Trolls and snerts;

November 22nd, 2011

AN I ask if Steve Rotheram MP ever reads the ECHO? If he did, then maybe he’d have seen my letter before jumping on the anti-trolling bandwagon (Stop Trolling says MP, Nov 18).

As an emerging prize-winning authority on trolling I have read as much as I have written. Those in the field like to distinguish trolling from trollers and trolls. Trolling is basically posting a provocative message with the intention of entertaining (called “posting for the lulz”). The collective word for anyone who does trolling is a troller.

Instead of tarring all the trollers with the same brush, Mr Rotheram should look into the issue. Genuine trolls only do trolling to entertain others, whereas it is the snerts that post to harm others for their own sick entertainment.
Far from trolling being new, it has existed in name since the 1980s. Mr Rotheram should save his time introducing a Private Members Bill: New Labour criminalised trolling by snerts in the Communications Act 2003, as he would know if he was to read the free information available on my Trolling Academy website – www.trollingacademy.org

Source: Liverpool Daily Echo

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Your View – Wales on Sunday

November 20th, 2011

I was pleased to read Rachael Misstear’s report (“Sick Trolls Target Sex Abuse Teenager”, last week’s front page) that police are looking into dealing with the cowardly internet users who preyed on a sex abuse victim through what Rachel describes as “trolling” . Victims of crime often turn to online communities to try to deal with their situation. Instead of meeting the “MHBFY [My heart bleeds for you] Jennies” who empathise with them, they all too often meet the “Snerts” who seek to harm, who are not the same as “Trolls” who are good humoured.

Trolling is the posting of messages to entertain and those who do it are collectively known as “Trollers”. When a Snert does trolling, it is to harm others for their own sick entertainment. When a MHBFY Jenny does trolling, it is to help someone see the lighter side of life and come to terms with their situation.

As the founder of the Swansea-based Trolling Academy, my advice to people who want to get support online is to find websites dedicated to their concern. Once they find this, they should do what is called “lurking”, by looking at the other posts without joining, to see if they are friendly and helpful, and they should only join if they are.

If anyone knows or believes a child is being abused, they should ring the NSPCC on 0808 800 500. Children should ring Childline on 0800 1111.

Source: Wales on Sunday

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Ethically and legally removing the powers of the banksters

November 18th, 2011

Many people don’t realise when they complain about businesses rewarding shareholders, they may actually be talking about themselves. I own shares in one of Europe’s biggest energy firms and one of the world’s biggest technology firms. Most of the shares in these companies are owned by the banks, who manage our pensions and ISAs on behalf of the public. But as you’d expect the banks always vote on their terms, not those of their customers.

So what needs to happen is that the funds managers who make the decisions on how to vote are fully separated from where our money is held. This would mean that if everyone’s shares were managed by a not-for-profit ethical funds manager, then they would be able to vote on mass to not approve the extreme directors remuneration packages at the AGM, and could appoint ethical directors and not those who don’t look after the interests of the shareholders. That is us! – The ISA and Pension holders.

I know as a minor shareholder it makes no difference how I vote, because the banks will always have the most votes. So if the government could change the rules we could stop the banks managing our ISA/Pension shares then we could appoint directors who will act in our interests.

Also, if the Government own 51% of the shares in the banks, why don’t they vote on to the boards ethical directors who act in the interests of the public, including the share-owning public? I further think the Government, as a shareholder in the banks, should request to see the contracts of the bankers will million bonuses – even a Formula 1 driver’s contract has penalty clauses. There may be something in there that means the banksters could be dismissed for on the grounds of ‘gross misconduct’ for their actions. If not, we should question whether the directors who approved those contracts acted in the interests of shareholders by rewarding unethical behaviour, and if not should they face penalties under the Companies Act?

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Do European laws give pro-choice rights on abortions to fathers?

November 18th, 2011

It is a basic premise of both European Human Rights Law and European Union Law that a right to do something also includes the right not to do something.

Take the ECHR right to found a family. This also includes the right not to found a family. So should men, who have conceived a child, have equal rights to have their potential child aborted as the women they’ve impregnated? I think so.

