Les Tricoteuses - Part Deux

[BornSicky]

new thread to discuss phonehacking scandal.

But she didn't really answer, did she? Oh quelle surprise. What the do we pay our MPs for? I could have asked most of those questions and got those answers.

I was glued to it all afternoon waiting for some incisive questioning. Where was it?

Like the expenses scandal - there were no big one line revelations....

it was all iffing and fiffing and hoohar and monotone shite.....

It was probably hugely expensive and from what i can see, totally pointless. Just letting the nauseating mps have their day in the sun. We learned nothing.

Well there's an afternoon of my life I'll never get back.

Only thing I can offer is that at around 15:48 RM interrupted Philip Davies MP with the following:

RM: Apparently there was a contract with Mr Clifford which was cancelled by Mr Coulson.
JM: I don't know about that.

Now I haven't recorded the whole meeting, but in the early questioning perhaps by Tom Watson (around 14:50), didn't RM say "Never heard of them" wrt Max Clifford and Gordon Taylor?

I know he said that about a lot of people, so I could be misremembering. I s'pose he could have meant "Only heard about them a fortnight ago in the Guardian," but it struck me as faintly odd he had at his fingertips extraneous info about people he'd never heard of.

Soooo...it was George Osbourne who suggested Andy Coulson's appointment...

I bet he's a happy man tonight.

It gave the people the illusion that all was OK and that our elected representatives were holding power to account, as Jon Snow was so excited to tell us.

That's depressing about Jon Snow. Haven't seen Ch4 News, but I would have expected more from him.

He qualified it to say that he never heard of the first one i.e. Gordon Taylor.

Jon Snow often gets over excited when reading the news. I remember several years ago, he was positively bouncing about some news in Northern Ireland, which turned out to be a false dawn.

Just catching up with thread.

In case nobody's said it yet, £700k is well over $1million. Of course JM knew what it was for.

Whereas RM has today done the equivalent of a vicious political despot claiming he's physically unfit to face The Hague. Somebody give the man a Zimmerframe.

So the Murdochs know nothing, huh? I am surprised by the apparent levels of incompetence demonstrated by the leaders of the world's most successful news organisation. How on earth have they managed to keep a business going all these years?

Have just seen footage of RB saying she's never had to pay police for info. Huh? Has she not seen the vids of herself on YouTube saying that she did pay them? Or are we meant to believe that that was her Evil Twin speaking?

People, I have a shocking statement to make: these people are lying.

Gasp!

still don't know who this mobile owner is who has apparently given all these 'interviews' and who they must have thought was a paedophile

Said it on the other thread, will say it on this one. Milly's phone being hacked was mentioned in Hugh Grant's article in The New Statesman months ago. Did none of these people (Brooks, Murdochs) read it?! They say they only knew two weeks ago from the press reports.

I don't know who it is, but she seemed to say that she learned of teh allegation from an article in teh Guardian, so maybe they mentioned who it was, but I don't know as I don't read the Guardian.

did she give the impression that it was ok to "convert" mobile numbers when NOTW were Paedophile hunting, but that otherwise it all never happened?

It was just a dream, a dream, a dream.

and when you wake up none of it will be real, until I click my fingers and you will all pretend you are sheep.

ba ba bollox

Good point about teh Hugh Grant article. Why didn't they question her further on that aspect?

Neville Thurlbeck was definitely a person Rupes had "never heard of" (14:53).

Which appears to conflict with the Evening Standard's claim that from 1995 to 2000, Thurbeck was "an unpaid employee of the National Criminal Intelligence Service, a liaison body between Scotland Yard's Special Branch and MI5" and this was known by "people right at the top of News International".

In fact, he was charged and acquitted of corruption in 2000 - while working for NOTW.

(I don't want to conflate News Corp and News International, but I think in 2000 Rupes really would have been someone at the top of NI. It does seem... odd that he wouldn't know.)

Oh, thanks for that correction, claig.

Or a paediatrician, Brian.

Haven't read whole thread but it was disappointing. She was v good.
Was Coulson paid after he left?

Would someone explain why just because someone is old does not mean that they are good, not to me, but to the person who said that RM reminded them of there (no doubt) lovely Grandad?

Pooh.
(hope your hands are ok, Donkey)
xx

bollocks, had to stop watching when he got custard pied, missed RB entirely. (re the Grant article, i just looked it up and this is what was said. not a clear 'oh yes we did that', Grant puts it to him and then McM says it's more than likely.

Me Ah . . . I think that was one of the questions asked last week at one of the parliamentary committees. They asked Yates [John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police] if it was true that he thought that the NoW had been hacking the phones of friends and family of those girls who were murdered . . . the Soham murder and the Milly girl [Milly Dowler].
Him Yeah. Yeah. It's more than likely. Yeah . . . It was quite routine. Yeah - friends and family is something that's not as easy to justify as the other things.

also, thisisanicecage, RM is right at the top of NewsCorp, isn't he? rather than News Int? (might be totally wrong about that, do find the nomenclature confusing tbh).

she seemed to be saying that it was ok when she used the invetsigators to track down 'paedos' but not for anything else. They kept going on about 'public interest defence' but surely an illegal act is an illegal act regardless of public interest?

The whole thing was pretty tedious.

Well, according to the Murdocks and Rb, SOMEONE must be guilty. Louise Mensch came off very well.

(hands too bruised to bang on table; now I understand the need for a gavel)

Yes, I was trying to work that out Aitch - I think things were different in 2000 but I can't unpick the history of those companies accurately.