The BCSE Guide To Silencing Criticism

The BCSE continue to be extremely worried by the threat to their credibility posed by the information revealed on the "BCSE Revealed" blog, and with good reason. Because, we keep highlighting the religious agenda, lack of scientific/educational credentials, and downright falsehoods which are part of their modus operandi. People who read "BCSE Revealed", will consider the BCSE as so silly that it's not even worth listening, let alone responding.

Just how worried the BCSE are can be seen in the steps they're willing to go to discredit me. If you flick through the archives, you'll soon find plenty of material - bogus legal threats, campaigns of insult both by private e-mail and in public, and downright fabrication.

Last week I pointed out that the BCSE had had one of its press releases picked up by the National Secular Society, and run as a news item. The same press release was also blogged by James Randerson, a Guardian columnist. Over the last year, Randerson's name is one that I've soon come to recognise: his own metaphysical naturalistic bias naturalism shines through very clearly (take a peek at his blog to see what I mean). So, it was no surprise at all to find that Randerson was the only mainstream reported of any kind who picked up the BCSE's press release and gave them some publicity from it (albeit in a blog rather than in the newspaper), here.

In the last line of Randerson's blog, he credited the BCSE, with these words:

"For more on TIS check out the British Centre for Science Education."

Those words blow away Randerson's hopes of credibility in the eyes of any neutral observer: the BCSE are the very definition of a bogus scientific institution, driven by their own metaphysics rather than science itself. As I've said before, they serve as a good litmus test: anyone who credits them has given the game away about their own prejudices. One commenter, whose identity I don't know, picked this up, remarking:

Ah, the British Centre for Science Education. So much less ironically named than "Truth in Science" - well worth an uncritical plug in this column, methinks.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/..._classroom.html#comment-713146

I then took the opportunity to add a link to my own blog, so that people could see what he meant. One commenter asked me if I was the "famous David Anderson", mentioned on the BCSE website, a creationist, and said that if I was then therefore "I would say that". I pointed out that the only reason why I was mentioned on the BCSE website was because I run this blog: it is what, in the BCSE's eyes, makes me famous So, somewhat of a circular argument. I "would say that", because I run a blog which does say "that"!

I do wish now that I'd saved a copy of my own comments so that I could re-post them here. I didn't though, because I didn't anticipate what would happen later... which was quite revealing.

What happened next was that Roger Stanyard and Brian Jordan of the BCSE complained to the Guardian that my comments were "malicious libel", and the Guardian dutifully removed them. (Whether that was Randerson himself or not, I don't know).

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1379

My guess is that the Guardian probably routinely deletes comments on receiving such threats, just to cover their own backs. It's not worth the time to investigate when you get many such complaints, as a huge website like theirs may well do. The BCSE, however, know far better:

• As I've been making statements about the BCSE's bogus credentials in public, known to them, for over a year, very easily accessible (just Google for "British Centre for Science Education" and I'm right up there), linked from very popular blogs, the BCSE have lost any feasible opportunity to sue me for libel: they'd have to explain why they made no formal complaint to me about any specific statements or asked to have any such specific statements removed or corrected, during that time.
  
  
• To be "malicious", a statement has to be known to be false. But, seeing as I've documented all the allegations I've made so that anybody can check their accuracy, this obviously can't apply.
  
  
• And of course, the main point is that... truthful speech, no matter how damaging to your cause, cannot be libelous. Duh!
  
  

I cannot remember exactly what I put on the Guardian blog; my memory was that it was pretty general. But, I'll try my best again here to say all the things I can think of, just to show you that they have no intention of suing me for malicious libel because they know these things are all true:

• The British Centre for Science Education has nobody known in its leadership with any credentials in science education.
  
  
• The BCSE is so inept in its actual knowledge of education, that when it launched, it was easy to prove that its members didn't even know what the National Curriculum was, let alone having read it or implemented it as teachers.
  
  
• The BCSE has a proven and continuing track record in gross deception.
  
  
• The BCSE has run personal campaigns of the nastiest and most personal kinds against me based on utter falsehoods, which it knew in advance to be falsehoods. That's the kind of operators they are.
  
  
• They only have one PhD scientist in their leadership - now retired. (Dr. Jordan - he who signed the infamous Richard Dawkins-backed petition to make it illegal for any parent in the UK to instruct their children in any world view except atheism).
  

