Obsolete

Da dodgems.

2012-05-19T13:56:00.002+01:00

Hiatus round-up.

2012-05-18T16:54:00.004+01:00

I'm not here next week, more's the pity, seeing as it looks like the Euro's about to collapse and everyone's going to starve to death as a result. We can though all meet our maker safe in the knowledge that a social networking site guaranteed to have been overtaken by something new within 5 years is, for the moment, worth billions of dollars in the United States. Here then are a few links to keep you busy for oh, 5 minutes or so:

Mark Beaumont in the Grauniad making a fool of himself in the process of reviewing DJ Fresh's gig at the Koko, terming the producer a "dubstep pioneer".

John Sentamu in the Graun making a fool of himself over gay marriage. His opening paragraph begins thus so, and the article goes downhill from there:

I will be the first to accept that homosexual people have suffered discrimination and sometimes worse through the decades and that the churches have, at times, been complicit in this.

At times, John? Are you sure you're not overegging the pudding with such a sweeping generalisation?

Jonathan Portes on how in twenty or fifty years from now the government's refusal to borrow to invest when the rate at which we can do so is at a historic low will be looked upon with incredulity and horror.

John Savage and Ewan Pearson on how I Feel Love changed pop.

And lastly, here's thepoke.co.uk's mash-up of the Leveson inquiry, turning the proceedings into a "auto-tuned hip-hop extravaganza":

Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.

2012-05-17T21:28:00.003+01:00

Well did you hear, there’s a natural order.
Those most deserving will end up with the most.
That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top,
Well I say: Shit floats.

Today, Donna Summer died. Meanwhile, in London, the Ivor Novellos were taking place. The writers, that's the writers, not the public or record company executives, gave awards to Ed Sheeran, Adele and Take That. Oh, and PJ Harvey for her album, but they pretty much had to do that if they weren't to lose all credibility. Two years ago Lily Allen won three, including one for the lyrics to The Fear.

There's always been terrible music. That even the writers are now giving awards to mediocrities, when 35 years ago Summer, Moroder and Belotte were ripping it up and starting again (alongside their punk contemporaries it should be noted) really ought to bring home that, for the second time this week, this has to stop. Please.

Oh, they hate things. Just the wrong things.

2012-05-16T21:28:00.007+01:00

From time to time, there comes along an article that is so lacking in apparent awareness that it takes the breath away. When that same article is written with seeming direct input from the bowels of Downing Street, it makes you realise that two years in, this government is already away with the fairies.

Steve Hilton then is gone. I personally thought he had already gone, and that the omnishambles of the last couple of months was partially down to his no longer being at the rudder, but apparently not. As when all those other past great minds have left the political stage, his passing has been marked with platitudes from many about how he brilliant he was when he was in fact about as useful as, to quote The Thick of It, a marzipan dildo. Hilton's big idea was the Big Society, a concept that may well have worked if we weren't going through the worst recession since the Black Death. As we are, and as not a single person ever managed to give a proper definition of what it was other than people running public services, it went down like a certain X Factor judge.

Ben Brogan's theory for why the government is doing so badly, presumably straight from the gob of Steve Hilton, is wait for it, that the Tories don't hate the opposition enough. Gordon Brown is as well known, hated the Tories and everything they stood for. He and his minions dedicated themselves to screwing over the opposition in every way that they could, and so for that matter did the likes of Alastair Campbell. The thing about the Conservatives is really, honestly, they're just too nice, at least personally to other people. The factions within the party can fight like two tomcats in a sack as been documented over the years, but they just don't want to put the boot properly in to Labour. Why else, apart from the fact they're just such lovely people? Well, for many of them life in opposition was fairly sweet. They could do their second jobs, earning more for a few days' work a month than the average person makes in a year, and they weren't pilloried quite as much as they are now.

The problem with this thesis is that for the most part it's balderdash. Yes, Gordon Brown hated David Cameron, but then anyone who doesn't actively dislike Cameron hasn't been paying enough attention. It also doesn't take into account how hidden below the surface Cameron has a filthy temper, something that only becomes apparent when he's truly rattled, as when he was ordered back to the Commons to give his statement on Jeremy Hunt. It might well be true that there are certain ministers, even the prime minister, who are too comfortable in their positions and that's affecting their performance but that doesn't even begin to explain why the government has so spectacularly shafted itself.

Part of the real reason is that it's tried to be just too damn clever, something that Steve Hilton more than contributed to. As Brogan relates, Hilton wanted George Osborne to go even further in the Budget: not just drop the top rate of income tax to 45p, but to 40p and slash corporation tax to 15%. They imagined that this would thoroughly delight the business world, and also in the longer term drive the recovery: come to Britain, earn millions and pay the same rate of tax as the middle class! According to Brogan, the 50p rate was one of Brown's unexploded bombs, when it really wasn't. The polls were and are clear: the public aren't attached to the 50p rate in the long term, yet they think at the moment when they're making sacrifices it should stay. You can see the reasoning behind changing it, but it was politically stupid in the extreme. Everything has then followed on from that, with all the other problems in the budget, the fuel strike panic, the Abu Qatada idiocy and the continuing Leveson clusterfuck. Add in the recession, created almost entirely through the government's austerity fetish even if most of the cuts are still to come, and these are the real reasons why Cameron's ratings are now below that of Brown in 2010.

The one other thing Brogan's piece tells us is that Hilton liked to shout at the civil servants. In the dying days of the Brown government when Andrew Rawnsley's book was published chronicling Gordon's rages, including turfing a Downing Street secretary out of her chair because she wasn't typing fast enough, this was cited as being the ultimate evidence of his unsuitability for the job. Hilton's attitude by contrast is shown as being understandable, even after being repeatedly reprimanded by Cameron's chief of staff, as the civil servants are clearly standing in the way of his reforms and deserve it. If that wasn't enough, then Hilton's proposal for an additional £25bn cut in welfare spending, on top of the £18bn already slashed ought to tell you who it is he and the Conservative section of the government really hate: the most vulnerable in society, who have to get it into their thick skulls that the days of New Labour's "socialism" are over. As for him, he's off to teach at Ayn Rand university in America. He'll be deeply missed.

Now if they could get the dog to jump a shark...

2012-05-15T17:26:00.005+01:00

I do of course realise that much of the voting on Britain's Got Talent is tactical. Not that I've ever watched the damn thing. Essentially any act other than a singer, meaning that Simon Cowell can't instantly earn even more money out of them, wins, with the exceptions of Paul Potts and Jai McDowall (who was dropped from Cowell's label after one album). Some of it was probably ironic. I also don't know who the other acts were. And Samuel Johnson's one-liner about dogs walking on their hind legs is as accurate now as when he said it back in the 18th century.

All the same, it does seem to say something about this country in 2012 that an entertaining but completely throwaway act is voted the best we have to offer. True, the last thing we need is yet another Leona Lewis/Adele clone, but still, a fucking dancing dog (and frankly, at times it looks as though it is going to turn into a one girl, one dog performance of the Aristrocrats)? It would be nice to think we have now, finally, inexorably, reached the point at which reality talent shows have jumped the clichéd shark. We've had frumpy spinsters, execrable urban dance acts, Shayne Ward and Matt Cardle, and now we've got Pudsey. This must stop. Please.

You can take the woman out of News International...

2012-05-15T16:20:00.003+01:00

Last Friday it was difficult not to feel at least a quiver of sympathy for Rebekah Brooks. As well as being asked some faintly irrelevant questions by Robert Jay during her appearance at the Leveson inquiry, such as whether she had swam with Rupert Murdoch (she did at least recognise complaining about such trivialities was the height of hypocrisy), she is also as far as I can recall the only witness whose choice in the sartorial department has been commented upon. The right-on Guardian ran an wonderfully enlightening piece by their fashion editor ("A white Peter Pan collar sends the most unambiguous of fashion messages"), while on Newsnight Charlotte Harris's first sentence was on how amusing it was that Brooks had chosen to dress up as a puritan. There admittedly was more than enough newsprint spent on what she actually said, but did we honestly need to know that her dress cost £475 from an online boutique?

