More Buds on the Tree.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Burkina Faso & a $15.8 Million pay-out!
I've just received an unsolicited e-mail from a Mr Karim Ahmed suggesting that I make a claim against the estate of someone who was killed in a plane crash in Burkina Faso in 2003. My share is $15.8 million and Mr Ahmed kindly offers to be my legal representative handling this transaction.
99.9% of people will laugh this off as 'too good to be true' but if this e-mail is broadcast to tens of thousands of people there will be some takers. What motivates the 0.1% who do respond to these sorts of scams? Psychological research in this field suggests that it is not that the 0.1% think the scam is neccesarily for real, but they get sucked in on the basis of "what if"!
That fear of 'missing out' motivates a tiny minority of people to take a 'punt' even though they realise it sounds 'iffy'.
Of course the other aspect of this is that you are required to make a false claim - and once you've done that you cannot then back out. After you've taken that step then the authors of the scam have some leverage on you. There is a saying that 'you can't con an honest person' - and that happens to be true!
Post-Script, 21st March 2010.
Just to prove that last point I've received a second similar e-mail today from a Mr Mohammed Waleed. The e-mail purports to seek to arrange the transfer of 2 Million US Dollars to my bank account in the mistaken belief that I am his business associate. This apparently misdirected e-mail is an opportunity for me to claim to be the legitimate third party and hand over my bank account details in anticipation of a rich payout. Once my account has been cleared out, would I be inclined to report the matter to the police? The scam once entered into gives the scammers leverage over you! Having attempted to 'con' "Mr Waleed" myself I could hardly claim the moral highground could I?
Further Post-Script, 24th March 2010.
I must be at the top of someone's "Most Gullible List" somewhere because yesterday I received another scam e-mail which is a hybrid of the two above, Mr Mohammed Waleed suggested that I claim to be a relative of someone killed in a plane crash in Burkina Faso etc.
Then this morning I received an e-mail from someone purporting to be Dr Richard Green of the 'Journal de Pharmacie' based in Burkina Faso. They say they have checked my ID and believe I would be a worthy agent for a $10.8 million donation towards charity work - he does add not to bother replying if I am "of an ungodly character"!
A couple of hours after this e-mail I had another from a Jim Ovia of the United Nations/World Bank Compensation Unit saying that if I have been the victim of an internet scam I can claim $500,000 in compensation. All I have to do is send them my bank details so they can make the transfer.................!
Final Thought, 25th March 2010.
I received five e-mail scams over as many days, the total sum offered was $43.6 million or £29 million at the current rate of exchange. They obviously like big numbers don't they and bank on exploiting peoples' naked greed.
I've just received an unsolicited e-mail from a Mr Karim Ahmed suggesting that I make a claim against the estate of someone who was killed in a plane crash in Burkina Faso in 2003. My share is $15.8 million and Mr Ahmed kindly offers to be my legal representative handling this transaction.
99.9% of people will laugh this off as 'too good to be true' but if this e-mail is broadcast to tens of thousands of people there will be some takers. What motivates the 0.1% who do respond to these sorts of scams? Psychological research in this field suggests that it is not that the 0.1% think the scam is neccesarily for real, but they get sucked in on the basis of "what if"!
That fear of 'missing out' motivates a tiny minority of people to take a 'punt' even though they realise it sounds 'iffy'.
Of course the other aspect of this is that you are required to make a false claim - and once you've done that you cannot then back out. After you've taken that step then the authors of the scam have some leverage on you. There is a saying that 'you can't con an honest person' - and that happens to be true!
Post-Script, 21st March 2010.
Just to prove that last point I've received a second similar e-mail today from a Mr Mohammed Waleed. The e-mail purports to seek to arrange the transfer of 2 Million US Dollars to my bank account in the mistaken belief that I am his business associate. This apparently misdirected e-mail is an opportunity for me to claim to be the legitimate third party and hand over my bank account details in anticipation of a rich payout. Once my account has been cleared out, would I be inclined to report the matter to the police? The scam once entered into gives the scammers leverage over you! Having attempted to 'con' "Mr Waleed" myself I could hardly claim the moral highground could I?
Further Post-Script, 24th March 2010.
