Mind your business, Peter Power

It's been a while since the man who left the Dorset Police under distinctly odd circumstances showed his face on the TV, but when there's a "crisis" of any sort, snow matter what sort of crisis, there's plenty of crisis management money to be made, even in times of general financial woe. What better way to kick-start an ailing business than with yet more free publicity from the dear old State Broadcasting Corporation. Cinderella Man provides some background information on how such cross media marketing trickery functions, Lord Patel has more, and yours truly provides the commentary for Power's latest appearances:

After a little bit of snow that everybody vaguely human enjoyed immensely for its day off work, day off school, and a day of fun and frolics chucking snowballs around, Mr Peter Power seizes the opportunity to advertise his Crisis Management services, courtesy of BBC News. Again.

While ordinary people enjoy a few inches of snow every now and then, the economy, along with Mr Peter Power's own personal bank balance, isn't very happy about that sort of thing. To Peter Power and his ilk, the economy -- the thing that left in the hands of the likes of Peter Power has entirely gone to hell in a handcart -- is very, very important indeed. Far more important than all the people that had a fun day off playing in the snow.

The ever charming Mr Power and those lovely people at the government are all going to save the world for us. As if that wasn't enough, Mr Power and those lovely people at the government are going to save the world and make money doing it. The clever things that they are.

So, here he is, that lovely unchanging hairdo and everything, blathering on in his usual way and trying to sound a little bit helpful and a little bit scary all at the same time. Amaze and amuse yourself at quite how he managed to get from home to a TV studio what with all that terrible, ghastly old snow that managed to bring the country to a standstill, but couldn't keep Mr Power off the TV.

2009-02-02 BBC Two - Newsnight - Peter Power

Earlier the same evening:

2009-02-02 19 43 BBC News - Peter Power

Expect to see Mr Power again soon, courtesy of the BBC's self-defeating Conspiracy Files series, just as soon as the "7/7 helpers" show trial number two comes to an end. The CPS seems to have adopted a policy of "If at first you don't convict, trial, trial again." Except, in Mr Power's case, the CPS decided not to prosecute.

J7 Exclusive: Peter Power's CV Fakery

According to recent figures, approximately half of jobseekers tell lies on their CVs and the figure is up 10% on the results of a similar survey last year. So prevalent is the problem of CV lies that, in January, Channel 4 dumped their TV nanny, Claire Verity - previously accused by viewers of child cruelty, after she failed to prove that she hadn't faked her qualifications.

Following the events in New York on 11th September 2001, one woman, Tania Head, emerged from the debris with a distinctive tale of woe. Ms Head claimed to be on the 96th floor of the south tower when the first 'plane' struck. Her husband, Dave, was apparently on the 100th floor of the north tower. Head claims that the impact of the second 'plane' rendered her unconscious and badly burnt. Her account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. In time, Head became no less than President of the World Trade Centre Survivors' Network.

Shortly after the 6th anniversary of the day that has come to be known as 9/11, the Telegraph announced that Tania Head, like half of all jobseekers, had lied on her CV:

"[For] it emerged yesterday that the big, bubbly lady with the brave smile and the most heart-rending of tales may have invented the entire story. Consciously or unconsciously, disaster victims will sometimes confuse a few details but the enormous question mark hanging over Head is whether she was ever in the Twin Towers at all when the planes struck.

Multiple inconsistencies in her story emerged after the New York Times said it tried to interview her in recent weeks about her experiences to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the attack."

When pressed, a lawyer hired by Ms Head said, "With regard to the veracity of my client's story, neither my client, nor I, have any comment", and the Telegraph article further noted:

"What became clear yesterday was that no one has ever bothered to verify the key details of Head's remarkable WTC story or asked her to elaborate on others...."

When an event of such significance occurs, the verification of key details is of the utmost importance. Yet, as the case of Tania Head amply demonstrates, this verification is not something that mainstream news and media organisations can be trusted to perform, not even with an event often billed as 'the day the world changed'. Consequently, a liar can become the president of a prominent survivors group, despite their story never having been verified by anyone, and with no questions being asked for a good number of years.

On 7th July 2005, London's transport network was rocked by what were reported to be a series of up to seven explosions staggered over the space of an hour. In time the number of explosions was reduced to four, three Underground (as opposed to six) and one on a bus (as opposed to the reports of three exploded buses) and the staggered Underground blast timings became, "almost simultaneous". It was a full two days before the story of staggered blast timings on the Underground morphed into "almost simultaneous" blasts.

Oddly, on the day of 7/7, two men were to introduce bouts of jarring cognitive dissonance into the proceedings.

One of these men was the ex-Chief of Mossad, Efraim Halevi, who published an article on 7th July 2005 in the Jerusalem Post which spoke of, "the multiple, simultaneous explosions that took place today on the London transportation system" with "near pefect execution". How Halevi knew of "multiple, simultaneous explosions" two days before the Metropolitan Police and the companies charged with running London's transportation network is still a mystery. Quite how he knew of the "near perfect execution" is also a mystery.

Another bout of cognitive dissonance came when another man announced on BBC Radio Five Live (MP3) that, at the time of the explosions, he was, "running an exercise" for "a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning". He later confirmed somewhat dismissively of his exercise, "it was based on bombs going off, to the time, the locations, all this sort of stuff." The source of these quotes was Peter Power, the Managing Director of a private 'crisis management' firm, Visor Consultants, and a former Metropolitan policeman for 19 years.

It now transpires that Mr Power has, like half of job applicants and the president of a prominent terrorist attack survivor group, been a little creative with the facts that constitute the truth of the matter. In the public domain there exists an overview of Mr Power's working history which goes a little like the one promulgated by the BBC as part of their London Under Attack Panorama programme:

PETER POWER
Crisis management specialist & government adviser
Visor consulting 1995- present
Director BET Group Security 1992-1994
Senior Officer Metropolitan Police 1971-1992

However, the sterling cooperative research efforts of the July 7th Truth Campaign have uncovered quite an anomaly in what would otherwise be a fairly standard CV for a senior Metropolitan Policeman.

The problem with the version of Mr Power's history is that between 1990 and 1993 Peter Power was working neither for the Metropolitan Police, nor for BET, but instead for the Dorset Police.

Ignoring for a moment the apparent sideways and backwards step to a rural police force from a prominent role with the Metropolitan Police, but pausing for a moment to reflect on why such a step may have occurred, one can only wonder why someone with a bent for shameless self-promotion might be so reticent about the three years of his career with the Dorset Police.

Perhaps it has something to do with the circumstances in which he left Dorset Police? After all, if your career history included you being suspended from your job as a policeman, for a period of six months, before you retired on the grounds and pension of "ill health" after a file about you, compiled during an 'internal investigation', had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, maybe you wouldn't want to make a song and dance about it either.

J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign have the full details of Peter Power's CV Fakery here and here.

Additional commentary here and here.

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Update: Some post-Valentine's Day love regarding the Peter Power Wikipedia WikiWar™ here. Watch real live Internet sock puppets, as opposed to the tired, old and worn very thin sock puppets in the press and on TV, on Peter Power's Wikipedia page.

Note: The New York Times says:

This digital-age deception has a name, “sock-puppeting,” and a precise definition — the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company.

Funny that. Fake history, fake survivors and fake online identities, all in one story, all at the same time.