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

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

boy you take your throwaways pretty seriously nakh

http://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpg

The facial expressions Mensch pulls in reaction to Morgan's patched-in voice are fantastic, I'd like to see what she'd have come up with if they'd been together in the studio.

The “guilt by association” is also painfully reminiscent of the McCarthy era in the United States. “Are you or have you ever been...” translated from accusations of Communism to “...employed by, associated with or regularly met, the Murdoch family or News International.”

All of this is now in danger of diverting our attention from the two key elements which are surely at the very root of the challenge faced by Press, police and politicians. Namely, deep-seated corruption and totally unacceptable intrusion into privacy.

SHEFFIELD MP David Blunkett was on a contract worth £5,000 a day with News International as an advisor on a social responsibility project - which finished at the end of June when the News of the World phone hacking scandal intensified.

The Labour politician, who represents Brightside and Hillsborough, was paid £25,000 for the six-month appointment but said he had only worked five days on the project, run by Rupert Murdoch’s company to help deprived youngsters.

ffs