We are building up to it. Slow to anger, us Brits. Also, famous for not moaning about stuff. Or stabbing people.
I think everyone's on twitter, or perhaps changing their voicemail PIN codes.
Even by the standards of the British tabloid press, it is frightfully tawdry.
I'm confused about whether Andy Coulson was currently employed by David Cameron or not. The BBC article is written vaguely.
Ah, okay, thank you wikipedia:
Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World, resigned from his position as David Cameron's communications director on 21 January 2011, citing "continued coverage of events connected to my old job at the News of the World".[51] He had joined Cameron's communications team in 2007 after his resignation from the News of the World.
He was fired earlier this year.
Although Robert Peston of the BBC noticed this morning that his number10.gov.uk and conservatives.com mailboxes still work, or at least have live redirection.
(I sent them a SMTP VRFY via telnet, but then nobody has that turned on.)
6.2: I don't know what this means but I hope you aren't trying to hack into his mailbox, because that would be... wrong.
re: 8
Checks if the username exists and is valid. Not hacking as such, but can be used to do so.
No. The international standard for e-mail provides a command to check (verify - hence VRFY) if a given e-mail address exists at a particular mail server. Hardly anybody runs with it on because you don't usually want J. Random Crackmonkey compiling a list of your users. I thought it might be worth a try though.
aaand Rebekah Brooks is gone from the internal management committee!
Grauniad is reporting that they told Number 10 about Coulson knowingly employing onvicted PI and murder suspect before his appointment.
Also, NI appear to have breached UK employment law in laying off the NOTW staff without consultation.
I will say that it's consistent with my experience of Murdoch's US operations that the first move after a crisis was to treat longtime workers like shit.
This alleged email deletion story is pretty explosive. Ithas the potential to ensure that News Corp can't contain the damage to the News of the World and is the first time I've thought the BSkyB bid might be in jeopardy.
I will say that it's consistent with my experience of Murdoch's US operations that the first move after a crisis was to treat longtime workers like shit.
Murdoch's first move at any point is to treat long-time workers like shit. The move that made him was secretly building a new printing press for his UK papers which would make hundreds of inkies redundant, then sacking almost the entire NI workforce when they went on strike.
we Brits don't have to clog up the rest of the blog
What, you think USians are too provincial to hate on Murdoch on multiple continents? Fuck him all the way to Antarctica, I say!
14: Boy, that does look grim. I wonder who the executive is. I suspect we're going to find out.
16: It's more that we were posting OT updates on about three different threads. I thought it made sense to put them all in one place. It's hard to overstate how huge this is over here. The NOTW is the biggest selling paper in the country, and it's going to be gone in two days.
18. Unless they've melted down the server, I'm betting they can recover most of them if they're bothered. Watergate anybody?
It's hard to overstate how huge this is over here. The NOTW is the biggest selling paper in the country, and it's going to be gone in two days.
But it's a paper that never contains any actual information or journalism, right? How much bigger is it than our National Enquirer shutting down?
17: A restraining order and a twelve gauge.
THE CLOSURE OF THE ENQUIRER WOULD BE A PRETTY FUCKING BIG DEAL.
Some audio from the Brooks meeting this afternoon.
Sorry, screwed up the html.
Try this.
How much bigger is it than our National Enquirer shutting down?
How much bigger do you want?
1. It's scandal stories have traditionally been able to influence policy. Not so, I believe, with the Enquirer;
2. Every other print in the country except (partially) the Groan and the Graph have historically followed up its "stories". Not so, I believe, with the Enquirer;
3. It was Murdoch's biggest profit centre outside of broadcasting.
The equivalent to the Enquirer was, I think, the Sunday Sport, which went tits up last year.
26: I don't doubt that NOTW is a bigger deal than the Enquirer, but I think you underestimate the impact of the Enquirer.
26: I don't doubt that NOTW is a bigger deal than the Enquirer, but I think you underestimate the impact of the Enquirer.
Put it this way. Can you imagine Obama hiring the former editor of the Enquirer as press secretary? Or, for that matter, successive presidents meeting with the former editor of the Enquirer on a regular basis?
Basically, this is more like Fox News shutting down.
I've said before that the respective roles of TV and print news are basically reversed on either side of the Atlantic, and I think it applies here to.
It didn't contain much information, but you did get a healthy chunk of right-wing indoctrination to go with your Sunday plate of sordid'n'sensational. It's not so much the Enquirer as the Daily News's style but operating nationally and without a local base, mashed up with the NY Post's politics.
Is there any constituency lamenting its closure? Or are there other essentially equivalent outlets?
Also, Jamie is asserting (on what basis I know not) that the bookies have stopped taking bets that Cameron will have to step down. I doubt it, me, but if the Enquirer went tits up would anybody even wonder about its effect on Obama?
I hate to break it to you, but American newspapers don't have tits.
Bellies are fine, as is cleavage to a certain point.
From 37's link:
The Guardian disclosed that it had passed to a senior Cameron aide information about the News of the World's links to the detective, Jonathan Rees, which could not at the time be reported because Rees was awaiting trial for an axe murder.
!!!
Apparently nobody can get a gun in the U.K., but that hasn't stopped the plucky British killer.
Actually, now that I think about it, the Mail closing down would be more equivalent to Fox News closing, in that the Mail is more relentlessly ideological than the NOTW, not to mention more frequently published.But this is still seismic, and politically so, in a way that the Enquirer shutting down wouldn't be.
38, 39: Also of note "under Coulson's editorship the News of the World rehired Rees after he had served a seven-year sentence for conspiring to frame a woman for possession of cocaine".
Is there any constituency lamenting its closure? Or are there other essentially equivalent outlets?
Depends on how you define constituency. The NUJ, and many journos in general, are of course lamenting the loss of jobs. And then there's this, in my opinion deeply misguided, article.
As for equivalent outlets, the Sun is extremely similar, unsurprisingly. The Mail is somewhat similar, but with slightly less emphasis on sex scandals and slightly more on house prices and whipping up racism.
With the possible exception of the NY Times, I don't see the disappearance of any major American newspaper as being a spectacularly big event. Our great local paper, which used to be thought of as the second or third best in the country, has already mostly disappeared, and nobody seems to care all that much.
Political, economic, and media ramifications aside---this is one hell of a story.
which used to be thought of as the second or third best in the country
By who?
By who?
David Halberstam for one, assuming you're talking about the LA times.
OK, third or fourth best. I hate the Washington Post so much, though.
With the possible exception of the NY Times, I don't see the disappearance of any major American newspaper as being a spectacularly big event. Our great local paper, which used to be thought of as the second or third best in the country, has already mostly disappeared, and nobody seems to care all that much.
Like I say, newspapers and TV occupy opposite positions over here. Although print has been declining just as it has in the US, far more people read national newspapers than watch TV news. Not least because TV news is, relatively speaking, politically impartial and staid, while the newspapers are all to greater or lesser degrees politicised and punchy, Normally, though not always, newspapers set the political and news agenda, which TV then follows.
45: Many. When I was out there in the mid-80s it was pretty damn good and my impression was that it would've ranked third at that time. Of course I got to contrast it with the Orange County Register.
I'm sorry, but I seem to be incapable of expanding the acronym to anything other than News of the Weird. Is there any way to connect News of the World to The Concrete Enema?
It's been around since 1843: casucally chopping off something this old in the UK is a big deal.
It's consumed primarily as a "bit of a larf": it's never been a remotely serious newspaper in my lifetime. As none of the Brits seems yet to have noted, its actual real name everywhere is the NEWS OF THE SCREWS.
Paradoxically I think that gives these developments way more heft over here: it's like finding out that Marmaduke is running an international child-sex ring.
I just invented the mustard colada! Who wants one?
It is weird how little newspapers matter in the US. Wen I lived in Philly, the Inquirer was considered one of the top papers in the country, and would win a Pulizer almost every year. At some point, the paper totally went in the crapper, and was dumped by McClatchy when it bought Knight-Ridder. My family still lives in Philly, and I know a bunch of people who live there, and in all of our conversations, "our award winner paper is now in the crapper" never came up.