To which the answer today might be yes. Those who've so much as read a single post here on phone hacking will know it was a certain Rebekah Brooks who stated back in 2009 that the Guardian's coverage had "substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public" (PDF). As public relations goes, it must rank up there as one of the most stupid, reckless and foolhardy missives in recent memory. It still isn't quite as moronic though as today's ejaculation from Mr and Mrs Brooks:

We deplore this weak and unjust decision after the further unprecedented posturing of the CPS.

Jonathan Aitken might not have been facing a charge of perverting the course of justice, but swords of truth and trusty shields come to mind. And we all know how that ended up.

(P.S. Pity poor David Cameron.)

It's up for grabs now!

2012-05-14T16:33:00.003+01:00

Well yes, yesterday was quite good, but seeing as the Premier League wants everyone to believe that 1992/93 was Year Zero, here's the last game of the 88/89 first division season between the teams in first and second, where if the north London side won by two clear goals they would be champions...

Skitta.

2012-05-12T12:09:00.001+01:00

A liar or an idiot.

2012-05-11T16:19:00.003+01:00

Apart from the new email showing further proof of the closeness between Jeremy Hunt and Fred Michel, the most crucial piece of evidence given by Rebekah Brooks today at the Leveson inquiry was that she didn't believe her publishing of the details of sex offenders in the News of the World in the aftermath of the kidnap and murder of Sarah Payne would lead to reprisals. There are only two conclusions you can draw from such apparent insouciance: either Brooks is a liar, or she's an idiot. Her entire campaign was designed to force politicians to do something, and she and her staff knew that the precise way to do that was to get into the public domain information that would almost certainly lead, if not to vigilante action, than at the very least abuse and protests against those named. She perhaps didn't anticipate a paediatrician being targeted by mistake, but she absolutely knew what she was doing.

It's through this prism that you have to view the rest of her evidence, which was mostly mind-numbing in the extreme. Despite the fact she has been close to the last three prime ministers, we're meant to believe that this was all down to sheer friendliness on her part. Yes, obviously they thought they could get something by almost drawing her into their inner circle, but never once did she compromise her position as a journalist and never once did they compromise their position as a politician through their relationship.

Thankfully, Robert Jay was on far better form today than he was against the stonewalling Andy Coulson yesterday. He also seemed far better briefed. Brooks had to deny, unconvincingly, that she had variously demanded that Downing Street order a reopening of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, else Theresa May would be appearing on the front page of the Sun every day until they did; that she did not, as widely reported, tell Andy Coulson that the Sun would not support the Conservatives until Dominic Grieve was moved from his job as shadow home secretary, having had the temerity to say to Brooks's face the Sun's coverage of crime and the Human Rights Act was hysterical; and that she did not in a phone call to Ed Balls demand the sacking of Sharon Shoesmith following the Baby Peter case, else they would "turn this thing on him".

Funny, isn't it, that there all these stories, all apparently untrue, about Brooks using her power and influence to demand things of politicians and yet she didn't believe there was anything inappropriate about the level of contact between the then editor of the biggest selling newspaper in the country and those making the law. She also didn't believe that politicians were trying to get to Rupert through contact with her, which is just about as obtuse as her evidence got. It was fascinating to learn though that David Cameron spoke to her repeatedly about the phone hacking accusations against the Screws, and yet he apparently never spoke to Andy Coulson about it. Very strange.

In spite then of how apparently little they discussed the BSkyB bid, which Brooks knew of two months before it was announced (it just so happens that it was almost in line with the Tories coming to power), it was mostly just Tories who commiserated with her when she was forced into resigning. It was done indirectly, naturally, and some of the reported words are not exact, but it is true that Cameron more or less said that he was sorry he couldn't show her the same loyalty she had shown him, as Ed Miliband had him on the run. He needn't have been concerned. Brooks today was loyalty personified. One suspects however that it won't save her from a short stretch in either Styal or Holloway.

The eternal darkness of Coulson's spotless mind.

2012-05-10T21:21:00.003+01:00

If, like me, you've seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and thought that the possibility of having certain memories wiped from your brain isn't necessarily a bad thing, then it seems that at long last a treatment has been developed that can achieve exactly that. It's called the Leveson inquiry.

Difficult as it is to believe, considering we've now had evidence from both James and Rupert Murdoch, neither of whom could remember almost anything controversial that has happened to them, the latest sufferer of amnesia to testify seems to have the most serious case. Andy Coulson could barely remember his name, let alone almost anything else that's happened to him over the past decade.

Here's an incomplete list of the things he couldn't recall: the conversations he had with Rupert Murdoch about the news content while editor of the News of the World; any conversation with KRM about the paper's endorsement at the 2005 election; any mention of his previous employment when George Osborne enquired whether he'd be interested in becoming the Tories' chief spin doctor; any shadow cabinet minister other than David Cameron asking about phone hacking; whether News Corp's lobbyist, Fred Michel, attended a lunch with Cameron and the then Spanish prime minister; whether Cameron sought further assurances from him after the Guardian's phone hacking revelations in 2009; any specific conversation about the News of the World's endorsement of the Tories in 2010; when he knew that the Sun was going to endorse the Tories in 2009; or having any conversation with Fred Michel, Rebekah Brooks, Jeremy Hunt or any other politician about the BSkyB takeover bid.

It was all unflinchingly loyal, and it was also absolutely infuriating. At times Coulson bordered on being incredulous at Robert Jay's questioning; did he really have to spell out why the Tories wanted him to deal with the media? His body language said exactly what he refused to, that it was breathtakingly obvious. As Michael Wolff writes, Coulson was the key conduit between News International and the Conservatives, and he alongside Rebekah Brooks was chiefly responsible for convincing Murdochs junior and senior that Cameron was a surer bet than Labour. It didn't matter that he didn't have a background in politics, as that was secondary. This is exactly why Cameron couldn't have cared less whether Coulson knew about hacking at the Screws, and why he apparently didn't enquire further regardless of all the warnings he was given. As long as he delivered in terms of the reason he was hired, and wasn't catastrophic at dealing with the rest of the media, he'd be just fine.

It was only once in office that the problems really started, as the whole phone hacking caper simply wouldn't go away. Coulson didn't go through developed vetting for obvious reasons, even though all his predecessors and indeed his successors have: they knew he wouldn't have passed. That he thinks he may well have seen top secret material and also sat in on national security meetings just shows the contempt Cameron felt for all the criticism he came in for over his hugging close of Coulson. He felt, just as Blair and Brown did when they sent commiserations to Coulson over his resignation from the Screws, that this phone hacking business was just part of the greater game. No one got hurt, apart from a few celebrities, and who cared about them?

Cameron's continuing loyalty was reciprocated in full. Coulson was "disappointed" with the Sun's coming out in favour of the Tories, as it was more about Labour losing their support than the Tories gaining it. That the paper did it on the day of Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour conference for maximum effect went unmentioned. Indeed, on the whole he felt that the Sun's coverage wasn't obsequious enough, apparently forgetting that on election morning the Sun splashed with a take on the Obama hope poster, claiming Cameron was the country's "only hope". Attempting to make further mischief, Coulson also claimed that a Guardian executive told him "not to write off" the possibility the paper could endorse the Tories, something Alan Rusbridger responded to by tweeting, Coulson fashion, that no one at Kings Road could recall such a conversation.

Remarkably, when he could remember certain details, he often seemed to be mistaken. Coulson complains bitterly in his witness statement (PDF) that following the Matt Driscoll tribunal ruling "it prompted a torrent of publicity in which I was repeatedly branded a bully". Considering that at the time only the Guardian, Independent and Private Eye so much as mentioned the finding of the tribunal, this is just ever so slightly hyperbolic. Likewise, he thought his answer to why there couldn't possibly have been a secret deal between News International and the Conservatives over the BSkyB bid was compelling: why did Vince Cable become business secretary with jurisdiction over approving it when someone else could have been put in place? The obvious answer is that it was part of the deal when the coalition was formed. In any case, if Cable had to be removed from his role over his apparent bias, why wasn't the same process followed over Jeremy Hunt, who had previously said he wanted to act as a cheerleader for the Murdochs? And why is Hunt now still being defended to the hilt when the case against him is far more compelling that it ever was against Cable?

