Mishmish is back in town (and a note to my daughters)

Every move I make between living in big cities around the world seems to claim a non-guilty victim, one – way or other.

When we went spectacularly bust from our first endeavour to reform the construction practices of NZ some 4 years ago, my Father, repatriated to his homeland of Serbia got irrecoverably ill. One may say that could have happened regardless of our need to move away from NZ, he was/is an old man – I am convinced that there was a connection.

Then, the eldest daughter got left behind, with not a lot of family support, a sad little ‘dot of loneliness’ at the end of the world. She successfully picked up the broken pieces in time and is now a strong, confident, independent young lady. I would have chosen for her a slightly slower and less ruthless growing up timeframe.

Not eaten up enough by guilt of putting my family’s future at risk again – and acting as an irresponsible parent to the other 2 daughters, still in their mid-teens, I upped the ante and set out to reform the AEC world at a much bigger scale when I got into messing with the ‘big guys’ like Leighton, HLG, Gammon etc…

So, virtually penniless and treated as criminals (almost) husband and I left briefly Hong Kong two days ago – or not so briefly – the future will tell, after putting the two previously mentioned, future-compromised teenagers in the care of a dear friend and her family at the other end of the world for a ‘limited time’.

Teenage years can be difficult under any circumstances.

When you had the privilege of being constantly brainwashed by overpriced private schools on how important every part of your ‘formal’ education is, I can understand that they may feel hugely let down and ‘given up’ for some silly ideals of their parents.

When Universities, run as big businesses have been attacking them over the last 3 years with manipulative marketing campaigns of ‘making the biggest choices of their lives’ by choosing to apply for one of their institutions – it is hard for me not to fear them feeling like the victims of this latest interlude of our lives.

Trust me girls, things will be fine.

But don’t trust me so much that you are lulled into an extended holiday by the generous hospitality of dear friends. Teenagers should be pushing boundaries; some give pleasure when nudged, some pain, some both; live, make choices and decisions,

Don’t panic, take it easy. But not too easy. 

Read, learn, research. Walk! Socialise, develop tools to cope.

I know you’re not meant to grow up at 15 or 17, not in a white-middle class family.

Tough. It is, what it is. Don’t let yourselves victimised by this situation, make the most out of it.

(learn finally how to make that real Hungarian chicken soup – you have the best resources at hand);

There definitely is one victim of the Gammon scam and me moving back and forth between UAE/HK over the last 5 months.

That is Mishmish, the cat. See, we had him for about 3 years, while living in Abu Dhabi.

We are not really a good-pet family but we did get on with Mishmish OK.

We had to give up on Mishmish when I took on the ‘dream-job’. 

Not sure how does the law of HK look at compensating for the hurt feelings of a pretty average ginger cat, but I will keep this issue in mind when I count my losses.

Unless he was given to a much more caring family in which case there will be one less compensation claim for Gammon to worry.

Unfortunately, we had promised not to ever enquire about his fate once dropped off at the shelter – so maybe Gammon can cross Mishmish off their list of worries.

It will be pretty hard for me to prove that they intentionally caused him a harsher life than he would have had, had they not scammed me into their faux job of the non-desired Head of Innovation.

Thankfully for me, there is plenty of evidence to prove other claims against the same entity.

Still, just to make a gesture to a new life for us all and Mishmish as we were ‘sneaking’ through Hong Kong’s wonderful MTR system to the airport with 8 bags between us two, I chose to take with us a mosaic picture I created of Mishmish some time ago and packaged it in a distinctive HK red/blue stripy bag.

We gifted the picture to a friend that welcomed us to his home in UAE because while Mishmish was still ours, they were good mates, one summer he cat-sat him for weeks.

Life is all about gestures. Good and bad.

Good to be back in the UAE – still ready and eager to work globally.

(This blog has more pictures to accompany it than I usually choose to have, to illustrate to the wider audiences some of the mementoes of Mishmish while living with us, also the picture and G lugging the oversized bag from North Point to Central, Hong Kong – thanks darling!)

Cheer up! Things can get worse!

So, I cheered up and things got worse. – a sad little catchphrase that Graham and I throw at each other far too often these days. Not that we are in a bad mood or anything,  nothing can cheer one up more than having to pack a household of stuff twice-up in a couple of months.

Wasn’t it a clever move to leave half of the boxes unpacked, and the couch and the fridge with the movers in the storage? We are learning something, after all!

