Michael Green Lives! Grant Shapps’ Former Website Still Registered To His Fake ID

Tory chairperson Grant Shapps has claimed that he got his dates mixed up after a recording of him pretending to be Michael Green in 2006 was uncovered by The Guardian.

Shapps had claimed he left the internet con-man business behind when he was elected as an MP in 2005.  The recording clearly proves this was a lie.  In fact his trafficpaymaster website is still registered in the US to Michael Green.  This is a breach of contract with ICANN who oversee internet domains in the US.  Were the website to have been used for any dubious purposes –  such as encouraging people to rip off the small businesses using google ads by flooding the net with fake websites – then this false registration would be an aggravating factor which could lead to an additional seven years in jail.

All of Michael Green’s websites have vanished and even been blocked from the internet archive project.  So there is no way of knowing for sure whether the Conservative Party were telling the truth when they said yesterday that: “his full name and biographical details were permanently published on the company’s main website”.  It seems strange to go to the trouble of using a fake name to register the website if this was the case.  There is no mention of Grant Shapps on any of the screenshots that scores of people managed to take of the sites before they disappeared.

Michael Green was also a regular contributor to the Warrior internet forums, alongside Sebastian Fox, another pseudonym used by his former company  howtocorp.com.  Most of these posts have been deleted as well, although a few still remain in which both of these non-existent people appear together.  Grant Shapps never mentioned his real identity there either.

Another website which has gone missing is trafficpaymaster.wordpress.com.  This site was removed from wordpress for violating their terms and conditions.  It only contained one post, made in July 2011 by someone calling themselves John Hilton, a ‘self-proclaimed’ internet marketing expert.  This post gave a suspiciously glowing review of the software that Grant Shapps’ company sold alongside handy details of where to purchase it.  The only links on the site point to the websites that Shapps used to run and the previously mentioned Warrior internet forums.  Because it was hosted on wordpress.com it cannot be hidden from the internet archive.  Fake reviews are likely to be illegal under consumer protection laws.  Whether John Hilton is also Grant Shapps, or his wife who he claimed took over the company, remains yet another mystery in the murky former world of the Conservative Party Chairman.

Shapps has repeatedly claimed he is the victim of political smears.  Judge for yourself.

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Grant Shapps Hides The Evidence – See For Yourself Whether Fraud Allegations Are ‘Political Smears’

Internet con-man and Tory Party Chairman Grant Shapps has closed down his spam website company following a police investigation which acknowledged that he ‘may’ have committed an act of fraud.

All mention of the Trafficpaymaster software which led to the investigation has been removed from the internet, whilst Shapps’ two alter-egos, Michael Green and Sebastian Fox, have deleted all posts advertising the product on the Warrior Internet Forums.

According to The Guardian any allegation of criminal behaviour has been strongly denied with a spokesperson for Shapps saying: “Any suggestion of illegality would be completely improper and malicious and would be treated as such.”

Shapps’ company sold software with the express intention of it being used to breach google’s terms and conditions to generate income from google ads.  The software did this by ‘scraping’ (stealing) content from other people’s websites, spinning it – which means changing a few words round so it looks original  – and then using that content to auto-generate websites. Google’s Adsense package could then be added to the websites to make money from advertising.

This would mean that small businesses buying advertising through the Google Adsense network – who believed those ads would appear on genuine websites – would be fleeced of their cash.  This could be what the police were referring to when they said an act of fraud may have been committed. The screenshot below shows that the company explicitly advertised their software as a way to ‘build an Adsense empire’.

Questions have also been raised about Shapps’ use of pseudonyms and the accuracy of testimonials on his website.  After all, if people were recommending this product, and those people didn’t actually exist, then that would be false advertising.  Shapps has said his use of the name Michael Green was ‘a joke’.  He has not commented on his other alter ego Sebastian Fox.  Yet here they both are, plugging his dodgy product, in what seems to be a deliberate attempt to mislead potential customers by having them appear as two different people.

In what could be seen as a further attempt to deceive potential buyers, Shapps’ company strongly denied that using this software would lead to websites being blacklisted from the google network – a devastating and quite often fatal consequence for a small online business.

Google confirmed in Autumn last year that websites using Shapps’ software would be blocked.

