Showing posts with label dead trees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dead trees. Show all posts
Monday, 4 June 2012
it's different for girls
Readers will remember that I posted some days ago about some nonsense in the Reading Chronicle, dictated to them by Martin Salter. The headline of their story, that Salter had given evidence to the Leveson inquiry, was a plain lie. And they knew it was. But the Chronicle's willingness to publish lies knowing them to be lies is well known in Reading and further afield. However, they took the opportunity to have dictated to them some untruths about yours truly, which Tom Watson MP has chosen to submit to the Leveson inquiry, although they are totally irrelevant to it. I am taking action in respect of Tom Watson MP and of the Leveson inquiry people separately, as you might expect me to. In respect of the Chronicle I asked for withdrawal of the untruths in the story and for a reply, to be given equal prominence with the piece of dictation they had previously taken from Martin Salter. They have refused, and have told me I may write a letter for publication, which must be significantly shorter than the original piece and which will be subject to their editorial control. I'm not doing that. I've posted my response as a comment on the on-line version of the story, but if you read the Chronicle only on paper you will see nothing. You might wonder how many other untruths go uncorrected in that organ.
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Dial M For Murdoch
I downloaded this to my Kindle yesterday (oh how I love that thing) and have now read it. I must say I was impressed with it as a source book. It is clear, mostly chronological, and detailed while being readable. It has a clear agenda, that the Murdoch Empire is Evil and has Corrupted Britain. Well, that is not the full story, as any fule kno.
Tom Watson and Martin Hickman have put together quite an impressive account, which work has probably done much to save Watson's sanity. But it is those who appear to be mad and obsessed who have often got hold of something which is true and/or needs to be disclosed, against the forces of those who not want the stone lifted up. There is quite a lot of cut-and-paste in this, as you might expect. For example, early on they trot out the story about the paediatrician whose job title was mistaken for paedophile - but they copied that from the Guardian, and it is wrong. No paediatrician was burned out of their home, either. Mr Salter was in on this stuff, as I noted here last summer.
Thes two have worked hard to find some impressive and entertaining quotes, such from as the New York Times, which described those attending the British Press Awards 2005, at which the News of the World won a bunch of awards, as "a club of misanthropic inebriates". Larf? I nearly passed me fags round.
Pertinent to the same previous post of mine is this: "In February 2003 Devon and Cornwall (police) had raided Lawson's (a private investigator) firm, Abbey Investigations, and found that in late 2000 Lawson had supplied a national newspaper with checks of the criminal records of Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nick Brown, then Agriculture Minister, and another Labour MP, Martin Salter. The newspaper which bought the checks (which came back blank) has never been named but, in 2000 and 2001, News International was siding with Tony Blair in his frequent rows with Gordon Brown, and Rebekah Wade's News of the World had placed Salter on a 'naming and shaming' list for criticising the 'For Sarah' campaign." This is the only place I have seen that the checks came back blank. Even Salter didn't say so at the time, as well he might not, because he has frequently bragged that he has criminal convictions for possession of cannabis and assault. Any other report or mention I have seen has said that the criminal record checks produced nothing of interest. Not to that thread, no. But a criminal record check obtained informally as opposed to a CRB check, would show everything on the record, including spent convictions. Just saying.
The "For Neville" email was sent on 29th June 2006, and it contained transcripts of voicemail messages between Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers' Association, and an associate. The content was not apparently very interesting, it was just that it was clear from the transcripts that phones had been hacked - and now this had been disclosed to its victim. All this stuff is what this book says, others may dispute it on matters of fact, I don't know. I do know that Neville Thurlbeck, former chief reporter, is most offended at having it said, later in the book, that he inhabits a semi-detached house. For example.
In October 2007 there was a clause in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which provided for a custodial sentence for breaches of the Data Protection Act. By the following April this clause had been dropped, although the Bill had been ready for royal assent the previous October. Journalists and executives might have gone to prison otherwise. I'm prepared to believe that. But who knew?
