Les Tricoteuses - Part Deux

[BornSicky]

new thread to discuss phonehacking scandal.

I was really impressed by how thorough it was, NiceCage- I feel like I understand the issues a lot better for having read it, and see why this is all important. The stench of corruption which emanates from the links between the police, the media and government is quite overpowering.

BOF wants us to change the subject.
I don't exactly know who's in and who's out, because I am not privy to it as I'm not in. But most people are never in. People can rise from poor to rich, but they may still not be in.

Not sure I understand the Ross/Brand phone call thing. Can you explain that a bit more?

Perhaps claig you could start your own thread for the weighty philosophical matter of what the "It" is, and the establishment/inside/etc? And how jolly good/bad/purple they each are?

It were Monday night NN, tianc, but it don't matter. He will pop up again. There ought be many who will be able to blow the pipe, the people with no confidentiality contract.

No I will not give you that pleasure.

Ooh yes, edam, I keep wanting to write about "the Harbottle flies", like a Dickensian caricature.

I am being heard like the language of Britain be not my premier language.

I am just suggesting we stick to the phone hacking scandal, Claig, because it gets a bit dense for newcomers otherwise, but people are free to disagree. I do think that starting a thread of your own on this interesting establishment theme is a great idea though.

oh and did anyone see the judicial inquiry team members:

journalist George Jones; former political editor for Channel 4 News Elinor Goodman; former chairman of the Financial Times Sir David Bell; Lord David Currie, former chairman of Ofcom; and former chief constable of West Midlands police Sir Paul Scott-Lee and Shami Chakrabarti from Liberty.

pretty mixed team there. am especially pleased to see Shami Chakrabarti on there. She always speaks good sense.

Then it'll be the one below, triplets.

(Gotcha, will look now. Thx)

Elinor Goodman's a nice touch, too - I trust her independence and judgment and she'll certainly do her damndest to protect investigative journalism.

oh terrible! I keep reading your posts and wondering wtf you are writing, then i go back and decode it replacing with S words. "being heard"... sounding? I'm guessing.

and claig/BoF quite happy for it to be another thread or here, if it says on the phone hacking/media and the establishment vein. THough it does seem to have wandered off down a "why the beeb should be sold off/dismantled" path. IMHO.

BoF, just looked up your link to that blog, am glad to see it highlighting the Screws paying Glen Mulcaire's legal fees to this very day - despite the Murdochs' crocodile tears on behalf of Millie Dowler. They are paying his fees to stop him being forced to reveal who ordered him to hack phones. It's outrageous that they've been allowed to hide this fact.

The Beeb is establishment media. Trevor Kavanagh was on tehe radio this morning and said that the BBC had made this top news for days and downplayed other events such as the possible collapse of the Euro etc. He implied that this was to the BBC's advantage. Murdoch is often accused of wanting to dismantle the Beeb. I think it was edam who brought up the subject of the Murdochs saying that the Beeb was 'state sponsored journalism' and only the market could provide a true free media. That's how we ended up down this path.

All of those issues are related to the Murdoch case and the political elite and establishment now turning on Murdoch, when they were quiet for so many years, is also part of the picture.

Coulson Security checks

So, this is why Cameron didn't want to answer about who did Coulson's security checks. It was a) a private company, b) not a full and rigorous check and c) makes it look like coulson/ cameron knew that he wouldn't pass a more proper check.

tsk, tsk.

I think I heard on the news today that they have announced they will stop paying them (at last), Edam. They are finally under scrutiny.

yes, they are stopping paying them, which (judging by a guardian article) now means mulcaire will be legally compelled to name the people who asked him to hack from the NOTW.

claig, it's led the news on every channel and all the papers, not just the Beeb. Although you might say it's been a tad downplayed by the Murdoch titles...

And the BBC is always under fire from the government of the day, of whatever cover. Because they hate being held to account. Blair and Campbell didn't refrain from attacking the BBC, did they, aided and abetted by their wilfully blind friend Lord Hutton.

or, alternatively, claig it's not a liberal conspiracy to take our attention off the euro but rather an almighty xxxxstorm that finally came down upon NI's head because the actions of its representatives falsely gave a family hope their daughter was still alive and this was the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of the public's acceptance of their shenanigans.

also fwiw i saw a VERY informative interview on the euro on the bbc today - kavanagh obviously wasn't paying enough attention.

Yes, I didn't say that, Kavanagh said that. I think it's a huge story because of what it shows us about our democracy.

Yes the BBC is under fire from every government, but at the same time often a tool of every government. Governments have more control over the BBC than they do over independent press such as the Murdochs. That probably is part of the reason why they have fewer meetings with the BBC than they have with the Murdoch papers.

No Kavanagh wasn't implying that it was a liberal conspiracy to take our attention off the Euro, because if it collapses we will soon enough find out about it. He was implying that the BBC was leading on this to bash Murdoch, a rival to their media operations.

I don't think that's true at all Claig. I think that the reason the government meets with all the other media groups is because they know they can persuade them to present/publish along a particular line that is flattering to the government or can be bent to be flattering.

With the beeb, the government cna't do that because of the impartiality rules, so there's no point trying to "wine and dine" them because they can't accept it and can't do what they want anway. Additionally, I think the government have specifically kept the beeb at bay because they are trying to reduce their size, as has been much debated in the HoC, especially regarding the World Service.

Oh, and there was silly old me thinking Kavanagh QC...

Morse would get to the bottom of these shennanigans...

He'd have sorted it all out...

Maybe you are right. But let's not forget the BBC's coverage of the miner's strike, when they helped Thatcher

'The most blatant example of "press bias" was the BBC's news coverage of the police charge on miners during a picket of Orgreave coking plant in south Yorkshire - the Battle of Orgreave as it became known. On 13 June 1984 horses and riot police bludgeoned unarmed strikers unconscious as they lay on the floor. By the the time the BBC's film footage was shown on the news it had been cut and spliced to show the miners advancing first and the police seeming to respond in self-defence. All the shocking scenes of police brutality had disappeared.'

www.workersliberty.org/node/2366

and I remember the petrol strikers refusing to speak to the BBC because they felt their reports were biased in favour of Blair.