Reports of frauds, deceptions and scams keep appearing, weekly even daily, on
major news channels and newspapers. Some of these frauds seem just too big and remote to be of immediate, direct relevance to our daily lives. But, we will eventually pay for the consequences and damages, in taxes, costs of goods and services, regulations, copy-cats etc.

I hope we can collect, in one thread, frauds and scams, reported or heard. We must become more aware and more educated to guard against frauds and scams
which impact upon the health, well being, and wealth of ourselves and our families.

TP,

That is an underhand scam, so is not warning passengers on the luggage limitations BEFORE they buy the tickets :-(

Apparantly BA has advised staff to avoid mentioning the new charges when booking tickets unless the punter specifically ask about BA's luggage policy.

I hope the passengers don't take it out on the check-in staff ...

Frhttp://www.telegraph.co.ukom

Not made in Britain

By Richard Gray and Adam Lusher, Sunday Telegraph
11/02/2007

It is Sunday afternoon. You have studied the food displayed on the supermarket shelves and made your selection. Price has probably been a factor but, for most shoppers, the primary consideration is quality. What we want is what we see on the packaging: a succulent steak, a pie that is puffed up to perfection, a cake that has the same light, springy texture as the one pictured on the wrapper. And, increasingly, we want to know where it came from. The majority of British shoppers prefer - what with the proliferation of diseases spread by edible animals - to buy British. If it claims to be an Aberdeen Angus steak, we'd like to feel reasonably reassured that it has more than just a nodding acquaintance with the breed. If it says Royal Oakham chicken, it would be nice to know that it has spent its life in or around a place called Oakham.

Yet the truth is that very few of us actually know exactly what we are eating and where it comes from. Did that salmon really swim up the River Dee? Were those Jersey Royals really from the soil of the Channel Islands or might they be a much cheaper Irish variety? And that Oakham chicken? Take a closer look at the small print on the packaging and it will reveal that while the product is made in this country, the meat is actually "chicken from farms in the UK and the EU". In fact, Marks & Spencer insists it is made with only British meat, in spite of what the label says. But it certainly isn't from Oakham. "There are several places called Oakham," says the store's spokeswoman. "It is just a name we gave to it. It is not meant to be meat from Oakham."

With suspicions that an outbreak of bird flu at Bernard Matthews's Suffolk farm is linked to an earlier instance of the deadly H5N1 virus among geese in Hungary, warning bells have begun ringing over the origins of the food we eat. The fact that a Hungarian slaughterhouse used by the Matthews company is less than 30 miles from the source of the outbreak in geese, and equally close to the abattoir where 13,000 of the birds were gassed last month, means it is now seen as a possible source of cross-contamination. While the company has repeatedly claimed that there is "no connection" between its Hungarian operation and bird flu in Suffolk, a link appears increasingly likely.

It will come as little surprise to most food producers that Bernard Matthews also appears to have been less than forthcoming about the origins of its meat. It is a practice that is widespread in the industry. The fact is that under current food-labelling rules, companies are allowed an enormous amount of leeway to confuse, at best, or even to mislead consumers. And most take full advantage of it. So woolly is the legislation that meat imported to Britain and then processed here can be labelled as indigenous.

While food producers are not breaking the law, it could be argued that the lengths to which some go to convince us that our shopping baskets are brimming with home-grown and produced goods are unethical and even deceitful. One might think, for example, a Lincolnshire or Cumberland sausage would contain British pork. Similarly with a Scotch egg. But these are perfectly legal descriptions of processed dishes made from imported ingredients.

Shoppers have begun fighting back against this loophole in the regulations. Last month Tony Blair called for clearer food labels to help consumers buy British produce. Within days David Cameron, too, had jumped on the bandwagon, backing a campaign by the Country Land and Business Association to encourage consumers to be more questioning about where the food on their plates comes from.

It is widely believed within the industry that shoppers are starting to do just that, and that many have reached the point at which they will no longer put up with sharp practices. The fall-out will hit producers in the pocket.

The fact is that "food fraud" as it is known, is big business and stretches across a range of key products. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) believes that about 10 per cent of our weekly shopping may be "counterfeit". Many of the everyday goods that we buy - honey, orange juice, ham, butter and coffee - generate serious money for the food cheats. From printing misleading labels to diluting or modifying the food itself, it has become more commonplace than ever for suppliers to dupe consumers.

The FSA carries out spot checks on food and drink to ensure they are both safe to consume and that the customer is getting what was paid for. Using sophisticated specialist equipment, it has identified that only 54 per cent of bags labelled as basmati rice contained the pure product: the remaining 46 per cent had all been diluted with inferior varieties, some by as much as 60 per cent. Last year the FSA beefed up its prosecutions. Two Essex-based companies, Basmati Rice and Surya Rice, were each fined 8,000.