Not least because TV news is, relatively speaking, politically impartial and staid, while the newspapers are all to greater or lesser degrees politicised and punchy, Normally, though not always, newspapers set the political and news agenda, which TV then follows.
Ah, so that's the context of the TV segments devoted to the headlines of the various papers.
Not least because TV news is, relatively speaking, politically impartial and staid, while the newspapers are all to greater or lesser degrees politicised and punchy, Normally, though not always, newspapers set the political and news agenda, which TV then follows.
Thanks, that helps a lot.
Here we have the situation where the newspapers traditionally act like they're grudgingly forced to cover salacious stories because those irresponsible people on TV stations are talking about it so they can't ignore it anymore. When the Enquirer actually broke a story that ended up in the mainstream media (John Edwards) it was as if ... I don't know, if Alan Carr was interviewing Tom Hardy and started making a joke about how Hardy had boffed David Cameron, and then started producing a dossier of convincing evidence to that effect.
51: It's been around since 1843
One source had it as basically rooted in the culture of Penny Dreadfuls. Not sure how accurate that is.
Thanks, that helps a lot.
If you want me to do my full on rant about this subject, I'm now drunk enough.
Late breaking news, courtesy of the Grauniad's insanely addictive live blog.
3rd person arrested on suspicion of corruption (ie bribing police). Unnamed, interestingly. The police announcements are always anonymous, but usually the press runs with a name anyway. Not entirely sure whether this means they genuinely don't know or if they're being super sensitive about libel and/or prejudicing a trial. He's aged 63 so it shouldn't be too hard for them to narrow it down.
Rather amusingly, it seems the audio from the Brooks meetings is coming via Sky News, as did quite a few live tweets.
You have to type the rant into the computer.
"Rupert has seeded substantial power to his son James..." - Michael Wolff, Comment Is Free
Right, here goes. Bear in mind that this is all highly simplified and, well, bollocks.
The US and British media landscape started out in fairly similar places. The press started as polemical, populist rags - born out of the pamphleting tradition - and continued that way for some time, in the absence (post about 1850 give or take a few decades) of heavy regulation. Meanwhile, broadcast media was highly regulated from the start and its news was traditionally, at the very least, establishment. Especially in Britain, where it was the just the BBC for quite some time. Conversely, the print media had a wide diversity of often anti-establishment voices well into the 20th century. The Mirror, for instance, was started as a newspaper by and for women in the early 1900s. And if you look at the wonderful archive of newspapers in the Newseum (sponsored by News Corp!) in Washington, the US press was very lively for a long, long time from late colonial times until quite recently. Hearst is the most obvious example of a traditional press baron in the US, and his example still holds true in Britain.
But from about 1960 onward, the two countries' media started to diverge, for a range of reasons. US print journalism started to see itself as a profession, rather than a vocation, which led to the development and strict enforcement explicit and implicit codes of behaviour such as political impartiality, ridiculously boring headlines and an aversion to tawdry scandal. Slightly later, the deregulation of TV, the repeal of the fairness doctrine, and in particular rise of cable news, allowed TV news to fill the infotainment gap the newspapers had largely abandoned.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the decline of deference, Empire and general obscenity law allowed the press to run wild. Murdoch entered the fray, turning formerly run-of-the-mill papers into economically and politically conservative yet sex-obsessed rags. But TV, especially news, remained highly regulated, still viewed as a public service, and the main broadcaster was still run by the state.
So you end up with a situation where in the US, TV news is ratings driven, sensationalist, nativist and populist, while the (broadsheet) press is outward looking, scrupulously balanced (within the Overton window, natch) to the point of obscuring the truth, and unspeakably boring 90% of the time. In the UK, by contrast, the press is highly sensationalist, highly politicised, even more nativist, always conscious that you lose 95% of your readers with every paragraph, and obsessed with scandal. Meanwhile TV news is (within the Overton window, which is shifted quite substantially to the left compared to the US) balanced, boring, international, and wonkish.
I had a bit more to say but I forgot what it was.
That was good, but Apo may be disappointed in the lack of rant-ness.
My rants come across a lot more sober in text form.
Tonight's Newsnight was quite lively. McMullen is a proper dick. It takes quite some doing to give Steve Coogan the moral high ground.
But from about 1960 onward, the two countries' media started to diverge, for a range of reasons. US print journalism started to see itself as a profession, rather than a vocation...
I wonder if this has to do with the process of consolidation (from multiple newspapers per city to one) that happened in the US around the same time, which has been often mentioned as a reason for the political blandness here (trying to maximize readership across parties). I doubt the same process could have taken place in England, what with the preeminence of London.
Well, that's another rant, about the existence and relevance of national newspapers in Britain versus the US, but it's not as interesting, to be honest. It's mostly driven by my annoyance when people talk about the "London Times" or even worse the "Manchester Guardian", which hasn't existed for 50 years.
In short, though, I think it has more to do with the class system. Journalism in the UK was an (educated) working class job for much longer than in the US, so it was viewed for longer as a way of making of a living, rather than a profession with self-protective standards. Most of the high profile British editors made their way up the ranks from quite lowly origins until recently. That's changed quite dramatically in the last 20 years, it has to be said.
That said, the relative uncompetitiveness of US print news does I think contribute to the shittiness of a lot of the US press (it's less apparent in the large markets where there actually is competition).
I had a bit more to say but I forgot what it was.
Maybe more alcohol would help.
Maybe more alcohol would help.
I'm certainly going to find out.
How important is Hugh Grant to this story?
Wow, Robert Vienneau reads Unfogged.
57: The first popular US dailies had their roots in penny-press scandal sheets too - James Gordon Bennett launched the Herald with sensational stories like the murder of Helen Jewett in the mid-1830s - but they either got conglomerated or went out of business later. Also, at some point most of them were brought to some degree of respectability in the eyes of the respectable.
I don't know what the consensus is, if there is one, but I have the impression that journalism in the US professionalized - or at least the effects of ongoing professionalization were already becoming noticeable - by the 1930s.
The kind of sensational, but often factual, reporting you got with the muckrakers (and Hearst employed some of them at Cosmopolitan) was pretty much gone by 1914, but that's another (though probably related) story.
But whatever the chronology, though, the results for contemporary US journalism are the same. And pretty crappy.
68: I don't think that I've ever said "The London Times," but I have said that when at home, as opposed to in the UK, as The Times of London to distinguish it from NYT. If I said "The Times" here I'm pretty sure people would think that I was talking about "The New York Times."
Semi-serious question, in the post Conrad Black/ Barbara Amies era is the Telegraph a better paper than the Times?
68: I don't think that I've ever said "The London Times," but I have said that when at home, as opposed to in the UK, as The Times of London to distinguish it from NYT. If I said "The Times" here I'm pretty sure people would think that I was talking about "The New York Times."
Yeah, I don't object to trying to distinguish the two. I just wish people would use "the UK's Times" or some such locution. The national press is London-centric, but it's not that London centric.
75:And Unfogged reads Robert Vienneau
The recent CT thread on Marxism is very much worth saving and studying, for those who want to understand the Labor Theory of Value and the Transformation Problem and such.
The NOTW thing strikes as the kind of bourgeois moralistic distraction and trivial victory (black President, DSK destruction) the capitalists use to hold down class consciousness.
No, the NOTW was the kind of bourgeois moralistic distraction the capitalists use to hold down class consciousness. Publicly exposing the right wing propaganda machine AND its owners as the criminal conspiracy they are opens up an opportunity for serious activists to draw lessons about the nature of the ruling class that go a lot wider.
This thing has now crossed the Atlantic. There's the fox; chase it.
Robert Vienneau is dead to me.
My takeaway from the Marxism thread is that while I'm now muddled at a higher level, I still don't know if formal Marxian economics is good for anything.
