The Official Newscorp/UK end of season finale/Rebekah Brooks did 9/11 thread

Surely you mean, "I'm tho thcared."

Probably bad fact-checking rather than a deliberate attempt to lie. There's a suggestion that she picked the idea up from the Guido Fawkes blog and didn't bother to verify whether it was true. Watching her fail to admit that is amazing, though.

It's an extraordinary performance - defensive to the point of being genuinely childish. She appears to be wearing a Metallica lanyard so one bonus point for that though.

any reports on the outcome of the 1922 committee meeting yet?

i was disappointed to hear about their show of support for him at the start; i'd think that, even with how close it's got to him, the trigger for a putative cameron departure would still have to come from losing the confidence of his own party. i'd thought being summoned to 1922 was an indication of this.

Private Eye suggesting that the provenance of the Sunday Mirror's scoops on Rio Ferdinand and Angus Deayton around the same time may also be dodgy. Richard Wallace was involved and now edits the Mirror, with the Eye banging the drum for him to be summoned to give evidence given Piers' evasiveness

Interested to see who the first non-News International guys to get outed in this will be . If there's a god up there there's surely gotta be tidal wave of shit heading for the Mail at some point

xp I don't think he was summoned - it was already arranged. Also, Bagshawe is Bunty.

Yeah, think Mensch told Jon's No it was a regular thing that had been postponed because of the various goings on?

She appears to be wearing a Metallica lanyard so one bonus point for that though.

She married Metallica/Chili Peppers manager Peter Mensch a couple of weeks ago - was chick lit "author" Louise Bagshawe until then

I can't see Cameron resigning or the party moving against him unless he has been careless and hard evidence comes out that he was involved more directly than we know. It may weaken his position given the serious lack of judgement in hiring Coulson and cavorting with Wade. Barring something spectacular it usually takes more than one bit of mud to take down a political leader.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/20/andy-coulson-security-clearance-checks

Hmmm:

In the latest development in the phone hacking scandal, Rupert Murdoch’s company agreed to release details of its dealings with Harbottle & Lewis, the lawyers who for four years held company emails containing details of wrongdoing at the Sunday tabloid. Documents held by Harbottle & Lewis, who act for the Royal family, have been described as the “smoking gun” that could prove that senior figures in Mr Murdoch’s empire were aware of hacking but tried to cover it up.
Despite protests from MPs and pressure from the law firm, News International had refused to release Harbottle & Lewis from legal obligations of confidentiality, meaning that the lawyers could not co-operate fully with police and parliamentary inquiries.
Last night the company relented and said it would allow the lawyers to disclose at least some of the information they hold to detectives and MPs. While the move could help to solve the mystery of the company’s response to the scandal, it remained unclear how much information would be disclosed, and whether it would be put in the public domain.

I would be willing to bet that NI would not allow anything incriminating from being released in this manner, so anything less than a full release would simply be a continuation of the cover up with the object of appearing cooperative while withholding crucial evidence.

Sounds like the law firm felt pretty pissed off that the Murdochs were essentially dumping on them at the hearing, though.

so was murdoch acting deliberately contemptuous of the panel or is he just "not all there"? it was really hard to tell. he seemed to treat the committee as though he were multitasking--hardly devoting most of his mental resources to engaging with the questions or even the entire set of circumstances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMeYdSYCC7A

basically, yeah.

Ha I love that scene.

Barring something spectacular it usually takes more than one bit of mud to take down a political leader.

yeah - as it stands i don't think this will bring down cameron, but i do wonder what brooks and co have on him, and whether it'll get to a point where they reveal it.

where does louise mensch find the time to tweet so much, good god.

She's just killing time iirc.

i do wonder what brooks and co have on him, and whether it'll get to a point where they reveal it.

i liked it when she said coulson was hired on geo. osborne's advice. did she have to volunteer that information?

I wonder why nobody has mentioned Steve Hilton's name in connection with this clusterfuck... so far.

i think hilton on the whole really hates the osborne tendency, and it's osborne who is most keen on NI. otoh he was apparently at the pre-dowler summit the other weekend. idk.