Coulson's evidence was summed up when he said that he was "too busy" to divest himself of the shares he received in News Corporation as part of his severance package. He was working far too hard to be bothered to ensure there was no possible conflict of interest in his role, apparently immersing himself fully in the detail of his job, and yet now he can barely recall much of what was he was doing. He was the very definition of an unreliable witness, but it was precisely this approach that will have delighted Downing Street. How Cameron must be hoping that Rebekah Brooks takes a similar tact tomorrow.

"From David Cameron to David Brent."

2012-05-09T20:00:00.004+01:00

If there's a day a year when it's possible to feel even slightly sorry for the Queen, it has to be when the state opening of parliament rolls round again. Anyone who seriously goes in for all that "oh, isn't she a wonderful, inspiring woman, served the nation her entire life" and doesn't then immediately add "and also lived a life of the utmost luxury as reward" is a fool, but the nonsense and farrago she has to put up with on the day of the Queen's speech does almost counteract it. She's now gone through the same tedious, ridiculous procedure 57 times, and that's 57 times too many by anyone's standards. To keep asking an 86-year-old woman to carry around a "large bag of potatoes on her head", even if it's only for around 15 minutes in order to perform this unnecessary, absurd ritual is about as offensive as it gets. Please, if there's going to be reform of the House of Lords, can we abolish the archaic bummery and flummery that goes with it?

That it also takes place in this most inauspicious of years, when we can spend billions on a fortnight long circus but not on providing jobs for the young unemployed only, to quote Shaun of the Dead, exacerbates things. Dennis Skinner's quip in the Commons, which has become as much of a tradition as the rest of the day, said it all: "Jubilee year, double dip recession, what a start". At least back in 1977, the year of the silver jubilee, there was disco and the arrival of punk, with Thatcherism still two years away. What have we got now? Brostep, David Guetta, Jessie J and Simon Cowell. Think there was no future then? Blimey.

Everything you really needed to know was in the speech's first two sentences. The coalition is no longer even promising growth, as it did two years ago; now all it offers is economic stability. It will focus on growth, but stability is all we can realistically hope for. George Osborne previously told us that thanks to him, the economy was out of the danger zone. The reality is that we're still sinking.

What then is the big idea in the Queen's speech to get to grips with this? Why, they're going to make it ever so slightly easier to sack people! The idea, such as it is, is that this will enable companies to clear out the deadwood and instead hire in some go-getting youngsters that can drive them forward, thereby creating more jobs that the deadwood can then err, reapply for. Just as the coalition is trying to convince us that they're doing everything they can to help the "strivers" and the hard-working, those who find themselves without a job, or even worse, sick, may as well give up, as it's clear they're on their own.

There's also very little in it to tackle top pay, despite all that's been said. All the Enterprise bill proposes is making shareholder votes binding, which doesn't change much when there hasn't been a successful vote yet against director remuneration, and when chief executives are having to resign anyway despite that. The banking reform bill splitting investment and retail is welcome, as is the green investment bank, but neither are going to happen before the next election. About the only act that can be welcomed wholeheartedly is the Children and Families bill, and as Ed Miliband pointed out, it sounds like a Labour bill because large sections of it are pilfered from their manifesto at the last election.

The real winners it seems are the intelligence agencies, and the police. Quite why there's a need for yet another attempt to set-up a British FBI with the National Crime Agency, the Serious Organised Crime Agency having been such a massive success is unclear. It also seems that regardless of all the recent triumphs at SIS and MI5, whether through all but refusing to cooperate with the police investigation into the death of Gareth Williams, with the head of the Met yesterday announcing a forensic review of the case, or the apparent collusion with the Gaddafi on rendition, they're going to be rewarded with a bill that will prevent evidence like that revealed during Binyam Mohamed's legal action ever being revealed in court again. They're also going to get further access to the internet records of everyone, although this has been split off into a separate bill in an attempt to show the coalition really is listening to criticism, and is still concerned about civil liberties, honestly really.

And then there's the aforementioned Lords reform bill. It's not a priority apparently, but it must be more of a priority than HS2 for instance, the sort of government work programme that would create jobs, and which will have to wait another year before the legislation is ready. Tim Montgomerie, bless him, says that the whole thing "feels authentically Cameroon". If by that he means it's utterly vacuous and has no overriding theme, then he's absolutely right. As said yesterday, this is the sort of legislation programme a government that's run out of steam and doesn't know what to do decides upon. It hasn't quite reached the point of setting up a Cones Hotline, although that might be Nick Clegg's next big idea, but it's not that far off. For a government that is only two years in, it really is about as bad as it gets; no hope doesn't even begin to cover it.

In the rose garden.

2012-05-08T18:16:00.005+01:00

It wasn't meant to be this way. By this point, regardless of whether the Conservatives had won the election outright or not, the economy was meant to be growing at a sustainable level. The private sector, we were told, would step into the areas where the state was being cut back. Any lingering disquiet over the cuts was meant to have been overwhelmed by a "march of the makers", a return of that feel good mood, living standards rising again, and hope of all hopes, by 2015 tax cuts all round, just in time for the case for the second term to be made.

What we've had instead has been so wretched that the coalition has had to be effectively rebooted. Relaunched, in the parlance of the hacks inside the Westminster bubble. Gordon Brown's time as prime minister saw innumerable "relaunches" of Labour, all of which only contributed to the notion that his government was utterly doomed. Each successive time either he or his ministers made their case to the nation, begging that the apparent end of their relationship be reconsidered, more and more people decided it really was time to call off the affiar. Cameron might have looked strangely like a human sized condom filled with vomit, but he couldn't be any worse than Gordon Brown, a man who seemed to smile involuntarily. And anyone with doubts about Cameron could plump instead for Nick Clegg, who was neither of the above despite being exactly the same.

Cameron and Clegg have today then duly "gone on the offensive". This is a wonderful example of the brilliance of the English language: just as they have indeed supposedly bucked their ideas up and want to sell themselves all over again to the great British public, it also has a beautifully brutal double meaning, as nothing is currently more offensive than the sight of this gruesome twosome pretending that all is right between them. Their pairing is as insulting to our collective intelligence as it comes, as though we'll somehow decide that we should give them another chance purely because they're doing the act in the Downing Street rose garden all over again, albeit this time in front of the desperately unfortunate employees of a tractor factory. The message after all is exactly the same, regardless of what's happened over the past two years: no retreat from austerity now, tomorrow and for the foreseeable future (or efficiency, as Cameron hilariously tried to rebrand it), even though we're now in a double dip recession as a direct result of it. There isn't any revolt against this strategy, Cameron insisted; Francois Hollande supports deficit reduction too! That he also wants the Eurozone pact that effectively outlawed Keynesianism rewritten went unmentioned.

There are of course numerous messages to be taken from last week's local election results, and your own political prejudices will inform what you think voters were saying. If you're a Tory right-winger, you focus on the rise in support for UKIP and say this means you have to drop wishy-washy liberal crap and go to the hard right. If you're a Labour supporter or sympathiser you think it means that it was a protest against both austerity and the cuts. If you're a Liberal Democrat, then, err, it means you've got another 3 years of this hell yet to go. The problem for the coalition is that it's getting it from all sides, to a far more problematic extent than a single party government would be. It also leaves it with almost no room for manoeuvre: the cuts and austerity were made such a fetish from the outset that both Cameron and Clegg imagine to backtrack now would result in them losing all credibility. In fact, more likely is that they'd gain some respect for admitting they got it wrong; what people really loathe is incompetence, as has been demonstrated over the last six weeks. More prosaically, it means that the Tories can't tack to the right if they wanted to because of the Lib Dems, while the Lib Dems have failed to gain any credit for what they've achieved because it's all so massively overwhelmed by the damage of the worst Tory policies.

