The Countermark Blog

Honesty is always the best policy

27th March 2023

Last week’s news coverage of the UK Governments ‘party gate’ investigation confirms the theory that honesty is always the best policy. You can query, nudge, look for signs of dissembling, uncertainty, listen to weasel words, ask outright, hold it up to the sun or bite into it, but it is hard to know if the […]

For 20 years a fake psychiatrist fooled the NHS

20th March 2023

Zholia Alemi’s fake degree certificate from the University of Auckland allowed her to work for NHS trusts and private providers in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The woman who pretended to be a qualified psychiatrist to work illegally for more than 20 years has been jailed for fraud. Alemi was caught only after trying […]

Foreign beef sold as British beef in the UK – There is a (British) app for that

13th March 2023

Foreign beef sold as British beef in the UK – There is a (British) app for that. On Friday 10th March 2023, numerous news-sites reported a national food fraud probe by the Food Standards Agency in connection to fraudulent beef products and the immediate removal from retailers’ shelves (see Food Fraud link below). The Australian […]

Are you paying someone else’s energy bill? When a handy shortcut goes wrong…

3rd March 2023

Are you paying someone else’s energy bill? When a handy shortcut goes wrong… I have been paying someone else’s energy bill for the last 6 months, by mistake. Ovo Energy had a shortcut in their customer experience, that makes identifying a person fast and straightforward. After all, no one wants to spend longer on a call […]