“I boarded a crowded train with a group of colleagues; we journeyed
through the train looking for places; there wasn’t a place for all of us
to sit down" Jeremy Corbyn.
Yes there was but you all wanted to sit together. It is a train, not a Tardis. Other people may get on it first and tend to dot themselves about. The consequence is that it is unreasonable to expect to turn up on an open ticket and get seating in exactly the configuration you wish, especially if you are travelling as a group. This also applies at theatres, cinemas, buses, tube trains and your doctor's waiting room.
It is ludicrous that a grown man has a tantrum - wah, wanna sit wiv me mates, wanna magic train wot expands to make a magic office for me - and still expects to lead the Opposition. The correct response would be to stick him on the naughty step and tell him to learn to behave properly if he wants to be taken seriously.
People who wish to sit together have the option of pre-booking a seat. If you do not have online access, the booking office will help. The later you leave it, the less likely you are to be able to sit with your friends. On an open ticket you take your chance with whatever is available.
Q. If you and your mates get on a train without having booked seats together, how likely is it that the train guard will shuffle everyone else around in order to get you a special magic snowflake office?
A. Quite high if you are the leader of the Labour Party. Jezza accepted special treatment and even tried to pretend that he did not.
Having provided that special treatment for Corbyn's administratively incompetent staff, the least Virgin could have expected was a 'thank you'. Instead, they got a misleading piece of propaganda which was suspiciously pre-cooked as the film maker was there.
It takes a lot to make me sympathetic towards Richard Branson, but Corbyn managed it.
Showing posts with label PR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PR. Show all posts
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Monday, 17 November 2014
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
When Dr Matt Taylor gave the good news about the Rosetta mission, and with every right to be proud of his achievement in space exploration for the European Space Agency, there was a disastrous failure of PR which nearly wrecked the project. The project that day was not space exploration. That's what they do on all other days. The job that day was to engage the public to gain support so that funding remained and might be increased.
Dr Taylor walked into the world media's eye in a graphical shirt made by a friend and Twitter went kaboom. The component which failed was the head of public affairs. Instead of insisting that the Mission was the star of the show and that a key presenter would be wearing a plain, comfortable, casual shirt with long sleeves, Dr Taylor was allowed to toddle out eupohric in his party wear.
The public face of the European Space Agency (ESA), at the point it was talking to the people who pay the bills, had accidentally fallen in to the hands of a kindly tattoo artist's wife in Chelmsford, and she had chosen a fabric design based on popular cover art for classic science fiction.
Amongst friends, at a barbie, maybe at the gala session of a professional conference, or all day at a comic con, that shirt is OK. But it was wrong in the context of the job to be done that day, which was to represent the ESA to the public.
Women who deconstructed the theme of the shirt shirt were immediately accused of being too fugly to understand the science and anyway, how come they had judged a man on his clothes? To which the reply was 'Welcome to my world'.
The vituperation ramped up with the usual cries of 'it's all the fault of the feminists' but, as with the rape threats against Jessica Ennis-Hill in a separate context, the purpose was to attack any woman who voiced a criticism, how dare she. Women complain they are attacked for voicing an opinion, and thousands of people leap up to patronize and threaten them for saying such a thing. Or telling a man what to wear in a professional context, the bitch.
Like yelling 'raaayyycist', a quick shout of 'feminazi' is used to marginalize the criticism to lazily avoid having to face it. The point is not whether some people were offended, but whether they are right about the message which goes out if you turn up to a major PR event wearing a softporn-themed shirt. There is little to argue about in PR terms; that was no way for the ESA to present itself. To be fair to the ESA, they made him change his shirt in later segments, so somebody was trying to get a hold on the bolting story as it galloped off with real science story clinging on to its back like a terrified monkey.
Provided Dr Taylor had not ignored dress instructions (we do not know if he was ever told what to wear) it was cruel of the ESA to require him to make the apology; somebody could have done it for him in a simple statement, but the criticism stands. The point of the day was the Landing, and a shirt has no business undermining that.
The moral of the story is that if you ever wondered what use a PR is, this is what happens when PR fails.
If you must do retro ironic print shirts, please follow the master:
Dr Taylor walked into the world media's eye in a graphical shirt made by a friend and Twitter went kaboom. The component which failed was the head of public affairs. Instead of insisting that the Mission was the star of the show and that a key presenter would be wearing a plain, comfortable, casual shirt with long sleeves, Dr Taylor was allowed to toddle out eupohric in his party wear.
The public face of the European Space Agency (ESA), at the point it was talking to the people who pay the bills, had accidentally fallen in to the hands of a kindly tattoo artist's wife in Chelmsford, and she had chosen a fabric design based on popular cover art for classic science fiction.
Amongst friends, at a barbie, maybe at the gala session of a professional conference, or all day at a comic con, that shirt is OK. But it was wrong in the context of the job to be done that day, which was to represent the ESA to the public.
Women who deconstructed the theme of the shirt shirt were immediately accused of being too fugly to understand the science and anyway, how come they had judged a man on his clothes? To which the reply was 'Welcome to my world'.
The vituperation ramped up with the usual cries of 'it's all the fault of the feminists' but, as with the rape threats against Jessica Ennis-Hill in a separate context, the purpose was to attack any woman who voiced a criticism, how dare she. Women complain they are attacked for voicing an opinion, and thousands of people leap up to patronize and threaten them for saying such a thing. Or telling a man what to wear in a professional context, the bitch.
Like yelling 'raaayyycist', a quick shout of 'feminazi' is used to marginalize the criticism to lazily avoid having to face it. The point is not whether some people were offended, but whether they are right about the message which goes out if you turn up to a major PR event wearing a softporn-themed shirt. There is little to argue about in PR terms; that was no way for the ESA to present itself. To be fair to the ESA, they made him change his shirt in later segments, so somebody was trying to get a hold on the bolting story as it galloped off with real science story clinging on to its back like a terrified monkey.
Provided Dr Taylor had not ignored dress instructions (we do not know if he was ever told what to wear) it was cruel of the ESA to require him to make the apology; somebody could have done it for him in a simple statement, but the criticism stands. The point of the day was the Landing, and a shirt has no business undermining that.
The moral of the story is that if you ever wondered what use a PR is, this is what happens when PR fails.
If you must do retro ironic print shirts, please follow the master:
Monday, 8 April 2013
Job of the Month - Chief of Staff, Kent Police
Quick - here's your chance for 90k's worth of goodies plus pension contributions and all the rides in blues and twos you can handle. Luckily, you won't have to do anything nasty like real work or dealing with dangerous violent people - it's all pretendy work. No formal qualifications or experience required.
Ann Barnes hasn't a clue how to do the job despite being elected to be the new Commissioner. Her first puppet was an average teenager who was in tears within a week because Ann failed to recognize that actually, you are nuts to expect a child to carry that kind of responsibility and public exposure. Her second appointment is supposed to figure out how to do the job, and do it, so that Ann can continue to collect the dosh for pretending to.
Anyhoo, here's the outline:
By the by, you have to be nice to Paris Brown, the youth commissioner - but then for goodness sake, the child was always going to be made to look awful. Think of it as social work, trying to patch up Ann's idiocy.
Here's what Ann promised the people of Kent and what she is now relying on you to implement for her.
In a better world this job would not exist because the Chief Constable would already be doing most of it, but since it does, why not put in an on-line application and give that money the very best chance of a good home where it will be appreciated. The real police will regard you with all the enthusiasm of something nasty on their shoes, but as soon as they get the drift of where you are coming from - being Ann's walker - they will at least temper their derision with pity.
My tip for the job would be to make friends with the mounted divisions, then get the horses out on PR appearances in the shopping centres. Everyone loves police horses.
Alternatively, if this seem too much like hard work and you are male, consider getting two women pregnant with at least five children apiece, then live on benefits. I gather it pays about the same. On balance, I know which I'd prefer to subsidize.
Update 10/4/2013
The Mail reports that Paris Brown has stepped down following reports that the police have been dragged in on the basis that her tweets may be within the scope of the criminal law. Her previous job - a trainee booking clerk in the parks department - may not be open to her now that her employers have an excuse to sack her for her comments.
So now we've got an unemployed and possibly unemployable child under the age of 18 whose biggest sin, as far as we know, involves being a bit gobby. No arson, mugging, embezzlement, torture of animals, not even as much as a caution for dropping litter - just a kid mistaking their nascent musings for hip writing which, of course, never happened before in the history of text.
Ann Barnes is still there on £85k (which is surprisingly less than her lieutenant will earn) while having shoved a kid through this sugar-cane crusher in pursuit of her own public image. The moment the allegations emerged she should have taken protective action instead of making the teenager humiliate herself in public for Ann's programme.
The only person who owes it to the electorate to step down is Barnes for having shown such obvious lack of commonsense and duty of care in the first place. If Keith Vaz had any decency he'd resign too. Yes, I know, don't hold my breath.
Update 11/04/2013
The Times reports that the police have been criticized by media lawyer Mark Stephens, who pointed out that Keir Starmer already issued guidelines on investigation of comments on social media. What exactly it has to do with Starmer, who runs the CPS but not the police, I'm not quite sure, but it is his job to advise about offences so it is probably worth checking what he says. The point here is that twenty years ago a police officer would have understood that one is free to hold odious opinions and express them. Now, the expression of those opinions - not just incitements against target groups - is something the state feels free to investigate so long as it has the flimsy excuse of 'somebody complained'.
These are the interim guidelines
The comments attributed to Brown were likely to fail the 'high threshold' test i.e. there was no public interest justification in pursuing them. Or, put it another way, if Brown is going to be chased, then so should many of the commenters on the passing of Mrs Thatcher.
Ann Barnes hasn't a clue how to do the job despite being elected to be the new Commissioner. Her first puppet was an average teenager who was in tears within a week because Ann failed to recognize that actually, you are nuts to expect a child to carry that kind of responsibility and public exposure. Her second appointment is supposed to figure out how to do the job, and do it, so that Ann can continue to collect the dosh for pretending to.
Anyhoo, here's the outline:
This post will provide the mainstay of direct support to the Kent PCC. This is the first role of its kind and as such the post holder will have the flexibility and freedom to create the framework of support needed by the PCC who has stated that her aim is to be the most visible, accessible and transparent Commissioner in the country.This means 'For god's sake, tell me what the job is and make me look good'. Fair enoughski, isn't that what the faithful 2-i-c people of the world do all the time?
