The Steeple Times

Tag: Law

  • Moron of the Moment – Killer Cyclist Charlie Alliston

    Moron of the Moment – Killer Cyclist Charlie Alliston

    Irresponsible cyclist whose out-of-control fixed gear bike killed a mother of two in London deserved to be jailed; the law must now change

     

    Perhaps also an ‘Aggressor of our Age’, our ‘Moron of the Moment’ just had to be a reckless cyclist whose actions resulted in the death of a mother of two.

     

    On 12th February 2016, former McDonald’s worker Charlie Alliston chose to ride an illegal for road use Olympic style fixed gear track bike with no front brake on Old Street, East London. He crashed, at a speed of 18 miles per hour, into 44-year-old Kim Briggs causing “catastrophic head injuries” that resulted in the human resources executive’s death a week later.

     

    Jailed on Monday for a paltry 18 months after being convicted of causing bodily harm by wanton and furious driving under an archaic piece of legislation used to prosecute horse and carriage drivers in the 19th century, what is especially shocking is that this 20-year-old showed utterly no remorse.

     

    In various online posts after the accident, Alliston also wrote such heartless and disgusting comments as:

     

    “That in way whatsoever was this my fault… She ignored me… I can put my hands up and say this was not my fault.”

     

    “I warned… Get the f**k outta [sic] my way, which she didn’t.”

     

    “Yes it is her fault… Hopefully it is a lesson learned on her behalf… She put not only hers, but my life in danger. But as usual theres [sic] always the odd w**er that has to blame the cyclist.”

     

    “I’ve already had a lot of s**t from it already.”

     

    “Eventually she got carted away, I had to sit in the van for several hours waiting for an officer to come and take pictures of the situation.”

     

    “I was not recklessly riding, riding fast.”

     

    “F**k me and my health, I can heal and recover. The bike cannot!”

     

    “At the end of the day if you know the flame will hurt you, you still proceed to put your hand over it and get burnt. Its [sic] your fault, I refused to accept any responsibility in this whatsoever. She saw me and acknowledged my presence yet still carried on it. Its [sic] not my fault people think they’re invincible or just have zero respect for cyclists… Why the f**k did she stop in the middle?”

     

    We very much hope this vile and callous horror has a most pleasant time in prison. Charlie Alliston also provides an example as to why cyclists should be forced to be insured and the outcome of this case also provides proof as to why the law should be updated to reflect the damage and destruction that cyclists do sometimes wreak.

     

  • Public vs. Private

    Public vs. Private

    Matthew Steeples suggests respected actor George Clooney and publicity desperado Karen Danczuk provide contrasting examples about the ethics of paparazzi intrusion and media manipulation

     

    Paparazzi intrusion and media manipulation are interlinked hot potatoes that look unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. Two very different examples emerged in recent days of very different behavior by so-called ‘personalities’ – yet each gives indication that something is not quite right with the situation as it stands.

     

    Whilst ‘ordinary individuals’ – and such should include, for example, successful business people who do not choose to put themselves on any kind of public pedestal – unquestionably deserve privacy from press intrusion unless they do something criminal or opt to share details of something considered newsworthy, the issue of where is the line of public and private was importantly raised by George Clooney late last week. The actor promised to “prosecute to the full extent of the law” a magazine named Voici after they scaled the fence of his Lake Como home to take unauthorised pictures of his young twin babies, Ella and Alexander, and he is right to do so.

     

    Whilst undoubtedly a public figure himself (and one whose fortune stems from such), Mr Clooney has a point. His offspring, through no fault of their own, have only become part of a media circus because of their parentage and the dangers that could result from their images being featured in the press are great. Stronger restrictions against unauthorised photography are indeed required internationally – especially in the domain of minors – and California, for example, was right to issue laws in 2013 that protected children from paparazzi cameras.

     

    Elsewhere and though such publications as the Mail Online may thrive due to their enthusiasm for incognito shots, on Sunday that paper illustrated another type of shoddy journalism. In publishing a ‘story’ – if it could even be called such – about the tawdry ex-wife of the disgraced Labour MP Simon Danczuk, 34-year old Karen Danczuk, cavorting on a Spanish beach with her 26-year old “Spanish toyboy lover” as he proposed to her, that paper opted to mislead its readers.