Furthermore, thanks to the Tory strategists reading Tony Blair's autobiography far too literally, putting into practice his advice that he wished he'd began his reforms immediately rather than half-way through his second, the coalition has already put on the statute book their changes to the NHS, education and welfare. The policy cupboard has as a result been left almost bare; have a look at the bills mooted as being in tomorrow's second Queen's speech, and see how reminiscent of the last years of Brown's government they are. Yes, there's the banking reform and public sector pensions bills, both of which are important for diametrically opposite reasons, but the rest is pitiful. Lords reform which no one really wants, a national crime agency, to which the only response has to be, what, again, and that's about it. As true as it is that New Labour legislated far too much, legislation is what is needed when everything else is so dismal. It distracts attention, it invites debate, and it gives MPs something to do. Without it, all of the talk is going to be about the still tanking economy and the 80% of the cuts which are still to be made.

This also means there's plenty of time for those reforms to go horribly wrong. If NHS waiting times go up then there's only thing they'll be blamed on, and it seems a more than reasonable prediction that Iain Duncan Smith's universal credit, a good idea on paper, becomes a logistical nightmare akin to the early years of tax credits when implemented.

It could still all change. The economy can't slump forever, surely, and the current omnishambles will eventually pass; no government can go on being both unlucky and seemingly incompetent forever without something breaking. The odds are good though that this won't be the last relaunch between now and 2015.

Gurkha.

2012-05-05T15:26:00.001+01:00

End of the beginning.

2012-05-04T14:06:00.004+01:00

There is always the danger of reading far too much into local election results. By any yardstick both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats ought to have done badly yesterday, and indeed they have. The Liberal Democrats are playing their losses down, despite how this leaves them with fewer councillors than at any time since the Liberals merged with the SDP. They obviously hope that this will be as low as they go, but they seem to forget that 80% of the cuts are still to come, as have the Tories, and there is still no growth in sight.

All the same, Labour's gains are solid without being truly spectacular. The overall share of the vote, rather than being in line with results where the governing party went on to lose power does instead resemble Labour in the 80s and the Tories in the first half of the 00s. This said, we are still only two years into the coalition and have only recently reached the point at which Labour has been seeing a lead in the opinion polls that would give them a comfortable majority if repeated at an election. If nothing else it will end any murmurings about Ed Miliband's leadership, and about time too.

It is also lovely to see certain Tories so quickly turning their fire on the leadership for not being right-wing enough. It seems to have passed them entirely by that the main concerns at the moment are not immigration, crime, Europe or gay marriage, except among the usual minority, but the economy, jobs and standard of living, all of which they are less quick to be critical about. Likewise, for all the talk of the rise in support for UKIP, it's only turned into a gain of one seat, regardless of how it may have cost the Tories in places; the Greens by contrast have gained four overall. The BNP's collapse meanwhile has continued, leaving them with a pitiful four councillors in total. If there is a swing to parties to the left and right of Labour and the Tories as there has been across Europe, then it hasn't gone to the furthest extremes.

Inevitably, if Ken loses in London as he seems certain to, then the Tories will point to Labour not making the key gain they needed to. As said before, letting Ken stand again was a huge mistake as it allowed Boris to turn the election into a battle of personalities, with policies coming a very distant second. For the most part the rest of the country seems to have seen London and said, nope, we don't want that here. And thank goodness for that.

Update: Approximately 20 years later, it turns out Boris has won by about 60,000 votes. Fairly apparent that with a David Lammy or an Alan Johnson there would now be a Labour mayor to go with the 800+ council seats. Great to see Jenny Jones grab third place, and by 8,000 votes over Brian Paddick, and also impressive that Siobhan Benita ran the Lib Dems close. You also suspect though that UKIP would have done hell of a lot better had they not for some reason been down on the ballot under their slogan rather than as UKIP.

Louise Mensch goes stray for pay! (Or, seeking attention and then complaining about the downsides of doing so.)

2012-05-03T21:13:00.003+01:00

Louise Mensch has it seems been taking lessons in distracting attention away from legitimate criticism from Nadine Dorries. Yesterday Mensch tagged a few, and it should be stressed it is a few, unpleasant tweets from various people and then complained about how horrible it is being bullied on social networking websites. First off, some of them aren't unpleasant or anything approaching bullying, they're funny and intended as ironic: Jared Earle asking whether she'll be doing page 3 considering her support for the Murdochs amuses me, even if it doesn't anyone else. At the other end of the scale there's Vice magazine, doing a passable impression of SugaRape by asking "crusties" on May Day whether they'd have sex with her despite the fact she's a Tory. That's just so witty and outrageous guys! Next you'll be going "stray" for pay and writing about it!

On the whole though, they're just the fairly standard comments that anyone in the public eye and active online can expect to get. It's not nice and no one's pretending it is, but it isn't going to change, regardless of how many times the likes of the Sun print articles about how evil trolls are. And really, Mensch should have a thick enough skin by now not to get upset about being called a cunt. As for the Guardian then weighing in about how terrible this misogyny is, both of those referring to her as a slut are women (and one then said it was a joke just to get her to favourite her tweet). It's not so much about sexism as it is about most people just reaching for the nearest and most obvious insult: portraying it as something more than that often gives too much credit to the person dishing out the abuse. Furthermore, Peter Oborne got it right in his piece for the Telegraph today when he described Mensch as an "attention seeker", which is exactly what she is. Seek attention, as Mensch did on Tuesday by touring round every TV and radio station she could denouncing the report declaring that Rupert Murdoch wasn't fit to run News Corp, and you can't then expect to always have your position critiqued in calm, courteous terms.

One suspects that the real reason Mensch decided to highlight the abuse she was receiving was to take attention away from the fact that the main point she was making on Tuesday, that the "not fit" criticism was put in at the last minute, simply wasn't true. It had in fact first been proposed back at the end of March, when the chair of the committee, John Wittingdale, said it would have to be voted on later as it was clearly controversial and a consensus wouldn't be able to be reached without one. Tom Watson has since claimed that a second letter from James Murdoch to the committee appeared to "uncannily" answer many of the concerns raised by the committee in private conversations. Louise Mensch admits she received a briefing from Fred Michel, the News Corp lobbyist who had a "close" relationship with Jeremy Hunt's special adviser, but that it was declared and she did not discuss the committee's work on the report. Even if nothing was untoward, Mensch declaring that she found James Murdoch a "compelling, convincing and consistent" witness suggests that she's either gullible (unlikely) or exceptionally willing for whatever reason to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The other effect of all this has been to successfully relieve the pressure on David Cameron over his judgement and links to the Murdochs, which was precisely what the Tories aimed to do in the first place by reducing the criticism of both junior and senior. Next week we might just get back to that: Rebekah Brooks is appearing at the Leveson inquiry and she may well reveal the texts exchanged between Cameron and herself. Not even Louise Mensch will able to distract attention away from what they may well contain.

A nasty taste in the mouth.

2012-05-02T17:18:00.006+01:00

There are many things about the investigation into the death of Gareth Williams that leave a nasty taste in the mouth. While the apparent murder of an MI6/GCHQ worker in such bizarre circumstances is always going to invite comment and speculation, it's fair to say that the leaks to the press alleging that Williams was either gay, a transvestite or had come to a sticky end at the hands of al-Qaida, all emanating from uncertain sources were little short of smears. The Met, having to work the case through the counter-terrorism branch SO15, were only able to take statements from MI6 officers that were then "anonymised" afterwards, making the process a travesty. The inquest heard that "assurances were taken" without any further questioning then taking place.

The inquest itself was delayed for over a year, yet this seemingly didn't allow the time for a detective from outside SO15 to be vetted and conduct the interviews again. When it did finally take place, the attitude of MI6 seems to have been remarkably similar to the one taken by MI5 for the 7/7 inquests: challenging every decision made towards openness, demanding anonymity and claiming "national security" would be endangered if almost anything approaching "sensitive" material was discussed in open court. SO15 it seems were similarly awed by their relationship with MI6: Detective Superintendent Michael Broster gave some truly extraordinary evidence, saying that as MI6 had been "very helpful throughout and continue to be" he saw no reason for memory sticks and another North Face bag found in Williams' office to be examined by the Met team, or indeed even told they existed, as the investigating officer only found out about them three days ago.

