ROB AGER RESPONDS TO MEDIA SMEAR ATTACK BY SIMON BOYLE OF MERCURY PRESS AND GUY PATRICK OF THE SUN
Update Feb 15th 2011: My short film The Victim, claimed as a supposed "S&M" film by tabloid "journalist" Simon Boyle of Mercury Press, was this weekend shown at the Threshold arts festival at the Novas centre in Liverpool. The screening took place in the same building where Mercury Press rent their office. According to Leane Durr of Mercury Press the festival featured "bands, dancers, exhibitions, flash mobs, photography, theatre, galleries and games, by a feast of performers and artists who are the best of the North West." It seems the festival organisers viewed my film very differently to Simon Boyle.
Update 21st Dec 2010: The Telegraph and The Sun have now removed their articles thanks to written mediation facilitated by the Press Complaints Commission. Mercury Press don't fall under the remit of the Press Complaints Commission because they're not members.
Full story
Simon Boyle of Mercurypress in Liverpool (an online news website) and Guy Patrick of The Sun (that shining tabloid pillar of intelligent news content and soft pornography, still remembered in Liverpool for their coverage of the Hillsborough disaster) launched a media smear attack article against myself and this website in April 2010. Their attack was basically pre-election mudslinging, conducted by two dishonest and politically motivated "journalists", probably with links to the Labour party and / or European Union. Before I go about the task of revealing the lies, manipulations and deceipt of these two "journalists" I will first offer some background as to how the smear attack began.
In late 2009 I joined the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a civic nationalist party, to assist their Liverpool branch in gaining support and to further the British public's opposition to the highly corrupt European Union. A chairman was needed for the branch to facilitate local meetings. I agreed to this role, secured meeting venues and chaired approx 5 meetings without being the central decision maker. My role was voluntary and I have never been a candidate or a policy maker. During this period I produced and posted several short videos for the branch including Positive Discrimination at the National Union of Journalists and UKIPwatch exposed.
The latter video is the primary motivation behind the smear attack, illustrated by the fact that The Sun's article featured a still image of me taken from the same video. The video revealed that the anonymous smear attack website www.ukipwatch.org is run from Brussels by Jo Wood of the Labour party. In January of 2010 I had sent the video link to a UKIP MEP in the EU parliament. It has since been confirmed to me by another MEP that the video was consequentially viewed by many MEPs and it seems the Labour party (then in power and facing a massive decline in popularity) may have been somewhat embarrased by the revelation.
I also have information from sources in Liverpool that the smear attack against me and this website had been planned over a period of several months and that The Sun had hired Mercury Press for the task. Other material of my own that are not UKIP related, but may have contributed to the political motive of the smear attack, included Choose Your News (a one hour video about media monopolization in Britain) and New Labour New Fascism New Racism (a detailed article outlining the corrupt and undemocratic nature of the EU and the Labour party's commitment to the EU).
On 2nd of March 2010 I received a seemingly polite introductory email from Simon Boyle of MercuryPress regarding the Liverpool branch, requesting "info and pictures". On 1st of April 2010 (interesting timing) journalist Guy Patrick, on behalf of The Sun newspaper, contacted UKIP and enquired about the content of my fiction films, apparently claiming that they were "S&M porn" and falsely claiming that I'd been posting UKIP tags on the end of them. UKIP's press officer Bridgett Rowe consequentially over-reacted and announced my suspension without viewing the films and without contacting me. The next day Guy Patrick phoned me personally, asking about the films, but also asked me to comment on being removed from the chairman position of the Liverpool UKIP branch, which had only happened as a result of his own maliscious allegation against me. Basically Bridgett's knee-jerk response gave Boyle and Patrick the green light to run their articles. Several weeks before they'd tried the same with UKIP's Northwest regional chairman, Fred McGlade, but Fred saw through it.
Simon Boyle of Mercury Press - a "journalist" whose articles for the tabloid Daily Mirror
include photos of celebrities in bikinis taken covertly. Other genius reporting include these items:
Penelope Cruz looks bored at LA Lakers basketball game
Abbey Clancy strips off in racy photoshoot - pictures
Cheryl Cole’s a star in studs as Elle magazine cover girl - picture
It is tempting to conclude that, like some sexual stalker,
Boyle appears to have a fixation on women way out of his league.
