Okay none of you guessed, my first lawyer’s letter of the year came from Lse.co.uk. Apparently I have damaged its good name and caused it distress. Yes, that is the website which each day carries at least 50 posts smearing me with all sorts of abuse and lies. Next up, Prince Andrew is going to give me a lecture for inappropriate behaviour because my wife is six years younger than I am.
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Comments
Juicin Drumroll
Tell them to fuck off & kiss your arse on the way out.
The LSE BB is a joke, particularly the Quindell thread.
“The customers of LSE.co.uk provide hours of entertainment for us all and have featured heavily in our Bulletin Board Moron of the week competitions. Shall we bring them back?”
Yes!
wildrides
I laughed until I cried ………… London South East has a reputation apparently . London South East management are deluded enough to think that it is a good one ( laugh ……. I nearly split my sides ) They (LSE) then go on to say they have not got time to moderate all posts before posting . Thus their business model is based on :- anyone can join and post any old crap and we might take it down if you complain ……… but only after the damage is done to you . This relies on you to monitor all of LSE boards to see if it has any crap about you . Obviously if LSE were operating a decent business model then they would employ enough moderators to check all posts ( as per Share Prophets ) .
Tom Winnifrith
Filthy
http://www.shareprophets.com/views/9410/oi-quindell-are-you-sure-your-customers-still-love-you-tell-us-about-swinton
read carefully – where do I say Swinton was NOT going to sign. I stand by my assertion (sourced) that Swinton got cold feet & at the date of publication had not signed. It subsequently did.
I am sure stacks of imbeciles like yo reported me to the FCA for this. But since I did nothing wrong they have not been in touch.
Try harder you mother before wasting my time again with another own goal
T
T
Janus stark
TW, you lack the professionalism I would normally attach to a paid ‘investigative’ journalist. A quick check would have revealed the broker forecasts were not intended for qpp, and were published on various sites. Instead of publishing at the first sniff of a story you should have ‘investigated’. You’ve let down the other journalists on this site and I suggest you clear your stories with them first. At least that would allow them to check your articles before they go to print. Have a good one, and when can I claim the prize for qpp not going into admin?
sherlock
I have put a webarchive track on the lse page that shows the quindell brokers ratings so that nobody can ever argue in future about how long any misleading information has been published on that webpage, and would encourage anybody else who has concerns about the veracity of information posted there to do the same.
See – http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.lse.co.uk/ShareBrokerTips.asp?shareprice=QPP&share=quindell
This can be a very useful way of picking up those who have changed website information when it has been found to be incorrect – the trouble is the webarchive needs to have the page already on its radar to be tracking it. I urge SP readers (and writers) to track whichever BB they have concerns about.
Castlewolf_22
Tom, you truly are a star,,,,,,from Sefton to where we are now…..I now fully 100% support your work (I always did, but now it’s confirmed)….this malarkey with LSE and AIM corruption has to addressed….all is not well with FCA, LSE, QPP, and many others etc etc….and small investors paid high prices……point to note….why does LSE ban “derampers” but never bans the “Rampers” (who are blatantly obvious to all that they ramp more than any de-ramp)….now it seems we have good enough reasons to know why….it suits their agenda, whatever that might be….Sir, I salute you!
Barford
Free speech keeps our Country strong so Keep up the good work TOM
On another note I see Range have published a Q&A today!!!
David Talbot
Hi Tom,
Not sure there is a Solicitors Complaints Authority. Do you mean the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)? If so, I should not hold your breath expecting a fair response. Firstly, I believe you will find you can only complain about a solicitor who is acting for you. Therefore, Mr Rhys Griffiths of Field Fisher is free to send unprofessional garbage to you. In any case, the SRA is only there to give a veneer of respectability to solicitor failings. Compared to the SRA, the waste of space FCA is a model of regulatory rectitude.
David T
Bob
@Janus
“TW, you lack the professionalism I would normally attach to a paid ‘investigative’ journalist. A quick check would have revealed the broker forecasts were not intended for qpp, and were published on various sites.”
Excellent point….. Errr. Why did LSE not perform the quick check for themselves?
“Instead of publishing at the first sniff of a story you should have ‘investigated’.”
Excellent point….. Errr. He warned LSE. They did not respond.