Most shocking of all is that MI6 didn't investigate why Williams hadn't turned up for work until 8 days after he was last seen. This was according to MI6 a simple error by his line manager, and yet it seems astonishing that an officer of any of the security services can vanish for days, missing appointments and meetings, without anyone attempting to make contact with them or seemingly wondering where he was. This was a man who had worked for the secret state his entire adult life, described as "brilliant", given an award as part of a team for his work on cryptic analysis. He was owed a duty of care, the same that the services offer to agents who have been caught in compromising circumstances without so much as batting an eyelid.

One line of inquiry quickly shut down was that Williams had been working under a separate identity, something that was apparently completely off limits. If this was the case, and he had gone abroad under one, then surely that is something that should have been considered. The police for their part still seem to be focused on the idea that his death his down to his private life, although the coroner appears to have dismissed this. Despite the likes of Mark Urban repeating myths that he was interested in claustrophilia, his internet use seems to have been minor, and his slight interest in bondage websites may well have been down to specific training he was about to undergo at MI6, something else they have declined to comment on.

If he was secretly gay, or interested in dressing up in women's clothes, then there seems to be no evidence that he indulged in either with partners, and no one has come forward to say they were involved with him when you would have expected they may have done. He never discussed either with the two female friends he had, or with his sister, all of whom he was close to. The women's clothes he bought had after all not been taken out of their packaging, more than suggesting they were either gifts or they were part of his interest in fashion.

Despite the coroner also saying there's no evidence that his death was connected to his work, which rather suggests that we're no further than when the investigation began, it's seems remarkable there's been so little comment on how the heating had been turned up in the flat, in spite of how it was August, likewise that there were no fingerprints in the bathroom near to the bath as you would expect. All of this suggests that this wasn't someone panicking at a sex game that went wrong, but as Williams's family suspects, something far more sinister. It's difficult not to think that MI6 knows exactly what happened to Gareth Williams, but they have no intention of letting anyone else know.

"Not fit."

2012-05-01T16:40:00.005+01:00

The select committee system has at long last come of age. Today's report by the culture, media and sport committee into News International and phone hacking (PDF) is absolutely devastating, even more critical than this morning's Guardian report suggested it would be. While neither James or Rupert Murdoch are criticised for directly misleading parliament, the majority decision to say that Keith showed "wilful blindness" and so is not a "fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company" is as strong as it gets.

It's also, in spite of both what Louise Mensch said at the press conference this morning and News Corporation have since released in a statement, completely justified. It most certainly is partisan though, just in the completely opposite way to that implied by Mensch and News Corp. Mensch claimed that the committee had heard no evidence which could justify reaching the conclusion the majority did on Murdoch, when in fact the case is clear cut and set out unflinchingly; the entire section from paragraph 201 onwards on the corporate culture at News Corporation is detailed and focused on just that. News Corporation asked the committee to believe that even after the Guardian had published its 2009 expose on the Gordon Taylor settlement and they had issued their first report criticising the "collective amnesia" at the company that no one at the highest executive level questioned what they claim they were being told. They point out that even after the supposed epiphany in December 2010, as James Murdoch characterised it, the company was still claiming in its defence to the Sienna Miller's claim for damages that no other journalists had been involved with Glenn Mulcaire.

Since then the approach has been equally transparent: put all the blame on Colin Myler, Tom Crone and Jonathan Chapman. Involved as they undoubtedly were in the cover up, to believe it was all them is the equivalent of nonsense on stilts. Rebekah Brooks testified that "on average" she spoke to her benefactor "every other day"; are we supposed to believe that Rupert never enquired about the local difficulty with which she was personally dealing with, accusing the Graun of "likely deliberately misleading the British public", and also never talked about it with James? If, as he claimed at Leveson last week, he had long wanted to get rid of the News of the World, why didn't he at an earlier point use the scandal to act?

The reality is that as the report states Murdoch has displayed "excellent powers of recall and grasp of detail" ... "when it has suited him". All the more dubious then that when asked whether he knew for certain in January 2011 that the "rogue reporter" defence was false, he claimed to have forgotten the exact date. Furthermore, although the report doesn't make the exact argument, the fact that he saw nothing wrong with the approach taken by Neville Thurlbeck in the Max Mosley case, with his attempt to blackmail one of the women involved is a wonderful example of the culture that operated at News International, not necessarily specifically sanctioned at the highest level, but certainly condoned.

It's ridiculous then for Mensch and the other Conservatives on the committee (Therese Coffey voted against every additional criticism of both the Murdochs) to claim that it wasn't within their remit to declare whether or not Rupert was a fit and proper person to helm News Corp, and that's solely for Ofcom to decide. What is the point of politicians, and indeed a media committee unless it is make their views plain on a matter of this much importance? There was a culture of illegality at a company which was attempting to obtain a stranglehold on the British media, as the takeover of BSkyB by News Corporation would have achieved. This culture was, as even Rupert Murdoch admits, covered up. Either the executives at the company didn't know about it, in which case they were lied to and incompetent, or they knew about it and connived in it. Only finding that they thought Rupert and James's approach to everything "astonishing", as the Tories on the committee wanted the report to say, is not just a cop out, it's weak and pusillanimous.

Their real reasoning for wanting to do so though is politically sound. They know full well that this once again brings David Cameron and his lack of judgement into the equation. Yes, everyone sucked up to Murdoch, but this isn't just about Cameron being unlucky that the music stopped on his watch, it's about how he went further than New Labour ever did and installed as his spin doctor Andy Coulson, a man who resigned as News of the World editor because like the two Murdochs he knew absolutely nothing about what had happened on his watch. Despite being warned off by almost everyone other than those in the pay of Murdoch, Cameron went ahead and took Coulson into Downing Street with him, and once there instigated policy which massively favoured News International.

Just as Cameron is defending the indefensible as Ed Miliband put it yesterday by refusing to grant a separate inquiry into Jeremy Hunt's dealings with News International over the BSkyB bid, using his culture secretary as a human shield lest all the attention turn towards him, so the Tories on the committee are effectively defending the indefensible to protect their boss. The real partisanship here was from those who should have known better, and it will be something they will come to regret.

Film review: Straightheads.

2012-04-30T15:59:00.004+01:00

(Major, major spoilers ahead. But seeing as the film came out five years ago and it's terrible and no one should see it I don't think it's going to matter.)

Or, as it should be known, Danny Dyer's Straw Dogs. Would anyone ever want to see Straw Dogs, as remade with Danny Dyer? No, thought not. So they called it Straightheads instead, which is a nonsensical, meaningless title. Is it implying that the two leads are otherwise completely straight, and that the crime that befalls them and leads to their response is the only extraordinary thing that happens? Frankly, who knows. The film itself certainly doesn't clear anything up, in every sense.

Made according to the IMDB for around £1.8 million, and you have to suspect the vast majority of that went on pay, Straightheads is another of those awful films which the UK Film Council saw the script for and somehow decided was worth funding. It must also rank as the worst decision of Gillian Anderson's career, as she is horribly miscast as the City worker Alice. Danny Dyer is Adam, a working class CCTV installer, hired by Alice.

From the very beginning the problems are glaring. Alice comes home to find Adam asleep on her patio, which with most people wouldn't go down well. Rather than getting him to show her the basics of the system he's installed and then shoving him out the door as soon as possible, she instead decides to take an immediate shower. Quite why she's having the system installed in the first place is unclear; as usual in films, the house/apartment/whatever is all but immaculate, she doesn't have children, and there doesn't seem to be anything obvious worth stealing. It does though provide Adam with the opportunity to spy on this gorgeous older woman getting undressed, and the implication is that Alice doesn't mind, or if she does, the fact that he's installed this voyeurism device has slipped her mind within seconds. Indeed, she doesn't seem to decide what to do next until she's in the shower.

Suitably refreshed, she returns while Adam is still replaying the images of her getting semi-naked. It's really difficult to get beyond the idea that the only reason the film exists is because it features Gillian Anderson, aka Agent Scully aka a 90s schoolboy's wet dream in a couple of scenes of partial nudity. It's also clearly playing on Anderson's mind or she was getting second thoughts as her performance is all over the place. Anderson has said in the past that she's one of those people whose accent adjusts according to where she is, hence why in The X-Files she sounds American while back here she speaks with a distinctly English twang. This makes her voice in Straightheads all the odder: it doesn't sound how she normally does anywhere; it's as though she's trying to sound slightly sultry and yet instead it just comes out as slightly head girl of a public school.