Anyway. Today I was going to write to May Lin Lam, who is Gammon’s company solicitor.

Of course, it would be much more civilised to speak face-to-face to her than communicate through various blogs but I’m in no position to challenge some of the strange ways Hong Kong does its business.

And in spite of her being the company solicitor and the top person one should be supported by when one raises a question of serious concern to the company’s well-being, we had never met in person.

The first time I learned of her existence was when at the company’s induction day, (June the 19^th 2013) I was told by Bryant Lee, a very pleasant fellow, part of the HR personnel/army that Gammon keeps to run its operations smoothly, named her as the third / and top level of the safety-net when it comes to company corruption.

As in, when you notice something not quite right, you go first to your immediate supervisor.

If the solution the supervisor offers is not quite to your satisfaction, you take your case to Mr Thomas Ho, the CEO, who by all means is the absolute boss of the company, expect when it comes to tricky subjects;

So, when you feel he is not quite serving the company’s best interests (in your own humble opinion) – then you go and see Ms May and she will make sure that on behalf of the shareholders, things will be investigated properly and you get your sack if the whole story was just a made -up one but also due justice if what you were claiming actually was true.

Unfortunately, for still undisclosed reasons, this company procedure was at least once not properly employed, on the day I was sacked.

On the 19^th of August 2013, and a convenient, two month’s anniversary of the previously mentioned induction, if you like to keep a tab of these ‘date’ things.

So, I never met Ms May in person, though poor thing got pretty busy around all the fuss that my unhappiness with being fired ‘unexplained and on spot’ had generated afterwards.

Also, dully understanding her full occupation with the damage control after such a loose cannon got off the rail, I will restrain myself from the question I was going to ask her today, the one that has been bothering me for a while and to do with what constitutes a case of ‘Using a document with intent to defraud’ when it comes to my case and some of the letters her directors have issued close to my dismissal?

Instead, I’ll tell my readers a little story that I remember very often when things go wrong;

And the best of it is, that it is totally based on facts:

It may be a bit of a long story – so relax, get a cup of tea or something else… and listen to the story…

My family of 7 and I lived in a nice house in the woods.

The suburb of Auckland in New Zealand, was indeed called Woodlands park and we had some serious specimens of trees around our property. We also had a bit of a weird house.  It was unusual to start with, over 3 levels, long and skinny, then we made it really kitschy, plastered with mosaics all over the walls, floors, stairs, even ceilings.

Our bedroom was on the top level, third floor if you count the garage level. It was not a bedroom in a proper sense, as it was a 30+ square meter of an open room. We had a library in it, the family TV, one computer station to share, the master bed, and a space to make beautiful creatures out of legos and play-mobiles. (this was the sunniest spot in the house to lounge in the afternoons too); This huge room was also surrounded by the flat roof of the rest of the house and had at least 3 sliding doors opening onto it. Also, this room was built sometimes in the seventies, all walls wood panelled and the carpet, beige, deep, wool shag pile.

Occasionally we left the sliding doors open.

Occasionally ducks walked through the room, in one door, out the other.

One day they did not just walk through, but disturbed by someone, got panicky and left huge piles of duck-shit all over the beige carpet.

I got quite upset. No, I panicked and got all matter of cleaning stuff onto my precious floor-covering.

I scraped, I scrubbed, I washed, I soaked, I applied unnatural amounts of chemicals to the process, with the hope to get my fabulous 70-ties shag pile back to its pure beige.

I laboured over the spots for hours, naturally just making it all worse, with the best hope to achieve of lifting the entire surface a nuance up and blend to what a washed out and highly chemically threated duck-shit contaminated shag pile carpet would look like.

I was truly sad over the incident as I truly cared about that place I called home.

But, after I while I gave up. Left the ugly spots dry up and somewhat merge into the rest of the pristine looking wool. I ignored looking at traces of dirty little islands of my heaven.

….weeks went by….

And one day, behind the couch I found a dried up disk of duck-shit.

And, you know what? It lifted neatly off the beige carpet with no mark to leave.

 Whatsoever.

So, here is a life lesson for you:

Sometimes, you just have to leave the shift to dry.

May Lin Lam, Gammon’s company solicitor, I’ll come back to you.

Later. In time. When things dry a bit, they’re easier to lift.