The ECHR equally says that someone should not be deprived of their property without proper compensation. I think seeing as an absent father could be expected to pay child maintenance for a child for at least 16 years, then if he chooses not to found a family and the mother wants to keep the child, he should have to be compensated in some other way if he is being deprived of his financial property because his human right to not found a family is being broken.

European Union Law prescribes that there should be no discrimination on the grounds of sex. So by not giving men the right to abort their inseminated foetus they are being treated less favourably than women.

I think if women want the benefit of a natural man’s DNA without their full consent, then they should be responsible for the costs of maintaining the use of that DNA.

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I’m an EU Law Expert – Fiscal Union was not my idea

November 17th, 2011

A eurosceptic friend, John Hopkinson, writes on his blog about how conveniently people now support fiscal union for the eurozone and argue who thought of it first.

I  have been arguing the opposite for nearly ten years, including in my submission to the Richards Commission.

As someone who supports UK entry to the euro, but only when our interest rates have been stable for a significant period of time at the same rate of the eurozone, and the exchange rate, which would also need to be stable, would result in the value of wages and goods in the UK being the same as the EU, in order to avoid high inflation.

In my view, as a dual Master of Economics and a Master of EU Law those calling for fiscal union don’t know what they are talking about.

If the political elite lack the ability to converge their economies using a single interest rate, how can they be expected to with a single tax regime across the eurozone?

The only way for the eurozone countries economies to converge is for each region of each member state to converge its economies by varying income and business taxes (e.g. business rates, corporation tax), and use the single interest rate as a baseline to set them.

The channel tunnel could not have been built if the French engineers were drilling in a different direction to the British ones. Equally the eurozone won’t be stable if the economies aren’t converged heading in the same direction.

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Is Nick Robinson biased against Labour?

November 14th, 2011

In an almost thuggish way, Tom Watson said that Nick Robinson didn’t report the phone hacking scandal enough because he was ‘favouring the Conservatives’ to put it more delicately.

I know how he feels. It annoyed me that Ed Miliband was getting the headlines on the hacking scandal over true experts like myself who have published research on ‘data misuse’ laws. I made the BBC clear of this dissatisfaction when they basically ignored my expertise.

But let us look at the news articles since 1995 on claims of bias against Nick Robinson as evidence.

March 1995 – Claims of bias were made against Nick Robinson by Labour when he sent a memo, as they saw it, trying to cover up the preferential treatment where the BBC Panorama programme, which Robinson was deputy editor of, interviewed John Major as Prime Minister, but did not offer the same prominence to the other leaders.

August 1995 – The London Evening Standard publishes a story, titled, ‘Labour sees red over new BBC reporter’, which highlights the fact that since March 1995 the party felt that Nick Robinson’s presentation of facts on Panorama were biased in favour of the Tories.

March 2003 – In the Times Nick Robinson, who is currently the ITV political editor, notes in an article there might be a problem with Labour’s perception of him. Highlighting the times that Peter Mandelson would be complaining to the Director General of the BBC about his apparent bias.

May 2003 – For the first time on record ‘anti-Tory bias’ and ‘Nick Robinson’ come together. This time in it is in The Times, with him commenting on the pressure being on Greg Dyke at the BBC and not himself, as Robinson is still working for ITV.

This all builds up to a shock confession:

October 2003 – The Independent runs an article, ‘I do not regret my Tory past, Nick Robinson, ITV’s News’s Political Editor’ which shows that Robinson was once significantly involved with the Conservative movement. The article says he has received claims of bias from both sides, which I might expect having spoken with the editor of my local paper who received the same, but unless the Conservatives have a different word for ‘bias’ I see little evidence of this in my brief search!

I will not look further into the articles, as I became politically active around 2002 in the Labour Party, even speaking to Nick on the Radio 5 Live about how a speech by Tony Blair hit a cord with me, just before he went to ITV I think – On Radio 5 Live he and Brian Hayes were my favourite presenters of that era. On his move to ITV I did start to think he was biased against the Labour Government, but then I would expect no different, as the ITV News programmes that he was reporting for have always seemed to me to be the Tabloid Newspaper of Evening TV, changing the tone of the programme to try to capture the public mood regardless of accuracy.

