BENT SOCIETY! So You've Been Punterized.

The Rotten Origins of Easter Eggs

2016-03-06T09:30:00.001+00:00

Was an act of chucking rotten eggs at a crucified priest in Scotland the cultural origin of the term Easter eggs?

Out of the 30+ Million Books in Google's Library Project, it seems that the earliest use of the term 'Easter egg' or 'Easter eggs' in English occurred in print in 1656.

The circumstances described are shocking.

Were rotten eggs thrown at a priest the first to be described as Easter eggs in the English language? Surely not. But, until dis-confirming evidence rolls around the corner, this is a distinct possibility.

Source: Sanderson, W. (1656), A compleat history of the lives and reigns of Maria queen of Scotland, and of her son James VI. Mosely, Tomlins, and Sawbridge. Ludgate Hill (p. 35).

The Easter Bunny (B) and Google Books.Public Domain

First Easter Eggs: Bad Eggs Thrown at a Catholic Priest in 1565 in Edinburgh, Scotland,

At a time, described as 'near Easter' in April 1565, it is reported that bailiffs imprisoned a priest after giving mass and then:

"Priest-like, mounted him on the Market Cross, with his Chalice bound to his hand, and his body to the cross, for 2 hours, whilst the boys sweetened him with rotten Easter Eggs.'

Bonnie Taylor Blake searched in other archives and on the archaic spelling "Easter egges" she got back further than I could with that term. Bonnie got a reference as far back as 1572 : . Knox, J. (1572) History of the Reformation:

"Himself fast tyed to the said crosse, where he tarried the space of one hour,during which time the boyes served him with his Easter egges."

Now here is something.

In both Bonnie's earlier example for "Easter egges", and my later one of "Easter eggs" a man is tied to a cross for a specific period of time. Both accounts - mine published in 1656 and Bonnie's find, published in 1572, tell the exact same story about the same priest who was pelted with rotten eggs in Edinburgh, whilst tied to a cross on the same day in 1565.

Clearly far more research is needed. But the cultural history, in Britain at least, of the Easter egg might just be more sinister than previously known.

The Rotten Easter Eggs Hypothesis

In 16th Century Britain, it seems quite possible that the Easter egg arrived on these shores pre-named, or else was "christened", on independent invention or re-generation, with the sole sinister purpose as ammunition to throw at Catholic priests tied to crosses in public punishment spectacles in Scotland.

To disprove this tentative hypothesis, I invite researchers to find a pre-1565 example of Easter eggs being consumed in Britain, collected, rolled down hills, offered in churches, given to children, painted, or whatever else, rather than simply thrown a priests.

If you can discover an earlier English language use than 1656 - of the term Easter eggs (or Easter egg ) and earlier than 1572 for "Easter egges" or Easter egge" please leave a comment below - with a reference to the source.

Other Easter Findings with the ID method - (Note: all US publications). All three below are for the precise terms:

Thinker Media IncUsed only with express written permission

Nullius in Verba

Read

Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret

to find out how to use the powerful ID research method to find the earliest use of words, terms and phrases

Author's note: With the invention of the Internet, Google Chrome and its library of over 30 million books and other publications, we are today able to search for the apparent first published use of particular words, terms and phrases. As more publications are scanned we may find earlier usages that disprove our first conclusions. But that is how knowledge has always progressed. The possibility of one day discovering a human skeleton in the fossil record below that of a dinosaur does not disprove the theory of natural selection; quite the opposite. The ability to completely disprove such a theory in one fell stroke, with one piece of dis-confirmatory evidence, is exactly what makes it such a powerfully important theory.

The Darwin Dynasty of Plagiarising Science Fraudsters by Glory Theft

2016-03-05T08:06:00.001+00:00

- By Mike Sutton -

The Patrick Matthew blog picks up on the new and original discoveries in my book Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret to reveal that all the science books and learned papers are wrong to claim that no one read Patrick Matthew's (1831) prior publication of the full theory of macroevolution by natural selection before Darwin and Wallace replicated it in 1858 (indeed before they even wrote a private word in their notebooks in the topic) without citing Matthew. In reality, new BigData technology facilitated analysis proves Matthew's book and the original ideas in it were cited cited by 25 people, seven of whom were natural scientists, four of whom were well known to Darwin/Wallace and three (Loudon, Selby and Chambers) played major roles at the epicentre of influence and facilitation of the work of Darwin and Wallace on organic evolution! Moreover, Charles Darwin (FRS) is 100 per cent proven to have been a lying plagiarising science fraudster by glory theft.

But did you know Charles Darwin's famous grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (FRS), had earlier committed the same act of dishonest plagiarising science fraud by glory theft. You can get the facts on the Patrick Matthew blog.

Brave & Honest Richard @RichardDawkins Thank you sir for the retweet. I await your response https://t.co/4E2eZfbi18 pic.twitter.com/ug1K405M2A
— Supermythbuster (@supermyths) February 17, 2015

Shocking Fact: Wikipedia Administrators in Disgraceful Punterizing Revisionist Cover-up of Darwin's Lies About Matthew

2016-02-27T13:16:00.004+00:00

- By Mike Sutton -

Unless they are writing about bias and errors in the Wikipedia encyclopaedia, the reason university students worldwide are forbidden from citing it in their coursework, dissertations and other assessments as a source for facts is because its content is consistently plain wrong, or else fails to include the most important facts.

This blog post reveals the absolute proof that Wikipedia's paid employees are dishonestly and systematically hiding from the wider public the 100 per cent verifiable fact that Charles Darwin lied about the readership of Patrick Matthew's original conception of the theory of macroevolution by natural selection.

Anyone trying to put the facts - with references to their validity in the publication record - on Wikipedia will be blocked by its paid employees. As a money-making organization, Wikipedia is punterizing us all by fund-begging from the general public for its so-called encyclopedia. The following sorry tale reveals all.

I Mike Sutton stand boldly in the field and asks Wikipedia to explain why, when it is forever fund-begging from the general public, it pays administrators to hide behind pseudonyms to systematically delete significant, embarrassing, 100 per cent proven, facts regarding Charles Darwin's dishonesty about who really did read Patrick Matthew's book before he replicated the original ideas in it without citing Matthew

On September 7th 2015, here on my Best Thinking blog, I wrote:

I challenge anyone to get the biased Darwinist Wikipedia editors to allow them to include on the Wikipedia Patrick Matthew page the hard fact led 100 per cent proof that Darwin lied about the reality of who really did read Matthew's book pre-1860. Try it. I double-Darwin- dare you!

The challenge was repeated on my Patrick Matthew blog under the title The Double-Darwin Dare

Yesterday, someone tried.Then they showed me what happened. I'm reliably informed that the entire incident has been filmed for a TV documentary on the subject of Wikipedia administrators engaging in systematic fact-deletion on particular hobby-horse topics to which they have assigned themselves custodians of public knowledge.

Wikipedia is punterizing us

In this particular incident, a Wikipedia administrator calling themselves "Dave Souza" fact-deleted the independently verifiable knowledge that Charles Darwin is 100 per cent proven to have published falsehoods about the readership of Patrick Matthew's original ideas before he and Wallace replicated them without citing Matthew.

On the Wikipedia Patrick Matthew page, references to Darwin's actions were supported by my scholarly, peer reviewed British Society of Criminology journal article (Sutton 2014 ). On the "Revisions history" page of Wikipedia's Patrick Matthew page, Souza excused his historical revisionist behaviour - whereby he deleted the recorded and referenced facts of Darwin's behaviour - with the falsehood that my journal article is self-published!

When Souzas revisionist edits were reversed, a battle of deletion and undoing of his deletion ensued. In the "Revisions history" page, reasons were given for restoring the facts and Souza was informed in writing that he was publishing falsehoods on Wikipedia about my British Society of Criminology journal article. Only when Souza was informed in writing on the "Revisions history" page that his historical revisionist behaviour was actually being filmed for a TV documentary did he cease his fact-deleting behaviour!

At the time of writing (8.51 am GMT 25/02/2016), the real facts of Charles Darwin's dishonesty have finally been allowed to stand on the Patrick Matthew page. However, readers might be interested to learn that Wikipedia has currently deleted its entire "Revision history" page for the Patrick Matthew page by three months back to November 2015!

I think it is pretty clear that they have something to hide, simply because because they've currently gone and hidden it!

The telling question now is: what will they do next with the Patrick Matthew page?

Rest assured dear readers, whatever it is, I'm reliably informed that it will be filmed in the public interest and then broadcast.

Wikipedia's employment and empowerment of personal hobby-horse fact censoring petty martinet administrators such as Dave Souza is what makes it so untrustworthy.

Public Domain

Wikipedia is ultimately controlled and edited by its paid "hobby-horse" unqualified, biased and gleefully under-educated chip-shouldered administrators.

The text Dave Souza was systematically deleting before being ethically informed his activities were being filmed for a TV documentary on Wikipedia bias.

On Wikipedia's Patrick Matthew Page :

'However, there is no direct evidence that Darwin had read the book, and the fact that he wrote that he sent out for a copy after Matthew's complaint, only if true, meant that he did not have a copy in his extensive library or access to it elsewhere. In subsequent editions of The Origin of Species, Darwin acknowledged Matthew's earlier work, stating that Matthew "clearly saw...the full force of the principle of natural selection". From 1860 onward, Matthew would claim credit for natural selection and even had calling cards printed with "Discoverer of the Principle of Natural Selection". Significantly, new analysis of the literature has called Darwin's legendary honesty into question. Sutton (2014) "[21] presents published evidence from Matthew's and Darwin's 1860 letters in the Gardener's Chronicle that Darwin published a falsehood by claiming in the Gardener’s Chronicle and from the third edition of the Origin of Species onward that Matthew's original ideas went unread, because Matthew had already informed Darwin in print in the Gardener’s Chronicle in 1860 that his original ideas on natural selection were read by the naturalist John Loudon, who reviewed his book in 1831, by an unnamed naturalist who feared pillory punishment if he were he to teach Matthew's ideas on natural selection, and that his book was banned by the public Library of Perth, referred to by Matthew by its nickname in Scotland: "the Fair City". Darwin's citation after 1860, and his published fallacy that Matthew’s ideas went unread before 1860 has done little to garner recognition for Matthew, since he is still generally unknown.'

Please Note: Further details and updates on this sorry saga are available on the Patrick Matthew Blog

Further Note: The veracious information that should be on the Wikipedia Patrick Matthew page, but which Wikipedia does not want you to know, can be read in my RationalWiki Essay

Postscript 11.29 am GMT 25/02/2016

At the time of writing, Wikipedia has, currently, restored the incriminating Wikipedia revision history page on Patrick Matthew. This is what it currently looks like:

Patrick Matthew: (Wikipedia) Revision history page

(cur | prev) 19:22, 24 February 2016‎ BiasMonitor (talk | contribs)‎ . . (33,387 bytes) (+1,172)‎ . . (This fact deletion session by Souza is being filmed for a TV documentary on Wikipedian editor bias. Undid revision 706690883 by Dave souza (talk)) (undo)

(cur | prev) 19:19, 24 February 2016‎ Dave souza (talk | contribs)‎ . . (32,215 bytes) (-1,172)‎ . . (Undid revision 706690259 by BiasMonitor (talk) nope, ungrammatical and its in the wrong paragraph: take it to talk, or try adding it to the Sutton claims) (undo)

(cur | prev) 19:15, 24 February 2016‎ BiasMonitor (talk | contribs)‎ . . (33,387 bytes) (+1,172)‎ . . (Souza is deleting significant verifiable facts from Sutton peer reviewed article. This serious and unwarranted verifiable fact deletion will be reported. Undid 706679280 by Dave souza (talk)) (undo)

(cur | prev) 18:45, 24 February 2016‎ BiasMonitor (talk | contribs)‎ . . (32,215 bytes) (-1)‎ . . (Souza writing fallacious excuses. He is fact deleting a information from Sutton peer reviewed article Extreme bis displayed. Vandalism of facts. Undid revision 706680142 by Dave souza (talk)) (undo)

(cur | prev) 18:42, 24 February 2016‎ BiasMonitor (talk | contribs)‎ . . (32,216 bytes) (+1)‎ . .(Sutton's is a peer reviewed article not self published. Souza is seriously vandalising verified valid facts..Undid revision 706681665 by Dave souza (talk)) (undo)

(cur | prev) 18:13, 24 February 2016‎ Dave souza (talk | contribs)‎ . . (32,215 bytes) (-1)‎ . . (null edit: on review, better summary is that the edits were changing the response to Sutton's views into a reiteration of his dubious claims, thus undue weight.) (undo)

(cur | prev) 18:02, 24 February 2016‎ Dave souza (talk | contribs)‎ . . (32,216 bytes) (+1)‎ . . (null edit to note removed undue weight to self published "big data analysis" which hasn't gained credence from historians) (undo)

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(cur | prev) 19:52, 31 December 2015‎ BiasMonitor (talk | contribs)‎ . . (33,037 bytes) (+212)‎ . . (→‎Later opinions: added further text on Darwin's relationships with those who had pre 1858 knowledge of the ideas in Matthew's book - because they cited it.) (undo) (Tag: Visual edit)

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The Darwinist Finches Myth: We Have had 155 years of Punterization by the Darwin Worship Industry

2016-02-14T16:14:00.000+00:00

One of the most pervasive science myths currently in existence is the fallacious, and thoroughly dis-proven, tale that Charles Darwin discovered natural selection by observing the adaptation of Galapagos Islands finch's beaks.

