Cameron should fall on his sword

mybreakfastconsisted

The Beginner wrote:

All irrelevant as the ministers have no say in Offcoms decision on the BskyB takeover, so where was the conflict? To throw mud, you need to find a sensible target first!

Simon

We are all aware that Cameron for instance openly and specifically trashed Ofcom after - singling them out for rubbishing - after Coulson arrived.

tailwindhome

daviesee wrote:

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

Milliband is deliberately going easy on Cameron because he knows Tory knives are out for him.

Or it could be because Labour sucked up to Murdoch just as much.

I don't support Cameron, I despise all politicians equally.

Or it could be more advantageous to ensure that the Aussie, the Ginger and the Hacks remain the target.

mybreakfastconsisted

David Cameron's odds of leaving continue to slide - now down to 6/1 from 12/1 yesterday and 100/1 last week: http://ow.ly/5HLKJ

bails87

From the Daily Mash:

Phone scandal thingy round up: Day 14,008
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates resigned because it was long, long overdue.

Guardian journalist Nick Davies has taken to wearing a titanium breast plate and a concrete hat.

Nick Boles, a Tory MP and News International freelancer, described the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone as 'a little local difficulty', giving the Labour Party a really good idea for an absolutely f**king humongous poster.

jedster

THere's been a few posts questioninf whether the media and the politicians are making too big a deal about the hacking scandal. I don't think so. For me, it's not the hacking itself (however digusting the Dowling, Soham stuff was) but it is what has been revealed about (at least) News International's malign influence on our police and politics. what I mean:

Am I the only one who doesn't really give a sh!t about this 'scandal'. I really don't care if the NOTW hack into celebs voicemails to get stories. Really couldn't care less. Especially when I see the likes of Hugh Grant complaining

.

I wouldn't go quite that far but I basically agree.

Fair enough the hacking into Milly Dowler's phone crossed a line of 'taste and decency' but did anyone really expect the tabloid press to display taste or decency. It probably was a criminal offence, perverting the course of justice or something but not really worth filling every ******* news broadcast for 2 solid weeks

.

True, probably one solid week though.

Here's my main issue though. I knew that Murdoch had a lot of influence on policy - political parties wan't the editorial support of his papers and were prepared to tweak policy accordingly. Maybe I'm naive but I didn't really believe that his executives went around telling our elected politicians to stop digging into our dirty laundry or we'll publish stuff we know about you or be digging through your bins for years. This strikes me as blackmail and gangsterism. Even last week Ed Milliband was told by a senior NI journalist that "you've made it personal with Rebeka now we're going to make it personal with you". Tom Watson finallty snapped with NI when he had been pressing them for an apology and they told him to get lost and instead send people to go through his bins. He decided to go after them when his daughter hid behind the sofa saying "the nasty man is outside again". Apparently, a few years ago, the Chair of the Media Subcomittee asked the committee whether they really wanted to press Brooks to come before them again
"do you really want News of the World to be looking into your affairs?

I think this stuff is really serious. Using blackmail and intimidation to stop our elected representatives doing their job is corruption and abuse of power on a grand scale.

Then we have the police... I cannot for the llife of me understand how the first police investigation could have concluded that despite the thousands of names in the private investigators files, the hacking was restricted to one jornalist - the Royal Correspondant. I mean, why would NI pay 700k to the head of the PFA over hacking? What would that have to do with the Royal Correspondent? The stuff about Milly Dowler was in those files too. I think Yates and Stephenson may be suffering unduly but I think everything points to Andy Hayman being extremely suspicious and at risk of going to jail. This guy was in charge of the first investigation and went on to get a job as a columnist with The Times after retiring. He was also criticised with leaking utter bollocks to the NotW about De Menezes (sp?) - that stuff about him acting suscpiciously and wearing a heavy coat in summer, etc.. We're talking about one of the (formery) most senior coppers in the Country here.

