Facebook faux-pas / Bang bang / No photos / The screw turns futher / Christmas present problem solved

Facebook faux-pas

(NB - the Facebook links in the following first article will only work if you’re a member of that site and signed in.)

As someone who works in Public Relations, I can confirm that there’s at least one aspect of the PR world that does live up to its public perception.

PR, and in particular the Public Affairs section of same, does provide many a perch for political hacks on the make in the period between their post-education student union sabbatical year and their selection as a parliamentary candidate. There’s no end of our aspirant political rulers honing their spin skills in the dark arts - either in-house for companies or at PR agencies.

Some of these hacks of a Labour tint may now have to twiddle their thumbs for longer than they’d hoped - the high tide of their party may have passed by for now - but politicos from all parties can make PR a convivial long-term career if party members and electors never get to award them the positions that they’re sure they deserve.

So looking at the Facebook profile of a Public Affairs person that I know, I wasn’t surprised to be linked from them - within a click or two - to a plethora of putative politicians such as wannabe Labour candidates Luke Akehurst, Howard Dawber and Paul Richards. If you glance at their photos, you'll see that they’re clearly three parasites that spend far too much time at corporate lunches.

Paul Richards used to write affectionate clerihews about Hazel Blears. His politics remain just as rank. One of the Facebook groups of which he is a member is called ‘You'll Never Beat John Golding’ (Description: A group for fans of the sheer political prowess and organizational genius of John Golding, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme 1969-1986).

In this group, Luke Akehurst writes about the time he spoke to Golding. ‘I asked if he was "THE John Golding who had smashed the left on the NEC" and he said, "I thought everyone at HQ had forgotten about me."

And then there are the entry-level hacks that link to (and ape) people like the above three. Rather pathetic student age saddos joining Facebook groups like the ‘Herbert Morrison Memorial Society’ (created by Akehurst).

Even more stomach churning is the networking in groups like ‘I'm going to Labour Party Annual Conference - Bournemouth, Sept07’ (sample excerpt from a post in that group - ‘I've just ordered the Champagne, so there should be plenty to taste’) or ‘I’m going to a Labour Penal Colony in September of Year Zero’ as that group will one day be renamed.

And then just a click or two away from Dawber and the like you reach those who currently have some clout rather than just seeking such.

These include people like Colin Byrne (former Chief Press Officer for Labour, now UK CEO of major PR firm Weber Shandwick), Julia Hobsbawm Bamping, (CEO of ‘Editorial (Un) Intelligence’ and former business partner of our new ‘First Lady’), Margaret Hodge MP (one immigrant who should have been refused entry), Matt Tee (former government health news spinner, now NHS Direct CE. Will the NHS ever learn that they need those from outside their senior ranks to critically evaluate their peers - or else more like the NPSA - and they shouldn’t use PR people to actually run things?) and more - Jon Snow, Nick Cohen, Mark Borkowski, etc. Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight journalist, is apparently friends with Hazel Blears. Hmm. I remember…well, maybe it’s for work.

Networking - Facebook style

I didn’t quite realise just how much the above types would reveal to the rest of us in both their actions and their conversations that they record in their Facebook pages (although I suppose they could be showing off).

They’re not yet astute enough to hide their lists of friends and the conversations between them all - so you can still read Julia Hobsbawm Bamping saying, in true ‘Nathan Barley’ style, that she was off to Aldeburgh (favourite seaside resort for Londonistas) and she thinks that 'Maggie Hambling 'scallop' on the beach (there) is fab'.

There’s no particular reason to think that communist revolution would break out first in Britain. But when it does, we clearly need to secure both the movable assets and the moving and shaking asses before they both try and flee the country to any remaining oases of capitalism. Clearly having minor members of the establishment writing whether they are currently at Aldeburgh or at Glyndebourne or in Grasse will be helpful when we need to round them up in mobile execution buses. Let’s just hope the Facebook (or similar) trend catches on and more significant people, like FTSE100 company directors, also keep us up to date on their movements.

All that glitters...

Many, particularly those who are younger, appear to often use Facebook in a light-hearted way - to both be boastful and to mock others. But New Labour linked commentator Mary-Ann Sieghart is approaching Facebook in a very serious manner. Sieghart has a small list of Facebook friends - mainly colleagues and family. Our Mary-Ann tells us that she’s about to spend ‘a month in the country’ and she recently used Facebook to arrange a meet up with Julia Hobsbawm Bamping in Aldeburgh.

But I think Sieghart, whose self-regard and intelligence is the butt of many a joke in Private Eye, may have become a bit befuddled in Facebook land.

