Nobel Prize awarded to gender pay gap economist

Tim Wallace
Mon, 9 October 2023

The Harvard professor found the main factor holding back women’s earnings was caring for children - HARVARD UNIVERSITY/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock/Shutterstock

A Harvard professor who found the main factor holding back women’s earnings is caring for children has won the Nobel Prize for economics.

Claudia Goldin was awarded the prestigious prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday in recognition of work that has “advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”.

Her four decades of studies have focused on how the role of women in the workforce has changed over time and what that has meant for their earning power.


Prof Goldin found fewer women worked outside the home after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but that more women began moving into paid employment through the 20th century as education improved and innovations such as the contraceptive pill allowed more control over family planning.

She has taken aim at the idea that sexist managers are responsible for much of the gender pay gap, instead finding it is largely caused by decisions made after having children.

Women typically take on the majority of caring responsibilities and so need flexible jobs – effectively locking themselves out of the higher-paid “greedy jobs” that require work late into the evenings, over weekends and while on holidays, she said.

“A greedy job is a job in which you’re supposed to respond late at night or on weekends or take off that vacation,” she told a recent International Monetary Fund podcast.

“And it takes up a lot of your life. And it’s a job for which if you couldn’t give it all of your life, then you wouldn’t be in the job for a long time. You wouldn’t be promoted.

“Not so many women are going into these greedy jobs, precisely because they can’t do those kind of hours because they have kids to take care of or somebody to take care of.”

Prof Goldin is the third woman to have been awarded the prestigious prize, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel. The prize includes a payment of 11m Swedish krona (£820,000).

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said: “By trawling through the archives and compiling and correcting historical data, Goldin has been able to present new and often surprising facts.

“She has also given us a deeper understanding of the factors that affect women’s opportunities in the labour market and how much their work has been in demand.

“The fact that women’s choices have often been, and remain, limited by marriage and responsibility for the home and family is at the heart of her analyses and explanatory models.”

Hans Ellegren, the academy’s secretary general, said the professor “was surprised and very, very happy” to be given the award.

The Nobel Prize for economics has been awarded annually since 1969 and there have been 93 recipients.

Exxon Mobil executive close to $60bn deal charged with sexual assault

RAPE IS NOT ABOUT SEX BUT POWER

Telegraph reporters
Mon, 9 October 2023

exxonmobil

A senior executive at the heart of a $60bn (£49.3bn) US oil deal has been charged with sexual assault.

The head of Exxon Mobil’s shale oil and gas business, a unit involved in merger talks with rival Pioneer Natural Resources, was arrested at a Texas hotel last week on a sexual assault charge, police said.

David Scott, an Exxon senior vice president who oversees all its shale oil and gas production business, was arrested early Thursday morning at a La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel in Magnolia, Texas, the Montgomery Sheriff’s Office said.


Efforts to reach Mr Scott were unsuccessful. It was not immediately clear if he had legal representation.

Mr Scott, 49, was arrested in his room at the budget hotel near Exxon’s Spring, Texas, headquarters. One of the two women he was in the room with left and called police from the lobby, a worker who saw a security video told Reuters. Rooms at the hotel cost about $120 a night.

His arrest coincided with news breaking that Exxon was in advanced talks to acquire Pioneer in a deal that could value the shale producer at about $60bn. An agreement could be announced in the coming days.

Mr Scott’s LinkedIn profile shows he has been with Exxon for more than 26 years and has been involved in some of its most important oil and gas projects. Originally from Australia, he started with Exxon in Melbourne as an engineer, moving to jobs in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi, where he was president of its United Arab Emirates affiliate.

He became head of Exxon’s Permian Basin operations in 2020 and was promoted to senior vice president earlier this year, placing him in charge of all its shale oil and gas.

A spokesman for Exxon said: “We are aware of the allegations and cannot comment on a personal matter; however, we can say that this individual will not continue work responsibilities as the investigation proceeds.

“All ExxonMobil employees, officers and directors are accountable for observing the highest standards of integrity and code of conduct in support of the company’s business and otherwise.”