As I am now a Professional, it is this revelation in October 2003 that strikes me the most salient, even above all the past claims of bias. It is unethical for any professional to take up any form of employment where there can be a ‘perception of bias’, whether they are a former government minister taking up a position in a publicly funded body in the same area afterwards, or a sports official who is refereeing a match where a first-line relative is of the same nationality as one of the competitors.

So, in essence, however much I like him, as someone who famously got insulted for holding an apparently undesirable physical characteristic, by George W Bush of all people, I think he should seriously consider his position.

Even if he is perfectly capable of, on most days, creating a perception of impartiality in line with BBC guidance, is it worth the constant claims of bias against him, and this the questioning of his professionalism, to be in an environment where he can be easily perceived to be biased?

Concluding the issue on the assumption of ‘good faith’ on the part of Robinson, I would say that the reason this perceived bias is so persistent is that Nick is likely to draw on the same social networks that took him into the Conservative Party in the first place, so therefore he is more likely to represent a ‘Tory perspective’ than a Labour one.

So I’d like the BBC and other media outlets to take steps to ensure that it is not the same people from the Old Boys’ Networks that get represented in the media, but many others who have expertise but might not normally make it into public life. If they were to do this then the perceptions of bias, whether ‘left-wing’, ‘liberal’, ‘all-White’, or whatever, would start to disappear.

 

 

 

 

 

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Policy on cannabis and other recreational drugs

November 14th, 2011

My position on the manufacture and supply of cannabis and other unregulated ‘street drugs’ is now pretty simple. If we are going to allow them to be lawfully used, then regulation and not decriminalisation is the only course of action I’m willing to support.

Decriminalisation of cannabis is, in my opinion, a charter for legalising organised crime, including forced prostitution, organised paedophilia, human trafficking, etc.

Regulation would be the only realistic option, as the manufacture and distribution could be ensured to be made up of lawful activity only and could have the benefit of driving the organised criminals out of the market.

But my fourth way question is – why legalise a millennia old drug like cannabis, which has well documented risks from long-term use, when there is potential profit to be made by the pharmaceuticals designing and patenting new and safe recreational drugs? This could drive up innovation in the economy, and mean that the checks and balances in place for medical drugs could be in place for recreational drugs.

So my policy on recreational drugs is that their design, manufacture and distribution should regulated and they should only be available for sale if they pass what I call the ‘safe sex pill test’. That is, if the risks to the person using them are easily as understandable as the contraceptive pill, and pose no more harm to them than that potentially can do, then it should be available in licenced premises  for recreational use.

 

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Are Women’s rights of higher importance than children and others?

November 14th, 2011

It is not very often these days that reading a news article can fill me so quickly with rage, but this one on the Conservative Party
website:

The Tories are basically saying:
WOMEN ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN CHILDREN!!!!

The anger I felt, as a male victim of both childhood sex abuse and
domestic violence was nothing that even the ancient God Thor would ever have experienced. Fortunately, as I went to an independent private specialist school under the last Conservative Government, I have learned how to channel these for creativity and to campaign for social justice, and I set out my solution below.

Within days of coming to power Theresa May scrapped the whole of the Vetting and Barring Service (VBS), seemingly only because it was unpopular because the last Government went too far in changing the definition of who needed to be checked.

The previous definition of who needed to be checked – ‘Anyone with substantial, unsupervised access to children or vulnerable adults’ – was fine. But Ms May appeared rather than getting an immediate grip on the situation and seeing the wood for the trees, threw out the baby with the bathwater!

The VBS that the last Government proposed was intended to make it much easier for not-for-profit organisations like mine to find out whether someone was allowed to work for us based on their criminal history.

This would not only make it easier for us administratively, but protect the privacy of suitable candidates also.

It aimed to bring all records together, including the sexual offences register, so finding out whether someone can work with children or vulnerable adults would be as simple as ringing up HMRC or using Government Gateway to see if someone is registered with the Construction Industry Scheme and what their tax treatment is. I have had direct commercial experience of both the CIS and CRB services, and would say the CIS is the model to follow.