Elsewhere, presumably, BBM’s picked up on the ‘mistake’ and went on a ‘ramperfest’… on LSE?
CHARTMAN
Yes, LSE need to be more vigilant with their outsourced data.
Click on BKG (Berkeley Group) which closed for the weekend @ 2309.00 (down 28.00) – yet LSE has Numis Secuities on the 15th Jan, yesterday, showing their rating simply as 35.00 – and it still hasn’t been amended.
The previous broker before Numis Citigroup on 12th Jan is showing a rating of 2700.00
I noticed similar errors on a couple of other stocks but couldn’t be arsed to make a note of them. But there’s clearly a case of lack of due diligence on LSE’s part to examine all outsourced data, rather than just publish blindly, on trust.
Bob
@Sherlock
Try http://www.changedetection.com/
It is more forensic ;-)
lloorree
Evening Tom
Just a thought, but, you may want to redact your mobile number from the attachments?
Thanks
Bob
So… you make a request to have false allegations about you removed from their site and they go ‘burble’. Probably does not matter, in fact it might matter a lot if you want to go counter-claim, but did they manage to get rid of the associated posts, some, all, any?
“As our website receives on average 8 – 10,000 posts per day, it is not feasible for us to check the content of every message posted by third parties. We monitor the boards in relation to complaints either by third parties or our users, and we do of course always react to any requests made for removal of posts. We are more than happy to cooperate in these matters – these are not the sort of posts we wish to have on the share chat boards.”
No seriously, excuse me.. No doubt all of these posts are stored in a database.
Of course you, being ‘Tom’ are a bit of a ‘luser’, technical term for someone who uses a computer and has to ask the ‘helldesk’ [sic] silly questions.
The correct response should have been
‘Thanks Tom,
We have had our database experts run through the QPP threads using ‘pizza’, ‘restaurant’, ‘tiger’ or ‘bribes’ as search terms. After a quick check we also included ‘winnifroth’, ‘pizzaface’ and ‘delivery boy’. We have found 214 posts that might relate to your complaint. You may wish to provide other search terms yourself.
These have been isolated from the boards prior to review and will no longer appear live.
In this case we will now send e-mails to the posters involved requesting that they check the content of those posts and warn them about the possible defamatory nature of the posts requesting that they,
1) Inform us as to why the posts should be re-instated. We believe in free speech as well.
2) Accept the warning and apologise on the understanding that a ban is imminent.
3) In the event of no response the account will be suspended but records kept.
Naturally if you have further suggestions yourself we would be happy to consider them.
Kind Regards
Bob
On Behalf Of
LSE Support Team’
MS
Is that the lawyer for not-the-nine-o´clock-news?
Temptress
The pomposity of the lawyers letter is vomit inducing.
What a cnt.
MS
One thinks that by pointing out the factual inaccuries on the LSE board, you used terminology which points out the existance of factual errors, that is all.
PS expect to be sued by clowns for bringing their profession into disrepute!
Lendl
I see the quantum of the claim will depend on your response Tom. Pressdram/Arkle anyone?
J P Spaghetti
Tom – I see LSE are running a competition in which respondents to their request to complete a feedback survey can win an iPad. The deadline is the end of January. One question they ask is what people would change about the site, and one of the conditions is that winners must consent to having their name used for publicity purposes. I think you should enter (it shouldn’t take too long)!
Struie
To make it easy for the LSE mods all they need to do is look at the post history of the username akcsl.
And for trying to remove advertising from Shareprophets the name Grumpyscouser is the main culprit
And just to show how thick those QPP posters are, those usernames are on the top recommended posters list!!
warun boofit
Janus Stark , I just love the pomposity of your opening sentence, your not a lawyer by any chance are you? The mistake on the LSE website was there to be noticed by anyone but who else picked up on it , I give full marks to TW for that. I have a brain of my own believe it or not which means I dont always need to have every fact and reason listed out. My own thoughts on the excuses and wriggling about thats gone on so far to try and minimise it all away could be libelous if I were to print them so I am not allowed to say what I am thinking without risking getting my very own lawyers letter.