If you want to see a softer side of me, here are some pictures of this weird kitchy-mosaicy house:

https://picasaweb.google.com/114033065542183897341?feat=email&gsessionid=I6BHFHz3xUqGMpy50UpCSw

The harshest lesson I learned in my almost 6 months of living in Hong Kong is the one of how weak and powerless the media is….

I start with my usual disclaimers: I’m getting to be an old woman, close to have lived a half of a century. Grown up in the highly controlled media environment of the quasi ‘open looking’ -yet closely overseen-by officials  of the ex-YU government.

Following immigration to NZ in my late twenties , I finally  met the ‘truly’ democratic media where all types of mud could be thrown at politicians as long as the big, ‘country feeding corporates’ and the pristine image of  the clean-green country were kept intact.

Manipulation of the different sort.

Again, take note: I’m not naive, not a spring chicken by any means.

By now, I know what allegations one can make, what homework needs to be done before anything gets into print. How hard is to get any media attention unless it is a stupid, harmless subject and a story with no threat of a lawsuit.

Media is a safe business, a mundane churning out of stories where no one gets hurt, let alone truly questioned on integrity or any other ‘difficult’ subject.

 The best stories are when a husband kills his wife in a jealous rage. Or a global celebrity turns up in the local café unexpectedly.

Just don’t mention the war! (Cue John Cleese) ;

Or Gammon, or MTR, or BIM, or the Hong Kong Institute of BIM or CIC or anything that has to do with this difficult subject….

I did try. I had the personal story on offer.

It was not good enough;   a 48 old highly respected, well qualified professional brings her family to Hong Kong. She spends over 300K HK $ to settle, sets up home. She is serious, committed, naive, easy to be fooled into a weak Gammon director’s personal game and kicked out. Too bad. Not good enough for the South China Morning Post’s readership. Too white, too elite, stupid even; She should have known better than fall for that one.

Then, there was the MTR story, a lot to it, hard to explain. Or maybe not that hard, just in need of a bit of focus that so few people seem to be prepared to commit to these days.

 Someone manipulated someone else. The results could have been good for the public had anyone understood what this game was about. But no such luck, one party manipulating another, then another and at the end who cares if the MTR gets its facilities for 3 times the price that otherwise should be getting it when it requires too much maths to understand the subtleties’? 10 dollars for a train drive or 8, who cares?

MTR wins, the game goes on…

Yep, it’s all good. I understand you ….

But then why kid anyone with some ‘feel good stories;? Why tell me, ’we’re different’ we are no mainland China!’… ‘ we have English law, freedom of speech… we are a democracy!’

Really?

You sure fooled me on that one! But not for long;

I said, there will be no more whining; And, there will be no more whining. (no pathos, just facts)

We got the tickets, we are out of here.

 But, I do want to come back to Hong Kong in the future and do business here.  No matter how much everyone thinks I failed this nest big time, there will be times in the future when my expertise will be sought after. Mark my words.

Still, there is a little problem. A problem of tax.  With my tickets from Gammon today arrived a ‘gentle reminder’. One I can’t copy in here because due to my unpleasant’ activities since getting terminated they introduced a massive disclaimer at the bottom of their emails.

This for a company that did not have a uniform ‘email signature’ before me landing in. I should be proud. I hope they nicknamed it the ‘Zolna disclaimer’. That would be nice.

Anyway, the kindly HR woman that is responsible for ‘rewards’ within the company has reminded me that I have to clear my taxes before I leave for good; (not a quote, paraphrasing it);

I responded (grumpily, but no whinging – note the difference in the tone)

Thank you for the tickets.

I wish to make the following ‘gentle reminder’ to you and your bosses too:

Apart from the consequential damages that your scam has caused to me and my family, Gammon has dishonestly and directly made us pay out 300,000 HK dollars (see table below) mostly for services they knew would be forfeited

shipping	21000
upfront school fees and equipment	87435
temporary accommodation	90000
upfront rent and fees	102372
	300807

Your department also kindly organised a seminar for me regarding the tax laws of the country and prepared a sample return, giving me a clear indication by when and how much I should save up, just before I was terminated;

Following termination the only ‘real offer of help’ you made was assistance with covering for a recruitment agent’s fees. I declined this offer as I do not trust any agents working with you any more, having been scammed by the last one.

Such fee would definitely cover the tax I owe this country;

I ask you for the last time, sort out the tax and the apartment’s issue and we will be out of here.

