Apologies if these brief responses are inadequate.
NGMsGhost wrote on Apr 19
th, 2010 at 6:49pm:
This is indeed a most valuable and therapeutic element in the proceedings that someone with your "I never get cross" Mr Positivist mentality would of course never understand. I see that you would seek to deny this basic human right to us though.
Personally without the righteous anger at receiving a call from someone pushy that one does not want to get on one's own home number I fail to see what else motivates anyone to spend hours of their private time pursuing this issue. Any more rational approach involving writing long treatises would normally in my experience only appeal to those paid to do such a job on a professional basis.
I hope that I do understand the enormous of distress and wasted energy that is caused by telephone nuisance. I campaign for people to be spared from this, not for them to be helped to waste more energy by making a complaint. I do not acknowledge any right to be the victim of nuisance. If the state is deliberately failing to prevent a citizen from being a victim of nuisance so that they may have the satisfaction of complaining about it, then that would be a breach of human rights.
NGMsGhost wrote on Apr 19
th, 2010 at 6:49pm:
I am unclear which you consider to be the more serious offence here? The withheld CLI or the unsolicited marketing call to someone who is registered on the TPS Do Not Call list?
I understand the proposal for the former to be only as a means of helping to address the latter, which is therefore the more serious. I can see no other useful purpose for it, unless every citizen is to be provided with a list of every telephone number and the name of the person using it.
NGMsGhost wrote on Apr 19
th, 2010 at 6:49pm:
It wouldn't do so if there were large fines for faking or withholding a CLI for a UK originated call and the identity of anyone withholding or faking their CLI who was UK based could easily be traced.
If measures to prevent the withholding of CLI were effective, there would be no need to refuse calls with withheld CLI. The point only applies whilst there is such a need.
The right to withhold CLI is currently held as an issue of privacy - a valuable right, when understood properly. It is proposed that this right is withdrawn from those who have not yet been found to have have broken the law, but are doing so (that indeed is the whole point of the proposal). I am keen to know which other technically innocent callers would also have to forgo this right. It is suggested that this should apply to all UK-originated calls, however many of us would regard such a proposal as an infringement of our right to privacy. It could certainly provide a nice earner for the telcos in the provision of outgoing-only lines (assuming that these were not also to be banned.)
To move on a little, many of the CLIs currently provided give access to a recorded message from a call centre (not any particular client) which says "you were called today by xxxx call centre, please leave your number if you wish it to be removed from our calling lists". This satisfies Ofcom, but to me represents a gross misuse of CLI. If anyone pays for such a call they deserve their money back.
BT does something similar, a message says that someone from BT called. That is however on a 0800 number. A total waste of time.
Provision of CLI is only part of the story, one then has to think what it gives access to. Telcos and others are quite happy for this to be a worthless call.
To struggle back to relevance for the forum. The enthusiasm for calling back to the CLI of a missed call provides an opportunity for scammers to give revenue sharing or PRS numbers as CLI in the hope that return callers will hang on listening to recorded messages long enough for them to earn some serious money.
I would always advise people never to call a number that they do not recognise, whatever type it is. The proponents of enforced CLI clearly take a different view.