I must be at the top of someone's "Most Gullible List" somewhere because yesterday I received another scam e-mail which is a hybrid of the two above, Mr Mohammed Waleed suggested that I claim to be a relative of someone killed in a plane crash in Burkina Faso etc.
Then this morning I received an e-mail from someone purporting to be Dr Richard Green of the 'Journal de Pharmacie' based in Burkina Faso. They say they have checked my ID and believe I would be a worthy agent for a $10.8 million donation towards charity work - he does add not to bother replying if I am "of an ungodly character"!
A couple of hours after this e-mail I had another from a Jim Ovia of the United Nations/World Bank Compensation Unit saying that if I have been the victim of an internet scam I can claim $500,000 in compensation. All I have to do is send them my bank details so they can make the transfer.................!
Final Thought, 25th March 2010.
I received five e-mail scams over as many days, the total sum offered was $43.6 million or £29 million at the current rate of exchange. They obviously like big numbers don't they and bank on exploiting peoples' naked greed.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Catholic Adoption Agency & Gay Rights.
A Leeds based Catholic Adoption Agency has won a High Court case against certain 'sexual orientation regulations' (part of the Equality Bill) which would compel it not to draw a distinction between same-sex adoptors and more conventional relationships.
A variety of lobby groups (Stonewall, The Secular Society, Humanist Society etc) have denounced this ruling as immoral and bigotted. A same-sex couple interviewed on the BBC TV the other night felt deeply angered that they were being discriminated against.
There was no evidence, to the best of recollection, that this couple had been refused adoption by this agency. Indeed one is tempted to ask why would they apply to such an agency in the first place? It should also be pointed out that no-one has an absolute 'right to have a child'!
The moral outrage seems rather contrived to say the least.
It seems that the High Court took the view that the work done by the agency in managing 'difficult to place' children was such that to effectively close them down would be a wholly unwarranted consequence of enforcing Harriet Harman's brainchild.
It would be silly to assert that the church is being persecuted by the state. And yet it strikes me that the church as a whole and other Christian institutions are being "set up" by state sponsored legislation which will encourage vexatious litigation from hostile lobby groups and individuals with their own agendas. Pressure from them and an unsympathetic media will increasingly bear down on the work done by Christian charities.
The precedent our Liberal masters are seeking to create is that the State will in future police individual consciences. No you won't be thrown into prison, but you will be subject to public vilification and, in some circumstances, the loss of your livelihood if you defy the Liberal Establishment. They might permit you a conscience just so long as you don't actually do anything with it!
Persecution of the church by the state has simply taken a modern twist - it's now contracted out!
A Leeds based Catholic Adoption Agency has won a High Court case against certain 'sexual orientation regulations' (part of the Equality Bill) which would compel it not to draw a distinction between same-sex adoptors and more conventional relationships.
A variety of lobby groups (Stonewall, The Secular Society, Humanist Society etc) have denounced this ruling as immoral and bigotted. A same-sex couple interviewed on the BBC TV the other night felt deeply angered that they were being discriminated against.
There was no evidence, to the best of recollection, that this couple had been refused adoption by this agency. Indeed one is tempted to ask why would they apply to such an agency in the first place? It should also be pointed out that no-one has an absolute 'right to have a child'!
The moral outrage seems rather contrived to say the least.
It seems that the High Court took the view that the work done by the agency in managing 'difficult to place' children was such that to effectively close them down would be a wholly unwarranted consequence of enforcing Harriet Harman's brainchild.
It would be silly to assert that the church is being persecuted by the state. And yet it strikes me that the church as a whole and other Christian institutions are being "set up" by state sponsored legislation which will encourage vexatious litigation from hostile lobby groups and individuals with their own agendas. Pressure from them and an unsympathetic media will increasingly bear down on the work done by Christian charities.
The precedent our Liberal masters are seeking to create is that the State will in future police individual consciences. No you won't be thrown into prison, but you will be subject to public vilification and, in some circumstances, the loss of your livelihood if you defy the Liberal Establishment. They might permit you a conscience just so long as you don't actually do anything with it!
Persecution of the church by the state has simply taken a modern twist - it's now contracted out!
Friday, March 12, 2010
"Evangelicals are a Force for Good", says Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times.
