‘Nearly impossible’ for an independent Scotland to join EU, says EC President

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‘Nearly impossible’ for an independent Scotland to join EU, says EC President

Skyscanner brings a pinch of Silicon Valley to Scotland

• Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has valued Skyscanner at $ 800 million


• Skyscanner sees 100 million searches a month, half of which are from repeat customers


• Employs over 300 staff globally with offices in Singapore, Beijing, Miami and Glasgow

CNN Marketplace Europe puts the spotlight on one of the world’s most influential and interconnected continents as Europe faces up to the economic challenges and opportunities of the next 10 years. Watch the show on Thursday at 13:45 ET and 18:45 GMT. You can also watch it at 16:00 GMT Saturday and 13:00 GMT Sunday.

(CNN) — Peer at the windows and you’ll spot big colorful chairs, plastic plants and a huge bed, but this is no department store.

Welcome to the hip headquarters of Skyscanner, Europe’s most popular flight search engine — a hot-house of IT talent with an average employee age of 32.

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Leading the team is CEO Gareth Williams, who broke the golden rules of web start-ups. At first, there was no business model, just a bright idea. And, we’re not in sunny Silicon Valley, California. It’s another damp day in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“We probably went largely on instinct,” said Gareth, “you’re supposed to use market research and a business model in mind, and we had neither of those things.

“We didn’t know how we’d make money from the idea and we were just going on instinct that other people would like this,” he added.

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Frustrated at the time it took to find cheap flights to visit his brother in France, the 44-year-old programmer spent a week building a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, the first version of Skyscanner.

The next step was convincing the airlines to offer access to their schedules and fares. Gareth realized many customers will check Skyscanner first, before choosing to book directly with the airline’s website. That creates valuable leads for the carriers.

“The quantity of traffic leads we send is so high, [and] the relative cost of our other distribution channels is so low that it’s a really a great deal for them,” he said.

And the proof is in the numbers. Skyscanner says it’s broadly doubled either users or revenue each year. Twenty-five million people search the site every month, leading to exponential expansion and new offices in Singapore, Beijing, Miami and Glasgow.

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Its future growth will be fueled by investment from Sequoia Capital, which has had a hand in Google and Apple. Sequoia has valued the company at $ 800 million.

Skyscanner chief Gareth Williams.

“It is recognition of what’s possible anywhere in the world,” says Gareth.

“But it’s also recognition of what we see, and presumably they do too, that we’ve barely scratched the surface. Transport, tourism and hospitality is over 10% of the world’s GDP, so the information needs are huge.

“We’ve barely begun on our journey, and the fact we’re doing it outside Silicon Valley is an indication of an increasing trend.”

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“We’ve barely begun on our journey, and the fact we’re doing it outside Silicon Valley is an indication of an increasing trend.”
Gareth Williams, CEO of Skyscanner

The future, says Williams, is to make travel booking as intuitive as buying a book. In essence, it’s making the web do more of the work. That includes offering suggestions based on previous travel, or even calendar entries, dragged across into the site. Voice recognition is another area of interest.

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Skyscanner sees itself as a global player, rather than a Scottish business. Nonetheless, the country is engaged in a ferocious debate about its future, with a referendum on independence next year. The implications on doing business in Europe are still unclear.

“I can’t do anything about it, so I ignore it and work on the things that affect me,” said Williams.

“We’re very proud to have originated in the port area of Leith. In terms of the European and local economies it will do what it will do. Death, taxes, Google and the economy, I have no control over.”

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But Williams does have control over his surroundings. With his table tennis tables, meeting pods, barista coffee machines and staff perks like language classes, he has taken a little bit of Google and planted it in Edinburgh. Surrounded by university talent, this employer is helping to stem a brain drain out of the capital.

“We’re right next to Edinburgh University which has one of the best computer science departments in Europe, if not the world, and having access to the graduates and the postgraduates coming out of there is a massive accomplishment for us,” says Gareth.

“Silicon Valley is undoubtedly a very special place, but the world outside Silicon Valley combined is much bigger.”

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Skyscanner brings a pinch of Silicon Valley to Scotland

Scotland Yard investigates Twitter rape threats against Stella Creasy MP

Police have questioned a 21-year-old man in connection with the torrent of abuse. He has been bailed to a date in mid-September following his arrest in Manchester on suspicion of harassment offences, Scotland Yard said.

On Monday night it emerged that a second MP, Claire Perry, also received death threats relating to her fight against pornography on the internet.

Ms Criado Perez, a freelance journalist, organised a campaign which included a petition signed by more than 35,500 people after the Bank of England decided to replace Elizabeth Fry with Winston Churchill on new £5 banknotes.

Her campaign led to the announcement that Jane Austen would feature on the new £10 note from 2017, but led to a litany of hostile and menacing tweets against her.

Ms Criado Perez described how the online abuse had left her feeling “under siege” and terrified in her own home.

She told BBC2′s Newsnight: “It has consumed my life both physically and emotionally. I’ve not really had much sleep.