Thinker Media IncUsed only with express written permission

Nullius in Verba

Mike Sutton is the author of Nullius in Verba - a book where every fact is independently verifiable and fully referenced.
‘Nullius’ will subject you to a significant bombardment of new Big Data discovered,previously hidden book evidence, to uniquely 'prove' two key things far more likely than not:
1. That, contrary to prior knowledge-beliefs, Patrick Matthew's 1831 book - containing what Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins (in Bryson 2010 ) admit was the first and only pre-1858 complete hypothesis of natural selection - DID influence the pre-1859 published work of both Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace on the topic of organic evolution and natural selection theory.
2. That Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace each, independently, plagiarized the theory of natural selection from Patrick Matthew and then lied when each claimed no prior knowledge of it.
Useful websites on the story of Darwin and Matthew

Mike SuttonUsed only with express written permission

Follow Dysology on Twitter

Mike Sutton is imperfectly followable on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Dysology

THE DARWINIST'S FINCHES MYTH

A number of cleverly self-serving Darwinist myths abound, which Darwinists use to fallaciously argue against the facts that prove beyond all reasonable doubt Darwin never discovered the theory of natural selection independently of its originator Patrick Matthew (click here if you are not yet aware that Darwinism has been mythbusted as a science fraud).

I expect to encounter the deployment of a number of such myths by Darwinists desperately seeking to bury the discovery of Darwin’s science fraud in oblivion. As and when I encounter them, I will use this series of blogs to explain the source of the myth, prove it is a myth and counter it with genuine facts.

A few days ago I was challenged, on my Google+ account (see here ), on the veracity of my discovery of Darwin’s science fraud by the following question:

“So Darwin invented his whole adventures to the Galapagos and his finches?”

To answer that question today, I wish to address the long-busted, but pervasive and still active, Darwinist myth that Charles Darwin discovered the theory of natural selection by way of a Eureka! Moment arising from observations of the adaptation of finch beaks whilst on the Galapagos Islands, or else (the myth has evolved) after his return to Britain.

The Busted Darwin Finches Myth

The voyages of the Beagle ended in 1836. After his return to England in 1836 Darwin never left the UK again. Two editions of the Voyages were published by Darwin (Darwin 1839, 1845)

Darwin (1845) slyly altered this second edition of the Voyages of the Beagle to make it look as though he began thinking about evolution while on the Galapagos Islands. Martinez (2011, p.96) explains:

'The popular myth that the Galapagos finches crucially inspired Darwin to think about evolution arose because in the second edition of his Voyages of the Beagle he added one sentence about finches: "Seeing this gradation and diversity, in one small intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends." But that brief comment was foreign to Darwin's travel books and thousands of research notes; there is no evidence that it represented his thoughts during his voyage in 1835.'

As Martinez (2011) goes on to explain, by the time Darwin (1845) slyly snuck that revision into the second edition of the Voyages of the Beagle he had already believed in evolution for eight years. Martinez (2011) provides an excellent account of Darwin's snakelike doctoring of the second edition of the Voyages of Beagle, which was an essential ingredient of the success of Darwin’s great science fraud.

In actual fact, Darwin did far more than subtly sneak-in the odd sentence, or odd comment - an impression that one might get from reading Martinez alone. When we visit the primary sources, we can see that Darwin slyly added huge amounts of new text into the second edition of the Voyages of the Beagle - without informing his readers that he had done so. The excellent website of the Rockville Press provides a superb comparison of the text between Darwin’s 1839 and 1845 Voyages - by way of presenting comparative text from the Project Gutenberg digitized versions of the two editions in question (here ).

Darwin (1839)

'A group of finches, of which Mr. Gould considers there are thirteen species; and these he has distributed into four new sub-genera. These birds are the most singular of any in the archipelago. They all agree in many points; namely, in a peculiar structure of their bill, short tails, general form, and in their plumage. The females are gray or brown, but the old cocks jet-black. All the species, excepting two, feed in flocks on the ground, and have very similar habits. It is very remarkable that a nearly perfect gradation of structure in this one group can be traced in the form of the beak, from one exceeding in dimensions that of the largest gross-beak, to another differing but little from that of a warbler.'

Darwin (1845):

Trumpet from the rooftops

Finches beaks slyly inserted in Darwin's 1845 second edition of the Voyages of the Beagle

'Of Cactornis, the two species may be often seen climbing about the flowers of the great cactus-trees; but all the other species of this group of finches, mingled together in flocks, feed on the dry and sterile ground of the lower districts. The males of all, or certainly of the greater number, are jet black; and the females (with perhaps one or two exceptions) are brown. The most curious fact is the perfect gradation in the size of the beaks in the different species of Geospiza, from one as large as that of a hawfinch to that of a chaffinch, and (if Mr. Gould is right in including his sub-group, Certhidea, in the main group) even to that of a warbler. The largest beak in the genus Geospiza is shown in Fig. 1, and the smallest in Fig. 3; but instead of there being only one intermediate species, with a beak of the size shown in Fig. 2, there are no less than six species with insensibly graduated beaks. The beak of the sub-group Certhidea, is shown in Fig. 4. The beak of Cactornis is somewhat like that of a starling, and that of the fourth subgroup, Camarhynchus, is slightly parrot-shaped. Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.'

The first (1839) edition of the Voyages of the Beagle contained no such clue that Darwin thought about natural selection while on the Beagle expeditions. Why not? Because Darwin then believed, and continued to believe, until around 1837-39, that species were immutable.

So here we see in detail exactly what Martinez (2011) is really telling us. Darwin doctored the second edition of his ‘Voyage of the Beagle’ book (Darwin 1845) by inserting some considerable amount text on his observations on evolution to make it look as though these thoughts occurred to him on the voyage itself (Sulloway 1984).

Here, then, we see concrete evidence of the science fraudster Darwin at work - desperately crafting his own mythology to try to account for how he supposedly 'independently' discovered another man’s, namely Patrick Matthew 's (1831), discovery with no prior knowledge of it.

Those finches - often fallaciously and farcically called ‘Darwin’s finches’ - were collected by his shipmate, who was Captain FitzRoy’s Steward, - Harry Fuller. And, for years, after his return to England, Darwin saw no significance in those finches - thinking that they, like all species, were immutable. It was not until he got back to England and started reading books that he became an organic evolutionist. The adaptation of finch beaks never even featured in the Origin.

In reality, contrary to Darwinian mythmongery, it would be over 100 years after Darwin’s return from the Voyages of the Beagle before scientists worked out the natural selection significance of Galapagos finch beak adaptations. As Sulloway (1982) proved:

'Darwin identified the cactus finch as an "Icterus," a genus in the family of orioles and blackbirds, and he mistook the warbler finch for a "wren" or warbler. In fact, Darwin correctly identified as finches only six of the thirteen species - less than half the present total - and he placed these six species in two separate groups of large-beaked and small-beaked Fringillidae. Furthermore, with the exception of the cactus and warbler finches, Darwin failed to observe any differences in diet among the various species, mistakenly believing that their diets were largely identical

For this reason he could never argue that the different beaks of these finches were necessarily adaptive and therefore produced by natural selection. Thus there is no basis to the claim that Darwin had these finches in mind when he broached an evolutionary interpretation of the mockingbirds and the tortoises in his Ornithological Notes'

Therefore, it is an established fact that, despite the pervasive myth in the literature and television documentaries, Darwin never used variation in finch beaks as an example of evolution in the Origin of Species (1859), because he was totally unable to provide sound confirmatory evidence for it.

Finches are mentioned just twice in the first edition of The Origin of Species (Darwin 1859). But neither of the two references made to finches is on beak adaptation between different types of finch.

To be trumpeted from the rooftops

It is a Darwinist myth that Darwin discovered that finch beaks were naturally selected to be best circumstance suited to their environment. That was a 20th century discovery.

Perhaps one reason why finches and all their different beaks features so largely in Darwinist mythology is because of a book published in 1947 (Lack 1947), which created the myth of “Darwin’s Finches” to fill in the knowledge gap of Darwin’s missing Eureka moment. It is in this 1947 book (See: Marx and Bornmann) that the term "Darwin's Finches" is first coined. It looks like Darwin certainly fooled Lack with those sly changes in the second edition of the Voyages of the Beagle. But even Lack (1947 xiv) wrote in his preface that: 'Charles Darwin appears not to have appreciated the the evolutionary evidence provided by the finches until several years after his return from the islands.'

The truth is worse than that, however. Darwin never wrote anything at all worth reading about those finches, due to his dismal failure to as much as note which birds came from which islands! Consequently, most of what he did later write about them was an absolute dogs breakfast of assorted errors (see Sulloway 1982). Now that's hardly the work of a genius naturalist and scientific discoverer is it?

The orthodox Darwinian, and widely agreed, fact of the matter is that whilst on the Voyages of the Beagle Darwin understood little about ornithology and was on the Beagle in a geological capacity. In fact, the ship's captain recorded in his journal that Darwin set about the mass slaughter of trusting seabirds on the island with his geological hammer for the sheer fun of it!

The tale of a geological hammer being used to massacre seabirds for naught but its owner’s sadistic glee at slaughtering poor trusting creatures is told by the Beagle’s Captain Fitzroy (1839) who wrote:

‘When our party had effected a landing through the surf, and had a moment's leisure to look about them, they were astonished at the multitudes of birds which covered the rocks, and absolutely darkened the sky. Mr Darwin afterwards said, that till then he had never believed the stories of men knocking down birds with sticks; but there they might be kicked, before they would move out of the way.'
And:
'The first impulse of our invaders of this bird covered rock, was to lay about them like schoolboys; even the geological hammer at last became a missile. “Lend me the hammer?” asked one. “No, no,” replied the owner, “you’ll break the handle;” but hardly had he said so, when, overcome by the novelty of the scene, and the example of those around him, away went the hammer, with all the force of his own right-arm.’

Conclusion

Darwin's finches are just one more cleverly misleading Darwinian science myth. In fact, this one is classified as a supermyth.

It might be useful for you to remind desperate and muddle-headed Darwinists, at this point in your explanation of the facts, that they do have their own, actually veracious, orthodox Darwinist knowledge, that Darwin came back in 1836 from the Geological Survey (Beagle voyages) still believing that species were immutable. Then ask them to show you where, exactly, Darwin wrote about the adaptation of finch beaks whilst on the Beagle expedition. At which point it becomes an ethical requirement that you take pity on your subject. So serve your Darwinist a niece piece of cake, encourage them to eat the lot, and then use the just desert as a gentle heuristic device to explain why they cannot both have their cake and eat it.

If not finches then what was Darwin's Eureka! Moment?

Expert Darwinists agree that the very first evidence we have of Darwin coming to terms with the idea that natural selection might be the best explanation available for the existence, emergence, habitat and extinction of different species is in his private Zoonomia notebook (Darwin 1837-1838) . But what none of those adoration-blinded Darwinists appear to have spotted is that it is Patrick Matthew’s (1831) expert subject of fruit trees that is the very first topic covered in that notebook. And Matthew’s Eureka! Moment clearly came from his observations in the field, made in his own orchards, including experiments he conducted to prove the relatively superior survival qualities of naturally selected crab apple trees over artificially selected (cultivated) varieties.

Darwin (1837-38) wrote:

ZOONOMIA

Darwin OnlineAttribution

Darwin's (1837-38) private Zoonomia notebook

‘ Two kinds of generation the coeval kind, all individuals absolutely similar, for instance fruit trees, probably polypi, gemmiparous propagation, bisection of Planaria, &c., &c.’

Later in that same private notebook Darwin went on to write another line about Golden Pippen Apples, which were a variety of cultivated apples for which Matthew won many prizes. This is another fact also studiously ignored by Darwinists (Darwin 1837-38):

‘Never They die, without they change; like Golden Pippens it is a generation of species like generation of individuals.’

All the evidence once again points to Darwin discovering the theory of natural selection inside the pages of the one most important book - the one he really needed to read - the book of which he claimed to have had no prior-knowledge of; the book that contained the full hypothesis that Matthew (1831) coined ‘the natural process of selection.’ The same book that I have uniquely proven (see: here) was read and cited in the literature by at least seven naturalists – three of whom were associates of Darwin and associates of his closest friends.

The time for celebrating Darwin and Wallace is now at an end.

Useful Websites for more information

PatrickMatthew.com

The Patrick Matthew Blog

References

Darwin, C. R. (1837-1838) Notebook B: 'Zoonomia' Transmutation of species. Transcribed by Kees Rookmaaker. Darwin On-line.

