Death of Local Journalism, (a)Moral Money, & Systemic Institutional Abuse

Commercial Councils

Businesses want to make money. I get that. They have a duty to their shareholders. To maximise shareholder returns. It’s part of company law.

When Sir Christopher Chope (he of upskirting fame) became the leader of Wandsworth, one of London’s Flagship Tory Councils, in the late seventies, he outsourced the collecting of the rubbish.

Not long after, he sold off council-owned properties to developers and to residents.

Young people in Wandsworth’s children’s homes were moved out to Kent and elsewhere.

Some were drugged and raped, and used as guinea pigs for Big Pharma.

Much of this was reported on in the papers, tv and even spoken about in Parliament.

But it carried on.

The Purse

Capita, meanwhile, were formed and grew into a global government outsourcing firm. G4S, SERCO & Atos have also got into the government contract business.

These are all private, publicly quoted, companies.

With shareholders and a duty to maximise profit and returns.

That is their stated duty.

So while certain journalists, particularly one at the FT, start talking about purpose as opposed to profit, one has to ask if they’ve gone native, or whether they mean what they are saying.

The Moral Bank Account

The FT’s Gillian Tett, for whom I have always had time, has started a new section of the FT called Moral Money.

Though I haven’t delved deep into it, on first glance, the people operating in it were unregulated asset-stripping, venture capitalist, private equity, buy-out people who were essentially hedge fund, vulture fund, disaster capitalists styling themselves as people who suddenly cared.

The whole thing seem to be a marketing scam for that other new buzzword “impact investing”.

I couldn’t believe Ms Tett was lending them her time, platform, trust and all round credibility.

But I refrained from emailing her.

Just.

Here it is: https://www.ft.com/moral-money

For Firefox users, click here: to bypass paywalls

a(M)oral Money

Money is fungible >>> My money is as good as yours!

But the FT are suddenly talking up ESG

Times must be tough. Did Gillian Tett and Editor Lionel Barber convince their bosses at Nikkei that this would fly?

A nice Green market to tap into?

Green Bonds. To save the rainforest. Seeing as the other bonds are making their money from deforestation. A contrarian play.

Frontier investing.

The Hedge Fund money at Extinction Rebellion doesn’t just pay attention.

The pump and dump school of ecological & political marketing.

From Clickbait to Jailbait

Starring Gail Bradbrook, Carrie Symonds, and co-starring Roger Hallam & Boris Johnson.

Increasingly hard to tell them apart.

Except the types of activist Boris usually hangs around with are of the Oligarch variety, Crispin Odey, Evgeny Lebedev, even Mandelson, Blair and Osborne have far more in common with Johnson — hang on a second..

Equal Ops depopulation to facilitate austerity on steroids and no-one will clock?

Psychologically Eugenicising the youth by conditioning them to perpetuate cycles of conflict over ever diminishing availability of opportunity.

And let the few bits of political attention they have left be distracted by no-platforming and non-binary micro-aggressions.

This is what FT, EU, BBC, the Tory Party, Lib Dems, Greens, Extinction Rebellion and significant Labour Party operatives still offer.

And where does it go?

Given the revolution in Local Government started by Sir Christopher Chope and pushed through in Bradford and from Central Government by his Financial Terrorist chums Eric Pickles, George Osborne, & Sajid Javid, one might have thought there would have been a plethora of stories coming out from all over the UK on this stuff.

But there hasn’t.

The death of local journalism and the rise of property-obsessed Commercial Council PR operations means you are now more likely to get a report on the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza than see anything on the various forms of torture and abuse that the London Borough of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea systematically inflict on all too many of their residents on a daily basis right here in London.

It’s the psychopathic business model.

No Guilt, No Shame. No Self-Respect. No respect for others’ dignity.

Just business. Pound signs. The bottom line.

If you involve agency staff to run essential services then their mentality will take over. Which is one of economic survival and not public service.

Yes that’s right, we’re talking Systemic Institutional Safeguarding Abuse.

I’ve started asking some questions – and the picture I am receiving is not good.

More in depth analysis to come.

These scribblings were sparked by my reaction to the following piece by Jim Waterson. I suspect I disagree with Mr Waterson’s politics but he’s been very helpful when I’ve interacted with him, does great reports (for the Guardian) and is good on TV.

There is such a thing in the UK as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who do do some great work. But the money behind them is not Moral Money and the staff are mainly made up of pre-institutionalised journalists who have been recruited from the mainstream media. They’re prone to stealing ideas, recruit in their own mould and lack diversity to such an extent as would make even Steve Bannon cringe.

Gary Webb

After Gary Webb uncovered the Iran Contra scandal in which the CIA were dealing crack in LA. He got back on with what he knew best — Local Journalism.

Check how Reuters reported his death in the New York Times:

There is no mention of Webb’s work on the no-bid Oracle contract with the state of California.

I found this piece which cites Webb’s influence on Hip Hop culture.

He told us when you know something bad is happening it probably is, and both you and the government are somehow involved.

They say it was suicide and they also say it was two bullets to the head.

What’s with the Second Bullet?

A message to us all.