Ray, You are entitled to your views, but you are not entitled to express them in an abusive manner such as you used to express them to me. For what it's worth, you sound like (and based on my years of experience reading your emails on this and other lists, are) a conceited arrogant person with few if any people skills. Read what your write. Time and time again it is laced with insults and condemnatory comments. It would take little to persuade me that you are really just a testy, nasty old man. You smugly talk about expressing your strongly held views in a forthright manner, but what you are really doing is giving yourself permission to be offensive. Nothing puts you above others on this list. If anything, your alleged expertise, which you brag about and spruik at every opportunity, should encourage you to deal with others in a polite and helpful manner. It does not licence you to go for the throat of every person whose views differ from yours. I should mention some facts that relate to the your opinions. The dodgy lawyer you refer to is a good friend of mine and incidentally an excellent senior litigation lawyer, who has expressed that if I choose to proceed he will do the work essentially pro bono, although I would be up for costs. My children were not born in England and so your comments about English registration information are irrelevant. There is a great difference between information about people being provided in ordinary commerce or discoverable by delving into people's lives, and personal information being published on a web-site. Privacy laws - in Australia at least, do not permit the unauthorised publication of personal information about private citizens, and they do not permit anyone to obtain birth, marriage and death certificates without appropriate identification and good reason for doing so. No doubt, you being what you are, you will rear up and attack me again. Your response will be laced with insults and denigrating remarks, because you need for whatever reason, to defeat everyone you come up against, and although you can appeal to reason and fact, you will stoop to the insults that you dish out so readily, because you find that much more satisfying than dealing with people in a civilised and polite manner. Even your response below was so predictable. Your usual tactic is to use your poison pen to cause offence, then submit a supplicating follow-up where you defend and justify yourself on exactly the grounds you used in your follow-up below. Try spending your last few years being nice to people. In return, people will like you more. Presently, there are lots of people who don't like you. In the end, it's not what you know, nor is it that your opinions differ from others, it is what sort of person you are that counts. Be nice. Regards John Poxon -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Monday, 6 February 2012 12:53 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTT] Respect for others opinions Clearly, I seem to have upset one or two people with my forthright and strongly-held opinions. I am a born-and-bred, died-in-the-wool Yorkshireman and happen to believe in calling a spade a spade and not pussyfooting and tippy-toeing around subjects that seem to worry others. If that offends some folks, then I can only apologise, but it won't change my views! As a retired journalist (over 40 years in the media in local and national newspapers) and the former editor for 10 years of the Journal of One-Name Studies for the Guild of One-Name Studies (twice an award-winning publication), yes, I hold strong opinions and I am not afraid to express them. It seems to me that in these politically correct times far too many people are terrified of saying what they think in case it upsets some timid, precious little soul. I happen to believe, as a family historian, that we should tell it like it is - warts and all - and not be shy about admitting to scandals, illegitimacies, etc, in our family history. We all have them and don't let's pretend we haven't! Now, regarding the issue of privacy, may I be permitted to make a few salient points? 1) It is perfectly open to anyone, wherever they may reside in the world, to obtain the birth, marriage or death certificate of anyone else who was born in England and Wales since 1st July 1837 when civil registration was first introduced. The system has always been a completely open one and rightly so. The reason it is open is to guard against the very thing that some people seem to worry about, i.e. fraud. There are documented cases in the 1840s when fictitious births and deaths were inserted into the registers in order that the registrar or his cohorts, who were paid by the number of entries they produced, actually invented people who never existed in order to boost their pay! One registrar in Liverpool went to jail over the scandal and there may well have been others who were never uncovered. Some of those entries are still in the GRO records today. A reason for marriage records being open and available to all is to guard against bigamous marriages (of which I have personally uncovered a number in Victorian times AND written about them in magazine articles). 2) Anyone who was born in England and Wales from the third quarter of 1911 onwards, to this day, will have their mother's maiden name recorded in the indexes, which are accessible online to everyone, as we all know, at Ancestry, Findmypast and other websites. These records are very clearly IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN and accessible to all and it is foolish nonsense to pretend otherwise. I have pointed out earlier in this thread that anyone who gives their mother's maiden name as a codeword to their bank, building society, etc, is foolish to do so. It's not the fault of the registration system, it's the fault of the idiots who run the financial world and don't seem to have caught up with the realities. 3) If you choose to take part in mailing lists AND put your personal details and family history online, then you are laying yourself open to it being abused. You are inviting less-than-honest people to either steal or alter it!!! If you don't want your family history stolen or altered, then take my advice and keep it to yourself. There are some very unscrupulous people around, but talking of taking legal action against them is so much nonsense because you will simply be chucking away good money to parasitic lawyers who will be delighted to take it. 4) There is far too much paranoia about so-called privacy. As I pointed out also, earlier, every time I telephone a company to buy something the very first thing they ask is for my postcode. They then tell me who I am and where I live! Whether you like it or not, we all of us ARE on databases held by government, local councils, the NHS, police, big companies and lord-knows-who else. We appear in telephone books and electoral registers, our details of our birth and marriage etc, are held by somebody somewhere; thus, to claim privacy on a mailing list that can be read online all over the world is simply spurious and paranoid nonsense. Lecture over! -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE Notts Surname List http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~hughw/notts.html ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

John I do not propose to answer all your points except to say that I have often wondered how Australian family historians ever manage to do their research at all when access to records is denied to them! I find this an unbelievable situation in a supposedly democratic country and it never ceases to amaze me that Australian genealogists, on the whole, seem to accept the situation. What price freedom? As for not being liked by some people, well, that's never been something that's bothered me too much, frankly. Some of the most successful people in history were hated by everyone! What I do know is that I am extremely good at my job, both as a journalist and a genealogist, and I have never been one to hide my light under the proverbial bushel. If that gets up a few noses - well, TOUGH. As for your lawyer friend, do let us know if he succeeds in getting anything out of the person who you say stole your family history. My betting is that it's a very long shot indeed. As I pointed out, you yourself were the one who invited an intrusion into your own privacy by ever putting it online in the first place. Best wishes and good luck with your researches. Roy

*Ive already given a warning. Please stop this thread on Nottsgen! You are welcome* *to take it to genbrit, but not here!!! * * * * *hugh Moderator On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 5:06 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > John > > I do not propose to answer all your points except to say that I have often > wondered how > Australian family historians ever manage to do their research at all when > access to records is > denied to them! > >