This role is not a single focused senior administrative role, this is a high profile, potentially frequently pressurised, busy and varied role – you will never be bored! As the manager of the Office of the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) you must possess excellent interpersonal skills that you can adapt to any situation. You will be an inspirational leader, who inspires and motivates people from all walks of life, whether this is the staff working in the OPCC, officers and staff from Kent Police, members of the public or those people working in partnership organisations and agencies – in fact anyone you come into contact with.This sounds to me more like what was intended of the Commissioner, but Ann clearly hasn't any intention of doing it so it's a better billet than the usual 2-i-c as you don't have the ghastly admin or being made to do it all yourself. On the other hand, you'll almost certainly have to polish Ann's ego and make it seem as if she has thought everything good while you collect the blame for anything which goes wrong. At 90k plus bennies, this should slap a lot of balm on your own blistered ego. After all, you didn't win the election, did you.
You will be able to provide clear, objective, authoritative and impartial advice based on analysis and interpretation of complex information and situations.Ann can't work out what the briefs mean so you are supposed to read them and explain them to her.
As an effective horizon scanner, you should be able to anticipate the needs of the PCC and present information before it is requested.Preferably psychic.
Alongside this you will have developed a structure to provide regular, relevant management information that informs and updates the PCC on progress without creating burdensome bureaucracy.Pull some numbers out of your arse. They don't matter and there is no budget for gathering proper info - it was all spent on commissioners, youth commissioners and your wages. The least you can do is a bit of cut'n'pasting, you ingrate.
By the by, you have to be nice to Paris Brown, the youth commissioner - but then for goodness sake, the child was always going to be made to look awful. Think of it as social work, trying to patch up Ann's idiocy.
Here's what Ann promised the people of Kent and what she is now relying on you to implement for her.
In a better world this job would not exist because the Chief Constable would already be doing most of it, but since it does, why not put in an on-line application and give that money the very best chance of a good home where it will be appreciated. The real police will regard you with all the enthusiasm of something nasty on their shoes, but as soon as they get the drift of where you are coming from - being Ann's walker - they will at least temper their derision with pity.
My tip for the job would be to make friends with the mounted divisions, then get the horses out on PR appearances in the shopping centres. Everyone loves police horses.
Alternatively, if this seem too much like hard work and you are male, consider getting two women pregnant with at least five children apiece, then live on benefits. I gather it pays about the same. On balance, I know which I'd prefer to subsidize.
Update 10/4/2013
The Mail reports that Paris Brown has stepped down following reports that the police have been dragged in on the basis that her tweets may be within the scope of the criminal law. Her previous job - a trainee booking clerk in the parks department - may not be open to her now that her employers have an excuse to sack her for her comments.
So now we've got an unemployed and possibly unemployable child under the age of 18 whose biggest sin, as far as we know, involves being a bit gobby. No arson, mugging, embezzlement, torture of animals, not even as much as a caution for dropping litter - just a kid mistaking their nascent musings for hip writing which, of course, never happened before in the history of text.
Ann Barnes is still there on £85k (which is surprisingly less than her lieutenant will earn) while having shoved a kid through this sugar-cane crusher in pursuit of her own public image. The moment the allegations emerged she should have taken protective action instead of making the teenager humiliate herself in public for Ann's programme.
The only person who owes it to the electorate to step down is Barnes for having shown such obvious lack of commonsense and duty of care in the first place. If Keith Vaz had any decency he'd resign too. Yes, I know, don't hold my breath.
Update 11/04/2013
The Times reports that the police have been criticized by media lawyer Mark Stephens, who pointed out that Keir Starmer already issued guidelines on investigation of comments on social media. What exactly it has to do with Starmer, who runs the CPS but not the police, I'm not quite sure, but it is his job to advise about offences so it is probably worth checking what he says. The point here is that twenty years ago a police officer would have understood that one is free to hold odious opinions and express them. Now, the expression of those opinions - not just incitements against target groups - is something the state feels free to investigate so long as it has the flimsy excuse of 'somebody complained'.
These are the interim guidelines
The comments attributed to Brown were likely to fail the 'high threshold' test i.e. there was no public interest justification in pursuing them. Or, put it another way, if Brown is going to be chased, then so should many of the commenters on the passing of Mrs Thatcher.
Saturday, 29 September 2012
My favourite Wiki - Supranational European Bodies
This lovely Euler diagram shows that there are alternative bodies we could be members of in a way which is very easy to see. It's only like a gym membership package or choosing which insurance options to take on a policy. Just move your flag to where you'd rather be.
Where we ought to move to is a matter for debate, and there could be some additional rules which link certain memberships so that if you want to be in one, you have to be in another, which might constrain which group(s) we go in to.
However, Switzerland seems to do pretty well by being in The Council of Europe, EFTA and the Schengen area. Admittedly they still have the rulings of the EFTA court to deal with but then, if you are forming mutual trade agreements you must expect there to be a way of arbitrating when club members disagree.
The main thing to grasp is that when David Cameron makes oozy noises about a referendum and Tory ignoramuses pretend you can pick and choose which part of EU law to comply with, either they haven't done their homework or they are telling a flat lie in the hope of electoral success. It's not an in-or-out issue to frighten the children with.
Yes, we can leave the European Union and survive. No, we won't necessarily lose all our memberships although we might have to ask EFTA nicely if they would admit us. No, we don't really need permission to go. Lawyers will tell you they can't undo this, that or the other. Tell them we are going to resile, repeal the ECA72, and if they won't get on with the job then, like Cardinal Wolsey, they'll be replaced with Thomas Cromwell.
If it's good enough for Henry VIII, it's good enough for us.
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See also Switzerland News
Friday, 27 July 2012
Paul Chambers Twitter Trial - post mortem
"We have concluded that, on an objective assessment, the decision of the crown court that this 'tweet' constituted or included a message of a menacing character was not open to it.
"On this basis, the appeal against conviction must be allowed."You can see how the magistrate at Doncaster magistrate's court in May 2010 may have been baffled by the high-power prosecution from the Crown Prosecution Service. In a string of cases over the past two years they have been misapplying law which is broadly written so that they can use it when they need to. Instead, various jobsworths have been trying to score departmental points by bringing novelty cases which should never have got past the screening such as the golliwog in the window and the ludicrous John Terry case.
Paul Chambers was fined and ordered to pay £600 costs after being convicted of sending "a message of a menacing character", contrary to provisions of the 2003 Communications Act. This famous message:
"Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"Much harder to see is why Judge Jacqueline Davies, sitting with two magistrates, dismissed his appeal his appeal in November 2010, saying that the electronic communication was "clearly menacing".
It's clearly NOT menacing. Nobody gives you 'a week and a bit' in a threat. In the context of the delay being down to snow, it was obviously a self-referential jibe at the expense of people who say unreasonable things.
There were linguists all over explaining the classic form of the joke, plus the fact that Chambers was fully identified, which should have given her a clue. Maybe the two magistrates also on the bench were too much in awe of her, too sympathetic, to do what they should have done - take her aside and offer her a drink of water or maybe she should let somebody else hear the case? Maybe somebody not so het-up about personal matters?
Judge Jacqueline Davies lost her much loved husband, Paul Clark in October 2008 and had trekked across the Sinai Desert in memory of him in 2009
Invent Partners thought she was just ignorant of the technology and so relied on what ever gubbins the CPS told her. They sent an open letter, but not, unfortunately, until it was already obvious that she didn't understand what she had been told.
The nub of it is this: either Jacqueline Davies is a woman who doesn't speak English well enough to understand a joke or her personal grief intruded in to her judgment so that she failed to back-stop the CPS lawyers on the make. The airport staff are absolved; they just have to report this rubbish, not take a view on it.
None of the magistrates come out of this well; they are supposed to be bastions of common sense under the common law, but at least three here allowed themselves to be cowed, or maybe they also didn't understand what they were being asked to rule on.
My condolences to Her Honour Judge Jacqueline Davies, but grief and ignorance are a bad mix at any time, disastrous in a judge who has not only to sentence the guilty but perform the function of stopping the state - in the person of the CPS this time - from oppressing the innocent citizen.
Judge Jacqueline Davies won't be the only judge who has been wrong-footed by the CPS. It has been bringing cases, reckless as to whether it is likely to win or lose because it is using the process as punishment.
Paul Chambers had his life turned upside down, lost his job, has a criminal record which although quashed will always be revealed by an enhanced CRB check, by CPS workers who have managed to hide behind a judge.
He is owed a huge apology, reparations, and a job for life at the CPS as he now knows much more about the law than they do.
Update 11/04/2013
At the end of 2012 the CPS issued interim guidelines about the prosecution of alleged offences concerning the social media.
Here are the interim guidelines
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Five Rings to Rule Them
Amazon is carrying the Official Olympic Wenlock Police Figurine
You may care to read the reviews.
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Update: some commenters have noticed that Wenlock reprises that masterpiece of the 20th Century, Francis Bacon's "Three Studies for Figures for the Base of a Crucifixion." Especially the middle one.
You may care to read the reviews.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS TALKING ABOUT, THIS IS A GREAT TOY, IT IS FUN TO PLAY WITH AND MAKES ME FEEL help me PROUD TO BE BRITISH. IT IS MODERN IN DESIGN AND it's watching me REPRESENTS ALL THAT IS GREAT ABOUT OUR COUNTRY AND THE OLYMPIC GAMES WHICH WILL BE GREAT please THE IOC ARE DOING A FANTASTIC JOB AND OF COURSE SOME PEOPLE ARE GOING TO MAKE SOME MONEY OUT OF IT, BUT THAT'S FINE BECAUSE it's going to take my pets away THAT'S THE WAY OF THE WORLD THESE DAYS. WHAT'S SO WRONG ABOUT MACDONALD'S I SAY AND COKE THEY i don't want to die ARE TASTY. IN CONCLUSION YOU SHOULD BUY ONE.
