The Wardman Wire

I have covered the rundown of the bookshop chain that used to be known as SPCK over several months.

The SSG News Blog is carrying a story of some leaked correspondence from the time when the management of the bookshop at Durham Cathedral was transferred from the Society of Saint Stephen the Great to the newly created company “Durham Cathedral Shop Management Limited”. I reproduce the relevant part of the article.

Correspondence between Durham Cathedral Shop Management Company and Philip Brewer

—–starts—–

I have before me some very interesting email correspondence between Durham Cathedral Shop Management Company and Philip Brewer dated March 12, 2008, the day after “the new company was incorporated as a limited company on 11 March”.

Durham’s questions in plain text, Philip Brewer’s responses in italics:

1. What happens to the cheques that will be sent in for ledger accounts made out to St Stephen the Great of which the statements have already been sent. What are they now to have on them as you won’t be able to fit Durham Cathedral Shop Management Co on the cheque.

I will instruct the bank to take them as per normal. Just deposit them to the new account number I gave you.

2. Do we have to wait until new accounts are opened before we place any more orders for stock or customer orders.

Please work with your suppliers as a new entity. Ignore whatever was and whoever was in the past. We are now a new company, with no relationship to the old going forward. So, contact your suppliers, tell them the drill, that you are a new company and that you would like to begin trading. When and if asked about billing, tell them they should process that at vendor-accounts, as you are not aware of how they are paying old invoices, etc. they will need to chase Saint Stephen the Great Trust as they have been doing.

We also need to know of who we can say will be our references.

What are your recommendations?

Also what do we say if the suppliers ask about the invoices that we already owe for ?

Since we are new, we can’t owe anyone anything yet.

3. Is it okay to contact Booksolve to get the tills and computers changed to Durham Cathedral Shop (do we need to have Management Co on this or will Durham Cathedral Shop do

Yes, you may do this. I have already requested they give me a cost for the service to continue. So you are welcome to contact them to make this change. Remember, we are a new company. No need for you to get involved with or diverted with what bills etc are being paid by whom.

—–ends—–

Wrapping Up

For now, I’m not offering any detailed commentary.

I am sure that the stock which belonged to the old operator (Saint Stephen the Great) and continued to be sold by the new operator (Durham Cathedral Shop Management Company) was correctly transferred from the one to the other and accounted for, and that the organisations which supplied the original stock have been correctly dealt with in accordance with accounting law.

I am also sure that the attempt to take “Saint Stephen the Great LLC” into bankruptcy in Texas in the summer with declared debts of around £1m was nothing to do with any of this. That was a debacle which I have reported previously – the person concerned, Mark Brewer (brother of Philip Brewer who features in the above correspondence), ended up with a flea in his ear from the South Texas Bankruptcy Court for trying to make an organisation that didn’t exist as documented on the paperwork bankrupt in the wrong country, and being required to take a 10 hours Continuing Education Course in Bankruptcy Law, including at least 2 hours worth of Continuing Education in Ethics.

I’d be surprised if there wasn’t more to come on this.

This is a long and involved story, but you can do worse than read my Dave Walker articles, and the archives of the SPCK/SSG News Blog, the list of News Reports in the Press and the Blogs, or the Archive of Reports in the Church Times. You can read all of Dave Walker’s nearly 2 years worth of reports which were “Cease and Desisted” by Mark Brewer shortly before the bankruptcy application in Texas in this PDF document (1.7M). There are other relevant documents on thispage.

Strong Note

I need to attach a strong note here that the SPCK mission society who used to be associated with the bookshop chain which includes the Durham Cathedral Bookshop is no longer involved in any way, and that Durham Cathedral are the landlord and not responsible for the management of the Durham Cathedral Bookshop. Nothing in this article reflects on either Durham Cathedral or SPCK.