Obviously, then, in complaining that I have spoken "malicious libels" about the BCSE, the BCSE are indulging once more in bogus legal threats which have no chance of being carried out, and plain old fibbing once again. You'd think that if the BCSE did have credentialed science educators amongst their number, their website might want to tell you a little about them? Why the almost entire silence on the BCSE website about their true identities and credentials? Because the things I've been telling you are too true...

It is amusing to remember that when I first launched this blog, without a comment facility (because my aim has always been to journal, not to have yet another Internet debating forum), the BCSE complained that my running a blog without comments constituted outrageous "censorship". Here's James Rocks of the BCSE over at RichardDawkins.Net peddling this line:

Yes, he appears to have set up the blog "BCSE Revealed" as nothing more than a deliberate attempt to smear our friends over at BCSE. What's really interesting is the censorship he applies to bloggers (some of which gets revealed at BCSE). I'm also a member there BTW.

http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=75901#p75901

(If you search back through my archives, you will find a little material on Rocks. He's not a qualified scientist, but is a militant atheist, and like the BCSE (of which he is a member), he founded a campaign group which seeks to lobby the public representing itself as an authority on science. Notice too the tag-line in his post at Richard Dawkins' website: "Religion! Something to comfort those who live in a world torn apart by religion!").

Note the "censorship" complaint. How does this tally with the BCSE's own strategy of having links to critical material about them removed from websites on the grounds that it is libelous? How does it measure up with their own panic to prevent anyone from discovering the criticism of them that exists?

The BCSE know that my material isn't within a million miles of being libelous, and they know that they have no intention of taking any legal action over it, because they can't. (I expect they have a range of bogus excuses to cover that... too expensive (not heard of no win, no fee?), too time consuming (yet they have lots of time to run their own smear campaigns against me and write letters to the Guardian complaining about libel!)).

In other words, the BCSE are again caught acting in premeditated deception. So, again, note the hypocritical double standard: The BCSE seek to discredit "BCSE Revealed" by telling you that I censor and smear; the BCSE on the other hand seek to prevent anybody hearing about criticisms of themselves by censoring them based on bogus claims about libel. Ho hum!

The BCSE certainly ought to know what smears are, having had little else to say in response to me. However, Rocks and the rest of the BCSE are stilling failing to get over the reality hurdle: When facts are documented in triplicate, it is not a smear: it is a fact, documented in triplicate. By continuing to point out that the BCSE send press releases to national newspapers like the Guardian, etc., calling themselves a national body of scientific experts, and failing to point out their true identity as a group of atheists, management consultants and junior IT workers etc., I am not smearing them: I'm holding up the mirror of reality. That reality isn't kind to them or their agenda, but reality it still is. Deal with it!


David Anderson



Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Documenting the depths of BCSE cynicism (continued)

Previous parts in this investigation: one, two, three, four, five.

In the last post from Ian Lowe (containing the words "he resigned" in regard of Stanyard) which we covered in the last installment, Tim Hague then posted on a different subject, regarding plans for re-organising the BCSE. Hague began as follows. This was still on the 13th of June:

Tim Hague: As I'm not going to be there tomorrow I had a 'brain dump' of various things that could be discussed.

Roles and Responsibilities I like the idea of one (or two) people having 'overall responsibility' for a particular facet or area of BCSE. Some suggestions for areas we could be concentrating on:

Hague then proceeded to list ten areas: overall management, public relations, tech support, forum admin, research, liaison, events, publications, online publications, "SJS campaign".

A very revealing comment is then made by Hague:

Because we have more areas than people, some people will need to wear two hats (I suggest we limit it to a maximum of two each).

In other words, "BCSE Revealed" has been spot-on in its argument that the figures show the BCSE as having failed to recruit beyond the boundaries of its committee. Hague lists ten areas, and then says that there are "more areas than people". I can count more than ten people (but not too many more), so I think Hague means those who would be ready to put in serious hours of work for the BCSE's cause. Remember that when I posted that the BCSE was in serious decline, BCSE chairman Michael Brass posted a statement to the BCSE's public discussion group to say the following (emphasis mine):

Contrary to Anderson's latest crapola, Roger is a member of the BCSE committee. The only thing in freefall is Anderson's overactive tendency to leap in head first.