Mr Scott faces a second-degree felony assault charge and was held on a $30,000 bond, according to jail records. Convictions on such felonies in Texas carry a minimum of two years and up to 20 years in jail.

Earth was hit by largest ever solar storm that would devastate civilisation today, tree rings show

Andrew Griffin
Mon, 9 October 2023 


Earth was once hit by an extreme solar storm that would devastate human civilisation if it happened today, tree rings show.

Scientists were able to piece together the solar storm from ancient tree rings that were found in the French alps, and showed evidence of a dramatic spike in radiocarbon levels some 14,300 years ago. That spike was the result of a massive solar storm, the biggest ever found by scientists.

If a similar event happened today, it could knock the power grid offline for months and destroy the infrastructure we rely on for communications, scientists have warned. The researchers behind the new study have urged that the extreme nature of the newly discovered event should be a warning for the future.

“Extreme solar storms could have huge impacts on Earth. Such super storms could permanently damage the transformers in our electricity grids, resulting in huge and widespread blackouts lasting months,” said Tim Heaton, professor of applied statistics in the School of Mathematics at the University of Leeds. “They could also result in permanent damage to the satellites that we all rely on for navigation and telecommunication, leaving them unusable. They would also create severe radiation risks to astronauts.”

Further work is needed to ensure that the world is protected from similar events happening again, scientists said. And more research is required to actually understand how and why they might happen.

Scientists have found nine extreme solar storms, or Miayake Events, that happened in the last 15,000 years. The most recent of them happened in the years 993 AD and 774 AD, but the newly found one was twice as powerful as those.

Researchers do not know exactly what happened during those Miyake Events, and studying them is difficult because they can only be understood indirectly. That makes it difficult for scientists to know how and when they might happen again, or if it is even possible to predict them.

“Direct instrumental measurements of solar activity only began in the 17th century with the counting of sunspots,” said Edouard Bard, professor of climate and ocean evolution at the Collège de France and CEREGE. “Nowadays, we also obtain detailed records using ground-based observatories, space probes, and satellites.

“However, all these short-term instrumental records are insufficient for a complete understanding of the Sun. Radiocarbon measured in tree-rings, used alongside beryllium in polar ice cores, provide the best way to understand the Sun’s behaviour further back into the past.” 

The largest solar storm that scientists were able to actually observe and study happened in 1859, and is known as the Carrington Event. It caused vast disruption to society, destroying telegraph machines and creating a bright aurora so bright that birds behaved as if the Sun was rising.

The Miayake Events like the newly found storm would have been vastly more powerful, however. They were discovered by slicing ancient trees that are becoming fossils into tiny rings, and then analysing the radiocarbon that was present in them.

Their work is published in a new article, ‘A radiocarbon spike at 14,300 cal yr BP in subfossil trees provides the impulse response function of the global carbon cycle during the Late Glacial’, in the journal The Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

23andMe says hacker appears to have stolen people’s genetic information


Andrew Griffin
Mon, 9 October 2023 

(Getty Images)

A hacker has stolen the personal genetic information of 23andMe users, the company has said.

23andMe allows people to send in a sample of their DNA and have it tested, with the results sent into them. Customers can find out what their genetic information might tell them about their health, for instance, as well as their relatives and where they might have lived.

But some of that same information was accessed by hackers and appears to have been made available online, the company said.

It made the statement after the hackers appeared to be attempting to sell the information online. 23andMe did not say whether some or all of that data – which included the names of celebrities – was actually legitimate.

But it did say that information had been “compiled from individual 23andMe.com accounts without the account users’ authorization”. Its investigation was still continuing, the company said, and it is unclear the scale of the problem.

The data appears to have been taken by a hacker who used recycled login credentials from other websites that had since been hacked, the company said. That is a common technique for breaking into profiles, and cyber security experts suggest using different passwords on different websites and changing them regularly to avoid it.

Once the hackers were able to get into those accounts, they used a feature on 23andMe that allowed them to gather yet more information. 23andMe offers a tool called “DNA Relatives”, which lets users connect with people with similar genetic information to help assemble their family tree – meaning that hackers were able to gather information about other people whose accounts had not actually been compromised.