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After purchasing this toy I was surprised that it unpacked itself and it's surface to air missile system in my back garden. After a test firing of the missile (which passed through my kitchen, down the hall, through the open front door before slamming into Mrs Greyson's house at number 17) all I can say is that a single eye must clearly hamper effective depth perception. I am inclined to think the toy is unsuitable for small children and neighbours opposite.
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This toy is worse than masturbating to a picture of Lord Coe, official overlord of the 2012 Olympics. And believe me, I've tried.
Update: some commenters have noticed that Wenlock reprises that masterpiece of the 20th Century, Francis Bacon's "Three Studies for Figures for the Base of a Crucifixion." Especially the middle one.
Monday, 25 June 2012
A bouquet of Chancellors
Let's look at the backgrounds of the 19 Chancellors of the Exchequer since Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne. There are more of these than prime ministers as the PM reserves the right to change them. Why Tony Blair didn't change his is one which history will eventually get round to answering.
(There's a pie chart at the bottom which combines the PMs and Chancellors. The following shows how it was counted).
The first, Rab Butler, was already in office when The Queen arrived.
1 R. A. Butler Cambridge, Pembroke
2 Harold Macmillan Oxford, Balliol
3 Peter Thorneycroft Royal Military Academy, Woolwich
4 Derick Heathcoat-Amory Oxford, Christ Church
5 Selwyn Lloyd Cambridge, Magdalene
6 Reginald Maudling Oxford, Merton
7 James Callaghan Didn't go to Oxford - sat civil service exams instead
8 Roy Jenkins Oxford, Balliol
9 Iain Macleod Cambridge, Gonville and Caius
10 Anthony Barber As a PoW, law degree via the Red Cross, then Oxford, Oriel
11 Denis Healey Oxford, Balliol
12 Sir Geoffrey Howe Cambridge, Trinity Hall
13 Nigel Lawson Oxford, Christ Church
14 Sir John Major Didn't go to university - took banking exams
15 Norman Lamont Cambridge, Fitzwilliam
16 Kenneth Clarke Cambridge, Gonville and Caius
17 Gordon Brown Edinburgh
18 Alistair Darling Aberdeen
19 George Osborne Oxford, Magdalene
Chancellors of the Exchequer
Oxford would have had 9 because Jim Callaghan would have gone there if he'd had the money, although which college is not known. Balliol scores 3, ahead of Cambridge's Gonville and Caius with 2.
To combine that with the previous bouquet of prime ministers it must be remembered that you get different answers depending on whether you count the number of offices (because some people served as both PM and Chancellor) or the number of administrations (because some people got more than one term).
Prime Ministers
Combined Totals
A crude combined total is to add the two counts, which means some people will be double-counted such as Harold Macmillan, who served as PM and Chancellor, while Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair will have their multiple terms under-represented. It will give the general proportions although it won't be numerically accurate. I've included Nick Clegg, so consider Cambridge slightly over-represented if you wish, but the effect is negligible.
The fiddle-factor to beware of is that Oxford is under-represented in this count. Wilson, Blair and Thatcher served multiple terms. In a fully-expanded count they would have scored at least 8 between them (assuming you count by term even if it isn't a full one) and all three went to Oxford. However, they didn't go to Balliol, thus allowing the effect of Balliol to appear slightly more dominant than it might be, although you would have to look across the other offices of state - Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and perhaps Lord Chancellor - to analyse that..
Dominance of Balliol
Despite the fiddle-factor it is still worth looking at the dominance of Balliol, but bear in mind that a weighted count would give St John's (Blair) and Somerville (Thatcher) more prominence.
Office holders educated at Oxford
1 Anthony Eden - Balliol
2 Harold Macmillan - Balliol
3 Sir Alec Douglas-Home - Christ Church
4 Harold Wilson - Jesus
5 Edward Heath - Balliol
6 Margaret Thatcher - Somervillle
7 Tony Blair - St John's
8 David Cameron - Brasenose
9 Derick Heathcote-Amory - Christ Church
10 Reginald Maudling - Merton
11 Roy Jenkins - Balliol
12 Anthony Barber - Oriel
13 Denis Healey - Balliol
14 Nigel Lawson - Christ Church
15 George Osborne - Magdalene
Of the Oxford colleges, Balliol is the front-runner with 5 but Christ Church is chasing it with 3. At Cambridge, Gonville and Caius also scores three.
The direction is clear; Oxford is dominant in these two key offices of state, particularly PMs, but precisely how dominant depends on how you do the counting. A fuller analysis would extend to the Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Lord Chancellor and be based on a weighting for the number of years in office.
Conclusion
It is surprising that Oxford has retained its dominance given the competition from Cambridge and ancient universities such as Edinburgh. Besides, universities such as Durham were established in the early Victorian period and many of the Red Brick (i.e early 20th Century universities) have had a century to catch up. Even the Plate-Glass universities have been in business for about 50 years.
Even more surprising is that it has dominance over Cambridge which outclasses it in some technical subjects.
(There's a pie chart at the bottom which combines the PMs and Chancellors. The following shows how it was counted).
The first, Rab Butler, was already in office when The Queen arrived.
1 R. A. Butler Cambridge, Pembroke
2 Harold Macmillan Oxford, Balliol
3 Peter Thorneycroft Royal Military Academy, Woolwich
4 Derick Heathcoat-Amory Oxford, Christ Church
5 Selwyn Lloyd Cambridge, Magdalene
6 Reginald Maudling Oxford, Merton
7 James Callaghan Didn't go to Oxford - sat civil service exams instead
8 Roy Jenkins Oxford, Balliol
9 Iain Macleod Cambridge, Gonville and Caius
10 Anthony Barber As a PoW, law degree via the Red Cross, then Oxford, Oriel
11 Denis Healey Oxford, Balliol
12 Sir Geoffrey Howe Cambridge, Trinity Hall
13 Nigel Lawson Oxford, Christ Church
14 Sir John Major Didn't go to university - took banking exams
15 Norman Lamont Cambridge, Fitzwilliam
16 Kenneth Clarke Cambridge, Gonville and Caius
17 Gordon Brown Edinburgh
18 Alistair Darling Aberdeen
19 George Osborne Oxford, Magdalene
Chancellors of the Exchequer
The totals for provision of Chancellors of the Exchequer
Oxford 8
Cambridge 6
Other universities/colleges/professional exams 5
Other universities/colleges/professional exams 5
Oxford would have had 9 because Jim Callaghan would have gone there if he'd had the money, although which college is not known. Balliol scores 3, ahead of Cambridge's Gonville and Caius with 2.
To combine that with the previous bouquet of prime ministers it must be remembered that you get different answers depending on whether you count the number of offices (because some people served as both PM and Chancellor) or the number of administrations (because some people got more than one term).
Prime Ministers
Totals for the provision of Prime Ministers (inc. Nick Clegg )
Oxford 8
Cambridge 1 (Nick Clegg)
Other universities/colleges/professional exams 4
Other universities/colleges/professional exams 4
Combined Totals
A crude combined total is to add the two counts, which means some people will be double-counted such as Harold Macmillan, who served as PM and Chancellor, while Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair will have their multiple terms under-represented. It will give the general proportions although it won't be numerically accurate. I've included Nick Clegg, so consider Cambridge slightly over-represented if you wish, but the effect is negligible.
Combined provision of colleges to office:
Oxford 16
Cambridge 7
Others universities/colleges/professional exams 9
Cambridge 7
Others universities/colleges/professional exams 9
Dominance of Balliol
Despite the fiddle-factor it is still worth looking at the dominance of Balliol, but bear in mind that a weighted count would give St John's (Blair) and Somerville (Thatcher) more prominence.
Office holders educated at Oxford
1 Anthony Eden - Balliol
2 Harold Macmillan - Balliol
3 Sir Alec Douglas-Home - Christ Church
4 Harold Wilson - Jesus
5 Edward Heath - Balliol
6 Margaret Thatcher - Somervillle
7 Tony Blair - St John's
8 David Cameron - Brasenose
9 Derick Heathcote-Amory - Christ Church
10 Reginald Maudling - Merton
11 Roy Jenkins - Balliol
12 Anthony Barber - Oriel
13 Denis Healey - Balliol
14 Nigel Lawson - Christ Church
15 George Osborne - Magdalene
Of the Oxford colleges, Balliol is the front-runner with 5 but Christ Church is chasing it with 3. At Cambridge, Gonville and Caius also scores three.
Oxford colleges
Balliol 5
Christ Church 3
Others 7
Conclusion
It is surprising that Oxford has retained its dominance given the competition from Cambridge and ancient universities such as Edinburgh. Besides, universities such as Durham were established in the early Victorian period and many of the Red Brick (i.e early 20th Century universities) have had a century to catch up. Even the Plate-Glass universities have been in business for about 50 years.
Even more surprising is that it has dominance over Cambridge which outclasses it in some technical subjects.
Approximate proportions of higher education of PM and Chancellor of the Exchequer
 |
Thursday, 31 May 2012
A bouquet of prime ministers
There have been twelve prime ministers since Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne. Churchill was in office when she got there.
In order (source: Wikipedia):-
Winston Churchill - Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
Anthony Eden - Bailliol, Oxford
Harold Macmillan - Bailiol, Oxford
Sir Alec Douglas-Home - Christ Church, Oxford
Harold Wilson - Jesus, Oxford
Edward Heath Bailliol, Oxford
James Callaghan - Took the Oxford entrance exam, but didn't have the money to attend.
Margaret Thatcher - Somervillle, Oxford
John Major - didn't go to university
Tony Blair - St John's, Oxford
Gordon Brown - Edinburgh
David Cameron - Brasenose, Oxford.
Of that twelve, eight went to Oxford. It was nearly nine but for Callaghan taking civil service exams instead. None went to Cambridge, although it depends on if you include Nick Clegg who was at Robinson, Cambridge. He's not prime minister but that might depend on whether Cameron has a bizarre accident with a windmill and a bicycle.
Oxford has also supplied us with the current back-ups. Boris Johnson (Balliol ) and both of the Milibands (Corpus Christi) and Ed Balls (Keeble) and Osborne (Magdalen). It's a very long shot indeed, but if you fancy Louise Mensch's chances, she went to Christ Church, which would nudge that college up in to second place behind Balliol, while Michael Gove would be a first showing for Lady Margaret Hall. Probably not in the running, but Theresa May went to St Hugh's and Hague, like Osborne, went to Magdalen.