84.2:Me too. I've picked up some older David Harvey books, including the very technical Limits to Capitalism
Okay, I do disagree. It may be very very difficult, but I do still see Marxism as a path to a merging of theory and praxis. The bourgeois economists I like (a little), Krugman DeLong Thoma seem terribly frustrated and confused about to turn their analyses into policy. Quiggin seems to be seeking hard.
The 10th Thesis seems sometimes a rebuke, but also a path.
Of course Marxist/Marxian political/social theory is a field as large as Marxian economics.
83: I think that the FCPA applies only to the corporation and not the person. It's sometimes used to get companies that have probably not engaged in bribing foreign officials but have not followed good accounting practices.
It's mostly driven by my annoyance when people talk about the... "Manchester Guardian", which hasn't existed for 50 years.
I've done that: sheer ignorance, of course, but based on having seen historic references to the Manchester Guardian, and current references to the Guardian, which I assumed to be the same paper, and that in the US I've never heard of a paper dropping its city affiliation. The only paper I can think of that's not on some level a local paper is USA Today, which was founded as a national.
It still seems odd to me that you'd have a newspaper, however national, without some particular local focus.
Do AP and Reuters wire stories show up in UK papers? And, if so, which ones?
Reuters stores certainly now and then (unless the internet has radically changed things): even the biggest papers don't run stringers in every country, so that stories break when they have no one near by.
AP I'm less certain of: is it US stories only? Obviously the big papers DO all have US correspondents, and they tend to go with "stories that are already big in America", so AP would be more a rival than a necessity.
I'm guessing a bit: it's possible the ecology has changed a lot since I read daily papers in actual in-yr-hand paper form...
(Haha I just clicked on the Reuters web page: he first thing I read was a banner saying "You're now viewing the UK edition. NO THANKS.")
87: The only paper I can think of that's not on some level a local paper is USA Today
Well there was Grit (a "magazine" since 2006). But looking it up I was surprised to learn that it started as a Williamsport, Pa local and for most of its history published a local Sunday edition.
I'd say the Wall Street Journal as well.
Thinking about friends who are generally apolitical but likely to check the news a few times a week, I'd say CNN.com serves something akin to the role of "national newspaper" for most of them.
92
I'd say the Wall Street Journal as well
The WSJ has started publishing a lot more local news (such as NY sports).
92: Hmm. Did not know that, haven't read a paper copy in years I realize.
I think of WS as the WSJ's locality.
I'm a complete convert to Twitter, in its current form, as a superior news aggregation service. My state rep's daily/hourly summaries were way better than any newspaper write-up during the recent legislative session, and between Blake Hounshell and some Yemen hands, it's easier to get an understanding of what's going on in the ME than ever. Journalists' tweets are better than the stories that get printed/broadcast anyway.
Ebert, Krugman, Greenwald.
It was not a national newspaper per se, but my local paper was a Knight paper (in fact the original one) for most of my time growing up (Knight-Ridder* at the end). And it really did have very good national news instance compared to the two Cleveland papers at the time. However, it wasn't that great on local issues, which is probably par for the course for one-newspaper towns.
*It still boogles my mind how right K-R was in the face of the national press hysteria in the lead up to the Iraq War. History should be ruthless on this. It was all out there and available. They were also very good (and totally ignored) on the Swift Boaters, breaking the story well before the election of them getting together to help each other "remember correctly" after the initial attempts fizzled in early the spring. And were almost totally ignored.
Rebekah Brooks is the refutation of the whole "wouldn't it be grand if people like us were editors" argument. Murdoch in feminist drag.
Also, +10 for the KR/McClatchy Washington Bureau. They did real reporting of Iraq when it wasn't fashionable.
no worries, Alex; people like me make damn good publishers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Graham
It seems that in the US, the magazines have served the "national" function, but obviously at a much lower frequency. McClure's advertised itself for a while as the first true attempt at national journalism and Collier's called itself a national weekly - in both its U.S. and Canadian editions.
I think the AP has some foreign correspondent reporting, but it may just be from areas where the U.S. has a military/foreign affairs presence.
Hmm, Katharine Graham was pretty much the opposite of everything about Wade/Brooks - elite, old money vs putting-it-on-a-bit prolier than thou...
But still a woman. Not that my argument (snipe, actually) is that Katharine Graham proves more than that a woman can be a damn good publisher. It's that Rebekah Brooks' case says nothing about whether the feminist argument you cite is correct or not. Nothing. "Refutes", my arse.
And Katharine Graham's class and wealth and her become pubisher by inheritance is, actually, relevant to the feminist argument in that she never had to fight her way up in a man's world, as Rebekah Brooks did. So it was more feasible for her to retain "womanly" qualities, if she did.
Let me concede that Brooks may have been horrible all her life, and that you may have only encountered feminists who promote a highly crass, reductive, and biologically-based version of the relevant feminist arguments on this issue; and that it may have escaped your attention that -- for example -- Tories apart, only one very small somewhat eccentric feminist group supported Thatcher.
Let me,having done that, pretend I thought I was offering a counter-argument, and ask you why you'd see Brooks as a refutation, Graham, as no counter-refutation?
well, that's what happens when I get angry on a hot day; it should be "and her becoming publisher", of course.
Re national newspapers: Chistian Science Monitor.
Apparently I can forget lots of things.
100, 101- Alex (as far as I can tell) was talking about class, not gender. I don't think anyone has offered Brooks as a refutation of the possibility that a woman can be a good editor.
Also I meant publisher, not editor.
"100, 101- Alex (as far as I can tell) was talking about class, not gender. I don't think anyone has offered Brooks as a refutation of the possibility that a woman can be a good editor."
105/107, I assumed Alex's
"Rebekah Brooks is the refutation of the whole "wouldn't it be grand if people like us were editors" argument. Murdoch in feminist drag."
referred to a feminist argument that if a greater number of Xs (where X=politician, normally, but editor, newspaper proprietor, would count) were women, society would be a better place.
100
And Katharine Graham's class and wealth and her become pubisher by inheritance is, actually, relevant to the feminist argument in that she never had to fight her way up in a man's world, as Rebekah Brooks did. So it was more feasible for her to retain "womanly" qualities, if she did.
If feminism makes it easier for women to fight their way to the top then you expect to get more Rebekah Brooks's not more Katharine Grahams.
Let me concede that Brooks may have been horrible all her life, and that you may have only encountered feminists who promote a highly crass, reductive, and biologically-based version of the relevant feminist arguments on this issue; and that it may have escaped your attention that -- for example -- Tories apart, only one very small somewhat eccentric feminist group supported Thatcher.
Feminists may not have supported Thatcher directly but they helped create the conditions that made possible her rise to power.
in the US I've never heard of a paper dropping its city affiliation
I know of one example, but admittedly at the state rather than national level.
Really, I was lazily kicking at a bad faith defence of News International that goes something like this: well, unlike your elitist whatever, the real working class love us and our editor is a woman (or if we're talking race, our investigations editor is a Muslim). Take that, liberal cobag! to borrow a phrase.
This is an example of why it's unwise to care too much about the other side's arguments as you may mistake them for content.
"Feminists may not have supported Thatcher directly but they helped create the conditions that made possible her rise to power." Unsurprisingly, given its source, this is nonsense on stilts.
112
Unsurprisingly, given its source, this is nonsense on stilts.
Feminism hasn't encouraged conservative women to pursue professional careers?
Not in the UK in the 50s, no, don't be so ridiculous: whatever the impulse, it wasn't called -- and it wasn't -- feminism. And of course what actually made her political career possible was marrying a millionaire.
111 I see. Well yes, it was lazy. But so was my snipe in reply. This is an example of why it's unwise etc...
Unwise? Why do you think we're here? Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
I'm eating Dippin' Dots, the ice cream of the future! Or maybe they're just sequins. Either way, I'm fancy!
