United Kingdom: ME Association governance issues

The MEA does not appear to have trade marked "The ME Society" or "ME Society" and their 2009 registered company was incorporated as "THE MYALGIC ENCEPHALOPATHY SOCIETY LIMITED" - not as "The ME Society Limited" or "ME Society Limited".

 

They do. Although I recall that AfME still haven't wrested afme\.org.uk from the current owner despite the fact that it was their former domain name & the fact that the content on the site has the potential to cause significant confusion.

 

https://companieshouse.blog.gov.uk/2019/02/12/choosing-a-company-name-trading-name-or-trade-mark/

Company names and trade mark law

If you’re incorporating a company simply to protect the name (with no intention to trade), you might want to seek advice from a professional as a trade mark may be the better option. To throw another spanner in the works, there are also unregistered trade marks. Choosing a name is not as straightforward as you think.

There’s a common misconception that you can stop others from using your business name by registering the name at Companies House. Sadly, this is wrong.

Incorporating a new company will prevent other businesses from registering the same, or a very similar, company name to yours. A trade mark is a sign which can distinguish your goods and services from those of your competitors.

Registering a company name does not automatically protect it by trade mark law. Similarly, if you register a trade mark, you may not necessarily be able to register it as a limited company name. They are 2 different forms of protection, administered by 2 different organisations.

Companies House registers companies and the Intellectual Property Office registers trade marks. Both organisations have rules and regulations about what you can register.

Trading names

You can also trade using a different name to your registered name. This is known as a ‘business name’ or ‘trading name’.

Trading names must not:

• be the same as an existing trade mark
• include ‘limited’, ‘Ltd’, ‘limited liability partnership, ‘LLP’, ‘public limited company’ or ‘plc’
• contain a ‘sensitive’ word or expression unless you get permission

You’ll need to register your name as a trade mark if you want to stop people from trading under your business name.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1874213975111721023



Dx Revision Watch
@dxrevisionwatch
Under Company and Charity Law you are obliged to provide members with copies of meeting minutes. Why have requests for provision of minutes of the General Meeting on 18/11/14, at which a Special Resolution to change your Articles of Association was passed, been repeatedly denied?
0:00 PM · Dec 31, 2024

 

This is very tiresome, I apologise on behalf of the MEA for its frank lack of transparency. Also I apologise for my own jibes, I do not want to be a rabble-rouser so if neccessary please feel free to sit on me roundly and soundly. Or maybe I can learn how to make my obs without jibbing and jibing.

I am insulted by the MEA and I want a public apology from all these execs, with a genuine, inclusive Patient Participation Engagement, and no more nonsense about rehabilitating the majority of PwME using up the majority of their service budgets on rehab only useful to the minority if at all

Therefore I need to transparently and advisedly co-produce the MEA's part-funded £1m epidemiology project to be sure it produces accurate knowledge of our combined minorities, with no more let and hindrance, and as the MEA is trading with the Evidence-Based Rehabilitation Enterprise, I want oversight, quality control and governance for the obvious reason that the Enterprise already had the largest chunk of the research budget with no co-production to speak of, but rehab provides only for a small minority

Also by some dogma these trading partners totally missed the boat, spent all that money refusing by ill-advised policy to use the wearable biomedical monitors now being indisputably rolled out across the UK by the NHS and promoted big-time by Mr Streeting as key to the NHS Renawal services and home hospitals, but leaving us behind thanks to the MEA failing to poll us directly upon on our visionary wearable fantasies, although in many cases monitors are more accurate, handy and trackable than those questionnaires preferred by competing but necessarily indeterminate fields of rehab, indeterminate once encroaching on our territory. You bet I am therefore territorial, i don't like xenophobes taking over

So I guess the fabled toolkit of rumour is questionaires not tech.

I approached the current wing-ding (over the hotly defended IT an PR budgets), looking for that

Spoiler: the specifications of the on-off Dormant Society and the Association

The last Dormant filing was from 2018:
"Accounts for a Dormant Company made up to Dec 31st 2018"

This last dormant Balance Sheet (2018) was itemised
showing £0 Net Assets and £0 Reserves
still ongoing for the previous last 2 years
and still with "exemption" from audit as a "dormant company"
unless the Members require an Audit.
The Society was originally registering with "no member list".