If BoJo ever gets through the magical door, it will take Balliol's score to 4 which will be very difficult for any other college to match unless Balliol is disqualified for the next sixty years. Yvette Cooper (Mrs Ed Balls) is also Balliol, so the college is uncannily good at spotting potential contenders.
Looking at the two who didn't go to university - Callaghan and Major - the lack of an Oxford degree doesn't seem to have made a difference to their performance as PM. Both took other professional exams, both were wrong about a significant number of issues and lost office as a result.
Winston Churchill doesn't really count in this sequence. Since he passed out of Sandhurst 20th in his year of 130, he was no slouch. Luckily for us, since he didn't go to Oxford his idea was to fight Germany rather than defend ourselves by being pre-emptively invaded by Soviet Russia. Sadly, he eventually lost that half of the war but not for want of trying. Baroness Thatcher went to Oxford but gets a special pass because she studied a proper subject: Chemistry.
Outside of No 10, a mention must be made of Baroness Shirley Williams (Somerville) and Baroness Mary Warnock (Lady Margaret Hall), architects of the worst aspects of the education system which, sadly, was signed in to existence by Mrs Thatcher who was rather trusting in those days and thought the teachers and civil servants knew what they were doing. Perhaps they did.
So let's hear less about "Oxbridge" as if they were both equally culpable. It's incontrovertibly Oxford which has landed us with the majority of front-rank noodles.
Or maybe not.
Part II - A bouquet of Chancellors
Update: Helen Mirren has read for the part of the Queen, again, in a drama which follows the relationships of the monarch to her prime ministers.
In order (source: Wikipedia):-
Winston Churchill - Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
Anthony Eden - Bailliol, Oxford
Harold Macmillan - Bailiol, Oxford
Sir Alec Douglas-Home - Christ Church, Oxford
Harold Wilson - Jesus, Oxford
Edward Heath Bailliol, Oxford
James Callaghan - Took the Oxford entrance exam, but didn't have the money to attend.
Margaret Thatcher - Somervillle, Oxford
John Major - didn't go to university
Tony Blair - St John's, Oxford
Gordon Brown - Edinburgh
David Cameron - Brasenose, Oxford.
Of that twelve, eight went to Oxford. It was nearly nine but for Callaghan taking civil service exams instead. None went to Cambridge, although it depends on if you include Nick Clegg who was at Robinson, Cambridge. He's not prime minister but that might depend on whether Cameron has a bizarre accident with a windmill and a bicycle.
Oxford has also supplied us with the current back-ups. Boris Johnson (Balliol ) and both of the Milibands (Corpus Christi) and Ed Balls (Keeble) and Osborne (Magdalen). It's a very long shot indeed, but if you fancy Louise Mensch's chances, she went to Christ Church, which would nudge that college up in to second place behind Balliol, while Michael Gove would be a first showing for Lady Margaret Hall. Probably not in the running, but Theresa May went to St Hugh's and Hague, like Osborne, went to Magdalen.
If BoJo ever gets through the magical door, it will take Balliol's score to 4 which will be very difficult for any other college to match unless Balliol is disqualified for the next sixty years. Yvette Cooper (Mrs Ed Balls) is also Balliol, so the college is uncannily good at spotting potential contenders.
Looking at the two who didn't go to university - Callaghan and Major - the lack of an Oxford degree doesn't seem to have made a difference to their performance as PM. Both took other professional exams, both were wrong about a significant number of issues and lost office as a result.
Winston Churchill doesn't really count in this sequence. Since he passed out of Sandhurst 20th in his year of 130, he was no slouch. Luckily for us, since he didn't go to Oxford his idea was to fight Germany rather than defend ourselves by being pre-emptively invaded by Soviet Russia. Sadly, he eventually lost that half of the war but not for want of trying. Baroness Thatcher went to Oxford but gets a special pass because she studied a proper subject: Chemistry.
Outside of No 10, a mention must be made of Baroness Shirley Williams (Somerville) and Baroness Mary Warnock (Lady Margaret Hall), architects of the worst aspects of the education system which, sadly, was signed in to existence by Mrs Thatcher who was rather trusting in those days and thought the teachers and civil servants knew what they were doing. Perhaps they did.
So let's hear less about "Oxbridge" as if they were both equally culpable. It's incontrovertibly Oxford which has landed us with the majority of front-rank noodles.
Or maybe not.
Part II - A bouquet of Chancellors
Update: Helen Mirren has read for the part of the Queen, again, in a drama which follows the relationships of the monarch to her prime ministers.
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
Pretendy government at GovNet.co.uk
Back in September 2009 Witterings from Witney looked at a body called GovNet Communications which paid various nabobs to be on their 'board'. There's nothing unusual in this; sometimes the board member makes a useful contribution by way of consultancy, other times they are hired for their contacts or air of respectability and glamour.
Now WfW has received letter from solicitors Turner Parkinson LLP crossly stating that their client is not at all happy with the post.
GovNet Communiations is a trading style of Partnership Media Group Limited no. 3307092
While the domain name govnet.co.uk is allowable, the unwary will easily confuse it with gov.uk, and thereby be encouraged to mis-read the website as a government organ, especially with a board studded with lords who used to be ministers and an existing MP. The current key government website is direct.gov.uk but gov.uk is the beta site which may replace it.
It is a hazard of the domain name system that very similar names can be generated but owned by different people. Nominet will resolve disputes of this sort without going to court. Based on a quick reading of the nominet archive, Nominet asks users to make sure that websites are sufficiently different so as not to mislead people and takes in to account whether other intellectual property protections - such as trademarks - exist. An intellectual property lawyer would have to advise as to whether the government has taken out any protections which would make the domain name 'govnet.co.uk' one they could complain about.
GovNet is proud of its speakers and essentially, sells influence
As the GovNet domain tells us:
Here for example, is an Intellectual Property course, which originates in a specialist body with legal standing and is delivered by recognized training bodies, which is definitely worth the money. That's the sort of thing to look for when buying training.
The existence of Partnership Media Group Limited is on the govnet.co.uk and moderngov.info websites but it is gently down-played, directing the attention to the Government Procurement Service logo with "supplier" written under it in tiny letters, misleading the glancing eye as to who is providing the material.
Now WfW has received letter from solicitors Turner Parkinson LLP crossly stating that their client is not at all happy with the post.
GovNet Communiations is a trading style of Partnership Media Group Limited no. 3307092
While the domain name govnet.co.uk is allowable, the unwary will easily confuse it with gov.uk, and thereby be encouraged to mis-read the website as a government organ, especially with a board studded with lords who used to be ministers and an existing MP. The current key government website is direct.gov.uk but gov.uk is the beta site which may replace it.
It is a hazard of the domain name system that very similar names can be generated but owned by different people. Nominet will resolve disputes of this sort without going to court. Based on a quick reading of the nominet archive, Nominet asks users to make sure that websites are sufficiently different so as not to mislead people and takes in to account whether other intellectual property protections - such as trademarks - exist. An intellectual property lawyer would have to advise as to whether the government has taken out any protections which would make the domain name 'govnet.co.uk' one they could complain about.
GovNet is proud of its speakers and essentially, sells influence
Understanding ModernGov draws together a range of senior Government contacts, bringing you the very best speakers and trainers with the most relevant knowledge.They also have another product called Understanding ModernGov copied on both the moderngov.net and moderngov.com registrations. Nothing wrong with that, but the unwary might think they are part of the government. Wording on the website fosters that impression. For example:
Understanding ModernGov provide a portfolio of highly informative, interactive Government training courses that clearly and concisely explain the mechanisms of government and parliament.But they aren't 'Government training courses' in the sense of being produced by the government, They are a set of talks about the government which you can pay to listen to. In some cases, from people who you've already paid once to do their job, and who are now selling their arses - or more likely, ours - to the highest bidder.
As the GovNet domain tells us:
Each course is CPD Certified, providing an in-depth perspective of the mechanisms that drive central, regional and local government.They are certificated in as much as there is an established trade body, the CPD Certification Service, which acts as an umbrella for private training providers.
You must put what weight on this you think fit. Some trade bodies are stronger than others. In general, the older established ones have acquired legal protections linked with the obligation to enforce minimum standards and the mechanism to do it, and their stamp carries weight, especially if they can exclude other people from using identifying words in that trade, e.g. The Law Society. However you should never assume a body has any legal authority until you've checked.Membership of the CPD Certification Service signifies the corporate commitment to the sharing of knowledge and enables members to have a wide range of material independently certified by us and to utilise our certified CPD symbol on items promoting their CPD material and on Certificates of Attendance and CPD Self-Assessment Forms.
Here for example, is an Intellectual Property course, which originates in a specialist body with legal standing and is delivered by recognized training bodies, which is definitely worth the money. That's the sort of thing to look for when buying training.
The existence of Partnership Media Group Limited is on the govnet.co.uk and moderngov.info websites but it is gently down-played, directing the attention to the Government Procurement Service logo with "supplier" written under it in tiny letters, misleading the glancing eye as to who is providing the material.
we are the UK's leading Public Sector publisher and events organiser.Well, yes, that may be strictly true in the sense of publishing material about the public sector, by it isn't a "Public Sector" publisher and events organizer.
The names, images and logos identifying the GovNet News and Events portal and Search the Public Sector (STePS™) , are proprietary marks of the Partnership Media Group Limited trading as GovNet Communications. Copying of our logos and/or any other third party logos accessed via this website is not permitted without prior approval from the relevant copyright owner.Did they bother asking the UK government if it minded someone taking a domain name so very close to their own?
Monday, 21 May 2012
The ASA and judicial review
There have been updates in the tale of Cranmer and the Advertising Standards Authority, (ASA) where Brer ASA punches the tar baby Cranmer for not raising its hat to him, only to find that he gets stuck in a worse mess than being offended.
It is not clear why the ASA decided to have this fight which is a political one disguised as being about an advert. What little authority the ASA has has arises from the willingness of advertisers to accept its rulings rather than risk having a statutory body created. It is industry-funded which is better than taxpayer-funded. There are plenty of firms who just ignore the rulings; presumably they are not worried about whether the ASA can lean on publishers or search engines to restrict access to their material. Here is a list of them.