Equally, we don't get any insight whatsoever into how or why Alice might find Adam attractive. Inviting him along to a work party, although we first have to go through a car scene which involves them getting lost in the country, Alice mentioning that she grew up near where they are, which is important for later, and her getting out to urinate for no reason whatsoever (it's also worth noting that Alice appears to have a large skull tattoo on her inner right arm which you never get to see properly, suggesting that it was an allusion to how she's not this completely straightlaced City worker which they later thought better of), the only slight nod to how this might not be Alice's first younger man is that her boss finds Adam's age (23) to be fitfully amusing. Any wider comment on the mismatch between the two both in terms of class and age is quickly dispensed with for a sex scene, conducted on the very edge of the woods near to the house.

The coitus out of the way, the rape revenge must duly begin. It starts in time honoured fashion, as an ageing Land Rover driving slowly along a country road blocks their process home. Rather than just simply overtaking, they have to tail-gate, drive alongside and let the horn off, before Adam declares them to be onanists as they finally go by. Can anyone guess what happens next? Yes, they of course run straight into a stag. They can't just leave it in the middle of the road though, they have to drag it to the side and Adam, being this tough geezer, simply must adminster the coup de grace. At which point our friends in the Land Rover pull up, adminster a brutal beating to Adam, and then despite her attempts to escape, hold down and rape Alice.

If you thought the acting had been bad prior to this point, then here's where it really enters a whole new realm of awful. As well as blinding him in one eye, the attack also leaves Adam impotent, to the point where he can't even manage to get it up to squeeze one out to his first sight of Alice getting undressed. For some reason he decides to masturbate in front of a mirror, although happily we don't get to see Dyer's member, just his face as he tries desperately to show his sexual frustration and instead just scrunches it up. Just as he fails to spark, so the chemistry between Alice and Adam, as little as there was at first completely dissipates. Why are they still together? Didn't perhaps the whole unpleasant incident suggest their affair wasn't the best idea? Obviously not.

As this is a rape revenge/vigilante film, there has to be an explanation as to why they haven't gone to the police. It turns out that they have, although as Alice explains to her boss, it's "only" a GBH and so they don't seem interested. While in similar films the police are ignored or insulted as being too politically correct, generally useless or corrupt themselves, here it might well have helped if SHE'D REPORTED SHE HAD BEEN RAPED AS WELL. If you're going to do this sort of film, either keep the police out of it altogether (as in I Spit on Your Grave, which is the Citizen Kane of rape/revenge compared to this despite its numerous flaws), or make it clear they're not going to do anything for such and such a reason, not that won't because they didn't tell the police everything that happened.

In the most extraordinary of coincidences, her old man chose her time off to recover to kick the bucket, and apparently uncontactable, the funeral has already took place. She travels out to his house, which as we've established is near to where the party was, only on her way back to almost drive straight into a pack of horse-riders. One angrily berates her, and what do you know, she recognises his voice! Quick as flash, she asks the last rider what his name was, apologising, and so the revenge is set creaking into motion.

Amazingly, it gets even more nonsensical. Turns out that Alice's dad was a soldier, that he taught her to shoot as a girl, and he just happens to have left a sniper rifle behind. He believed in getting even, and so it seems does Alice. Dyer, despite being the atypical wideboy who subsequently was to suggest in a Zoo column that a jilted boyfriend should disfigure his former lover as a way of getting over the end of the relationship (he was misquoted, he says), isn't so sure, although Dyer is so unconvincing, even as he clears a table in the theatrical way which signifies his angst, that you just know that the roles are subsequently going to be reversed.

Before we get to the denouement, there has to be another character placed in the plot to make the entire enterprise seem slightly more complicated than it actually is. After disposing of the dog of one of the rapists with the rifle, the body of which Adam drags away without leaving behind a tell-tale trail of blood, we discover that he has a teenage daughter (Sophie) as she comes out the house calling for it. Their revenge plan still goes ahead however, which has to involve Adam installing an apparently unnoticeable security camera system in the house. All the while he's doing this Sophie must have been in her room and didn't hear him, as once the rapists return just as he's finished he hides in there. As the other two men also apparently have eyes for her, she is just about convinced not to scream as Adam comes in and places his hand over her mouth. For some reason though this seems to have excited Adam sufficiently for him to attempt to force himself on her, in what must be one of those most ill-advised and ill-thought through scenes in such a film. If this is meant to make his character more ambiguous, or to underline the effect the assault had on him, then it achieves neither; it just makes you dislike him even more intensely.

Next morning, Adam having escaped in the same way as Sophie did from his clutches, Alice hears (Adam must have put microphones in as well) the sound of a car engine going constantly on the feed. Determined that she won't be denied her revenge by a suicide, she charges to the house and pulls him out. Apparently not recognising her as he struggles to breathe, he thanks her for saving him from a mistake and begins to explain why he was trying to kill himself. Turns out that on the night of the rape they too had been driving home from a party, only for them to spot his daughter out at 4 in the morning too, walking by the side of the road. Knowing that his friends would try to force themselves onto her if they all drove home, he created a "diversion" with Alice and Adam. While the other two were kicking seven bells out of him, he got Sophie out of the Land Rover. Having not had enough unpleasant sexual assaults so far in the film, we then return again to the rape of Alice, entirely gratuitously.

All that remains to be said is that the revenge which follows, such as it is, is completely unsatisfying. A rifle and an anus is involved, Alice doesn't want to shoot as well as thrust to Adam's dismay as she doesn't explain that she was raped in part to save his daughter from that exact fate, Adam then literally decides upon an eye for an eye, the two others turn up and are swiftly despatched and that's that. The film minus credits lasts exactly 72 minutes, and those 72 minutes are some of the least rewarding, worst acted and most misguided you're likely to see for quite some time. It says something about a film when by far the best scene is left on the cutting room floor, as the deleted scenes prove: one of the rapists, played by Ralph Brown in the only decent performance in the film, dances in the living room with Sophie's father. It shows the chilling power he has over the others and hints at how with better writing, proper direction and different actors in the two main parts the film could have been a competent, low-budget British film, nasty certainly but worthwhile. Instead it's a blot on Gillian Anderson's resume and Danny Dyer can boast that he simulated intercourse with 1996's Sexiest Woman in the World.

The Iceman.

2012-04-27T20:51:00.001+01:00

One rogue newspaper.

2012-04-26T21:55:00.004+01:00

For years we had the one rogue reporter defence. Now, courtesy of Rupert Murdoch's second session at Leveson, we've been given the one rogue newspaper defence.

You see, Keith never really liked the News of the World. It was only the first newspaper he bought in Britain, the one which essentially kick-started his global ambitions. He didn't have much contact with the editor, not even phoning them up every week. His real love, the Sun, he lavished with attention. If you want to know what he thinks, read its editorials. Secretly, he'd wanted to shut the Screws down and bring the Sun out seven days a week, something he has now done. Funny that.

As any number of ex-Screws staff have now said, this account is utter bollocks. Yes, it's true that Murdoch didn't pay as much attention to the Screws as he did the Sun, but the idea that he didn't phone the editor every week (something Piers Morgan for one disputes) or that he was somehow embarrassed by the Screws is nonsense. Why would he otherwise have picked Screws stories in his witness statement (PDF) as evidence of journalism by his papers in the public interest?

It's hardly surprising then that he knew absolutely nothing about what was going on at the paper. Or indeed, that he didn't pay attention to little matters like the Max Mosley privacy case. He didn't know about the Gordon Taylor settlement. Or basically, any of the allegations against the paper until it was too late. When the Milly Dowler hacking story finally blew everything apart, he panicked. Nevertheless, shutting the Screws down was the right decision.

Some of this, it should be stressed, is believable. During 2008 he was focused on taking over the Wall Street Journal. He probably doesn't read the full rulings against his papers, or at least until he has to prior to the grilling he's received over the last two days. The idea though that absolutely everything passed him by is laughable. It seems that neither James or dear Rebekah ever mentioned the troubles the Screws was having thanks to the continued digging of Nick Davies. If we were to believe every word of Rupert's evidence, both this time and last, then he had apparently never heard of Neville Thurlbeck, one of the chief reporters on the Screws for the best part of 20 years. At least James admitted that he didn't really read the tabloids he was in charge of, although you can't imagine that was because they were too vulgar for him.