On the Max Mosley story (Nazi orgy which wasn't), Neville Thurlbeck allegedly emailed one of the women present to threaten that if she and the others did not cooperate in the writing of a follow-up story unpixilated pictures of them would be published, thus identifying them. According to this book Thurlbeck acknowledged doing this, under pressure from above. But sometimes there is a whiff of conspiracy theory here. Chris Bryant, well known for being self-important as well as loathsome in various ways, said that the underpants picture of him (from the Gaydar site, seeking partners) was published eight months after he had asked Rebekah Wade in Parliament about payments to police. It might, just, be that News International had other priorities than Mr Bryant's underpants.
Quoting from Thurlbeck (in a private conversation with Tom Watson): "All I know is that when the DCMS was formed, or rather when it got on to all the hacking stuff, there was an edict came down from the editor and it was find out every single thing you can about every single member: who was gay, who had affairs, anything we can use. Each reporter was given two members and there were six reporters - that went on for about ten days. I don't know who looked at you. It fell by the wayside: I think even Ian Edmondson (the news editor) realised that there was something quite horrible about this." If I were a member of a Select Committee of the House of Commons (and I have been) I would be surprised if the tabloids were not snooping around. Thurlbeck has professed himself pissed off at his confidence being breached in this way, by quoting a private conversation in this book. I don't see why. Happens all the time. Has happened to me loads of times. He calls the task of snooping espionage rather than journalism. Well, maybe, but I don't really see that.
The book is a smooth read, as befits something basically written by a journalist. There are not that many infelicities, considering that it has been produced quite quickly, although a CID officer is named "Fillergy" and "Fillery" in the same paragraph.
News International tried to marginalise those who were seeking to make its life difficult. Well, what would you expect it to do? What do people generally do? What would you do? At a BSkyB reception at Labour Party Conference 2010, a Times journalist told the Labour MP Stephen Pound that Tom Watson MP was about to check in at the Betty Ford clinic because of heavy drinking. What is amazing about this, if true, is not that it was said, but that Tom Watson did, or at least he says he did, give up drinking for six months as a result. Who's the patsy here? Do the tabloids tell MPs how to live their lives? Should they? Should MPs obey?
It is very helpful to have detailed just how Yates of the Yard (and others) failed to check the evidence of criminality that they had been given. Good to have all this stuff in one place.
Neville Thurlbeck (who has a "soft and precise Wearside accent", hmmm) was arrested in April 2011. On 4th July 2011 the Guardian broke a story that the NotW had deleted messages on the phone voicemail of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler, to make room for more. At that time the Met, Surrey police, NI and the Dowler family all believed the NotW was responsible for the deletions. Five months later the Guardian would admit that this was bollocks. Still, whatever, hey. It's only the red-tops that make things up, hein?
The answers to the crossword in the final edition of the News of the World (1 across, 4 down, 10 across, 7 down) were Tomorrow, We, Are, Sacked. Lolz. I've kept that edition, as a souvenir.
The book reminds us that, when asked why he had not dismissed Neville Thurlbeck, at the parliamentary inquiry in July 2011, James Murdoch said he had never heard of him. Was this true?
Scotland Yard was "humiliated" by the launch of a new, "proper" investigation. Hmmm.
Potential smears, too. The NI receptions at the 2011 party conferences were cancelled, but Michael Gove MP, Conservative Education Secretary (whose wife is a Times journalist) took the opportunity to praise Murdoch anyway. "Gove's experience as Education Secretary might be useful if, as has been suggested, News Corporation makes a move into the educational publishing business." I love that "as has been suggested". I use it all the time. It's how not to have to back up what you say as fact, and how to protect your sources.
Watson's approach and dialogue sometimes appear juvenile, and he does chase the cheap sound-bite. Quoting himself at a parliamentary hearing: "Mr Murdoch, you must be the first mafia boss in history who didn't know he was running a criminal enterprise." Whatever else James Murdoch might be, he is not a mafia boss.