     

    Featuring images taken by an agency named Flynet Pictures, it is plain that Ms Danczuk – listed as a “current client” by Louise Clifford, the daughter of the jailed nonce and convicted sex offender Max Clifford, on the website of her Borne Media PR agency – staged the images contained in that article and that the Mail Online’s Stephanie Linning was, at the very least, complicit of playing along with what is nothing other than a moment of media manipulation. The public, however, did not fall for this and of the 320 comments on the article most were in the negative. One, which received 1,184 likes, remarked: “So it was a big surprise for her then with a camera on standby? Fixed photo opportunities!”

     

    Shame on the Mail Online for falling for the desperado Karen Danczuk and her representatives and shame on Voici also for invading the Clooney children’s privacy. Such activities must cease and the sooner, the better.

     

    Update: 8:30am, Monday 31st July 2017 – Karen Danczuk has now blocked @SteepleTimes on Twitter. Something about ‘heat’ and ‘kitchens’ comes to mind.

     

    Public vs. Private – George Clooney and Karen Danczuk – Matthew Steeples suggests actor George Clooney and desperado Karen Danczuk provide contrasting examples about ethics of media manipulation
    Paedophile Max Clifford pictured with his daughter Louise Clifford prior to being jailed for 8 years in 2014 for abusing victims as young as 14 years old; Louise Clifford is now the PR of amongst others such greats as Karen Danczuk, Chloe Sims and Lauren Goodger and shockingly purchased her father’s “goodwill” in November 2015
  • Anti-Social Media

    Anti-Social Media

    The law needs to be updated with regard to what is acceptable on social media; businesses such as Facebook and Twitter need to equally be held to account

     

    Social media, as we’ve already reported, was proven to be anything but sociable in a London courtroom this week. With the jailing of the tweed gilet clad racist Viscount St Davids for 12 weeks for malicious communications came acceptance from the country’s most important magistrate, Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot, that “Facebook is not private” and that it is no longer a place where anything can be posted without repercussions applying.

     

    Elsewhere, on Friday, outside of the realms of the law but again very much illustrative of the perils of posting without consideration of impact, the Mirror reported that Stella McCartney is said to be furious with David Beckham – a man known to use European privacy laws to have his own home obscured on Google – after he posted an un-pixelated image of a group of children at his daughter’s birthday party that included amongst others her six year old daughter on Instagram. Ms McCartney, a woman reportedly very protective of her child’s safety, is said to be “spitting feathers,” yet, as the paper concluded: “David Beckham has not taken the [liked by 900,000 individuals to date] post down.”

     

    Previously decisions in civil cases – such as that of freelance journalist Dennis Rice vs. the crowdfunded news site Byline and media personality Katie Hopkins vs. blogger Jack Monroe – have highlighted that irresponsible and defamatory posts can be costly to the parties involved, with damages and legal bills awarded against Hopkins alone said to total some £130,000. Equally, as a contrast, such outcomes as Paul Chambers’ successful appeal against his conviction for tweeting about blowing an airport “sky high,” have also depressingly shown that regulation of what is acceptable is confused and in need of reform.

     

    A most telling factor to consider is that the Communications Act came to statute in 2003 and as such really does not have any specific provision for activities conducted on mediums like Facebook – a for-profit company with revenues of £20.6 billion in 2016 and 2 billion active monthly users as of June 2017 – and Twitter – a for-profit company with revenues of £1.9 billion in 2016 and 328 million active users as of July 2017. Facebook was founded in February 2004 and Twitter in March 2006 and thus, though it is accepted that the Communications Act (2003) was appropriate back in the early noughties, it is now out of date and no longer fit for purpose.

     

    An attempt to update the law with the Malicious Communications (Social Media) Bill in 2016 was likely going to be a step forward, but because of Theresa May’s decision to call a pointless General Election in May 2017, that failed due to it having not even yet reached the House of Lords prior to the 3rd May. Now, with the ‘Wheat Field Wanderer’ in a position of being nothing but “weak and wobbly” in terms of her political influence, such laws will likely be forgotten. That is entirely wrong and we now call upon politicians of all parties to campaign to right the wrong that allows bullies and trolls to continue to prosper.