The eminent blogger Guido Fawkes says this in a comment to Cranmer:
The reason I ignore them is because they have no power. No statutory basis. They are a self-appointed, self-regulatory organisation ............. no different from the green ink loonies who write to me every day apart from the fact that they have a letterhead.Which prompts the question:
If judicial review is the process for reviewing the decision-making process of public and quasi-public bodies, is the ASA the sort of organisation which can be taken to judicial review?
There has been at least one judicial review which by the very act of being heard bolsters the view that the ASA is a quasi-public body doing public work and, besides, people keep responding to the ASA as if it had Authority.
In an earlier case the ASA investigated whether quoting passages from the bible can be an advert which causes offence and concluded that they were and should not be used again. Instead of pointing out that ASA is not the first body in history to have suggested that Christians can't say what they are going to say whether you like it or not, the Sandown Free Presbyterian Church (SFPC) took the ASA to judicial review. (This was a Northern Ireland case).
Mr Justice Treacy found for the Sandown Free Presbyterian Church:
Mr Justice Treacy accepted that there had clearly been an interference with the applicants’ right to freedom of expression [Art 10] since the effect of the ASA’s decision was to prevent the applicant advertising in similar terms in the future.(Summary of judgment here. Full judgment here.)
He accepted, however, that the ASA had a legitimate aim of maintaining a system of self regulation in the advertising industry which provides adequate controls against the publication of material that would cause widespread or serious offence, including offence that interferes with the rights of readers of a particular sexual orientation to respect for their dignity and private life.
Mr Justice Treacy appears to have accepted that the ASA is a quasi-public body doing public work. The ASA aren't about to contradict him. They engaged the experienced Dinah Rose of Blackstone Chambers and she doesn't appear to have argued for dismissal on the grounds that the claimant could not bring her client to judicial review. That would have been to argue that the ASA has no legal standing and isn't a quasi-public body.
The Sandown Free Presbyterian church brought the case for its own purposes so it didn't ask that prior question. The reviewer of the case - because there were internal challenges first - also thought the ASA had authority.
I consider that the ASA has a duty to weigh up the arguments and counter-arguments and decide whether the advertisement has, or is likely to have, caused serious or widespread offence. That decision must be taken with due regard to the context, medium, audience, product and prevailing standards of decency.My emphasis on "duty". Does it have a duty? It certainly can give whatever opinions it likes, but then so can any club on the behaviour of its members.
In paragraph 53 the court makes explicit its belief about the status of the ASA;
- Moreover, seriously offensive advertising attacking a particular sexual orientation may interfere with the right to dignity, and the right to respect for his or her private life, of the reader of the advertisement. This right is itself protected under Art.8 of the Convention, and the ASA, as a public authority, has a positive obligation to protect that right.
But surely that depends on establishing whether the ASA have any power to order anybody around who doesn't want to be? Making an assumption doesn't deal with the prior legal question: can the ASA be brought to judicial review?
This is not the first time the question has been raised since governments began to set up private agencies to do quasi-public work. In 1987 that question was asked about the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers. The discussion involved looking at the reality of regulatory power being distributed in a world which was changing.
There is no hard-and-fast rule about this; the court reserved the right to decide to hear a case because nobody can foresee exactly how administrative structures will be in the future. However, strong guidelines emerged for when a body's decisions can be reviewed: (note: my summary, not definitive)
- the body has to be producing effects in public law
- the body does not need to have statutory support but it ought to be able to point to something official from which it emanates, although that might be a convoluted route as a result of other acts which does not set it up directly.
- the body's rulings cannot be ignored, that is, if it has enforcement power such that when it gives a ruling, it is only fair that it should be reviewable by the courts.
Not all of these have to be in place to bring a case. Their Lordships tried to differentiate an argument between members in a private club with situations where that club has public law effects.
Applying that to the present example, the first is arguable. The ASA has some effect on advertisers but would you call that public law? It involves cutting off the access to revenue by telling publications not to accept advertising, which is definitely an exercise of real power.
The second is also arguable. The ASA keeps saying the government recognizes it but do they have a duty to undertake investigations. What power compels them to do an investigation when they are unwilling?
But, as Guido Fawkes demonstrated at the very beginning, the third ground is the weakest. If you have a choice whether to take any notice of them, at least in certain media, then how are they a tribunal or a public body?
If the ASA is not a public body because it cannot enforce its rulings, why is it being taken to judicial review?
If the ASA is a public body, can the Freedom on Information Act be used to prise open its secret complaints procedure?
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
A little more about the ASA
Cranmer has published the response he has given to the ASA.
The ASA has issued a pompous statement which seems to miss the main point: they haven't got any grounds to investigate and even if they had what they think of as a right to investigate, they still haven't got any power to do anything except, maybe, to hand it to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) who are most unlikely to want to tangle with this one. The EHRC prefer to stick to beating up fond old couples such as Mr and Mrs Bull down in Cornwall (and then claiming they didn't mean to launch a second attack for more money), and calling Christianity an infection.
We can all investigate. A little more about the ASA is useful to collect.
Firstly, it's not an "authority". It's a company as registered at Companies House, specifically:
ADVERTISING STANDARDS AUTHORITY LIMITED (THE)
MID CITY PLACE
71 HIGH HOLBORN
LONDON
WC1V 6QT
Company No. 00733214
The members of the council are all listed on the website with short clickable biographies. The best known are Lord Smith - that's Chris Smith who, although gay, has never made any secret of it and has never allowed it to be an issue in any of his work, at least as far as I know, Professor Andrew Motion best known for his poetry (some of which is OK but not as good as Pam Ayres), and Martin Narey, best known for heading up Barnardos and signing-off the sort of ads which stigmatize white men as child beaters.
The people who run the organization day to day include
Miles Lockwood, Director of Complaints and Investigations
It isn't the first time that the ASA has had a spat like this with Christians. At the end of March 2012, the ASA took issue with a standard Christian leaflet where they offer to pray over you in the belief that this can promote healing. The group who gave out the leaflet also included a sensible health warning about visiting your doctor. There was no suggestion that they tried to coerce belief, cozen money out of people or prevent people getting proper medical attention.
This didn't stop the ASA sticking their noses in, attempting to make themselves arbiters of the printed material which barely qualifies as promotional. There's nothing unusual about healing services; the ASA appears to be trying to claim the right to tell churches they can't use the word 'healing' at all.
Since Christians have the unfortunate trait of often being irritating they don't get the support they deserve when their right to freedom of expression is infringed. Blogs which should have known better failed to identify this as an freedom of speech and religious expression argument, thinking this was about a literal interpretation of what everyone with a scrap of education knows is poetic language and religious belief, both of which are entitled to protection and are matters of opinion, not fact. Why isn't Andrew Motion doing something brave like protecting freedom of speech?
The ASA used its considerable industry funding to lean on a bunch of harmless street pray-ers whose earnest desire is that my knee will be fixed without surgery by divine intervention. Let 'em try, I say. If it works, I'm better off, if it doesn't I'm no worse off and I'm still on the waiting list. How strange that the hedge-witches, shamen and priests all accept that it is my choice whether to go for surgery or not but the ASA thinks it knows what is best for me.
The disputes over faith healing and what can be said about it stem in part from the antagonism in the alternative health-care field. This was foolishly increased when the chiropractors decided to try to use lawfare (good word, I just heard it) to silence their critics.
They attempted to sue Simon Singh for libel and such is the state of our laws that they were able to be a significant nuisance until finally dropping the case in April 2010. It went all the way to the Appeal Court, though, before they were told that Singh's original article was comment, not fact, and that he was entitled to express his opinion.
There is a suggestion from one blog campaign that the ASA isn't up to much, but it is confusing because it attempts to be over-clever and simply does not understand the ASAs limitations. Then again, the ASA doesn't understand its limitations.
The website asa-rocks.org has a series of pages expressing its rage over quackery and the apparent inability of the ASA to do anything about it. I share some of their anger but they don't seem to understand how difficult it is to draw that line, especially since some medical doctors have engaged in quackery and misrepresentation, often in places which do matter such as when they are expert witnesses in court.
In climate science we've had the epic quackery of Global Warming but so far the ASA hasn't sent any letters to UEA asking them too explain themselves or tear out pages of their undergraduate prospectus which presents them as having a science faculty.
The bugaboo of asa-rocks is asa-sucks, the defunct campaign which noticed that the ASA was not sticking to the process of receiving a complaint and investigating, but instead had got in bed with another campaign, the Nightingale Collaboration, to systematically challenge the alternative services sector. When this was revealed, the ASA dropped the association.
The Nightingale Collaboration makes some good points, but as it was fuelled by reasonable outrage at the use of the libel laws against Singh, its main purpose was to return-volley lawfare against the Chiropractors by finding something they can't substantiate then reporting them to the Trading Standards which does have some legal standing, unlike the ASA. This summary gives a fair over-view of both sides. The chiropractors should not have played rough if they didn't want the same level of response.
The other alternative care providers generally took a robust attitude to the ASA, advising that on receipt of a letter you should consider binning it as junk mail or perhaps making a complaint to the ASA that you have been contacted by an organization which misrepresents itself as having legal authority.
Technically, the ASA could take issue with every beauty parlour whose facials claim to rejuvenate the skin. That is an impossible claim to substantiate for prior reasons based on entropy. However, the ASA would find itself even less popular if it decided to go after Madame Rene; do they seriously think her customers expect her to do miracles? Her customers are not interested in hearing they look like WH Auden and there is little she can do about it; they expect Madame Rene to get on with the aromatherapy massage and for the ASA to mind its own beeswax.
I will decide for myself what I think of god-botherers and beauticians.
Update: In which Cranmer fisks the ASA interim statement and it emerges that the group who were supposed to have complained are very cross because they didn't, although one of them complained about about a separate magazine.
Update: Bucko points out that the ASA fail to comply fully with company law.
The ASA has issued a pompous statement which seems to miss the main point: they haven't got any grounds to investigate and even if they had what they think of as a right to investigate, they still haven't got any power to do anything except, maybe, to hand it to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) who are most unlikely to want to tangle with this one. The EHRC prefer to stick to beating up fond old couples such as Mr and Mrs Bull down in Cornwall (and then claiming they didn't mean to launch a second attack for more money), and calling Christianity an infection.