After the Guardian's Marina Hyde had wrongly reported that the Sun had doorstepped one of the Leveson Inquiry's junior counsel, a couriered parcel arrived from Wapping for Alan Rusbridger, containing a toilet roll and a note which read "I hear Marina Hyde's turd landed on your desk. Well, you can use this to wipe her arse." Mmmm, stylish. But Marina Hyde is a shit, so very pleasing.
Chris Bryant said early in 2012, rightly, that there was a "three-headed scandal... mass criminality, then the mass cover-up and then, from 2007, the inexplicable failure of the Met properly to investigate..." But it does seem a bit like special pleading when it is the victims of the tabloids who are the ones wielding the trusty sword of truth.
Sometimes facile "the battle of Prince William's wounded knee".
Well, those are my impressionistic quotes and observations. While I have no time for Tom Watson and his associates, I am glad to have read the book. I am glad I have it, because it is informative, and those mentioned in it are likely to come forward now and say so if they have been misreported there. Which is all to the good. I'd love to know what those closer to the centre of these matters actually think now.
Tom Watson and Martin Hickman have put together quite an impressive account, which work has probably done much to save Watson's sanity. But it is those who appear to be mad and obsessed who have often got hold of something which is true and/or needs to be disclosed, against the forces of those who not want the stone lifted up. There is quite a lot of cut-and-paste in this, as you might expect. For example, early on they trot out the story about the paediatrician whose job title was mistaken for paedophile - but they copied that from the Guardian, and it is wrong. No paediatrician was burned out of their home, either. Mr Salter was in on this stuff, as I noted here last summer.
Thes two have worked hard to find some impressive and entertaining quotes, such from as the New York Times, which described those attending the British Press Awards 2005, at which the News of the World won a bunch of awards, as "a club of misanthropic inebriates". Larf? I nearly passed me fags round.
Pertinent to the same previous post of mine is this: "In February 2003 Devon and Cornwall (police) had raided Lawson's (a private investigator) firm, Abbey Investigations, and found that in late 2000 Lawson had supplied a national newspaper with checks of the criminal records of Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nick Brown, then Agriculture Minister, and another Labour MP, Martin Salter. The newspaper which bought the checks (which came back blank) has never been named but, in 2000 and 2001, News International was siding with Tony Blair in his frequent rows with Gordon Brown, and Rebekah Wade's News of the World had placed Salter on a 'naming and shaming' list for criticising the 'For Sarah' campaign." This is the only place I have seen that the checks came back blank. Even Salter didn't say so at the time, as well he might not, because he has frequently bragged that he has criminal convictions for possession of cannabis and assault. Any other report or mention I have seen has said that the criminal record checks produced nothing of interest. Not to that thread, no. But a criminal record check obtained informally as opposed to a CRB check, would show everything on the record, including spent convictions. Just saying.
The "For Neville" email was sent on 29th June 2006, and it contained transcripts of voicemail messages between Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers' Association, and an associate. The content was not apparently very interesting, it was just that it was clear from the transcripts that phones had been hacked - and now this had been disclosed to its victim. All this stuff is what this book says, others may dispute it on matters of fact, I don't know. I do know that Neville Thurlbeck, former chief reporter, is most offended at having it said, later in the book, that he inhabits a semi-detached house. For example.
In October 2007 there was a clause in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which provided for a custodial sentence for breaches of the Data Protection Act. By the following April this clause had been dropped, although the Bill had been ready for royal assent the previous October. Journalists and executives might have gone to prison otherwise. I'm prepared to believe that. But who knew?
