PLAYING YOUR WAY OUT OF WEDLOCK

SquareOne News

by Atholl Simpson

Online gambling and networking sites are causing more and more marriages to break up due to spouses amassing major debts or reuniting with long lost loved ones, according to top divorce lawyers.

“If the husband or partner is into gambling online, then it can suck them into a world where they don’t engage anymore,” said Peter Thomas, a divorce solicitor from The Law Practise. “And it can have a devastating effect.”

One recent case involved a city worker that had built up a debt of more than £100,000 over many years, using different online gambling sites to spread his debt. Once his partner found out, she filed for divorce using his dire financial circumstances as grounds to prove unreasonable behaviour on his behalf.

“Some people would rather spend time on the internet than spend time with their partner,” said Conrad Adams, divorce solicitor for Cumberland Ellis, told SquareOne. According to Mr Adams internet accessibility and the promise of instant gratification is what draws people to it. Most people can use it at home but also during their normal working day since most workplaces and companies are completely computerised. There is almost instant access to the web, allowing people to escape the real world for a virtual one in which they forget that normal rules apply.“Internet gives them an instant buzz that they don’t get in real life,” he said.

The number of divorce cases involving the internet has also been growing with the increasing popularity of online networking sites such as Friends Reunited or Facebook. Adams said they have helped partners get back in touch, either intentionally or by accident, with ex-girlfriends or old teenage flames. In many cases internet flirtation has led to an extra-marital affair and the subsequent break up of a marriage.

Thomas, from The Law Practise, told SquareOne he had even come across a case where a married man was engaged in a online relationship with another woman. His wife used the evidence on his hard drive to prove adultery and win her divorce plea.

“The internet can bring inclusion in social networking and in provision of knowledge,” said Hazel Wright, from The Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships in London, “but if misused by addictive personalities, it has a potential for huge damage to personal relationships.”

Despite these findings, both the solicitors and the help centre agreed that these are just new and modern ways to justify a divorce.They only highlight a problem that probably already existed within the relationship.

CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH?

SquareOne News

by Pere Fornes

The new Public Health Scotland bill which will update health laws dating back to 1889 passed stage one of its ratification yesterday at Holyrood.

Health professionals have been working under rules that date back to the Public Health Act 1897 and the Infectious Diseases Notification Act 1889. The new bill is geared towards dealing with threats which have emerged in recent years.

The bill outlines the duties of health professionals to notify authorities when they suspect that a patient has a contagious disease. Infections cause a quarter of all illnesses in the world and they account for 10% of deaths in the UK. Old threats such as tuberculosis, that were thought to be eradicated, are re-emerging whilst there is a threat of infectious diseases and contamination being spread through terrorist attacks.

The legislation is mainly aimed at addressing individuals who refuse to take measures to avoid contaminating others. Minister Shona Robinson said: “Some contaminated people take measures to avoid contaminating others, but we need legislation on this. Although we recognise that there is to be a balance between our duty to protect the public and the right of people to their rights.” All but the Conservative party agreed on this point, Mary Scanlon Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, said:

“I am not so sure about the balance between the rights of the individual against the rights of society. If there is a threat to public health, the rights of society have to prevail.”

The Law Society of Scotland had been consulted and have said that there are four sections which are not compliant with current Scottish Law. All parties agreed that there was a real need for the law to be updated and overhauled but that some amendments would need to be made before stage two.

Labour MSP Ken McIntosh also made a proposal regarding concerns over the safety and licensing of sun beds. The bill currently only focuses on contagious diseases, but the rest of the groups agreed that such amendment was needed. He recalled the recent case of a 13-year-old boy who, in his hometown, went to an unsupervised tanning shop. He put coins in the tan machine and stayed there for 20 minutes. As a result, he ended up in hospital with serious burns. It is not the first time this has happened, but more worrying is the long-term damage, skin cancer has trebled in the last 20 years as a result of the obsession with looking good and having a ‘healthy tan’.

McIntosh proposed three measures.

1- Outlaw unsupervised saloons.

2- Set a minimum age of 18 years old for tanning beds.

3- Provide information on the risks involved.

He said: “We need one clear message: “Sun beds can kill you.” Why don’t we treat sun beds in the same way that we treat alcohol or tobacco?”

Photo by Son of Groucho

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LUCKY DEVIL?

SquareOne News Feature

by Chris Hammond

After having been tipped off by Kate about the imminent clampdown on the fortune telling industry, SquareOne decided to send me 'deep undercover' in an attempt to expose some so called supernatural shenanigans as a scam.


I'll be honest I was champing at the bit to get stuck into this. I've always viewed the whole spiritualist-psychic world as being dreary, distasteful and openly exploitative. But then cadging cash off some people is fair game, that's how things work yeah? Yeah, but the bereaved, emotionally unstable and irredeemably thick are generally speaking not fair game, despite being predominantly the main custom of clairvoyants, tarot card readers and psychics. Fancy a chat with your dead husband? Insecure enough to believe you'll find true love in 13 days time? Dumb enough to think that everyone born on the same day as you displays the same inherent character traits?


Think I'm being flippant do you? Go and watch Baby Mind Reader, Colin Fry, Have I Been Here Before or any of the psychic television that floods the schedules and judge for yourself. Better yet see the link below for more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xGZnRgfTCo


Anyway, I was very careful to chose a highly respectable tarot reader for my visit, one with glowing references and lots of nice things said about them. Surely they'd give me an accurate forecast? Putting my fair-minded cap on I took a seat in their glorified mystic cupboard to have the next year mapped out for me.


I'll say this, she only asked me three direct questions. What is your name, when is your birthday and what do you do? I barely spoke for the ensuing session. So grudgingly I had to put aside all ideas of this being a barrage of confidence tricks; my tarot reader genuinely didn't seem to need my input.


The reading took part in three stages. An assessment of my character, a month by month fortune forecast and the answer to one single question. The first part I couldn't possibly comment on suffice to say it was ambiguous; whilst the second and third points I will document in a fortune diary - the first installment of which will be due at the end of April.


I'll say this despite my initial (and so far continued) scepticism and cynicism about the industry and its practices, it doesn't look like I'll be able to involve trading standards in quite the way I had first hoped. In fact I'd go as far as to say if April continues to pan out the way it has for me my tarot reader will have been eerily accurate . . .