Edinburgh Sucks! | Rogue council employee has community council sites blacklisted

Alistar Frater

Rogue council employee has community council sites blacklisted

By The Basa ⋅ October 10, 2006 ⋅

A rogue community education worker and one of Rosendale’s fraudsters has managed to get community council websites blacklisted for what appears to be spamming. Proof of this can be found by clicking here.

The rogue employee, Alistar Frater, who in conjunction with another of Rosendale’s fraudsters, Pete McDougall run visps.com where in turn various community groups including Southside, Trinity and Lorne Community Councils have their website hosted. Other sites hosted are Bathgate Golf Club, The Young Edinburgh Strategy 2006-2010.

A clip from their website at http://www.visps.com/about.htm - if this is taken down then look at it on the Internet Archive at - http://web.archive.org/web/20041010071528/www.visps.com/about.htm :

The Partners

In 2001, it became clear that other local organisations were thinking the same way. The City of Edinburgh Council’s Community Education department, Edinburgh Learning, and others, were working towards a strategy for Edinburgh. A NOF funded project, CityConnect, is working throughout Edinburgh to introduce new learners to ICT.

VISPScotland is working closely with these organisations to provide ISP facilities at the lowest cost. The services are now hosted by one of Europe’s largest Internet providers, Tiscali.

From the above organisations, Wabster, a community networks development and support team, came into being. Wabster consists of a few people dedicated to de-mystifying the technology and encouraging the use of ICT in communities at low or no cost. The VISPScotland support services are now provided by Wabster.

The People

The Directors of South Edinburgh Community Newspaper Ltd manage VISPScotland on behalf of the community of South Edinburgh. The day-to-day operations are managed by Alistar Frater in conjunction with CityConnect Manager, Pete McDougall.

Whilst we mention in the title that this is a rogue employee, that may indeed not be the case. We at EdSucks have informed the council heirarchy of the multiple businesses that this employee is running in council time including City of Edinburgh net and WabsterIP which is currently in the process of being struck-off by Companies House having never submitted accounts to that organisation, even though they have won council contracts. For the answer to the question of whether he is a rogue employee we will have to ask his line manager Mike Rosendale or possibly his former boss Ewan Aitken who may like to answer this question on his blog.

The question must now be asked at the highest levels in the council (Burns, Jobson and Aiken) is why is this person still employed and why is it all still being covered up by the three aforementioned decision makers. Rosendale must be fired immediately not be promoted to Director of Children & Families. His co-fraudsters who are still working with the council, Frater and Hillson must be fired. All council funded projects within the city which are serviced by City Connect must be informed of the background of McDougall and requsted to find another vendor.

What are the councillors now going to do to get the community council’s who went with this dodgy outfit, thinking that it had the backing of the council, a website that is not known as a spameister. Damn shame.

Also on the visps site, as mentioned above is “VISPScotland is working closely with these organisations to provide ISP facilities at the lowest cost.” Now head over to http://www.visps.com/domains.htm and you will see what is probably the most expensive dotcom registration price in the world at 100 pounds per domain - oh, they have a sale on, its now only 75 pounds. (Again, they may take this down so the Internet Archive version is at http://web.archive.org/web/20041010075217/www.visps.com/domains.htm . Readers beware, you can get a dotcom domain registered for around 3-5 pounds. Whilst over at the domain, notice the support phone number on the visps site, 07050 665984 - “07050 numbers are charged to the caller at all times, including when directed to a mobile phone. The cost to call an 07050 number is 32p per minute daytimes, 22p per minute evenings and 10.5p per minute weekends.” - so these community organisations will be charged a fortune if they need to call for technical support.

If you are a councillor in this city or a senior offical with the council, you should not let the words “social inclusion”, “community” or “helpful” go past your lips if you allow this travesty to continue.