She knew - she knew all the time

from the Guardian, 17/7/11

"... (The Spectator's) current issue also carries an illuminating anecdote by the columnist Toby Young, who recalled Lis Murdoch's hen night before her marriage to Freud, when she and Rebekah Wade (then editing the News of the World, and not yet Mrs Brooks) were in a party of "boozed-up ladies" being ferried around London in "a white stretch limo". Noticing they were being followed by a Ford Mondeo in a way that suggested a paparazzo pursuit, Wade "called her picture desk and rattled off the Mondeo's number plate. In less than a minute, she had the name and telephone number of the car's owner, a notorious paparazzo." She rang the number and, Young says, told him: "If you don't stop following us, I'll personally see to it that you never work in this town again." Cue an immediate U-turn by their pursuer."

OK - very amusing.

So Rebekah Wade KNEW eight or ten years ago, how to get her staff to hack police or phone company data bases?

HELLO! Did you all hear me?

Rebekah Wade KNEW eight or ten years ago, exactly who to phone, on her staff, who could hack police or phone company data bases? In real time?

And how to use that information to threaten retaliation?

Well, blow me - what a surprise!

She seems to have forgotten that this was part of her range of talents ..... her ruthlessness, her aggression, her disregard for the legalities and, of course, she had no knowledge whatsoever of her staff doing similar bad things in the years that followed.

Wow!

The sheer cheek makes you blink and recoil.

The casual incompetent arrogance of News International is (please God) going to kill them dead!

I cannot wait.

What I love about Britain (1-7)

What I love about Britain (1)

That an unknown Australian with a lot of his Daddy's money could come here 30 or more years ago and buy up three of the most influential newspapers and bankrupt a respectable and properly regulated satellite television company and gain monopoly control of all the satellite broadcasting in this country.

What I love about Britain (2)

That when the same Australian transformed himself into an American we let him go on owning all that stuff.

What I love about Britain (3)

That is was only when his staff tried to hack the Royal Family's phones that his Evil Empire started to collapse.

What I love about Britain (4)

That in 2009, when the Guardian accused Murdoch and his staff of bad stuff like this, the Metropolitan Police rubbished the Guardian in a report which its author, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, yesterday described as "pretty crap" in a remarkably frank Sunday Telegraph article.

What I love about Britain (5)

That Yates worked really closely, on his "crap" 2009 report with Ken Macdonald, then Head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

What I love about Britain (6)

That Ken Macdonald, now Lord Macdonald, is currently retained by News International to "advise them on their dealings with the police."

What I love about Britain (7)

That you couldn't possibly make it up.

PS - What I also love about Britain:

The Guardian correction this morning.

Lord Macdonald "has given some advice to the company (News International) about the ... issue of allegedly corrupt payments to police on the part of News of the World journalists."

Which sounds like he is advising them on their newspaper's dealings with the police?

He has not been "retained" but he does "give them some advice."

Now, does he give them this advice for free?

Or, can we assume, he invoices them accordingly?

The advice of somebody of Lord Macdonald's legal standing should be worth - what - 500 pounds sterling per hour? 1,000 pounds or more for a written opinion? I am not a lawyer - I am guessing - but that is probably in the appropriate scale of charges. He may be able to charge much more.

In other words, Lord Macdonald has been paid to help News International as it wriggles and jiggles and squiggles inside the British body politic which is trying (like the old lady who swallowed a fly) to rid itself of this parasitic, cruel and mischievous organization.

I think Lord Macdonald would do well to review his choice of clients.

British Police - and how they behave

A terrible, shocking story - which you all ought to read and remember:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/03/football-fan-attacked?INTCMP=SRCH

Last year, returning from a football match, student Tommy Meyers was savaged by a police dog while being arrested for assault. 


Now, following his acquittal, he and his family talk about the incident.


"Until 11 September last year, the police were rather admired in the Meyers household. Tony Meyers is a firefighter, a profession in which you work closely with the police and tend to get on with them, and his younger son, then 17, had done work experience with the police and was considering it as a career.

All that changed in a few dreadful seconds on Reading station, when the two of them were forced to watch as officers handcuffed Tony's older son, 20-year-old Leeds University student Tommy, forced him on to the ground, and set a police dog on him. The dog bit fiercely into Tommy's face – he couldn't even raise his handcuffed hands to protect himself. The injuries will be with him for the rest of his life, partly because the police refused him access to antibiotics for 14 hours, by which time infection had taken hold.

Tommy, a slightly built, taciturn and rather serious student of medical biochemistry who is thinking about training to be a doctor, was acquitted of assault and resisting arrest last month. I ask him what he thinks of the police now. He pauses for a moment to put his thoughts in order and says quietly: "They're cruel, inhumane, barbaric and brutal. They look on people with disdain. They think they are above everyone else. I have no faith at all in the police." Tony says: "The only trouble I witnessed that day was caused by the bullying police thugs who think they can do what they want and get away with it."