Private message to 'MFB' in response to their posts re my rising to the bait of Chris Roberts.


MFB. Thank you. I'm sending this PM so I don;t take more of the valuable discussion space diverting away from Chris Robert's disinformation messages on the forum... As a representative of Fair Pint I take unfounded accusations seriously and I am on firm ground here. I've stated my position on this forum very clearly previously that I will not and have not knowingly engaged in discussion with Chris Roberts because his agenda is secretive and obscure, he appears psychotic and obsessed with Fair Pint and me particularly, a situation which has mystified everyone who's come across him.

I share your position about the futility of rising to bait but then why should I, or anyone else, have to be wary that an apparently new poster with objective points to make might well be Chris Roberts' trolling? Is it my duty to assume by default that any new poster is likely to be Chris Roberts posing as someone else, yet again, and not engage in discussion just in case? You will find posters here sensitive to the possibility that anyone taking a stance supporting the pubco status quo on the back of being a 'devil's advocate' is likely either to be an alias of Chris Roberts or a pubco employee.

A paradox of all this is that Roberts says he is a champion of the individual against the pubcos yet when he was invited to get involved with Fair Pint right at the beginning he was too busy too tied up and so on after which he began gradually to snipe from the sidelines at everything we've done.

Now then, none of us in Fair Pint expect praise or want accolades, or even any particular recognition, for what we've been doing - the progress we have made with government, the pubcos and the other formally contituted trade bodies has been ample evidence that we are doing more than a little bit right and pushing at the right doors. But when someone starts systematically lying about what we have done and making wild, totally unfounded, accusations which he says are all proven and the evidence has been published, it pisses me off a bit. No one on Fair Pint's side has done anything to Chris Roberts or anyone he knows other than spend time and energy researching issues, providing advice, and supporting lessees en masse through our published position and arguments and individually when they come to get in touch with us.

On this thread I engaged in a discussion with Steve Norton, as did everyone else, beliving him to be a new contributor. I had no idea it was gloing to turn out to be the local troll who's been deliberately assassinating threads for months. So it turns out this particular 'someone' is not Steve Norton but Chris Roberts, who has been blocked many times from posting on this forum under various guises by the website administrators for serially disrupting threads throughout. No. I didn't want to rise to the bait but it was dangling without my thinking 'this is probably Chris Roberts' because I'm not the nutter he keeps assuring me I am.

There aren't many particular ifs or buts about this general situation with pubcos and the tie MFB. When a poster, whatever their provenance, comes out and plum says 'it's nowhere near as bad as all you moaners make it out to be and pubcos are not bad' they are simply either ignorant of the facts (and a good deal of what pubcos really get up to hasn't even been properly exposed yet) or are deliberately trying to misinform a dicussion. That's what Steve Norton was doing.

When I post I am aware of the public nature of it and consider the potential for material to be used out of context in future and so do take care of what I write. If my annoyance with 'Steve Norton' results in Chris Roberts popping his lid and expoosing himself for the underhand person he repeatedly has shown himself to be then I consider that I've done a service for the forum. If Chris Roberts gets in the way of a thread it's a shame but I stand by what I have done today.

He has accused me publicly of emblzzelement, fraud, misappropriation of funds from activities where I have been several hundred punds out of pocket, of lying about being at Fair Pint meetings he says I haven't been to when I've mentioned in passing that I have attended, and sent me and other Fair Pint members highly abusive messages. I've been polite about him but I will not offer the other cheek when he slaps me or Fair Pint down because of his cloudy personal agenda. I happen to think the most straightforward way of letting people see what this person is really like is to post in public whatever he sends me privately (the first time I did this he asked me how dare I publish private messages?). Each time it appears to result in him exposing himself for what he is.

He, on the other hand is more than welcome to publish anything that I have sent to him because it's benign, none of it is offensive and if he were to post it, would prove nothing other than the fact that I've been fairly polite toward him.