Otherwise, I will sit in front of the SCMP’s office with a sign ‘Gammon stole 300K from me and I cannot pay my tax to the country’.

Regards,

Zolna Murray

Now, let me add two more notes to this:

 1/ the HR agent involved up front believes he DID nothing wrong, and I retract any ‘unfair and unfounded’ accusations I’ve levelled at him. 

2/ the money involved is a lot and not that much depending on what type of expat-globetrotter you are. We are the type with no house, no bach, no boat, no nothing. What we do have is a couple of kids still needing to get somewhere and a big dream of creating a 21^st century construction co (and the skills to match the dream);

So, since I have a couple of days up my sleeve and am not that great at hunger-striking, here is my plan for the next couple of days:

I will put in a bit more effort into opening the eyes of the good people of Hong Kong to the type of company they have in their lovely city.

Look out for me around town, I do intend to spend quite a bit of time around the offices of the South China Morning Post.

As for the tax department: I will pay my dues. I have to go away to earn it but will be back.

Trust me;

Dear Mr and Mrs Jardines-Balfour-Beatty!

Would you please get your unruly child Gammon get to behave in an orderly manner urgently, stop his bullying activities and get him to clean up after his mess in the playground.

Otherwise, we will have no choice but to remove him from our well respected institution (other parents have been complaining already);

Sincerely,

The Principal

Yeah, yeah – I’m still whinging- you may think.

But, there is a slight shift in the tone that you may have missed.

I’m in the ‘upwards-and-onwards’ kind of a way, even if a bit still rattled.

I have biiiiiig plans…just don’t tell anyone yet!

For the immediate next couple of days, I still have to clean up after someone else’s crap.

(I do apologise for the language, but there is no nice way to say this);

See, we all know the story by now:

Gammon scammed me into coming over the HK. Oh, silly me, how could I walk into it?

Any attempt of my following the sacking to open the eyes of the good people of Hong Kong how their scammers operate was an absolute disaster;

(i.e. who cares, these are our scammers, we like them the way they are – go away, stranger);

OK, fair enough.

Now, I say – OK Gammon, you won for the moment, I’m out-of-here…

Can you please be a dear and tidy up the mess you created (you know, all the long term contracts that we only got into because you vouched for us?)

…. Guess what Gammon said when asked to do this in the bestest civilised way I can do:

(Yes, I CAN behave in a civilised way)

‘We don’t want to know, it is a ‘personal’ matter’…..

PERSONAL?

You sure are right there…can’t remember any entity pissing me off personally (sorry again about the language) as much as you had, not even Leightons, and that is quite something!

So, due to your childish behaviour Gammon, I am addressing your parent companies, Balfour Beatty and Jardines directly.

And, I expect and answer, swiftly!

As good parents you must exercise your right and duty to discipline this child, just as much as you use every opportunity to boast when the child appears to do something good for your financial performance (see both of you reporting on Gammon winning the:

‘The HKSAR Highways contract to construct the Southern Connection Viaduct Section of the Tuen Mun – Chek Lap Kok Link (TM-CLKL) in Hong Kong is the largest solo civil engineering contract ever awarded to Gammon Construction.’)

On this latter news, I’d be a bit cautious too – it will blow up ‘big time’ in your face, let’s say in about 3 years, give or take 6 months. Though, one person will probably be out of harm’s way by then, John Clark the current, Engineering Director at TMCLK Link - Southern Viaducts at Gammon Construction Limited, as long as he reaches the magic 3-zero long service bonus, no one will care that he may have been a bit hesitant regarding D&B projects some time ago.

Still, dear Mr and Mrs J-BB (I wonder which one wears the pants in this parent relationship) – I’m not asking you to believe me at this stage that most of the projects your ‘almost golden goose’ is sitting on will spectacularly fail in the future, that would be far too hopeful of me, considering that you do not believe me about the factual events reported on that were happening at present;

I’m only asking to get Gammon to front up to the schools of my children and explain to them what happened, the residential agent and the landlord that is losing out and pay the utility bills that are owed;

Peanuts considering what you are losing by kicking me out.

But hey, time will tell you that. Unless your own long service time limit kicks in before that.

There is for hope for you!

A sick joke, THE Gammon way:

My youngest daughter has become a big fan of sick jokes. My fault obviously, no good happens to children whose mother cannot provide certainty of anything from today – to – tomorrow.

Still I’m proud of this little survivor making the most of her current situation.