We can all investigate. A little more about the ASA is useful to collect.
Firstly, it's not an "authority". It's a company as registered at Companies House, specifically:
ADVERTISING STANDARDS AUTHORITY LIMITED (THE)
MID CITY PLACE
71 HIGH HOLBORN
LONDON
WC1V 6QT
Company No. 00733214
The members of the council are all listed on the website with short clickable biographies. The best known are Lord Smith - that's Chris Smith who, although gay, has never made any secret of it and has never allowed it to be an issue in any of his work, at least as far as I know, Professor Andrew Motion best known for his poetry (some of which is OK but not as good as Pam Ayres), and Martin Narey, best known for heading up Barnardos and signing-off the sort of ads which stigmatize white men as child beaters.
The people who run the organization day to day include
Miles Lockwood, Director of Complaints and Investigations
Miles joined the ASA in September 2010 and is responsible for leading the complaints and investigations teams, the core function of the ASA, who dealt with over 28,000 complaints last year. He studied History at the University of Nottingham and then obtained two post graduate certifications in Law at Nottingham Law School. Qualifying as a solicitor in 1998, he worked in commercial legal practice and specialised in general litigation and dispute resolution matters.Lockwood's top-class biography continues. It is hard to believe that he signed off a poorly screened complaint which is not within the scope of their own code, so perhaps he didn't know about it.
It isn't the first time that the ASA has had a spat like this with Christians. At the end of March 2012, the ASA took issue with a standard Christian leaflet where they offer to pray over you in the belief that this can promote healing. The group who gave out the leaflet also included a sensible health warning about visiting your doctor. There was no suggestion that they tried to coerce belief, cozen money out of people or prevent people getting proper medical attention.
This didn't stop the ASA sticking their noses in, attempting to make themselves arbiters of the printed material which barely qualifies as promotional. There's nothing unusual about healing services; the ASA appears to be trying to claim the right to tell churches they can't use the word 'healing' at all.
Since Christians have the unfortunate trait of often being irritating they don't get the support they deserve when their right to freedom of expression is infringed. Blogs which should have known better failed to identify this as an freedom of speech and religious expression argument, thinking this was about a literal interpretation of what everyone with a scrap of education knows is poetic language and religious belief, both of which are entitled to protection and are matters of opinion, not fact. Why isn't Andrew Motion doing something brave like protecting freedom of speech?
The ASA used its considerable industry funding to lean on a bunch of harmless street pray-ers whose earnest desire is that my knee will be fixed without surgery by divine intervention. Let 'em try, I say. If it works, I'm better off, if it doesn't I'm no worse off and I'm still on the waiting list. How strange that the hedge-witches, shamen and priests all accept that it is my choice whether to go for surgery or not but the ASA thinks it knows what is best for me.
The disputes over faith healing and what can be said about it stem in part from the antagonism in the alternative health-care field. This was foolishly increased when the chiropractors decided to try to use lawfare (good word, I just heard it) to silence their critics.
They attempted to sue Simon Singh for libel and such is the state of our laws that they were able to be a significant nuisance until finally dropping the case in April 2010. It went all the way to the Appeal Court, though, before they were told that Singh's original article was comment, not fact, and that he was entitled to express his opinion.
There is a suggestion from one blog campaign that the ASA isn't up to much, but it is confusing because it attempts to be over-clever and simply does not understand the ASAs limitations. Then again, the ASA doesn't understand its limitations.
The website asa-rocks.org has a series of pages expressing its rage over quackery and the apparent inability of the ASA to do anything about it. I share some of their anger but they don't seem to understand how difficult it is to draw that line, especially since some medical doctors have engaged in quackery and misrepresentation, often in places which do matter such as when they are expert witnesses in court.
In climate science we've had the epic quackery of Global Warming but so far the ASA hasn't sent any letters to UEA asking them too explain themselves or tear out pages of their undergraduate prospectus which presents them as having a science faculty.
The bugaboo of asa-rocks is asa-sucks, the defunct campaign which noticed that the ASA was not sticking to the process of receiving a complaint and investigating, but instead had got in bed with another campaign, the Nightingale Collaboration, to systematically challenge the alternative services sector. When this was revealed, the ASA dropped the association.
The Nightingale Collaboration makes some good points, but as it was fuelled by reasonable outrage at the use of the libel laws against Singh, its main purpose was to return-volley lawfare against the Chiropractors by finding something they can't substantiate then reporting them to the Trading Standards which does have some legal standing, unlike the ASA. This summary gives a fair over-view of both sides. The chiropractors should not have played rough if they didn't want the same level of response.
The other alternative care providers generally took a robust attitude to the ASA, advising that on receipt of a letter you should consider binning it as junk mail or perhaps making a complaint to the ASA that you have been contacted by an organization which misrepresents itself as having legal authority.
Technically, the ASA could take issue with every beauty parlour whose facials claim to rejuvenate the skin. That is an impossible claim to substantiate for prior reasons based on entropy. However, the ASA would find itself even less popular if it decided to go after Madame Rene; do they seriously think her customers expect her to do miracles? Her customers are not interested in hearing they look like WH Auden and there is little she can do about it; they expect Madame Rene to get on with the aromatherapy massage and for the ASA to mind its own beeswax.
I will decide for myself what I think of god-botherers and beauticians.
Update: In which Cranmer fisks the ASA interim statement and it emerges that the group who were supposed to have complained are very cross because they didn't, although one of them complained about about a separate magazine.
Update: Bucko points out that the ASA fail to comply fully with company law.
Saturday, 12 May 2012
8 out of 10 cats prefer Cranmer
Do 70% of people think marriage should be left as it is: one of each sex?
A ComRes poll said so, and that's what the Coalition For Marriage (C4M) are quoting.
This took approximately five minutes to find out, but rather than exercise their fingers and brains the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have written pompously to Archbishop Cranmer demanding that he explains it all to them as they are far too fick to bother to to check out a complaint about whether that figure could be substantiated. It's not secret - the source is listed on the advert.
This, they think, shows them doing a good job. I think it shows people whose jobs can be cheerfully cut. Luckily, it looks like the public aren't paying for once, so it's up to the advertising industry if they want to keep funding these idlers to provide free copy for bloggers.
As His Grace politely points out, it isn't up to him to evaluate the original research. If the ASA want to challenge that, they must go to ComRes and C4M. But we all know it isn't really about the opinion poll. Rather, it's an attempt to control what can be said politically in the context of an advert.
In this case, it is a Christian-led resistance to the re-definition of marriage which some people find objectionable. They roped a trade-body in as arbiters of what can and cannot be said publicly.
I don't like C4M and Andrea Rose Minichiello Williams. I don't approve of the way the groups to which she is connected allow ordinary people - such as Mr and Mrs Bull of the Chymorvah Private Hotel - to get in to fights where the law is already weighted against them. There are civilians and combatants, and you should be wary of encouraging the former to become the latter. Luckily the ASA have picked on someone their own size in Archbishop Cranmer, who knows what he has signed up for.
This illustrates the point which Christian groups and Cranmer have previously claimed: that when a Christian expresses a view, not only can they expect that view to be challenged rightly in debate but that law, or quasi-law such as trade bodies claiming 'codes', will try to stop them expressing a view at all.
Checking the ASA's own code, it appears they don't have any remit to deal with editorial content so the following is run in the context of editorial material to further inform public debate about what it is attempting to suppress as offensive.
No permission has been sought from the originators nor has payment been received.
I 'ad that Barbara Streisand in the back of the cab once.
Update: Linkage -
Ministry of Truth - best formal analysis (as ever)
Ambush Predator
The Engineer
Peter Ould
Dr Jim West
Max Farquar - best graphic
Anna Raccoon
Tim Worstall
Longrider
Orphans of Liberty
Samizdata
Raedwald
A ComRes poll said so, and that's what the Coalition For Marriage (C4M) are quoting.
This took approximately five minutes to find out, but rather than exercise their fingers and brains the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have written pompously to Archbishop Cranmer demanding that he explains it all to them as they are far too fick to bother to to check out a complaint about whether that figure could be substantiated. It's not secret - the source is listed on the advert.
This, they think, shows them doing a good job. I think it shows people whose jobs can be cheerfully cut. Luckily, it looks like the public aren't paying for once, so it's up to the advertising industry if they want to keep funding these idlers to provide free copy for bloggers.
As His Grace politely points out, it isn't up to him to evaluate the original research. If the ASA want to challenge that, they must go to ComRes and C4M. But we all know it isn't really about the opinion poll. Rather, it's an attempt to control what can be said politically in the context of an advert.
In this case, it is a Christian-led resistance to the re-definition of marriage which some people find objectionable. They roped a trade-body in as arbiters of what can and cannot be said publicly.
I don't like C4M and Andrea Rose Minichiello Williams. I don't approve of the way the groups to which she is connected allow ordinary people - such as Mr and Mrs Bull of the Chymorvah Private Hotel - to get in to fights where the law is already weighted against them. There are civilians and combatants, and you should be wary of encouraging the former to become the latter. Luckily the ASA have picked on someone their own size in Archbishop Cranmer, who knows what he has signed up for.
This illustrates the point which Christian groups and Cranmer have previously claimed: that when a Christian expresses a view, not only can they expect that view to be challenged rightly in debate but that law, or quasi-law such as trade bodies claiming 'codes', will try to stop them expressing a view at all.
Checking the ASA's own code, it appears they don't have any remit to deal with editorial content so the following is run in the context of editorial material to further inform public debate about what it is attempting to suppress as offensive.
No permission has been sought from the originators nor has payment been received.
I 'ad that Barbara Streisand in the back of the cab once.
Update: Linkage -
Ministry of Truth - best formal analysis (as ever)
Ambush Predator
The Engineer
Peter Ould
Dr Jim West
Max Farquar - best graphic
Anna Raccoon
Tim Worstall
Longrider
Orphans of Liberty
Samizdata
Raedwald
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Magazine prosecuted for stating the bleedin' obvious
The Spectator is to be prosecuted for breaching a court order which banned anyone from writing about the defendants in the Stephen Lawrence case lest they claim they could not receive a fair trial because the jury had been influenced.