The company said that it had no indication that its own systems had been attacked, or that it was the source of the credentials used. But it advised people to change their password and set up multi-factor authentication to ensure that their accounts were secure.

World’s largest offshore windfarm project starts powering UK grid

At 260 metres the turbines are nearly three times as tall as Big Ben 

Alex Lawson
Mon, 9 October 2023 


The first turbine to be completed in a project to build the world’s largest offshore windfarm, in the North Sea, has begun powering British homes and businesses.

Developers confirmed on Monday that Dogger Bank, which sits 70 nautical miles off the coast of Yorkshire, started producing power over the weekend as the first of 277 turbines was connected to the electricity grid.

The project, jointly developed by Britain’s SSE and Norway’s Equinor and Vårgrønn, will produce 3.6 gigawatts of power, enough for 6m homes a year, when it is completed in 2026.

Rishi Sunak said the project was “critical to generating renewable, efficient energy that can power British homes from British seas”.

The prime minister’s endorsement comes weeks after he drew heavy criticism from green campaigners for rowing back on net zero policies as he seeks to make the energy transition a key political battleground.

The government was also condemned last month when a disastrous energy auction saw no new offshore windfarms secure contracts despite there being the potential for 5GW of projects – enough to power 8m homes a year.

Keir Starmer, who will address the Labour party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, has said Sunak’s lack of investment in wind power is a “gift to Putin, who has strangled the international gas market we are hooked to”.

The cost of material, labour and finance have risen sharply for windfarm developers over the past year. Earlier this year, the Swedish energy company Vattenfall said it would cease working on the multibillion-pound Norfolk Boreas windfarm because rising costs meant it was no longer profitable.

Sunak said the £9bn Dogger Bank development would “not only bolster our energy security but create jobs, lower electricity bills and keep us on track for net zero”.

Alistair Phillips-Davies, the chief executive of SSE, said: “There’s been lots of talk about the need to build homegrown energy supplies, but we are taking action on a massive scale.”

The developers said each rotation of the 107-metre-long blades on Dogger Bank’s first turbine could produce enough energy to power an average British home for two days.

Last year, SSE switched on another huge wind project – Scotland’s largest offshore windfarm, Seagreen.

The surge in gas and electricity bills over the past two years, in part linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has thrown the spotlight on Britain’s domestic energy system.

The government has set a target to decarbonise the UK electricity system by 2035, while Labour has pledged to achieve the same feat by 2030. However, they face a considerable task to achieve those targets in a market currently reliant on fossil fuel power generation.


Largest wind farm in the world starts supplying power to Britain

Jonathan Leake
Tue, 10 October 2023 

Dogger Bank turbin

The world’s largest offshore wind farm has started supplying power to Britain’s energy grid after it generated electricity for the first time.

Turbines started turning at the Dogger Bank wind farm on Saturday, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hailing the project as crucial to Britain’s net zero future.

When complete, Dogger Bank will consist of 277 giant offshore turbines that generate enough electricity to power six million homes a year.

Energy giant SSE confirmed production from the first installed turbine on Tuesday.

Mr Sunak said: “Offshore wind is critical to generating renewable, efficient energy that can power British homes from British seas.

“I’m proud that this country is already a world leader in reaching net zero by 2050, and by doubling down on the new green industries of the future, we’ll get there in a way that’s both pragmatic and ambitious.”

The UK’s offshore wind farms have expanded rapidly in recent years and currently have a capacity of about 14 gigawatts (GW).

The Government has pledged to expand this to 50GW by 2030, meaning the UK needs to install at least one wind turbine every day for the next seven years.

Dogger Bank is located 75 miles off the coast of Yorkshire and is being completed in three phases.

The power it generates is channeled into the UK’s national grid via Dogger Bank’s high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission system.

When fully complete, Dogger Bank’s 3.6GW capacity will match that of Sizewell B nuclear power station – although the power it produces will vary with the prevailing wind.

Dogger Bank is being developed and built by the UK’s SSE Renewables in a joint venture with Norway’s Equinor and Vårgrønn. It is powered by the largest-ever wind turbines, which are made by GE Vernova.

