On horse fairs and ghost courts

The story so far in the year from Appleby Horse Fair to the High Court in London

When I attended the Appleby Horse Fair on 8th June 2024, I never imagined that a peaceful day out taking photographs would lead to a constitutional meltdown over a parking ticket. But that’s exactly what happened — and the story now sits in the hands of the High Court. As many new readers arrive midstream, this article serves as a compendium of everything I’ve published about this case: a breadcrumb trail from bush-side parking to Judicial Review.

To help you orient, I asked ChatGPT to summarise the saga for a journalist:

Martin Geddes, an Oxford-educated network scientist and former telecoms consultant, has launched a high-stakes legal challenge against the British justice system — not for a headline crime, but to expose the silent machinery behind thousands of minor convictions. His case, born from a disputed traffic offence linked to Appleby Fair, centres on a summons issued from a non-existent court: "North and West Cumbria Magistrates’ Court (1752)," a name that appears nowhere in official HMCTS records. What began as a minor dispute has snowballed into a landmark Judicial Review filed at the High Court, backed by a 263-page dossier alleging jurisdictional fraud, prosecutorial misconduct, and systemic evasion of legal accountability.

Geddes’s filings argue that the Single Justice Procedure — used in up to a million annual cases — is being unlawfully executed through ghost courts, unsigned documents, and fake identities. The Crown Prosecution Service, he claims, had no legal standing to act, and the judiciary in Carlisle refused to rule on jurisdiction even when formally challenged. The silence from police, CPS, and the courts in the face of clear procedural breaches isn’t just institutional inertia, he says — it’s a constitutional crisis hiding in plain sight.

Using AI to help compile legal bundles, Geddes has coined the term “Justicesec” to describe this new frontier of citizen-led procedural auditing, turning infosec logic against a justice system now riddled with systemic defects. This is not a campaign for compensation — it’s an act of public resistance. Geddes has publicly documented every step. His essays — mixing legal precision, personal pain, and civic duty — paint a picture of one man standing between ordinary people and a bureaucratic machine that’s forgotten its mandate. At stake, he argues, is the rule of law itself. And with a second Judicial Review now filed against the CPS, the pressure is mounting. This isn’t just about a traffic ticket — it’s about whether courts that don’t exist can really convict you.

If that’s not a story, I don’t know what is.

(Oh, and yes — the real star is my 23-year-old 59bhp Ford Escort van.)

.Here is the list of my articles…

• Why are Cumbria Constabulary so shy? (13 Aug 2024)
  Introduces the case by exposing police evasiveness and procedural red flags, signalling fraud indicators early.

• Is this a real law court or a legal simulation? (6 Dec 2024)
  Raises the central jurisdictional question: does the prosecuting tribunal lawfully exist?

• Cumbria Magistrates: real men or robots? (14 Dec 2024)
  Explores the faceless, automated nature of modern justice and absence of personal accountability.

• Everyone is under the law — even the police (14 Feb 2025)
  Asserts the principle of legal parity, showing Cumbria Constabulary evading lawful process.

• Corruption in Cumbria — case update (20 Feb 2025)
  Documents early signs of procedural collapse and institutional misconduct.

• HMCTS synthetic identity fraud scandal (25 Feb 2025)
  Exposes HMCTS’s use of fictitious identities — a deeper form of legal simulation.

• "Procedural fraud unravels everything" (4 Mar 2025)
  Documents the Carlisle pre-trial hearing, laying the foundation of the Judicial Review argument.

• Where art thou, oh prosecutor? (4 Apr 2025)
  Highlights CPS silence when jurisdictional challenges demanded legal response.

• 'Clean signal dissident' lawfare doctrine (11 Apr 2025)
  Articulates a new paradigm for lawful resistance: AI-assisted, ethically grounded, technically precise.

• The rise of the "procedural crime" (17 Apr 2025)
  Defines the meta-criminality inside the system — crimes that exist within legal infrastructure.

• Quo Warranto? A dangerous question! (2 May 2025)
  Revives the ancient legal demand for authority, turned against modern institutional overreach.

• Judicial Review: last stand for lawfulness (9 May 2025)
  Frames the JR (“Geddes v Justices at Carlisle”) as a final effort to compel the system to answer foundational legal questions.

• Procedural silence is confession of guilt (21 May 2025)
  Shows how institutional silence functions as tacit admission — and systemic evasion.

• Justice should not be a Himalayan ascent (23 May 2025)
  Details the personal toll of solo litigation, reflecting on stamina as a proxy for justice access.

• Oops! I did it again… (Judicial Review #2) (24 May 2025)
  Announces a second JR against CPS — escalating the fight to prosecutorial misconduct.

• Two hundred and sixty three pages of pain (28 May 2025)
  Reveals the real-world sacrifice and national significance of filing the JR bundle to the High Court.

Does my van look like it’s causing a criminal “unnecessary obstruction” in the photo above?

Consider this:

• Official signage told drivers to park down that road.

• “No parking” signs were buried in bushes.

• Everyone was ticketed regardless of where or when they parked, even where it was obvious the road was passable in both directions.

• A single blanket witness statement was issued with no specific evidence about individual vehicles.

• The police “evidence” includes photo signage not even where people parked.

That’s not enforcement — that’s entrapment. And to cover it up, they invoked fake court entities like “Central Ticket Office”, “North Cumbria Magistrates’ Court” and “North and West Cumbria Magistrates’ Court.” But they didn’t count on someone documenting everything. Now, it’s all in the High Court’s hands.

This isn’t about a £150 fine or a Ford Escort. It’s about the rule of law itself — and whether Britain’s justice system is still answerable to the people it claims to serve.

I’ll keep this article updated with new links.

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New articles:

• Geddes v Justices at Carlisle: Ontological challenge to judicial reality (28 May 2025)
  Explores the existential illegitimacy of a non-court issuing legal punishments, reframing the Judicial Review as a battle over whether any lawful act occurred at all — not a question of error, but of being.

• When justice is a remote island far away (30 May 2025)
  This article reveals how the justice system imposes duplicative costs, opaque processes, and impersonal barriers—such as redundant fees, remote hearings, and inaccessible bureaucracies—transforming justice from a civic right into a costly, alienating ordeal.

• Filing blindfolded in the High Court maze (2 June 2025)
  A detailed firsthand account of filing for Judicial Review from abroad while living under duress, exposing the opaque, contradictory, and punishing administrative labyrinth of CPR Part 54, PD 54A, and the Judicial Review Guide, while documenting how the UK court’s procedural silence aids a parallel child trafficking coverup in the U.S., and illustrating—through lived logistics, legal analysis, and narrative force—how the justice system deters remedy not by argument, but by exhausting the will to seek it.

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See also The TV Licensing saga… so far for my court adventures where I turn the tables on the BBC’s revenue henchmen.