Common Purpose: why the paranoia?

I got sent some long rambling conspiraloonery spam with a written intro addressed to me about Common Purpose today. I was vaguely aware of Common Purpose because someone I know went on one of their courses; (she now works at a worthy human rights NGO).

Anyway, googling it I notice that it seems to have set the conspiraloonery community a-chuntering recently in a huge way, with pages and pages of dark warnings about its masonic/New World Order/Satanic etc etc influence, with it being decribed as a virus, a criminal organisation that abuses Government and all sorts.

On David Icke's forum they seem to be waging a war of attrition against what seems to be a harmless and well-meaning networking and leadership training programme.

Does anyone know what the beef is?

Set up by an ex big cheese in DEMOS - who advised tony balir loads - nuff said.

tbh - it gives me the willys.

And there, in a nutshell, you have the problem with conspiraloons.

You mean as in there isnt any, as usual?

It's all on that Common Purpose Exposed site, isn't it? (cpexposed.com)

There are loads and loads of sites going on about it. I demonstrated this in post one with the google link.

I'm interested as to why the sudden surge of interest in this organisation, when a) there are loads of similar ones that don't seem to stir up the same feelings and b) all the interest in them is relatively recent. I mean, there's always conspiracy websites going on about Freemasons, Bilderberg, etc etc but this CP stuff is a new one on me, and I can't really see the reason for the sudden antipathy towards it.

Wondered whether there was some backstory I was missing.

A loon came up with a particularly appealing detective story featuring these guys, and it took off from there?

I've posted about this before.

I seem to remember posting that I had worked for them, that I'd had access to all the CEO's emails, phone calls, meetings, etc, and had not particularly enjoyed the experience of working for them.

I then went on to point out that therefore if there was some conspiracy about Common Purpose, I would have been very happy to expose it. Unfortunately, there, er, isn't. Not at all. It's exactly what it appears to be - a slightly wanky New Labourish not-for-profit networking organisation that thinks it is far more important and influential than it actually is.

I invited the last conspiraloon who posted about Common Purpose to ask me anything he/she liked, as I had been On the Inside, so to speak. He/she never posted about it again, which was a shame.

The main reason why there is stupid conspiralunacy, I would say, is that the people who go on the courses and the people who work there make such a bloody big deal about how incredibly exclusive it is and you have to go on a course to really understand it, blah blah. This is bollocks. The most radical thing I ever saw someone do on a Common Purpose day was go round the town centre in a wheelchair to see what it is like for wheelchair users. That group came back with the incredible insight that it can be hard to be a wheelchair user who has to use public transport.

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=282243&highlight=Common Purpose

What I posted in the other thread before Badgers'...

My friend thought it was an okay training session but she'd been on better.

Missed the thread badgers, thanks for that

That Generation Infinity event is a bit though ... every adult has to bring along a young friend/relative of between 12 and 22.

Naaah, it's some youth outreach thing.

The fact that conspiraloons dislike something doesn't automatically make it a good thing.

Must be boring as hell for the 12 year olds - did you see the list of speakers

Just seems a bit Masonic to me.

The Masons are still going in their club.
This mob will still be going in their club.
The left will still be going in their club.

No biggy, I was just curious to see how well known it was. I think that I have only heard about them once in mainstream media which was around the time I started the thread. If I read 'Common Purpose' on a CV for a position I was recruiting then I would think wtf?

Slimy networking thing.

Don't like the way they seem to be targeting kids but the way they go about things I imagine they'll just come across as tragically uncool.

Yep, I can't really muster up any sympathy for the attention they're getting from the conspiracy theorists tbh.

I can kind of see where they're coming from, though.

It's hard to idly click round the CP website for long without a bit of nausea and a few involuntary shudders.

Ah yeah, totally. The way it's written is like an open invitation for the CTers. Oh, and NLP *pet hate*

So I guess we've more or less answered BK's question, then.

Looks like it

Ta

from the 'edge media' interview with Brian Gerrish;

an applicant from norwich was rejected by CP because they were (CP quote) 'too norwich'

i think it was norwich, might have been some other SE town.

It was Norwich.

Oh well, that is entirely reasonable. You can't have someone join your leadership from Norwich.

Was the applicant Alan Partridge, perchance?

if they are the lizards
the future is going to be even more depressing
rather than battling robots and alien lizards.
the future will be a tedious series of power-point presentations and some embarrassing role plays and ice breakers

the money could be spent on something useful like an attack helicopter

brian gerrish

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...StoHvZCMLgPNM91HA&sig2=buxBVefcd-Q9JZ_VG_qngg

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...JzFWgkNMnHM5X-qDw&sig2=SXZZyf7_32RrrYRVD-TeMg

brian gerrish is a loon