Shapps claimed in the Sunday Times that he created Michael Green as a ‘brand name, a bit like Colonel Sanders with his chicken.’  It is unlikely however that KFC’s website is registered under the name Colonel Sanders, unlike Shapps’ company who used the name Michael Green to register trafficpaymaster.com, in direct contravention of US internet rules.

Whilst this in itself is not a crime, it can be an aggravating factor if a website registered under a false name is used for criminal activity, such as copyright violation.  Whether spinning content in the UK would be classed as copyright violation is so far untested by the courts.  In the US, where Shapps’ website was registered, this would be considered a violation of copyright which could lead to serious criminal charges.  And were Shapps ever found guilty of this then he could have seven years added to his sentence for registering the site under a false name.

Shapps has done everything he can to hide all traces of his former online activities which also included flogging get rich quick schemes of dubious legality.  Unfortunately for him a number of posts made by Sebastian Fox are still available on the Internet Archive and provide more details of exactly what Shapps’ company was up to and how they set out to breach copyright and scam the Google Adsense network.  Read though them and see for yourself whether allegations of fraud are ‘political smears’ as Shapps recently claimed to Channel 4.

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Backlash To Benefit Bashing Is Only Just Beginning

The reported shift in public opinion in favour of social security spending is likely to be just the beginning as yet more horrific tales emerge of poverty and homelessness due to Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms.

The findings of the British Social Attitudes survey released this week suggests that despite this Government’s benefit bashing rhetoric, public opinion is starting to shift in favour of claimants.  The key findings are that only 51% of people believe benefits are too high and discourage work – compared to 63% in 2011, whilst 34% of people support more spending on benefits compared to 28% the previous year.  Another encouraging finding is that almost half of people (47%) believe that further cuts to benefits would damage too many people’s lives.

From the endless thunderous headlines in some sections of the press – often dripping with DWP concocted lies – it would be easy to assume that everyone in the UK is the kind of swivel-eyed, money-grabbing Jeremy Clarkson wannabe the Daily Mail would like to pretend represents the average citizen.  As the above table shows, the reality is very different, with consistent support reported for wealth redistribution (69%), a decent standard of living for unemployed people (59%), support for housing for those who can’t afford it (81%) along with nationally funded healthcare (97%) and pensions (96%).  These figures have remained constant for almost 30 years showing that support for the welfare state has remained solid even if some opinions on the finer details have become warped by the stream of propaganda.

What will terrify Tory spin doctors however is that this change in opinion is only likely to be the beginning.  This survey was carried out in 2012, before almost all of the most savage cuts to social security had been introduced.  Many of the most vicious cuts such as the Bedroom Tax and Benefit Cap were still distant threats that had barely made the headlines.  The shambolic unraveling of Iain Duncan Smith’s bungled Universal Credit project was only just starting to become apparent, and whilst the Work Programme was hardly setting the world on fire , no-one back then realised what an eye-wateringly expensive shambles it would turn out to be.

The impact of the Bedroom Tax is currently demolishing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, but the inevitable wave of evictions is still some months down the line.  The Benefit Cap – still not introduced everywhere – has already seen homelessness in London soar, whilst everywhere else the number of homeless families creeps steadily upwards.  Atos are only half way through assessing claimants on sickness and disability benefits meaning the desperately sad tales of chronically ill people found fit for work, or driven to suicide by the ruthless regime, are set to continue.

The new claimant conditionality for unemployed people is likely to result in a huge increase in the use of benefit sanctions, which are already expected to top a million this year.  Every claimant sanctioned is someone left with almost nothing at all, and forced to either depend on foodbanks – or in the words of one homelessness charity, beg and steal to survive.

Meanwhile the lurid stories of benefit claimants living in two grand a week mansions which have been used to drive the benefit slashing agenda have now all dried up due to the benefit cap.  In reality these only ever reflected a handful of extreme cases; usually large homeless families in emergency and temporary private rented accommodation.  Now those families are forced to share a room in a grotty B&B, or face being socially cleansed from the area in which they may have lived their entire lives.  This will make for a for different kind of headline, and not one you’re likely to see in the Daily Mail anytime soon.

Unfortunately for the Tories, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, and increasingly this bunch of clowns aren’t fooling anyone.  And that’s why all they have left is spite.  Even the Daily Mail loyalists seem to have been repulsed by freakish Michael Grove’s latest comments that people dependent on foodbanks have only got themselves to blame.

