If it seems too good to be true…
You know the old saying and so you’d think most people would be on the look-out. You’d further think that someone described as “internet aware” wouldn’t fall for an email scam. But it seems you’d be wrong on both counts.
This story is about an 80 year old woman who’s fallen victim, to the tune of £16,000, to an email scam that promised to net her $30 million, supposedly left to her by some relatives she didn’t know she had. Maybe I’m too cynical for my own good, but wouldn’t alarm bells be ringing with you if someone said “You’ve inherited $30 million, but we need £16,000 in fees”? Take it out of the estate and give me what’s left! I don’t need to pay you anything up front.
It’s sad that someone - whether they’re 18 or 80 - should fall victim to a scam like this, but let’s be honest - there have been enough of these things going round over the last ten years for someone who is “internet aware” to be able to spot them. Greed got in the way of good sense.
Like it did in this case, when an elderly man lost his £70,000 life savings when he was taken in a telephone lottery scam. He hadn’t entered any lottery, but because he was told he’d won a million euros he thought he was quids in. Again, it’s sad that anyone should be taken for their life-savings but it’s not like there hasn’t been plenty of publicity about these things.
Anyway, once my friend in Nigeria (he’s a crown prince, you know) has taken his $23.5 million out of the country with my help, I’ll be able to give both these people some help. How much, Mustafa? £10,000? I’ll write you a cheque now…
But you still left her on her own…
This story on the BBC site adds yet another twist to the story about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. I have only one question to ask Mr McCann:
If you were worried about security around the apartment and thought that you might have been watched by a predator, why did you leave your children on their own?
Stupid prosecution of the week
I couldn’t believe it - for all sorts of reasons - when I read this story on the BBC website. A Scottish man has been put on probation, and placed on the Sex Offenders Register, for having sex with his bicycle.
Quite how you have sex with a bike I’m not too sure, and even if you explain it to me I’m not sure I really want to know, but that’s between him and his Raleigh. What worries me about this case is that the man has been placed on the Sex Offenders Register (the same Register that all the convicted rapists, paedophiles, etc get put on) because he was “caught in the act” by two cleaning staff at the hostel where he was staying. The reason why this worries me is because he was behind a closed, locked door on his own with an inanimate object. He was not involving anyone else in his recreation, no animals, children or other adults were being harmed in any way, yet he has still been tarred with the same brush as people like Ian Huntley.
If the genders had been reversed and two male cleaners had walked into a room where a woman had been “entertaining” herself with some inanimate object, would this case have even been reported? I’m not so sure.
Don’t comment on a feminist blog when you’re drunk…
[I’m re-posting this entry because I’ve been thinking that I shouldn’t censor myself just because some people disagreed with what I said. Or, more accurately, personally attacked me for trying to give an opinion.
I’ve removed the links that originally existed in the post, as I’m not trying to open up the debate again – just to present my blog in as complete a way as possible.
It was the debate that raged around this post that lead directly to writing this post, and creating my guidelines.]
Seriously, do yourself a favour and don’t do it. Especially not if its this one [link deleted].
I made the mistake; it was late, I’d had a few drinks. Well, perhaps “a few” isn’t the right description. Perhaps “a lot” would be better. I was checking out the latest postings on WordPress and happened on this one [link deleted].
Now, I’ll freely admit that I didn’t read it all. In fact, I read hardly any of it, but the gist was clear enough - a group of thugs had subjected a young girl to a horrible ordeal and filmed it. Its really “happy slapping” taken to its (almost) ultimate conclusion. There’s only one thing left to film now.
Quite rightly the blog and the comments were condemning the vileness of the crime and the perpetrators. I felt, though, that an important area of the debate had not been covered and, with my senses dulled by too much cider, suggested that blogs like this were giving the perpertrators an audience and that we should stop giving them a platform.
Of course, if I’d been sober I would have just read the blog and left. I know that. I know that I was stupid to make any comment, let alone one like that, on such a blog. I know that. But it didn’t stop me.
As you would expect, the floodgates opened. I was accused of “trivialising the attack” by suggesting that the blogger and others were “fuelling the misogyny”. I was told that this sort of thing meant “Jack Shit” to me, that I was being “simplistic”, “insincere” and “fucking dismissive”. I was asked if I would like to “fuck off and carry on pretending that women aren’t people”. Finally, it was suggested that it is me and people like me that “create and maintain the rape culture” and my “male entitlement and total lack of regard for the ’sex’ class is what underpins the world”.
Now, by the time I read these comments it was the next day and I wasn’t drunk anymore. I was stone cold sober - not even a hangover - and I couldn’t see how one comment could generate such personal vitriol. OK, you may not have agreed with my comment, but just ignore it. If they’d done that, I would have let it lie. But they attacked me personally and there was no way I was going to let that go.
I tried to remain calm and be polite; I tried to clarify my original point:
It’s nice to see that one comment can generate so much ‘reasoned’ debate.
[name removed], I am not being “fucking dimissive”, nor “simplistic” [name removed]. My comment was not because this type of thing means “Jack Shit” to me as you’ve also suggested. I agree that this kind of crime - whether against women or men - is atrocius and deplorable. I am not suggesting that they should be ignored; genuine reporting I have no objection with.
What I do object to is the type of reporting that - whether intentionally or not - glorifies either the crime itself or those that have committed it. The advent of the Net age and widespread blogging - MySpace, YouTube, all those types of sites - give these morons an audience. Everybody wants to be famous, and some are content to be famous for doing bad things.
>Don’t give them the oxygen of publicity was all I was saying. It’s been fascinating to read in your comments what else I supposedly said.
I know, not the most conciliatory thing I could have said perhaps. But I felt - and still do, even though I’m probably now guilty of glorification myself - that my point was a valid one; don’t give them the publicity. Someone else suggested that my view compared this type of heinous act to graffiti on walls, smashing windows and made it “no more serious than a stolen neckless [sic]“. This completely - and maybe deliberately - misunderstands what I was trying to say; the increase in availability of media coverage has led to a desensitising of sensibilities. When you see on the news every night coverage of some atrocity committed by one group on another (whether for sexual, political and religious ideals or - as with George - just for the oil), you start to think this is the norm. Especially if you’re a young, impressionable (or just plain thick) teenager with nothing better to do.
And the comments continued. The blogger suggested next that as “[your] name usually sports a penis - maybe it is your attitude that needs examining not ordinary decent folk who want to know exactly what we as a gender are up against”.
I should have left it there. I really should have. I was never going to convince any of these people that my point of view wasn’t coming from a position of hating women or wishing them harm, but was coming from a position of hating the media’s glorifcaiton of crime in the name of information and that the blogosphere was perpetuating this.
But I didn’t. The internal filters broke and I decided to get personal as well, and I enquired whether the bloggers attitude of seeing themselves as an oppressed and victimised minority might not be holding them back from actually having a life which is why they needed their blog to validate themselves. I also indicated that I would leave them “to go back to your man-hating”.
Ooops.
OK, I perhaps didn’t put my point over very well - or indeed, at all - so perhaps you’re now reading this and are completely against me (its already been suggested that I should watch out that my “male entitlement isn’t savaged by the Pit Bull on the way out”). I’ve learned my lesson; I will never comment on a feminist blog again.
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