There was then a cover-up. Naturally though, this didn't involve any of Rupert's nearest and dearest. Both James 'n' Rebekah were kept completely out of the loop. Why, despite Colin Myler being brought in as the new broom after the resignation of Andy Coulson, it seems that he and the rest of the staff just wanted to forget about all the unpleasantness involving Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire. Those who under Coulson had been co-operating with the industrial scale phone hacking had of course wanted the air to be cleared, for all of this to come out, for executives at the paper to know what had been going, but they were stopped in their tracks by the dastardly Tom Crone, the lawyer and drinker extraordinare! Except of course Rupert couldn't come out and say his name and accuse him outright; he just ensured that his description of the man couldn't be mistaken for anyone else. As Crone later said, it just happens to be a coincidence that the two main people Murdoch principally blamed also happen to be the ones disputing the evidence given by his son.

In any case, the idea that James and Rebekah were out of the loop and misled is absurd. Back in 2009 when the Guardian exposed the settlement with Gordon Taylor, either could have said if they had indeed been unaware of the scale of what went on that they wanted no stone left unturned. Instead Brooks issued that infamous letter claiming that the Guardian "has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public". It took until the end of 2010 before News Corporation finally realised the story wasn't going to go away and set up the Management and Standards Committee to look fully into what had gone on at both the Screws and the Sun. Rupert himself briefly forgot everything that had been drummed into him and went for the jugular when Robert Jay implied that the overall desire of executives had to been to "cover up, not to expose", to which he responded, quick as a flash with "[W]ell, people with minds like yours perhaps [might think that]".

For the last two days have been a performance, and an incredibly good one at that. Murdoch didn't set out to destroy this government, as some of us both thought and hoped that he would, but he did ensure that everyone he loathes and wants to settle a score with got what he thinks they deserve. The Guardian was pretty much left alone while the Telegraph, the Times's main rival, was repeatedly pasted. Everyone he thinks has either failed or turned on him received at best a slight and at worst a smear. Anything that might make him look as though he was really in the wrong he'd forgotten about, while all the stories ex-staff and others had written were just nonsense. He admitted he'd made mistakes, but only slight ones. He regretted he hadn't acted sooner, but what he'd always wanted to happen now has done. It would be a blot on his reputation for the rest of his life, but he can clearly live with that. What endures is the myth, unaltered by this appearance and if anything enhanced by it, that he's untouchable, even infallible. Thankfully, there's still plenty of time for that particular spell to be broken.

The call of the Hunt.

2012-04-25T19:22:00.005+01:00

Well, I think it's fair to say that was just ever so slightly disappointing.

After yesterday's fireworks with James, and I can't help picturing advisers and politicians running around Thick of It style while he was giving evidence about the Fred Michel emails, the hope was for more of the same from Keith himself. Instead, what we got was much the same performance he gave to the media committee, albeit without the crap about how this was the most humble day of his life. There were the long pregnant pauses, the occasional thump of the table, and also the same failures of memory. He couldn't for instance remember that David Cameron back into 2008 had interrupted his summer holiday to pay a visit to the mogul on one of his yachts, although thankfully Wendi Deng, not called upon this time to swat a twat with a pie, did recall the happy event and jogged his memory.

Likewise, he'd also forgotten completely about meeting with Mrs Thatcher back in 1981, right at the point at which he was jockeying to take over the Times and Sunday Times. Strangely though, despite being unable to recall what was discussed at this personal tete-a-tete with the prime minister, Murdoch is absolutely certain that Woodrow Wyatt was wrong to claim in his diaries that he had asked Thatcher to "bend the rules" on his behalf. Harold Evans, who Murdoch went on to claim had begged him to tell him how to edit the paper, relates how this meeting with Thatcher, details of which were only released earlier this year, is inexplicably not part of the official history of the Times. Any suggestion that the takeover would otherwise have been referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, as it should have been, had this meeting not happened is quite obviously untrue.

That sort of thing just isn't Rupert's style. Moreover, with the possible exception of the above, when The Sun had not yet quite become the behemoth it was to be during the 80s, he hasn't needed to directly ask. As Paul Keating has said, and as Robert Jay threw at Keith, you don't make deals, or at least not in so many words; you have understandings that are in place until they are no longer to his benefit. Wyatt understood this as Murdoch made his "deal" with Tony Blair; it didn't matter that the Conservatives had cleared the path for him to build his empire, the political wind had changed. As long as Blair was amenable to his business interests, and he was, then he would switch his paper's support. It's true, as John Rentoul has said, that Murdoch didn't get everything his own way: he was blocked from buying Manchester United, and having come to a similar "understanding" over there being a referendum on the European constitution, Blair subsequently went back on it. The point was that as Alastair Campbell has said repeatedly, almost anything was worth it if the end result was that the Sun front page on the morning of the general election didn't have the Labour leader's head in a lightbulb on it.

Murdoch's power became such that the politicians had to go to him, not the other way around, hence the grating shtick from before that he wished they'd leave him alone. Blair flew round the world, Cameron went to his yacht, but once in power it just became too embarrassing for all concerned. Spin doctors had to tell BBC journos not to film Blair hugging and kissing Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch had to go in the back door of Number 10, Jeremy Hunt had to hide behind a tree. If you were to believe Keith, then all this nonsense about him controlling politicians through his newspapers is a myth created by the Guardian and Independent. Any suggestion from past editors and employees, like Andrew Neil or Martin Dunn to the contrary just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Only occasionally did he spout the most easily disprovable nonsense, as the new quote now residing at the top of this blog demonstrates. Really, Rupert? You've never once promoted Sky in the Sun, or torn shreds off the BBC in its pages? Are you sure you don't need a bit of a rest before you continue?

While he will indeed continue tomorrow, something even more hilarious was happening over in the Commons. Jeremy Hunt not only had the gall to stand up and give a statement on why he should still be a minister, he told the House that his special adviser Adam Smith had "unintentionally" gone too far in leaking and passing various incredibly helpful bits of information about what was happening with the BSkyB bid to Frederic Michel. Despite Hunt last night claiming that he had done nothing wrong, with the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg on Newsnight more or less saying that Michel was a Walter Mitty figure, the following morning Smith had to be the sacrificial lamb. Dennis Skinner's bluntness doesn't always score points, but he was dead right in his observation that when "posh boys are in trouble, they sack their servants".

Hunt of course had absolutely no idea what his SpAd had been up to. What's more, his following of all the due process, consulting Ofcom when he could have just waved the bid through proved that his decision had indeed been "quasi-judicial". It didn't matter that in the emails his apparent stalling was explained as "[Hunt] very specifically said he was keen to get to the same outcome and wanted JRM to understand he needs to build some political cover", his behaviour had been of the very cleanest calibre. Michel was just doing what all lobbyists do, which is exaggerate their influence and try and pass themselves off as being just as powerful as those making the actual decision. That Michel was passed information before it was released to the markets that was identical to that subsequently released, or that he was informed of questions that were going to be asked in parliament before it happened was just over-eagerness on Smith's part. It also doesn't matter that the ministerial code is crystal clear on how ministers are responsible for the actions of their SpAds. The only person who can judge Hunt is Lord Leveson himself.

The absurdity of Vince Cable being removed from his role in deciding on the BSkyB bid for "blatant bias" on the back of one boastful comment while Jeremy Hunt stays in his job despite his collusion with News Corp being documented in black and white can only be explained by how if Hunt goes, it's another of Cameron's human shields that's bit the dust. While Gordon Brown was allegedly "declaring war" on News International, Cameron was setting out on how he wouldn't just respect Murdoch's business interests, he'd actively help them. He kept his side of the bargain, right up until he was forced into ordering the Leveson inquiry by a scandal that News International imagined they could bury. Murdoch's vengeance for that is not yet complete.

Hell hath no fury.

