OT: Kryten, I think the Coalition wants an election before Abbott implodes, which could happen at any time. The proof is in the details as far as the carbon tax goes, and people have to see how it will affect them, before making up their minds if it is a good or bad deal.
]]>This is a partial transcript from 7 News yesterday:
Prominent UK media lawyer Mark Stephens says he thinks the Murdochs will protect Ms Brooks.
“We have to remember that people like Rebekah Brooks are treated as family by the Murdochs, particularly Rupert Murdoch and I think she will perhaps go to one of his titles in America or Australia and will continue her good work from there,” he said.
Mr Stephens says News of the World’s closure is a stroke of “evil genius” by Mr Murdoch to save himself, his son and Ms Brooks.
“He has preserved Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, his three key senior executives and they’ve kind of climbed in a life raft and allowed the rest of the people to go down with the ship that they’ve scuttled,” he said.
“Of course as they’ve scuttled this ship, the News of the World, what goes down with it are all the documents, the new and the electronic files which might cause embarrassment and all the rest of it and so they will never see the light of day as a result of that.”
Disgruntled staff like News of the World political editor Dave Wooding say they have been sacrificed to save Ms Brooks.
“There’s hardly anybody there who was there in the old regime,” he said.
“The people are very clean, great, talented professional journalists and we put out a great paper every week and we are all paying the price of what happened six years ago.”
Sceptics say the tabloid’s closure and News International’s cooperation with the police investigation has more to do with the Murdoch empire’s bid to take over the satellite broadcaster, BSkyB.
Alastair Campbell, who was Tony Blair’s communications director, says he thinks it is a tactical move related to the BSkyB takeover.
“They want to be seen now to be taking this far more seriously than they have up to now so that the government can give them the go ahead in relation to the BSkyB deal,” he said.
“But I think as this story develops and it goes on, the public will find that more and more unfathomable, let alone unacceptable.”
In the past week alone, the British culture secretary has received 100,000 submissions on the bid, almost all of them opposing the Murdoch bid.
OT: But the first was our very own Gillard train-wreck! I feel an election coming on Bryan… And I’m afraid Abbott will win. And I’m honestly (and unusually) completely unsure which will be worse! Continuing with the fool we have, or having a fundi moron with the imagination of a rat as PM! What a choice. *SIGH*
Angry voters want election on carbon tax
You can see on this graph that public opinion has been swinging towards the Coalition since Gillard stole the PMship. Current Government Confidence Rating is at 96.5, the lowest ever recorded.
L-NP Increases Lead Before PM Gillard Announces Details Of Carbon Tax On Sunday
I’m grateful for the Murdock train-wreck. It helps distract me from our own.
Maybe I can emigrate… Sth. Korea or Dubai maybe…. Hmmmm.
]]>As there are new cases popping up every day, it would appear that Ofcom won’t rule for decades.
Maybe these guys could convince Armani to design orange jumpsuits for them … just a thought.
]]>Depending on the lenght of sentence anyone convicted would go to a local dispersal prison pending a move to (probably) a Category C prison (Medium security) and then a Cat D (a so called open prison)
The crimes don’t warrant incarceration in a Cat A (top security prisons_ or Cat B (High security_
]]>– Badtux the Laughing Penguin
]]>I found this also at Political Scrapbook:
Steve Coogan demolishes ex-NOTW Paul McMullan on Newsnight
Seeing Steve Coogan straining visibly at the leash as former News of the World features editor and self-confessed commissioner of âillegal practicesâ Paul McMullan held forth on phone hacking, many viewers of Newsnight would have made themselves comfortable for some popcorn telly.
Cooganâs utter disgust with the tactics employed by some tabloid journalists â though Coogan might contest that description â at times bordered on the visceral.
âyou come across as a risible individual who is symptomatic of everything thatâs wrong with the tabloidsâ
âIâm not a politician so why come after me? Milly Dowlerâs relatives arenât politicians, so why go after them? Itâs morally bankrupt and you are morally bankrupt.â
âThis guy sat outside my house. Itâs just a risible, deplorable profession that youâre in.â
âYouâre not a journalist. You know youâre not, deep down.â
When Emily Maitlis pointed to the genuine merit of Fake Sheikh-style scoops Coogan deadpanned:
âHitler was nice to dogs.âThere could only ever be one winner.
… still laughing! đ đ
]]>He was on Newsnight on Friday (BBC2’s main news programme) he got his arse handed to him!
Here it is: http://thepoormouth.blogspot.com/2011/07/tabloid-hack-in-train-wreck-moment.html
]]>News of the World scandal: God’s newspaper executive less than visionary
Only a few days ago, a New York Bloomberg TV special was lauding Rupert Murdoch as “what God meant when he invented a newspaper executive ⌠he has vision, he has guts, he’ll take a risk, he’ll go to the edge”. The question now is whether Murdoch and the giant, family-dominated company he created has gone not to just the edge â but over it.
Put morality and the News of the World’s phone-hacking imbecilities to one side for a moment, parked on a shelf marked “Unacceptable, Deplorable Ordure”. Purely in business terms, purely as a textbook study in management ineptitude and purblind public relations, the great shambles of Wapping takes some beating. It’s natural, perhaps, to see Murdoch senior as bold, ruthless and imaginative. That’s the image and, in many ways, the record. But ponder the account of the News of the World’s final hours as recounted from inside the Wapping bunker by journalists from another News International paper, the Times.
Bloomberg is backpedaling faster than someone heading for a waterfall! đ
Ahhhh… but *Guilt by association* is such a wonderful thing! đ
…still laughing… đ
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