Anders Opedal, Equinor chief executive, said: “A renewable mega-project like Dogger Bank constitutes an industrial wind hub in the heart of the North Sea, playing a major role in the UK’s ambitions for offshore wind and supporting its net zero ambitions.”

Olav Hetland, boss of Vårgrønn, said: “Dogger Bank’s first power milestone demonstrates that offshore wind is ready to power Europe’s energy transition.

“The project has contributed to building industry and creating local jobs and will continue to do so over several decades. Looking ahead, we expect the Northeast of England to hold a central place in Europe’s offshore wind future.”

Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of SSE, said: “The innovations this pioneering project has developed will also mean future developments can be built faster and more efficiently, accelerating the clean energy transition.

“The challenge now is to accelerate the next wave of projects and we look forward to working with governments to bring these forward as soon as possible.”

World’s largest wind farm starts production off Yorkshire coast

August Graham, PA Business Reporter
Tue, 10 October 2023 


The world’s largest offshore wind farm has started feeding power into the British grid for the first time as turbines started spinning at the site.

The first turbines on the Dogger Bank wind farm, which is still under construction, produced their first electricity.

Although far from complete, if Dogger Bank’s 277 wind turbines were producing at maximum capacity at midday on Tuesday, it would have been able to produce around 10% of all the electricity being used at that point.


Its 3.6 gigawatts of capacity makes it the largest offshore wind farm in the world and it also has the largest number of turbines of any offshore wind farm.

The turbines that are installed at the site — around 130 kilometres off the coast of Yorkshire — have 107-metre long blades, and one single rotation of those blades produces enough electricity to power two homes all day.

At 260 metres the turbines are nearly three times as tall as the Clock Tower in Westminster, commonly called Big Ben after one of its bells.

When operational, the full wind farm will be able to power the equivalent of six million homes per year.

It will produce this electricity at between £39.65 and £41.61 per megawatt hour, in 2012 prices. At the time of writing the price of a megawatt hour of electricity in Great Britain was considerably higher, at £117 per MWh.

It is being developed and built by SSE Renewables, Norway’s Equinor and Vargronn.

“Dogger Bank will provide a significant boost to UK energy security, affordability and leadership in tackling climate change. This is exactly how we should be responding to the energy crisis,” said SSE chief executive Alistair Phillips-Davies.

“But it is also a landmark moment for the global offshore wind industry, with Dogger Bank demonstrating just what can be achieved when policymakers, investors, industry and communities work together to achieve something truly remarkable.”

John Twomey, director of customer connections for National Grid, said: “Dogger Bank’s first power is a momentous engineering achievement and marks another milestone in Britain’s clean energy transition.

“It’s a particularly proud moment for our connections and asset operations teams, whose work reinforcing our Creyke Beck substation to connect the wind farm’s green power to our network is a key part of this project’s success story.”

ANOTHER BLACKBERRY FILM

How the world fell out of love with the BlackBerry

Simon Hunt
Tue, 10 October 2023 

(BlackBerry Movie)

You were once never more than six feet from a BlackBerry in London. Everyone was hooked on the devices, from company execs firing off emails in the back of taxis to schoolkids who couldn’t last five minutes without checking BBM. The lightning-fast speeds to exchange messages, coupled with a full, pocket-sized keyboard, ushered in a new era of being permanently online, where everyone communicated round the clock. If you didn’t have a BlackBerry you were simply backward, uncool, a philistine.

From around the turn of the century onwards, annual sales of BlackBerry phones saw near-exponential growth, and with it the world’s thirst to get their hands on the latest devices. The craze transformed Waterloo, BlackBerry’s Canadian headquarters, from a sleepy town home to a large Mennonite community who travelled by horse and refused to use electricity, to a tech powerhouse that was the gravitational centre of the global smartphone industry.

“It was the closest I’ll ever feel to being a rockstar,” said Craig Swann, a software developer who spent twelve years working for BlackBerry maker RIM.