2012-04-24T16:44:00.005+01:00

And so the vengeance of the Murdochs begins. For those who, like me, imagined that the Leveson session with Murdoch junior would just be a re-hash of his repeated denials that he was ever told anything about any aspect of his job as executive chairman of News International, then I think it's fair to say that we've pleasantly surprised.

First though, the stuff we've already gone over umpteen times. The early stages were dominated by James's insistence that everyone had misinterpreted, misunderstood and misreported the emails (page 27 of his witness statement (PDF)) that looked as though they drop him in it, even though he hadn't read them at the time. You see, the contemporaneous note written by Julian Pike of Farrar & Co wasn't detailing a conversation that Colin Myler had with James at all; it was in fact what Myler had said and Pike was simply noting that Myler had met with Murdoch junior!

Documented in his witness statement is just how unquestioning he was of the reason for having to pay Gordon Taylor £350,000 in damages; he was "content" with what he says Myler and Tom Crone told him, and it was "appropriate" for him to rely on them to deal with it. They didn't tell him that this case didn't involve Clive Goodman, and he didn't ask; he didn't see the "for Neville" email, despite both Myler and Crone saying that they showed him it; he says Crone and Myler were "very keen" to settle yet he didn't inquire any deeper about why they were so desperate beyond the bare minimum that he says they told him. As much as you believe that James couldn't care less about the newspapers he was also supposedly in charge of, this hands-off, completely incurious approach just doesn't ring true. Regardless of the company you're running, when underlings come to you and says you've got to settle a legal action for a total sum of just less than a million including costs, the idea that you don't inquire, that you don't ask questions, that you don't read the whole of emails is just completely unbelievable.

Asked by Robert Jay whether he was in effect complicit or incompetent, he responded that he had been given "repeated assurances" that hacking was in the past and that he only had enough information to settle the Taylor case. Which, as far as it goes, was pretty much admitting to the latter.

Except, as the rest of Murdoch's evidence showed, he simply can't be described as incompetent. For the most part his dropping of Jeremy Hunt into the mire was pitch perfect; it was only when expertly asked by Jay what he thought of Hunt's department's help with the bid for full control of BSkyB that he allowed himself a revealing laugh.

This then is the start of the new Murdoch offensive. Having realised that in the short-term there is no way they'll be able to take full control of Sky, the family and all it controls has decided to take the entire political class down, or at least attempt to. There wasn't just the 163 pages of emails between Frédéric Michel and James Murdoch showcasing the contact between News Corp and Jeremy Hunt's team, making a mockery of the idea that he was in any way operating, as he told the Commons and as Gus O'Donnell ruled, in the "quasi-judicial" manner required of him, there was the revelation that James had personally made his case for the deal going through to David Cameron just three days after Vince Cable had been removed from his role. Add in how Alex Salmond had also apparently said he would be lobbying Hunt to let the Sky deal through, in effective exchange for the continuing positive coverage he was receiving in the Scottish Sun, and the ruling parties north and south of the border are both having their below-the-counter dealings exposed.

Just how much the takeover of BSkyB by News Corp would have changed the game is shown by the name chosen for the project: Rubicon. Had it been crossed, News Corp's domination of the British media would have been complete. As Nick Davies writes, the Murdochs thought they had it all sown up. The Sun's decision to endorse the Conservatives was taken jointly by James, Rebekah Brooks and you suspect with rather less input from Dominic Mohan and Tom Newton Dunn. This was intimated to David Cameron weeks before the paper itself let its readers and the world know. For his part, Cameron had already made clear that if elected he would cut back Ofcom and do the same to the BBC, the pet hates of a certain James Murdoch as made clear in his MacTaggart lecture. Cameron may not have abolished Ofcom as he said would, but he has cut it back, while the licence fee has been frozen. The only problem that remained was that Vince Cable was in charge of the decision over the takeover, and he was minded to send it to the Competition Commission, at the very least delaying it for months. Then the Telegraph had the wizard idea of sending undercover journalists to MP's constituency surgeries, and the Tories had their excuse for handing the decision over to "cheerleader" Hunt.

Rupert Murdoch may well have never warmed to Cameron, but he was increasingly leaving the decisions to James, or being persuaded to give the Conservatives a try by the ever clubbable, networking Rebekah Brooks. Keith has always been an arrogant hypocrite, yet he wouldn't have got where he was if he wasn't a supreme manipulator, and he always has something extra subtle left in reserve if he needs it. He would never have barged into the offices of the Independent and ranted at Simon Kelner for running an incredibly benign advertising campaign stating that he wouldn't be the one deciding the result of the election. That was the absolute height of News International's chutzpah, believing that they were untouchable to the point of rubbing their opponents faces in it. James today said he and Brooks went on their adventure because he was enraged at how Kelner had done it despite receiving "of my family's hospitality for a number of years", something that you can only characterise as resembling the mafia's attitude towards respect and slight.

Tomorrow sees the real Godfather giving evidence, and David Cameron must surely be having a sleepless night.

I'm the Prince of Wales, and if all else fails...

2012-04-23T16:48:00.005+01:00

It's Monday, it's late April 2012, the coalition's second Queen's speech is fast approaching and I'm freezing my nads off, so it must be time for another attempt at reforming the House of Lords. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, reforming the second chamber of parliament was a simple matter of principle, about how even if we must have a hereditary figurehead, it's bordering on the obscene that our laws are still influenced and changed by the unelected chosen through patronage, those there purely because they quite like God, and those allowed in because 5000 years ago their great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather (some actions have been shortened) was a good mate of King Ethelred.

One of the reasons this is no longer the case is that despite all of the above, the Lords has of late done a remarkable job in the circumstances. True, it rarely manages to block bad acts of parliamentary entirely, although it did in the case of Gordon Brown's attempt to ram 42 days without charge for "terrorist suspects" into law, but as a revising second chamber it stands in the way of governments of all hues putting truly wretched, ill-thought through and downright abominable legislation onto the statute book. Without wanting to sound like a pompous Tory, we really ought to be sure that the reforms we're proposing are for the better and not just going to result in a mirror image of the Commons.

The other key reason is that reforming the Lords gives innumerable opportunities for the main three political parties to do each other over. Having failed to bring in even the alternative vote for the Commons, the Liberal Democrats see Lords reform as something to fall back on, a legacy their voters can genuinely be proud of. Labour, by contrast, sees it as another way to cause the Lib Dems trouble; why else would the party be demanding a referendum, knowing full well this is also exactly what the Tory backbenchers opposed to both reform and the Liberal Democrats getting their way in any form in the coalition are also asking for? Having previously tried to "wrongfoot" David Cameron in the dying days of the third term, Labour has form in this regard. Cameron himself meanwhile, having previously regarded Lords reform as a "third-term issue", is perfectly happy with not ruling out a referendum entirely as the last thing he needs to do is antagonise his backbenchers further.

In keeping with the old traditions then, the slightly altered plans for reform produced by the joint committee are as much of a dog's breakfast as ever. They too agree that the chamber should be 80% elected/20% appointed, a compromise that reminds of Nick Clegg's characterisation of the alternative vote. They too said that those elected should serve terms of 15 years, which is a ridiculously long time, and that they should only be able to serve once, which makes holding those elected to account rather difficult. They only demure from the template drawn up by the coalition in that the chamber should be slightly bigger than they envisaged, with a total of 450 members, which seems more sensible than a bare 300. This means that peers (or senators, or whatever they'll eventually be known as) would be elected under the single transferable vote, meaning that the process for the second chamber will be fairer and more proportional than that for the Commons.

Which does rather suggest that, 20% appointed or not, the supposed revising chamber will have more of a democratic mandate than the Commons currently does. Just as it is absurd that the Lords currently has more members than the Commons, it seems farcical that this could be the constitutional position in just a couple of years time. Except, of course, that just as before there seems to be no chance whatsoever of MPs being able to agree on the subject. Is it any wonder then that so many hold Westminster in such utter contempt?

Northern soul.

2012-04-21T13:50:00.001+01:00

This person is trolling you.

2012-04-20T17:14:00.004+01:00

It's quite something when a piece for CiF opens with a sentence this obtuse and then goes downhill from there:

When I broke the neck of my sick cat and then made a handbag of her skin, I honestly had no idea of what I had got myself into.

236 comments and counting.