Although, as hard as she scrolls the internet for gorier and gorier jokes she can’t match the practical joke still being played out on us.

Let, me re-tell it to the World again:

Sick joke, THE Gammon way:

Thomas: Derek, I want to have the biggest and bestest BIM conference in town organised for one of the Government VIPs’!

Derek: No worries Thomas, I’ve got the most controversial yet highly respected global BIMexpert signed up to do it for us;

Thomas: Would she not worry about coming all the way to do one conference only?

Derek: Don’t worry Thomas, we’re pretend it is a long term thing, we’re telling her we’re employing her for a full time job and call her role a ‘Head of Innovation’

Thomas: Is there a danger she’d suspect we are not much good at BIM?

Derek: Don’t worry too much, I have thought about it too, she has clearly shown her suspicion, so we put her to ease by focusing on her family;

Thomas: You are bringing out her family?

Derek: Of course, this way it is so much more believable, we even paid for an agent to find schools for them and search for long term accommodation too

Thomas: Long term accommodation? Isn’t that going to be going too far, we will get rid of her straight after the conference?

Derek: that’s OK, we will set it up so it will be all her own fault; Not difficult, we are so bad, she’ll easily get disturbed by our over-claiming of BIM capabilities and get into trouble questioning it!

Thomas: But she can’t rent a flat without our letter of long-time employment!

Derek: So, when was this a problem before? You know Edmond will write any letter for us!

Thomas: Wouldn’t our parent companies get a bit worried about our actions?

Derek: Nope, as long as everything is by the book…

Thomas: Not even the ethics committee of BB?

Derek: Nah…We just have to make sure she pays all her set-up costs (for schools and accommodation) up front and she will be so skinned by the time she is fired, she will be glad to be out from here…
BB will never even need to know, let alone Jardines! You know, they can hardly distinguish between what a lousy BIM consultant  and a  pretend colour coordinator are and she could easily pass for either!

Thomas: Cool! Just make sure no bad publicity!

Derek: Bad publicity? Here? You know all the media is on our side! All those free lunches are finally paying their dividends!

….

OK – no real punch line for this ‘sick joke’ just a very bad taste in my mouth…

Of course this conversation is totally imagined by me – but looking at the facts, how else could have things possibly had come to this ending for me in such a short time frame, unless it had been a sick joke all along…?

…

For those still in need of a joke with a real punch-line, see my daughter’s favourite joke from today:

(remember, she is 15, what has happened to us via Gammon is still a bit too awful to relay directly to her in fullness) 

For Sam Houston, Executive Director of Gammon - personally

End of day 4 of my  Hunger strike and I’m suspending it.

Will explain later.

First, I’m going to write about Sam, the executive director of Gammon and the person responsible for the risk management of the company and our brief, but nevertheless interesting ‘relationship’.

Corporate lawyers should not get too excited about big ‘confidential’ info getting aired here, this post is going to be much more lyrical, and about what things could have been have we understood each other a bit better…

A sort of a ‘sliding-door’ type of a scenario – though the real events will be mentioned too.

The juicy parts the industry knows already, better than me, unfortunately.

Bizarrely, it all started at the lift; what better example of a sliding door;

I think I was going up to the 28^th floor of Devon House, it was my first day at Gammon, end of May this year. He was coming out of the same contraption at the lobby level. Turns out just to get a sandwich from Pret, as I saw him again minutes later why I was sitting still at the reception waiting for the HR person to come and meet me.

See, Sam cuts quite an authoritative figure, you can’ really miss him.

We did formally get introduced, later that day – though his limp handshake and detached manner could have been summarised with one word ‘whatever’ and giving the unspoken view of me

being this terribly overpriced woman with a skewed English accent, brought in as a Head of the Innovation Department, no one really needed and wanted, especially him, the finance man.

 I could have been ‘a colour consultant’ or a ‘Feng shui’ expert when it came to Sam that day , his mind was on the money that was invisibly strapped around me as an already wasted  overhead/profit.

Little did he know, or wanted to know, that for years I considered myself to be one of the best ‘risk-management-tools’ a construction company could buy on the market, that I had the magic to go through project documentation and point out all the places delays were likely to happen years down the track or isolate the sheets of drawings that could form the basis for the juiciest of claims.

That I knew exactly where Leighton will screw up its project years ahead of time and have warned of those issues affected directors and mangers (the CEO too, and to no use, but that is a different story).

