An Experiment

I'm thinking about moving to this blog from here. At the moment it's just an experiment to see how it goes. I've moved the content from the old place to here, but have for now only published the OSCR judgement page, I'll decide later if  I want to publish any more of the old stuff here.

I might keep both blogs going, on the other hand I might not, I'll play it by ear for now, no need to rush. I was thinking of using this one to publish finding by the Advertising Standards Authority, Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator etc, and keeping the lighter stuff on the other blog. Once again I'll just play it by ear for now and see how it goes.

As always I can be contacted for the passing of info etc. via email at the usual address emfarqu[at]gmail.com

Response From Scottish Lawyer On The ASA Ruling Against Highland Titles

There was an interesting response publish in The Scotsman newspaper after the story about the ruling against Highland Titles was published. This is letter to the Scotsman newspaper sent by Craig Anderson, Lecturer In Law at Robert Gordon University Aberdeen.

In it Mr Anderson makes it very clear that in his opinion, buyers of souvenir plots in Scotland do not own the land they might have been led to believe they have bought.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/letters/law-of-the-land-1-3336742

Who would you rather believe, a lecturer in law in Scotland, or a company like Highland Titles who have been found by the Advertising Standards Authority to be publishing misleading information in their advertising materials?

The letter is reproduced in full below.

"I note from your article, “ASA raps company over ‘fake Scots laird’ titles”, (11 March) that the Advertising Standards Authority has taken action against a company claiming to sell minuscule pieces of land, entitling the purchaser to adopt the title Laird, Lord or Lady of Glencoe.

Such action is to be welcomed. However, I am afraid that, in ­reporting the exposure of one part of this company’s misrepresentation, you have given ­credence to another. Your article stated that the sale of these plots has “created 7,500 new Scots landowners”. It has done nothing of the sort. A person who buys land in Scotland can only become the owner by registration in the Land Register of Scotland.

The Land Registration (Scotland) Act 1979 does not allow registration of “souvenir plots”, meaning “land which, being of inconsiderable size, or no practical utility, is unlikely to be wanted in isolation except for the sake of mere ownership or for sentimental reasons or commemorative purposes”.

As the square-foot plots sold by this company clearly fall within this definition, they cannot be registered and, as a result, their purchasers can never become owners of the land they believe that they have bought.

In other words, so far is this company’s scheme from creating 7,500 new landowners, that it has in fact created none whatsoever.

Craig Anderson

Lecturer in law

Robert Gordon University

Aberdeen"

ASA Rules Highland Titles Misleading And Laird Titles Are Fake

There has now been an Advertising Standards Authority Ruling made against Highland Titles, which finds they have been misleading customers to believe that they receive a Scottish landowners Laird Lord or Lady title, when this is not actually true.

It's official, there are no Scottish landowner titles, and you cannot buy a Scottish Lord or Lady title from Highland Titles or anybody else. Laird isn't a Scottish title, that is just something made up by the con artists trying to sell you one.

Some quotations from the ASA ruling.

“However, we considered the overall impression of the website and noted a large number of statements that implied a direct link between the purchase of the land sold by Highland Titles and the attainment of the titles Lord, Lady or Laird."

“We considered that consumers were likely to understand those statements to mean that through the purchase of a souvenir plot of land from Highland Titles they would gain the right to use a title to which they would not otherwise have had the right."

“We considered that those statements contradicted the message that anyone was able to use those titles and gave the impression that the titles available to customers who bought land from Highland Titles were recognised in a way that titles adopted by ordinary members of the public were not."

“Because we considered that the ad included a number of contradictory statements in relation to the nature of the titles available to Highland Titles’ customers, we concluded that the website was ambiguous and likely to mislead.”

 The story was reported in several Scottish newspapers.

 Screen capture from the Herald Scotland website of the Highland Titles Fake Laird Titles ASA story

Two screen captures from The Scotsman newspaper website on the Highland Titles fake laird titles story

Scan of the Metro newspaper of the Highland Titles fake laird titles story.

As pointed out in a comment the story was also the Daily Record, under the headline "You Have Been 'Ad M'lady". http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-361213255.html

Highland Titles have been found to be misleading people into believing that through ownership of land they gained the right to take up a Laird Lord or Lady title. The Advertising Standards Authority have pointed out this is entirely untrue. If Highland Titles are willing to knowingly mislead their customers like this, what else might they be leading them to believe which is not true? Perhaps the extent of and the amount of money spent on conservation work?

Footnote

As also pointed out in a comment, the Highlend Titles story appeared on The Scotsman newspaper website for a while on the 11th March (screen captures above), then vanished. I don't know if this is the reason it was withdrawn, but it does appear that The Scotsman has some kind of 'partner' relationship with Highland Titles as a Google search reveals.