Oh this thing goes way beyond hacking into Hugh Grant's voicemail. It's about who runs the country.

bails87

Jedster: I agree with pretty much all of that.
Here's some more stuff about Menezes, Hillsborough and other incidents of the police causing injury/death and then getting the press to make it seem like it wasn't anything to do with them.

The Forest Gate raid is a prime example of this. The police smashed their way into someone's house and shot an innocent man, but there were all kind of rumours going around in an attempt to smear him, many of them were 'exclusive' to......the News of the World :roll:

spen666

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

We know for example that Cameron had 26 meetings with News International executives in his first year in office - contrast that with the couple of meetings with The Guardian or the nine meetings with The Telegraph.

This is another statistic taken out of context

firstly.

The Grauniad is a left wing paper and unlikely to be favoured by a Tory government

The Telegraph and Cameron are not particularly friendly, despite it being a right wing paper


News International owns (owned) 2 daily papers whereas the other groups only had one- if you assume meeting related equally to both papers- then it is 13 per paper which is not so different from the Telegraph with whom hewas not friendly and however many at the Guardian ( you fail to mention a figure here, so it could be that there were more meetings with the Guardian than any other group)

.....
We also know from Stephenson's resignation that he was unable to give Cameron specific operational information because of his relationship with Coulson.

This is complete rubbish in so many aspects and is not part of Stephenson's resignation and indeed Stephenson today made it clear before Parliament that his resignation speech / letter was not an attack on Cameron.

you are clutching at straws here

Stephenson knows that Coulson is no longer in government - what he was saying adds up to a position in which he cannot trust the PM on this issue.

And who is Stephenson to judge anyone apart from a corrupt policeman who takes bungs from Champneys- whose PR is done by an ex NI man

Cameron far from being a steadfast friend brought into the heart of government people with an extremely dubious background, was parroting the Murdoch agenda, and was compromised by his friendships with these people to such an extent that The Head of The Met judged it prudent not to give him information which would have readily been passed to any other prime minister.

Again you are throwing mud without any substance here

What we still don't know was what was the degree of reciprocity.

How can you be sure that Cameron has not profitted from information which may have been obtained illegally?

Grauniad live link.

notsoblue

That post was spot on Jedster.

mybreakfastconsisted

bails87 wrote:

Jedster: I agree with pretty much all of that.
Here's some more stuff about Menezes, Hillsborough and other incidents of the police causing injury/death and then getting the press to make it seem like it wasn't anything to do with them.

The Forest Gate raid is a prime example of this. The police smashed their way into someone's house and shot an innocent man, but there were all kind of rumours going around in an attempt to smear him, many of them were 'exclusive' to......the News of the World :roll:

"Forest Gate suspect had accessed child porn"- he hadn't

"De Menezes vaulted the barrier" -he hadn't

"De Menezes had a bulky jacket on"- he hadn't

"De Menezes was suspected of rape"-he wasn't.

Many , many more lies that can only have come from the cops, printed in The Screws. NI had the Met in their pocket. Ten out of 45 Met press officers were ex NOTW.

mybreakfastconsisted

Could it be that NOTW/News International wanted eyes and ears at the Met.
Like Coulson was hired by Cameron, and was told to hire him, to have eyes and
ears in No.10 for News International, and their exectives.

There are fundamental questions to be asked and answered about
what seems a very dangerous situation in our democracy.
Where News International is up to their neck in conspiracy, corruption,
bribery and power play for profit, influence and control of our country.




William Hill offering 16-1 Cameron resigns before Sunday.

tailwindhome

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

William Hill offering 16-1 Cameron resigns before Sunday.