I wish this ToS contribution to stand in the record.
Fox owners spied on 9/11 victims. Stand by for action.
Feminism - maybe not Third Wave feminism, but the idea of taking women seriously in the public sphere - probably did have some role in allowing Thatcher to become Prime Minister, but so what? So did the rise of liberal democracy. Both are good things, but neither is a cure for all ills.
(Or is the point meant to be that whereas liberal democracy, when contrasted to the alternatives, clearly tends to increase the proportion of progressive people in positions of power, feminism is net-net neutral with respect to this particular effect, however good it may be for other reasons? That's arguable, but doesn't change the fact that having women in visible positions of power is an inherently progressive outcome when contrasted to the alternative.)
it may have escaped your attention that -- for example -- Tories apart, only one very small somewhat eccentric feminist group supported Thatcher.
Thatcher, like all Conservative leaders since her, got the majority of her votes from women. But this probably has nothing to do with Thatcher. In most countries, the female vote is more right-wing than the male vote. The US is an exception.
87: It still seems odd to me that you'd have a newspaper, however national, without some particular local focus.
All UK national newspapers have a London focus. The non-existence of anything north of Lincoln in the media world is a running joke to those of us north of Lincoln.
Lincoln? I thought the cutoff was Watford, if not the M25...
The interesting exception to the general rule of the UK having national papers is I think the Scots papers. The Scotsman and the Herald are quality national papers but at the same time not quite.
I thought the cutoff was Watford, if not the M25...
Nah, Oxfordshire is included.
Keir: the Scotsman and the Herald are both national papers, the nation in question being Scotland, but they both still have very definite local focuses - Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively.
The only significant non-London morning dailies left in England are I think the Birmingham Post and Yorkshire Post (Leeds). Los of evening papers though.
Yeah --- I mean, I always think of the Herald as the Glasgow Herald (to distinguish from the NZ Herald, which is actually an Auckland paper really).
Speaking of which, NZ's curious. There's four main dailies -- the NZ Herald (the largest, out of Auckland) the Dominion Post (the other major paper, out of Wellington), the Press (out of Christchurch & owned by the same people as the DomPost) and the Otago Daily Times (Dunedin, independent.) The Herald and the DomPost definitely aspire to be national papers, & the Press and the ODT are definitely local, but there's no real reason why Wellington and Auckland should have national papers and none from the South Island.
Non-London papers: Western Morning News, no?
The Yorkshire Post is the oldest newspaper in the world if you're a Yorkshireman (started 1755 as the Leeds Intelligencer). It's Lloyds List if you're a T&F Informa journalist (they are the current owners). I was both, and therefore conflicted on this key topic.
The non-existence of anything north of Lincoln in the media world is a running joke to those of us north of Lincoln
Where's Lincoln? Is it north of Banbury?
Indeed, it used to be the Glasgow Herald until about 10 or 15 years ago.
NZ has a lot of national papers for a country with fewer people than Scotland.
Or maybe not, actually; Scotland's got the Scotsman/Scotland on Sunday, the Herald, and the Daily Record/Sunday Mail, plus various locals like the Aberdeen Press & Journal and the very splendid and worthwhile West Highland Free Press.
127(1) : The Western Mail and the Daily Post, both pretty well-distributed in Wales.
127(2): The London Gazette beats them both doesn't it? Unless one's going to say that its current function isn't really that of a newspaper.
131.2: is it a newspaper if all it does is, essentially, print press releases?
Hmm.
To be honest, 132 is equally relevant to 131(1).
Wales has the Shropshire Star!
The Press and the ODT aren't very national. You can't get the Press south of Omaru or north of Picton, and the Herald and DomPost are both obviously Wgtn and Auckland papers with national aspirations.
The trick is that there are only two and a bit publishers in NZ -- APN and Fairfax, and the ODT and the very few remaining independents. So there aren't that many journalists.
Wales has the Shropshire Star!
Not unless Wales actually has Shropshire, I would argue...
133 is relevant to quite a lot of newspapers.
133 is relevant to quite a lot of newspapers.
Which is why the term "quite a lot of newspapers" will be a quaint anachronism within a few years.
I would argue Wales is the hillier western bit of Shropshire, ever since Glyndŵr turned up too late at the battle of Shrewsbury.
One feels that Glyndŵr, were he available for comment, would venture to dissent.
In most countries, the female vote is more right-wing than the male vote. The US is an exception.
I'm familiar with research showing that American women tend to lean left, but could you provide a citation for the former claim? Not being confrontational; I'm really intrigued and want to know more.
140: to add some incentive, I transfer all of my fortune to whoever comes up with a proper citation for that.
For the UK:
http://www.earlhamsociologypages.co.uk/vbint.htm#and
The traditional gender gap, with women voting for more right wing parties, didn't hold at the 2005 election, but holds consistently before that.
If Alex Gibbon's "The Mystery of Jack of Kent and the Fate of Owain Glyndŵr" is correct, Glyndŵr is not only available for comment, but currently blogging about matters legal at the New Statesman.
Like Arthur, Wild Edric, Hereward the Wake and Joe Hill, he never died and will return when he is needed.
In Soviet Russia, woman oppresses you.
140: In the UK, it held until the 2010 elections, when it reversed itself.
http://www.earlhamsociologypages.co.uk/vbint.htm#and
And this paper looks at the picture in Australia:
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rp/1997-98/98rp03.htm
It's not universally true, but seems very widespread:
Up until the 1970s, women were more likely than men to vote for conservative parties in West Germany, France, Greece, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden and Finland.(31) However, since the mid-1970s this trend has changed in several countries. In Sweden, women have been less likely than men to vote for the conservative party, while left voting generally (that is, voting for the Left Party and the Social Democrats) increased among women and declined among men in the 1980s... While women continued to form the solid base of support for the Christian right parties in France and Germany (around 45 per cent) during the 1980s, the percentage difference between men and women supporting parties of the left closed.(34)
...More women than men supported parties of the left in West and East Germany, Portugal, Spain and Denmark. In contrast, in Britain, Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland and France, women appear more likely than men to be right-wing in their voting choice. In the latter three countries, there was very little support by either men or women for parties of the left.
That's one country and for some of the time. What I do know is (think I know, can't be bothered to cite) is that left wing parties in Europe opposed universal suffrage, because it was thought that the generally lower levels of education that women typically had access to & that there was a correlation between right wing voting and level of education. True or not, that had nothing to do with women and everything with education.
[Also, 63 is good, I hope that the drinking is ongoing & that the rant will be completed.]
I'm trying to imagine what I'd make of 143.1 if I was American.
And don't forget Sir Francis Drake (Cap'n art thou sleeping there below?).
re: 146
Universal suffrage in the UK essentially predates the existence of the major left party (in its modern form) so I'd be very surprised if that was remotely a factor.
146 was to 142.
145: hm, what in earth would have happened to women in the 70's?
Where do you get your quote in 145.3? That seems fairly clear.
149: in that the UK may be an exception. Anyway, I do not think you need to have a major left party to have a tendency for the less educated people to tend to vote in a more conservative way. I'm not sure but I did think it was also a matter of discussion between progressives if universal suffrage wouldn't be tactically a bad thing.
re: 151
It's from the Australian paper linked directly above it.
re: 152
Less educated people, funnily enough, have formed the substantial base of the major left-wing party in the UK, more or less since its inception.
I'm not sure what you are arguing, tbh, Guido, except expressing surprise at other places not being like the US.
I think women's suffrage was a sort of left wing thing in the UK*; it has the ring of atheism socialism feminism vegetarianism spiritualism and science fiction in being a product of Victorian free thought. Certainly in NZ it was left wing.
* and I would be surprised if it wasn't in most places, although! should be compared with brotherhood ideals of citizenship post French Revolution & also temperance campaigns and the role of methodism and connection to liberalism/leftiness etc.
nattar, I guess I am arguing that most places are like the US only that they don't realize it yet. Funnily or not most left-wing parties started from the elite and much of the anti-left rhetoric currently around is that people on the left are elitist and out of touch with the 'people'.