An associate of Simon Boyle's was good enough to direct me to his photo.
The eventual publication of the smear attack contains so many over-the-top lies and distortions of information that I'm almost tempted to believe Boyle and Patrick sabotaged the story deliberately. I could have done a better job myself. Unfortunately, it's more a demonstration of how career "journalists" are willing to distribute disinformation about individuals and political parties to please politically motivated editors and media tycoon bosses.
Below I have pasted a copy of the (Simon Boyle) Mercury Press article, including factual corrections, as it contains more details and covers all the same points as The Sun article did. Simon Boyle's text is in yellow and my corrections and comments are in black (each referring to the yellow text immediately above it).
The article title is: UKIP Liverpool chief suspended in sex video probe
The UK Independence Party has suspended its Liverpool branch chairman after it emerged that he markets sadomasochism videos.
The films he mentions are fiction drama that explore psychological aspects of human violence and sexuality, and their content is very non-sensationalist compared to commercially available horror films such as Seven, Hellraiser and the Saw series. Other popular commercially available films such as Silence of the Lambs have explored such controversial subject matter and received critical praise. In addition I have shot many other films that explore entirely different and non-violent subjects.
Simon's opening statement also attempts to imply guilt on my part. UKIP temporarily suspended my position to give them a chance to investigate the smear allegations. I was later reinstated by UKIP chairman Paul Nuttal. At present I'm not officially a member of UKIP, though I still support the party. One of my reasons for this is that I was invited on a BBC radio show last year to discuss an entirely different topic, but wasn't allowed due to my being a member of a political party. I don't intend for UKIP to be my only media communication option.
Self-employed Robert Ager was removed from his post by the national leaders of the right-wing party when they learned how he shows women being tortured and humiliated his home made flicks.
Here the political agenda of smearing UKIP is revealed. UKIP is a non-racist party seeking UK withdrawal from the EU. Only one of my many films, The Victim (35 min fiction drama), features a scene of a woman being tortured and it is a brief scene in which the violence is only implied - it occurs off screen. But the wording chosen by Simon Boyle intentionally implies real torture.
Mr Ager, 35, stars-in and directs a series of raunchy flicks, featuring scenes of bondage, incarceration and flagellation that he sells via his web site.
Simon even gets my age wrong in the above sentence. The films are not raunchy. Nudity is kept to a minimum. Violence is off screen. One of those films, The Sex Game, has received over 100,000 viewings on Youtube (a site that does not allow pornography to be posted) with hardly any complaint regarding its content. Feel free to watch the film and judge for yourself.
Many of the films show Mr Ager, wearing monster masks and ghoulish costumes, while whipping women who are bound and gagged.
This is an outright lie. My recent horror film, now in post production, is the only film I have made that features "monster masks" and there are no "bound and gagged" women in the film.
Before [arty (sic) chiefs learned of his enterprise he had also posted official UKIP promotional messages on the same web site and in the credits of S+M videos.
The above sentence is a lie. I have never posted UKIP promotional credits on any of my fiction films and I have not made S&M films. However I have expressed support for UKIP in some of my political documentary videos / articles. The only ones that contained UKIP tags were those posted on the UKIPliverpool youtube channel.
Mr Ager, who has been chairman of UKIP Liverpool for 12 months, posted the videos on his website which also promotes his work as an "educational psychologist".
Again, Simon Boyle gets his facts wrong. I joined UKIP in late 2009 (not 12 months in advance of his article). I have also not described myself as an "educational psychologist". Simon has placed in quotes a term that he wrote himself. That's extremely poor journalism.
Ager says on the web site that he aims to "Help people develop their knowledge, creative, and perceptual abilities and philosophical outlook".
At last Simon provides an accurate statement. By comparison I put this question to Boyle and Patrick "What is your motive as a journalist? Is it to inform or disinform the public?"
It includes dozens of 'educational' videos and essays which can be downloaded or purchased on DVD, covering topics from 'Subliminal Messaging in Advertising' to 'Preparing for the Challenges of Globalization'.