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10440#10440

Brass knew he was telling untruths in his various claims that Stanyard hadn't left the BCSE - we've documented that many times over. Now, from Hague's comments, we've also shown that the BCSE's public and private statements about the health of its membership are in conflict. According to Hague, ten areas of activity will outnumber the supply of people to work in them. If that's a healthy organisation....

Back to the point

The next comment in the discussion was a reply to Ian Lowe. It was from Paula Thomas, BCSE committee member:

Paula Thomas: I wouldn't really be concerned here Ian. How much audience does Anderson actually have other than committed creationists and a few people like you and me? As I've said before he's a distraction.

I think we can use Roger's removal of himself from the frontpage positively after all isn't he writing a book? Maybe he needs time to concentrate on that...

Paua [sic]

I think that Paula would be surprised by my visitor statistics, but my guess would be that she's probably right in that I also think they generally include people at the opposite polarities in the Darwinism discussion. I'd also tend to agree with Paula that there's no real reason for Lowe to have been so concerned about whether I knew that Stanyard had walked out or not. My concern has always been to document the BCSE's gross dishonesty and lack of credentials, rather than their falling out with each other. What Lowe has done, though, by deciding to try to cover up Stanyard's walk-out and use it as a base to slander me and offer no apology or retraction when caught, has been to turn it into exactly the kind of material that I am interested in documenting.

I wouldn't agree with Paula, though, that "BCSE Revealed" is just a distraction. The fact is, we live in a moral universe. Human beings are hard-wired with consciences, and cannot simply cynically disregard truth without it taking its toll and gaining a bad reputation amongst those who know them - a fact which Christians such as myself have always pointed to as a God-given evidence of an ultimate day of judgment: we have a witness inside ourselves already. The facts that "BCSE Revealed" have been showing have been immensely damaging to the BCSE, and will continue to be so. When you switch off your conscience and decide to simply ignore inconvenient truths, you go down the road of moral nihilism and disaster.

Notice, then, what Thomas suggests: more deception. She suggests that the BCSE, in order to cover up their fall-out with Stanyard, make the false claim that he had had left to be able to spend more time on a book that he is apparently writing: "I think we can use Roger's removal of himself from the frontpage positively after all isn't he writing a book? Maybe he needs time to concentrate on that...".

There is one significant further data-point in the discussion: Michael Brass added a comment. His comment wasn't related to the issue of the deception campaign, but was agreeing with something else said later on by Paula Thomas. The significance, though, is that it shows that Brass read and knew the contents of this discussion: further evidence, added to what we already have, to show Brass's dishonesty. Brass knew that Stanyard had resigned and that my story that he had done so was accurate.



Summing it up

We now know that the individuals listed below:

• Knew that Stanyard had resigned and deleted mentions of himself from the BCSE's website, and then
  
  
• Took part in discussions planning the BCSE's slander campaign to discredit me, when it believed that I wouldn't have the evidence to prove that Stanyard's departure had taken place. This included allegations about being a proven liar, that I abuse my wife, that I'm impossible to work with, lazy, with no sense of morality, unable to apologise for wrong-doing, a control freak, a fragile ego, etc. etc.

Some of these individuals took part in the public smear campaign; others merely were involved in discussion of it, and chose to keep silent when it went ahead despite knowing that it was a pack of lies:

• Michael Brass, BCSE chairman
  
  
• Roger Stanyard, BCSE founder, spokesman, researcher
  
  
• Ian Lowe, BCSE committee member
  
  
• Brian Jordan, BCSE committee member
  
  
• Chris Hyland, PhD candidate at Leeds University and BCSE member (and one of the leadership of "Science, Just Science", the group in the process of merging into the BCSE)
  
  
• Tim Hague, BCSE member (and one of the leadership of "Science, Just Science").
  
  
• Paula Thomas, BCSE committee member
  
  
• James Rocks, BCSE member (and leader of "Science, Just Science").
  

I believe that that number, eight, accounts for a majority of those actively involved in the BCSE. It includes five of the seven BCSE committee.

What we've documented here is simply this: the BCSE is rotten to the core. It carries out planned campaigns of lies and slander of the nastiest kind, simply hoping that those who listen to it won't know enough to know what it's doing. This rottenness pervades the whole organisation. The chances of reform or apology are slim, because it's not just the odd renegade doing it: it's from top to bottom.

