Talk:Vanessa Collingridge

George Collingridge
Previously, the article seemed to imply that at some time it was thought that Cook discovered Australia and that George Collingridge's theory was that it was the Portuguese, not Cook, who did this dead.

No well-read person ever thought Cook discovered Australia. In his first voyage (1768 to 1771), he brought with him copies of charts of Australia drawn by the Dutch and others in the 17th. The orthodox view then, as now, was that Janszoon was the first European to stand on and chart the Australian mainland, having done so in 1606.

More than half of Australia's coastline had been charted before Cook set sail.

GC's unusual theory was that the Portuguese had visited Australia throughout the 16th century, well before Janszoon's journey.

I have edited the article to make it plain that conventional theory was that the Dutch discovered Australia in. It was against this theory that George Collingridge espoused his theory of much earlier Portuguese exploration.

Ordinary Person 08:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The article is not a history lesson, it's a biography of Vanessa Collingride, and covers her biography of Cook and her relationship with GC. As can be seen in contemporary reviews of the book, Collingridge's controversy among contemporary historians was his revisionism with regards to Cook's contribution:
 * "George Collingridge suggested that the Portuguese had discovered the east coast of Australia before Cook, though he was not the first to do so. At the time, however, this was almost regarded as heresy in Australian academic circles, whose members regarded Cook as a national hero." Journal for Maritime Research
 * "Noting linguistic anomalies in the maps, George Collingridge deduced that Cook was not the discoverer of Australia. Although he was vilified at the time, his theories now attract serious study." The Spectator
 * "[Collingridge's] proposals were rejected by both the Establishment and the public as they flew in the face of the British Empire and the accepted history which recognised Captain Cook as the "discoverer" of Australia." The Captain Cook Society
 * Also, as far as I can see, GC made not a single mention of Janszoon in his 1895 book at all. "The Dutch" had nothing to do with Collingridge's resultant notoriety, and certainly the associated inline citations make no mention of them. --DeLarge 17:29, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm satisfied with your correction. Ordinary Person 03:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

DVD promotions
A recent article in the Guardian (March 2, 2007) identified her as presenter of a series of DVDs promoting a UK buy to let "advice" company Inside Track. The company has been featured in a number of programmes and articles as using high pressure sales techniques and obscuring the facts from would-be investors; BBC Radio 4's Face the Facts episode Bye Buy-to-Let (broadcast 25 July 2008) investigated the company.

Had to remove this for several reasons:
 * 1) WP:Not. Mentioned on an investigative programme on 25 July, added to the article on 27 July...
 * 2) WP:Undue weight. Only the first sentence is about Collingridge; the second sentence has nothing to do with her, it's about the company producing the DVDs. If you think the company, or the investigation, merits inclusion in WP then create a new article and add it there. Don't use biographical articles as coatracks. Which brings me to the most important one:
 * 3) WP:BLP. Whether deliberate or not, the recent addition implies that Collingridge is somehow involved in unethical or illegal activity by association, just because she was hired to present a DVD and read from a script. It's a rather thinly veiled accusation, and without much more substantial evidence than the incredibly passing reference in The Guardian, should absolutely not be included.

Regards, --DeLarge (talk) 13:23, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Which part of WP:Not#News is relevant here? Many articles seem to have topical material which has now aged. SoMuchTime (talk) 18:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Some truth in this, but the article in the Guardian (hardly by the way "an incredibly passing reference" - it's a key point in the article) shows that she takes it easy on a notorious scamming company and clearly lends herself as a well-known TV presenter to this unethical company. SoMuchTime (talk) 18:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * My addition was completely factual and did not "imply" anything - I was adding information. I will think of a way to rewrite it though that doesn't give the "implication" that you apparently perceive in it. SoMuchTime (talk) 18:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * See my comments above. I don't totally agree, although there is merit in some of your points. SoMuchTime (talk) 18:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * All it says is that more than a year ago, Collingridge played hired-gun as a presenter on a promotional DVD, wich was produced by a company who were later accused by a BBC radio programme of using high pressure sales techniques.
 * "Unless news coverage of an individual goes beyond the context of a single event, our coverage of that individual should be limited to the article about that event, in proportion to their importance to the overall topic. (See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons for more details.)" If neither the company nor the event/investigation is notable enough to have an article, then it shouldn't just be dumped into VC's bio.
 * As I already said, the second sentence you added is nothing to do with Collingridge, it's all about the company itself. I put a link in to Coatrack. Please, read it.
 * Once more, this is the serious one. Go back and read the Guardian article again. It mentions Collingridge once in a 1500 word article about an entirely different subject. More than that, you could take out her name, leaving "They're professionally presented by [a] smiling ex-weathergirl (and first class Oxford geography MA) who asks soft questions to key Inside Track personnel." and it wouldn't change the meaning of the paragraph a jot, never mind the whole page.


 * I'm not going to revert again immediately, although I'm fairly strongly inclined to per WP:GRAPEVINE. I'd recommend you read over WP:Bold, revert, discuss in the interim if you're not already familiar with it; when you've been reverted (especially with a thorough explanation why), restoring your version and thereby precipitating an edit war is not the recommended course of action. I am going to post at the BLP Noticeboard to encourage further comment. Since the Seigenthaler incident Wikipedia has become incredibly sensitive to material which might violate BLP in any way. I really don't see how this paragraph has more than the most fleeting, tangential connection to Collingridge herself. It adds nothing to the article, while making groundless implications of impropriety which could be damaging to the subject. --DeLarge (talk) 00:04, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

DeLarge is correct. But put more simply, given that the BBC articles mention Collingridge only in the most passing of manners (to point out merely that she works for them), any information on the company itself actually has zero context in this article, aside from perhaps a one-word description thereof. As DeLarge has stated, anything further runs afoul of WP:COAT, and avoiding negative implications to a BLP where none have actually been suggested makes this pretty clear cut as far as I can see. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Family Matters
"Her father Gordon was half-Irish" As his grandson I can certify to the fact that he wasn't. He had distant Scots/Irish ancestry, but was not half-Irish himself. 134.225.165.163 (talk) 19:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

"and sons Archie, Angus and Finn" - Information out of date. -- 213.105.186.124 (talk) 15:43, 1 October 2013 (UTC)