“The threats have been so explicit and so graphic that they’ve sort of stuck with me in my head and have really put me in fear, I realised.”

When Miss Creasy spoke out in support, one Twitter user, @rapey1, threatened: “I will rape you tomorrow at 9pm. Shall we meet near your house?”

Another said: “You better watch your back. I’m gonna rape you at 8pm and put the video all over the internet.”

Miss Creasy then showed her own Twitter followers the messages, saying: “You send me a reape threat you morons I will report you to the police and ensure action taken.”

She said: “It is vile, absolutely vile. It’s not about sexual attraction, it’s about power. It is somebody trying to make you frightened. It is about sex as a weapon.

“It’s not just me. Women who speak out in public life, especially if they champion equality, get serious abuse.”

On Monday Twitter bowed to mounting pressure from victims of online abuse, including Miss Creasy, and announced it would introduce a button for reporting insulting comments.

Miss Creasy had called for Twitter to take faster and stronger action against online thugs in the wake of the abuse, criticising the site’s current security policies.

The MP copied the abusive messages to Waltham Forest Police’s Twitter account and said she was making a formal complaint to her local police station.

She said free speech was “incredibly important” but said it did not include the right to threaten people with rape.

“It is important that we do not think that somehow because this is happening online it is any less violent, any less dangerous than if people were shouting or abusing Caroline in the street in this way,” she told BBC Radio 4′s The World At One.

“Twitter needs to be explicit that sexual violence and sexual aggression will not be tolerated as part of their user terms and conditions.

“We can all challenge these people and indeed when this happens to me in other occasions I tend to retweet it so people can say, ‘This is not acceptable’.”

She also urged internet companies such as Twitter to work with police to establish the identity of the abusers and to find out whether they could be a risk offline as well.

Mrs Perry, the Conservative MP for Devizes in Wiltshire, suffered similar abuse. She said: “I am tempted to shut down my Twitter account given the trolling going on, including to me, but that would be giving in.”

One Twitter user wrote: “Please disappear into obscurity and/or alcoholism. Or die, whatever. The main thing is you should f*** off and never return.”

Miss Criado-Perez’s experience prompted more than 60,000 people to sign an online petition calling on Twitter to introduce a button for reporting abuse within every tweet.

The company agreed, saying: “The ability to report individual tweets for abuse is currently available on Twitter for iPhone, and we plan to bring this functionality to other platforms, including Android and the web.

“We don’t comment on individual accounts. However, we have rules which people agree to abide by when they sign up to Twitter.

“We will suspend accounts that once reported to us, are found to be in breach of our rules. We encourage users to report an account for violation of the Twitter rules by using one of our report forms.”

Senior police officers have privately said they are extremely reluctant to get drawn into the time-consuming and highly sensitive area of trying to police the internet.

Andy Trotter, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ communications advisory group, suggested today that Twitter was not doing enough to combat internet trolls.

“While we do work with them on some matters I think there is a lot more to be done. They need to take responsibility, as do the other platforms, to deal with this at source and make sure these things do not carry on,” he said.

Crime News – UK Crime News

Scotland Yard investigates Twitter rape threats against Stella Creasy MP

Christians demand free speech guidance from Scotland Yard chief

The American, a former deputy sheriff in Los Angeles, was eventually released without charge but later said his experience suggested that “thought police” had become a reality in Britain.

Andrea Williams, the director of the CLC, has written to Sir Bernard insisting that human rights laws allow Christians to express their genuinely-held views without fear of arrest, providing they do not incite a breach of the peace.

The Christian Legal Centre (CLC), which is representing Mr Miano, points out in its letter that Sir Bernard’s officers took no action against a woman who told Mr Miano to “**** off” but arrested the preacher for reading from the Bible.

In the letter, seen by The Telegraph, Mrs Williams says: “We formally request that you issue guidance to all officers immediately that the Bible message on the ‘sin of homosexuality’ is lawful.

“Currently, the police appear to enforce the law to silence the viewpoint that homosexual conduct is a sin. This conduct by the police is unlawful and amounts to a systemic pattern of discrimination against Christians.”

Mrs Williams suggested Christians were becoming “fearful” of expressing their lawful views because of the police’s “intimidatory tactics”.

The CLC said there had been at least 16 cases of Christians being arrested for expressing their views on homosexuality over the last 11 years.

Mrs Williams said: “We would like to see clear guidance from the Metropolitan Commissioner that Christians preaching from the Bible that homosexual conduct is sinful is lawful free speech.

“The police officers in this case found that the complainant saying ‘**** off’ was non-offensive and lawful, but that the evangelist’s preaching from the Bible was an arrestable offence.

“Free speech is under threat and we need to protect it. We hope that the Commissioner will take a lead in this.”

Mr Miano has instructed Paul Diamond, the human rights barrister, to act for him in the case.

It is understood the CLC will launch judicial review proceedings against Scotland Yard if Sir Bernard fails to issue the guidance to officers.

The group is also asking the Association of Chief Police Officers to draw up guidelines for police officers in other forces across England and Wales.

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Christians demand free speech guidance from Scotland Yard chief