The Ghost Order: how I took back the driving seat

The basics of law are broken in England: courts and orders have to be real, not imagined

On Wednesday morning, I sat down with my laptop — and I’ve barely left it since. It’s now Friday evening, and in that time I’ve authored a complete Judicial Review filing on my missing “ghost order,” where HMCTS seeks to collect a fine despite lacking the lawful paperwork and authority to do so. Normally, a filing of this quality to a supervisory court would take a small legal team several weeks. Now, a determined and capable litigant in person can achieve that result in days — with the help of artificial intelligence.

What’s at stake is far more than a clerical error or one flawed procedure. I have made multiple lawful attempts to engage the supervisory jurisdiction of the High Court to determine whether the non-statutory court names HMCTS uses on its legal instruments are valid or void. I’ve tried Judicial Review in May (never even issued, let alone refused permission), a “Case Stated” appeal in July (ignored by the magistrates’ court despite a statutory duty), and my ongoing Part 8 claim (now in its third round of correspondence with the Government Legal Department, still awaiting meaningful engagement).

Add to that a litany of frustrated freedom-of-information requests, ignored data-subject access requests, overt political discrimination, an unruled application to re-open the case, unanswered pre-action protocol letters, unacknowledged complaints, missing or withheld records, unsealed orders, unissued judgments, motions never ruled upon, ignored Notices of Fraud, and administrative evasion by HMCTS staff — all while prosecutorial standing remains concealed. The cumulative effect is institutional paralysis and a collapse of access to justice.

A tribunal is not merely a few judges in a room, or a ledger of adjudications, or a clause in a statute. It is a mechanism for repairing tears in the coherence of society. When there is a wrong, it reconciles facts with reality and restores harmony — even if that means imposing punishment to rebalance order. When the system seals off all internal routes for self-correction, it ceases to perform its divine function. A court is not a fine-issuing machine. Those instruments are means to justice, not the end itself.

I have carefully separated my personal “ghost order” case from the wider legal challenge to “ghost courts.” HMCTS staff are caught between a rock and a hard place. There are indeed people who lie, cheat, and steal — and who will resist any attempt to hold them accountable. We call them criminals. They obstruct justice and protest innocence to the last. The system is rightly designed to filter out their noise. But it is also bound by strict procedure so that emotion does not corrupt outcomes. In my experience, every one of those safeguards has failed.

I remain hopeful that the State will relent in enforcing a fine while acting outside its jurisdiction. The issue is not the threat of prison for non-payment, but that the administrative arm has become a sealed-off revenue unit detached from the rule of law. It even failed to obtain proper legal advice before responding to formal correspondence — a breach of protocol that effectively bypasses High Court supervision. That is a constitutional failure: you cannot lawfully collect fines while denying all statutory access to appellate jurisdiction and blocking remedy for error.

The real cost of this filing was not the £174 fee. It was the days without sunlight, exercise, or human contact. The nonstop procedural abuse — now nearly a year long — has become a form of virtual incarceration. Each new wrong demands another rebuttal, another complaint. But today, that changed. I have taken back the driving seat. The State can ignore the claim, defend it, or return to upholding the law — but it cannot continue without consequence. If the High Court refuses permission, then this matter moves to the European Court of Human Rights for breach of civil rights.

Occasional forays out with my camera are my solace