On the Max Mosley story (Nazi orgy which wasn't), Neville Thurlbeck allegedly emailed one of the women present to threaten that if she and the others did not cooperate in the writing of a follow-up story unpixilated pictures of them would be published, thus identifying them. According to this book Thurlbeck acknowledged doing this, under pressure from above. But sometimes there is a whiff of conspiracy theory here. Chris Bryant, well known for being self-important as well as loathsome in various ways, said that the underpants picture of him (from the Gaydar site, seeking partners) was published eight months after he had asked Rebekah Wade in Parliament about payments to police. It might, just, be that News International had other priorities than Mr Bryant's underpants.
Quoting from Thurlbeck (in a private conversation with Tom Watson): "All I know is that when the DCMS was formed, or rather when it got on to all the hacking stuff, there was an edict came down from the editor and it was find out every single thing you can about every single member: who was gay, who had affairs, anything we can use. Each reporter was given two members and there were six reporters - that went on for about ten days. I don't know who looked at you. It fell by the wayside: I think even Ian Edmondson (the news editor) realised that there was something quite horrible about this." If I were a member of a Select Committee of the House of Commons (and I have been) I would be surprised if the tabloids were not snooping around. Thurlbeck has professed himself pissed off at his confidence being breached in this way, by quoting a private conversation in this book. I don't see why. Happens all the time. Has happened to me loads of times. He calls the task of snooping espionage rather than journalism. Well, maybe, but I don't really see that.
The book is a smooth read, as befits something basically written by a journalist. There are not that many infelicities, considering that it has been produced quite quickly, although a CID officer is named "Fillergy" and "Fillery" in the same paragraph.
News International tried to marginalise those who were seeking to make its life difficult. Well, what would you expect it to do? What do people generally do? What would you do? At a BSkyB reception at Labour Party Conference 2010, a Times journalist told the Labour MP Stephen Pound that Tom Watson MP was about to check in at the Betty Ford clinic because of heavy drinking. What is amazing about this, if true, is not that it was said, but that Tom Watson did, or at least he says he did, give up drinking for six months as a result. Who's the patsy here? Do the tabloids tell MPs how to live their lives? Should they? Should MPs obey?
It is very helpful to have detailed just how Yates of the Yard (and others) failed to check the evidence of criminality that they had been given. Good to have all this stuff in one place.
Neville Thurlbeck (who has a "soft and precise Wearside accent", hmmm) was arrested in April 2011. On 4th July 2011 the Guardian broke a story that the NotW had deleted messages on the phone voicemail of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler, to make room for more. At that time the Met, Surrey police, NI and the Dowler family all believed the NotW was responsible for the deletions. Five months later the Guardian would admit that this was bollocks. Still, whatever, hey. It's only the red-tops that make things up, hein?
The answers to the crossword in the final edition of the News of the World (1 across, 4 down, 10 across, 7 down) were Tomorrow, We, Are, Sacked. Lolz. I've kept that edition, as a souvenir.
The book reminds us that, when asked why he had not dismissed Neville Thurlbeck, at the parliamentary inquiry in July 2011, James Murdoch said he had never heard of him. Was this true?
Scotland Yard was "humiliated" by the launch of a new, "proper" investigation. Hmmm.
Potential smears, too. The NI receptions at the 2011 party conferences were cancelled, but Michael Gove MP, Conservative Education Secretary (whose wife is a Times journalist) took the opportunity to praise Murdoch anyway. "Gove's experience as Education Secretary might be useful if, as has been suggested, News Corporation makes a move into the educational publishing business." I love that "as has been suggested". I use it all the time. It's how not to have to back up what you say as fact, and how to protect your sources.
Watson's approach and dialogue sometimes appear juvenile, and he does chase the cheap sound-bite. Quoting himself at a parliamentary hearing: "Mr Murdoch, you must be the first mafia boss in history who didn't know he was running a criminal enterprise." Whatever else James Murdoch might be, he is not a mafia boss.