This a fair argument in most cases; you don't need to be a lawyer to assent to the common sense of wanting an unbiased jury, without getting fetishist about whether the jury have ever heard of the defendant. However it was pointless in a case which already had billions of words devoted to it and had begun life as an attempt very publicly to force the CPS to bring a case, then gone on to a high-profile inquest, press campaign, an investigation by the Police Complaints Authority (as it was then) and a major enquiry, and then another investigation by the IPCC in 2007. The original trial collapsed; this meant some defendants could rely on the old double jeopardy rules to avoid a second trial, so hallowed law was changed to put them on trial again.
Whether they could ever have received a fair trial after the papers had tried the old "sue us for defamation if you aren't murderers" gambit is open to debate, and must raise issue of whether the inquest and three further reports were entirely without influence. If we refused to try everybody who was already known in the public press, then Jeffrey Archer would never have gone to gaol.
Besides, if this Spectator article could have prejudiced a jury, it would be against the Crown, not against the defendants. As an article it offered little further damage to those on trial; its ire was directed at the court system by pointing out what everyone already knew, i.e. that in the intervening years there were other prosecutions all fully covered in the press, by the BBC and by the law wire services. It wasn't secret.
Neil Acourt and David Norris were jailed for racially abusing a police officer, Detective Constable Gareth Reid, in 2001. They were convicted and appealed on the grounds that they hadn't been able to receive a fair trial due to being repeatedly condemned in the papers since 1993.
No, said Lord Justice Mantell, sitting with Mr Justice Wright and Mrs Justice Rafferty, just because you've been criticised in the press is no reason refuse to bring a trial.
However, they slightly reduced their sentences which they felt to be out of line with other examples of similar offences, which caused Sergeant Ravi Chand of the National Black Police Association to complain that judges didn't understand how serious this was. In other words, their original sentence was tainted by being an interim attempt to payback people who were felt to have got away with murder. The Sun was explicit in this "Lawrence thugs jailed at last" it said, glad that the CPS had finally got a conviction to stick against them.
So one of the defendants in the 2012 murder trial, David Norris, had already had the issue of prejudice against him answered in the courts. On the day that the Spectator was supposed to have distorted the very fabric of the space-time continuum, that information was available all over everywhere, including the BBC, the Daily Mail, and a solicitor's news service which was open to the public at that point and has since gone behind a paywall.
Later, the officer who alleged racial abuse by Acourt and Norris, DC Gareth Reid, alleged that he had been the subject of racial discrimination, losing an employment case against the Metropolitan Police in 2010. He had brought previous discrimination cases in 1997 and 2001.
Eventually, convictions for murder were brought in. The evidence looked poor but these are not the defendants one goes to the barricades for, and they have been convicted by a jury of their peers. Possibly the grounds for appeal will mention The Spectator and will make as much as they can of the fact that if it was worth prosecuting the publication, that must mean it had some influence. So the defence must be pleased that they've been handed an extra argument to use by the legal machine which was so keen to see the clients jailed.
The Lawrence case has always been choked with people trying to use the murder of one young man as proof of racism in the police. Neither the collapsed trial, the inquest or the PCA investigation delivered the conclusions which the press and campaigners wanted. Eventually, the Macpherson report got us decades of political correctness and which resulted in the police being too scared to take on child abusers who instantly play the race card.
This time we are going to get the show-trial of a publication because the courts think this will demonstrate who's in charge and stop the pesky press reporting things or even mentioning what they already reported a decade earlier. Shush, someone in the jury might have heard of Stephen Lawrence.
It won't be much of a show; editor Fraser Nelson has already said they will not contest the case and will just pay the fine, which is a wise call. But note, the original piece wasn't about the guilt or innocence of the defendants; it was criticising the justice system. However, Mr Justice Treacy thought the jury weren't influenced by two decades of media coverage and they said they hadn't read the Spectator, and he met them so he should know.
Here's a useful timeline to help keep track of all the things other than a couple of lousy paras in a patrician house-mag, which might have come to the attention of anybody conscious since 1993.
Stephen Lawrence has been held up as a martyr for 20 years, and so he is; but if there is one thing any averagely-educated person can see it is that martyrdom can swing round unpredictably. Keep going with the prosecutions of the messengers and the political correctness, and we yet might see scumbag David Norris carried out of court, re-sanctified and wearing the white robes of a poor misused victim of the justice system.
This a fair argument in most cases; you don't need to be a lawyer to assent to the common sense of wanting an unbiased jury, without getting fetishist about whether the jury have ever heard of the defendant. However it was pointless in a case which already had billions of words devoted to it and had begun life as an attempt very publicly to force the CPS to bring a case, then gone on to a high-profile inquest, press campaign, an investigation by the Police Complaints Authority (as it was then) and a major enquiry, and then another investigation by the IPCC in 2007. The original trial collapsed; this meant some defendants could rely on the old double jeopardy rules to avoid a second trial, so hallowed law was changed to put them on trial again.
Whether they could ever have received a fair trial after the papers had tried the old "sue us for defamation if you aren't murderers" gambit is open to debate, and must raise issue of whether the inquest and three further reports were entirely without influence. If we refused to try everybody who was already known in the public press, then Jeffrey Archer would never have gone to gaol.
Besides, if this Spectator article could have prejudiced a jury, it would be against the Crown, not against the defendants. As an article it offered little further damage to those on trial; its ire was directed at the court system by pointing out what everyone already knew, i.e. that in the intervening years there were other prosecutions all fully covered in the press, by the BBC and by the law wire services. It wasn't secret.
Neil Acourt and David Norris were jailed for racially abusing a police officer, Detective Constable Gareth Reid, in 2001. They were convicted and appealed on the grounds that they hadn't been able to receive a fair trial due to being repeatedly condemned in the papers since 1993.
No, said Lord Justice Mantell, sitting with Mr Justice Wright and Mrs Justice Rafferty, just because you've been criticised in the press is no reason refuse to bring a trial.
However, they slightly reduced their sentences which they felt to be out of line with other examples of similar offences, which caused Sergeant Ravi Chand of the National Black Police Association to complain that judges didn't understand how serious this was. In other words, their original sentence was tainted by being an interim attempt to payback people who were felt to have got away with murder. The Sun was explicit in this "Lawrence thugs jailed at last" it said, glad that the CPS had finally got a conviction to stick against them.
So one of the defendants in the 2012 murder trial, David Norris, had already had the issue of prejudice against him answered in the courts. On the day that the Spectator was supposed to have distorted the very fabric of the space-time continuum, that information was available all over everywhere, including the BBC, the Daily Mail, and a solicitor's news service which was open to the public at that point and has since gone behind a paywall.
Later, the officer who alleged racial abuse by Acourt and Norris, DC Gareth Reid, alleged that he had been the subject of racial discrimination, losing an employment case against the Metropolitan Police in 2010. He had brought previous discrimination cases in 1997 and 2001.
Eventually, convictions for murder were brought in. The evidence looked poor but these are not the defendants one goes to the barricades for, and they have been convicted by a jury of their peers. Possibly the grounds for appeal will mention The Spectator and will make as much as they can of the fact that if it was worth prosecuting the publication, that must mean it had some influence. So the defence must be pleased that they've been handed an extra argument to use by the legal machine which was so keen to see the clients jailed.
The Lawrence case has always been choked with people trying to use the murder of one young man as proof of racism in the police. Neither the collapsed trial, the inquest or the PCA investigation delivered the conclusions which the press and campaigners wanted. Eventually, the Macpherson report got us decades of political correctness and which resulted in the police being too scared to take on child abusers who instantly play the race card.
This time we are going to get the show-trial of a publication because the courts think this will demonstrate who's in charge and stop the pesky press reporting things or even mentioning what they already reported a decade earlier. Shush, someone in the jury might have heard of Stephen Lawrence.
It won't be much of a show; editor Fraser Nelson has already said they will not contest the case and will just pay the fine, which is a wise call. But note, the original piece wasn't about the guilt or innocence of the defendants; it was criticising the justice system. However, Mr Justice Treacy thought the jury weren't influenced by two decades of media coverage and they said they hadn't read the Spectator, and he met them so he should know.
Here's a useful timeline to help keep track of all the things other than a couple of lousy paras in a patrician house-mag, which might have come to the attention of anybody conscious since 1993.
Stephen Lawrence has been held up as a martyr for 20 years, and so he is; but if there is one thing any averagely-educated person can see it is that martyrdom can swing round unpredictably. Keep going with the prosecutions of the messengers and the political correctness, and we yet might see scumbag David Norris carried out of court, re-sanctified and wearing the white robes of a poor misused victim of the justice system.
Friday, 20 April 2012
The Police State of Norfolk
A fracas has broken out over pictures of football strip which got out ahead of the PR gig, and the story is now running in the Daily Mail and on regional television. A fan found pictures of the new strip on an authorized website and re-tweeted them, 12 hours ahead of the official launch. The club noticed and was annoyed. It called the police.
I can understand that the PR wallah who was arranging the jamboree was miffed at having their thunder stolen just before they hawked their wares, but what I can't understand is why the police thought that they had to involve themselves in a civil matter by trying to classify this as within the scope of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The essence of our computing legislation is that, like much modern legislation, it is drawn widely because it is impossible to predict the situations in which it might be needed. The onus is on the police and then the CPS to not use it unless they've got a case which is in the public interest.
The wording was deliberately vague; the security services pushed for the Act in 1990 following the quashing of the Gold and Schifreen conviction, so that unauthorized access would be criminalized rather than the method for gaining that access.
The difficulty with this kind of 'no arguments sonny' legislation, though, is the unwritten deal that the state won't use it to get involved in private matters, to settle private or commercial scores or apply it trivially. We don't have a written constitution. Maybe it can't be adequately expressed in writing, but that's the deal and any reasonable grown up understands it. The difficulty is knowing when to refuse to become embroiled because it is just too trivial to be a criminal matter.
Why exactly did the police rush round to a fan's house? This was obviously a case where one is sympathetic then goes to talk to the lawyer before getting involved. Possibly there was a matter of copyright infringement, but that's a civil matter, not for the police.
The allegation of a hack doesn't appear to have any substance; Norwich FC themselves put the pictures up via the intermediary promoter Emmerson Marketing, who didn't lock the pictures off properly and were amazed when the fanboi found them by looking at their HTML code and seeing the links there, although they were not yet revealed (reports El Reg in the comments). Whoops.