One would hope that any such arrangement would not compromise editorial decisions, but I'd bet The Scotsman wouldn't be very popular in Glencoe if that was found to be the reason the article was withdrawn from The Scotsman website.

Highland Titles Fake "Laird Scheme" Review Website

As if using fake newspaper articles to promote their fake titles fake land sales scheme wasn't bad enough, it seems Highland Titles may have sunk, if that is possible, even lower. Recently revealed over at the scots-titles.com forum, it is alleged that Highland Titles are behind a website which claimed to be giving impartial reviews of various "laird schemes". The website was lairdreviews.com which was pulled down shortly after it was claimed on the scots-titles.com forum that Highland Titles were in fact behind it, though the site is now up again.

Update

The fake review website at lairdreviews.com has just undergone an overhaul. The trolls page which was used to abuse critics of these schemes has now gone entirely, as have all the fake contact details, there are currently no contact details at all ..... Update - The Trolls page is now back.

Read the forum posts by Andrew and PetePiper

Rather annoyingly for Highland Titles, an email address seemingly belonging to Helen McGregor of Highland Titles (helenmcgregor55.gmail.com) appeared on a little known record called the SOA Record for lairdreviews.com

The name server for the domain was also changed immediately after the forum posts. As noted above, before the change, the name server for lairdreviews.com was NS1.17135745287.COM.

This name server was used at that time for four domains:

LAIRDREVIEWS.COM reviews (en) laird (en)
ALDERNEYBELLS.COM Alderney (en) bells (en)
GLENCOEWOOD.COM Glencoe (en) wood (en)
CIBELLS.COM bells (en) ci (fr)

The name server change can be seen here

All the above domains except lairdreviews.com are registered to the Bevis family who run Highland Titles.

http://whois.polodomains.com/nameserver/NS1.17135745287.COM/1.html

 The email address helenmcgregor55@gmail.com can be associated with the following domains:

lairdreviews.com
ehic-support.org
fakescotstitles.com
sar.co.uk
glencoewood..com
aldeneybells.com
cibells.com

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=cr&ei=44JlUr3MHfHY4QS94YGACA#filter=0&q=helenmcgregor55.gmail.com&start=0

The site itself gave glowing reviews of Highland Titles, while being a little, and in some cases, a lot less kind to competing company's offerings.

(As an act of common decency I have obscured any real names from the review quotations below.)

Quotations from the Monarch Of The Ben - Laird Of Ben Nevis review ....

"suggests that the owners are trying to evade paying tax and we would certainly not want to do business with such a Company"

"A****  M**** is well known to Trading Standards and a journalist colleague that we consulted "

On Highland Heritage - Laird Of Glenmore / Laird Of Kingsdale ..... 

"Domains by Proxy are owned by B**** P****, and his services are used by shady grops who wish to protect their privacy from the taxman, customers, Trading Standards, etc."

"They also trade on eBay, where they share that forum with some rather dubious vendors and some very unlikely titles."

 On Native Wood Preservation -  Laird Of Blackwood ....

"The first disappointment comes with a page describing the land on offer – Loch Wood by the village of Blackwood. Blackwood sits adjacent to the M74 motorway – Scotland’s main arterial route South to England. It is no more in the Highlands than London and being a Laird is all about the Highlands"

On Mac Sothis - Laird Of John O' Groats ....

"The order process is incredibly basic with room for error and only payment by Paypal is accepted.  We are always wary of shops that only take PayPal; lots of internet scams make use of PayPal"

Of course the Highland Titles offering is described in glowing terms ....

"Our email was replied to within 20 minutes and a follow-up telephone call was answered second ring by a helpful human.  If only all the businesses were like Highland Titles"
(Eh..... it took 20 minutes to answer an email they sent to themselves!!)

Then there was the "Trolls" page, which was nothing more than a personal attack on John Duncan and William (Robin) Cunninghame Graham, completely misrepresenting their positions and making claims they use multiple identities and produce multiple blogs without a shred of evidence in support. Currently the page is still available via the Google cache here.

Should the site vanish again it may be available via the Google cache, follow this link, click the little arrow to the right of the domain name, and click on "Cached".

I find it completely hilarious, there is much evidence to support the theory that Highland Titles use multiple identities all over the internet, and have allegedly produced several blogs to support their scams and attack people they don't like ..... but always somehow "forget" to put their name on them. Yet that same accusation about others is made on a fake review website without a single example of any specific instances to support the allegations made!

Fake newspaper articles ... fake review websites ... accusation that others are trolls when Highland Titles are seemingly using a fake review site to promote their own products and make the competition look very unappetising .... can it get any worse?