There is one more interesting comment in the thread I've been documenting above; it's from James Rocks. He says that it might be a good idea to delete some of the content of the "Science, Just Science" forums, and gives the following as one of his reasons:

James Rocks: Of course some material here should be deleted and never referred to again (such as the behind the scenes stuff we did on line and discussions arising from it) ... no one mentioned it last night as far as I know (well done) but if Roger and Brian knew about it they might just be a wee bit annoyed.

David Anderson



SJS/the BCSE have moved to delete some of the above material from the web - a copy is available from me for you to verify the accuracy of the quotations - just e-mail.

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

... and then they lied some more.

My plan in the next few posts is to start demonstrating just how badly the BCSE has lied in its recent campaign against "BCSE Revealed". If you're just picking this story up, the earlier parts are here: one, two, three.

Basically, the story is this: "BCSE Revealed" began running a story that Roger Stanyard had fallen out with the rest of the BCSE committee, and walked out. The BCSE then made attempts at reconciliation - which, after a fortnight or so, were successful. As I posted this story, the BCSE committee, in particular Ian Lowe, Michael Brass, Stanyard him and Brian Jordan, decided that they didn't think I'd have the evidence to prove it: so they used the opportunity to rubbish me and the accuracy of "BCSE Revealed" in some particularly insulting ways. However, it turned out that I did have the evidence. As I've begun showing this evidence, the above named BCSE leaders have been exposed as telling the most astonishingly bare-faced lies.

Before I showed the evidence, the BCSE leaders were running away with a theme of "this set of lies from Anderson is so appalling - let us pyschoanalyze just how he could do this". Lowe started offering the BCSE forum readers his diagnosis - apparently I'm lazy, abuse my wife, and have a pathological inability to work with others - and then he condemned me in advance for not apologising.

So, Lowe appears to know that heinous misdeeds ought to, when exposed, be followed by an apology. The lack of any such apology (whether from Lowe or any others of the BCSE leaders who jumped in with the premature insults) simply gives us more data to go on when we're trying to evaluate if the BCSE are bona fide science educators, or liars and hypocrites. As yet Lowe has been strangely silent in offering us a pyschoanalysis of just why he has such problems in handling truth...

Here's More Of The Evidence

In fact, the fact that Stanyard had walked out on the BCSE was not only known by the BCSE committee. The below quotations are part of a discussion by Chris Hyland and Tim Hague, two BCSE members. They're discussing it over on the website of "Science, Just Science", which is presently in the process of merging into the BCSE. (As the two groups are very similar and have a considerable overlap in membership, I've considered this something of a non-event, so am not saying much about it at the present). I don't believe Mr. Hague's name has come up on "BCSE Revealed" before; you may remember Hyland from his involvement in the events when the BCSE began telling MPs that "Truth in Science" were distributing material "full of scientific errors" before the BCSE knew the contents of the material... (see here).

On the 19th of June, Hyland asked the following question:

Chris Hyland: "Roger no longer appears to be a user on this site, can we find out when he deleted himself. I've had a quick look through the admin pages with no luck. Any idea Tim?"

Notice that Hyland appears to know that Roger had been responsible for removing himself from the SJS forum - back in mid June. This contradicts the story spun by the BCSE that Lowe temporarily removed Roger because Roger was having problems with his ISP.

What was Hague's reply?

Tim Hague (2oth June): I deleted him at his request last week.

Note that - the reason why Stanyard wasn't posting on the SJS forum wasn't because he had Internet problems - it was actually because he asked the forum administrator to delete his account. He was leaving permanently. What happened?

Chris Hyland: When last week?

Tim Hague: Ian appears to have removed Roger's 'I quit' messages from the forum. It was just after Roger announced that he was going to quit, I've no idea exactly which day or time that was.

Notice that: Stanyard quit, and told everyone so. Hague doesn't know exactly when it was, because Ian (Lowe) removed the dated "I quit" messages which Stanyard had posted. This is presumably from the BCSE forum rather than the SJS one, as that is the form that Lowe is the administrator of (Hague is the administrator of the SJS one). So here we have the following facts:

• Roger quit, and posted "I quit" messages to announce it. Stanyard's endorsement of Lowe's "Roger hasn't been around for a while because he had ISP problems" upon his reconciliation and return was a massive lie.
  
  
  http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10517#10517
  
  http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10480#10480
  
  
  