Darwin, C (1839). Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle, under the Command of Captain FitzRoy, R.N. from 1832 to 1836. London: Henry Colburn.

Darwin, C. (1845). Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the World. 2nd ed. London: John Murray.

Fitzroy, R. ( 1839) Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle. Volume II. Proceedings of the Second Expedition. London. Henry Colburn.

Lack, D.L. (1947). Darwin’s Finches. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (reissued in 1961 by Harper, New York, with a new preface by Lack; reissued in 1983 by Cambridge University Press with an introduction and notes by Laurene M. Ratcliffe and Peter T. Boag).

Martinez, A. A. (2011) Science Secrets: The Truth about Darwin's Finches, Einstein's Wife, and Other Myths. Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Matthew, P (1831) On Naval Timber and Arboriculture; With a critical note on authors who have recently treated the subject of planting. Edinburgh. Adam Black. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DmYDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=of%20selection&f=false

Marx, W. and Bornmann, L (2013) Tracing the origin of a scientific legend by Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS): the legend of the Darwin finches. In Scientometrics.October 6th. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1311/1311.5665.pdf . Actual journal abstract:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-013-1200-8#page-1

Sulloway, F. (1982) ‘Darwin's Conversion The Beagle Voyage and its Aftermath’. Journal of the History of Biology 15 (Fall, 1982), pp. 325-397 http://www.sulloway.org/Conversion.pdf

Sulloway, J. (1984) Darwin and the Galapagos. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. January. Volume 21, Issue 1-2. pp. 29–59.

100 Per Cent Verifiable Proof that Darwin and his Adoring Darwinists have Punterized us these past 155 years

2016-02-07T19:11:00.000+00:00

One of the closest things in criminology to a natural law is the predictive power of repeat victimization

There used to be a general belief in Western industrialised nations that, where crimes such as street robbery, car theft and burglary were concerned, victims were simply unlucky and should be consoled with the 'folk knowledge' that lightening doesn't strike twice.

Research debunked this myth. Big Data research of the national crime statistics in the British Crime Survey - combined with the observations of some earlier writers - revealed that in fact - counterintuitively - the opposite is true. Namely: "victimization is the strongest predictor of victimization", because most crimes of this type are repeat crimes against the same person, place or thing (see Farrell, Philips and Pease 1995 ).

Of course, it was always well known that at the "person" level, crimes such as domestic violence are characterized by repeat victimization and that two crimes are exempt from the general rule - namely homicide and manslaughter.

Lightning Strikes Not Just Twice, but more than Thrice, As it So Often Does With Crime and Delinquency: Patrick Matthew was a Repeat Victim of 'Glory Theft by Fallacy Coining'

John Lindley's Matthew glory stealing redwood seeds bogus priority claiming fallacy.

Wallace's replicating plagiarism of Matthew's original conception and unique explanatory examples in his 1855 and 1858 papers.
Darwin's (1858 and 1859) plagiarism and his Gardener's Chronicle (1860) and Origin of Species (1861) glory theft lies.
Darwin's friend, Professor David Anstead - or at the very least his anonymous editor weirdly added footnotes on his article - mockingly rubbishing Matthew in the Dublin University Magazine (January to June in 1860)  effectively writing that he was an over opinionated crank who had written nothing original. The footnote can be read here.  The Saturday Analyst and Leader (1860) then did the same thing.

In a gushing review of Darwin's Origin of Species. Charles Dickens's Magazine 'All the Year Round' (1860) quoted a paragraph of Matthew's (1831) original prose yet never cited Matthew as its source.  The uncited quote is to be found here.

The Dundee platform blocking of Matthew at the 1867 meeting of the British Association for Advancement of Science.

Royal Society Darwin Medal winners Ernst Mayr's and Sir Gavin de Beer's published glory stealing fallacies that the original ideas in  Matthew's book  went completely unread - and unread by any biologists - before Matthew brought them to Darwin's attention in 1860.

Richard Dawkins's pseudo-scholarly history and context free typical "state of denial" victim blaming of Matthew for what Darwin and his adoring Darwinists did to him.

One day Scotland will have Matthew on the £10 note

For 155 Years Charles Darwin and his Darwinists Punterized the Scots

2016-02-06T14:13:00.000+00:00

Scotland: This Is Your Fight! End Darwin's 155 Years of Punterization of All Our People.

One day, Scotland will have Patrick Matthew on the back of it's £10 note.

Not for nothing was the great Maya Angelou at the front of the audience listening to Dick Gaughan.

So as not to face their significance, people may not fully engaged with dreadful facts. The range of denial devices used by those in a ‘state of denial’ include what Cohen (2001) terms 'canny unresponsiveness', ‘psychotic negation of manifest facts’, ‘lying to convince your listeners and reinforce your own denial of the real facts’, ‘negation by wishful-thinking’ ‘evasive reassurance that the facts are not that serious’, ‘victim blaming for their predicament’, ‘withdrawal of attention – deflecting the gaze’ and ‘compartmentalization’. These various manifestations of denial relieve the recipients of dreadful facts from immediate anxiety but, paradoxically, denial’s comforts create long-term dangers, against which we must remain alert.

Don't be Punterized by Property Marking Companies and Irrational Criminology

2016-01-31T20:55:00.001+00:00

INVISIBLE PROPERTY MARKING DOES NOT REDUCE CRIME RATES ONLY CRIME REDUCTION BUDGETS and THE RAT NOTION OF OPPORTUNITY CANNOT POSSIBLY BE A 'CAUSE' OF CRIME

- By Mike Sutton -

Never underestimate the power of your own blog or website!

My original Bent Society Blog on Smartwater is :

1. referenced in Scholarly Books
2. US Government Department of Justice COPS report.
3. My colleague Roger Hopkins Burke (2014 pp.69-70) within the pages of his excellent best-selling text book "Explaining Criminological Theory" cites my criticism of Crime Opportunity Theory
4. Critical Criminologists Jeff Ferrell, Keith Haywood and Jock Young provide criminologists with my no punches pulled criticism of what's wrong with RATortunity (Ferrell, Hayward and Young 2015 , pp 69-70) in the second edition of their excellent book Cultural Criminology: An Invitation.
5.Furthermore, as yet another editorially peer-reviewed and in-print source for those looking for scholarly sources to cite these ideas, my original explanation for why the RAT notion of opportunity (Ratortunity) is a mere truism masquerading as causality is published in a peer-reviewed essay in the Springer Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice (here).

That said, seeing and then going against a significant and obviously irrational majority view can have fatal consequences for those with the courage of their rational convictions. I wonder, have humans perhaps been 'naturally selected' not to do so? For example, consider what happened to the poor chap - August Landmesser - who was brave enough to refuse to give the Nazi salute in 1936: (here),

Invoking Godwin's law. Never underestimate power of your web & blog site to invoke change: https://t.co/hZSq5ZHbnW pic.twitter.com/eaGLkglRn8
— Dr Mike Sutton (@Dysology) February 2, 2016

So You've Been Punterized

2016-01-31T19:09:00.001+00:00

In 2008 on Bent Society we invented a word that helps define a concept of modern life

Punterisation is a word that has its origins here on Bent Society.

Engaging with the public in criminology, our discussions and comments and posts all generated this word this year and helped us to work out what we mean when we use it.

To be punterised is to be treated by others as "a dipstick" as a problem and inferior person who is to be fobbed off with lies, half baked excuses and treated as a second rate person.

One might be punterised by pubs that serve you a very expensive round of drinks and then 15 minute later send in a team of Hi-Viz jacketed and jacked-up bouncers to harass you every 3 minutes until you leave (thanks for that one to Langtree's pub in Nottingham city centre - now you will be famous for your customer service) .

We might be punterised in the way we are treated by call centre staff - and indeed the way the staff at call centres are treated by their employers - (thanks to Soapsoane for the blog post on that one).

We are punterised by our government's disingenuous behavior - their excuses for war, their short-term political vote seeking that causes long term social harms, their blatant lies (thanks to Tony "Formula 1 Cancermonger" Blair for that one).

We are punterised by the UK Government that encouraged rampant borrowing and lending and gambling and then encourages more of the same to get the nation out of the economic meltdown, which was caused by exactly that (thanks to Gordon "Borrower" Brown and his Darling Chancellor for that one).

Those who are less well off, less articulate and not versed in the subtle ways of the middle-classes may be punterised in terms of the information, explanations, treatments, choices and services they are offered by civil servants, health and social care professionals.

PUNTERIZERS BEWARE!

2016-01-31T17:04:00.004+00:00

AFTER SEVERAL YEARS OF MOTHBALLING

BENT SOCIETY IS NOW BACK FROM THE DEAD.

ALL BUT ONE OF THE OLD CREW HAVE LITERALLY MOVED ON.

SADLY, TWO OF OUR DEARLY DEPARTED HAVE SHUFFLED OFF THIS MORTAL COIL.

Do You Remember the 2009 Moral Compass Debate?

Here is an image for old time sake.

What's in a Word? Can One Word Help to Make a World of Difference? Spread the Word. Punterisation or Punterization in Bent Society

2008-12-17T07:34:00.030+00:00

In 2008 on Bent Society we invented a word that helps define a concept of modern life

Punterisation is a word that has its origins here on Bent Society.

Engaging with the public in criminology, our discussions and comments and posts all generated this word this year and helped us to work out what we mean when we use it.

To be punterised is to be treated by others as "a dipstick" as a problem and inferior person who is to be fobbed off with lies, half baked excuses and treated as a second rate person.

Dr Mike Sutton 2008

One might be punterised by pubs that serve you a very expensive round of drinks and then 15 minute later send in a team of Hi-Viz jacketed and jacked-up bouncers to harass you every 3 minutes until you leave (thanks for that one to Langtree's pub in Nottingham city centre - now you will be famous for your customer service) .

We might be punterised in the way we are treated by call centre staff - and indeed the way the staff at call centres are treated by their employers - (thanks to Soapsoane for the blog post on that one).

We are punterised by our government's disingenuous behavior - their excuses for war, their short-term political vote seeking that causes long term social harms, their blatant lies (thanks to Tony "Formula 1 Cancermonger" Blair for that one).

We are punterised by the UK Government that encouraged rampant borrowing and lending and gambling and then encourages more of the same to get the nation out of the economic meltdown, which was caused by exactly that (thanks to Gordon "Borrower" Brown and his Darling Chancellor for that one).

Those who are less well off, less articulate and not versed in the subtle ways of the middle-classes may be punterised in terms of the information, explanations, treatments, choices and services they are offered by civil servants, health and social care professionals.

I have no doubt that our dictionaries will one day include the words "Punterisation" and "Punterised" and no doubt our American cousins will want to spell them with a Z rather than an "S" - and that is fine by me.

How have you been punterised in 2008? Who did you punterize yourself?

Today - taking text from Soapsoane's comment to last night's post, here is a poem that seeks to tell how punterisation of the poor continues to haunt their waking lives with Dickensian and Kafkaesque nightmares:

'To understand the issues
Bent offers us the floor
and adults (most) from Nottingham
tap out our keyboard groan

We file our pleas and insights(thinking passion is our own)
When really all we're looking for
is time and space to moan.

What is it that we talk about amid the legal haze?
Is it life outside the prisons
or time spent marking lives?

Do we really like to listen or are we really just afraid
of doing what we say we think without our drug or drink?

The chorus of the weary folk is that they're battered down
The versus of the vice is to join and beat them up

So really, here's my question

It's prisons that we make
The way we pin kids up and down remain our biggest crime.'

*******

What do you think?
We brutalise and turn our blind eyes to the sun we feel is ours

By Soapsoane (2008)

******

Can we have liberty for all in a bent society?

With this word punterised I hope that we may have gone one very small step further to empowering those who are treated as second-class citizens to make others stop and assess what they are doing by giving them the ability to say something quite socially profound: "Do you realise you are punterising me?" "Stop punterising me!".
SO PLEASE GO FORTH AND SPREAD THE WORD: Punterization.
Robin

Postscript 21.45pm 17 December

Entering punterization, punterisation gets just four hits on Google and they all come back to us and our ferret on the Daily Telegraph blog - Innit. My research reveals that in fact the word has been used a couple of times earlier in reference to such odd things as crags in New Zealand - although I never knew this when first using it . However, we are the first people to use it and explain what we actually mean by it. Great word "Punterization" and to be "punterised" - has its origins in the word "punter" as in mug-punter ..gambler and loser user of prostitutes etc.

Crime and Social Harm

2008-12-02T14:56:00.009+00:00

Some things that cause huge social harms are legal and vice versa. Why is this so and should something be done about it?

One of the main themes on Bent Society is to explore and criticise practices that are socially harmful but not necessarily criminal - yet.

The Second Edition of Criminal Obsessions is out now. This argues for just such an examination of what should be deemed illegal - by weighing up social harms.

It is available free online here. And hard copies may be purchased here.

