Learning from Private Eye #001: incumbency privilege of planning over 10 years, FT greenwash

Private Eye is a UK publication that doesn’t really have, to my knowledge, any exact replica elsewhere, at least in the English-speaking world (in France there’s La Canard Enchaine, and to a lesser extent Charlie Hebdo).

I didn’t buy it in 1988 – I wouldn’t have “got” it. By 1995 I was though, and have continued on and off ever since. It comes in three sections, sort of. In the first you’ve got news from the last two weeks – about the media, Westminster and Whitehall (Parliament and Civil Service), local government, etc. Then, after the letters page you have satire, parody, pastiche. And then “In the Back” you have detailed investigative journalism about all the various forms of cronyism and corruption running rampant. Those investigations, after a suitable break, often get picked up by the mainstream media, which lift the stories without saying where they got them.

It is both very funny/clever and very dark and stark. It’s historically not been so good on science, or, well, women, but if you read it with that in mind, you get a tolerably accurate version of what is going on. As I said, dark and stark.

So, I am thinking about a book (after I finish the one I am waaay overdue on) about the mechanisms of power, of incumbency. And so it occurs to me that some of that could be drafted as occasional blog posts about stuff that has popped up in Private Eye. We shall see.

For now, these two, from the last issue, caught my eye.

On the tobacco thing – what is particularly interesting, (not from a mundane ‘snouts in the trough’ but rather from a power perspective, is the insouciance with which the plotters can be assured that an eight year investment will be made, and pay off. I don’t know of any “dissident” groups that think like that (why would you, how could you?) Such are the privileges of sitting on piles and piles of money.

On the FT thing. Yes, the best propaganda doesn’t look like propaganda. The best propaganda is when you get your words said by unimpeachable sources. And so it goes.

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