Two months ago, an inspection by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) at one Worcestershire supermarket supplier raised suspicions that battery-farmed eggs were being packaged and labelled as the more expensive free-range option. With such a wide distribution network, these eggs could have found their way on to supermarket shelves all across the country.

As a nation, we are egg lovers. We eat nine billion each year, and just under a third are free-range. But Defra suspects that almost 30 million eggs labelled free range are no such thing. And by the time they reach the consumer it is almost impossible to tell. To tackle this, Defra has developed a highly accurate means of determining the truth. When eggs are first laid, their shells are still relatively soft, and in battery farms new-laid eggs rest on wire racks, leaving tiny marks on the surface. Invisible to the naked eye, these marks can be seen under ultraviolet light. Not, admittedly, an option for busy shoppers but a key weapon for food scientists in the war against fraud.

Lord Haskins, the former chairman of Northern Foods who was appointed rural recovery co-ordinator by Tony Blair after the foot and mouth outbreak six years ago, likens the producers' practices to the cash for honours scandal. "It's like loans to political parties. It isn't illegal but it shouldn't be happening.

"For example, a turkey can spend its entire life in another country and then be processed here and presented as British: that is clearly wrong, even if it isn't against the regulations. And it isn't just with poultry. In the pork industry there has been the problem of supermarkets bringing in legs of pork from Denmark, processing them here, and labelling them British.

"People forget that more than 40 per cent of food here doesn't go through supermarkets and doesn't get labelled at all. It goes into restaurants and God knows where it comes from. The catering industry is notorious for not worrying about its reputation with customers."

The tricks of the trade, it would seem, are legendary. "There are people out there who will buy cutting plants in this country and then bring in chicken from another country and cut it into pieces here," says Charles Bourns, a Gloucestershire poultry farmer and chairman of the National Farmers' Union poultry board. "There are cooked products which come from Thailand. They can't export fresh because they've had H5N1 so it's simply cooked there."

Almost all supermarket chicken ready meals use Thai chicken. For example, your local Morrisons supermarket's Chicken Tikka Masala, priced at 2.99, says "produced in the UK" on its label. Indeed it was, but the chicken comes from Thailand. The sourcing of poultry has long caused consternation and it is an area of particular interest to the FSA. Bulking up a chicken breast with water is, the agency has discovered, an old supplier's trick. One of its recent surveys established that almost half the frozen chicken breasts examined had a meat content of between five and 26 per cent less than appeared on the packaging, and that some chicken breasts contained as much as 43 per cent added water. Scallops and scampi were also found to have worryingly high levels of water, with almost half those examined containing 10 per cent.

Lean mince is another area of concern. The Association of Public Analysts suggest that while 27 per cent of all mince is now labelled "lean" or "extra lean" it is, in fact, just as unhealthy as "standard" mince. Sharp practice is also applied to tuna: there is tuna\u2026 and then there is bonito, a member of the mackerel family. It is significantly cheaper than its chunkier cousin which, given the high EU import levies on some fish, has led some makers of processed tinned tuna to label it as pure tunameat when it is in reality a mix of the two.

Since only 10 per cent of the honey Britons eat is actually produced in this country it was only a matter of time before someone was caught selling counterfeit produce. Two years ago Richard Brodie, a beekeeper in the Scottish borders, was caught passing off Argentine honey as his own. When the spotlight was shone on the industry it revealed that whole batches from India and China were contaminated with chloramphenicol, an antibiotic banned in food production worldwide. Honey from Vietnam, Cyprus, Tanzania, Moldova, Romania, Argentina, Portugal, Spain and Bulgaria was also found to contain traces of the substance.

Potatoes, long a staple in our diet, are another favourite of the food fraudsters. Rogue traders pass off inferior types as King Edwards. When the FSA took some samples from supermarkets they found that 35 per cent had been falsely labelled. Of those, almost a third were Ambo potatoes, the King Edward's arch-rival.

Falsely labelling meat as organic is a well-known trick.

Organic meat generates 200 million of sales every year in Britain and the industry is growing by the second.

In December, Julie's restaurant in west London - one of the capital's most fashionable spots - was found to have been serving standard meat and chicken that its menu declared to be organic. The food fraud had come to light when FSA officers, conducting a routine hygiene inspection, spotted that the restaurant listed dishes of sausages, chicken and lamb as organic. Yet its meat delivery records revealed that, between October 1 and November 1 last year, not a single ounce of organic meat had been ordered. The scam had saved the restaurant 4,200 during the 52 days in question, but Johnny Eckerperigan, its managing partner, was subsequently fined 11,500 and warned that if he appeared before the courts again on similar charges, he could expect a prison sentence.