How much have you staked?

mybreakfastconsisted

Stephenson said that a senior official in No 10 did not want David Cameron to be told about Neil Wallis's connection with the phone hacking inquiry in case that compromised Cameron. When pressed, he said that No 10 did not tell him this. He found out that his view - which was that Cameron should be protected - was shared by someone at No 10. Stephenson did not name the official, but he said John Yates knew more about this.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/20 ... f-comments

notsoblue

spen666 wrote:

The Grauniad is a left wing paper and unlikely to be favoured by a Tory government

Hey Spen, do you think the Guardian deserves some credit here for uncovering all of this?

tailwindhome

jedster wrote:

I think this stuff is really serious. Using blackmail and intimidation to stop our elected representatives doing their job is corruption and abuse of power on a grand scale.

It is interesting that people seem so easily persuaded that this affair (which again I believe to be massively over hyped) rests with Murdoch.

Surely the more important issue is how politicians of all shades over the last 3 decades are so quick to sell out to gain public support via the support of The Sun. Now we really know wot won it.

Seems to mean that the public are being duped.

It is impossible to blackmail an honest man.

MonkeyMonster

so...

pieces of sponge in a trifle with jam in between or those sponge trifle fingers that you can eat by the dozen?

spen666

The Guardian by its persistence has brought this matter to the stage it is in now and deserves credit for that.





I'd love to know why they have persisted with this story. and how they got their information. They have clearly spent a lot of time and money on this story. Did they have access to inside information from NI/ Police/Civil Servants/ Tories.

What is the Guardian's motive for running this story? Exposing the truth/ bringing down the government/ trashing the police/ destroying NI

These last 2 paragraphs do not detract from the fact it was due to the Guardian the story is where it is now and should not be treated as an attempt to deflect from the praise it deserves

spen666

TailWindHome wrote:

jedster wrote:

I think this stuff is really serious. Using blackmail and intimidation to stop our elected representatives doing their job is corruption and abuse of power on a grand scale.

It is interesting that people seem so easily persuaded that this affair (which again I believe to be massively over hyped) rests with Murdoch.

Surely the more important issue is how politicians of all shades over the last 3 decades are so quick to sell out to gain public support via the support of The Sun. Now we really know wot won it.

Seems to mean that the public are being duped.

It is impossible to blackmail an honest man.

+1

jedster

It is impossible to blackmail an honest man.

Hmm. Life's a bit more complex than that isn't it?

I regard myself as an honest man. I couldn't be blackmailed into doing something actively wrong. However, is there stuff about me that, if I were in public life, I would not like to see splashed across the News of the World? Yes. Might the threat of that be used to pursuade me not to look into something when I'm a busy person with lots of other priorities? Quite possibly.

Don't get me wrong, the politicians are at fault here too. A bit like the expenses stuff, many politicians of all parties have failed to challenge the culture.

mybreakfastconsisted

spen666 wrote:

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

Could it be that NOTW/News International wanted eyes and ears at the Met.
Like Coulson was hired by Cameron, and was told to hire him, to have eyes and
ears in No.10 for News International, and their exectives.

There are fundamental questions to be asked and answered about
what seems a very dangerous situation in our democracy.
Where News International is up to their neck in conspiracy, corruption,
bribery and power play for profit, influence and control of our country.




William Hill offering 16-1 Cameron resigns before Sunday.

What nonsense

Who made Cameron appoint coulson?

Are you suggesting NI did?

You are more barking mad by the post


The more fundamental questions are about your sanity and sense of perspective


But as it was said in the Guardian, it all must be true. The Guardian of course is always 100% true and has no agenda at all of its own does it?

Why not simply say


"Do you have a source for the claim NI rejected alternative candidates to Coulson?"



There's no need for your constant, repetitive, childish insults:







http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ulson.html

notsoblue

spen666 wrote:

The Guardian by its persistence has brought this matter to the stage it is in now and deserves credit for that.

I'd love to know why they have persisted with this story. and how they got their information. They have clearly spent a lot of time and money on this story. Did they have access to inside information from NI/ Police/Civil Servants/ Tories.