"Criminal obsessions is an innovative, groundbreaking critique of conventional criminological approaches to social issues. The contributors show how social harm relates to social and economic inequalities that are at the heart of the liberal state. This second edition of Criminal obsessions includes an additional essay by Simon Pemberton in which he develops theoretically the concept of social harm and discusses the future of the social harm perspective. "

****

Robin

BNP Members Are Very Upset Racists

2008-11-28T16:06:00.008+00:00

"LET'S NOT BE NASTY TO THE RACISTS, LET'S NOT BE AWFUL TO THE SCUM"

Picking up on my blog of a couple of days ago on the BNP membership list being leaked, a good friend who is ex-police sent me this link today which reveals how upset these poor racists were to learn their BNP cover has been blown.

Here is a small preview of their writhing at the news:

Many more entertaining racists can be found here http://www.stormfront.org/forum/ - for those BS readers who like to obverse such curiously delinquently deluded people online.

Have a happy weekend's reading. And please try not to laugh too hard...we should not mock the racist afflicted.

Robin

TV Detector Vans: TV LICENSING'S Big Fat Con

2008-11-03T11:35:00.015+00:00

Is it Really in the Public Interest to Deceive the Public with a Deceitful Scam? What About the Scofflaw Effect?

Regular Readers of Bent Society will remember that for several years I did not have a television but refused, as part of a social experiment, to inform TV Licensing of the fact. They threatened me with dozens of letters. I challenged them -by writing :

"If your detector equipment works and you clearly believe that I am watching a television set - then please do your worst and detect me. Put up or shut up with the empty threats."

All they could do was threaten me more with further letters. Nothing than that ever happened. The conclusion of my experiment, after being without a TV licence (and without a TV) for 3.5 years, is that the detector equipment cannot work or else they would not need to threaten people who do not actually own a TV set. Check out the older Scofflaw Influences posts to see the story.

Now Alan G - one of our regular readers - has kindly sent me a very interesting link

Here is what it links to: Enough further evidence for even the most paranoid and fearful among us to realise that BBC Television Licensing is all puff and bluster. The reality is that they have no realistic or workable way (other than you telling them) of knowing whether you own and watch a TV set or not. Forget the worry that the shops you buy TV's from inform TV licensing of your address - you might (as I have done on several occasions) be buying the set for someone else as a present! Tell them nothing. Refuse to speak with them. Refuse them entry into your home and they are POWERLESS!

Below - reproduced in all its full scofflaw-inducing glory - is the adjudication of the Commissioner for Information - arguably seeking to collude in the TV Licensing Detector Scam in keeping from you the truth.

It's like a sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus - it really is!

Laughably, this cover-up completely backfires. Because in saying that members of the public will not buy a licence if they learn the truth about their ability to detect televisions - the BBC reveals that they and their enforcement division - TV Licensing -have been shamelessly lying to the entire British public all along about their ability to "detect" the illegal use of unlicensed televisions. Because, what else could they have to hide in not answering the questions - other than the fact that they don't and can't detect television sets in anything like the way they pretend they can?

Reference: FS50154106 Freedom of Information Act 2000 (Section 50)

Decision Notice

Date: 16 October 2008

Public Authority: British Broadcasting Corporation
Address: 2252 White City
201 Wood Lane
London
W12 7TS

Summary

The complainant requested information from the BBC regarding the number of TV detection devices, how often they are deployed and their technical specification. The BBC refused to disclose the information under section 31(1) (a) (b) (d) and (g) of the Act. The Commissioner has investigated and found that the information is exempt under section 31(1) (a) (b) (d) and (g) and that the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure of the information.

The Commissioner’s Role

1. The Commissioner’s duty is to decide whether a request for information made to a public authority has been dealt with in accordance with the requirements of Part 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the “Act”). This Notice sets out his decision.

The Request

2. The complainant has advised that on 6 October 2006 he made the following request for information to the British Broadcasting Corporation:

1. Please could you confirm or deny that a BBC department developed hand-held devices.

1 Reference: FS50154106

2. Do you still use TV detection devices in your pursuit of TV tax evaders, be they your mobile vans or hand-held devices?

3. Please could you confirm that TVL are currently using these devices?

4. Please could you confirm or deny that the existence of a fleet of TV detection vans and hand-held devices is a myth

5. What levels of training do your operators have to use such devices

6. How many do you possess?

7. How often are they deployed?

8. If TV detection devices exist, please could you provide me with their technical specifications.

9. If your answer is that you still use them, please could you provide photographic evidence of their existence and to satisfy my technical and professional curiosity and please could you provide the technical specifications of the devices.

3. The BBC responded on 6 November 2006. The BBC provided answers to questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9 but refused to disclose the information requested in questions 6, 7 and 8 under section 31(1) (a) (b) (d) and (g) of the Act. The BBC carried out a public interest test and concluded that the public interest favours maintaining the exemption.

4. The complainant requested an internal review of the decision and the BBC responded on 7 February 2007. The review upheld the original decision to withhold the information requested in parts 6, 7 and 8 under section 31 of the Act.

The Investigation

Scope of the case

5. On 13 March 2007 the complainant contacted the Commissioner to complain about the way his request for information had been handled. The complainant specifically asked the Commissioner to consider the application of section 31 to the withheld information.

Chronology

6. The Commissioner began his investigation on 22 April 2008 by writing to the BBC to request further explanation regarding the application of the exemption and for a copy of the withheld information.

2 Reference: FS50154106

7. The BBC responded on 8 July 2008 providing the Commissioner with further arguments to support its reliance on section 31 and with details of the withheld information.
Findings of fact

8. The information being withheld under section 31(1) (a), (b), (d) and (g) of the Act is:

• How many detection devices the BBC possesses
• How often are they deployed
• The technical specification of TV detection devices (if they exist)

Analysis

Exemption: Section 31 ‘Law enforcement’

9. Section 31(1) provides that information is exempt if its disclosure under the Act would, or would be likely to prejudice (a) the prevention or detection of crime, (b) the apprehension or prosecution of offenders (d) and the assessment or collection of any tax or duty or any imposition of a similar nature (g) the exercise by any public authority of its functions for any of the purposes specified in subjection (2). The purpose specified in subsection (2), claimed by the BBC is, (a) the purpose of ascertaining whether any person has failed to comply with the law.

10. The BBC has stated that the information is exempt from disclosure as it would prejudice the prevention or detection of crime; the prosecution of offenders; the assessment or collection of tax; and the ability of the BBC to exercise its function. This is due to the fact that a person would use the information to evade the licence fee. The BBC explained that there are three types of information covered by the request which could aid a person to evade the licence fee. These are:

• Information relating to how the number of detection devices
• how often they are used, and
• Technical equipment used in television detector vans and handheld devices

11. The BBC explained that its responsibility to enforce the licensing regime arises as a consequence of its powers to issue TV licences and to collect and recover licence fees. This responsibility was expressly confirmed by the Home Office in 1991, the year in which the BBC became the statutory authority for the licensing regime. The BBC’s enforcement activities are in place to ensure that people pay their licence fee and they rely upon a number of deterrents. This process begins with TV Licensing’s database of 29 million homes and business addresses which tells it which of these have TV licences. Typically a number of letters will be sent to unlicensed addresses reminding people of the importance of being properly licensed and giving them information on the way to pay. Households may also

3 Reference: FS50154106

receive telephone calls asking whether a TV licence is needed at the address. To those who delay or try to evade payment, TV Licensing communicate the possible consequence of evasion such as the use of detection equipment and potential prosecution.

12. If there is no response to these communications then the address will be selected for a visit from an enquiry officer. Visiting can provide TV Licensing with information on whether addresses are unoccupied or derelict and whether or not there is TV receiving equipment on the premises which is capable of watching or recording TV programmes as they are being shown on TV. The BBC further explained that individuals are entitled to withdraw the implied right of access to all TV Licensing staff from their private address and officials can only enter a household with the consent of the occupier. Where a person has withdrawn the right of access, television detection equipment will be used to verify the situation at the address.

13. The BBC went on to explain that detection equipment is complex to deploy as its use is strictly governed by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (British Broadcasting Corporation) Order 2001. RIPA and the Order outline how the relevant investigatory powers are to be used by the BBC and ensure compliance with human rights.

14. Requests for authorisations for the use of detection equipment must be made in writing to the Head of Sales and Marketing or anyone holding a more senior role within the TV Licence Management Team of the BBC (who are persons designated for this purpose by the Order). The Order sets out the criteria which the authoriser must consider to assess an application of the use of detection equipment, namely that its use is:

• Necessary for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime constituting an offence under part 4 of the Communications Act 2003 or for the purpose of assessing or collecting sums payable to the BBC under regulations made under section 365 of the Communications Act 2003 and

• Proportionate to what is sought to be achieved.

15. The BBC explained that the number of detector vans in operation, the location of their deployment and the frequency is not common knowledge. It relies on the public perception that the vans could be used at any time to catch evaders. This perception has built up since the first van was launched in 1952 and has been a key cost effective method in deterring people from evading their licence fee.

Information relating to the number of detection devices and how often they are used

16. The BBC state that to release information which relates to the number of detection devices and how often they are used will change the public’s perception of their effectiveness. If the deterrent effect is lost, the BBC believes that a significant number of people would decide not to pay their licence fee, knowing

4 Reference: FS50154106

how the deployment and effectiveness of vans and other equipment will affect their chances of success in avoiding detection.

17. To support this assertion the BBC said that it is also aware that a growing number of individuals deliberately evade the licence fee due to dissatisfaction with the BBC. In 2006-07 it received 126 complaints from people who objected to paying their licence fee up from 60 in 2005-06. The BBC also stated that there are a number of blogs and forums dedicated to people who are dissatisfied with having to pay the licence fee. These sites are used by members to share information on the TV licensing system and how to evade payment. Discussions are frequently concerned with trying to determine whether detector vans can actually detect individual televisions.

18. The result of disclosing this information, the BBC claim, would be that it would lose out on funding and would be forced into a position where it would have to spend more of the licence fee on other enforcement activities.

Technical Equipment used in Television Detector Vans and handheld devices

19. The withheld information also contains details of the technical equipment used in detector vans, the BBC state that part of ensuring the effectiveness of this equipment is to keep the technology associated with how it detects television sets a secret. This is because revealing the technical elements of the detection devices would leave open the possibility of people analysing them to find weaknesses to evade detection equipment, and subsequently the licence fee.

20. The complainant has argued that it due to the cost of providing detector vans it cannot be a cost effect method of deterring potential evaders. The complainant also argued that as these devices are only used as last resort following other actions such as the database of addresses, the warning letters and the visit from TV Licensing officers, the real deterrent and greatest proportion of results and prosecutions against evaders is a result of these actions and not the use of the detection equipment. However, the BBC have not argued as to which method obtains the most prosecutions but suggest that the public’s perception on the use and deployment of vans is the greatest deterrent.

21. The Commissioner has viewed the withheld information and is satisfied that disclosure of the information would have the adverse effects discussed above. The Tribunal decision EA/2005/005 ‘John Connor Press Associates vs. the Information Commissioner’ set out the test for ‘would be likely to’ prejudice stating “the chance of prejudice being suffered should be more than a hypothetical possibility; there must have been a real and significant risk.” (Para 15).

22. This was clarified in the case of Hogan vs. the Information Commissioner EA/2005/0026 where the Tribunal found that the prejudice test is not limited to ‘would be likely to prejudice’. There is an alternative limb of ‘would prejudice’, and this second limb places a stronger evidential burden on the public authority to discharge. Where prejudice ‘would be likely to’ occur the likelihood need not be more probable than not, though it should be real and significant. For the ‘would prejudice’ test to apply, while it would not be possible to prove that prejudice

5 Reference: FS50154106

would occur beyond any doubt whatsoever, prejudice must be at least more probable than not. The BBC have applied the test for ‘would’ prejudice.

23. The Commissioner recognises the importance the BBC places on the public perception of the use of detector vans and other equipment, and he also recognises that disclosure of this information would change this perception as the information outlines: the extent of their use; the conditions under which they are used; the procedures necessary to enact their use; the equipment used and its capabilities; and the areas in which they are more or less frequently deployed. The Commissioner notes that a change in this perception could increase the evasion rate in paying TV licences by individuals. For these reasons he accepts that disclosure would prejudice the prevention or detection of crime; the prosecution of offenders; the assessment or collection of tax or the ability of the BBC to ascertain whether any person has failed to comply with the law.

24. The Commissioner finds therefore that section 31(1) (a), (b), (d) and (g) are engaged.
Public Interest Test

25. Section 31 is a qualified exemption and the Commissioner must therefore decide if the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure of the information.

26. The BBC acknowledge that disclosure of the information requested about television detection devices would help ensure that the licensing authority is exercising its functions appropriately and proportionately, that is, that people will not be unfairly subjected to detection. This is particularly important as the use of covert detection equipment has an impact on a person’s privacy. Releasing the information would reinforce the legitimacy of the process that the BBC undertakes and provide the public with some assurances about how appropriately the detection equipment is used.