At one point in the later 19th, the SPD explicitly opposed agitation for women's suffrage as diversionary from the main struggle. I believe Engels equally explictly denounced this as BS, but I can't be arsed to look for a cite because who cares.
shorter 157: education is a good thing.
Emmeline Pankhurst was socially friendly with pioneer British labour leader Keir Hardie -- though I don't know if this had political ramifications. According to wikipedia one of her ancestors was at the Peterloo massacre (on the being massacred side); she also had Manx forebears, which is interesting because -- did you know this? -- the Isle of Man was the first place in the world to allow women the vote, in 1881.
I actually think this is all largely irrelevant to the actual sui generis specifics of Margaret Thatcher's career, and if I have a moment later I'll say why.
I'm not sure what you are arguing, tbh, Guido, except expressing surprise at other places not being like the US.
Guido also gets the U.S. wrong. Less education correlates with support for Democrats in the U.S., also.
Funnily or not most left-wing parties started from the elite
What? The British Labour Party grew out of the Labour Representation Committee, which was related to the trade union movement. Similar story, with added radicalism, in France. The story of the European political left is tied very closely to the trade union movement, which is, by definition, not "elite".
and much of the anti-left rhetoric currently around is that people on the left are elitist and out of touch with the 'people'.
In the US, maybe; not everywhere. In addition, the Democratic Party is not really a party of the left, except inasmuch as it is slightly to the left of the other main party.
And left wing parties opposing women's suffrage because they thought women would tend to vote for the right is a real [citation needed] moment; arguing that it was a distraction (as in 158) is a different matter.
I think the Isle of Man's claim is a bit shaky, except within the context of a broadly mainstream conception of politics; though it does seem to have priority in British terms. The Paris Commune allowed women to vote in 1871. Marx's faction in the First International wanted women to be allowed to be members, but were voted down (by the French: vive la différence!)
161: Don't worry, I get most things wrong - but it does happen that I get them wrong in interesting ways. The US can't be a leading indicator for everything. It would certainly be depressing that education leads to the right (although for sure education leads to wealth leading to economic right wing) but depressing things can be true; also in the Anglo-Saxon world.
re: 157
This isn't true of the UK -- the major left-wing party was not born as an elite party. On preview, ajay has also made this point.
shorter 157: education is a good thing.
Getting the basic facts right would also be a good thing. So far you just seem to be rehashing claims that may (or may not) be true of the US but aren't true in Europe. Combined with a bit of condescension towards the 'uneducated', natch.
I think any attempt to correlate education with politics is going to run into the problem that low educational level also correlates with coming from a poor family background, which, I would have expected, would make you more sympathetic to left-wing parties.
Also, in the US, the correlation reverses itself after a certain point; people with postgraduate degrees tend to vote Democrat.
Shit, I didn't want to be condescending. Sorry for that, and all the rest. I do think education is a good thing, & the sustainable way to get to better politics. I do think that Europe is bigger than the UK. I also think that it's not good to come up with 'facts' about women without looking whether there is something beyond the first set of numbers.
I do think education is a good thing
Graduate school can fix that.
167: if that would be so (poor people predominantly voting left) in all of Europe it would mean that there are a lot less poor people than there actually are. At least in some parts of Europe one of the problems is that there are very convincing populists that manage to convince poor people to vote for the right. It may well be that it is not a phenomenon that happens with poor people in the US or the UK. There are other factors: lots of poor people in Europe have no voting right (because they're immigrants) and lots of poor people just don't vote (but there are countries in which voting is compulsory). But all in all (I may be wrong again) the actual votes for the extreme right in Europe would at least indicate that your expectation is somewhat optimistic.
Guido, before you go on, you should probably take a look at this
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/03/09/income-and-2008-presidential-voting-patterns/
which shows a very strong association between being poor and voting Democrat in the US;
and this
http://www.earlhamsociologypages.co.uk/vbint.htm
which shows a similar association between class and party affiliation in Britain.
the actual votes for the extreme right in Europe would at least indicate that your expectation is somewhat optimistic.
OK, there are several things wrong with this.
First, the actual votes for the extreme right in Europe are generally tiny, and thus in no way inconsistent with the idea that the poor tend to be leftish.
Second, why on earth are you assuming that only the poor would ever vote for the extreme right? Or indeed the populist right? I'm not aware that Berlusconi, for example, draws his support mainly from the poor. Quite the opposite, I would think.
No citation to hand but I believe that broadly speaking the fascist vote comes from i. the lower middle class/upper working class who are frightened by the prospect of falling into the abyss and ii. the total loser layer; but the latter is generally unlikely to drag their sorry arses to the polling booth, so though they may be very noisily right wing, they make up a far smaller proportion of the actual right wing vote.
The socialist vote (American=liberal) is generally concentrated in the broader working class, which these days includes a few million underpaid office serfs who continue to pretend they're middle class. These are the people who are the target of the new right, who are trying to scare them into voting against their own interests, but by and large they haven't succeeded yet.
Guido's comments above are symptomatic of a certain general belief that the working-classes are illiberal. Which isn't, at least in the UK, particularly true.
Working class people are more likely to be in mixed-race marriages, working class relationships typically have much more equitable distribution of housework and child-care than in middle-class families, and so on. Multi-culturalism and gender-equality are much deeper ingrained in working class culture than they are in middle-class culture, despite what the middle-classes may falsely believe about themselves.
a certain general belief that the working-classes are illiberal. Which isn't, at least in the UK, particularly true.
Maybe he's been doing a Friedman and talking to taxi drivers.
I'm open to the idea that I'm a symptom of the bad disease that is being 'middle class'. I certainly hope I'm wrong on this. The thing is that at least in North-West Europe the extreme right is getting 20-30% of the vote (proportional systems are less prone to an underrepresentation of the extreme right in elected parliaments). As far as I was engaged in the party, the problem being discussed was 'how to win back the working class vote'. I'm sure that many middle class people also vote extreme right (althought it's not my intuition to count 174i and 174ii) as middle class.
Also maybe 175 is true. I hope so but I don't think this disease-ridden middle class bourgeois brain is easily cleansed from the propaganda that has been accumulated by it.
The thing is that at least in North-West Europe the extreme right is getting 20-30% of the vote
Not in the most recent elections in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, the UK, Ireland, Norway or France they weren't. Am I missing anyone?
North-West Europe includes Finland and Hungary, right?
Belgium - Flanders: Vlaams Belang got +20% up to the last election when the "somewhat milder" N-VA got almost 30% (and the VB fell to 15%). Walloons do better on this, they are in fact the only ones to have recently voted really left that I know of.
Netherlands: Geert Wilders was needed to get the current government in place.
Denmark: the current government is not exactly a poster child for leftism.
France: Marine Le Pen is a serious contender for the run-off for the next presidentials (close to the Chirac event a couple of elections ago)
UK: the BNP and the UKIP maybe held back by the election system but their results are certainly not comforting
Germany: Die Linke has managed to keep votes, but then again so did the SP in the Netherlands just before Wilders won the elections
Am I really the only one to think that there is some serious danger from the extreme right?
I'm open to the idea that I'm a symptom of the bad disease that is being 'middle class'.... this disease-ridden middle class bourgeois brain is easily cleansed from the propaganda that has been accumulated by it.
Guido --
I don't know who's right about the voting habits of the working class in Europe. But I'm pretty sure no one's called you diseased, or attributed any error you've fallen into to your own class background -- the worst thing you've been called is condescending.
The point you're arguing doesn't seem to me to be clearly enough stated on either side that I can easily figure out who's right or wrong on the exact issue that's being argued. But I'm certain that the sort of thing you've said above won't encourage anyone to clarify calmly, rather than start snapping back and forth.