I saw it referred to here as a

It is registered as Active and as a Membership Organisation

in 2018 the specific exemption from audit was still specified as
"entitled under section 480
of the Companies Act 2006 relating to dormant companies"

After 2018 there are no more filings given "Dormant" status
i.e, none filed as "Accounts for a Dormant Company made up to 31st Dec".

From 2019 - 2023 there are filings of a
"Total Exemption for Full Accounts made up to 31st Dec"
as specified in my last post,
still exempt from audit (unless required by Members),
but it does not give the itemised balance sheet in the dormant format

The dormant format was 2 entries: Net Assets / Reserves,
itemised £0 / £0

From 2019 the new format was 2 entries:
Total Assets Less Current Liabilities / Reserves
(maybe in case of a debt outstanding then)

There is no sum of £0 entered for these items ,
no sums are entered at all just an underscore

And the audit-exemption is entitled under a different section
- section 466 of the same Act, but not relating to dormant companies,
also "in accordance with section 444 no Income Statement was delivered ".
With the Dormant status there was no reference to any Income statement.

So I guess there was a change in law, regs and terminology
in 2019
or there was a change in Dormant status ?

It is not clear why a dormant company
has an official address at the hosting MEA
but a separate correspondence address,
with no other connection to the MEA being apparent,
and I forget if there was any formal connection linking the 2 orgs
apart from sharing an office address for purposes of registration only.
Maybe the MEA is not privy to the correspondence either.
Certainly one can do what the other can't

The Society is a Company of type:
"Private company limited by
guarantee without share capital"

The Association is a Company of type:
"Private Limited Company by
guarantee without share capital use of 'Limited' exemption"

The Society and the association are both categorised by
Nature of business (SIC) as :
94990 - Activities of other membership organisations not elsewhere classified

I remain very publicly insulted by the MEA in the person of Mr. Riley, the only M.E A rep to be rude, totally outstanding, but the other execs have very publicly endorsed and condoned this it seems on the basis that I am some intractable deviant massed in a vexatious minority forfeiting all courtesy. I can let insults fly too.

The other execs are very polite but can no longer appear mysteriously non-committal. They may well be disgruntled being called old white men once their boss decided to let fly and trade some insults, but they are technically old white men, however it is as pejorative as was keyboard warrior, and it is as true as it was untrue to call us animals sloths.

Sloth is one of the deadly sins and I am sure the highpriests of the Amazon Aztrecs found sloths unmodifiable, fearful and avoidant, but the MEA cannot operate as a church and I am quiescently livid that Mr Riley is still calling me avoidant in public places and behind my back

I am insulted by the MEA and I want a public apology from all these execs, with a genuine, inclusive Patient Participation Engagement, and no more nonsense about rehabilitating the majority of PwME using up the majority of their service budgets on rehab only useful to the minority if at all

I am sure this is all a profound misunderstanding that can be cleared up with a full frank apology to be arranged, and I am sure of this because my life is at stake, and Mr Riley has made the very dangerous mistake:

- referred to in NG206 Section I think 6 - Safeguarding - which is a mandatory matter.

And so I won't allow his undifferentiated, diffuse, generic risk re-assessment to hold forth and profoundly upset my community too, putting us all at risk by "confusing the symptoms of M.E with the risk-signs" of an exaggerated illness belief from which he may have recovered but he is not representative of the majority and nevertheless keeps claiming to be and wishing to disburse the MEA & UK Budgets

I have reason to believe he wants to commit too much epidemiology to his trading partner the Evidence-Based Rehabilitation Enterprise (Trading) to show off his debatable tool, so I fear that he thinks his preferred epidemiology research design can review and re-assess the N.I.C.E evidence-base on which my life did, does and will depend,

Mr Riley took 7 years to work out he could get up in the morning then go back to bed, I don't think that warrants the NHS to fund rehab units as the core service for most of the community leaving nothing over for other services, yet again

Getting up in the morning does not appear to have vastly improved Mr. Riley's health, function and temperament, nor does it appear that waiting 7 years did him a lot of harm, so its not that signifcantly cost-effective, but the very patient cost-effective engagement of all our cases has begun here so I shall read that S4ME thread on the various obs made in case of bed matters

​

 

I think autocorrect has done you over at the end of para 4… suspecting you originally typed technophobes there?

 

It's a "working name" not a "working arm".