27. The BBC state that disclosure would also help ensure that public funds are being appropriately applied by ensuring that the TV licensing system is being effectively and efficiently run and ensuring value for money is being obtained.

28. However, the BBC pointed out that the use of covert detection equipment is strictly regulated by the RIPA and the Order. The Office of Surveillance Commissioners is an independent public body which also monitors the BBC’s compliance with legislation regarding detection. The BBC also has a number of policies in place to ensure that it is compliant with the legislation including a RIPA audit. As such, the BBC state that there are already sufficient safeguards to ensure that it is exercising its functions appropriately and proportionately and that people are not being unfairly subjected to detection.

29. The BBC also explained that it is required to satisfy the National Audit Office (NAO) as to the value for money of the collection and enforcement arrangements and is accountable for the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of such arrangements.

6 Reference: FS50154106

30. The BBC state that releasing the information would also have a negative effect on the public interest for legitimate licence fee payers, in ensuring that their licence fee payments are not spent on additional enforcement activities, and hence negatively affect the value for money which is being obtained in two key ways:

• The BBC would receive less of the allocated licence fee to use to fulfil its public purposes; and
• The BBC would therefore need to spend more of the licence fee on additional enforcement measures.

31. Finally the BBC argue that it is in the public interest that the TV Licensing system is efficiently run. The BBC has reduced the cost of collection from 6.2% of the total licence fee collected in 1991/2, when it took over from the Home Office, to 4.1% for the financial year 2006/07. According to the BBC this demonstrates that the TV Licensing system is being efficiently run. A key part of this success has been the use of detection equipment as a significant deterrent element. The BBC argue that it is therefore in the public interest that it can continue to effectively use detection devices in the way it does to prevent and detect crime, apprehend offenders, and assess and collect the TV licence fee.

32. The complainant has argued that it is in the public’s interest that the BBC reveals the technical specification of its TV detection devices as there is no justifiable reason for it not to. He states that he believes that TV detection devices do not work in the way suggested by the BBC and cannot detect the reception of a TV broadcast but only the presence of a TV.

32. The Commissioner has considered the arguments presented by the BBC and the complainant. He notes that it is in the public interest that the BBC is able to collect all the money settled upon it through the Department for Media Culture and Sport licence fee settlement process to enable it to receive the full level of funding for its activities. He also considers that it is in the public interest that the BBC’s ability to do so is not prejudiced. The BBC estimates that the total amount of income forgone due to evasion in 2006/07 was £173 million.

33. The Commissioner also finds that it is in the public interest to ensure that the BBC can keep the cost of enforcement activities to a minimum leaving the money received from the TV Licensing system to be spent on programming. The Commissioner accepts that one of the ways the BBC achieves this goal is to rely on deterrents such as the detector van. If the details of the use and deployment of the devices were made public, their deterrent effect may be reduced.

34. For these reasons the Commissioner finds that the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

7 Reference: FS50154106

The Decision

35. The Commissioner’s decision is that the public authority dealt with the request for information in accordance with the Act.

Steps Required

36. The Commissioner requires no steps to be taken.

Failure to comply

37. Failure to comply with the steps described above may result in the Commissioner making written certification of this fact to the High Court (or the Court of Session in Scotland) pursuant to section 54 of the Act and may be dealt with as a contempt of court.
8 Reference: FS50154106

Right of Appeal

38. Either party has the right to appeal against this Decision Notice to the Information Tribunal. Information about the appeals process may be obtained from:

Information Tribunal
Arnhem House Support Centre
PO Box 6987
Leicester
LE1 6ZX
Tel: 0845 600 0877
Fax: 0116 249 4253
Email: Tinformationtribunal@tribunals.gsi.gov.uk.
Website: www.informationtribunal.gov.uk
If you wish to appeal against a decision notice, you can obtain information on how to appeal along with the relevant forms from the Information Tribunal website.
Any Notice of Appeal should be served on the Tribunal within 28 calendar days of the date on which this Decision Notice is served.
Dated the 16th day of October 2008
Signed ………………………………………………..
Anne Jones
Assistant Commissioner
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
9 Reference: FS50154106
Legal Annex
Law enforcement.
Section 31(1) provides that –
“Information which is not exempt information by virtue of section 30 is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice-
(a) the prevention or detection of crime,
(b) the apprehension or prosecution of offenders,
(c) the administration of justice,
(d) the assessment or collection of any tax or duty or of any imposition of a similar nature,
(e) the operation of the immigration controls,
(f) the maintenance of security and good order in prisons or in other institutions where persons are lawfully detained,
(g) the exercise by any public authority of its functions for any of the purposes specified in subsection (2),
(h) any civil proceedings which are brought by or on behalf of a public authority and arise out of an investigation conducted, for any of the purposes specified in subsection (2), by or on behalf of the authority by virtue of Her Majesty's prerogative or by virtue of powers conferred by or under an enactment, or
(i) any inquiry held under the Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths Inquiries (Scotland) Act 1976 to the extent that the inquiry arises out of an investigation conducted, for any of the purposes specified in subsection (2), by or on behalf of the authority by virtue of Her Majesty's prerogative or by virtue of powers conferred by or under an enactment.”
Section 31(2) provides that –
“The purposes referred to in subsection (1)(g) to (i) are-
(a) the purpose of ascertaining whether any person has failed to comply with the law,
(b) the purpose of ascertaining whether any person is responsible for any conduct which is improper,
(c) the purpose of ascertaining whether circumstances which would justify regulatory action in pursuance of any enactment exist or may arise,
(d) the purpose of ascertaining a person's fitness or competence in relation to the management of bodies corporate or in relation to any profession or other activity which he is, or seeks to become, authorised to carry on,
(e) the purpose of ascertaining the cause of an accident,
(f) the purpose of protecting charities against misconduct or mismanagement (whether by trustees or other persons) in their administration,
(g) the purpose of protecting the property of charities from loss or misapplication,
10 Reference: FS50154106
(h) the purpose of recovering the property of charities,
(i) the purpose of securing the health, safety and welfare of persons at work, and
(j) the purpose of protecting persons other than persons at work against risk to health or safety arising out of or in connection with the actions of persons at work.”
Section 31(3) provides that –
“The duty to confirm or deny does not arise if, or to the extent that, compliance with section 1(1)(a) would, or would be likely to, prejudice any of the matters mentioned in subsection (1).”
11

But What About The Cry-Wolf Effect?

Bent Society respectfully suggests that the Commsioner for Information - in considering it in the public's best interest not to reveal the fact that the BBC and TV Licensing is perpetrating a scam on the public - did not consider the scofflaw effect of the BBC claiming to be doing and able to do something that its enforcement arm - TV Licensing - does not and cannot do.

This is a huge and shameful, national level, deception that is being perpetrated upon the UK public by the bent BBC.

The evidence presented in this blog post reveals that there is a huge dirty question mark hanging over the whole organsiation that is the BBC.

Supported by Televison Licence payers, the BBC relies upon a fabricatred bed of lies of of its own making in order to coerece the public to pay for that licence. That is no way for a public, subsidised, national broadcaster to behave. If the BBC is prepared to lie to the entire British nation for decades - and to seek to collude with Government officials in perpetuating those lies - then how can we trust anything they broadcast?

How bent is that?

Robin

TV Licence? Don't Bother!

2008-09-15T06:41:00.005+01:00

If you are a committed deviant why bother to get a TV licence?

It's been three and a half years since I bought a TV licence. Every month since I gave away my old television set TV Licensing have sent me nasty threatening letters because during that time - despite me telling them here on this very blog (and them replying here on this very blog - click to see) that I do not have a TV they have taken no notice.

Threats of heavies knocking on my door, reams of recorded delivery threatening letters, of detector beams penetrating my walls, of magistrates search warrants, of huge fines - all for nothing.

Clearly these threats were all made because they thought they knew I had a TV. And so clearly also there is no room for diversity in the rigid minds of TV Licensing. Like the robot in Terminator they just keep on coming... well the letters do at least but nothing else. Zero, bugger all!

Since Mrs Hood moved in last week I now have a TV and a TV licence (Mrs Hood is no scofflaw!). But I am convinced we need not have bought the licence. Because they thought I had a TV anyway - they stalked me by Royal Mail and treated me like a criminal and liar in my own home despite the fact that I was not! Yet they could do nothing but send blustering, harassing poison pen letters. Perhaps an Englishman's home really is his castle?

In reality, like ghosts, if you ignore it TV Licensing is a mere phantom, a toothless dog, a weak bully, a cardboard policeman.

Do fierce, but in realty empty, threats of this kind create scofflaw influences in other areas I wonder?

Robin

Some Straight Dope on Cannabis While Waiting to Inhale on the Road to Enlightenment: Everything a Government Needs to Know About Cannabis

2008-06-09T06:56:00.033+01:00

Reefer Madness 2 – The Sequel

Willona Wednesday (On Monday)

Now that the dust has settled on Mr. Brown’s decision to fly in the face of expert advice and reclassify cannabis upwards from class C to class B status (see:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brown-will-upgrade-cannabis-to-class-b-substance-despite-advice-of-drugs-experts-804526.html, it is high time (the first and probably not the last feeble pun to be found in this blog) to step back and give the issue of cannabis some dispassionate consideration.

The Prime Minister’s decision is the latest in a long line of similarly politically motivated moves, which have ignored available evidence regarding the alleged harms associated with cannabis use in order to pursue a moralistic, ideological and ultimately futile policy.

The Indian Hemp Commission 1894; the LaGuardia Committee (US) 1944; the Wooton Report (UK) 1968; the Shafer Report (US) 1972; the Le Dain Commission (Canada) 1972; the Royal Commission into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (South Australia) 1978; the Runciman Report (UK) 2000 – all of these offered research based recommendations with regard to cannabis all of which were rejected out of hand by vote hungry politicians feigning public interest. So our Prime Minister's decision is as unsurprising as it is irrelevant. Who is actually going to make choices about whether to start, continue or stop using cannabis because of an inaccurate and pointless system of classification?

The following conclusions of the 1978 Royal Commission are impossible to argue against:

'The regulation of the non-medical use of cannabis has been the subject of many official inquiries. These inquiries have reached strikingly uniform conclusions on the effects of cannabis use, both on the user and the community as a whole. The failure of legislators to accept these conclusions suggests that legislative responses are affected more by the perceived social status of users and the values and perhaps prejudices of powerful groups in the community, than by a careful evaluation of the pharmaceutical, medical and sociological evidence.'

Of course the new dimension to these old themes comes in the form of skunk cannabis which has triggered a new round of moral panic, extravagant claims and misinformation, but before considering skunk in some detail it might be helpful to provide a potted (pun number two) history of cannabis in order to place the latest concerns in some sort of context.

Cannabis in the 20th century

The demonization of cannabis and those identified as its principal users in the USA (at the time Mexican immigrants and Black people) is, to a large extent, attributable to the machinations of Harry Anslinger who was appointed the US government’s Commissioner of Narcotics in 1932 and was once able to tell Congress with a straight face: “If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marijuana he would drop dead of fright.” Anslinger’s racist, xenophobic zealotry did much to cement the connection between cannabis use and psychotic behaviour and he was instrumental in the production of Reefer Madness, a ludicrous anti-marijuana propaganda film released by the US government in 1936 depicting the descent into insanity and murder of the lives of a group of young people who experiment with cannabis and listen to jazz music.

Although cannabis use in the UK would not become a significant issue until the 1960s, Anslinger’s offensive and extravagant claims regarding the drug were echoed in some elements of the British press in the 1950s where concerns about the corruption of young white women by West Indian immigrants motivated by sexual desire were freely aired. Chapman Pincher of the Daily Express informed his readers: ‘Coloured men who peddle reefers can meet susceptible teenagers at the jazz clubs.’

The Times concurred in 1957:

‘White girls who become friendly with West Indians are from time to time enticed to hemp smoking…the potential moral danger is significant, since a principal motive of the coloured man in smoking hemp is to stimulate his sexual desire.’

Come the 1960s, cannabis use became increasingly widespread with its combination of hedonism and associations with so-called ‘counter culture’ making it particularly appealing to well-educated middle class youth.

Two points regarding this period are particularly noteworthy: firstly, as those of a certain age can testify, the variety and strength of much of what was available should not be underestimated – the potency of the likes of Afghani black, Nepalese temple balls, Thai sticks, Manali and proper Jamaican or Columbian weed was very much the equal of anything currently in circulation. Secondly, the immediate response from the authorities of the day was a knee-jerk recourse to the criminal justice system leading to the frequent use of imprisonment for cannabis users and culminating in the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act which established the drug classification system recently tweaked by Mr. Brown. It is abundantly clear that neither the Act nor the classification system are currently fit for purpose.

