Tuesday, 24 February 2015
BURIED BY THE MAINSTREAM
There you go Tone, your expose of my officially being an egotist is not getting much interest on your forum, so I will put it here
In a series of tweets last summer, I disagreed with Brenda Leyland about the Richard T. Hall, Buried by the Mainstream videos, her argument being that it was my ego that prevented me from backing and promoting this series of videos that claimed to expose the truth behind the Madeleine McCann mystery.
It wasn't. It was Richard's use of Tony Bennett's appalling and biased research that pointed the finger at the first arguido Robert Murat via the Smith family who saw a man carrying a child on the night Madeleine disappeared. The implication being that the Smith family were lying to protect their 'friend' Robert Murat. It has of course since been proved that Tony Bennett was in fact investigating the WRONG Smith family, ergo, Video 3 (iirc) of the 4 piece is a load of bollocks. Sorry Richard, but you should have checked.
Whilst there was a lot of good work within the videos, an error of that magnitude destroyed the rest. My sympathy lies with Richard, but I could not in all good conscience, promote the videos, because:
a) They were giving out the wrong information.
b) I consider individuals investigating (stalking) witnesses in a high profile criminal investigation to be fundamentally wrong on every level.
b) I consider publishing the findings of such stalking, ie, the personal, financial and confidential details of potential witnesses for the Crown, on a public message board, morally bankrupt, and if not criminal, then it should be.
c) I do not feign affection. That is, I will only praise that which genuinely impresses me and I'm afraid these videos didn't because I was niggled by the errors and they were far too long. If I say something is brilliant, when it isn't, then that will reflect on my own reputation.
It is appalling now to see Tony elevate Brenda Leyland to sainthood because she became a victim of this case. She wasn't. She was an ordinary woman, no different to most of us, but on occasion she went too far. That sadly, is probably one of the reasons she was selected as the 'example'. I was not a fan, but the only exchange I can recall with her, was our disagreement over the Mainstream videos. And incidentally, why hasn't Tony put my tweets alongside Brenda's? He is showing only half the conversation!
I am sure that if Brenda and I had got to know each other, we would have had much in common but such is the nature of social media, we are all but ships that pass in the night. I was shocked and appalled when Sky News pounced on Brenda, and I tweeted my support for her, because no-one deserved that.
I would be curious however to know Mr. Bennett's views in the aftermath of Sky News, that intervening period before Brenda was found dead. In fact, I would be interested to see the 'views' and 'tweets' of a number of antis at that time, because I had more than a taste of it myself following the Sun article.
For the critics, yes, tis boring having to rebut Mr. Bennett's allegations, and being called an egotist is one of the more amusing and less harmful among them. But it is sickening that he is using Brenda Leyland in this way and that he caused so much damage to the work of Richard T. Hall. If I were Richard, I would edit it to the bone and re-launch it as one video focussing on the truth and avoiding armchair theorists.