“Seeing your work in the palm of everyone all the time was incredibly gratifying. I would get stopped on the street so people could see my newer phone, or in airports people would be excited to hear your worked for RIM, and everyone knew RIM.”

Such was BlackBerry’s grip on the smartphone market, that when Steve Jobs took to a stage in San Francisco to unveil the first iPhone in 2007, many company insiders simply shrugged their shoulders.

“I think it was a lot of disbelief that people would want an inferior product,” Swann told the Standard.

“The original iPhones had terrible batteries, dropped calls constantly, and were slow. BlackBerry was a better phone.”

But while the Apple lagged RIM in its technology, it had a secret weapon up its sleeve: the App Store. The move opened users up to thousands of new tools that had never been available on a smartphone. It meant, in effect, that Apple was outsourcing its iPhone innovation to hundreds of software businesses across the globe – developing new applications at a speed RIM struggled to emulate.

It was the closest I’ll ever feel to being a rockstar

Former BlackBerry employee

By 2009, a year after the launch of the App Store, the keyboard-based BlackBerry and the touchscreen iPhone were at level pegging in global smartphone shipments, but in 2010, Apple edged ahead and Blackberry, to its shock, saw sales start to dip.

“It wasn’t until the App store took off that the writing was on the wall,” Fraser Gibbs, a former technical director at Blackberry, told the Standard.

“Of course folks were worried. Slowing sales brought budget cuts and hiring freezes which did cause a mood shift.

“But many were also puzzled. We were all keyboard addicts and didn’t understand the appeal. In the teams I worked with there was a lot of determination to keep going and fight back.”

And fight back it did. Blackberry unveiled its own touchscreen phone, the Storm, in 2011, and in 2013 began scrapping keyboards altogether. But it felt like a tacit admission that the iPhone’s design was the future. In any case, the Storm was a poor imitation, with hundreds of thousands of devices having to be recalled over faulty touch screen, while BlackBerry’s co-CEOs both resigned by 2012, and thousands of staff were laid off.

“I don’t know anyone who predicted a loss of market share,” Gibbs said.

“We built a business communications tool and the shift to a music/games/apps device is where BB really lost the market.

“It wasn’t a tech innovation issue but a realization of what the consumer market wanted out of a smartphone.”

Fast-forward to 2022, and Blackberry finally discontinued its support for its classic smartphones, marking the end of a 25-year history in the industry. Its dramatic rise and fall is chronicled in a new film, ‘BlackBerry’, which debuted in cinemas on Friday.

The film powerfully captures the thrill of being inside a tech firm growing at lightning speed, as well as the intense pressure on engineers to keep innovating at pace – though its storytelling is far from faithful to the facts.

“It left me a little angry as a lot was portrayed wrong,” Gibbs says.

Most of the tech discussions in the movie were nonsense. There was no big crack down on engineering, or fun.”

“What it got right is the energy to get the product working and out the door,” says Swann.

“The desire to have a perfectly engineered product that always worked.”

The BlackBerry engineering spirit lives on in Waterloo, which continues to be a leading tech hub in Canada. Ironically, the firm’s demise spawned a huge growth in tech startups in the city: such were the size of its severance payments, laid-off engineers had enough ready cash to launch their own ventures, some of which became unicorns in their own right. It’s also the home to big engineering bases for Google, Oracle, McAfee and others. But nothing compares to the excitement of the days of BB.

UK data watchdog issues Snapchat enforcement notice over AI chatbot

Henry Saker-Clark, PA Deputy Business Editor
Fri, 6 October 2023 


The UK’s information watchdog has said Snapchat may be required to “stop processing data” related to its AI chatbot after issuing a preliminary enforcement notice against the technology business.

UK Information Commissioner John Edwards said the provisional findings of a probe into the company suggested a “worrying failure” by Snap, the app’s parent business, over potential privacy risks.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it issued Snap with a “preliminary enforcement notice over potential failure to properly assess the privacy risks” posed by its generative AI chatbot My AI, particularly to children using it.

The regulator stressed that findings are “provisional” and conclusions should not yet be drawn.

However, it said that if a final enforcement notice were to be adopted, Snap might not be able to offer the My AI function to UK users until the company carries out “an adequate risk assessment”.