Janus stark
Warren, i’m no lawyer and i’m no investigative journalist with decades of experience in the stock market, but TW is. Shareprophets highlights the bad companies/directors on aim and 99% of the time is worthy of praise for doing so. However, in this particular instance TW has fallen short of the standard and let his personal agenda get the better of him without first verifying the facts of his article. When so many articles published here are worthy of so much credence it’s a shame that he didn’t go the extra yard before publishing. Just my view.
jimmy
perhaps mr Griffiths’ time could be better spent advising LSE on how to go through all the hundreds of of libellous comments directed at Tom and removing these before Tom calls in the grown ups – i.e Carter Ruck to sue their asses.
Tom – check out this new act -The Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013 which came into force in Jan 2014. link here – http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3028/contents/made
Anonymous (or pseudonymous) content is subject to what amounts to a non-mandatory notice-and-takedown scheme, defined in The Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013 (the “Regulations”). The Regulations are complex; they attempt to define a complete procedure for responding to formal complaints. In a nutshell, the operator must forward the notice to the poster within 48 hours. The poster then has five calendar days to respond.
To avoid liability, the operator must remove the allegedly defamatory statement unless the original poster provides a response within that period stating that the poster does not wish for the statement to be removed and including the poster’s full name and postal address. However the poster is entitled to refuse to consent to the disclosure of that information to the complainant.
Timelines for action under the Regulations are tight. If the operator has no means of contacting the poster, the allegedly defamatory content must be removed within 48 hours of receiving the complaint. If the operator sends the notice to the poster and receives no reply, the content must be removed within 7 days of the operator sending the notice. On its face, there is no provision for the operator to reject a complaint as unfounded and, under regulation 4, operators are required to respond even to formally defective complaints, albeit only by informing the complainant of the applicable requirements.
Tom, I would see a lawyer about this if i were you. You can make life VERY difficult for LSE. and they well deserve it.
Bob
@jimmy
“Tom, I would see a lawyer about this if i were you. You can make life VERY difficult for LSE. and they well deserve it.”
I think you and Tom might find III and ADVFN along with the rest including LSE should be tarred with the same brush as well.
No doubt Mr Griffiths will pick up on such a point in order to demonstrate that Tom really hates LSE because they squeeze their quanta of toothpaste from the middle of the tube. Trust me, there is logic somewhere in the previous suggestion. It is just subject to interpretation. No doubt as a Learned Gentleman he will seek the worst.
“Perhaps Mr Griffiths’ time could be better spent advising LSE on how to go through all the hundreds of of libellous comments directed at Tom and removing these before Tom calls in the grown ups – i.e Carter Ruck to sue their asses.”
http://www.lse.co.uk/careers/
I very much doubt, although I would be prepared to be corrected, that Mr Griffiths or for that matter any other Learned Colleague could find instances of their arses using both hands a mirror and T-SQL.
It might however be interesting to know how much LSE have gifted to FieldFisher for their poorly constructed offer of Eels as a pizza topping and how that compares to the yearly wage of someone who knows their SQL and would be able to assist LSE and the others with the problem of complying with the legislation you mention.
alcira16247
Tom
I was amazed that LSE had issued this lawyers letter.
I for one, when reading your exclusive article about the bogus brokers recommendations, drew no other conclusion that the LSE site had been hacked by baddies intent on mischief.
There was in my opinion, NO inference that LSE were responsible for the actual deed of making up these bogus reviews.
Can’t help but think that LSE have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick on this one!
roddy
I note that the Field Fisher partner, Rhys Griffiths, specialises in ‘dispute resolution’ (see http://www.fieldfisher.com/people/g/rhys-griffiths ) So Tom – would you recommend his services?
Secondly am intrigued by this line on the aforementioned page – ‘I acted on behalf of a leading developer of security software and hardware in relation to various litigation and arbitration arising out of the sale of the company’s shares for approximately $800m’ —- any thoughts on which company?
And indeed by ‘I also recently acted on behalf of one of the world’s largest online retailers in successfully defending a claim regarding defamatory user generated content.’
The following raises a few eyebrows: ‘I have also recently acted for a well known travel company in successfully defending various claims, prosecutions and investigations which arose in the UK and overseas as the result of the deaths of two of its clients.’
dasv
Bob,
As Armando Iannucci once asked of John Sessions, “What the hell are you talking about?”