Influencers in Dubai, Letter, Maxwell and the City Gangsters

 ...The revelation that the influencers are relatively self-interested people seems to have shocked their followers, who've apparently been under the impression they've been hanging on the every brand endorsement of a troupe of Mahatma Gandhis.

In fact, I actively enjoy the fits of morality by people who would kill to be having a cocktail on a beach, but - failing that - would settle for threatening to kill the person who is having the cocktail on the beach. According to the influencers' long suffering agents, we have not yet flattened the curve of death threats currently being addressed to their clients...

I loved the fitness blogger who explained to This Morning that it was "essential travel" for her to fly to Dubai to film her exercise routines, particularly as far as her followers' mental health and inspiration was concerned...

It was an even greater amusement to me to learn that a Towie star had been sneakily posting old images of himself in coats and scarves in his Essex garden, while all the while his flesh self was actually in Dubai quietly enjoying the sunshine...

(Marina Hyde, The Guardian, 2021)

Why does anyone "follow" these influencers? Is it because the influencers are so concerned for our mental and physical health? Perhaps it's because they are experts in their field? Or perhaps it's the followers...

Mountain Sheep
Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803-1902)
Photo Credit: Rochdale Arts and Heritage Service [CC BY-NC]

*Celebrities have been ordered not to use photo filters to exaggerate the effectiveness of beauty products they promote after Instagram influencers were caught making their fake tans appear darker.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has upheld complaints against two British influencers who posted photos and videos purporting to show the impressive results of tanning lotions.

Their adverts have been banned and other influencers told not to deceive the public.

A Quack Selling Medicines 
unknown artist
Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain]

Elly Norris, who has 23,000 followers on Instagram, posted that she was "absolutely obsessed" with the Skinny Tan coconut water serum, describing it as "like no other fake tan I've ever put on".

The influencer Cinzia Baylis-Zullo shared a video with her 356,000 followers showing her applying Tamologist face and body drops.

"I go to sleep and wake up with a beautiful glow," she wrote...

(Matthew Moore, The Times, 2021)

Influencers deceiving the public - surely not.

(See Influencers, Jan 26, 2021)

Letter

An "influencer" is a social media virus that changes the way its hapless victims behave. It used to be spelled as "influenza" before it went online.

(Paul Johns, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, The Guardian, 2021)

Maxwell and the City Gangsters

Embrace
Hugh Gerard Byars (b. 1957)
Photo Credit:City of London Corporation [CC BY-NC]

...His 1980s resurrection, the purchase of the Daily Mirror and ascent to become the familiar of presidents and prime ministers commands awe and revulsion. How could so many clever and important people embrace a figure with such a record? The answer, of course, is that which applies today to the oligarchs who make the City of London notorious as the money-laundering capital of the world. A few years ago the US authorities almost removed HSBC's American banking licence because of its dealings with Mexican drug cartels. So fast rushes the torrent of dirty money that no British government dares to impede it by expelling the most conspicuous gangsters.

Maxwell was a smaller player but he profited from the same rules of the game. Everyone who dealt with him muttered behind the arras that he was a crook, yet sniggered as they said it. As long as his cheques seemed good, they drank his champagne and trafficked with his companies. No banker or auditor even noticed when he pillaged his company pension fund.

Maxwell wielded lawyers and Britain's iniquitous libel laws as cudgels with which to silence critics. Those who fought back, notably Tom Bower and Private Eye, deserve memorial applause for their courage and persistence in crying from the rooftops that the "Bouncing Czech" was just that...

Today I read John Preston's book [Fall] with admiration. Yet I feel no animus towards Maxwell, nor even his ghastly family. Like Trollope, I reserve my rage for those who empowered and indulged them, the City's big hitters, same today as yesterday. They have attended the best schools and belong to St James's Street clubs, but their ethics are those of Peaky Blinders.

(Max Hastings, The Times, 2021)

(See Bankers, Jan 8, 2021 and Dirty Money, Nov 24, 2020)