After the Guardian's Marina Hyde had wrongly reported that the Sun had doorstepped one of the Leveson Inquiry's junior counsel, a couriered parcel arrived from Wapping for Alan Rusbridger, containing a toilet roll and a note which read "I hear Marina Hyde's turd landed on your desk. Well, you can use this to wipe her arse." Mmmm, stylish. But Marina Hyde is a shit, so very pleasing.
Chris Bryant said early in 2012, rightly, that there was a "three-headed scandal... mass criminality, then the mass cover-up and then, from 2007, the inexplicable failure of the Met properly to investigate..." But it does seem a bit like special pleading when it is the victims of the tabloids who are the ones wielding the trusty sword of truth.
Sometimes facile "the battle of Prince William's wounded knee".
Well, those are my impressionistic quotes and observations. While I have no time for Tom Watson and his associates, I am glad to have read the book. I am glad I have it, because it is informative, and those mentioned in it are likely to come forward now and say so if they have been misreported there. Which is all to the good. I'd love to know what those closer to the centre of these matters actually think now.
Sunday, 15 April 2012
the dead trees begin to take notice 2
I didn't think it would take long. A reader has just sent me a clipping from His Master's Voice, below, which does not of course mention the breaker of the story, namely moi. Apparently it was buried somewhere deep in the dead-tree edition on Friday. Thanks, and glad to set the record straight.
the dead trees begin to take notice
the Reading ones that is. Yes folks, step forward the Reading Chronicle, which has this on Reading Labour's racist dog-whistle, fairly factual on the whole, unlike His Master's Voice, which so far, on its website at least , has been silent on the issue. Well, there's only been what looks like a criminal offence committed by a candidate a matter of days before a local election, and only a racist dog-whistle publication which has become a national disgrace, so nothing to get in the way of Whitley Dad Pissed Off With Council and Tragic Teen In Plea For Money, hein? So big up the Chronicle, considering how poisonous the political climate is in Reading.
Word reaches me too of a late surge in the LibDem vote in Church ward. Unlikely, you might say. I thought so too. And how much it will amount to on May 3rd I don't know. But some people are saying they will not vote for a party (Labour) which has called them racist, and they have never been Tory voters, and at least the LibDems don't insult them. Hmmm.
I've known for a long time what the Reading Labour boys think of the people of south Reading, because I've heard them say it. Racist, they say. That's why the local party members are not usually allowed to choose a candidate, unlike other wards, because they cannot be trusted to choose the one the boys want. I know that the people of Church ward are not racist, and the local party members I know are not either.
There's still time to withdraw the leaflet, apologise and move on. You will (probably) be forgiven electorally. You weren't when at least one of your candidates was responsible for electoral fraud in Redlands - you lost every councillor there.
Saturday, 14 April 2012
one of us
yes, that again. Here is Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail:
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2129566/And-Daves-band-played-on-.html#ixzz1s0No3pHj
Imagine indeed. National coverage in their dearly beloved dead-tree media, written by "proper" journalists - and they still think this is OK? Putative parliamentary candidate Rachel Eden still has the possibly criminal letter on her website? Outrage on the doorsteps in Church ward as voters rail in fury at being called racist by the Labour Party? And just what do you imagine the other parties are saying on those very doorsteps? The Tories are mostly too clever to put anything "difficult" in their leaflets, but will talk up a storm: the LibDem publications have splashed this story everywhere, using words like "shameful". Only the Greens seem to think dog-whistle tactics are OK. Well, there you are.
In a ward of Reading — one of those southern English towns where Ed Miliband is desperate to make local-election gains — Labour has shipped in a white person to fight the Tory candidate, an Asian. Labour leaflets describe their woman, Eileen McElligott, as being ‘born and bred in Reading’. They add, subtly: ‘She is one of us.’