The result of this case and others is that local authority enforcement officers will soon be given testing kits that can differentiate between organic and non-organic. The kit, devised by the FSA and the Central Science Laboratory, can detect antibiotic drugs that are not allowed in organic meat production.

Convictions such as that of Eckerperigan have been welcomed by many involved in the food industry. Robin Maynard, campaigns director at the Soil Association, which champions organic farming, believes more checks should be made. "The tougher the policing by trading standards and environmental health officers, the better it is for genuine, committed organic outlets and for organic consumers," he says.

Patrick Holden, the association's director, is equally committed to weeding out the fraudsters. "The defining characteristics of 21st-century agriculture are globalisation and the centralisation of distribution systems so that the origins of food have become anonymous," he argues.

"We buy from some place on the planet from someone we will never meet and the product becomes so mixed up that it hasn't really got an identity by the time it reaches us. The artificial imagery and spin of food packaging creates an impression that our food comes from beautiful rolling hills. But this masks the true story. The identity of the producer is obscured behind the branding. People are starting to realise this now and there is a tidal change being expressed in the market place. If companies won't take note of this, they will lose out. This is going to have a long-lasting effect. For millions of people, cheap white meat has replaced red meat as a healthy option. But the truth is that cheap white meat comes with a hidden price tag. As we are now seeing."

The scam and lies of global warming? Interesting article. One bit I didn't realise is that the Southern ice caps are growing!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

Bolshi,

Well spotted.

I'm one who subscribes to the view that global warming is a lovely gravy train on which to jump to find ways of making money.

On another thread I drew attention to Frederick Forsyth reminding us on Question Time that the Romans grew wine grapes on Hadrian's Wall and of how hot it was in the Middle Ages.

Carbon, CO2 and all the similar worries can be just as easily explained as the result of the earth getting warmer, instead of the more widely publicised view of them being the cause of it getting warmer.

TP

TP. I'm not a great fan of Freddie Forsythe (if only he'd smile sometimes - miserable git) but he did talk the most common sense out of all the panellists imo.

Trouble with the enviromental scientists is that they would be out of a job if they said it's all perfectly natural. If, on the other hand, they forecast doom and gloom, they're likely to be rewarded with grants and more staff.

How do BBC get the Q Time audiences? They always appear to be teeming with left wing green activists and teachers! Not much difference really :-)

TP: I agree.

You just need to see the attitude of local councils to 4x4s to see that it's just a money-making scam. You can't object because you "don't care about the planet", as if paying more for parking (a car that isn't moving ain't polluting) or for refuse collection (what's the council tax for?) will make a jot of difference.

As for air passenger duty, those contrails that aircraft leave are made of ice crystals which reflect heat and light from the Sun. They're good for you.

Ken Livingstone, bless him, has proudly annouced that he has installed a charging point outside his house for his electric car -- which is a Toyota Prius which has no provision for external charging. It charges its battery from recovered braking energy or from its, er, well, actually, petrol engine.

And if he did have an all electric car, where does he think the electricity to charge it comes from?

And when will people work out that wind farms don't generate power when the wind doesn't blow -- like when it's freezing cold? And the "carbon footprint" caused by making all that concrete to embed them in kinda erases the other gain?

Time to build nuclear plants, and quickly.

Whilst on the topic of stuff on tv, cars and scams....

I've now seriously gone off 'Top Gear'. Last night's show was both a scam and a sham and not at all up to its usual high standard. One more like that and they are all set to lose half their viewers at least, IMHO.

The majority of the show saw the three 'nine year olds' each buying an American car for less than $1,000 and then driving it 800 miles from Miami to New Orleans. The antics they got up to on the way, giggling about their oafish pranks and problems with their bum cars, were absolutely pathetic and totally childish, let alone juvenile.

The worst bit was when they wrote anti-Americanisms in large crude lettering on the side of their cars and then had to flee lots of angry and offended 'Rednecks'. It reminded me of the stupidity of Jane Goody, who Clarkson so aggressively and nastily castigated in the last week's similarly poor previous show.

Last week the trio were tarmaccing and that had lots of oafish stupidity, was similarly poor and done in a comparable vein to this week's show.

Yes, only one more chance, Clarkson. Fail with it and 'I'm out of here'.

"How do BBC get the Q Time audiences? They always appear to be teeming with left wing green activists and teachers! "

A pal of mine was in the audience about eight weeks ago. His question was not aired - which speaks highly of my choice of friends, I trust!