Mr Edwards said: “The provisional findings of our investigation suggest a worrying failure by Snap to adequately identify and assess the privacy risks to children and other users before launching My AI.

“We have been clear that organisations must consider the risks associated with AI, alongside the benefits.

“Today’s preliminary enforcement notice shows we will take action in order to protect UK consumers’ privacy rights.”

A Snap spokeswoman said: “We are closely reviewing the ICO’s provisional decision.

“Like the ICO, we are committed to protecting the privacy of our users.

“In line with our standard approach to product development, My AI went through a robust legal and privacy review process before being made publicly available.

“We will continue to work constructively with the ICO to ensure they’re comfortable with our risk assessment procedures.”

BBC blocks ChatGPT maker from using its content over AI copyright concerns

James Warrington
Fri, 6 October 2023 

bbc office

The BBC has blocked ChatGPT from using its content amid growing fears that AI tools are breaching copyright.

The public service broadcaster said it has taken steps to prevent companies such as ChatGPT maker OpenAI from trawling its websites to train their software.

In a blog post, Rhodri Talfan Davies, the BBC’s director of nations, said the so-called scraping of BBC websites without permission was not in the interest of licence fee payers.

He said that the corporation was also examining other threats from AI, including how it could impact website traffic and lead to a surge in disinformation.

Mr Talfan Davies said: “It is already clear that Generative AI is likely to introduce new and significant risks if not harnessed properly.

“These include ethical issues, legal and copyright challenges, and significant risks around misinformation and bias.

“These risks are real and cannot be underestimated. This wave of innovation will demand vision and vigilance in equal measure.”

Rhodri Talfan Davies, the BBC’s director of nations, said that both ‘vision and vigilance’ would be needed to manage AI risks - BBC

It follows similar moves by The Guardian, New York Times and CNN, which have all blocked ChatGPT from accessing their websites.

BBC Good Food, which is operated under licence by magazine publisher Immediate Media, has also rolled out a ban.

News publishers are becoming increasingly concerned that tech giants have scraped data from their websites to help train AI software without permission.

The Daily Mail is currently gearing up for a legal battle with Google over claims the company used hundreds of thousands of its online news stories to train the Bard chatbot.

Meanwhile, the News Media Association (NMA), which represents titles including The Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph, has warned a flood of fake news generated by AI risks “polluting human knowledge”.

Despite the concerns, some parts of the news industry are hoping to establish landmark deals that would see tech giants pay for the use of content.

The BBC said it wanted to agree a “more structured and sustainable approach” with AI firms, though it is understood licensing deals are not yet being discussed.

The broadcaster will also start rolling out a number of small projects to experiment with AI. These could be deployed in areas such as news headlines, as well as in archive footage and to help the production process.

The threat from AI poses a unique challenge to the BBC given its licence fee funding model.

Leo Kelion, a former BBC tech editor, questioned whether there was a tension between the decision to block ChatGPT and the broadcaster’s remit.

He said: “I get there’s a desire to control who uses it and maybe get a fresh source of income. But it seems a shame to deprive AI models of a source of trustworthy output that strives to be impartial. There’s soft power for the BBC and the UK in its inclusion.”

The BBC insisted that AI could provide a significant opportunity for the organisation to “deepen and amplify our mission”, provided it was used responsibly.

Bosses said the organisation would always act in the best interests of the public, would prioritise talent and creativity over technology and would be transparent about its use of AI.

Mr Talfan Davies said: “We believe a responsible approach to using this technology can help mitigate some of these risks and enable experimentation.”

Banksy sued for £1.3m over ‘grave damage’ of Instagram post about fashion store

Tristan Kirk
Fri, 6 October 2023 

Banksy is facing a defamation claim in the High Court over an Instagram post featuring this GUESS window display in Regent Street (RCJ)

Banksy faces claims he “gravely damaged” the reputation of a rival with an Instagram post urging shoplifters to target fashion store Guess, according to details of a £1.3 million High Court case.