• Lowe actually removed Stanyard's "I quit" messages. From the beginning, Lowe went into panic mode and tried to cover up what had happened. (I don't know why... the fall-out is evidence of childishness, but hardly more than that; "BCSE Revealed" cares about the BCSE's deceptions; its childishness is small beer). His campaign of lies and insults against "BCSE Revealed" is the continuation of a policy he decided on immediately. Remember again Lowe's words when he thought he would be able to get away with this:
  
  "Watch him now - he has stated that Roger has left, simply on the basis of a change to the website, when it is simply not true. Roger had a problem with his ISP for a week or so, and we changed the email address to make sure that people could still contact us. Roger remains part of the BCSE committee. Anderson will blow and huff and puff, but he won't apologise and correct his mistake. That's the measure of the man."
  http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10461#10461
  
  How many lies and slanders is that? Not just one or two. Well, rather than making our own comment, we'll leave Lowe facing his own verdict; does he agree with himself? Apparently, someone who behaves like this and then fails to apologise is a very small person indeed. Apparently, we should "watch him now" to see what his measure is.
  
  
  
• Stanyard's quitting was well-known. It was announced publicly by Stanyard, seen by members of the forum, and known by those outside of the committee. None of those individuals, though, stepped in when the BCSE began its campaign of lies and slanders against "BCSE Revealed"; some of them kept silent, some joined in. Hyland and Hague were complicit. If they have evidence otherwise of e-mails and forum posts in which they tried to persuade Lowe/Brass/Jordan/Stanyard not to go down the path they did, then I'd be more than willing to reproduce them in order to clear their reputations.
  
  

This is a disaster for the BCSE: its public representatives have been caught telling the most cynical and bare-faced of untruths and running a nasty slander campaign based on statements it knew were baseless. Who, knowing this, is going to believe any of their future pronouncements? The only people who are going to accord credibility to the BCSE in future are those who have made their minds up, evidence or not. The BCSE has the choice either to get rid of its committee and start over - which will be very hard to do because it is now such a small organisation that its committee are almost a majority of active members - or to cynically bet that it will be able to carry on with nobody noticing, hoping people aren't going to find out what kind of individuals those behind it are.

The BCSE's website alleges that one of the major issues in the Darwinism debate is that those who opposed Darwinism are systematic and cynical liars. Well, on this one I can't make the common criticism I've been making over the months... this time, the BCSE really do appear to be talking within their field of expertise.

You can find the web page with the posts extracted above at: http://www.justscience.org.uk/...omments_parentId=2159
You'll have to rush, though: the BCSE's response to these revelations so far has been to remove such evidence within minutes... whilst leaving all the lies and slanders against me up for you to read. Go figure what that tells you about how they operate! As ever, I have copies to supply to researchers - just e-mail me.

David Anderson



Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Roger Stanyard: Update

(If you've read this story before, there are three updates down the bottom).

It seems that Roger Stanyard and the BCSE have made up; at least according to this thread on the BCSE forum:

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1116

The thread claims that Stanyard never left, and that I made up the entire story; then proceeds into a discussion of my honesty... and then tries to recycle some of the allegations that the BCSE made in the past against me. As in the past, they (again!) forget to produce the evidence... as in the past, whilst saying that this blog is full of untruths, they (again!) forget to say where, or what the contrary truths are... see here for more of that.

In fact, though, I have much more evidence than I revealed in the first post: evidence which reveals Brian Jordan, Michael Brass and Ian Lowe - the BCSE committee members in that thread who seek to claim that there Stanyard hadn't left - as brazen liars. Brass, Lowe and Jordan are obviously making a cynical bet on me not having such evidence, and hoping that they'll be able to bluff their way out of what happened. They hope that those on the BCSE forum who aren't in the inner circle will be convinced, and they hope that by blowing enough smoke and changing the subject to a discussion of the wickedness of the "BCSE Revealed" blogger, they'll be able to get away with it.

The others contributing to the thread above do in fact take Jordan, Brass and Lowe's words for it - which they will regret doing once the evidence is brought out into the open. I'm going to wait and see the BCSE's response to the above before I do that, but for now, here are a couple of discrepancies to note in Lowe's story. Lowe claims that Stanyard's e-mail address was removed from the BCSE's contact page because "Roger had a problem with his ISP for a week or so, and we changed the email address to make sure that people could still contact us. " What Lowe doesn't explain, though, is how this could account for the facts that:

• For a time, Stanyard's name was also removed from the list of committee members on the BCSE front page. (Some time later, the BCSE then removed the whole list of committee members - presumably because they didn't want anyone to notice that just one member had left). Why was Stanyard's - and only Stanyard's - name removed from the list of committee members? Why don't the BCSE put back the full list of committee members, so we can see just who is on it?
  
