Archibald Pelago - The Rat Catcher

Newspaceman is otherwise engaged at present and has asked me, Archibald Pelago, to take over the blog for a few weeks; in the process of which I shall tell you a little more of myself and my indulgences.

As you may have guessed by the title I am a rat catcher to trade and always have been; always had a love hate relationship with the rodent since my grandad died of Weils disease (he caught it up the allotments) and his skin went all yellow and taut. Thus, I hate rats and I love killing them; although this means that I have a reasonable knowledge of their lifestyle - one must know the habits of one's quarry to be a good hunter - and somehow your normal host feels that some of my rodent knowledge may be both enlightening and valid to his usual topic - the birthing processes of a televisually mind controlled slave race with Prince William as global figurehead.

This week my attention has been drawn to top BBC financial reporter Robert Peston, who is omnipresent on the television news at the moment; obviously really, given the seemingly precarious state of the global economy.







Yet, although Peston is a journalist and should be reporting the news, some say that he is in fact engineering it on a massive scale , certainly employees of the Northern Rock were of that opinion a year ago when his news-exclusive began the rush on the now state controlled bank, and this week once again he seems dogged with accusations of "insider knowledge" and market manipulation, the finger pointing this time regarding Halifax Bank of Scotland, or HBOS, who have just merged with another leading UK financial institution, Lloyds TSB.

Certainly he does seem to have high place contacts and one is somehow drawn to perhaps the highest placed of all - for Robert wrote a biography of now Prime Minister, then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, which was published in January 1995. We read further from his wikipedia entry:














The fly cover of the book describes how "Peston was given unprecedented access to Gordon Brown and his friends and colleagues". Telling Brown's side of the Blair/Brown power struggle, it is believed that Peston has used the relationship then built up with Brown for many of his later financial news story "scoops" at the BBC.

Furthermore:

In 2007, Peston's scoop on Northern Rock seeking emergency financial help from the Bank of England won the Royal Television Society's Television Journalism Award for Scoop of the Year and the Wincott Award for Business News/Current Affairs Programme of the Year. He was Journalist of the Year in the Business Journalism of the Year Awards for 2007/8, and also won in the Scoop category.

Thu if Gordon Brown supplied the Northern Rock scoop, then surely it was him who set out to cause Northern Rock to collapse, using Robert Peston (whether known to him or not) as the catalyst.

The "state" is taking over, or as Peston himself has both noted and titled in one of his blog articles this week:

A New World Order is being created.




Peston's wikipedia photograph, resonating Bond, note the HMS - Her Majesty's Service - it tells all.





cheers