What is the largest US-based international relief organisation? Save the Children? Care? Neither, says Nicholas Kristof; it's actually World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian group. The organisation has 40,000 staff in nearly 100 countries - more people than all the other big US relief groups combined. While the American view of evangelicals is still shaped by "preening television blowhards and hypocrites", the reality is that a growing number of conservative Christians are "acknowledging that to be 'pro-life' must mean more than opposing abortion". They are getting out there and helping the needy, doing "superb work" on issues such as Aids and malaria. And, contrary to the myth, it's not all about proselytising. Today, such groups as World Vision "ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversion". Secular liberals, who have a "snooty" disdain for all faith-based groups, haven't recognised their contribution. Indeed, some are pushing to end the long-standing practice of channeling US aid through such groups. That would be a "catastrophe", since it would destroy many of the "indispensable networks" the US relies on to distribute emergency aid. America mustn't make the world's most vulnerable people the casualties of its own "cultural war".
As quoted in The Week, issue 757, 13 March 2010. http://www.theweek.co.uk/
What is the largest US-based international relief organisation? Save the Children? Care? Neither, says Nicholas Kristof; it's actually World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian group. The organisation has 40,000 staff in nearly 100 countries - more people than all the other big US relief groups combined. While the American view of evangelicals is still shaped by "preening television blowhards and hypocrites", the reality is that a growing number of conservative Christians are "acknowledging that to be 'pro-life' must mean more than opposing abortion". They are getting out there and helping the needy, doing "superb work" on issues such as Aids and malaria. And, contrary to the myth, it's not all about proselytising. Today, such groups as World Vision "ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversion". Secular liberals, who have a "snooty" disdain for all faith-based groups, haven't recognised their contribution. Indeed, some are pushing to end the long-standing practice of channeling US aid through such groups. That would be a "catastrophe", since it would destroy many of the "indispensable networks" the US relies on to distribute emergency aid. America mustn't make the world's most vulnerable people the casualties of its own "cultural war".
As quoted in The Week, issue 757, 13 March 2010. http://www.theweek.co.uk/
Saturday, March 06, 2010
"Emperor's New Clothes"!
Visiting 'Tate Modern' today I cannot help feeling that some modern art is a lot of pretentious nonsense, in fact I felt that there was more artistic merit in some of the graffiti further along the Southbank!
I had a similar experience a few months ago when visiting the Futurist exhibition at the Tate - and then going on to 'Dan Dare' at the Science Museum. The Futurist manifesto (a sort of proto-fascism in my opinion) was juvenile and the art-work little better but the 1950's British Sci-Fi hero had the merit of being truly prescient and having some cool cartoon images.
Militant Cleric's Anti-British Rant in School Assembly.
Imagine the scene where a cleric uses the platform at a school assembly to denounce the British presence in his country and calls for his co-religionists to make a stand with those the army is oppressing there.
At the time of this incident the army had been deployed a couple of years earlier to help preserve the peace in that country and were taking casualties in this thankless task. There was some feeling that the army should be pulled out and the inhabitants "left to get on with it!" The cleric made his appeal to a secondary school in Bradford which had a large number of third and fourth generation immigrant children from his home country. Their forebears had come to the city to work in the textile industry which depended upon cheap labour - and that was recruited from overseas. The important point is that the cleric clearly felt that these children owed some loyalty to the old country and its people.
On the whole the children were baffled rather than inflamed by the impassioned plea by this man and I don't think anything much came of it. The cleric was not invited back to the best of my knowledge. By this time the children had only the most tenuous links with the old country and any resentment towards "the British" had long since dissipated. The stories of their grandparents and great-grandparents having to walk from Bradford to Leeds to attend their nearest place of worship had passed into folk memory and any resistance to such buildings being developed locally (as alien impositions on the national culture) had long since ceased. Additionally the immigrants had by now their own well established school system. That did not mean, however, that the immigrant community felt entirely at ease among the host nation and there persisted some unspoken but genuinely felt fear that the conflict in this cleric's country could have serious repercussions on British streets. Occasionally their children would be asked to disperse quickly from school on the basis of rumours circulating in the city that they would be targetted by gangs of local youths. This was probably sheer paranoia - but even so it was a genuinely felt fear, met with a resolve not to retaliate in kind.
