A Dutch International beach volleyball player is starting a four-year jail sentence for raping a 12 year old English girl.

Steven Van de Velde, 19 at the time, flew from Amsterdam in August 2014 to meet up with the schoolgirl from Milton Keynes he had met on Facebook and raped her three times before returning home. He was extradited to the UK and tried and convicted at Aylesbury Crown Court, the judge telling him: “A young, naive and foolish child had formed the view that you loved her. In reality you only knew her on the internet, had never met her before and were fully aware of the age difference. You were the adult, she was the child, and until you recognise this you will remain a danger to young girls”. Continue reading →

As fines and scandals continue to hit the banking sector HSBC has warned that it will take “a generation” before the banks are trusted again by their customers.

The warning has been sounded by Antonio Simoes, head of HSBC in the UK. Continue reading →

Unfair, misleading and aggressive trading practices used to defraud pensioners are an “industry standard” for the building trade.

This is the view of West Midlands building company directors Sarah Beadle (40) and Martin Evans (58) of Summit Roofguard, who have both been jailed for two and a half years for pressurising pensioners into paying grossly inflated amounts for building work. One paid £20,000 for guttering that could have been repaired for £40, and another was charged £9,585 for work that should have cost £2,820. The over-charging was made possible by victims being told that their properties were in urgent need of repair and that they were getting a discount that was only available for a few hours, two clear indications of a scam. Continue reading →

Fake five-star reviews for worthless products can be bought for as little as 85 pence each from a number of fake review companies prominently listed on Google’s search engines, an investigation by the Sunday Times has found.

For the investigation the newspaper launched a shoddy and ineffective lie detector phone app called Spot the Faker! for iPhone and Android handsets and then marketed it by buying dozens of fake reviews for £120. Many of the fake review firms stole the identities of celebrities and athletes to post them from, and the investigators identified more than a hundred apps that had used the fake review service.

Management of the Wentworth golf club are handicapped by some marketing incompetence, it seems.

Late last year Reignwood, the Surrey club’s Chinese owners, announced it wanted to reduce the number of members from 4,000 to 888 – a number considered lucky in China – and impose a £100,000 re-joining fee on the ones who wanted to come back, this reportedly to finance a large loan the company had taken out and a £20 million bill for urgent improvements to the course and clubhouse. Continue reading →

A Labour MP has been fined £5,000 for sending out automatic telephone calls to Labour supporters urging recipients to back his campaign to become London mayor.

David Lammy sent out 35,000 canvassing calls to people who had not given him permission to contact them, said the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham, likening politicians begging for votes to double glazing salespeople offering discounts.

Lammy finished fourth in the Labour mayoral campaign.

Marketeers we know have been receiving emails from a publisher of advertorials Mr Jack Clarke of Acquisition International as below.

“As the head of (company name) Acquisition International has personally chosen you as a leading MD in the United Kingdom and we welcome you to celebrate this news by joining us with an exclusive interview for our forthcoming issue. The cost for this high-profile spot is just £500 and includes: Continue reading →