Meanwhile internet con-man Grant Shapps’ has dismissed UN concerns over the Bedroom Tax as a ‘disgrace’ from ‘a woman from Brasil’ – a statement which hints at the festering misogyny you might expect to come from a man who used to make his money flogging sleazy guides on how to pick up women.

It’s hard to know where the next big benefit bashing stories will come from as social security is cut to the bone.  This doesn’t mean they will stop.  Expect more drip-fed propaganda about a disabled person caught  playing golf, or a single mum who has the cheek to have a boyfriend.  As desperation mounts to maintain the hate for the very poorest they will stoop lower and lower, because without this hate – which has defined the current administration – the Tories haven’t really got much to offer.  And so they will retreat into their all too familiar world of bigotry, selfishness and naked greed.  Meaning  once again the public will see the true face of a very nasty party that should have been consigned to the dustbin of history in the last century.

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DWP Twitter Feed Hacked, Now Offering Diet Tips!

The @DWPpressoffice twitter account seems to have started flogging diet supplements.  Top work spammers!  Has anyone seen Grant Shapps?

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Grant Shapps Is A Lying Bastard – Now That’s Official Too!

Internet con-man and Tory Party chair Grant Shapps has become the second senior Tory to be accused of misusing benefit statistics by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA)  in just one month.

Iain Duncan Smith was recently subject to a humiliating rebuke from the UK statistics watchdog after lying about the impact of the benefit cap.  Now it’s the turn of former get rich quick scammer Grant Shapps after he claimed that almost one million people had come off sickness and disability benefits rather than undergo the notorious Work Capability Assessment carried out by IT firm Atos.

Shapps’ claim was a shabby attempt to smear those with serious illnesses or disabilities as fraudulent, by attempting to claim hundreds of thousands of people came off benefits rather than face an assessment.  As pointed out by the chair of the UKSA, Andrew Dilnot, the figures Shapps used actually largely related to the number of new claims dropped before an initial assessment between 2008-2013.

Assessments usually do not take place until several months after a person has made an initial claim for out of work sickness and disability benefits ( now called Employment Support Allowance or ESA).  This means large numbers of claimants with short term conditions, such as a broken leg, go back to work before the assessment is complete and therefore end their claims.

The truth is that the number of claims ended before assessment shows that most ESA claimants are honest, and end their claim for benefit when they no longer need it  – the very opposite of what Shapps was attempting to suggest.

According to the New Statesman between: “March 2011 and May 2012, just 19,700 (somewhat short of Shapps’s “nearly a million) abandoned their claims prior to a work capability assessment in the period to May 2012”

It’s hardly surprising that Grant Shapps – a man who made his money running a string of spam websites under a false name – should be caught fibbing.  But what is even more telling is why he is fibbing.

Against a backdrop of disabled people facing soaring hate crime, Shapps is trying to whip up the mob by misusing figures which he claims proves most sick and disabled claimants are fraudsters like him.  Claimants who may have the most severe disabilities, life threatening or terminal illnesses like cancer or serious and complex mental health conditions. Claimants who are already having their lives plunged into chaos by the other changes to benefits such as the bedroom tax and council tax benefit reform.

It is not enough for Shapps and his Government to strip away what little financial security many sick and disabled people have with heartless and needless cuts.  He also seems to want claimants falsely labelled as criminals in not just the gutter press but also in the streets.

Download the letter from the UKSA  (PDF)

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Government Declares War on Disabled People and the Poor

On the weekend before the most savage cuts to social security in generations are introduced, the Tory party have gone on a media offensive to attack sick and disabled people or those who are unemployed, low waged and poor.

Minister for Murdering Disabled People Esther Mcvey began the assault with a vile piece of propaganda in the Daily Mail on Saturday.  Mcvey claims that many people who are “officially classed ‘disabled’ are no such thing”.  Her nasty diatribe comes in advance of the changes to disability benefits which will see around a fifth of disabled people lose vital support.

This is a woman with so much real world experience that she still lives with her business-owning dad at the age of 45.  Despite a half-arsed attempt at setting up a business, the nearest Mcvey has ever come to real work was sitting on the GMTV sofa.  Is it any wonder we are in such a mess whilst chinless gimps like Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Mcvey run the country like a bunch of posh teenagers who have never understood what it is to stand on your own two feet?

