Bartholomew's Notes

Back in 2009, the Canadian website Religious Right Watch profiled a conservative Anglican organisation called the “Cranmer Foundation”:

…It ran into a spot of difficulty after setting up in January under the name “Canadian Anglican Foundation” (CAF) – which obviously bore more than a passing resemblance to the existing, official foundation of the Canadian church, the Anglican Foundation of Canada (AFC).

The organization tangled with the Anglican Church of Canada almost immediately by registering as a domain name “anglicanfoundation.ca”. Either this was a pesky attempt at cyber-squatting or an attempt to beat the official Foundation to the domain name; either way, the AFC attacked the CAF and retained legal counsel.

…Oddly enough, there’s only a single publicly identifiable figure behind the new Foundation – director and communications officer Mike Daley.

…Now, Daley is a notorious and self-pronounced “shit-disturber” on the Canadian Anglican right, who’s previously been behind projects like CaNNet (see the story of that particular site, in his own words, here)… Daley has been caught before registering domain names that seem, well, intended to cause confusion – i.e. cybersquatting. In advance of the General Synod of 2004, his allies in CaNNet created a website called “gs2004.classicalanglican.com,” providing an anti-gay marriage counterweight to the official site at “gs2004.anglican.ca.”

Religious Right Watch also notes several other websites associated with Daley, and someone has added a comment:

All of the sites are down. Michael Gordon Bracci, his real name moved to England.

Two years later, The Blog that Peter Wrote has a follow-up:

Lord Credo (@lord_credo)  is well known to those interested in politics on Twitter.  He described himself as “a government Tory communications guy” on his profile; now he says he’s a “former govt comms guy”.

…I had huge doubts Credo could possibly be who he said he was quite early on.  Many of us did; how could anyone be tweeting as much as he did in a job so high level, and be so indiscreet about government goings on.  However, we met and he seemed genuine. Very likeable in fact. 

…Whilst Mike was enjoying the free hospitality of another friend, he’d carelessly left his passport lying around.  His name wasn’t Mike Paterson – it was in fact Michael Gordon Bracci.

It turns out that “Lord Credo” has no links with anyone connected to the British government:

He’s a confidence trickster, he’s pulled the wool over the eyes of many people and he’s been left to do it by the actual Downing Street communications team.

…He’s taken hospitality and money from friends of mine.  According to his passport he has no residency or work permit to be in this country.  He has weaseled his way in to a group of people – including gays and lesbians – even though he is a traditionalist Christian and has worked to back Church homophobia.

…His motivation? Well he is clearly a fantasist and quite probably not at all well from a mental perspective.

Various personal details that “Paterson” gave to the author show he is definitely the same person as the Canadian Anglican Bracci/Daley, although these details were distorted –  information about his “late wife”, who had supposedly committed suicide in Sydney, fitted with a wife who is very much alive and living in the USA.

As well as boasting about bogus political links, “Lord Credo” recently claimed to have been diagnosed with a brain tumour and to have suffered a family bereavement – gaining sympathy and extra followers after each announcement on Twitter. Following his exposure, he posted an apology and has now deleted his feed.

I became aware of “Lord Credo” a few months ago, when he offered to bring complaints by Tim Ireland about Nadine Dorries’ conduct and its consequences to the attention of Cameron’s office. Tim agreed to send him documentation in return for proof of delivery, at which point “Lord Credo” became hostile and jumped on the smear-against-Tim bandwagon (a bandwagon which more than one cyber-thug has found it convenient to join).

Bracci’s pitiable story is wearily and distastefully familiar: a fantasist using the internet to construct a bogus grandiose identity (and perhaps self-image), which is then used to manipulate others.

(H/T @bloggerheads)

(Slightly expanded)

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