The case of Liam Stacey, this week jailed for for posting racist and abusive messages on Twitter, has highlighted the subject of internet “trolling”. I came across another one of these trollers yesterday, equally vile but who seems to have slipped under the radar of the law - keep reading . Stacey, a 21-year-old university student, launched a tirade of abuse onto the net  after footballer Fabrice Muamba was taken critically ill during a match. Minutes after the young black player collapsed he had “LOL”-ed about him being dead, before releasing a torrent of racial abuse at outraged Twitter users who challenged him. Admitting he was drunk was no excuse, and he paid the price for putting  his mouth, or more to the point   fingers, into gear without thinking. His comments seemed to be a bizarre reaction to the misfortune of  someone who fell into a category he clearly has contempt for, in this case having a different racial background. But there i...

Well done to Apple for a piece of first-class customer service this week. Without going into a huge amount of detail, I managed to order an album twice on iTunes. Although you can only have one digital copy of an album, I had somehow pre-ordered and then re-ordered the same one. I was subsequently billed for the pair and the money taken from my credit card. Of course I sent an email immediately alerting Apple to the error, and I received a prompt reply assuring me my money would be refunded.In a couple of days it was. So far this sounds like nothing more than you would expect of any company under the same circumstances, and you are right. But here is where Apple, in my view, put themselves a step above. I received a follow up email from a named person, with a real email address, asking if the matter had been resolved to my satisfaction. The lady wanted to “ensure the issue had been taken care of”, and asked me to reply so she could be confident I was happy. I was gobsmacked, ...

If  you live in an air-tight box in the outer reaches of the Galapagos islands, you may not have noticed the whole world has been gripped by pasty-mania. Yes you heard right, pasties, like the ones that come from Cornwall. It all started after the Sun revealed chancellor George - I haven’t managed to find a way to tax air and sex yet- Osborne wants to slap a 20-per cent duty on freshly-baked pasties. The Government sparked a furore by claiming they should be treated the same as takeaways, and subject to the same taxes. Bakers argue they are cooled down before they are sold, and should therefore be classified separately. Jumping straight onto the pasty-wagon, Labour leader Ed Miliband tried to heat up the debate by paying a high-profile visit to a Greggs bakers in Worcestershire today. It was billed as a show of solidarity with the chain, which has seen £30 million wiped off the value of its shares since the Budget last week when Mr Osborne broug...

University student Liam Stacey will tonight be realising just how powerful his words are. The 21-year-old Welsh biology undergraduate (below, picture: Wales New Service) has probably been stripped, searched, showered, and locked in a cell with a total, and maybe violent stranger, to bed down for his first night behind bars as a convicted criminal. He  was sentenced to 56 days in prison for posting abusive and racist messages on twitter. His actions came about after footballer Fabrice Muamba collapsed with heart failure on the pitch two weeks ago. In the moments that followed, Stacey began to spout vile, racist taunts via the social network at the young black player who had been taken seriously ill. In one he wrote: “LOL [laugh out loud]. **** Muamba. He’s dead!!!”  When other twitter users became outraged he spat more racist comments at them, many of which are so offensive, I have chosen not to print them. He was arrested in the early hours the f...

Anyone who is not open to the idea that Madonna is the greatest pop artist in the world, please turn away now, I promise to have something different for you tomorrow. But for today, the stage is, rightfully and in the manner of tradition,  all hers. The mighty queen of pop released her latest album MDNA today, and for anyone who thinks she has lost her touch I suggest you give it a listen because this is Madonna back at her very best. Each time she releases an album I foam at the mouth with anticipation. But the past few times I have had a slight sense of doubt as to whether she will be able to deliver anything up to the same standard as she did in the 80s. I liked her last one, Hard Candy, although it lacked the sense of wow that I had the first time I tingled my way through Like A Prayer. Before that was Confessions on a Dance Floor, a vast improvement on the previous American Life, which even I had to admit was a definite low point of her career. ...

Drive along Westferry Road on the Isle of Dogs and you can’t fail to notice the front of a disused apartment building adorned with flowers, wreaths and cards. They first  appeared more than a year ago, as is often the case following a fatal road crash. But unlike the majority of floral tributes laid in the days after an accident, these didn’t disappear after a couple of weeks.  In the months since November 2010 when they first appeared, this makeshift shrine has grown and grown.  People have lit candles and placed enormous floral wreaths and cards at the site which has become a semi-permanent memorial to a young man who apparently had quite an impact on the community. Tom Spiteri died on Saturday, November 20, 2010, after coming off his motorbike during a collision with a car near his home. The 19-year-old dance music fan was pronounced dead at the scene despite witnesses  giving resuscitation. Within hours of his death a tribute page ...