One
small slip for a man; one giant fall for a profession.
In
previous short Chapters (29
- Fake News; 30 - Clarke Lies and videotape; 31 - On Lies and
conspiracies; 33 - Jon Clarke Entrenched Lies )
I tried to unravel some of the extraordinary stories relating to the
reported disappearance of Madeleine Beth McCann put out by Jon Clarke
the disgraced journalist, editor and proprietor of “The Olive
Press”, a free tabloid newspaper and advertising sheet found at
supermarket-check-outs in southern Spain.
I
tried to unpick the way in which outright and provable lies were
printed, published on-line, and then, bizarrely, put into first-hand
reporting in the recent Netflix ‘documentary’.
I
showed how a whole series of Clarke’s lies was immediately revealed
by the contemporary video footage included in that same Netflix
production, and how anyone watching and thinking about what they were
seeing could identify the untruths and inventions and falsehoods he
was uttering direct to camera, sometimes as he was actually making
the mendacious statements.
As
each Chapter was finalised new evidence was uncovered and comments
from readers flooded in, drawing my attention to yet more aspects of
this totally unacceptable behaviour.
What
follows is a series of short essays to try to unravel still further
what many believe to be a web of deceit.
*************************
Jon
Clarke. The Olive Press
As
readers of his paper have realised, Clarke is very free with
invective and ad
hominem
abuse, Clarke and his paper love nothing more than identifying people
by name, occupation, age and place of residence. He purports
however to be protective of his own family. A long time ago his
children were named by a contributor in an on-line forum, and he
asked for the details to be removed. Very quickly they were.
It
is in fact easy to find full details of Clarke’s wife and of his
children by conducting a ‘google’
search. Even a cursory search will find a Daily Telegraph article –
now no longer available except by using the WayBack search engine –
where the meta-text, the précis and extracts which appear under the
headline, remains.
People
familiar with the system will know that by adding one of the terms
from the meta-text and then repeating the search a slightly different
result is obtained. After as few as five iterations of this type
the full names of all the family and details of their home can be
seen. The ages of his children are easy to calculate. [ As a
matter of common courtesy I shall not append the details here.]
Clarke
placed all this in the public domain himself, and yet complains when
others do it. He may of course have been paid for the article, and
that may have over-ridden his core objection.
During
our unproductive e-mail exchange in which I asked for a retraction of
the deliberate lies Clarke had told about me, and perhaps some sort
of correction and apology, he finished by making an extraordinary
statement about publishing details of my family.
It
may be that this was a vague threat of some sort, but it is slightly
confusing.
Given
that my brother was a Blue and twice an Olympic athlete, (Montreal
and Moscow, since you ask) then held a National position within the
NHS, and lives in a house of historical interest which can be found
on the internet; given that my niece holds a middle management
position in PR for the UK’s oldest and most famous wine merchant
and appears under her full name on the Company web-site; given that
my nephews both hold high profile positions one within the world of
finance, the other in on-line trading across the world, and that any
cursory ‘google’
search will find them all, as indeed it will find me, it is unclear
how giving out their details would disturb anyone.
Perhaps
the theme of ‘knowing
where someone lives’
is a powerful one.
Clarke
claimed to have been forced to leave the Costa del Sol some years ago
when his activities as an investigative journalist began to attract
unwanted attention from his targets. His claims to have sought
anonymity in a renovation project outside a small village in the
mountains of Andalucia are slightly at variance with his decision to
publicise the considerable renovation work in a major national
newspaper, and then to open the place as a high quality rural
retreat, advertised in all the usual places.
Read more here:
http://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2016/08/chapter-34-decline-and-fall-of-modern.html
Read more here:
http://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2016/08/chapter-34-decline-and-fall-of-modern.html