Before returning to this thread I had a little Google.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=global+warming+myth&meta=

This will bring you more articles on the myth than any of us have the time to read.

Sadly we seem to have drifted into an era when anything claimed by those in authority, I suppose we include Mr Ken in that category, is to be regarded with suspicion.

I even found myself wondering, over the weekend, when the news would break that they never did prove that any of those poor turkeys had a nasty.

TP

Interesting timing "The Day After Tomorrow" on network TV last night.

I think human activities contribute, in a small way, to climate change. But business and government motivations are power and profit, not saving the planet for us.

Doc:

Anti-Americanism: "Hillary for President". Oh, I suppose you might be right.

Your Money or Your relatives' health and lives?

Elderly at risk in nursing homes

Older people were put at risk in two substandard nursing homes, according to the regulator for homes in England.

A whistleblower who worked at Laurel Bank Home in Halifax, has told Panorama of the "mental torture" and "abuse" of residents she witnessed.

The Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) says Laurel Bank is now "significantly improved".

But it wants to shut a second home in Halifax, The Haven, which remains open as its owners appeal against closure.

A former care worker at Laurel Bank, who was employed between 2002 and 2003, told Panorama that staff humiliated some residents.

She said relatives were unaware of what was happening: "They only saw what they were supposed to see. People were fed when relatives were there and not when they weren't. They were left to do it on their own."

The forerunner of the CSCI, the National Care Standards Commission, has admitted that it took too long to deal with the problems at Laurel Bank.

CSCI inspectors wants to close another home in Halifax, The Haven.

They made 21 visits in one year to intensively monitor standards at the home. Panorama questioned how effective the visits had been in bringing about improvements.

Mike Rourke from the CSCI told Panorama's Vivian White: "We were keeping a very close eye on the establishment but your point is well made that this home did not improve.

"Elderly vulnerable people were at risk."

12 years ago the Law Commission proposed legislation which would protect older people from abuse and neglect but so far, governments have refused to implement it.

Thousands of people contacted Panorama last year after The National Homes Swindle and A Growing Scandal films were transmitted. They shared their experiences about the reality of elderly care provision.

Many voiced concerns about the care of their elderly relatives. They wrote about abuse, a lack of protection and feelings of powerlessness.

--------------------------

Laurel Bank Nursing Home response to Panorama

Both Christopher Bolland, the owner of Laurel Bank nursing home, and his Manager, Linda Parker declined to take part in our film or to comment on the allegations made about the home.

---------------------------


Response from The Haven
The owners of the Haven nursing home, Freshsupport Ltd, run by the Tariq Malik family from a hotel in Manchester, declined repeated requests from Panorama for an interview.

----------------------------

Cow Dung, Rotting Chickens Poised to Beat Oil, Natural Gas

"...
Greed is motivating Wall Street to join the fight against global warming. New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the largest securities firm, made at least $68 million in six months from an investment in Climate Exchange Plc, an emissions trading marketplace that has tripled in value.
..."

Could it be the other way round? That someone spotted opportunities to make fantastic returns if governments, public and the media can be whipped into a fever of concern on global warming and green issues ...

A global scam? I heard that some media is now trying to get religious leaders and establishment involved ...

"That someone spotted opportunities to make fantastic returns if governments, public and the media can be whipped into a fever of concern on global warming and green issues ..."

Someone? Thousands of someones, surely?

Today we hear in the news that we are to spend 30m on newly appointed council employees who are to 'police' the non-smoking regulations that come in this summer.

Yesterday, in the nearby MIST thread, someone pointed out that it uses more energy to manufacture a wind turbine than it is likely to generate in its working life.

I'm tempted to start a subscription newsletter called Gravy Train Opportunities highlighting all the latest scares that open up new ways of making money.

TP

TP, do you need an editor ? :-)

axdpc. You'll need a title for your editorial section. How about " We're all doomed I tell ye!"
:-)

Bolshi :-) That may be too common. Most religions have been preaching and predicting doomsday for thousands of years. "I told you so" is too patronizing ...

axdpc, you're a natural, a saffron robe and a story for coping with doomsday and you could make zillions :-)

' How about " We're all doomed I tell ye!" '

I'm not sure that would work. If we are doomed anyway there is not much point in spending 30m looking for ciggies.

You need someone producing a strong enough PR campaign to make us think that if we all go on driving the wrong cars we'll start breeding kids with webbed feet - and then you start a Prius factory to cash in on it. The fact that manufacturing a Prius costs more energy than it saves is something you keep quiet.

TP