The legendary graffiti artist is being sued by a company run by Andrew Gallagher over a November 2022 social media post featuring an image of Banksy’s ‘Flower Bomber’ work in the Regent Street shop window.

The Instagram post was accompanied by the caption: “Alerting all shoplifters. Please go to GUESS on Regent Street. They’ve helped themselves to my artwork without asking, how can it be wrong for you to do the same to their clothes?”


The image shows the shop window advertising “Graffiti by Banksy”, together with the logos of the fashion store and Mr Gallagher’s ‘Brandalised’ name.

In a filing at the High Court, lawyers for Full Colour Black Ltd, which owns the trademark ‘Brandalised’, say they may seek for the graffiti artist to be unmasked during the legal battle.

“His true identity has not been disclosed to the public but he carries on his public activities under the pseudonym ‘Banksy’”, they state. “The claimant reserves the right to seek an order that he identifies himself for the purposes of these proceedings.”

Full Colour Black Ltd is suing Banksy and his company Pest Control Office Limited for £1,357,086 in alleged losses, claiming the Instagram post caused “serious harm” and “serious financial loss”.

It is argued viewers of the post among Banksy’s 11.9 million followers would have been led to believe that the company “had stolen Banksy’s artwork by licensing images to GUESS without permission or other legal authority”, a suggestion it argues is defamatory.

Full Colour Black Ltd says it collaborated legitimately with GUESS to licence a photograph of the Banksy “Flower Bomber” artwork for the shop window display.

The company had been locked in EU trademark disputes with Banksy between 2018 and 2022 after the graffiti artist argued his work should not be copied and reused for commercial gain. Full Colour Black said the ‘Flower Bomber’ trademark was cancelled in September 2020.

It is said the now-deleted Instagram post made an allegation “which goes to the heart of the Claimant’s business reputation”, and it drew ‘likes’ online as well as “overwhelmingly negative” comments aimed at Mr Gallagher’s company.

“The publication by the Defendants of the Post, and the entirely foreseeable republications and repetitions of them, have gravely damaged the reputation of the Claimant and have caused the Claimant to suffer very serious financial loss”, said lawyers for Full Colour Black Ltd.

“Following the publication of the post, a crowd of people appeared outside the GUESS store on Regent Street, London, creating a disturbance within and outside the store and causing the store to be closed to the public.”

The lawyers added: “The Post has created a highly damaging false and permanent ‘digital footprint’ about the Claimant which is beyond its control and is likely to continue to cause serious harm to the Claimant’s reputation in future.

“As a direct result of the publication of the Post customers and business partners of the Claimant have cancelled or refused to renew licensing and other contracts or have cease to place orders with the Claimant, causing the Claimant very substantial financial loss.”

The firm is seeking an injunction as well as damages for defamation. Banksy and his company have now been given time to respond to the High Court claim.

UK

Boris Johnson’s ex to join Labour’s crackdown on sexual harassment at work


Dominic Penna
Sun, 8 October 2023

Marina Wheeler finalised her divorce from the former prime minister in early 2020

(HE WAS CHEATING ON HER)

 - Jay Williams

Boris Johnson’s ex-wife is set to become Labour’s new “whistleblowing tsar”, it emerged this weekend as the party unveiled a planned crackdown on sexual harassment at work.

Marina Wheeler KC, one of Britain’s foremost civil rights lawyers, has been enlisted by the opposition as part of its work to strengthen employment protections.

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, confirmed that employers would have a legal duty to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent workplace harassment


In a speech to attendees at the annual party conference in Liverpool, Ms Rayner said: “I was pleased to announce today Labour would properly tackle sexual harassment at work.

“A shocking two-thirds of young women have been sexually harassed at work. This must change.

“That’s why the next Labour government will amend the Equalities Act to introduce a legal duty for employers to take all reasonable steps to stop sexual harassment before it starts.”

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner announces its policies for the workplace - OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images

Ms Wheeler has four children with Mr Johnson and separated from the former prime minister after 25 years of marriage, with the couple finalising their divorce in early 2020.

Speaking about her decision to join forces with Ms Rayner on the issue, she told the Independent newspaper: “[Women in the workplace] too often suffer sexual harassment and assault and they pay a heavy price for speaking out.

