Nor was it a problem for me, as the recipients of the mail shot were already signed up members of the institute and receiving bulletins on a daily basis. And judging by the volume of take-up, it was well received.
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Ever since the first words were written many thousands of years ago, writing for publication has been about knowing the secrets of selling. It’s about knowing how to grab a reader’s attention in the first line. How to interest your reader in what you are about to say. How to keep them reading. And to provide your reader with a call to action. In other words, something for the reader to take away. Being a successful freelance writer is also about studying changes in the editorial markets and adapting to those changes by changing your own business model.
30 years ago there were always opportunities for someone who knew their subject and could write to a publishable standard, to earn a good second income writing for professional and trade journals. There was also the excitement of receiving money through your letter-box. But no-one writes cheques any more. And editors no longer have to pay freelancers to fill their pages, because they receive so much quality material free of charge from businesses wishing to promote their goods and services. But even promotional material has to be professionally written. And someone has to be paid to write it. Why not you?
Forget expensive newspaper and TV advertising. The most cost effective way to promote the sale of goods and services is on the Internet. It’s about drawing the casual Internet browser to your website and to the goods and services you are offering. Today, the ‘keyword’ is king. It is about trying to anticipate the words and phrases which your prospective customer is going to type into their search engine, when they are looking for the type of goods and services which you are offering. It is those critical keywords which must be incorporated within your promotional material to draw those prospective customers to your website.
So what about artificial intelligence (AI)? Is that going to make freelance writers redundant? If your computer can write your promotional material, why do you need to pay a copywriter?
They said the same thing about secretaries when word processing was invented at the end of the 1970s. But it didn’t happen. Instead, the amount of paperwork ballooned. The issue with any piece of written work generated entirely by a computer is that it lacks originality. I learned that when I asked my computer to generate some promotional material for a book I had written. Instead, it repeated back to me the promotional material which I had already written. I’m sure that if I asked my computer to compose my next Eurovision hit, it would come back to me with a mishmash of every successful Eurovision entry which had ever been written, including words and music from ABBA’s ‘Waterloo’. Is that going to convince anyone? I don’t think so. ‘United Kingdom – Nil points.’
Just to show you how modern marketing works, I have included at the end of this article, a link to my book, ‘Write Quick. Get published.’ I’m not asking you to buy it. Just to notice it. And if you do notice it, please take a moment to look inside. If you then decide to buy a copy, I’ll be raising a glass. Cheers!
A feature of the UK’s post office horizon computer scandal is the number of sub-postmasters whom, on their lawyer’s advice, pleaded guilty to fraud that they didn’t commit. We know now that the fault lies entirely within the Computer System within which those postmasters were instructed to work, which generated shortfalls on their account, for which those postmasters were unfairly blamed and in many cases prosecuted and convicted. Even if you are innocent, as we know that those postmasters were, how can you defend yourself against false accusations when even your own lawyer insists that you should plead guilty?
Of course, if you are a defense lawyer, it makes your own life a lot easier if you have a client who pleads guilty. It means that you don’t have to agonise over what questions to ask a prosecution witness. Instead, you simply accept what the prosecution says. There is no reputational risk for yourself, because your innocent client has already thrown in the towel. So it’s now just about making a 20-minute plea in mitigation to try to keep your client out of prison.
But even if your now ‘guilty’ client escapes a prison sentence, they are still going to have a criminal conviction hanging over them. That itself is a life sentence because it is always going to come up whenever you apply for a job. Forget the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. That doesn’t even apply if a prospective employer carries out an enhanced check with the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), which will even throw up a police caution, no matter how long ago.
If I was up on a false charge, I would want a lawyer who will fight tooth and nail to clear my name. Not someone who shakes their head and tells me to plead to something I didn’t do. I can do that for myself. If you don’t have the stomach to fight my case, then please refer me to someone who will. Yes-I know that if I plead not guilty and get convicted by a jury, I will get a more severe sentence. But my good name is more important to me. Whatever happens, I would never regret my not-guilty plea.
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Last Sunday I copped a parking ticket. It was a complete surprise to me. I had parked in the same car park on and off for more than 30 years without problem. And isn’t parking supposed to be free on Sundays and public holidays? But not this Sunday.
It was only after I had arrived home that I noticed the little yellow package tucked behind my windscreen wiper. I opened it up to find that I was being punished for not having paid for my parking. That can’t be right? It’s Sunday? Perhaps the traffic attendant made a mistake? Perhaps he had forgotten what day it was? Perhaps he had woken up in the morning thinking it was Monday?
So, I drove back to the car park and looked around to see if there is any obvious sign about charges being introduced for Sunday parking. But there was nothing obvious except in the small print on the machine itself: which had recently been closed down because it was no longer taking cash. And there were no tickets being issued. It is now all pay by phone. Which brings me to another question. If there are no tickets to display, how does a parking attendant know whether someone has paid or not?
When I returned home again with my parking ticket, I searched online to try to find out when the rules for this particular car park had changed, as regards the introduction of Sunday charging, and what signage had been displayed to alert motorists that the rules have changed. But nothing came up. So, I posted a question to an AI platform and got back some Goan food recipes.
As I was not prepared to give up, I bowled in a statutory freedom of information request to the council which had issued the notice, asking the same questions. Now I don’t know how much it costs to answer a freedom of information request. But by the time it has been bounced around between different council departments and someone has spent half a day digging out this obscure piece of information and sending it back to me, I would not have thought that there would be much change out of £500.
As I had nothing to lose, I made representations to the local authority, explaining that I had made an honest mistake. As I expected, the council were quick to reject my representation. Though again, someone would have had to be paid to consider my representation and respond formally to it. If I wanted to take my appeal further, I would have to go to the parking adjudicator.
Appealing to a parking adjudicator is a double or nothing game because, by the time you make your appeal, you would already have lost your 50% discount for early payment. But my personal view is that if you think that a penalty charge notice is unfair and that you have grounds to appeal, you should appeal.
I went back to my AI platform and asked whether lack of adequate signage alerting me to the changes, provided grounds for appeal to a parking adjudicator. This time, instead of Goan recipes, it directed me to a government website, “Key Cases-London Tribunals”.
The first thing I noticed about this government website was that there are so few key decisions. I had been expecting thousands. When I typed ‘Sunday’ into the search- bar, nothing came up. I then browsed the section headed, “Adequacy of Signs and Lines”. There were only six key decisions, most of them dating back to 1990s. Really? So, it did not take me long to browse through the list. The key decision which most closely resembled my predicament was Mary Fairburn’s appeal against a notice issued by the London borough of Bexley, again where there had been a sudden change to the charging regime, to which she had not been alerted, except for the small print on the machine. In that 1997 case, Parking Adjudicator G.R. Hickinbottom expressed surprise that Bexley Council had not cancelled the notice on the basis of a genuine mistake but felt that he had no power to cancel the notice because an infringement had occurred.
So on the basis of Mary Fairburn’s decision, I will not waste time and further public expense pursuing an appeal to the parking adjudicator and will pay the PCN at the discounted 50% rate whilst I still have a few days to do so. Which brings me to a final thought.
I don’t understand the mentality of town centre parking policy. If you really wanted to help struggling local businesses, wouldn’t you want to make it as easy as possible for motorists to park their cars and get on with their shopping? No wonder town centre retail and entertainment chains like Wilco; Debenhams and Cineworld have gone to the wall.
BRUCE AND HOLLY 