Really feeling sorry for ilx user NI atm

@NeilInnes on Twitter:

Harbottle and Lewis were my lawyers when the Rutles "arrived". I was left with no copyright, no writing credit and no producers royalties.

the NI thing is limp, & shouldn't even be reported as cooperation if it's selective. like palin's e-mails.

Adam McLuhan
Louise Mensch = Cersei Lannister. #gameofthrones #phonehacking

Louise Mensch
@adammcluhan danaerys targarean and @maindepowr is the khal

I really want to contribute to this thread but am still hypnotised by the flan throwing loop. Esp. Mensch going 'O' and then looking over at the chair as if to check if it's ok to stand up, and then standing up, all in the blink of an eye.

And Sheridan not moving at all.

Sheridan's from Paisley, he's probably non-plussed by far worse forms of assault.

Meanwhile, in today's Times:

http://lockerz.com/s/122196367

what i love about the pie gif is that there are six mps around that table who do not react at all

that times cartoon is so o_0

can't believe the guardian is purposefully starving those somalian kids

let's think about who the real villains are here

As if the lying, mendacious, greedy fucks that Murdoch supports have absolutely ~nothing~ to do with the international politics that creates global poverty?

That cartoon might have some weight if they spent, you know, one "QUANTUM" of effort changing it the rest of the damn year.

this deborah orr piece is good on the psychology of it all http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/20/deborah-orr-murdoch-downfall

Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen the Sun or the NoW lead on a famine story.

otm. what a choice moment to gain perspective. like with clegg, in his speech at the moment, saying, let's talk about the real issue, the economy - it is not in dispute that the two things are generally characteristically different, but that the phone-hacking thing is about the fabric of our democracy rather than the specifics and scale of what acts were carried out. it's like treating watergate as a burglary.
xxxp

That Times cartoon just got sent to a Somali friend who will probably complain to NI about how offensive it is.

clegg, in his speech at the moment, saying, let's talk about the real issue, the economy

We've got 4 fucking years to talk about the economy, is it OK for use people to talk about what they want to talk about, you arsehole?

clegg, in his speech at the moment, saying, let's talk about the real issue, the economy leave him alone, he's my friend...

he's reeling off a list of, 'i was the first person in government to req a judge-lead enquiry, the first to call for murdoch to...' &c&c; he somehow manages to do the exact opposite of what he intends - signifying independence & LD vision - by sounding like some asshole housemate who has kept track of how many toilet rolls they bought.

'i was the 200th first person in government parliament to req a judge-lead enquiry

well yeah that they're either pedantic or selective references to how he joined a pile-on is a whole other thing. it was a thing that was frustrating about the reports of the murdochs' 'contrition' at the hearings - it isn't sincere at the point at which you've been compelled to do it & its become the option most likely to work well for you.

there wasn't much more than a quantum of contrition anyway. a lot of blather from james and the uncle junior act from rupe.

think the hearings were a kind of climax followed by a bit of a lull now, but im assuming caek's brother is 'all over it' and will provide some content at some point.

clegg, in his speech at the moment, saying, let's talk about the real issue, the economy he didn't think the last Coldplay single was much cop, took it back to HMV, got some points for his reward card

Team 2012 and Visa sold the exclusive rights to interview British athletes during the Olympics to News International back in January:

The partnership allows News International newspapers (The Sun, News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times) to all carry the title ‘Official Newspaper of Team 2012’. Over the next 18 months News International will undertake a multi-channel campaign featuring Team 2012 to engage their audiences to get behind each of the athletes, their sports and their personal stories as they prepare for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

It's just under review, isn't it?

Media Week says "News International is understood to have lost exclusive access to Britain's top athletes" - http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/1081280/News-World-closure-hits-News-Int-Olympic-deal/

AWESOME

Via twitter:

anonymouSabu - We're releasing something we found in The Sun's mail server, shortly. Ouch. Ready for the media storm? 9 minutes ago via web

there's a 'maybe we won't' message up now, regarding provisional release of the sun's e-mails - i can't quite tell how the two relate/whether they are referring to the same thing. the drama of this kind of thing is a bit offputting.

Yeah, Louise Boat needs to shit or get off the pot here