     

    Anti-Social Media – The law needs to be updated with regard to what is acceptable on social media; businesses such as Facebook and Twitter need to equally be held to account
    A pixelated version of the image David Beckham posted to Instagram of his daughter, Harper, and other children; the Mirror opted (rightly) to obscure the faces of the other children and we do the same here; shown: Princess Eugenie and Harper Beckham
  • The Busy Borwicks

    The Busy Borwicks

    Son of Kensington MP Lady Borwick’s curious connections to the people who ensured both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump revealed

     

    On Sunday, Carole Cadwalladr of  The Observer published a lengthy and well researched article that, amongst other things, examined the connections between The Hon. Thomas Borwick – the son of the Conservative hereditary peer The Rt. Hon. The Lord Borwick and Kensington’s Member of Parliament Lady ‘Call me Victoria’ Borwick – and the controversial US hedge fund titan and backer of Donald Trump, Robert Mercer.

     

    A director of a multitude of companies, in spite of being just 29 years old, “new media expert” Thomas Borwick – whose mother was forced to apologise “after using City Hall resources to promote her husband’s [now defunct] electric vehicle business” in 2009 – it now transpires, was not only Vote Leave’s chief technology officer but previously worked with SCL/Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ. Borwick currently touts himself to his 202 followers on Twitter as the founder of a political canvasing consultancy named Kan.to, an organisation that he boldy claims “will out-organise, out-plan, out-leaflet, out-twitter, out-work and out-vote all of its opponents”.

     

    Mercer, one of the owners of the far-right Breitbart News Network as well as being a major shareholder in Cambridge Analytica, is a man whose “sinister” connections to both Trump and Nigel Farage have rightly been widely criticised. On that basis, that the son of fervent Brexiteer Lady Borwick – a woman whose constituents voted 69% to ‘Remain’ and whose domain was home to a greater proportion of EU nationals than any other London borough in 2016 – has links to this billionaire and his activities should only encourage the voters of Kensington to ditch her and her out-of-touch party.

     

    We urge Kensington based readers to support Annabel Mullin of the Liberal Democrats on 8th June. This principled lady is the only person who can realistically unseat Lady Borwick and she is the only candidate who will support the beliefs the majority in this constituency continue to hold dear.

     

    #DumpLadyBorwick #VoteAnnabelMullin

     

  • A Right to Rape

    A Right to Rape

    That a man who raped a 12-year old child has walked free is an utter disgrace

     

    Daniel Cieslak met a 12-year old child in a taxi queue in Edinburgh city centre at 4am on 31st July 2015. He took her to a friend’s flat, had sexual intercourse with her and on being arrested “became distressed” and told detectives he had been led to believe she was 16.

     

    On the 17th March, Cieslak, a Polish born, 21-year old student at Napier University, pleaded guilty to rape but was shockingly discharged without sentence and without requirement to sign the sex offenders’ register at the High Court in Glasgow.

     

    The judge in the case, Lady Scott, took what she described as the “wholly exceptional” decision to “discharge [Cieslak] absolutely” despite the fact that she accepted that a victim under 13 years is “deemed incapable of consent”. She remarked: “Whilst there is no defence to this offence because of strict liability, the fact is that you would have had a defence if the victim had been a few months older”.

     

    That Daniel Cieslak escaped punishment is an utter disgrace. It is true that the girl he raped lied to him and told him she was far older than her years, but that he claimed he did not know the true age of what essentially is a child seems a little far-fetched. In response, Isabelle Kerr, manager of Glasgow’s Rape Crisis Centre told The Scottish Sun:

     

    “The law really can’t be any clearer. If someone is under the age of 16 they cannot give consent – therefore a 12-year old is not able to consent”.

     

    “It’s a concern to be talking about someone of that age as an ‘active participant’. It’s going down the road of victim blaming, something we’ve been working to tackle”.

     

    “I would be concerned that young women might be deterred from reporting rape if they feel they are not going to be believed or not taken seriously”.

     

    Whilst Lady Scott may be of the view that “justice [has been] best served” by her judgment, we agree with those who say that she got it wrong. That Daniel Cieslak walked free is entirely wrong and that a website named Tabloid Corrections claimed that he is an “innocent man” is even worse. As with the case of the convicted but not jailed paedophile Andrew Picard, all this result does is to bring shame on Britain’s legal system.

     

  • Power Pays

    Power Pays

    That a convicted paedophile is able to avoid a jail sentence is an utter disgrace especially given pensioners get locked up for non-payment of TV licence fees; Old Etonian Andrew Picard shouldn’t be on the streets, he should be in the clink

     

    Andrew Picard (AKA Andrew Laurence and Andrew Boeckman) was caught with 1,185 indecent images of children as young as eight on his computer. He admitted to possessing videos of a three year old being raped, children being forced to have sex with dogs and sharing indecent images on Skype with an undercover policeman yet he was spared jail and handed a derisory non-custodial sentence late last month.

