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

assume "drunk" was a cop-out meaning "ripped to the tits on Bolivian disco talc"

Yeah come on this is NIGEL KENNEDY we're talking about.

can't imagine how many hallucinogens you'd have to neck to find him tolerable company

Oh come on this is a TORY MP we're talking about.

i mean maybe he is a secret massive Varèse enthusiast but i'm thinking no

she's a quite hot Tory MP tbf and in these circumstances the Tory MP bit sort of adds to the hotness for some of us pervs

Maybe it was during her Labour year.

nigel kennedy a legendary caner, TRUFACT

True. Thinking this would be in The Brix Smth Years as well...

After leaving The Fall and disbanding The Adult Net, Brix... became romantically-involved with violinist Nigel Kennedy, and they collaborated on a cover of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" which was released as a single in 1993

Boy do I wish that was on youtube.

Hmmm:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/07/news-corp-tells-new-york-post-to-save-documents-hacking.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/cartoon/2011/jul/30/josie-longs-alternative-universe#zoomed-picture

that raises a lot of questions about the guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/02/phone-hacking-scandal-new-arrest

^ here we go again

James Murdoch please.

Stuart Kuttner apparently, former managing editor

xxp amelia hill has just added on twitter that it's believed to be stuart kuttner, former managing editor.

Kuttner has been for over 20 years the whip-cracking schemer who always knew how to get what he wanted for the paper, who knew every trick in persuading hacks to misbehave, chiselling informers out of promised fees, covering up for the illegal activities of journalists and editors.

It was he who, with cold calculation, duped former Private Investigator, Glenn Mulcaire into taking extra payments in cash, direct from the royal editor, Clive Goodman for royal stories harvested by hacking into Prince Harry and Prince William’s voicemails. That way, when Mulcaire was caught, as he was absolutely bound to be, Kuttner and then editor Andy Couslon could claim they knew nothing about it.

http://www.peterburden.net/archives/233

BBC saying it's a 70-year old man - does that fit?

yeah

can imagine an awesome OJ/glove courtroom scene in which he proves he is unable to even call his daughter using a mobile phone

kuttner played a bit part in the paper's famous harry potter/september 11 tapes. reporter charles begley tells him why he's been signed off work with stress:

CB: There were a couple of events which brought things to a head. A few hours after the attack on the World Trade Centre, I was asked by Rebekah to dress up as Harry Potter. She wanted me to dress up and go to her office in the middle of the newsroom.

SK: Which date was that?

CB: That was on Tuesday, September 11.

I feel bad for laughing at that.

Six weeks for the pie guy wtf:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/02/protester-jailed-throwing-pie-murdoch

not long enough

throw away the key tbh

i actually get more annoyed thinking about him than thinking about rebekah brooks or andy coulson

Throw away the key lime pie more like. I dunno, it's a bit ott. Hefty fine and some sort of social penalty maybe, but using public money to bang him up is just silly beggars imo.

he's a comedian, even prior to the pie i'd have advocated the death penalty

wait waht

you missed the "lex hates comedy" conversation?

he's potentially fucked public access to parliamentary inquiries, he shd be given a medal for his contribution to radical politics self-publicism by halfwit rag society cunts

don't think anybody's attitude to comedy impinges on Johnny No-laughs

You don't understand, this guy is being martyred in the name of pie-throwing.

It was a terrible thing he did, but I feel like I want to send him a hollowed-out cake with a whole new cake hidden inside.

Without him we'd never have seen Wendy Deng Prize Fighter so you know every lame cloud...

http://i.imgur.com/UgiKW.png

I like how 'breach of law' is the base, but 'discourteous' is the real offence.

Welcome to Britain.

Sock it to 'im, Tommy boy

Yes, very rude of him to interrupt Mr Cameron's fourth holiday in five months or whatever it is.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/08/another_british_journalist_adm.html

not really 'surprising' or dismaying - like presumably it is a sorta textbook investigative journalism case? - but i guess this could be a thing

No one is innocent, earth revolves around sun, let's evolve.

Well into the depressing stage of this saga now...

ny mag is overstating it a bit to say that drawing a distinction between a corrupt arms dealer and a murdered schoolgirl is a "nuanced moral argument".

Yeah it's not nuanced at all. I think most people feel pretty uncomplicated about it. We don't mind if journalists break the law in the service of speaking truth to power, but we do mind if they break the law to get sensationalist stories about regular people. Pretty simple, dudes.

[Ed: You need 350 more words, keep going]

We don't mind if journalists break the law in the service of speaking truth to power, but we do mind if they break the law to get sensationalist stories about regular people.

Unanalysed impression is that what "we" mind about doesn't impact on newspaper sales except Liverpool obv.

No one is innocent, earth revolves around sun, let's evolve.

#notagoodstory tbh

i was thinking the other day how entirely appropriate it'd be if heather mills ended up playing a significant role in bringing down piers morgan

He may also hope and pray that no one who attended it still remembers a lunch held in September 2002 in a private room at the swanky new Four Seasons Hotel in Canary Wharf, just by the offices of the Daily Mirror. The occasion was one of the monthly bunfights hosted for Moron by convivial Trinity Mirror chairman Sir Victor Blank. The dozen or so guests at this one included Ulrika Jonsson, Jeremy Paxman and the then chief executive of BT, Ben Verwaayen.

Moron’s feeble attempts to master a Scandinavian accent in front of Jonsson – he was trying to wind her up by mimicking conversations with Eriksson – were received with embarrassed titters. Then he started to hector Verwaayen, roaring that BT “should start providing better security for pin numbers for mobile phones! You should tell your customers to go and change them!”

At which point one might have expected the Trinity Mirror chairman to ask how his editor seemed to know the intimate details of Jonsson and Eriksson’s phone calls. But nothing was heard from the man who had so famously protected Moron in the “City Slickers” scandal, ignoring chief executive Philip Graf’s pleas to have him fired.

Having mocked Ulrika and hectored Verwaayen, Moron then launched into his party piece – a re-enactment of Heather Mills arguing on the phone with Paul McCartney and the ex-Beatle winning her round by singing “We Can Work it Out”.

Via Private Eye.

If there's any truth in this, he was essentially admitting it to anyone who would listen - which is just the kind of daft, hubristic thing you can imagine him doing. It has to just be a matter of time before CNN suspends him.

Rebekah Brooks will not comment on claims she is still drawing a News International salary.

A big song and dance was made of Rebekah Brooks’s belated decision to resign as the chief executive of News International as the phone-hacking scandal engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s empire, but it has not had any great effect upon her standard of living. I am reliably informed that she remains on the company payroll.

“My understanding is that Rupert has told her to travel the world on him for a year and then he will find a job for her when the scandal has died down,” whispers my informant.

When I call News International to inquire if Brooks is still on the payroll, they refer me to her personal publicist at Bell Pottinger. “We’re offering no comment on your query regarding Rebekah,” Steve Double tells me, helpfully.