Les Tricoteuses - Part Deux

[BornSicky]

new thread to discuss phonehacking scandal.

'oh and Johnny Rotten ended up marrying an hieress and investing in property. rock'n'roll'

Good luck to Johnny Rotten, he deserves riches. I wouldn't be surprised if he also reads the anti-establishment paper, the Daily Mail, as many sensible people do.

I don't see either merit or demerit in being an outsider. (Most of us are, one way or another.)

What Murdoch does pretend to be is a man of the people. Which apparently he thinks he can achieve by flying commercial to London.

And he's hardly a waif from the gutter either. Rupert came back from Oxford University in 1954 to take up the newspaper business his daddy had bought for him.

'I don't see either merit or demerit in being an outsider.'

The merit in being an outsider is that you are then the same as the millions of ordinary people who are not the 'insiders', not the Establishment, not the BBC bigwigs like Lord Reith etc. It means that you are with the people and understand their views and needs. You are not part of the Establishment consensus.

Murdoch has made it super irch. That's capitalism. He didn't achieve it because he was the son of Lord so and so, he achieved it by work. Lots of people go to Oxbridge, but they are not part of the real Establishment.

The other blower of the pipe did be on NN on Monday. It did not be the beige one. He did have bald head. Did not catch the name. There ought be more. furely?

"It means that you are with the people and understand their views and needs"

Well done, you've swallowed it whole.

Last night's Newsnight, to put triplets out of her misery.

The 'Bullingdon Club' are 'insiders', they started with a sliver spoon in their mouths and were dealt a good hand. Outsiders earned their place at teh table by hard work. A meritocratic society allows that type of upward movement.

I tend to prefer outsiders to insiders. They often come from the same roots as the people. That's also why I prefer independent thinking rather than the mouthpieces of the establishment, who push the establishment line.

Murdoch didn't start from nothing - as someone said, his Daddy bought him a business. He may revel in the role of outsider but he's actually a flipping multi-billionaire controlling a multinational business and with the world's politicians in his pocket. Although that last bit may just be changing ever so slightly... the outsiders are people like that poor man who has been found dead who blew the whistle, or Nick Davies at the Guardian who kept digging despite the police, government and News International desperately telling everyone he was hysterical.

Rebekah Brooks was an outsider, Coulson was too. So was Sean Hoare and Nick Davies. You can be rich but still be an outsider, it's not about rich and poor. It's about U and non-U, it's about establishment or not.

You can also be poor and still be an 'insider'.

As others have said, that would be Murdoch the millionaire's son who went to Oxford and then got started in the media mogul business with daddy's help.

That would be Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, who was born in Blackheath, London, the son of barrister Edward James Branson and Eve Branson. His grandfather, the Right Honourable Sir George Arthur Harwin Branson, was a judge of the High Court of Justice and a Privy Councillor. Branson was educated at Scaitcliffe School (now Bishopsgate School) until the age of thirteen. He then attended Stowe School until the age of sixteen.

That would be McLaren who was raised by his maternal grandmother, Rose Corre Isaacs, the formerly wealthy daughter of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish diamond dealers, in Stoke Newington. In The Ghosts of Oxford Street he says Charles Clore (who bought Selfridges) became his mother's lover.

Yes - no links to "the establishment" through wealth, position or both in any of those cases.

Ok, so they started with a few bob. But did they become Lord McClaren or Sir McClaren or Lord Murdoch or Sir Murdoch like ther BBC's Sir Robin Day. How many jobs did Sir Robin Day create and how many has Murdoch created?

Are we in danger of going a bit off-topic here? This doesn't really feel like the same thread.

Is Dimbleby a Sir and is Attenborough a Sir? I can't remember

Actually, there was a report back around the turn of the millennium that looked into what could be done to encourage more people to become entrepreneurs. As part of the analysis, they looked at the backgrounds of well-known entrepreneurs. Far from being people who had worked up to success from nothing the vast, vast majority came from already wealthy and well connected families - as they were the people who could afford to take the risk and still have a comfortable cushion to fall back on if it all went wrong.

Sorry BoF you are quite right.
on topic, apparently the lawyers have now been told they are allowed to speak to the police.

That's good- I wonder how long it's going to take to investigate? Bloody ages to do it properly, I reckon.

I read a really good blog post last night about yesterday's events here, if anyone is interested.

And I also had a. Good long read of the superb piece of investigative journalism which kicked a lot of the current stuff off, from the New York Times magazine in September last year. This is where Sean Hoare goes on the record. It really gives the lie to Cameron being unaware of Coulson's involvement.

Oh, and it wouldn't be fair if I didn't share what has to be the picture of the day with you

Agreed, BoF.

Yes, just celebrating that lawyer news now.

Oh that's magic, BoF. Ooh someone had fun when they noticed that!

Claig, I think you're going to need to determine what you mean by "establishment" and "outsider" before I can unpick this any further.

I've become lost in your inside/outside, establishment/anti-establishment poor/rich qualifications.

In every case, (it would seem to me) there are people that subvert the mould they are within. So, if we're talking about subversion, which you seem to be with the Sex Pistols, then can you explain which identities should be applied in the Ross/Brand phone calls at the Beeb?

And thanks for that NYT piece. I read it at the time and couldn't understand why things didn't kick off.

But apparently when Hoare came back to the UK, the Met said they would only interview him under caution (ie so that his words could be used against him at trial). Which was apparently quite unusual, because obviously you use the little fish to get at the big ones all the time.

He said there was lots he couldn't tell them because of this.

ooh, I do like the idea of Harbottle and Lewis coming clean. They sound so respectable and Dickensian - hard to reconcile the name with the involvement in phone hacking, tabloid journalism and pay-offs, even at one remove.