     

    Eton College, Berkshire and Williams College, Massachusetts educated former USA swimmer Picard – who changed his name from Andrew Boeckman to protect the supposed “good reputation” of his wealthy family during his trial – received a sentence of just 10 months imprisonment suspended for 18 months for ten counts of possessing child pornography in late February and thus, one must ask: “Why wasn’t he locked up?”

     

    Justifying why he spared Picard of Probyn House, Page Street, Westminster jail and why he also decided not to place this privileged pervert and predator on the sex offenders’ register, Judge Peter Ross remarked:

     

    “It has been said that you and your family have suffered deeply as a result of your arrest and public exposure. Your family didn’t deserve that… [Prison] would undo the counseling you have undergone”.

     

    Sallie Bennett-Jenkins QC, defending, added:

     

    “This is a young and very able man who has hopes for the future… He was able to have this opportunity [to seek help] and this was something Andrew sought for himself, by himself”.

     

    In a country where our government actively pursues jail sentences for pensioners refusing to pay their TV licence fees, it is a disgrace that the son of a prominent American lawyer named Philip J. Boeckman manages to avoid prison in spite of the seriousness of his offences. This utterly contemptible decision is something that brings only shame on Britain.

     

  • Rent-a-Gob v. Rent-a-Gob

    Rent-a-Gob v. Rent-a-Gob

    Acid tongued food blogger Jack Monroe’s libel victory over right wing media personality Katie Hopkins represents a victory for only their lawyers

     

    Katie Hopkins undoubtedly spouts a lot of hot air but that she lost a libel action yesterday brought by the acid tongued food blogger Jack “I don’t want my boobs anymore” Monroe is a little beyond a joke. Both women like the sound of their own voices more than anything else and both profit from controversy, but that Hopkins is now left facing a total bill estimated at around £325,000 seems a little ridiculous given that all she did was write two undoubtedly inappropriate but subsequently retracted tweets.

     

    Monroe – whose claims in documents submitted to the court that she tends “to move in circles of cookery and politics rather than outrage and vitriol” will have those who’ve encountered this nasty piece of work in fits of hysterics – won £24,000 after Mr Justice Warby agreed that Hopkins’ actions had left poor, little her with “injured feelings” that “remain raw”.

     

    In the judgment, Mr Justice remarked:

     

    “Publication [of the tweets] not only caused Ms Monroe real and substantial distress, but also harm to her reputation which was serious, albeit not ‘very serious’ or ‘grave’”.

     

    “In this case, the allegations were serious but certainly not towards the top end of the scale. The extent of publication was significant but not massive in its scale. The harm to reputation, though serious, will not have been grave. The need for vindication is not a weighty factor, as there has been no attempt to prove the truth of what was alleged. This judgment will make the position clear to those who were unaware of it already. Ms Monroe is a public figure, in the sense that she chooses to engage in public life and to engage in political discourse in public forums”.

     

    In spite of the judge rejecting suggestions that any real harm was done to Monroe, she’s actually benefited hugely from this case. Not only does a woman who once claimed David Cameron “used stories about his dead son” to sell off chunks of the NHS “to his friends” walk away with a large chunk of change in damages, but this foul mouthed, ‘gender X’ harpy has also had her profile splashed across virtually every paper today. She will now profit handsomely from interviews and features and no doubt will find herself taking on new work elsewhere. In the case of Rent-a-Gob vs. Rent-a-Gob in summary though, there’s actually only one real winner: Their lawyers.

     

  • A tawdry trio

    A tawdry trio

    As Amanda Clutterbuck and Ian Paton lose their attempt to reclaim £14 million worth of Kensington and Chelsea properties that they signed over to the ‘Vamp in the Veil’ Sara Al Amoudi, we suggest all three are nothing but tawdry (more…)

  • Colourful Ruins

    Colourful Ruins

    Private view of Nicholas Gibbs’ ‘Colourful Ruins’
    (more…)

  • Website of the Week: Donotpay.co.uk

    Website of the Week: Donotpay.co.uk

    Want to get out of paying a parking ticket? This could be your solution (more…)