Right, so there are no countries in North-West Europe in which the extreme right is getting 20-30% of the vote. That's what I thought.
re: 179
Neither of those would be North-Western Europe. I suppose Finland is northern Europe.
re: 177
I think you are making numbers up. None of the major European countries have far-right votes remotely in that area.* The UK's far-right party had less than 2% of the vote at the last election. I'm not sure where you are getting your 'facts' from, but I'm assuming not from anywhere accurate?
* Depends how you view the FN in France, I suppose. Although they only had 10-15% of the vote in the last regional elections, and they are, afaik, the largest of all the main European 'right' parties.
Whenever somebody asks me about the voting habits of the working class in Europe, I always say, "They will fluctuate."
I've decided to go by what FIFA considers to be Europe. Finland is northwest Europe, Bulgaria is southwest Europe, southern Europe is Kazakhstan.
North-West Europe includes Finland and Hungary, right?
The extreme-right party in Finland is the True Finns, who got 5% of the vote. Fidesz in Hungary I will grant you is a bit of a worry but it's hardly part of a trend of extreme-right parties doing really well across Europe.
re: 180
The BNP got less than 2% of the vote, and it's down year on year. There's really not much to worry about. The people to worry about aren't in extreme right political non-entities, they are smack back in the middle of neo-liberal mainstream parties.
re: 180.last
Pretty much, yeah.
I think LB is right. I've been a nuisance.
(the True Finns got 19.1% in 2011)
188. Not at all. What do you think about the reality of the threat from the right in the US? (From here the tea party looks like Poujadisme wrapped in the American flag.)
I've been a nuisance.
Not in any overarching sense -- the conversation just looked interesting, and I was trying to keep it from jumping the track.
We're suppose to stop if we're being a nuisance?
Thanks. I don't know too much about the US but I do know the poling in my home town (no - I won't tell you where I live) and in working class districts the Vlaams Belang (or Vlaams Blok) polled at 40% up to 2009. Wilders, De Winter, Le Pen, Bossi have all been identifying with the Tea Party. I am not in the US but if I hear people complaining about Fox or in the UK about NOTW and like I fear this is not because nobody is watching or reading it.
Also, I am having a bad day. It is like the chimney is going to fall on my head and not metaphorically. Trying to find a builder in the middle of construction sector holidays is not fun. I should be manly enough to go up there and do it myself but I fear that once I'm up there I would be tempted to jump. And anyway, there is nothing whatsoever that I'd be able to do up there except for jump. So I have decided to be grumpy instead.
Are they indeed? I did not know that. Probably the American left should see if they can use it for a righteous smear campaign. Except the American left usually reacts as though they'd rather lose than be thought impolite.
I thought Fox and the like quite openly associated with the 'new right' in Europe, especially Wilders. I don't know whether the 'new right' in Europe took their cue from the US or the Tea Party from what has been successful in continental Europe, but on Dalrymple and Burke they anyway seem to find a convergence with all things Hoover.
196: Wilders came to NYC for that silly mosque "controversy" a few months back, so there's certainly been something of a relationship. On the other hand, that story was really, really stupid and stupidly handled by the press, so even trying to think seriously about it makes my brain want to go on strike.
Wilders' party (PVV) currently has 24 seats out of 150 in parliament, or sixteen percent of the votes (roughly) so not quite up to the 20-30 percent of Guido, but not something to be happy about either.
(There's also the SGP, whom nobody in .nl thinks is on the extreme right, but they are a bunch of religious nutjobs who'd like all women to be barefoot and pregnant and without voting rights, so I'd count them as well)
Worse, while on their own the PVV is bad enough, if only through their constant fanning the flames of racism, they also provide cover for the supposedly respectable rightwing minority government currently holding power, both by going for a bit of racebaiting themselves (declaring the end of the multicultural society frex) and by having the support to drive through spending cuts by appealing to the PVV's semi-populist instincs: no money for scroungers, especially arty-farty scroungers.
Governments in other European countries might not quite be this blatant, but having an extreme rightwing bogeyman like the BNP has helped New Labour losen up their inner bigots to "respond to the very real concerns of the white working class" when they were in power, even if the BNP was never likely to get into parliament.
having an extreme rightwing bogeyman like the BNP has helped New Labour losen up their inner bigots to "respond to the very real concerns of the white working class" when they were in power
Not to any significant level.
I'm still consistently boggling at the constant stream of sleaze that's coming out.
200: What's the sleaze? A lot of the coverage on this sid of the pond seems to be more focused on the general idea of a newspaper closing, which rather misses the point.
There keep on being new stories about exactly what they hacked into: Gordon Brown's terribly ill daughter's medical records, personal phones of police investigating NOTW (which, if I've got it straight, were used to pressure police to back off?); the murdered girl whose messages they listened to before the police got them; it's just one particularly grisly story after another.
re: 201
Well, systematic corruption on the part of the police, bribery, invasion of privacy, cell-phone hacking, use of GPS pinging of phones, hacking of the police themselves, interference with a murder investigation, leaking of Brown's son's medical condition, hacking of the voicemail and then subsequent deletion of voice mails from the mailbox of a murdered girl. Hacking of relatives of victims of the 7/7 bombings, and on and on and on. There's more coming out on an hourly basis.
personal phones of police investigating NOTW (which, if I've got it straight, were used to pressure police to back off?)
Not quite: the police were investigating one of the PIs used by the News of the World for murder, and the NOTW went after the police, revealing some minor wrongdoing (eg misuse of air miles) on the part of two of the investigating officers.
re: 204
Also, iirc, they went allegedly went after Cook and Haines because they believed were having an affair with each other [but were, in fact, husband and wife].
Okay, that last is funny. The meeting where someone figured out the flaw in the story must have been great.
I'm not as well informed as some of the other ukfoggeders, but I'm fairly sure that the 'we thought they were having an affair' story was just a plausible cover for them going after the guy investigating the murder for which one of their pet investigators was a suspect.
Man. This story really is amazing. Do let us know when it comes out that they staged an armed robbery in order to write about it.
It would be super fun if Murdoch went to jail. Can you get that going?
And now all the aggrieved potential victims are coming forward: George Michael accuses NOTW of trying to "destroy" him.
So I have decided to be grumpy instead.
You made the right decision here. Strong work.
206: I'm imagining crappy sitcom writing, along the lines of Al Bundy: "They couldn't possibly be married—they're sleeping together!"
re: 208
With the murdered girl, they deleted voicemails from her mailbox, and then interviewed her parents about their hopes that she was still alive (partly because the fact that voicemails were being deleted from her mailbox led them to believe she was still out there).
212: yeah, I heard about that. Nasty, nasty.
211: Or per the list in Wilfred:28, whoever the equivalent character was in Married for Life.
Do let us know when it comes out that they staged an armed robbery in order to write about it.
Not sure if this is a joke, but the NOTW did more or less stage a kidnapping in order to write about it.
Also, not to beat a dead Guido (that's what Tony Soprano did to Ralph Cifaretto), but this from Ttam is absolutely right and bears repeating, and is also true in the United States (where poor and less-educated people, contrary to Republican mythology, also vote more Democratic):
Working class people are more likely to be in mixed-race marriages, working class relationships typically have much more equitable distribution of housework and child-care than in middle-class families, and so on. Multi-culturalism and gender-equality are much deeper ingrained in working class culture than they are in middle-class culture, despite what the middle-classes may falsely believe about themselves.
216: What would they be convicted of? Conspiracy?
Somewhere Paddy Chayefsky is saying, "I was fucking right!"
A lot of critics (and the TV guys in particular) protested way too much when Network came out. From a review in Time:
But at every turn Chayefsky's plot invests television with a sinister power to cloud men's minds, not through stupefying reductionism but by heated exaggeration. In short, his fable does not fit the facts observable nightly in the living room.
It would be super fun if Murdoch went to jail. Can you get that going?
Oh, yes, please do!