Last week she had a good networking day. At 10.33 on 30 July she and Margaret Hodge MP became friends. And then at 12.19, on the same day, she and David Cameron MP did the same.

There have been claims that some people on Facebook, such as the ‘David Miliband’ there, may not be who they purport to be. I do like the idea that possibly some of those players send private messages to Miliband - doubtless expressing their continuing support for him and the Blairite project - and could instead unknowingly be communicating with a sixteen-year-old Sunderland school student or the like.

I think Sieghart should consider whether the Jeremy Paxman, with whom she is a Facebook friend, is the genuine article? Is Paxo likely to be Facebook friends with Linford Christie, Ronnie Corbett and some young woman who claims to have hooked up with him?

If I were in Sieghart’s position, I’d also want to be ‘friends’ with David Cameron. If the Tories should win the new election then there’ll be no end of media types who will either bury or claim as grossly exaggerated any reports that they previously had any links to Labour.

But Facebook users need to use their wits and be in contact with the real David Cameron.

The large bulk of the friends that the ‘David Cameron’ to which Sieghart is linked appear to be university students; well, apart from Noel Gallagher. I saw next to nobody in ‘David Cameron’s’ list who was over 30. (since I posted this article 'David Cameron' has hidden his list of friends and thus hidden his/her clearly bogus nature).

Now of course, his friends may be the new Shadow Cabinet. If you’re going to have a Labour supporting businessman as a Tory parliamentary candidate, why not just appoint your shadow ministers based on what they are currently studying.

But I’m sure it’s not the real David Cameron.

Oh, and I’m sure that it's the real Mary-Ann Sieghart; well, as sure as one can be in a virtual world. I followed links into her from people who it wouldn’t be worth impersonating. But I suppose it’s possible that it’s all but a conspiracy of lies and one guy in South Dakota with a very large computer has manufactured all the names and all the conversations on Facebook.

Wannabe friends?

I’ve also been thinking that Facebook is - if you want to get on - a lot more democratic than joining the Groucho Club or the Carlton Club. Never mind being a lot more affordable. It looks as though we can all join in as one big happy family.

It’s not as though I don’t already interact with the notable.

I once espied Boris Johnson on his bike, and was going to say ‘hello’, but didn’t have the presence of mind (or nearby supply of throwable stuff) that made coming across some Tories campaigning on the back of a flat bed lorry such a fun experience for me, and for a few other passers-by, a long time ago.

I remember Sieghart herself once asking me, 'Is this the smoking carriage?' when she got on my train at Peterborough and then, as I had hoped, tutting and walking off to the next carriage after I falsely told her that it was.

I was busy and was worried I may be distracted by feeling the need to make some tart comments to her if she sat nearby, as I once felt obliged to direct abuse towards war apologist Christopher Hitchens as he smiled at me as we passed on Chowringhee Road, next to Kolkata’s Grand Hotel.

(I had a girlfriend who would either hold onto me very tightly and close her eyes, or preferably scarper, when she saw me notice the likes of David Owen or Rodney Bickerstaffe or Claire Short walking down the road towards us. She knew I was going to say something unpleasant to them.

Which was all rather hypocritical of her. Every time she saw someone wearing fur she would approach them and stridently complain. She did this wherever we were - including during a service in Southwark Cathedral - and she would either get back looks of puzzled apprehension from bewildered Russian women or else have some feisty woman scream at her ‘It’s fake fur, you stupid cow.’

As a vegan, she’d also lecture me about my cruel diet - both before and after I found a Mars Bars hidden in her clothing for her to secretly eat later.)

Well, anyway, I suspect my brushes with some of the movers and shakers are somewhat more substantive than those of some who have become their 'friends' on Facebook. If only it were credible, I’d create a fake Gordon Brown on Facebook. If I did, I wonder how many oleaginous networkers would soon be in touch? Shall I see if David wants to become my friend?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bang bang

When Jean Charles de Menezes was forced down on the floor of a tube train and coldly executed by a police killer who put several bullets into the Brazilian's head, I wrote a parody of what would happen with this case over the next two years. I based my guesses about the future course of events upon what happened in other recent police killings, such as their gunning down of Harry Stanley.

I don’t now recall all the details in my list but my predicted course of events included coroners instructing juries to return police acceptable verdicts; high court reviews collapsing into farce; disappearing CCTV footage; suspicious fires that destroy police notebooks and other evidence; cops silencing their critics with threats of legal action and Queens Police Medals for Gallantry all round.

To be fair, I’m not yet aware of any medals having been handed out.

Now, and as no surprise to anyone, the malicious lies told by the cops about how they killed de Menezes are all but forgotten with the announcement last week of the result of an Inquiry into police actions that was undertaken by the ludicrously named ‘Independent’ Police Complaints Committee.