If Ms May had any common sense then she would realise the VBS could be used for her sexist plan, but also be equally open to all persons and organisations who are making a decision about whether to recruit someone or otherwise engage in a relationship with them, regardless of their sex, simply by changing the definition of ‘vulnerable adult’ to include those who think they are at risk of domestic abuse.

As a Chartered IT Professional Fellow, it is my golden rule that one should never introduce a new IT system where an existing one can be upgraded for the same purpose. So Ms May might want to look at whether the Construction Industry Scheme, which uses NI Numbers, Company Numbers, and UTRs as identifiers could be extended to cost effectively allow the Government Gateway to be used for the VBS like it is for the CIS.

Ms May might want to look at this option in the forthcoming Protection of Freedoms Bill.

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Why fiscal union won’t work in the Eurozone

November 13th, 2011

Every man and his dog old premier are now patting the Eurozone leaders on the back for coming up with the idea of ‘fiscal union’ for the Eurozone. This was something that was opposed under both Thatcher and Blair, even with strong pressure from the rest of the EU.

Having fiscal union makes no sense at all. Fiscal union basically means that all the ways in which the government can influence demand and inflation, such as taxes, interest rates, money supply, are the same across the whole of the EU.

The reason we are in the crisis we are in is because countries like Greece, not only being economically unstable, suffered high inflation when joining the Eurozone, and the single interest rate meant it’s economy was growing and contracting at a different rate to the rest of the Eurozone due to lack of ability of its government to influence money supply because it couldn’t keep to the ‘growth and stability pact’.

I think that the single interest rate is however important – it sets a ‘base-line’ for which all the EU counties and their inter-country regions can work towards in order to converge their local economies with the rest of the EU over the long-term.

I believe, as I have for nearly 10 years that fiscal policy needs to be set at a regional level and not a national one, so certainly not at a supranational EU-wide level.

One just needs to look at the UK to see why this should be the case. Because fiscal policy in the UK is based around what is good for the South East of England, then this is making it difficult for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to grow their economies. If however the economies of these countries were run on the basis that their local tax policies were for the purpose of adjusting taxes to take account of the single interest rate, then there would be greater economic convergence over a longer period which would bring economic benefits to the regions in terms of equal prosperity in terms of wages, lifestyles and goods prices.

A policy moving towards harmonisation of fiscal policy for the whole of the Eurozone without first achieving economic convergence will only make problems worse. This is because a single fiscal policy could only ever work if each part of the Eurozone economy was fully converged. As we know the economies in Greece, Germany, France and Italy are so different that centralising fiscal union rather than decentralising it further will only make matters worse.

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Don’t blame Brussels

November 12th, 2011

Mr Edmunds of Pontnewydd questions why the political elite take things on history literally and he offensively claims that this means they have Asperger’s syndrome (Letters, Nov 5).

I’m sure if they took things literally from history, then instead of free healthy school meals, children from low income backgrounds would be eating cake, and they would probably, like in 1 Corinthians 13, put their childish ways behind them and read their order papers instead of waving them in the air!

Far from having Asperger’s syndrome as he claims, the political elite lack the genius people with this form of high functioning autism like myself have, meaning they do not have the capacity to look further than their nose (Sorry Mr Edmunds, I am allowed to use an idiom even if I’m autistic, aren’t I?) I have a Masters in European Union Law – and as the people I bored for hours will tell you, the most fascinating part of this course to me was learning about “proportionality”, which means laws must be interpreted on the basis of what they were intended to achieve, not literally, and not used for any purpose beyond what they were intended for.

I suspect, if like the French, the British politicians were to use “proportionality” when transposing EU directives, then as the French would say, they could “literally rip the heart out” of EU law. Instead of using Europe to further the dominance of the cartel of parties (ie Conservatives and Labour) by them misleading the public so one of them is always in power, then they would no longer be able to blame Brussels, when the fault truly lies with them.

Source: The Western Mail

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