Apparently the original artist was Carl Rose, who did this famous New Yorker cartoon (""I Say It's Spinach, so the hell with it"). So you can see the original style would have been a bit more realistic.
There was also Harold Ross's defense of Thurber's drawings:
"Why is it", demanded the cartoonist, "that you reject my work and publish drawings by a fifth-rate artist like Thurber?" Ross came quickly to my defence like the true friend and devoted employer he is. "You mean third-rate", he said quietly
And it seems that John Lanchester mentioned the likeness to the Thurber cartoon in 2009.
Network really wasn't very good once it got away from the news critique. What amazes me is how much the various stories coming out of this scandal sound like early 20th century caricatures, which might not have been so much caricaturistic, of unethical reporters. In The Front Page (also in the more familiar His Girl Friday version) the reporter and editor want to find and hide a murderer before the cops do so they can monopolize the story. There are less famous examples of such behavior either alleged or enacted in old movies, but I'm blanking on them right now. You certainly had society/celebrity scandal sheets harassing people. Pay off some switchboard operators and you've got a phone tap.
In the real world, Hearst obtained letters from the Standard Oil mailroom (via a disgruntled employee) and then tried to deploy them later to support his political ambitions. He apparently forged some of them too, to go with the others.
Oops, I guess 223 & 224 should be in the flags thread.
jay Rockefeller is now picking up the News Corp thing and demanding action. Can somebody tell us Brits who and what Jay Rockefeller is, apart from having a name which hardly inspires confidence.
He's a Democratic Senator from West Virginia. My impression of him is that he's a fairly generic Democrat, despite being a Rockefeller.
And apparently Chair of the Commerce Committee. Does this carry any weight?
The meeting where someone figured out the flaw in the story must have been great.
The Met leadership responded as follows: they cornered Rebekah Brooks and another NOTW executive at a cocktail party, and fetched her into a meeting with various top police officers where they demanded to know what the fuck they thought they were doing. Brooks claimed that they thought Cook and Haines were having an affair. At this point the dibble brought out the punchline that they were actually married.
It must have been a good moment, but spoiled by the fact that was all the police did about it. The key man seems to have been Dick Fedorcio, the Met's press chief, who intervened to persuade the then commissioner to lay off.
Interestingly, Andy Hayman (the cop from the terrorism squad who decided not to re-open the inquiry back in 2006 and who later became a News International columnist) seems to have fingered Fedorcio yesterday when the House of Commons Home Affairs committee quizzed him. He admitted that he regularly had dinner with NI executives while he was on the case (!) but claimed that he always went in the company of the head of communications.
If I were Keith Vaz or Tom Watson (the two Labour committee chairmen involved) I'd have Fedorcio on the Westminster Hall carpet tomorrow. Or if I was Sue Akers, the cop in charge of the new inquiry...I'd bet good money that bastard has the facts.
204: To be even more specific, a NoTW executive (Alex Marunchak) promised the dodgy PI on a murder rap (Jonathan Rees) and his business partner (Sid Fillery) that he would "sort out" the cop (Dave Cook) investigating him and tasked other PIs working for the paper to place him under surveillance.
Fillery is a former cop who ran the first murder inquiry into Rees back in 1987, which fell apart after a lot of documents disappeared. Fillery then quit the force and became Rees' business partner - taking the place of the dead man, Daniel Morgan, yet another cop moonlighting as a PI - until eventually they got him on an Internet kiddie-porn charge.
Now, Rees was responsible for planting cocaine on a woman involved in a divorce case for one of his clients. During a parallel investigation by the Directorate of Professional Standards, the Met internal affairs squad, into police corruption, they bugged Rees' office and by chance stumbled on the coke-planting. He went to jail for that.
And when he got out, he was re-hired by the News of the World, specifically by the then editor and future No.10 press chief Andy Coulson (who lives less than a mile from the scene of the murder and very close to all the other personalities involved).
Oh yes, it looks like they had access to the lawful intercept interface on all the UK's cellular networks. What's flopping about out there is that as far as I can see they could and probably did intercept the prime minister's phone calls as well as at least one of his designated deputies for nuclear retaliation, and as soon as someone raises this I think the defence establishment is going to go ape if it's not already there.
By the way, it's not the first time News Corp has rehired convicted criminals (hey, they believe in second chances!). The Sun's long-time chief reporter killed his wife - he got a manslaughter conviction on grounds of diminished responsibility.
re: 231
Yeah, it seems like there's evidence for multiple lengthy jail sentences distributed pretty widely around the NI stable, and the Met.
231.last does seem like a gaping security hole that shouldn't have existed in the first place, I suppose. But it'd be nice if it led to some real jail time.
The Graun is reporting that Boris is pleading "faulty memory" over talks with the police on phone hacking.
NI's long-time consigliere Tom Crone just jumped ship: probably not quite a John Dean moment, unless NI try and fix him up as the fallguy.
On another page, the Met's long-time press chief just got pulled in; or one degree away from it.
I'm beginning to think in uk terms that this is actually potentially bigger and worse than Watergate was for the US -- and it's certainly unfolding faster. Worse meaning better, from the street perspective.
Yeah. It's unfolding fast enough that I feel not remotely on top of what's happening, tbh. Which is where blogs like Jamie K's, and Alex's are handy.
I'm not so sure. It's massive, but I'm skeptical that it will have the same impact on constitutional type issues that Watergate had. We're going to get some sort of replacement of the PCC, maybe some tweaking of privacy law, and at most some statutory regulation of the press, which could be handled well or badly.
But Watergate led to the Church Committee, which in turn led to (theoretically) strong Congressional and judicial oversight of intelligence. There is basically no non-executive oversight of intelligence in the UK and won't be after this. I doubt we'll see meaningful reform of the Met either - they've shrugged off far worse scandals.
I'm not sure I mean constitutional stuff so much: it's more the huge opening it offers for action and perspective that's currently extra-parliamentary and extra-constitutional and so on, if nothing else as leverage on what's left of the -- quite youthful! -- political classes after the Blair-Murdoch generation are stripped out and disgraced. Obviously the latter actually has to happen; it may not, but blimey compare where we are with even ten days ago.
And "far worse" re the Met? Depends on where you're looking from -- the casual prostitution of information that's meant to be the highest security of the realm is going to piss off forces that normally stay very shadowy indeed...
NewsCorp">http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/jul/13/phone-hacking-scandal-live-coverage#block-62%23block-62">NewsCorp withdraws bid for BSkyB
Oh poo
NewsCorp withdraws bid for BSkyB:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/jul/13/phone-hacking-scandal-live-coverage#block-62%23block-62
News Corp has dropped the bid.
And "far worse" re the Met? Depends on where you're looking from -- the casual prostitution of information that's meant to be the highest security of the realm is going to piss off forces that normally stay very shadowy indeed...
Yeah, but at the end of the day it's "just" selling info. The Met has survived scandals involving: torture, institutional racism, fabrication and concealing of evidence, shooting innocent people multiple times in the head, killing bystanders at demonstrations and so on. And pretty much all that's come of it is the IPCC, a regulatory body that makes the PCC look tough and indepent.
strong Congressional and judicial oversight of intelligence
Which brings you back to Jay Rockefeller, and the dogs that didn't bark while wars were phonied up, men in shackles were beaten, mob lawyers wrote transparent memos, and decision-makers missed the goddamn point of a decade of enemy activity.
That's what I meant by "from whose perspective": those are all things obviously worse in the basic moral sense, but they basically cause the establishment to close ranks and demonise the victims on a one-by-one basis -- but the compromising of so much information is a distinctly different matter, at least if it impinges on the workings of other, very powerful institutions.
Well yes, hence my "theoretically". Britain's parliament couldn't perform oversight of that sort of thing even if it wanted to. The closest thing we have is a committee of MPs and lords appointed by the prime minister.
They should appoint Assange to co-chair it.
This is great, in a creepy way.
There is basically no non-executive oversight of intelligence in the UK and won't be after this.
