Recently in Media Spin and Disinformation Category

Sunday night has seen copycat looting, arson and attacks on the police in several areas of London:

The Metropolitan Police Service press bureau statement deliberately does not use the word "riot":

http://www.met.police.uk/pressbureau/Bur08/page01.htm

(save your own copy of this, since they may well amend or censor it later)

There has been looting in a number of boroughs in north, east and south London by small and mobile groups. Groups of youths continue to attack police officers and a number of police vehicles have been damaged.

[...]

Waltham Forest

[...]

Walthamstow Central


[...]

Brixton

[...]

Rival gangs attended Kings College Hospital

[...]

Enfield Town Centre

[...]

Oxford Circus

[...]

Islington

[...]

Ponders End

The Metropolitan Police Press Bureau really do not seem to understand the world wide web and social media:

The material on this page is for media organisations only. Please do not publish links to this page.

This page was last updated on
08-Aug-2011 2:18

The Met Police Twitter feed

https://twitter.com/#!/metpoliceuk

is useless.

They are not giving the innocent public any idea of the areas to avoid, but they have found the time to try to deny reports of a media coverup:


12:43 AM August 8th 2011

metpoliceuk Metropolitan Police
Police have not requested a #mediablackout and are continuing to provide updates

All that they have to say via Twitter is the very uninformative:

12:45 AM August 8th 2011

metpoliceuk Metropolitan Police
Police are responding to a significant amount of criminal activity across London and are deploying officers to tackle it.

No doubt some people will be calling for the Mayor of London, the Acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the Prime Minister to interrupt their holidays to return to London.

Why ? What exactly are they going to do that cannot be done over the phone ?

Any such interruption in their holidays would be a sign of weakness, giving the violent criminals more power than they deserve.

Various mainstream media reports are announcing the Sir Paul Stephenson appointed as Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis i.e. the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.

e.g. BBC Stephenson to become new Met boss

The fact the decision to appoint the deputy to the previous Commissioner Sir Ian Blair to the post, has been leaked to the media ahead of the official announcement, sends exactly the wrong signal - it looks like the all too cosy relationship between the Labour Government's media manipulators and the head of Britain's largest Police force is continuing, just as before.

Will Sir Paul continue to be tainted by personal involvement in all of he major cockups and scandals involving the senior ranks of Metropolitan Police under Sir Ian Blair, or will he be able to get back to the fundamental principles of proper policing as espoused by Sir Robert Peel back in the 19th Century:

  • *Every police officer should be issued a badge number, to assure accountability for his actions.
  • Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime.
  • Above all else, an effective authority figure knows trust and accountability are paramount. Hence, Peel's most often quoted principle: The police are the public and the public are the police.


The taxpayer funded propagandists at the Greater London Authority / Mayor of London press office have issued another misleading Press Release: British National Party told to stop publishing 'The Londoner' leaflets or face possible legal action

This relates to the GLA / Livingstone's unloved waste of taxpayer's money and blight on the environment, the awful propaganda sheet "The Londoner" newsletter, which they supposedly inflict on every household in London.

They even ship thousands of copies to unlucky elected officials and other people, outside of London, who almost certainly bin it straight away.

There should be a formal investigation into the claims that the GLA's "The Londoner" is published monthly, and distributed to every household in London, at vast expense, as there are many London households which do not receive 12 copies a year - is this claim another lie, or is there more incompetence or corruption involved ?

The GLA spin weasels are taking offence at the much smaller distribution of the equally odious propaganda sheet produced by the extremists of the British National Party, also entitled "The Londoner", who inflict their nonsense on the tiny proportion of London households which their dwindling number of official party activists can doorstep. The BNP appear to be in the process of splitting, due to the more moderate, less racist members being disgusted by the antics of a clique of incompetent, corrupt bully boys surrounding their leader. Parallels can be drawn between Nick Griffin and Ken Livingstone - they are both surrounded by such cliques of supporters, and they both insult and ignore any opposition to their fanatical views.

Neither of these publications actually represents normal Londoners at all.

Crucially, for Trade Mark protection purposes, neither of them is a real newspaper either, like , for example the Evening Standard, which has a far stronger claim to "The Londoner" Trade Mark as applied to newspapers.

The Mayor of London's Office and Press Office appear to have been infiltrated by Personality Cultists, who are bringing the system into disrepute, with their abuse of public resources to conduct personal attacks and to make threats against their political opponents.