A casual observer in the secondary school would have found one aspect quite jarring however. Each class did not have a number to designate them; the classes were given the names of those who had been "martyred". Such markers emphasised to the children that, as well assimilated as they were in English culture, there were differences too. Yet the names of the martyrs were carefully selected to emphasise their English rather than foreign origins. In fact the names of the schools themselves were carefully chosen for the same reasons as if there was a concerted effort not to create an immigrant subculture but to stress that they too belonged and wished to belong. So the challenge to the host community is how welcoming they choose to be.
From an Evangelical perspective (and that is where I am coming from!) there is a much deeper challenge - do we see our role as defenders of our national culture against faiths perceived as 'foreign'? Are we inclined to feel threatened, defensive or even angry? In the face of militant calls from hostile clerics do we really believe that the Gospel is our greatest asset or do we think we need to take "action" of some other sort?
Oh! by the way the assembly I described was in 1970 and the cleric was an Irish Catholic priest.... I was there that day! This was St George's Secondary School on Cliffe Road and I was there for two years in "Anne Line" and "Henry Morse" before moving onto St Bede's in Emm Lane, Bradford.
post-script, 12th March 2010.
I came across this BBC article on local history which ties in nicely with the comments above, just click on the link... http://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/content/articles/2006/05/12/bradford_irish_katie_feature.shtml
Imagine the scene where a cleric uses the platform at a school assembly to denounce the British presence in his country and calls for his co-religionists to make a stand with those the army is oppressing there.
At the time of this incident the army had been deployed a couple of years earlier to help preserve the peace in that country and were taking casualties in this thankless task. There was some feeling that the army should be pulled out and the inhabitants "left to get on with it!" The cleric made his appeal to a secondary school in Bradford which had a large number of third and fourth generation immigrant children from his home country. Their forebears had come to the city to work in the textile industry which depended upon cheap labour - and that was recruited from overseas. The important point is that the cleric clearly felt that these children owed some loyalty to the old country and its people.
On the whole the children were baffled rather than inflamed by the impassioned plea by this man and I don't think anything much came of it. The cleric was not invited back to the best of my knowledge. By this time the children had only the most tenuous links with the old country and any resentment towards "the British" had long since dissipated. The stories of their grandparents and great-grandparents having to walk from Bradford to Leeds to attend their nearest place of worship had passed into folk memory and any resistance to such buildings being developed locally (as alien impositions on the national culture) had long since ceased. Additionally the immigrants had by now their own well established school system. That did not mean, however, that the immigrant community felt entirely at ease among the host nation and there persisted some unspoken but genuinely felt fear that the conflict in this cleric's country could have serious repercussions on British streets. Occasionally their children would be asked to disperse quickly from school on the basis of rumours circulating in the city that they would be targetted by gangs of local youths. This was probably sheer paranoia - but even so it was a genuinely felt fear, met with a resolve not to retaliate in kind.
A casual observer in the secondary school would have found one aspect quite jarring however. Each class did not have a number to designate them; the classes were given the names of those who had been "martyred". Such markers emphasised to the children that, as well assimilated as they were in English culture, there were differences too. Yet the names of the martyrs were carefully selected to emphasise their English rather than foreign origins. In fact the names of the schools themselves were carefully chosen for the same reasons as if there was a concerted effort not to create an immigrant subculture but to stress that they too belonged and wished to belong. So the challenge to the host community is how welcoming they choose to be.
From an Evangelical perspective (and that is where I am coming from!) there is a much deeper challenge - do we see our role as defenders of our national culture against faiths perceived as 'foreign'? Are we inclined to feel threatened, defensive or even angry? In the face of militant calls from hostile clerics do we really believe that the Gospel is our greatest asset or do we think we need to take "action" of some other sort?
Oh! by the way the assembly I described was in 1970 and the cleric was an Irish Catholic priest.... I was there that day! This was St George's Secondary School on Cliffe Road and I was there for two years in "Anne Line" and "Henry Morse" before moving onto St Bede's in Emm Lane, Bradford.
post-script, 12th March 2010.
I came across this BBC article on local history which ties in nicely with the comments above, just click on the link... http://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/content/articles/2006/05/12/bradford_irish_katie_feature.shtml
Friday, March 05, 2010
Monday, March 01, 2010
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