Be Excellent To Each Other

I followed a link from another forum to his infamous Tomb Raider review, and thought "ah, it's the angry man from Digitiser... oh he's still quite angry, isn't he?". Bookmarked his site. Then a few weeks later edited the bookmark to point at the forum, rather than the front page, as that was where I always went straight to.

He and Mali used to play Space Pirate together.

No, I finished it.

But it's now 15 years and 3 months since I joined up there. A significant chunk of my life, that.

Mop told me about the forum as a way to meet people to play Halo with.

Mop told me about the forum as I’d just got married and he thought I looked too happy about life.

Mali brought me here, met on a EVE board.

Mop pays me to post.

Doccy g mentioned beex on usenet, I think. Someone from here did anyway.

I would gladly pay you to stop

Not sure how I found his site.. perhaps either fruit machine emulation or just speccy nostalgia.

Me or The Rev, I expect.

That’s where I saw it mentioned too.
Not sure who or which group though.

Probably ugvm? The only other place I would have mentioned it was alt.digi, but that was already years dead before beex came along. I have a vague feeling I may have mentioned beex there but you would have been unlikely to see it.

Yep, I mostly lurked there but that’ll be the place.
It could also have been Niaz (gospvg) who mentioned it.

Ap2 or occasionally lurking on newsgroups or some other internet search re Amiga Power

Didn’t WoS result from the collapse of digiworld.tv?

I can't parse the fact the Beex and Usenet were both visited Internet destinations at the same time.

Ugvm had comfortably more posts than beex for a fair period of time while they ran in parallel, I shifted over when it started to die off.

Not been back to ugvm in years!

I enjoyed both, and still look at WoS once or twice a year to see if there is any new content (sometimes the occasional article appears).

For some reason we're talking about that over here.

Because this is the thread where we are nice about him, if you want to take the piss you need to do it elsewhere

Stu has posted his latest crowdfunding campaign

Goal of 50k - launched about 5 hours ago and he's at 37k already

https://wingsoverscotland.com/last-call/

And goal reached (50.5k in about 10 hours)

Is he Scotland's Nigel Farage?

who could have predicted

I mean, I'm confused why anyone would think he wouldn't. I certainly would in his place

Easy money for him isn't it?

It's still mind blowing.

“Pay costs” is so vague. His or Kezza’s or both? You’ve got to possess some kind of special arrogance to commence an expensive litigation without the means to pay your costs and/or an adverse costs order.

As he points out at the start of this campaign, he swore last year that that would be the last one. He claims he’s doing another now because of Brexit but he wouldn’t have known Brexit was going to be delayed when he started the proceedings against Dugdale.

Remember when everyone got him a Wii using a pyramid scheme? Yeah, he’s been doing this forever.

How different might this world be if all you fucking fuckheads had've just paid your 2 pounds a month.

I thought the justification was pretty transparent, and a good one.

Russia Today?

A dog collar?!?!

That’s powerful pretentious.

I doff my cap, he's done well.

By appearing on a Russian government propaganda network?

As this IS the being nice thread, I’d say that at least they do clear up from the very beginning why he’s wearing it (well, not really, I mean he could have NOT worn it in the first place, obviously) but at least they quickly establish he is NOT a member of the clergy ‘because it’ll upset the Unionists’. I do wonder whose idea it was for him to wear it in the first place, though? Was it Salmond’s people who told him to wear his dog collar, he did, then had to explain on questioning he wasn’t clergy? Was it his idea? Did they pre-arrange it just to debunk and clarify for the audience? It was a stunt, but felt really awkward, as Salmond tells him to take it off in a really dismissive manner, like Stu is some kind of class clown who has just been playing a tiresome jape.

This reality is getting a bit too weird. Where did we leave the proper one again? Is the portal behind the sofa?

On Alex Salmond's rather twee little current affairs show about Scotland no less. I only watched about 10 minutes, did he ever outright ask Stu why he still insists on living in Bath?

Yup.

[edit]Well, no. But they talked about him going back to live in Scotland. I suspect the reason he lives in Bath is "because that's where his house is" (although I've heard him say "because it rains less", which is also a good reason).

Christ. I just checked his Twitter feed and it’s about 90% transphobic bullshit, and 10% saying that Mark Field was right to assault the protester and nobody should be upset.

Not overly-positive mention of Wings Over Scotland here: https://soundcloud.com/thepoliticalpart ... is#t=49:49

BBC News - Wings Over Scotland blogger ordered to pay Kezia Dugdale's legal expenses
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-48921155

Stu estimates it at "about a hundred grand". He took £170k in crowdfunding last month, apparently.

I feel better than we only stumped up for a Wii or a PS3 now

(Not that I contributed to any of that)

Dugdale was awarded an “uplift” which suggests her lawyers were on some kind of “conditional fee agreement” (or “No win, No fee” agreement for the lay folk).

You can have a “No Win, No Fee” (where you don’t pay your solicitors if you lose) or you can have a “No Win, Low Fee” (where you pay a lower hourly rate if you lose) -

But with these agreements the lawyer can charge an uplift (also known as a success fee) in the event that the claim wins. The success fee would be a % of the legal costs which can be recoverable against the opponent in certain cases. The success fee is usually assessed as the risk to the solicitors that if the person doesn’t win then they don’t get paid (or paid less).

In these cases there’s always the risk that if you lose you end up paying a vast amount of money to your opponent. To protect your client against this outcome you can also have “ATE” Insurance - which is a policy that pays your opponent if you lose so it’s not coming out your clients pocket and they have little risk that they will end up paying anything. The ATE has conditions namely that you’ve got to be more likely to win than lose. The cost of the ATE premium is often deferred as well so it’s not payable to the end of the case and may even be underwritten so you don’t even pay for the policy if you lose. The cost of the ATE can often be payable by the losing party in some cases too.

So you’ve got:-

1) the clients claim/defence
2) the solicitors costs
3) the solicitors success fee
4) the clients expenses - like court fees
5) the barristers fees
6) the ATE premium

If your client wins their argument all of the above become payable by the opponent.

That’s a typical funding setup for a conditional fee agreement. In those circumstances the client has little risk at all but the funding will only remain in place if the claim/defence is more likely to succeed. The only problem is getting lawyers to take a defamation case with this funding setup, but I can see big lawyers wanting to attract big publicity cases for a rep.

Mind you, I’m still confused what RevStu’s funding arrangements with his solicitor are.

If he’s got a similar arrangement with his solicitors then if he loses his ATE policy picks up the tab. There’s no need for more money. If he doesn’t have an ATE policy to cover adverse costs orders, then why not? It’s not like these are unusual agreements; they’re routine. If his case was strong enough (and I’m assuming his solicitors decided it had prospects better than 50/50; it’s not like he’s been doing it himself like he used to do (and fucked up before IIRC)) then he should have had advice about adverse costs order (again, routine) and covering those costs (routine).

I asked him on his site whether he had ATE and my comment was moderated into oblivion.

He might not have it but I’m curious.

*disclaimer all of the above is highly simplified.

They get rid of comments with bad grammar. The correct form is "whether he had EATEN"