A particularly unfortunate consequence of jailing those involved in the cannabis market who, although guilty of criminal offences, were not archetypal criminals, was the contact they inevitably made with those who undoubtedly were of that ilk. Hardened criminals whose stock in trade was violent armed robberies and whose initial view on drugs was something akin to: ‘Dwugs? Bleedin’ dwugs! Dun some fings in my time, but dwugs? Nah!’ suddenly found that a few puffs on a joint made ‘doing yer bird’ a whole lot easier and of greater interest still was the discovery that a potentially hugely profitable illicit market was being run by hippies who had never seen a gun, much less owned one.

Thus the control of the drugs business shifted from headbands giving credit to head-cases giving grief and nothing would be the same again.

Throughout the 1970s as demand for cannabis increased massively, the variety and quality began to decline and the market was largely dominated by hashish from the Indian sub-continent, which was often cut with ghee or vegetable oil and ‘Katarma Gold’ from Morocco which was mass-produced and of no more than adequate potency. As the grip of ex-pat British criminals residing in Spain’s ‘costa del crime’ tightened on the cannabis trade, Morocco increasingly became the source of hashish destined for the streets of the UK and by the 1980s what became known as ‘soapbar’ (half kilo blocks in the shape of large bars of soap) would dominate the market for the next decade and more (the only real exception being Jamaican grass, the market for which was almost exclusively confined in the UK to Black British and Caribbean communities).

Initially, the quality of soapbar was high grade but very soon the villains organising its importation, with their virtual monopoly secure, began to extract even greater profits by systematically and routinely cutting their product with some sort of wax, a practice that became replicated further down the supply chain. The upshot was that consumers were smoking cannabis that was low in quality and high in adulterants such as wax, boot polish, animal excrement and dyes, all of which must surely have caused considerable damage to users' lungs yet, astonishingly, those claiming an interest in harm reduction in relation to drugs, including all the moral entrepreneurs in both Westminster and Fleet Street, were completely silent.

What must also have been true is that many of those users became so hacked-off with the inability of this low grade rubbish to actually get them stoned, that they would turn to other drugs in order to achieve something resembling the desired effects, which ironically provided a grain of substance to the otherwise debunked 'gateway theory'.

Enter the 'Skunk.'

Against the backdrop outlined above it is hardly surprising that when skunk started to arrive from Amsterdam in the early 1990s cannabis lovers began turning to it in increasing numbers despite its relatively high price - at a typical £25 for an eighth of an ounce it was about double the price of soapbar - because it worked; it worked extremely well in fact. It worked so well that it rapidly became the market leader and as the moral outrage that had been directed at ecstasy began to fizzle out as that drug entered middle-age, the attentions of the tabloid moral entrepreneurs were turned in the direction of skunk and a second wave of 'reefer madness' was ushered in characterised by very similar extravagant claims and misinformation engendered by the likes of Anslinger first time around.

According to which newspaper was being read on a particular day, readers could be 'informed' that skunk was anything from two to twenty times stronger than other forms of cannabis, conveniently overlooking the fact that these 'other forms' of the drug were actually the all but useless soapbar referred to above. It also became received wisdom that skunk was the direct cause of mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and psychosis despite the fact that there was no reliable evidence to support such claims. Such minor details of course could not stand in the way of a good story: 'This new strain of cannabis is so incredibly strong it can bring on the early signs of schizophrenia from a single puff.' So said the Liverpool Echo. While the Daily Express put it readers straight on the issue: 'The killing (of Anthony Walker) by dope smoking Paul Taylor and Michael Barton highlighted the danger of relaxing the law.' But the gold medal must go to the Daily Mail whose readers, as noted by Max Daly in an article for Druglink: '...have been told that cannabis was to blame for a vampire fantasist who drank the blood and ate the heart of his 90 year old victim, a father smothering his baby son, a teenager slaughtering a motorist while dressed as a samurai sword-wielding ninja, a daughter bludgeoning her father to death with a poker, two crack addicted teenagers punching to death a baby and a mental patient strangling his former lover.'

And all that over a period of just 18 months!

These grisly revelations, it seems, actually emanate from defence barristers seeking to convince courts that their clients were suffering from some cannabis induced diminishment of responsibility (don't even start me on the antics of our legal eagles - who will be the subject of a future blog, but suffice it to say for now that rather too many of them couldn't lie straight in a bed!).

It must be acknowledged that there are genuine concerns about skunk and there are many contributions to the debate that articulate these in more measured fashion than the sort of irresponsible political and press drivel outlined above, but the effect of such hysterical nonsense is to confine the 'debate' almost exclusively to the issues of mental health and the drug's correct classification. As such, more radical proposals about how best to address the issue of cannabis use have become so marginalised as to be virtually off the radar. However, this does not alter the fact that millions of people will continue to smoke skunk regardless of anything the law may say or the efforts of the criminal justice system and it is therefore vital that the issue is approached dispassionately and in the round. This should involve careful consideration of the following broad themes: 1. Potency, effects and the market 2. Links to mental health 3. Young people and binge culture.

Potency, effects and the market.

Although, as already noted, widely disparate claims have been made about the potency of skunk based on the level of the perceived principal active ingredient (THC), there is at the same time, almost perversely, a general consensus that this form of cannabis is super-strong. I say 'perceived' because cannabis is a highly complex substance containing some 400 chemicals and there is much to learn about the various ways these work, not least in respect of the drug's undoubted medicinal properties, but for the purposes of this discussion, two are of particular interest - THC and cannabidiol.

While the popular perception sees THC as the element that provides the desired effects for recreational users i.e. 'getting high', it is becoming increasingly understood that in fact, the pleasant feeling of relaxed euphoria (bordering on silliness) and heightened senses (often associated with creativity) which users seek and enjoy, is actually achieved by the balanced combination of both THC and cannabidiol.

There is growing recognition that while THC can produce feelings of anxiety and even paranoia leading in some cases to what might be termed psychosis, cannabidiol contains anti-psychotic properties, thus, like many things in nature, cannabis is at its optimum when containing the appropriate balance between these two ingredients. It may well be the case that the process of modifying the cannabis plant in order to create a version that can be grown quickly under hydroponic conditions i.e. skunk, has resulted in a plant in which the balance between THC and cannabidiol has become skewed in the direction of the former.

It should also be understood that contrary to the impression often created, skunk is not of uniform super strength. It is grown variously by gangs of organised criminals, second hand car dealers from Essex, single mothers and enthusiastic amateurs looking to satisfy their own needs along with a degree of profit. The first named will obviously dominate the market and will prioritise the interests of maximising yield and minimising costs over concerns about quality and in doing so produce what is known in the trade as 'commercial' - a strain of reasonable strength, but rarely spectacular. The quality of product amongst other growers is liable to considerable variation and worryingly there is increasing evidence of street level skunk being adulterated by either the addition of tiny glass globules both to increase weight and the crystalline appearance often looked for by consumers (who will therefore be unwittingly smoking molten glass!), or by squirting the buds with hairspray, again to enhance feeling and texture, but again unlikely to be of benefit to consumers' lungs.

The overall impression then is of a market dominated by organised criminal groups with no concerns about the welfare of consumers - many of whom will be purchasing a product of uncertain strength and purity.

Links to mental health.

As with the presumed super potency of skunk, the inexorable link between cannabis use and mental health problems has become an assumption more the result of tabloid reportage than any considered examination of evidence.

Not long ago I watched an edition of BBC's Question Time in astonishment as arch elitist rabid old-school Tory-boy Norman Tebbitt of all people (that's him pictured right), stated with total authority that smoking cannabis caused schizophrenia; since when did Norman Tebbitt get to know anything about cannabis?

What we can say is that anyone with existing or latent mental health problems, as well as those with a genetic predisposition towards mental ill-health should not take cannabis, nor indeed any mind-altering drug, including alcohol. What we most certainly cannot say is that cannabis is directly causal in producing mental health problems amongst hitherto mentally well individuals, although persistent heavy use over a period of time is likely to increase the risk of such an occurrence particularly if the product is over represented in the THC department.

The fact is that, as with alcohol, most people who use cannabis do so recreationally and, more or less, responsibly. In reality, therefore, the biggest health risk they face from using cannabis is likely to be lung damage, which results from smoking it - usually with tobacco.

Young British people and binge culture.

For most town and city dwellers it is a fairly common experience to see young people, complete with baseball cap at improbable angle and those ridiculous mock belt-less prison-style trousers with arse somewhere round the knees, openly smoking cannabis with apparent impunity - although I somehow doubt whether Prime Minister Mr. 'I'm in touch with the people' Brown (pictured right) has encountered this himself.

This suggests not only the irrelevance of the law (let alone the classification system) regarding cannabis to these young people, but also the impotence of a law that is largely unenforceable. A worrying aspect of such a situation is the distinct possibility that for some of these youngsters, the law in its entirety can be treated with the same disregard.

It might also be asked with regard to the laws on cannabis, how can anyone respect laws that prohibit the possession of cannabis yet permit the purchase of seeds, the equipment to cultivate them and all manner of items to facilitate the consumption of cannabis, including king size rolling papers manufactured by a multinational company that must be fully aware of the use to which these are put?

As with alcohol there can be no surprise that many young people are happy to experiment with cannabis, but the concern in both cases is not consumption in itself, but the extent and volume of that consumption and the great British predilection for excessive, binge consumption, which turns what should be moderate and controlled usage into some sort of competitive event in which excess becomes the ultimate aim. And make no mistake, this culture of excess is not going to be addressed or altered by legislation, much less any tinkering with an outdated system of classification.

There is clear role for education in all of this, yet our education system is in a parlous state for the most part and seems more about getting students through assessments for league table purposes rather than actually educating young people about the world they find themselves in.

Few areas of the system are more parlous than that of drugs education, mired as it is in a foggy-bog of negative, slanted, partial information that is more propaganda than anything resembling true education.

Surely if we want our young people to make sensible decisions about substances that are both enjoyable and potentially harmful, we must be prepared to broach the issues openly and honestly? This lesson was learnt some time ago by the Dutch who have been able to develop a system of controlled access to cannabis which, in harness with honest education and active social policies, has led to lower rates of consumption and far fewer drug related problems than is the case in this country.

And finally.

To anyone prepared to be objective, it ought to be abundantly clear that during 40 odd years of trying to legislate and 'criminal justice' our way out of cannabis consumption, the very thing that was designed to be curtailed has, in fact become commonplace and there is no earthly reason for thinking that change is just around the corner.

Common sense therefore bellows at us: 'TRY ANOTHER WAY'.

Can we not bow to the inevitable and accept that what is needed is a pragmatic response to something that is here to stay so that we might manage the situation far better? Would it be so hard to envisage a system where legal and controlled access to a substance that is quality assured is made possible? A system where safer methods of consumption than smoking, such as vapourisers, can be developed and promoted in order to genuinely reduce harm? And shouldn't it be the absolute right of a young person to be given full and honest information about a drug so widely available and used that almost all of them will come into contact with it in some way?

You tell me. All comments are very warmly welcome.

Will

B.S. Postscript 9th June 2008
Are our young people perhaps merely being fobbed off with lip-service drugs and alcohol information websites such as Talk to Frank http://www.talktofrank.com/home_html.aspx ?
And has research been conducted to determine whether smoking hairspray and molton glass induces psychosis?

"No Customers no Theives"

2008-06-05T15:41:00.012+01:00

Do we need more police eyes on the street?

Yesterday, around 2pm away from CCTV coverage, I watched as a thin young man in his mid twenties displaying all the worn-out prematurely aged signs of opiate addicting lent through the passenger side window of a black hackney cab that was in a rank-line of others waiting for passengers to turn up.

My suspicions were immediately aroused and yet I was surprised to see he did not have a holdall with him from which to hawk stolen goods. Then I spotted his accomplice at the far back end of the rank of cabs - his eyes staring in his friends direction. In his hand was a black bin liner with something square, and possibly electrical, about the size of a stereo amp, CD player of computer games console inside it.

I went a little further up the road and lent against a wall and watched them. The one leaning in through the cab window called his similarly becapped and unshaven gaunt young friend over. And then the bag was put inside the cab. The deal was done. Not a police officer in sight.

On reflection, I should have taken the licence plate and Hackney licence serial number of the cab down and reported what I'd seen to the police. But even if I had - what would have happened? what could I prove?

The motivation is reinforced in the minds of the thieves so that another person will fall victim to those two (for I'm guessing that they were burglars) today and tomorrow and everyday until they are caught. The cab driver's pounds feed both their addiction and the motivations of the organised criminals behind it. Someone, somewhere tonight, will be enjoying whatever entertainment they get from getting someone elses property at a "knock-off" price.

The victim of theft may have expensive door and window repairs to organise. If they have it, then they will have time consuming insurance claims to make. And for many months to come, every time they come home they will most likely expect to find they've been burgled again.

Cab drivers are regular buyers of stolen goods. Ask any prolific thief. Ask any cab driver. The deals can and often are done openly on busy city streets.

Welcome to modern day BentSociety Britain!