Elsewhere internet con man Grant Shapps was attempting to claim in the Daily Mail that just because some people get better or die before a claim for sickness benefits is assessed that this somehow proves everyone on the benefit is a scrounger. Rarely has the nasty party sunk any lower.

Shapps may not be as privileged as many of his Tory counterparts but he has certainly never had a proper job.  His idea of hard work is to set up a few get rich quick scams and flog grotesque guides on how to pick up women to the gullible and desperate over the internet

And finally Iain Duncan Smith himself appeared in The Daily Telegraph with the ludicrous claim that he could live quite easily on just £53 a week.  But then that’s because he sponges off his wife’s parents –  living the high life in an inherited ancestral mansion whilst tax payers fund his lavish expenses.  At least Esther Mcvey scrounges off her own parent.

Millions stare destitution in the face this month with ruthless and reckless cuts set to throw lives into chaos.  Many claimants will be left with nothing at all to buy food after paying their bedroom tax, council tax benefits, water rates and other utility bills.  Homelessness is already rising and about to soar as a direct result of this Government’s policies.  With unemployment also back on the rise, particularly amongst the young, parts of the country may be unrecognisible in just a few month’s time as poverty not seen in decades returns to haunt the UK.

Not content with that however, this toff Government want to add insult to injury by slandering and abusing the victims of their policies in the national press.

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5000 People With Cancer Declared Fit For Work Boasts Grant Shapps

Internet con-man Grant Shapps has been crawling all over the papers today as the Government used Easter Sunday to launch an all out attack on sick and disabled people.

Tory party chairman Shapps claims in the Telegraph today that he will do his job from the pub from now on and his bizarre diatribe suggests that he’s already well on the way to being pissed.  The notorious get rich quick scammer rants that sickness benefits are ‘evil’ whilst brandishing figures attempting to smear all those out of work due to illness or disability as scroungers.

Once again the Tories are suggesting that most claims for Employment Support Allowance are not genuine based simply on the fact that many people give up a claim for ESA before they are assessed.  This is the exact same trick that the DWP tried to pull last year which simply reveals that for many people sickness is temporary and when they get better they end their claims.

Digging into the numbers however reveals some tragic statistics.  Shapps’ pub bore rhetoric is based on figures which breakdown claims for ESA by condition, and provide details of the results of their assessments.

They make for depressing reading.  Almost 5000 people with cancer were found ‘fit for work’ between 2008 and 2011, including ten people with malignant brain tumours.  Over 1000 people diagnosed with schizophrenia were also deemed scroungers and had benefits stopped.

Two and a half thousand people with MS were found fit for workfare if not paid work and placed in the Work Related Activity Group.  A further 800 MS sufferers were thrown off sickness benefits altogether.

Confirming that many claims are temporary in nature, the figures include many people who had broken a limb or suffered some other short term injury or condition.  Unsurprisingly many of this group came off benefits before being assessed which can take place several months after making an initial claim.

There are many other reasons a claim might stop before an assessment takes place.  Claimants could marry someone and no longer be eligible, or in many cases reach retirement age.

In a predictable spittle-flecked outburst, the right wing press have crowed that almost 10,000 people whose primary conditions was associated with drug use ended their claim before assessment,  A similar number were found fit for work – as if employers are suddenly rushing to hire currently using heroin addicts.

Whilst some of this group may have stopped using drugs and therefore ended their claim, some may have found themselves in prison.  Others may have slipped out of the benefits system completely due to the chaotic nature of their condition.  Some will probably have died from an overdose before the assessment took place.

And it is this that reveals the truly nasty face of this Government.  Around 14,000 people with cancer ended their claim before they were assessed.  It should be hoped that this is because many of them went into long term remission.  The sad truth is that some of them will have died whilst awaiting a benefit decision.

It is these tragic deaths that the vile Tory party are only too happy to exploit in an attempt to prove that half of people on sickness benefits were faking their conditions.  They truly are beneath contempt.

The figures are available via google viewer for those without Excel or can be downloaded direct as an xls format.

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The Legacy of Grant Shapps – Soaring Rents, Homelessness and Housing Benefit Costs

Grants Shapps’ claims that Housing Benefit caps would lead to lower rents have been demolished by a report published this week by the National Housing Federation (NHF).

The NHF warn in stark terms that rents are soaring, a trend they believe will continue and lead to millions of people unable to afford to buy, or rent a home in the near future. The Evening Standard also warned last week that rents across London are at an all time high, having risen 6.2% in the last year. In Hammersmith and Fulham, one of the boroughs most impacted by the government’s caps on Housing Benefit, rents have soared by 15%.