The ME Association is also a "working name":


https://register-of-charities.chari...ty-search/-/charity-details/801279/governance

Organisation type: Charitable company

Other names:

• THE ME ASSOCIATION (Working name)
• THE ME SOCIETY (Working name)
• MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS ASSOCIATION (Previous name)
• THE MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS ASSOCIATION (Previous name)
• THE MYALGIC ENCEPHALOPATHY ASSOCIATION (Previous name)

 

A company's "working name" is also known as its trading name or business name, which may be different from its registered company name, as registered with Companies House.

"The ME Association" is the working name of the registered company "THE MYALGIC ENCEPHALOPATHY ASSOCIATION LIMITED".

"The ME Society" is the working name of the dormant registered company "THE MYALGIC ENCEPHALOPATHY SOCIETY LIMITED".

 

When Dr Charles Shepherd was Company Secretary for the MEA (December 2003 - November 2004), his home address was listed in the Companies House Filing History as the "Correspondence address" with the MEA's head office address as the Registered address.

https://find-and-update.company-inf...cers/hqDWo_plrj9DaUqV8sUwBMLNCAc/appointments

 

To state the obvious, MEA are not legally obliged to retain the minutes for Nov 2014 past Nov 2024 (ten years). But they would be well advised to search through their electronic and physical filing cabinets for a copy of the 2014 AGM minutes.

Without the minutes, the MEA cannot evidence their assertion of the wording of the AoA on the vital matter of payments to Directors. None of the public copies of the AoA available prior to Dec 2024 support their view.

If the minutes cannot be produced then surely there is a basis for complaint to the CC as we are in “dog ate my Articles of Association” territory.

 

I am sure they can all remember the reasons they had and gave for altering the articles - the reasons that convinced them and then the Members, surely they cannot say they lost the minutes and have no idea why they would want to change articles in 2014, by AGM i.e a significant change - not just pretty them up

If they can't recall then they are all too unmoored to know and do the business but if they can't think up a rational reason then its no wonder they did not just say look, this is why we made that change .... mind you they are in very good company since no-one can think up any reason for the change they say they made

 

Some one up thread pointed out that minutes of a meeting don’t formally exist as minutes rather than a draft until they are adopted, presumably at a subsequent meeting. So it could be argued that the ten years are not yet up.

 

harping on - to the best of my knowledge, the ME Society was only dormant up until 2018 then it distinctly did stop registering as dormant, and maybe began to hold some assets, liabilities and / or reserve, since it stopped filing £0

Instead, from January 2019, it registered as quite big i.e bigger than a "small company", and so it had to provide full accounts

It suddenly got big, big enough to provide and file "full acounts" with a directors report, every year from 2019-2023, according to Companies House

So in some way I guess it is trading in that category:
‘Total Exemption Full Account'
meaning:​

https://mooreks.co.uk/insights/audit-exemption-and-how-to-take-it/

​

The Society got bigger in some way when it transtioned from dormant to fully accounting. If small, then it would have listed as 'Small Accounts' not full accounts.

I don't give a hoot but if its not dormant then it seems its trading under an ME Name very closely associated with the ME Association, most likely with MEA knowledge, using its address

I don't know if its just a technicality that looks like trading, or if its MEA-related or just using the MEA address and otherwise no-one else's busines.

 

This question has been floating around for quite a while now, I’d say a year. Well before November. I can’t imagine if you were destroying it that you wouldn’t check it over .

I don’t think but can someone confirm that whilst they must be kept 10yrs it’s not a case of having to destroy after that time (which would apply eg to certain types of personal data / different types of info have different regs) ?

 

The Special Resolution that was passed on 18 November 2014 has already been posted in this thread. Here is the certification letter, signed by the then Company Secretary, Gill Briody, that accompanied the copy of the Articles, as sent to Companies House:

 

As the General Meeting for voting on the Special Resolution had taken place in November 2014, a report of that year's AGM and a report of the General Meeting would have been expected to have been published in the spring 2015 issue of ME Essential.

Notice and voting slips for the Special Resolution and notice of that year's AGM would have had to have been sent out in the Autumn or Winter 2014 issue.

(It's possible, but not yet established, that the AGM for 2014 and the General Meeting for the Special Resolution were held on the same day, as they had been in November 2013.)

 

It remains exempt from filing full accounts:

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06898702/filing-history

03 Sep 2024 Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2023

 

Why on Earth are the MEA creating such a palaver about failing to provide what ought to be a very simple paper trail for adopting the current articles of association?

 

That's Neil for you.

I suggest that you email the office and ask them to provide a copy, quoting the Act.