“Knowing this, and to keep their jobs, they suffer in silence.”

The measures would add to existing provisions in the Equality Act, which makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against staff because of their sex.

Harassment, including less favourable treatment of staff members because they have rejected sexual advances, currently falls under this umbrella.
One-third sexually harassed

Almost one-third of working women suffered some form of sexual harassment either at work or in a work-related environment in the past year, the latest data from the Government’s equalities office show.

An analysis of the data by Labour estimates that 4.7 million women per year endure sexual harassment at work, of whom 17 per cent choose to move to another job because of their experience.

Last month, the City watchdog confirmed it would launch a crackdown on workplace misconduct following allegations of sexual harassment against Crispin Odey.

Lawyers for Mr Odey, the hedge fund tycoon, say he “strenuously disputes” a number of claims of improper behaviour throughout a 25-year period.

Elsewhere in her speech, Ms Rayner said women suffering symptoms of the menopause at work “will get the support they deserve”, while also pledging to “empower” women in business.

She also denied reports the party’s flagship New Deal for Working People, which sets out various additional employment policies, would be watered down.

“Be in no doubt – not with Keir and I at the helm,” Ms Rayner told delegates.

“We’ll ban zero-hour contracts, [end] fire-and-rehire, and give workers basic rights from day one. We’ll go further and faster in closing the gender pay gap, make work more family friendly, and tackle sexual harassment.

“And we won’t stop there. We’ll ensure that unions can stand up for their members. We will boost collective bargaining, to improve workers’ pay, terms and conditions.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

UK

Ex-Patisserie Valerie finance chief denies fraud before bakery chain collapse

Tristan Kirk
Tue, 10 October 2023 

The cake shop was put into administration in January 2019. (Mike Egerton/PA) (PA Archive)

The former chief financial officer at collapsed bakery chain Patisserie Valerie has denied fraud as he appeared in court alongside his wife for the first time.

Christopher Marsh, 49, Louise Marsh, 55, Pritesh Mistry, 41, and Nileshkumar Lad, 50, are all accused of defrauding the company’s shareholders and creditors between October 2015 and October 2018.

It is said they put the business in peril by inflating profits, hiding debts, and presenting bogus figures in the company’s annual accounts and public statements.

The Serious Fraud Office, which brought the criminal charges, said £28 million was represented in the company accounts, while around £10 million in debts were concealed.

Westminster magistrates court heard banks were lied to about reserves in the accounts of Patisserie Holdings Plc as well as the reasons for cheques not going through.

It is also alleged the company’s auditor, Grant Thornton, was handed bogus invoices for fake vehicle purchases.

Marsh, his wife Louise who is an accountant, his deputy Mistry, and financial consultant Lad all appeared in the dock for a brief hearing on Tuesday.

The court was told Mr Marsh intends to fight the charges at trial, while the other defendants did not indicate any pleas. District Judge Daniel Sternberg sent the case to Southwark crown court for trial.

A fraud investigation was opened in 2018, shortly before the bakery chain tumbled into administration with a £94 million hole in its accounts.

Louise Marsh, pictured leaving Westminster magistrates court, is accused of fraud at Patisserie Valerie (ES/Kirk)

The company and many of its shops were later bought out of administration by Causeway Capital Partners, an Irish private equity business, for £5 million.

When announcing the charges, outgoing SFO director Lisa Osofsky said: “Patisserie Valerie’s abrupt collapse rocked our high streets, leaving boarded-up shops, devastating job losses and significant investor losses in its wake.

“Today is a step forward in getting to the bottom of this scandal.”

All four defendants are accused of conspiracy to defraud.

Lad, who lives in Tenby Avenue, Harrow, Mistry, of Rosamund Avenue, Leicester, and Christopher Marsh, who lives with his wife inKensington Close, St Albans, are all accused of conspiracy to defraud, five charges of fraud by false representation, and making or supplying an article for use in fraud.

Christopher Marsh also faces a further allegation of making false statements as a company director.

They have been set free on bail until a plea hearing at Southwark crown court on November 7.