Speaking about the housing benefit caps, Grant Shapps, when he was Minister for Housing, claimed that: “Rather than some of the catastrophic predictions that have been made, what’s much more likely is that rents will start to fall.”

The Housing Benefit caps were justified by lurid stories claiming people were living in Chelsea mansions whilst claiming benefits at a cost to the tax payer of thousands every month. The truth was that this represented a literal handful of homeless families who were in emergency temporary accommodation in expensive ares of London.

The housing benefit caps were set at a far lower rate than the cost of a Kensington town house and resulted in much of London becoming unaffordable for those claiming full housing benefit awards. The impact of these changes has barely begun to be felt and already every measure of homelessness in rising.

Whilst central London is socially cleansed an influx of housing benefit tenants into outer London boroughs and the home counties will mean soaring demand for rental properties. The impact of the housing benefit caps will be higher rents for everybody as competition for what few low cost rental properties exist intensifies.

The National Housing Federation also report on the huge rise in the number of people claiming Housing Benefit who are in work. In just three years the number of people claiming the benefit to top up wages has grown by 417,830 people. According to the report this number is increasing by 10,000 people a month.

Whilst rising rents are undoubtedly to blame for some of this increase, it hides a larger truth. Unemployment, we are led to believe is falling. Yet the number of people who need to claim Housing Benefit, a benefit based on income rather than employment status, is rocketing.

This apparent paradox is easily explained. The fall in unemployment has been largely down to people being sent on workfare, part time jobs, and the record number of people registering as self-employed. All of these people still need to claim Housing Benefit, because even if they are ‘officially’ working, they aren’t making any fucking money.

The Government plans even more cuts to Housing Benefits, with the threat to remove the right to a home for those under 25. Already people under 35 are now only permitted to claim for a room in a shared house. A perfect storm is coming which may yet see record numbers of homeless people once again hitting the streets of London and other large cities.

Despite the brutal cuts the Housing Benefit bill is rising. The Government’s policies so far have led to more homelessness, higher rents and more government spending on housing benefits. The only people to benefit have been greedy landlords (like Chris Grayling) who are pulling out all the stops to cash in on this Government’s housing shambles.

Grant Shapps Is A Lying Bastard

Tory Party Chairman Grant Shapps pleaded in the Daily Telegraph on Friday that his use of the pseudonym Michael Green, the name he adopted to promote his get rich quick scams, was just a joke.  His justification comes after the company he established, and which is now run by his wife, is under increasing scrutiny after a complaint was made to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

The complaint argues that Howtocorp, the business established by Shapps,  misled the public by presenting “Michael Green” and “Sebastian Fox” as genuine businessmen who had made substantial sums of money from using the company’s software and money making guides.

Shapps has been repeatedly mocked after a picture of him posing as the imaginery online marketing guru Michael Green appeared in the media.

Shapps’ dismissal of the complaints about his multiple personalities fails to explain why he, or someone from his company, registered the trafficpaymaster.com domain under the fake name Michael Green in breach of US internet rules as recently as February last year.

(click to enlarge images)

Trafficpaymaster.com is software sold by howtocorp which automatically generates websites by stealing content from other sites.  Under US law this practice is almost certainly illegal and using a fake name to register the website which sold it would be an aggravating factor which could add seven years jail time to any sentence received.  Shapps appears to have a strange sense of humour.

Shapps’ joke also fails to explain the following post on the Warrior Internet forum where both Michael Green and Sebastian Fox appear together to promote the company’s software:

Howtocorp deleted all their posts from the Warrior Forums on the 30th September this year, shortly after news of Shapps’ online spam scam broke.  Unfortunately they missed the one above.  Posh people are never very good at crime.

All of the company’s websites and youtube channels have disappeared over the last couple of weeks.

Shapps claims in the Telegraph that he is “absolutely not embarrassed” about the activities of the company which might leave people wondering why he has decided to hide the evidence.

According to Michael Green, the company had made $28 million dollars from their assorted scams.  It does seem strange that a company raking in so much cash should suddenly shut up shop and attempt to remove any trace of their existence from the internet.

