Aspals Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Aspals?

Aspals started in 1997 as a free web resource. We host contributions from practising and non-practising lawyers and law students with assistance from some, who give up their free time to maintain the site. Its founder and principal webmaster is a former Army Legal Services officer who served within ALS for 25 years and was one of the founding fathers of the Army Prosecuting Authority and the Operational Law Branch. At present, there are two active webmasters. They may relay your questions and link suggestions to other experts for their views prior to responding. These experts are scattered between the continent of Europe, UK and across the "big pond" to the USA. The site is completely independent and has no official links with any government department or service. Hence we rely on contributors for support.
It has been pointed out to us that other Internet users have called themselves "Aspals". We have not registered the name, even though our site is now over 10 years old, so I guess we cannot stop its use. However, we have no connection with Anand Palsodkar or the lady on FHM!
We receive no financial support other than donations, income we generate from the modest fee for advertising with us and the small commission on the sale of books and other items on the site. This money helps towards paying our web costs, the purchase of judgments in military cases, which we provide to our readers free of charge, and to meet administrative expenses. So, if you like what we do, please support us by buying your books, videos, music and other goods through our links. This will help to reduce the overall financial loss we actually incur running the site. You may also wish to help us by making a sterling donation directly to our account, though electronic transfer, through

(Aspals has an account, simply use the eMail address: webmaster@aspals.com) or by sending it to the following address:

The Manager
Lloyds TSB Bank,
Law Courts Branch,
222 Strand,
London WC2R 1BB
Account name: Aspals Legal Pages,
Account Nº: 01833538
Sort code: 30-00-04.

Please remember to quote our acount details.
For those who wish to donate in Euros/US dollars, please contact us for further details of payment through

(this service also accepts credit/debit card donations as well as cash transfers from all currencies). Thanks in anticipation.

Who is the Aspals site designed for?

The site is predominantly for military and international lawyers, but especially for those engaged in court-martial defence work. There are many links to sources of information and legislation that, for a defence practitioner, are not easy to find elsewhere. However, all visitors are welcome. Feel free to stroll through the site and use the very powerful search engines (both internal and external) that are to be found on our Search page.

Which jurisdiction is the site aimed at?

Principally, English jurisdiction, as the early content is designed to provide background information to the British Court-Martial system and pointers for defence advocates appearing before courts-martial, who may be unfamiliar with the post-Findlay changes. However, many international links are provided to areas of law which are of more general interest to the military and international lawyer and discussion is encouraged from non-UK lawyers on problems arising under, or areas of interest in, other jurisdictions.

Contributions to the Sounding Board

To contribute to the Sounding Board, you must use the posting form provided. This is necessary due to abuse of the system from some people using anonymous servers or temporary webmail accounts without a return eMail address. Likewise, messages sent from web-based eMail accounts, such as "Hotmail" or "Netscape" or "Yahoo" etc are likely to be rejected, as they are open to abuse and we cannot verify these addresses. In fact, they will be automatically deleted from our servers (through application of mail filters). If you want us to withhold your identity, just ask (and select your pseudonym). Please note, that you agree to the copyright in your message passing to Aspals and that there is no authority to reproduce messages without permission. This restriction is necessary to prevent unauthorised use of message content for purposes harmful to contributors. However, for these reasons, we will not accept any message that is libellous, insubordinate or gratuitously offensive. We support the three services. If you wish to remain anonymous, you must say so in your posting. You must also choose the "nickname" you wish to use. However, please do not needlessly ask for anonymity - it sometimes gets very confusing! We reserve the right to terminate threads that are becoming personalised or too "military-specific". These pages are for the enjoyment of everyone interested in the British military justice sytem.

My webpage does not show the latest version.

Sometimes a web page will show old information, due to the computer cache storing an old copy of the page. This happens if you log onto the Aspals site, then leave it and come back a little later. This sometimes reloads the old page, even if you have your browser settings set to refresh the page. To ensure that you always have the most up-to-date page, when you return to the Aspals site, (1) place your cursor in the right-hand frame and then (2) right click the mouse and (3) select "refresh". That will re-load that frame on the Aspals site and show the most recent page update.

Is it possible to obtain legal advice?

Due to continued abuse of the system and "spoof" queries from people who should know better, the provision of legal advice to individuals asking about their personal legal problems is not provided. Sorry! but the amount of work generated in this way (we track contributors) is too time consuming. Even in genuine cases, experience shows that problems are at best roughly summarised and that further inquiry inevitably flushes out some critical facts which may have a radical bearing upon the initial problem posed. For detailed advice, the answer is to make an appointment with a solicitor or, if you are a serviceman based in Germany and cannot readily contact a UK solicitor, with Royal Air Force Legal Services. Their services are free. Look them up in the military phone book. Discussion is encouraged, however, between practitioners and academics on matters of law, and help will be provided to researchers whenever possible. Furthermore, advice may be provided on more general matters relating to the service legal systems. If advice from contributors is found to be of assistance, then please tell us. (Some contributors to the Sounding Board are leading academics and practitioners, so it would be polite to thank them for their time and expertise).

My eMails do not seem to get through

Please check that your eMail address is not on our junk mail blocked addressses list. Unfortunately, junk mail has become a real problem and is overloading our system. To be sure of your message getting through to us only use the posting form. Direct eMails to our addresses may end up victims of our filters. The following list will be revised from time to time, as circumstances demand. Please keep checking back:

yahoo

hotmail

netscape

How Often is the Newsbites section updated?

Normally, news items are updated between one and two times per day - morning and evening. Headlines in the Newsbites applet are overwritten each day, although the stories and hotlinks remain on the News Page for several days. We try to limit the size of the news page to no more than 50K. Therefore, if there is a lot going on, older stories can sometimes "fall off the end." So, if you want to keep abreast of military news, keep checking our pages.

Can I Link To The Aspals Site?

While we are delighted if webmasters of other sites wish to link to the Aspals site, we do like to be asked first (we may provide a reciprocal link, in certain cases). In any event, the only condition we set is that the link goes to our domain homepage at: http://www.Aspals.com, from where visitors can navigate. If you wish to link directly to any other page, you may do so, provided that your site contains a link to our homepage as well. A link to the homepage ensures that any changes we make to page addresses will not result in HTTP error messages.

Reporting New Web Sites

Sometimes there is a delay between a web site being notified to us and it actually appearing on the Aspals site. Sometimes, reported sites do not appear at all. The reason is that Aspals carefully examine each submitted site and will endeavour to check all links to ensure that the content is relevant and/or interesting to visitors. Please keep sending in your suggestions. Many links are as a result of suggestions from visitors.

Queries Not Answered Here?

If you have any more questions then contact Aspals without delay on this link: Aspals Query

Most definitely, yes. However, please remember that, in order for your mail to be decrypted, we must have your public key on our keyring. So, if you have not posted your key to the secure server, please send us your key (using the PGP copy facility) before sending an encrypted or signed message. Those requiring anonymity are strongly advised to use encryption for any sensitive messages or inquiries not intended for publication, as the government is proposing to gather every eMail on its servers. You can download the latest version of PGP © from here. The information in ordinary eMails is about as secure as that sent on a postcard. PGP ©encryption protects your messages from being read by others. We also accept RSA certificates eg from Verisign © and Thawte Freemail ©. The following is the Aspals PGP © public key which you can import into your keyring by blocking the entire message and copying it to the clipboard, then right clicking on the PGP © tray icon and selecting the option to "Add key from clipboard".

Problems?

Any problems should be notified to webmaster@Aspals.com. Please do not send general queries to this address.