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

^^^Will Lewis is also Robert Peston's best friend and is widely believed to be the NI insider that RP cites in his reports.

Clarity.

Meanwhile on the security clearance front:

3.27pm: Ian Katz writes: Andy Coulson had begun undergoing high security vetting in November, around three months before he resigned as David Cameron's director of communications, the Guardian has learned.

Downing Street has been under pressure to explain why the former News of the World editor was not subjected to so-called "developed vetting", the high security checking process most previous No 10 press secretaries have undergone. Both Coulson's successor and his former deputy, Gabby Bertin, are undergoing developed vetting.

A Whitehall source said the decision not to subject Coulson to developed vetting was taken by Jeremy Heywood, the Downing Street permanent secretary. The source said it was decided that, as director of communications, Coulson did not need access to highly secret material and that developed vetting was a costly, unnecessary expense.

The source stressed that Coulson's lower level of clearance, "security check" or SC, did allow him to have access to material designated "secret" and to "top secret" material under supervision. He also said that the controversy surrounding Tony Blair's press chief Alastair Campbell's access to intelligence material was a consideration in deciding to give Coulson a lower level of vetting.

The source said that following the discovery of an explosive device on a plane at East Midlands airport in October, it was decided that Coulson did need developed vetting to deal with similar terrorism-related issues and the process was started. The process can take three to six months and had not been completed when Coulson resigned saying the phone-hacking scandal meant he could no longer work effectively.

He also said that the controversy surrounding Tony Blair's press chief Alastair Campbell's access to intelligence material was a consideration in deciding to give Coulson a lower level of vetting.

Bollocks

Context, pls? How could a prior controversy lead to a lower level of vetting?

I assume the logic is that the controversy was caused by the press chief having access to intelligence material, so if you withhold access you don't have to do the vetting.

Indeed. Still reads like a pathetic dig at New Labour to me though.

That explanation is bollocks, and totally digs on Campbell out of tribalism rather than any substantive comparison between his and Coulson's positions.

I am sure Coulson was paid the same or more than a directly vetted official, even if he was only cleared to 'top secret', so Number 10's point is what, exactly?

i wonder if coulson ended up having access to top-level security documents despite his low clearance rating..

i.e.

Assistant Commissioner John Yates told MPs he had met Coulson to discuss, among other issues, counter-terrorism.

Yes, but you never know with the Met, he was probably discussing it with the cleaning lady as well

Who was also recommended by NI.

...because right now, it's looking like Campbell was able to pass DV with flying colours, whereas Coulson abandoned the process and his job.

What, if anything, will this mean for Cameron's plans to privatize many public services?

Is this a distraction from that or will this sour the electorate on private corporations running public services?

It's one of those things where a majority of the public are opposed, but scar-ooooooo what we might think or want.

Cameron + Clegg aim to dismantle the public sector come what may, don't see anything standing in the way of that, and I've heard it argued that Clegg is even more fanatical about this than Cameron

Dismantle the public sector or privatize it, suzy? Are unions and 'entrenched bureaucracy' the problem in some neo-Thatcherite way or is this just a trojan horse way to kill public services altogether?

Neo-Thatcherite, that sums up Clegg for sure

http://i.imgur.com/QDcxn.jpg

o_O

dunno abt co durham but i can believe the other two letters are real

the letters don't matter, just imagine what's underneath that dress, phwooaarrrrh.

i mean, could they not just have a picture of a typewriter, or a hammer, or something australian for some context?

a koala in a bikini? phwoar?

anyway, bbc reporting notw hired someone to stalk tom watson back in 2009

(presumably not robert peston)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8656131/Phone-hacking-inquiry-judge-attended-parties-at-home-of-Rupert-Murdochs-son-in-law.html

nice

Tinker Tailor stuff indeed.

Lord Leveson, while chairman of the Sentencing Council that advises the Government on punishing criminals, met Mr Freud at a dinner in February last year in an Oxford University college.
The pair discussed how to promote public confidence in the criminal justice system.

delicious

jesus christ just nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure

Sunday Mirror phone-hacking claim revealed by Newsnight

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/23/news-international-liberal-democrats-bskyb

it's not even a tiny surprise at this point but here we are - amy winehouse was hacked. http://charleslavery.org/2011/07/24/amy-winehouse-was-hacked/

Here's the thing: anyone who was a showbiz editor on an NI title and later rose to an editorship there or anywhere else is probably a 'beneficiary' of phone hacking, if not an outright practitioner. I've never met a showbiz ed who hasn't been a giant, flaming self-aggrandizing asshole.

Someone who used to work for ESM in the early '90s got into tabloid journalism via the other method - dealing Class A drugs to fellow hacks. There was an ESM bus trip to a club outside of London back in the day and this person managed to lose an entire baggie full of pills en route. Most of us couldn't stand this person and spent the rest of the trip indulging in quiet satisfaction as we watched the individual hunt high and low for the lost pills, trying to pretend nothing important had happened.

So, uhhhh...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8657058/Tories-did-deal-with-Murdoch-over-BBC-licence-fee.html

i find it really hard to gauge the import of a lot of this stuff, since things that i would've thought would be explosive have so far been brushed off - but that should be huge, right?

It already feels like something that's a weird relic. "You bent over backwards for these guys that much?"

i just don't know where the 'line' is, in differentiating between the kind of dealmaking that obviously happened, but was perhaps implicit, & that obviously labour did in not opposing media takeovers, & happens a lot, etc, & the sort of thing that just seems like egregiously non-democratic influence-buying, as above.

xpost "I wonder what they have on you?"

The sad thing is that I feel like in the US there are stories unearthed about how some company basically asked a legislator to take some action or even handed him a pre-drafted bill to present all the time, and they rarely blow up into anything. Hopefully the timing of this plus the blatant anti-competitiveness of it will help it gain steam.

yeah i mean it fits p neatly into the narrative currently being, they were too cosy, they met a lot, they discussed deals maybe in breach of propriety laws &c

it's pretty difficult to prove influence, is the problem

Wait for it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/interactive/2011/jul/19/rupert-murdoch-twitter-pie

or 'why not to use twitter'

i am so amazed by the technology of that sort of thing that i lose any critical faculty. the way the bubbles gravitate towards the centre & that the bubbles represent people's writing. like i just don't care whether it's good or bad.

i see they weren't counting "wtf" though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsJwM1DnLu4

sort of wonder if it would be legal to 'buy' an mp and get them convene committees at which they randomly slander and abuse public figures

pretty sure that ilx poster ismael klata is in fact one of the millibands, tbh? not narrowed it down to which yet obvs

they're jewish......

server glitch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZtVm8wtyFI