Imagine the Left’s outrage if Tory leaflets ever said such things against an Asian Labour candidate.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2129566/And-Daves-band-played-on-.html#ixzz1s0No3pHj
Imagine indeed. National coverage in their dearly beloved dead-tree media, written by "proper" journalists - and they still think this is OK? Putative parliamentary candidate Rachel Eden still has the possibly criminal letter on her website? Outrage on the doorsteps in Church ward as voters rail in fury at being called racist by the Labour Party? And just what do you imagine the other parties are saying on those very doorsteps? The Tories are mostly too clever to put anything "difficult" in their leaflets, but will talk up a storm: the LibDem publications have splashed this story everywhere, using words like "shameful". Only the Greens seem to think dog-whistle tactics are OK. Well, there you are.
Thursday, 12 April 2012
the dead trees get it wrong - again
the Independent is a bit of a LibDem rag and as such of no interest to anyone really. However, their Diary column is often rather good - it is written by Andy McSmith. Now I've been informed on several occasions that items which appear in Diary columns don't have to be, er, true or anything, they can be made-up slurs, and in fact usually are. This is what they have to say today, fisking as usual mine.
Something rotten in Reading
If Oscar Wilde were alive now, he might write a Ballad of Reading East, wish I'd thought of that one in which "some grow mad and all grow bad", because something is poisoning the political atmosphere in that constituency.
A few months ago, the Tories in Reading East deselected a councillor, Jamie Chowdhary, reputedly because he was too close to the former Tory council leader Andrew Cumpsty, who was on the way out. They threatened to expel another, Mark Ralph, who publicly objected. Baroness Warsi, intervened to prevent Councillor Ralph's expulsion, but to no avail. This week, he announced that he is resigning. Reading East is also the only constituency in a generation, no, the first one, there were several Labour ones later where a sitting MP was sacked no, deselected, I continued as Reading East MP for another 15 months, not even the Reading Labour boys could manage a sacking by the local members of the Labour Party. Jane Griffiths, who lost the seat in 2005 no I didn't, I stood down, has accused her former colleagues of being "racist" no I haven't, I have said that the "one of us" leaflet is racist because it is using dog-whistle language. I have not accused any individual or group of being racist. because of an election leaflet in which a Labour council candidate, Eileen McElligott, is described as "one of us" – as if to imply that there is something alien about her opponent, Azam Janjua, who, by the way, used to be a Labour councillor before he switched to the Conservatives and you don't say why he did, what was done to him by Reading Labour, and how the then Reading West Labour MP, Martin Salter, was involved
So you see, Mr McSmith. spectacularly wrong. But it's only a Diary piece, hey, so keep the lies coming
Something rotten in Reading
If Oscar Wilde were alive now, he might write a Ballad of Reading East, wish I'd thought of that one in which "some grow mad and all grow bad", because something is poisoning the political atmosphere in that constituency.
A few months ago, the Tories in Reading East deselected a councillor, Jamie Chowdhary, reputedly because he was too close to the former Tory council leader Andrew Cumpsty, who was on the way out. They threatened to expel another, Mark Ralph, who publicly objected. Baroness Warsi, intervened to prevent Councillor Ralph's expulsion, but to no avail. This week, he announced that he is resigning. Reading East is also the only constituency in a generation, no, the first one, there were several Labour ones later where a sitting MP was sacked no, deselected, I continued as Reading East MP for another 15 months, not even the Reading Labour boys could manage a sacking by the local members of the Labour Party. Jane Griffiths, who lost the seat in 2005 no I didn't, I stood down, has accused her former colleagues of being "racist" no I haven't, I have said that the "one of us" leaflet is racist because it is using dog-whistle language. I have not accused any individual or group of being racist. because of an election leaflet in which a Labour council candidate, Eileen McElligott, is described as "one of us" – as if to imply that there is something alien about her opponent, Azam Janjua, who, by the way, used to be a Labour councillor before he switched to the Conservatives and you don't say why he did, what was done to him by Reading Labour, and how the then Reading West Labour MP, Martin Salter, was involved
So you see, Mr McSmith. spectacularly wrong. But it's only a Diary piece, hey, so keep the lies coming
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