News Fortnightly at Sunday Night: 9pm
1st June 2025: A fairly straightforward update tonight.
Before we can get onto the mechanics of solving these problems…
… we need to rebuild the whole website. This includes different site architecture. Plus some integral parts, such as “the list” that formed part of the legacy content before ownership/custodianship transfer in March 2025.
We are very keen to get onto the exciting parts, such as building community-owned power generation facilities. For example, some of our crew have been bidding on lochs for this type of project…
Community Owned Electricity Generation
Halving Your Power Costs By Your Own Community Efforts
The Law Is Now On Your Community’s Side
^^ Communities Can Build These ^^
By getting rid of electricity company Chief Executive Officers who get paid £4,500,000 a year (here), and the rest of the obscenely high salaries, along when pensioners are freezing or not eating is a matter of urgency and long overdue a review.
With simple maths, the price of electricity will tumble if you get rid of obscenely overpaid CEO. Lest anyone think we are being unfair to this…
£4,500,000 A Year Dud
^^ SSE plc CEO Alistair Phillips-Davies ^^
PA Images & Alamy Fee Paid: Click Here
Seriously, if SSE plc’s Mr Phillips-Davies was any good at his £4,500,000 a job, then how does he explain this abominable set of 3,992 customer reviews…
^^ SSE plc CEO Alistair Phillips-Davies ^^
Enough.
No more fat-cat payoffs for Phillips-Davies and his ilk in reward for failure.
No knighthood please.
If this person had any honour, he would hand back the C.B.E., too.
& give 80% of that bloated pay package to a charity that helps pensioners.
Any doubts, just look at what the actual numbers are: click here.
By the way, Mr Phillips-Davies and Mr John Manzoni, last time we checked, SSE plc is subject to the Land Reform Act and the Community Empowerment Act.
Just looking at Mr Manzoni’s CV and the carnage under his watch at the BP disaster in Texas, along with Manzoni’s more recent cushy job back in the U.K. with an overpaid CEO at SSE plc… it just occurred to our legally qualified trustees, if SSE plc have done “harm” to the local community in any location in this country, then there is a competent case to seek REMOVAL OF SSE PLC ASSETS. Yes the District Valuer will need to come in to sort out a fair price.
But the recent, elegantly worded and learned ruling by Sheriff Niven-Smith is profound and will likely impact on SSE plc.
But right now, given these two “bosses” at SSE plc are still to extend the courtesy of a constructive reply to our letter to both men and each of the entire SSE plc Board, then perhaps the two Amadans best do their legal duty and let their auditors, EY (Ernst & Young) know there may be an existential problem headed towards SSE plc HQ at Inveralmond, or wherever the tax avoiding bolt-hole that SSE plc set up in Switzerland is.
For sure, the Land Reform Act does what it says on the box. No matter how many assets you try and keep out of the taxman or tax woman’s way… most of the land that SSE plc uses is still in this country. Whether local communities decide to repossess land from SSE plc
and do a better, fairer and less greedy job themselves is another matter.
As our inscrutable friends say…
”May you live in interesting times.”
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MORE
The other crucially important matter is a ruling by Sheriff Niven-Smith (a sheriff is the term for a Scottish judge).
Our Advocate (Scottish barrister) is studying the judges ruling.
It looks very much like the Land Reform Act and the Community Empowerment Act will enable…
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Communities To Have Legal First Refusal
To Buy A Closed-Down Bank Building
By Compulsory Purchase!
That is triggered if a bank seeks to close the local branch and that closure his proven to be harmful to the local community!
^^ Coming To A Town Near You ^^
^^ A Community Owned Bank ^^
It is already happening, though not yet by compulsory purchase, forcing the banks to sell buildings to the local community.
Here is an example of a decent bank that worked with the local community…
^^ Community Banking Hub Networks Are Growing ^^
As for our team here at Calum’s List? We have a good bank building in on our radar (it is where we bank). It has a very decent staff, run by an appalling Head Office management outfit. Santander Bank bosses still have our charity’s money and have made no effort to repay it to our Creditcare Debt Advice Association.
We already own a business centre that was fully renovated at the other end of the Santander Bank, 167 High Street, Arbroath, bank building location. There are already closed-down shops + offices being re-opened in the High Street by our day-job crew and they are headed towards CEO Mike Regnier’s Bank branch that he has already earmarked for closure and desertion of another local community.
This Santander Bank is closing down. That is a fact. So it is an ideal candidate as it is close by alone of our existing Business-Angel support centres. Our team of Dragon’s Den type volunteers are ready to help keep another doomed Bank Building from closure and dereliction.
We already have a track record and experience in establishing, running and fundraising for charity. So a new Community Banking Hub may yet be born at 167 High Street, Arbroath.
Hopefully Santander will play nice (and save the staff their jobs). But if Santander are just liquidating assets to boost their greed-driven profits and regard staff as collateral damage, then Mike Regnier, CEO at Santander UK plc (here) is in a lot more trouble than his organisation already is (news on that soon).
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BUT!
There is always a “but”
But before we get to the exciting stuff that will help folk live better lives with less money worries, we must complete the major website rebuild.
Today we came to an unfortunate bump in the road.
A PTSD problem.
The page we were working on may help to make sense…
Click Here
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Rocky Road To Recovering This Website
It is Calum writing this update and I’ve not looked at this website “list” for around 10 years. It should really have been called “Michael’s List” after the founder. But because of circumstances where I lst a friend in 1996 and the first charity was founded (here) and ran for 11 years; tragically followed by the debt-suicide of a second friend, I asked if anyone else had seen these tragedies. The place I asked was o Michael’s DWP-Disability-Help forum. Several replies of shocking deaths were poste. But instead of “Michael’s List”, we ended up were we are and I am the last person standing (and alive) from the original crew.
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Please Never Forget
We have discovered taking over this website in March 2025 is definitely a dive into the deep end with our new team here after inheriting this domain. Started in 2012 by Mick Moore. Sadly Mick died. The new crew are determined to honour the 60 friends who died and are at the core of this site.
The way ahead for our new team is to bring about projects that reduce the horrendous tragedy of debt-suicide and welfare reform deaths in the UK each year. The last national figures were somewhere between 2821 deaths and 81,140 deaths (official source: click here).
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To Return To The Front Page, Please
Click Here
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