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.

BBC Pre Christmas Specials

Stop press: BBC does something vaguely useful for a change documenting, in part, the bullying, threats and intimidation tactics used against the Black Irish Muslim community by MI5/MI6 and exposes the fraudulent 'research' of Reich Right Wing Stink Think Tanks.

First up, Newsnight on Policy Exchange and the widely-touted allegations about 'extremist' literature in Mosques based on the latest, highly scientific, bleeding-edge Policy Exchange research techniques that go a little something like this:

1. Decide the results and conclusions of the 'investigation'


2. Fabricate token items of evidence to make it appear as if some research has been done


3. Wax lyrical about the 'research', results and conclusions and hope that nobody thinks to check the evidence

In the case of Policy Exchange, Newsnight checked the evidence and scuppered PE's pernicious plans.

Newsnight Policy Exchange Exposé Part 1/3


Newsnight Policy Exchange Exposé Part 2/3


Newsnight Policy Exchange Exposé Part 3/3

Osama Saeed noted:

Edinburgh Central Mosque was one of those fingered by the [Policy Exchange] report. I said at the time that the mosque had no idea how this literature was supposed to be on their premises. A strange thing then happened a week or two later. A stash of the pamphlets in question were dropped just inside the doorway to the mosque. No one has any idea how they appeared there, as certainly none of the mosque authorities ordered them. Someone clearly outside dumped them, and they are currently investigating who that could be. Unfortunately, BBC Scotland, including Newsnight Scotland, did report Policy Exchange's "findings".

People at the mosque were smelling a rat at the time, and that will now just intensify in the light of the Newsnight report.

Pamphlets that magically appear inside Mosques to support far-right propaganda masquerading as research leads nicely on to Radio 4's recent broadcast about some of the tactics employed by the 'intelligence' services MI5 and MI6 in their efforts to manufacture from Muslims the same sort of thing they had a heavy hand in manufacturing during the Irish 'troubles', just as the 'only' suspect in the Omagh bomb attack, Sean Hoey, was cleared of all 56 charges -- including the murders of 29 people:

Recruiting Muslim Spies
First aired: Tuesday 18 December 2007 20:00-20:40 (Radio 4 FM)
Repeated: Sunday 23 December 2007 17:00-17:40 (Radio 4 FM)

Since the advent of home-grown Islamist terrorism, Britain's intelligence services have urgently sought better information from within the UK's Muslim communities. But, as reporter Tazeen Ahmad finds out, their attempts to recruit informants are alienating many young British Muslims who say the tactics are making it more difficult to obtain the information the intelligence services seek.

Listen again to this programme

When you're done watching and listening to that little lot, you might want to cast your eyes over the latest report from the perversely named Centre for Social Cohesion, "Hate on the State: How British libraries encourage Islamic extremism". Not.

The Cult of the Expert

Read this from Newsnight.

Here's a variant from a parallel dimension, a variant slightly closer to the reality of the situation:

The Cult of the Expert
How Today’s Mainstream Media is Killing Our Culture, Our Ability to Think and Assaulting Our Intellect

“If we are all experts, there is nothing left to be learnt.”

The Antagonist’s new post, The Cult of the Expert is the latest addition to the Antagonista reading list. In it, the author expresses his concern for the profligacy of mainstream media 'experts' who profess to know everything and yet convey nothing, spawned by archaic technologies such as newspaper and television and for too long in the control of too few hands. This, he feels, has had a destructive impact on our culture, ability to think, intellect and understanding of the world.

He says, “[They] can use their mass produced media to publish everything from uninformed 'expert' political commentary, to unseemly pornographic videos, to embarrassingly mindless repetitive music, to the same old unreadable, unwatchable and unpalatable rubbish that we've read for years in the form of reviews, essays, novels and even news”.

He complains that the mainstream media are “collectively deliberately corrupting and confusing their own middle-class values about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture for popular opinion.”

He claims that Newnsight perpetuates a cycle of misinformation and ignorance, and labels the myopic Murdoch media empire inane and absurd, “showing poor fools dancing, singing, eating, washing, shopping, driving, cleaning, sleeping, all in the name of becoming celebrities who want to be worshipped by idiots with nothing better to do because this is the rubbish to which they have become accustomed.”

He warns that new media is just taking hold in earnest – “say goodbye to middle-class idiots and cultural gatekeepers of the old media – old style reporting from inside the cage of small elitest and self-interested circles, news anchors with fake smiles who only do it for the money, editors who can't discern facts from personal opinions unless it is to include the latter over the former, music companies who pump out repetitive manufactured mechanical drivel for huge profits, and Hollywood movie studios producing films about how America is going to save the world from everything but itself.”

What do you think? – is The Antagonist being alarmist about the effects of the mainstream media, or raising genuine concerns? Are we at the mercy of the self-professed and overpaid 'expert' regurgitating the same old opinions for profit and personal gain? Can kids tell the difference between credible news sources and the endless stream of middle-class opinion in the mainstream media? What, in any case, can be done?

The Antagonist is not yet finished with Andrew Keen and his elitest claptrap. More later.