A second accurate statement. Well done Simon.
Mr Ager, who claims to be a member of top IQ club MENSA, reports that his website receives 20,000 visitors each month.
I don't claim to be a member of MENSA, I explain in the FAQ of my site that I was a member of MENSA many years ago. The website traffic is now closer to 50,000 visits a month.
Despite his interest in education, Mr Ager proclaims that he has no formal qualifications, but says his expertise is the result of "a lifelong fascination with psychology and philosophy related disciplines - such as Gestalt therapy, marketing psychology, military psychology and Buddhism."
He adds: "My experiences of these disciplines haven't just been theoretical. For over 12 years I’ve worked with children, the mentally ill, homeless people and ex-offenders.
"This helped me find out first hand how the various psychological theories bare up (sic) to the test of real life.
"As a result of all these experiences I wrote a book detailing a model of self-therapy, which I call Collative Learning Systems."
With the above it appears that Simon Boyle is trying to give the impression of himself being a non-biased journalist by citing balanced information and real quotes, but ...
Alongside his 'educational' material, Mr Ager posts copies of his graphic horror-sex films.
The only horror film of mine is the one I am currently editing, Turn In Your Grave, which has its own website and is not sexual in content. The site Boyle refers to (the one you're now visiting) is divided into different sections, with my fiction films being posted seperately from my educational films / articles.
In one movie, the half-hour long "The Sex Game", a half-naked man is chained to the wall of a Liverpool house, while being subjected to abuse and whippings.
The man receives two (fictional) whip lashes, both off screen, in a 21 minute surrealist drama film set in a dream-like fictional brothel setting. Watch the film for yourself. It is very tame, yet the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale featured sexual torture of the main character and received a mere 12A cetificate. Here is The Sun's coverage of Casino Royale. The author relishes the sexual torture scene: "Bond’s Thunderballs get so gruesomely whacked that every man in the audience will feel his pain long after getting home." And here is Mercury Press' coverage: again there is no complaint about the sexual torture scene in a 12A certificate film. The difference is that the makers of Casino Royale did not chair a branch of UKIP several years later or post embarrasing revelations about the Labour party, the EU and the National Union of Journalists.
When not shooting his own horror home-movies, Mr Ager devotes a good deal of his time to writing bizarre sexual-laden reviews of banned and unsavoury horror films.
All of the films I've reviewed are commercially available in Britain. I write reviews of films from all genres and I only discuss sexual themes when the films contain such material. They are very well received, some having had over 100,000 viewings on Youtube.
Much of the content, which also features on his website, is highly controversial, and include one review which describes Jesus Christ as a child molester.
Notice that Boyle doesn't mention the name of the film review. Why? Because none of my reviews make any such claim. This isn't an innocent mistake by a well meaning journalist. It is a deliberate and maliscious lie. Shortly after I posted an early version of this response the sentence was removed from the article, but not before I documented legal proof of it.
A UKIP spokeswoman said: "As a result of the evidence that has been supplied to us about Mr Ager, he has been suspended as the Chair of the UKIP Liverpool Branch.
"There will be a thorough inquiry into the matter."
Mr Ager said: "I have been asked to step down. I've never been involved in a political party, so the whole game is pretty new to me.
"The film called 'The Sex Game' is a fictional film which has been shown at small film festivals. It's not a porn film - I don't think it's particularly offensive.
"There's a lot of horror films out there and my material is pretty tame. I put a lot of intelligent material into the scripts."
The above quotes were actually given to Guy Patrick of The Sun, yet they first appeared in Simon Boyle's article - that's further evidence of a collaborative smear attack between these two "journalists".
Notice that at no point in his article does Simon Boyle mention the name of my website www.collativelearning.com. To do so would enable readers to check the site for themselves and thus discover the evidence contradicting his allegations.
When reading future smear attacks, be they against UKIP or any other party, keep in mind the really important issues affecting our country, including:
the illegality of the Iraq war
over-population of the UK
unbalanced immigration
7.8% unemployment
the detrimental costs of EU membership
"political correctness" as an assault on freedom of speech
no referendum on EU membership
You may frequently find that those being smear attacked have been publicly bringing attention to these issues.