The suspicious bulky jacket that the cops said he wore (he didn’t), his jumping over the ticket barrier that they said he did (he didn’t), the warnings that they gave him (they said nothing) have all been wiped from the record along with the rail union claim that the cops pulled a gun on the tube train driver and the tube station staff claim that CCTV footage was removed from the station by the cops - and then subsequently ‘lost’.

Paul Page

Over at Editorial Photographers UK (EPUK) there’s yet more news about our bobbies with bullets.

Police officer Paul Page was charged with possessing a pistol with intent to cause fear, dangerous driving, false imprisonment and possessing a prohibited weapon following an incident last year, but was cleared of all these charges after telling the court that he thought the person he pulled a gun on, was a hitman.

"The court was told that during a high-speed chase he rammed a photographer’s car with his own to get it to stop before forcing Sun freelance Scott Hornby out of his car at gunpoint. Page then put Hornby face down on the ground until a police armed response unit arrived on the scene."

"At the time Hornby had not been told why he had been sent to stake out Page’s house on November 21st last year, which was in connection with a Sun investigation into alleged failed property venture. Police colleagues of Page were believed to have lost £1.3m in the venture."

As EPUK comment "Chasing a photographer, ramming his car repeatedly until he stops, forcing him out of the car at gunpoint...and walking free from court on all charges. What does a cop have to do to get convicted these days?"

The British state swims boldly along as a mainstream liberal democracy. There’s no reason to think that it’s set on branching off to less calmer waters anytime soon. But there are a few groups within, dragging their hands Cro-Magnum Man style, that dip more than a knuckle into the adjoining stream of fascism - the cops being prominent amongst them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No photos

And in further news from the world of photography, I see reported in the British Journal of Photography that the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) is trying to make sure that independent reporting, or at least that of the photographic kind, never gets to see the light in relation to the construction of the 2012 London Olympics site.

Magnum Photos have refused to tender for an ODA contract to photograph the site's construction. Magnum point out clauses that insist that the ODA be handed "all image rights ... and associated copyright"; a 'gagging clause', that insists that bidders refrain from doing anything "which would have an adverse effect on or embarrass any games body or any official sponsor of the Games" and another clause that would mean the ODA could "edit, alter, adapt, modify or deal with the work in any manner in which we see fit".

An ODA spokesman added that it is confident that it will find a photographer happy to sign to its terms.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The screw turns further

Despite reporting recently on the British state’s vicious offensive against Islamists and free speech, I let pass by the recent convictions of five more Islamists who were sent down for apparently no more than youthful bravado and dreaming because of my wish to cover other subjects. But I hadn’t then seen the details of that case that have now been reported on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).

Aitzaz Zafar, Usman Malik and Awaab Iqbaal were each jailed for three years, Akbar Butt was jailed for 27 months and a school student, Mohammed Irfan Raja, was also convicted in the first example of a successful prosecution under the Terrorism Act 2000 for 'possessing material useful for terrorism'.

17-year-old Raja said he was planning to go and fight in Afghanistan but as WSWS report "no serious evidence that this was anything more than an adolescent fantasy is reported."

Raja was in contact with the other four, one of whom - Zafar - was asked why he had the video of a beheading? Zafar said that he had downloaded a zipped file containing more than 200 documents. "I never read all of them and in court they cherry-picked one document".

WSWS are right when the report that these are "police state measures - the jailing of these youths merely for downloading material readily available on the Internet."

In fact even some of the state’s apparatchiks appear to have slight twinges of doubt about the present jackboot course of the government.

The Royal Institute of International Affairs, or ‘Chatham House’ as it is known, is a think-tank specialising in working out foreign policies for Britain’s murderous imperialist rulers. This place is also the originator of the phrase ‘under Chatham House rules’ - a protocol of slimy duplicity that means ‘we’ll tell this interesting information to all you important people assembled here - but don’t tell anyone who told you.’

David Livingstone is an associate fellow in international security at Chatham House. He appeared as a witness - for the defence. He told the BBC Today programme that there was no evidence that the five had planned to instigate a terrorist attack.

I’m sorry I passed by on reporting this case. But not as sorry as I feel for those British ‘revolutionary socialists’ who never report on the British state's war against supporters of the resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan - be they reds or Islamists - but instead fill their pages with page after page denouncing the reactionary views of Islamists.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Christmas present problem solved

The one you've been waiting for.

‘Uppercuts - The Best of Southpawpunch’ (provisional title) will be published in November.

As well as the highlights from this column, my book will also feature exclusive original material.

More details to follow.