As for any commercial implications; there aren't any. Norwich got some free advertising for a garment which nobody but its own fanbase cares about. All the commercial damage came from the police trying to put the frighteners on a customer.
This was a case which was very low priority, and yet the police reacted because the h-word was waved around. Because they are police and not marketing managers it didn't occur to them that if you are planning the launch of a new home strip, in fact quite a lot of people have to know about it - particularly the sponsors, Aviva, who will have approval of everything, the t-shirt printers, the photographers, players and video artists making the promotional material, and the people building the marketing website who need the pictures ready to go. The idea that a strip is 'secret' is charming nonsense, a fairy-story which was told to the police, taking advantage of their relative ignorance.
Shirts don't happen by magic. They happen by contract - and contracts are not, in the first instance, a matter for the police.
Let's have a look at the time-line.
April 17 The fan posts pictures on Twitter
April 18 Norwich FC call the fan at 4.30am, then the police.
April 18 The police interview the fan
April 18 PR releases run by interested websites and papers - see below.
April 19 Daily Mail runs the story about the police interview.
April 19 Norwich FC official launch at Carrow Road, which shows strip with a different style collar and new yellow streak on the shorts
The police seem unaware that Norwich gave the full story and a picture of their director, famous Twitterist Stephen Fry, posing with the shirt on April 18 to the insurance industry website Insurance Times and other websites such as strip suppliers. In order to set that exposure up, they may have given the material to websites on the 17th, who then package it for release on the 18th.
All that happened was a fanboi broke an embargo which didn't apply to him anyway.
Extract:
Norwich City director Stephen Fry said: “We’re so thrilled Aviva are with us for another four years. A four years which we hope will see our beloved club consolidate its natural home in the Premier League. “The new kit fitted me like a…football shirt. I was so pleased to be able to launch it, even while 12,000 miles away. You’d be amazed how many Norwich fans there are in New Zealand.”
........
As Fry explains he is in New Zealand and posing with the shirt, we can safely assume they've been in production for some time, other wise he wouldn't have one and they wouldn't be available to go fresh on the shelves, would they? This is not 'secret' - it's just that some advertising material was pointed out to the target market a few hours before the pr launch was scheduled. It's no more than a sneak preview of a product, the soul of gossip. Nothing whatever to do with the police, who misdirected themselves as to the nature of this complaint. It's only a 'surprise', the way a new car or a birthday present is a surprise. Fanboi rudely spoilt the "surprise", which is hardly surprising because that's what fans do - they talk about the club. Clubs generally encourage this because without fans they are nothing.
The Club initially tried to defend its stupidity, then realized it had got it wrong and embarrassed the sponsor, Aviva, who sponsors them to butter-up the customers, not antagonize them . The very last thing you should do for someone who just paid you a pile of dosh to be associated with a global brand, is draw attention to a minor stuff-up at a PR launch. Norwich FC made their own patron saint Delia look like a cheap thug. Given Fry's media sophistication and his own enthusiastic use of Twitter, it is most unlikely that he would have run screaming to the rozzers.
The Police State of Norfolk
Someone with clout at the club called the police - was it CEO David McNally? He would have had to be asked first. Then somebody with clout in the police responded by sending a constable when they should have insisted on taking legal advice first . Any lawyer worth their salt would have pointed out that a twelve-hour spoiler was not the end of the world and that the first thing to check - politely - was how the leak happened. It's not necessarily a criminal matter at all.
The question is why did the police act so swiftly? Was it an example of funny handshakes, the hospitality box and putting the apparatus of a police state at the disposal of a bezzie mate?
That the police mistakenly thought this might be a hack is just about credible. However, since it took five minutes to explain that the club's promoter had left live links laying around, the correct response is "Sorry to have troubled you Sir, thank you for being so cooperative". And then tell David McNally that they are satisfied there was no criminal offence and that they wouldn't be taking it any further.
Instead, Norfolk police have ham-fistedly continued to suggest that there might have been an offence if malice had been present, with the poor fanboi being marched around to say sorry as if he could be guilty of something criminal. This was not a criminal offence at all. If it was anything, it was for the civil lawyers and not the police.
Norfolk Constabulary are very bad at these matters. They have just spent months being suckered in to the Climate Change debacle, where people mashing up data to suit their agenda have used - or wasted - police time in trying to control and shut down academic dissent.
I can understand that the PR wallah who was arranging the jamboree was miffed at having their thunder stolen just before they hawked their wares, but what I can't understand is why the police thought that they had to involve themselves in a civil matter by trying to classify this as within the scope of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The essence of our computing legislation is that, like much modern legislation, it is drawn widely because it is impossible to predict the situations in which it might be needed. The onus is on the police and then the CPS to not use it unless they've got a case which is in the public interest.
The wording was deliberately vague; the security services pushed for the Act in 1990 following the quashing of the Gold and Schifreen conviction, so that unauthorized access would be criminalized rather than the method for gaining that access.
The difficulty with this kind of 'no arguments sonny' legislation, though, is the unwritten deal that the state won't use it to get involved in private matters, to settle private or commercial scores or apply it trivially. We don't have a written constitution. Maybe it can't be adequately expressed in writing, but that's the deal and any reasonable grown up understands it. The difficulty is knowing when to refuse to become embroiled because it is just too trivial to be a criminal matter.
Why exactly did the police rush round to a fan's house? This was obviously a case where one is sympathetic then goes to talk to the lawyer before getting involved. Possibly there was a matter of copyright infringement, but that's a civil matter, not for the police.
The allegation of a hack doesn't appear to have any substance; Norwich FC themselves put the pictures up via the intermediary promoter Emmerson Marketing, who didn't lock the pictures off properly and were amazed when the fanboi found them by looking at their HTML code and seeing the links there, although they were not yet revealed (reports El Reg in the comments). Whoops.
As for any commercial implications; there aren't any. Norwich got some free advertising for a garment which nobody but its own fanbase cares about. All the commercial damage came from the police trying to put the frighteners on a customer.
This was a case which was very low priority, and yet the police reacted because the h-word was waved around. Because they are police and not marketing managers it didn't occur to them that if you are planning the launch of a new home strip, in fact quite a lot of people have to know about it - particularly the sponsors, Aviva, who will have approval of everything, the t-shirt printers, the photographers, players and video artists making the promotional material, and the people building the marketing website who need the pictures ready to go. The idea that a strip is 'secret' is charming nonsense, a fairy-story which was told to the police, taking advantage of their relative ignorance.
Shirts don't happen by magic. They happen by contract - and contracts are not, in the first instance, a matter for the police.
Let's have a look at the time-line.
April 17 The fan posts pictures on Twitter
April 18 Norwich FC call the fan at 4.30am, then the police.
April 18 The police interview the fan
April 18 PR releases run by interested websites and papers - see below.
April 19 Daily Mail runs the story about the police interview.
April 19 Norwich FC official launch at Carrow Road, which shows strip with a different style collar and new yellow streak on the shorts
The police seem unaware that Norwich gave the full story and a picture of their director, famous Twitterist Stephen Fry, posing with the shirt on April 18 to the insurance industry website Insurance Times and other websites such as strip suppliers. In order to set that exposure up, they may have given the material to websites on the 17th, who then package it for release on the 18th.
All that happened was a fanboi broke an embargo which didn't apply to him anyway.
Extract:
Aviva extends sponsorship deal with Norwich City to 2016
Insurer will continue to feature on team’s shirts and sponsor Community Stand
Norwich City director Stephen Fry said: “We’re so thrilled Aviva are with us for another four years. A four years which we hope will see our beloved club consolidate its natural home in the Premier League. “The new kit fitted me like a…football shirt. I was so pleased to be able to launch it, even while 12,000 miles away. You’d be amazed how many Norwich fans there are in New Zealand.”
........
As Fry explains he is in New Zealand and posing with the shirt, we can safely assume they've been in production for some time, other wise he wouldn't have one and they wouldn't be available to go fresh on the shelves, would they? This is not 'secret' - it's just that some advertising material was pointed out to the target market a few hours before the pr launch was scheduled. It's no more than a sneak preview of a product, the soul of gossip. Nothing whatever to do with the police, who misdirected themselves as to the nature of this complaint. It's only a 'surprise', the way a new car or a birthday present is a surprise. Fanboi rudely spoilt the "surprise", which is hardly surprising because that's what fans do - they talk about the club. Clubs generally encourage this because without fans they are nothing.
The Club initially tried to defend its stupidity, then realized it had got it wrong and embarrassed the sponsor, Aviva, who sponsors them to butter-up the customers, not antagonize them . The very last thing you should do for someone who just paid you a pile of dosh to be associated with a global brand, is draw attention to a minor stuff-up at a PR launch. Norwich FC made their own patron saint Delia look like a cheap thug. Given Fry's media sophistication and his own enthusiastic use of Twitter, it is most unlikely that he would have run screaming to the rozzers.
The Police State of Norfolk
Someone with clout at the club called the police - was it CEO David McNally? He would have had to be asked first. Then somebody with clout in the police responded by sending a constable when they should have insisted on taking legal advice first . Any lawyer worth their salt would have pointed out that a twelve-hour spoiler was not the end of the world and that the first thing to check - politely - was how the leak happened. It's not necessarily a criminal matter at all.
The question is why did the police act so swiftly? Was it an example of funny handshakes, the hospitality box and putting the apparatus of a police state at the disposal of a bezzie mate?
That the police mistakenly thought this might be a hack is just about credible. However, since it took five minutes to explain that the club's promoter had left live links laying around, the correct response is "Sorry to have troubled you Sir, thank you for being so cooperative". And then tell David McNally that they are satisfied there was no criminal offence and that they wouldn't be taking it any further.
Instead, Norfolk police have ham-fistedly continued to suggest that there might have been an offence if malice had been present, with the poor fanboi being marched around to say sorry as if he could be guilty of something criminal. This was not a criminal offence at all. If it was anything, it was for the civil lawyers and not the police.
Norfolk Constabulary are very bad at these matters. They have just spent months being suckered in to the Climate Change debacle, where people mashing up data to suit their agenda have used - or wasted - police time in trying to control and shut down academic dissent.
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