Well, no, why should there be? AFACT the intelligence services have barely been involved in this business at all - except for vetting Andy Coulson, and I rather suspect that they were told "The PM wants this guy passed, so pass him".
||
Any UKfogged people recommend a decent place for a cheap PC? Barebones (mobo, case, psu, cpu, ram) or even just a motherboard bundle (mobo, cpu, ram)?
No need for disks, monitor, keyboard, etc.
Novatech? Elsewhere?
>
When I'm not building it myself, I tend to get mine from Cyber Power. I wouldn't call them particularly cheap though.
When I'm building from components, I used to use Dabs, who are certainly cheap, although the last few times I've had some frustrating delivery issues.
Well, no, why should there be?
That was my point. Watergate went to the heart of executive power and secrecy and resulted in meaningful changes to the constitutional framework.
While hacking-gate is huge, it's a qualititatively different scandal touching on different aspects of government and the public sphere. Nothing like that is going to happen here, unless we get really heavy handed press regulation, which I think is unlikely (though definitely possible).
Tory MP Jacob Rees Mogg tells Sky News says there has been an "extraordinary hysteria and frenzy" directed towards News Corp and that it has acted in a "politically adroit way" in withdrawing its bid for BSkyB.What's extraordinary about it? JRM is an amusing exercise in self parody during normal times, but this shit is completely out of order.
254: ah, OK. Sorry for misunderstanding.
Cyber Power not my sort of thing, I don't think. I'm not a gamer, and even their lowest spec build is more than I need. Thanks, though.
That would be Jacob Rees Mogg, son of former Times editor William Rees Mogg.
I've never used them myself for a system, but YoyoTech are generally well regarded and they have some entry level rigs. They've got a shop just off Tottenham Court Road as well.
If you're really getting barebones, though, you're probably best off buying the components separately and sticking them into your existing case. Buying a system wholesale usually only works out cheaper when you need to upgrade a lot of stuff.
re: 260
Yeah, I've been pricing it. There are a few decent bundles around, but still looks cheaper to just do it from parts. It's what I've always done, but was looking to see if there was a cheap alternative.
YoyoTech are generally well regarded
Those Red Lectroids know their stuff.
If this brings down Cameron and effectively removes Murdoch from the serious levers of power -- very VERY big if obviously -- then it will have had a de facto constitutional effect if not a de jure constitutional effect, in the sense of changing the shape of the Actually Existing State lo! these 30-odd years. And since the UK basically has a de facto constitution rather than a de jure constitution anyway...
But yes, by "Watergate" I guess I meant major game-changing turbulence, which in the US was probably LESS than it seemed at the time, rather than concrete legal changes.
I really can't see this bringing down Cameron unless there are very serious revelations which we haven't yet got wind of.
That would be Jacob Rees Mogg, son of former Times editor William Rees Mogg.
Yes indeed. He's mildly famous for being a prat. His Twatter feed was the subject of widespread mockery a few weeks ago, until everybody went to the pub and forgot about it.
263: Has Cameron denied that he stole that infamous bicycle from an orphanage? I'm just asking.
New revelations aren't actually Cameron's main problem now: an angry and wounded Newscorp, a divided and humiliated Tory party, a splintered Coalition, a suddenly on-point in attack and pin-point precise Leader of the Opposition, an utterly scornful wider media wolfpack, and his own uselessness are. Uselessness in his supposed field of expertise: PR. The BROWN WRONG story in the sun contained a leak from a No.10 aide saying "blind panic here": doesn't even matter if this is true or not. One Tory MP disagreed with his PM and agreed with Dennis Skinner earlier today. The Telegraph isn't going to let up. Who are his convinced troops now?
I don't think he'll be out in a week. But I suspect he is now basically on the way out.
But I suspect he is now basically on the way out.
And then Nick Clegg leads the LibDems to decades of hegemony?
I really don't have a feel for whether Clegg himself is weakened or strengthened by all this. The LibDems have been more or less invisible all week; and he and the party were not in a strong position anyway. This is something of a vindication for Vince Cable, who was probably the second most senior LibDem in the Coalition until he went inadvertently public in December that he was against the BSkyB bid, at which point he was speedily removed from that responsibility. My guess is that they're minimally strengthened almost by default within the Coalition, but not so as to make a difference.
Milliband by contrast is coming out of this rather well.
Miliband's not good on telly yet, and the manner of his announcement of non-support of the striking teachers ten days go was a serious blunder -- but this last week he's been very good. I imagine he's seized back the support of most of the party for a good while, and also seized the momentum in parliament and held it till Murdoch blinked. Which is seriously amazing, actually.
I think he's potentially vulnerable to pressure from the left, which is why I think Brit politics as a whole will hear a lot more of the unrespectable left than they have done for a long time. How that plays out remains to be seen. Exciting times!
I think he's potentially vulnerable to pressure from the left,
I have no idea if this is politically plausible, but I would be endlessly entertained if Milliband's brother emerged as the spokesperson for a faction of Labor, leading to bitter public confrontations incorporating childhood grudges ("Mom always liked you best!).
I don't understand how LibDem voters in England haven't been basically shamed or mau-mau'd into renouncing the party, a la Nader voters from 2000 in the US. I mean, didn't the Lib Dem vote basically blow the election for the "left" (which is a clear majority in the UK) and bring in horrific austerity measures, made worse by their accepting a totally subservient role in a coalition? From a distance, at least, fuck those LibDem guys.
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In other NMM news, I hope none of you have spent any portion of the last week masturbating to my mother. That window closed about this time last Wednesday.
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I don't understand how LibDem voters in England haven't been basically shamed or mau-mau'd into renouncing the party
I thought they mostly had been -- that a big part of the LibDem vote was disgruntled Labour, that is now even more disgruntled with the LibDems than they had been with Labour
274: I'm so sorry. Do you have any siblings, or is it just you?
As far as I know the actual LibDem vote has collapsed, yes; and caused exactly that reaction among young swing voters especially. But as long as the Coalition exists, the Clegg group retain a certain small measure of power: because -- I think this is correct, I forget the relevant numbers -- they can force an election by leaving and joining Labour to vote against the Government. An election the Tories will badly lose. But as a LibDem threat, it's also an act of self-immolation as a significant party, probably for a generation. So I actually only think Clegg is better off today to a microscopic degree, if at all, because Cameron is so very damaged.
I'm not sure how widespread this is, because I'm seeing things from too close up to a rather intense bubble of perspective, the UKUncut people, some of whose theorists and voices I'm only a couple of degrees of separation from socially -- but my sense is that the LibDems picked up quite a large youth vote unwilling and unable to vote for NuLabour thanks to its very bad recent record on civil liberties -- and that a significant proportion of this vote has switched basically to angry street-level activism, or vocal support of same. This is the student-loans generation, who do not currently have much of a reason to support any party, but very good reasons to be politically active.
Breaking: Jean Charles de Menezes family phone "may have been hacked" -- which means that this scandal could actually put many of the earlier, dodged ones back on the table.
Tell you what, the Telegraph is doing a grand job as Tory Party house rag this week. I'm beginning to wonder whether Dave has got problems.
The FBI has opened an investigation into allegations that News of the World journalists tried to hack into the phones of 9/11 victims, AP reports.Right. Over to you lot.
whew, I'm glad I didn't wait until my afternoon break for that one!
And the hits just keep coming! Brooks arrested, Stephenson resigns.
275: Oh, urple. So sorry for your loss.
I confess that I am really looking forward to watching all the excellent political TV dramas I imagine that Britain will produce in the next couple of years, inspired by these events. Also of course I am hoping for collateral damage to Murdoch properties in the US.
Oh urple, very sorry. She wasn't that old, was she? And the stories you told about her. She sounded like such a character. For good as well as crazy.
Really sorry for your loss, Urple.
Urple, hugs, peace.
291: can someone find a link or two for the virtual wake?
I'd somehow missed that. So sorry, Urple.