I always used to tip taxi drivers a pound. I'm not going to anymore. I've another tip for them all from now on: "Don't buy stolen goods: because it causes social misery...just like not getting a pound tip off me instead of this advice."

I hope they will dwell on it.

Robin

Robin’s Hi-Tech Crime Futurology

2008-05-31T15:52:00.000+01:00

Move Over Asimov

Will Thought Crimes Need to be Invented in the Near Future?

The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov developed his now famous laws of robotics as a framework around which to write his science fiction stories.

These are his three laws of robotics:

First Law:

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law:

A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law:

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Artificial Life Imitating Art

These laws have in fact been taken on board by today’s robot designers see: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/Asimov.html and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6425927.stm

Following news this week, however, that scientists have implanted probes into a monkey’s brain - allowing it to control a robot arm in order to feed itself by thoughts alone - these laws may be redundant before they even have a chance to come into effect.

Are Asimov's Laws of Robotics Now Redundant?

We’ve tended to think about intelligent robots of the future as having some kind of artificial intelligence that would enable them to function as autonomous decision making and order following machines. But the monkey-arm experiment has shown that such ideas might now become redundant – at least for the foreseeable future.

The way I see it is this.

With blue-tooth equipment functioning perfectly everywhere these days it does not take a quantum leap to foresee that scientists will soon have poor little strapped-up monkeys feeding themselves with wireless arm technology.

As I watched the news about the monkey’s robot arm, I imagined a headless shiny robot sitting on the couch beside to my fiancée. She would need only to think: “Pass the remote control Jeeves” and the robot would hand it to her.

Then the infernal criminology kicked in again.

I Imagined now two different people, along with their headless and brainless robot servant, sitting on a couch. The humans are arguing violently about something that raises great passions in their hearts.

Under heated circumstances such as these, one person might think: “Arghh I really want to strangle you right now!” And Jeeves would be up like a polished aluminium shot crushing the hapless human victim's windpipe in a nano-second!

Looks like we’re going to need some new laws of Brainless Robotics then.

And so I thought I’d get in first and draft them now, so that I can get a knighthood.

Bent Society's Brainless Robot Thought Crime Laws (remember you read them here first)

1. A person cannot think violent thoughts towards another person while their brainless robot is within mind-controlling range.

2. A person cannot think acquisitive criminal thoughts about property that does not belong to them while their brainless robot is within mind-controlling range.

3. A person cannot think thoughts about committing criminal damage while their brainless robot is within mind-controlling range.

There that I reckon should keep us safe for a while. Or will it do you think?

Robin
A bloke from the past blogging for the future

Can a Bit of Bentness be Beneficial?

2008-05-28T07:44:00.001+01:00

The Tale of

Teddy Bear Ted

Just to allay any fears that the Bent Society Society is in the business of seizing the moral high ground, today’s edition of Will’s Wednesday Blog raises the question: Can a bit of bent activity be good for us?

It was Emile Durkheim who first espoused what was then the highly controversial notion that crime was a normal part of society and indeed that a society with little or no crime would be unhealthy in that it would be over-controlled and stagnant and that some crime could bring benefit to society. A classic example can be found with the suffragette movement - in their day these women were branded as criminals, in our day we recognise them as heroines who moved society forward. In keeping with this great sociological insight and to pose the question albeit in a far more modest context, I bring you the tale of Teddy Bear Ted.

The story goes back to a time when what are now known in Britain as ’Snooker Centres’, providing the facilities for a respectable leisure pursuit, were called billiard halls providing the environment in which many a youth was misspent.

In just such a den of iniquity located in London’s East End, characters answering to monikers such as Fat Jack, Eleven to Ten Bernie, The Cat, Peter the Hat and more besides spent their days avoiding honest toil and looking instead for something better than an even break. Inevitably, gambling was central to billiard hall life and anyone who could provide what appeared to be good quality ’information’ regarding the prospects of quadrupeds in forthcoming races was a highly respected man. None became more respected than the individual who had access to greyhound tips emanating from one Teddy Bear Ted and after four straight winners Ted had acquired an enthusiastic fan club despite the fact that no-one actually knew who he was.

So it was that the next time the word came, “got one from the Teddy Bear”, a sizeable posse from the billiard hall was off to the dogs armed with every last pound they could scrape together from all manner of sources.

As, alas, is the way of all good things, this one was about to come to an end and several of the assembled company were ruefully asking why they, in particular, always seemed to be there just as the wheel came off, since it was obvious as the runners headed for the penultimate bend that the wretched beast could not win even if it suddenly sprouted wings.

But suddenly, just as hope was abandoned and losing tickets were about to be tossed into the night sky they were preceded by another object winging its way through space. A four foot toy teddy bear landed with consummate timing right in the path of the leading greyhound and for that glorious moment canine chaos reigned as dogs collided with both bear and one another, rolled over and headed in all directions other than the winning line.

To the great relief of certain overstretched punters, the ’No Race’ sign flashed large on the totalisator board signifying all bets void and the safe return of all stakes. Meanwhile, the teddy bear was securely in custody but remaining tight-lipped, while both the whereabouts and identity of Ted remain a mystery to this day.

Now there can be no doubt that the escapades of Teddy Bear Ted were bent and had the thin blue line extended as far as Ted’s collar, some sort of offence would have been found with which to charge our bold hero and his behaviour duly admonished, but wouldn’t life’s rich tapestry be that much poorer without the colour, without the bentness that the likes of Teddy Bear Ted bring to society?

Will

Setting the Record Straight About Smartwater for Perpetuity

2008-05-16T15:37:00.004+01:00

DO NOT BE MISLED BY COMMERCIAL HYPE

This Bent Society Article Should be of Interest to Police Agencies and Academics Wishing to Know More About the Ineffectiveness of ALL Property Marking Schemes

This Article Provides Essential Information on a Series of Earlier Posts Labelled 'Smartwater - Dumb Idea?'

The following text is taken directly from an email sent recently to an academic criminologist because he had been named in the comments section on one of the posts. He sent the email to us for publication.

Please note that Bent Society has highlighted some of the text to emphasise what WE see as certain key points in the text.

Email from the team that evaluated Smartwater begins:

'I have some points regarding the interpretation of our work that I would like to share with you.

There is an implication within these discussions that the work undertaken by Perpetuity has concluded that SmartWater reduces crime.

The most recent study did not evaluate SmartWater in this way. The approach taken was to ask offenders in an area where the scheme had been implemented well for their views, and they said at that place and point in time that they felt it was an issue. It did not conclude that Smartwater reduces crime.

It would be useful I think to put some of the discussion about what we found in context since I feel that some of the claims are beyond what the data allows.

In the past we have conducted work on property marking, including interviewing offenders, and concluded it was ineffective. This is not unusual with security measures, they are often found to be less effective in practice and clearly we need more research to tell us why. The problem from our point of view is that many companies make claims about their products, but we were unable to substantiate them, and the dearth of research does not help.

We approached several parties to see if we could set up a full scale evaluation of property marking (using experimental design and/or realist evaluation) but we were unable to generate any interest.

We did hear that SmartWater may be interested funding in a full scale evaluation, and we proposed this to them. We had conducted a small scale evaluation for a client of theirs and found it was not fully effective, not necessarily their fault, it takes a lot to make measures work. But we were keen to get them to think about evaluation. To their credit they considered the idea but they had more immediate needs. They wanted to know whether offenders had noticed it but focussed on an area where their strategy was working. After all, a key point about SmartWater is that it needs to be implemented as part of a strategy. Interviewing offenders and asking them what they think in an area where there is no strategy would be likely to generate a finding that it doesn’t work. They wanted to go beyond that. So they identified an area where SmartWater was working. To be clear, this was not chosen because it was representative, and the report makes this clear, it was chosen because the strategy was mostly working (or so they hoped). And they wanted to know what offenders in that area thought about it.

SmartWater was very high profile in the police station there and so this is very definitely not typical and not representative of all areas.

We would have expected the responses to be more positive here compared to that in other research precisely because it was implemented as part of a strategy.

Clearly this was not a full independent evaluation, it was a snapshot of offenders’ views at a point in time. That was all it could ever be, but it does provide us with insights that we did not have before and provided important data for SmartWater. But this is not evidence that it works, or that it is better than the alternatives.

We asked what offenders thought in the police station and they were clearly generally concerned about the impact SmartWater might have on them (although some were not) but this may bear no relation to how they behave in practice.

What is really needed is a full scale independent evaluation.

Ideally, this would compare different types of approaches to property protection and identify not just whether something works, but why it does or does not. All too often in our experience security does not meet expectations, and we need to know much more about the reasons why.'

Email sent by:

Kate Broadhurst
Head of Research
Perpetuity Research & Consultancy International
(PRCI) Ltd
148 Upper New Walk
Leicester LE1 7QAUK

www.perpetuitygroup.com/prci

Direct line: +44 (0)116 222 5559
Fax: +44 (0)116 222 5557

Bent Society would like to warmly thank Perpetuity for this information

How to Bring About the End of Crime Reduction Quackery

2008-05-13T23:27:00.000+01:00

What harm do ineffective crime reduction products really do?

If a crime reduction product is falsely represented as effective - then by default that must mean that its purchase and use by the police and community safety partnerships has diminished our stock of scarce resources in the fight against crimes. This applies both in terms of the development, trial, evaluation and implementation of new and effective crime reduction measures and in expenditure on and implementation of proven methods.

By "product" I am referring here to hardware as well as crime reduction programmes, systems and media-based campaigns

Falsely representing the effectiveness of a crime reduction product then - so that it is marketed and purchased nationwide -when it is not statistically significantly cost- effective at all - may directly impact upon levels of victimisation across a whole nation.

Should false representation of the efficacy of a crime reduction product be a very serious criminal offence?

In fact we do not have an adequate law to deal with this. But if we are to demand that we all deserve something much better than the current shameful, ludicrous and harmful level of quackery in crime reduction in Britain, then we might propose that crime reduction products, which are purchased with tax payer’s money, must be regularly certificated as proven to be effective in reducing crime by proper independent scientific evaluation.

With such a national scheme in place we could then demand legislation that would create the offence of: “Deliberately, Recklessly or Negligently Manufacturing, Marketing and/or Supplying an Ineffective Crime Reduction Product.”

I'm not sure about this though, because it sounds rather like something a dreadful dictator might impose upon a nation.

Perhaps simply being named and shamed and out-debated by experienced and qualified criminologists in the public arena of the Blogosphere will suffice?

WHAT SHOULD PROPER CRIME REDUCTION EVALUATION INVOLVE?

To move beyond the current practice of implementing completely unproven methods without trial, monitoring and evaluation and to move beyond the current embarrassingly slack acceptance of things that appear "promising" in crime reduction we need to set a national and widely acceptable standard of crime reduction evaluation. To incorporate the best of all methods of evaluation in criminology I think that crime reduction "products" should be subjected to a double-blind quasi experimental design evaluation with a parallel Realist evaluation.

For those seeking to read literature to begin to understand exactly what that might entail I recommend the following:

Foster, J. Hope, T. with Dowds, L. and Sutton, M. (1993) Housing, Community and Crime: The Impact of the Priority Estates Project. Home Office Research Study 131. London.
Available free online: http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors131.pdf

Tilley, N. and Pawson, R. (1997). Realistic Evaluation, London: Sage.

Further useful reading:
Paul Ekblom and Ken Pease, Crime and Justice, Vol. 19, Building a Safer Society: Strategic Approaches to Crime Prevention (1995), pp. 585-662
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
See: http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0192-3234(1995)19%3C585%3AECP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R&cookieSet=1

Double-blind trials

The use of the double-blind trial is such a fundamental tenet of medical research that an explanation of what it involves can be found in thousands of useful text books on medicine. Criminologists and sociologists have shied away from it in the past, sometimes claiming that it might be unethical - or else too expensive. I believe that such claims are based upon no more than laziness, lack of skills and knowledge or else lack of adequate research funding. If it is accepted as the best way to truly tell if something works in medicine then it is even less unethical to use it in crime reduction evaluation. Indeed, it should be the minimum standard point at which we begin.

Criminology, Disease and Lucky Rafting Monkeys Part 1

2008-03-06T17:57:00.000+00:00

One of our readers, Burt Russle, posted a comment on the Freakonomics review post which provides some quite interesting further insights into other celebrity authors plagiarising work and vaingloriously profiteering of the back of the unattributed concepts, writing and research of others.

Of particular interest to me in the article Burt forwarded (see: http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1763.html ) is that the author in question claimed that an unattributed research assistant inserted large quantities of written text into his book without him knowing that it was plagiarised. Whichever way you look at that case you can see that the academic in question is cheating someone - either the original author of the plagiarised work, or else the book buying public who purchased the professor's book believing him to be the sole author.

I believe I may have experienced something similar as a consumer of books. Let me explain.

I have been a long time fan of the biologist and Darwinist Professor Richard Dawkins (that's him on the right) - I loved his best selling book 'The Selfish Gene' and also his more controversial 'The God Delusion'. On that basis, my girlfriend bought me a copy of his 2004 book: "The Ancestors Tale".