The Evening Standard report last Friday, contains an extraordinary threat:

Whistle-blower to sue Mayor over 'bullying' claims
Andrew Gilligan, Evening Standard
25.01.08

The whistleblower who exposed a key part of the City Hall scandal is to sue Ken Livingstone for libel, the Evening Standard can reveal.

The move comes after the Mayor claimed on BBC radio that Brenda Stern was sacked for bullying her staff.

Ms Stern, a former London Development Agency manager, was forced from her £70,000-a-year job after she complained about serious irregularities in a project run by a friend of the Mayor's equality adviser Lee Jasper.

A complaint of bullying was made against her but in a letter seen by the Standard, LDA chief executive Manny Lewis says the allegation was investigated and was "not founded"

[...]

Hopefully Brenda Stern will be awarded a large amount of money and, a public apology from Ken Livingstone personally.

However, more importantly, the article goes on to say:

The Mayor's office hit back, threatening that if Ms Stern sued, the GLA would investigate "other matters" apart from her stint at the LDA, including her past life and previous employment.

Firstly , if there was anything dubious in her previous employment (she is a lawyer who was seconded to the the London Development Agency), it shows GLA incompetence for not checking before employing her in the first place, which seems highly unlikely.

Therefore any such "investigation" must be an attempt to dig up information for a political smear campaign against a whistleblower, thereby abusing the staff and resources paid for by the London taxpayer.

These are the tactics of extremist cults, like the Scientologists or the Moonies etc. and is not how the public employees at City Hall should act, or appear to be acting.

This threat violates even the GLA's own Code of Ethics for Staff (.pdf)

2.3. Proper advice and support

(b) To uphold the political impartiality of the Authority's staff, not to use public
resources for political purposes
and not to act in any way which would conflict
with this Code;

The individual(s) who uttered this threat should be named and shamed, and investigated by the Standards Board for England, for bringing the Office of the Mayor of London into disrepute.

If the GLA is somehow manipulated by Livingstone and his cronies into trying to fund, or allow GLA human or technical resources to be abused in such an ""investigation", this would be a violation by a public authority of the European Convention on Human Rights Article 8, the right to privacy, and therefore against the UK Human Rights Act, and therefore against the GLA's own internal Codes of Conduct and Ethics.

If the individual members of Livingstone's inner circle carry out their threat, they should be investigated by the Police and charged with a criminal offence under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and / or with Malfeasance in Office.

Even if you are a Labour voter, it must be clear that the current Mayor of London and his clique of cronies must not be allowed back into power this coming May.

Channel 4 tv - is to broadcast a Dispatches documentary, tomorrow at 8pm Monday 21st Jan 2009

These seems set to examine some of Ken Livingstone's record of peculiar policies, broken promises and cronyism. It is also set to look at the Greater London Assembly, which should act as a check and balance on whoever occupies the office of Mayor of London, but which has failed to do so effectively.

Interestingly, the investigative reporter this time, is not from a "right wing" publication like the Evening Standard , but from a "left wing" one, the New Statesman magazine.

See the New Statesman political editor Martin Bright's blog article My questions for Ken


But in the course of my research I came across a blizzard of stories that do not show the mayor in an entirely good light. These include some already in the public domain, such as the cost of foreign trips and the "embassies" set up by the mayor abroad, details of the oil deal with Venezuela's leader, Hugo Chávez, and questions over spending by the London Development Agency. Other stories, including one concerning a campaign against Trevor Phillips, now chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, organised from within City Hall, raise concerns. There are also the curious actions of Livingstone's inner circle of advisers and their idiosyncratic politics. And, inevitably, we looked at the congestion charge.

Perhaps most importantly we examined the office of mayor itself: whether it is institutionally robust and whether any incumbent in the post would be held fully accountable.

Even before it has been transmitted, this tv programme has provoked some Sunday Newspaper articles, and taxpayer funded public relations spin from the Mayor's spin doctors, who appear to be working overtime, regarding the serious allegation that the political appointees and the other appartachiki who are paid to be politically neutral civil servants, were actively campaigning for Livingstone, including fund raising, using GLA / Mayoral offices and equipment , during working hours.

The Sunday Times:

The Observer:

If even left wing, Labour supporting, journalists are starting to question Livingstone's dubious record, will that translate into seeing him lose the May election ?

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