On the day I started at Gammon I was given the job to organise a BIM conference.

Five and a half weeks to get a major event off the ground, with little inside knowledge of the company, it kept me busy.

The next time I saw Sam was at the conference.

The event was successful, though no better or worse than many others that get held regularly in the global BIM arena, a field that probably organises a larger than necessary number of events like these, often recycling  the same projects, same images, same construction-sequence movies.

To make the event more than just another showcase of ‘we did this’ and ‘we did that’ – I used the opportunity (with the permission of my managers) to herald in a new era of BIM@Gammon, where as the first company to do this in Hong Kong, we would go deep-as-well as wide and get the entire company ‘BIM literate’ in the shortest timeframe possible.

We held a Q&A session at the end of the internal session – in a fairly full house – Sam was sitting close to the back, reclined in the chair, asked for the mike:

‘is this BIM just going to be another tax to pay?’  put up  the question  – and kill me, I don’t remember my answer, but must have been upbeat, I wanted this guy to feel positive about ‘this thing’ he neither liked, neither wanted to be part of, but his CEO has assured me the company was fully backing.

Later on, I learned he was part of some negotiations to insource BIM capability to Gammon – but somehow got overruled. Overruled but not forgotten that it happened.

Wind the clock a bit forward, the conference behind us;

I start looking at our jobs that have some BIM components to them;

3 stand out, all risky in their own right, one with a poorly set up design development job, based on a shaky BIM structure and already terribly late; one with a client mandated – highly onerous BIM with strict deadlines we had not met – the third, the biggest D&B job this company has ever taken on with a consultant (our consultant!) flatly refusing to do anything in 3D for it.

I try to get my head around these ‘hottest potatoes’,  stretch the very limited resource at hand see what can be achieved by when.

I plan, I present, I talk.

I get ignored, ridiculed and undermined.

Not by everyone, but by those, that matter, obviously.

Those that have followed my work know that I do look at BIM (Building Information Managed) as a fundamental risk management practice – just as project with BInM (Building Information NOT PROPERLY Managed) as a disaster to happen.  As ignorant as it sounds, forget the building and how we are going to do it, if the project information is crap and we do not manage it in time, it will blow up.

All 3 jobs were candidates for this.

So, went to see Iain Wink, Group Risk manager. A cheerful fellow, one eye on the awful rain thumping outside still pretty greenery of his office window, the other on his impending summer leave he told me not to worry much about risk – these jobs were in good hands.

Walking out of his office, came Sam to mind again, was he not the executive director responsible for RISK, surely he would not dismiss my concerns as easily as everyone else?

Unfortunately, I could never pull to his attention the risks that were growing under his nose, the next I met Sam, it was at the infamous last meeting of my final firing where he called me ‘little naughty so-and-so’….

I was sincerely taken beck by his tone of voice, despite the situation I did not think we two were people with such differing agenda. Both of us had the company’s good and our own livelihoods at hearts.

Neither had I the opportunity to present to him the plan I prepared for the Innovation Department, so far a ‘full overhead’ on the company, to become a thriving business unit.

I worked day and night to get the figures right for the director that asked me to do it while his colleagues were drafting the letter to fire me.

Well, Sam, you wanted to save money, I could have done that for you, and Gammon, but it just was not to be.

When you chose to cut me off that day, screaming at me I still was for you just an overpaid ‘colour-consultant-whatever’ with a thick folder of "sins" committed to the company recorded by the "trusted" HR director for whose firing you’ll get a nice pat on the back.

Maybe you should have taken a deep breath, listen me out and had another go at saving money where it really matters, in the mid-directorship levels.

Now, there is something really meaty to work with.

…and for those very few interested in the status of my Hunger strike and wellbeing.

Well, after 4 almost completed days, I quit at 8PM tonight. Yep, call me a wussy.

I never wanted this to become a personal story, but….

The MTR 65 Bil experiment was of no interest to anyone.

The Gammon lack of Integrity story was of no interest to anyone.

…I thought maybe a personal story would raise some eyebrows?

Nope.

And fighting alone and hungry is a no-no, even in the manuals of seasoned activists, I’m told

So, if this is a blot on my character – you are welcome.

After all, how could I carry on starving, not writing and wait for ‘sure for God never to come miracle’ when Leightons are finally getting exposed in their cherished home-country.

See blog:

http://debunkthebim.blogspot.hk/2013/10/birds-of-feather-flock-together.html