Unlike Dawkins' other books, which I was barely able to put down and loved almost every page of, I found The Ancestors Tale more boring and hard to read than James Joyce's Ulysses (the only other book I have never finished once started) and was unable to get more than a third of the way through it before giving up, because the tedious subject matter and dense writing style was literally killing me. What could be the possible reason for this? I suspect, and I know that I could be wrong here, but I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that on the inside cover the book we are told that it is authored by Richard Dawkins, with additional research by Yan Wong. The telling question here that I ask myself is this: Did Yan Wong write any of the text in the book, and if so, how much? OK - 'nuf said on that score because its a speculative dead end.

But one very small section of that book did interest me. At pages 148-150 Dawkins writes about how both disasters and beneficial natural phenomenon do happen against extreme odds.

The Lucky Monkey Principle

In what we might conveniently refer to as the Lucky Monkey Principle, Dawkins explains how species can travel thousands of miles from one land mass to another and colonise it by chance.

What happens is that during fierce tropical storms pieces of swampland or natural rafts made up of trees and other debris containing live animals (often those that were bedded down in trees etc for the night before the storm struck) can against huge odds transport live animals across oceans to dry land many, many miles away. He writes (Dawkins 2004. p 148):

"The point about intercontinental rafting of monkeys, or rodents or anything else, is that it only has to happen once, and the time available for it to happen, in order to have momentous consequences, is way outside what we can grasp intuitively. The odds against a floating mangrove bearing a pregnant female monkey and reaching landfall in any one year may be ten thousand to one against. That sounds tantamount to impossible by the lights of human experience. But given 10 million years it becomes almost inevitable."

And the interesting bit for us humans is what Dawkins later goes on to write (p150) about this principle:

"I can't resist remarking how chilling this kind of 'it only had to happen once' logic becomes when you apply it to contingencies nearer home. The principle of nuclear deterrence, and the only remotely defensible justification for possessing nuclear weapons, is that nobody will dare risk a first strike for fear of massive retaliation. What are the odds against a mistaken missile launch: a dictator who goes mad; a computer system that malfunctions; an escalation of threats that gets out of hand? what are the odds against a terrible mistake, initiating Armageddon? A hundred to one against, within any one year? I would be more pessimistic. We came awfully close in 1963."

So what's the link between all this and disease and criminology and Bent Society?

Well, there might be none, if it turns out that I've been tormented to complete insanity by reading and commenting on that spurious and poisonous junk-science-drivel written about crime and criminologists in Freakonomics. On the other hand, Monday's post (next week) will once again be exploring yet another quite rational but strangely unexplored area of criminology and life in modern Britain.

Actually, I hope its the latter.

Until then, dear reader.

Dr Society

References

Dawkins, R. (2004) The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. London. Orion Books.

Further Punterization Issues

2008-02-21T10:48:00.000+00:00

Take the money and run punterization rouses: there should be a law against them!

I’ve noticed now that British Airways (BA) is automatically adding travel insurance to the cost of flights for customers who book online (Readers Rants, Sunday Times Travel Supplement. February 10, 2008 p. 30.). The way this works is that unless you see that this is what is happening and chose to check the box so that the charge is not added you get billed for it on it your credit card. I wonder how many people are getting caught out who already have travel insurance – or who wanted to book it separately – or not at all are being caught out by this rouse. Either way BA stands to gain more from doing this than what they did before where customers chose to opt-in for insurance if they wanted it.

Last year I booked a flight to Berlin with the cheapest budget operator I could find – Ryanair. And Ryanair’s website was then doing the same thing with insurance that BA is doing now. So it seems that BA is now adopting the snaky business practices of budget airlines. Bent Society business practices can be seen here to rise up then and infest others like damp mould from any old corrupt cellar.

Interestingly I found out something else about Ryanair’s business practices that are designed to catch your pocket. Having booked my flight and chosen to purposefully exclude Ryanair’s insurance - that their website tried automatically to add to my booking – I was asked if I wanted now to book my hotel through Ryanair while still online on their website and pay for the tickets and hotel in one go. I looked at the price for the hotel I wanted and wrote it down and decided that I would book it through Ryanair but only after I had paid for my tickets and only if I could not get a cheaper deal on the booking elsewhere. So at that point I simply paid for my flight and logged out of the website.

Looking elsewhere on the Internet, I found that I could get the room I wanted in the same hotel a little cheaper by going directly to the hotel’s German website. But I decided to go back and book it through Ryanair – so that at least I would not be bumped from my flight if Ryanair oversubscribed the flight. And unbelievably that is something that airlines are legally able to do, because they work out that on average there is always someone who cannot make it due to delays or whatever. But when, on the odd occasion, everyone happens to turn up who booked a ticket - all expecting that to mean they have a seat paid for and reserved – that’s when people get bumped. My reasoning was that with corresponding hotel reservations for that night booked through Ryanair I would not be a prime candidate for bumping. And I was not paying personally anyway because this was an all expenses paid trip to deliver a criminology paper at an international conference.

Now here is the snaky business bit – the exact same hotel booking was a lot cheaper on the Ryanair Website, now that they did not know I had bought a flight from them, than it was when I booked my ticket and they asked if I wanted also to book a hotel in order to get a good deal by paying for the flight and hotel together.

Why would they do this? Surely there should be discount for booking the two together? Well not if you think the way Ryanair does. Because Ryanair’s Flight and Hotel Snaky Charge Rouse must surely work on the principle that Ryanair reason that anyone opting to book their hotel with the airline that they just bought their flight from are going to be lazy, dumb, or too busy - or else their company is paying and they don’t care - to bother to shop around. But those just coming to the Ryanair site to check out hotel prices –as the system assumed I was doing on my second visit - are going to be thrifty bargain hunters looking for the cheapest deal.

Just one more trickle-down corrupting influence courtesy of Ryanair.
Nice going Ryanair. This devious little business rouse shows us exactly what you think of your punters (oops sorry I mean customers) doesn’t it. What a fine wily old example to set for our younger people about morals and treacherous Bent Society snaky dealings.

Further Tales of the Punterization of 'Customers'

2008-02-20T11:35:00.000+00:00

Direct Debit Business Snakiness and Related Scams

Since the first shockwaves of the impending UK acquisitive Crimequake predicted in yesterday’s post are some months away from hitting us yet, today’s post focuses upon yet more mundane examples of snaky Bent Society practices that we encounter daily in Britain.

On Monday’s post I mentioned the fact that British ramblers are outraged at the hypocrisy of Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary of State, for not allowing a public right of way around his family’s coastal property when she was instrumental in getting rights of way established over the land of so many other coastal property owners.

Interstingly, last week I received a letter from the Ramblers Association that represents an example of how businesses and other organisations seek to profit from a relatively new but already common place banking procedure known as Direct Debit. Essentially, Direct Debits are used to pay for all kinds of gods and services including insurance, membership fees and utility bills. And once started by them, Direct Debits have to be cancelled by the bank account holder - or else the money is paid to whoever they have given written authority to take money from their account. And just so long as the person or organisation receiving money from the Direct Debit writes to you at your last known address warning you –and thereby tipping you off to cancel the Direct Debit if you wish to so do- they can even increase the amount taken by whatever they like.

In effect, unless you cancel the Direct Debit yourself they can and will keep taking your money

And so the Ramblers Association, of which I am a member, wrote to me last week to inform me that: “We will debit your account £** on (amount and date removed to preserve anonymity) unless you advise otherwise. Please let us know immediately if this should be changed.”

Now, personally, I would rather the system worked where the Direct Debit ended each year and they wrote in advance of the termination date asking for my approval to keep it active. But then of course the Ramblers’ Association and other businesses and bodies would not make all the millions they must get from ill, dead, forgetful, over-worked, stressed out, money rich but time poor, lackadaisical and/or regular address changing punters.

Anyway, the fact that Direct Debits per se have great potential to work against our financial interests, unless we stay on the ball, is a minor Bent Society issue compared with other Direct Debit related business tricks - such as those practiced by major utility companies in the UK. Because at least, so long as we are not dead or too ill to enjoy it, we get what we pay for with non-cancelled Direct Debits. However, as the next example reveals, some utility companies are getting away with unnecessarily holding onto, and no doubt investing, their customer’s money while providing no service for it - nor paying them any interest whatsoever.

The e-on keep the customer’s money for aeons scam

I am a customer of the electricity provider e-on (the Direct Debit scam-artist utility company formerly known as Powergen). In the autumn I received a statement from e-on to tell me that my meter had been read and that I was more then £100 in credit. In other words I had been paying considerably more on my Direct Debit over the past year than I was using in electricity. Now, ‘all should be well’ I thought because e-on’s autumn 2007 letter kindly went on the say: “As you pay by Direct Debit, we will carry your balance forward to your next statement. We regularly review how much you are paying to make sure it is the right amount and will let you know if it needs to change.”

Well e-on, first of all I would like to say here how wonderfully vague-spin-Bliarite of you to use the word regularly. How regularly exactly is that then– once a year? Once every 5 years. Every decade perhaps? I ask this in all sincerity, because at the end of January 2008 e-on wrote to me again to inform me that my payments are now considerably over £100 in credit - oh and also to let me know that they are regularly reviewing the situation blah, blah etc, etc. But they have not paid me back the excess money they have taken and they include no mention of an intention to do so.

I feel tempted to telephone e-on in order to ask them to please let me have my extra money back now thank you very much – just like I remember I had to do earlier last springtime when the same thing happened. But no dear readers, in the interests of social science let us see instead exactly what e-on means by “regularly reviewing” my monthly payments and what happens to the excess balance of my money that is in their bank account.

Dr Society

Furious Pedalling Menace and Terrorists Please Ask Before You Undertake Reconnaissance

2007-11-26T17:58:00.000+00:00

I took this shot a few days ago inside my local shopping centre - the Victoria Centre in Nottingham.

The picture is of a young man doing what teenagers have been doing for centuries:
"testing the boundaries of society".

This hooded young chap was riding his bike blatantly through a crowded indoor shopping centre. And he almost made it before being intercepted by a special constable.

Well if we must let them ride like maniacs on the pavements because our roads are full of speeding motorists - like myself - then perhaps this is all we can expect. How long I wonder before they ride them inside the shops too? Actually, I bet that one has happened already.

Terrorists Please Mind Your Manners

As I was putting my camera away a security person in suit informed me that I was on private property and was not allowed to take photographs without permission. When I asked him why that was so, I could get no more sense out of him than you can on most nights from the average steroid pumped bar bouncer. He did manage to say it was a rule - at least that is what I think he said. When I asked him where the signs were to inform us poor hapless shoppers of this rule he sternly informed me that because it was private property they did not have to use signs. Unable to get any more sense from him I thanked him for the information, let him know I had my picture anyway and bid him farewell. As I walked away all he could call out after me was "What...What...What!" Honestly, you could not make this stuff up.

What has become of us?

A few minutes later I asked a much more articulate security fellow what his colleague had been going on about. It seems that they are afraid of terrorism. The faceless people in charge of the Victoria Shopping Centre will let you take a picture inside their private property if you ask a security operative first. But you must ask nicely.

So, for the record, lets get this straight then. In a shopping precinct, in England, right in the centre of the high street, at Christmas ,with your children, if you find someone in a paid position of authority and ask them nicely then they might just agree to let you take a picture of your family in front of the seasonal decorations.

And just so long as terrorists do not look like terrorists - and are not inarticulate and rude when asking permission - it appears they can then take all the pictures they want. Therefore, I suppose, if Bin Laden and his friends (that is him on the right) want to be photographed next to Santa and the Christmas Tree - all he has to do is adopt a disguise then find a guard and ask nicely. Or, they could simply take a picture like I did and put up with then being told it is not allowed, before they take it back to their splinter cell to sit down and plan where to leave their evil rucksacks.

What have we come to? Now even our shopping centres are resembling a private police republic. What's next I wonder - no photographs on the street?

----

POSTSCRIPT (10 March 2008)

A couple from Spain were ordered out of an indoor shopping centre for taking photographs of their grandchildren - for the same fears of photography aiding terrorism. Story reported in the Daily Mail on Friday 7 March 2008 - and online here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=505649&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments

DEMOS Think Tank Highlights Bent Society Story

2007-11-16T12:09:00.000+00:00

Item of some interest

It may be of interest to Bent Society readers to note that, as the above image shows, the think tank DEMOS recently highlighted a Bent Society post. It seems that the blog is beginning to reach the ears of policy advisers already. This is quite encouraging.

Here is the link that appeared on Google: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:fVkhCMyOyMIJ:www.demos.co.uk/themes/~society+bent+society&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=uk

Just click the link and scroll down the DEMOS site. In the bottom right hand corner of the screen is the relevant story. If you click the story title it takes you to the Bent Society post on the Telegraph blog site that acts as a signpost to the Bent Society Blog site - which is, of course, here.

Dr Society