Whatever the verdict of the complaint to the ASA it is clear that Shapps and his former company are doing everything possible to hide any online evidence relating to their possibly illegal activities.  Labour MP  Steve McCabe has called for a police investigation into howtocorp’s activities.  A young man is currently facing extradition to the US for acting in similar way to howtocorp.

Shapps’ second line of defence, that he is no longer involved in the company, is perhaps most despicable of all given that it leaves his wife to face any legal fall out from the scams which made him rich.  They are playing a dangerous game.  Should a police investigation take place examining Shapps or his wife’s company,  then their orchestrated campaign of destroying any online evidence could well see an offence of ‘perverting the cause of justice’ added to the charge sheet.

The Young Man Being Extradited For What Grant Shapps Did

A 23 year old man faces extradition to the US and a possible ten year jail sentence for committing similar offences to the dodgy online company founded by Tory spiv Grant Shapps.

Richard O’Dwyer from Barnsley was just 19 when he set up tvshack.net, a website which indexed links to movies and TV shows hosted elsewhere.  Whilst O’Dwyer’s own website did not carry copyright material, he has still been charged with conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and criminal infringement of copyright.  Both charges carry potential sentences of five years each.

Copyright violation is breach of criminal law in the UK, but prosecutions are rare.  This didn’t stop Theresa May agreeing to a request from the US to extradite Dwyer, despite a petition in his support which has now reached 225,000 signatures.

Grant Shapps, the new Tory party chairman, ran howtocorp, a company which sells software designed to steal content from other websites and use it to automatically generate websites.   This content is ‘spun’, meaning a few words are changed around to fool search engines into thinking that the websites are publishing original content.

It is not known whether this ‘spinning’ would allow the website owners to evade copyright legislation in the UK.  At some point a test prosecution is likely to establish to legality of the technique which allows shady online businesses quickly generate hundreds of websites based on other people’s work.  These website are used to host advertising (possibly fraudulently) such as Google Adsense.

In the US the legal situation is much clearer.  According to this lawyer, a test case has established that the practice is illegal in the US.  Shapp’s company, which largely operated in the US despite being based in the UK, sold this copyright violating software for a whopping $297.

There is also evidence that the company used the software themselves to generate Google Adsense revenue from plagiarised content. 

It is not known how much money Shapps and his company made from this copyright scam which is arguably just as serious an infringement of the law as the so called crimes that Richard O’Dwyer committed as a teenager.  O’Dwyer simply linked to copyright content.  Howtocorp not only used copyright material themselves, but made a small fortune from actively promoting copyright violation through their software.

O’Dwyer did not even host his websites in the US, unlike Shapps’ company who registered the website which promoted his software under a fake name.  Registering a domain name using a false identity is an aggravating factor in prosecutions of online scams in the US, which can see any sentence doubled or extended by 7 years.

If Grant Shapps were charged with the same offences as Richard O’Dwyer, his sentence would potentially be longer than that facing O’Dwyer.  Shapps, or his wife who now controls the company, could be looking at 15 years.

Shapps hasn’t even lost his job for committing similar offences to this young man who is staring into the abyss of the US penal system.  This follows revelations last week that two men were jailed last year for Andrew Mitchell style rants at police.  Mitchell hasn’t lost his job either.  Rarely has the double standard been so self-evident than within this Government of crooks.  It really is one rules for us and a quite different one for them.  Whilst Theresa May happily condemns a young man to brutal incarceration, Shapps’ shady online practices are swept hastily under the carpet.

Almost every website operated by howtocorp has disappeared offline in the last couple of weeks, suggesting that the company are all too aware of the potential seriousness of their money-making scams.  Perhaps most contemptuously, Shapps handed control of the company he founded in 2002 to his wife in 2008.  Shapps would far rather see his wife face any potential legal consequences for his company’s actions than have his own cheap suited image dented.

O’Dwyer is not the only person facing legal consequences for running websites which link to copyright material.  In the first verdict of it’s kind, Anton Vickerman was sentenced to four years in prison by the UK courts in August for his surfthechannel.com website.  Vickerman was charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, a charge which will hopefully cause more than  a few sleepless nights in the Shapps household.

Richard O’Dwyer is appealing the extradition, you can sign the petition in his support at: http://www.change.org/petitions/ukhomeoffice-stop-the-extradition-of-richard-o-dwyer-to-the-usa-saverichard

For more details on the case visit: http://juliasblog-the-fight-of-our-lives.blogspot.co.uk/