  
• If the problem was with Stanyard's e-mail address, then why was Stanyard's mobile phone number also removed? How would problems with Stanyard's ISP affect his mobile phone, exactly? You might have thought that the difficulty contacting Stanyard by e-mail would make it more necessary to have the mobile phone number up to contact him with, not less...
  

So, I'm now calling the BCSE's bluff on the following scores:

• Are they going to stick with their story that I have made the whole thing up, or will they admit that Stanyard left and that they're now making up with him? (How far that making-up has gone, I don't know - presuming that this isn't itself a fabrication).
  
  
• Are they going to wait for me to produce the further evidence I have, hoping that they can explain it away - or are they going to face the possibility that my further evidence is damning and will reveal Brass, Lowe and Jordan as telling whopping lies?
  
  
• How can they explain the above discrepancies?
  
  
• Are they ever going to explain what the other supposed errors on this blog are, or going to continue to trade in completely general descriptions? Comments are still open for corrections...
  

Let's wait and see...

I've taken a full record of the thread above; particularly Lowe's bold words. Lowe has been exposed on numerous occasions in the past as willing to tell outright lies "for the cause" in the hope that nobody will know better - see here for one example. He's going to have some more explaining to do shortly...

Update 11:32 a.m. I presently have Michael Brass in my inbox. He e-mailed me after the first story, to tell me that my story had no basis in fact. In response, I told him that Stanyard had in fact left, and now apparently returned, and asked him to confirm or deny it. Brass now appears to be back-tracking; he refuses to answer this question, but is now apparently arguing that the story constituted a "lie" and a breach of the "Ten Commandments" (Brass's words), not because I was wrong about Stanyard having left, but because I failed to mention that Stanyard had returned. I have asked Brass to explain how the apparent fact that Stanyard has left and returned makes the statement Stanyard has left into a lie.

Brass's spin machine is going into overload, because he has now both publicly accused me of lying, but also can no longer deny that Stanyard left since I know otherwise. This leaves him in a bit of a spot, so he's now trying to change the basis of accusing me for lying to the claim that Stanyard's leaving and returning means that we can't say he left. Michael Brass has major problems telling the straightforward truth. I challenge him to allow me to publish our correspondence on this topic in full so that my readers can judge for themselves which one of us has a forked tongue. What have you got to hide, Michael?

Update 12:26. Brass refuses me permission to publish the e-mails he sent me trying to spin his way out of this situation. Note that, readers - Brass doesn't want you to be able to judge for yourselves whether he is a liar or not; he wants to keep the evidence secret. I, however, want to publish it. What does that tell you? I will be examining my options....

Update 12:39. Brass is digging himself further into a hole. When he refused me permission to publish his e-mails which document his lying, I told him that he should not e-mail me in future (as it was him who e-mailed to initiate contact), unless he was willing to have those e-mails published. Here are my precise words (the words "have you" should have appeared before "send"):

For future reference, I put you on notice that I will consider all e-mails you send me about the BCSE or my blog as with full permission to publish. I'm not prepared to [sic] send me spin of this kind in future and then have you refuse to let the public see it so that they can see what you've tried to do. Please don't e-mail me unless you find these terms acceptable (unless I specifically say otherwise).

Brass's response was to go to the BCSE forum, and add this:

For everyone's amusement: Anderson is now stating that he has the right to publish in full any e-mails sent to him, regardless of whether the originator (and copyright holder) agrees.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10479#10479

Can anybody spot any similarities between my statement and Brass's version of it? No, neither can I.

I'm happy to assure anyone who wishes to contact me that I will not publish their e-mails without permission, and that my statement meant what it said - that it applies only to future unsolicited e-mails from Brass. Again, I invite my readers to note the incredible difficulty that Brass, BCSE chairman, has in handling himself with integrity. If the truth is on his side, why does he have to do this kind of thing? I wonder!

It's worth noting that the BCSE are promoting, on their website, a site in which one of their own members publishes private e-mails which I declined to give him permission to publish... do you think that bothers Michael Brass? Is Michael Brass a hypocrite? The answer's not hard to work out.


David Anderson



Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.