What is the Guardian's motive for running this story? Exposing the truth/ bringing down the government/ trashing the police/ destroying NI

These last 2 paragraphs do not detract from the fact it was due to the Guardian the story is where it is now and should not be treated as an attempt to deflect from the praise it deserves

Its astonishing that you're questioning the Guardian's motive for running with this story (your disclaimer is a poor figleaf). Surely its self-evident? Its not about bringing down the government or an attack on the police, or even destroying NI. Illegal activity went on that threatened the very essence of democracy in this country.

Anyhoo, apologies for the trolling, I couldn't help it.

Does anyone think that things will be different after all this has run its course? Will it change politics for the better? Or will there just be different players fulfilling the same roles with more insulation?

mybreakfastconsisted

TailWindHome wrote:

jedster wrote:

I think this stuff is really serious. Using blackmail and intimidation to stop our elected representatives doing their job is corruption and abuse of power on a grand scale.

It is interesting that people seem so easily persuaded that this affair (which again I believe to be massively over hyped) rests with Murdoch.

Surely the more important issue is how politicians of all shades over the last 3 decades are so quick to sell out to gain public support via the support of The Sun. Now we really know wot won it.

Seems to mean that the public are being duped.

It is impossible to blackmail an honest man.

Do you think it's a trifling matter that NI interfered with at least two murder investigations?

jedster

Incidently, I do think the Guardian deserves a lot of credit. I voted Tory at the last election (for the first time in my life) and I don't want Cameron to go over this. Until recently I read The Times and the Sunday Times out of preference. I wrote to the editor of the Times explaining that I wouldn't be buying his or any other NI paper from now on. I'm reading the Guardian for the next 6 months at least, just my way of expressing gratitude for the work they've done.

mybreakfastconsisted

When you have newspaper reporters trying to intimidate politicians, blackmailing police officers and employing people suspected of murder it goes far beyond matters of freedom of the press. It's corruption.

rjsterry

spen666 wrote:

The Guardian by its persistence has brought this matter to the stage it is in now and deserves credit for that.





I'd love to know why they have persisted with this story. and how they got their information. They have clearly spent a lot of time and money on this story. Did they have access to inside information from NI/ Police/Civil Servants/ Tories.

What is the Guardian's motive for running this story? Exposing the truth/ bringing down the government/ trashing the police/ destroying NI

These last 2 paragraphs do not detract from the fact it was due to the Guardian the story is where it is now and should not be treated as an attempt to deflect from the praise it deserves

It's worth noting that The Guardian/The Observer are not organised in the same way as most papers - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Ownership - so it won't have commercially based motives in the same way that DMG or Trinity Mirror might have.

mybreakfastconsisted

2.40pm: Matthew Taylor writes that David Cameron's chief of staff Ed Llewellyn appears to be under increasing pressure after John Yates revealed he was the "senior official" who asked the Met not to brief the prime minister on the hacking scandal in September 2010.

Last week it emerged that Llewellyn also failed to pass Guardian warnings about former News of the World editor Andy Coulson over hacking and his connections to Jonathan Rees, a private detective then facing charges for conspiracy to murder, to Cameron. Despite the warnings Llewellyn took the judgment that the information was already substantially contained in news reports in the public domain.

Today Met commissioner Paul Stephenson said a senior official in No 10 had advised the Met not to inform the prime minister about the police's decision to hire former NoW deputy editor Neil Wallis. Yates confirmed Llewellyn was the adviser in question and said Llewellyn told him it was not appropriate for him to brief the PM on the hacking investigation, adding: "And I'd be grateful if it wasn't raised."

jejv

spen666 wrote:

Also we only have Rusbridger's word he said this. Now when you add into the equation that he edits/ edited a left wing newspaper, it is not surprising he is trying to bring down a tory politician.

Well if you like your reporting a bit more right wing, how about:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/ ... -scandal-1

Maybe that's behind a paywall. You do subscribe, yes ?

"The problem is that all working journalists with experience of any daily newsroom (including me), simply never, ever believed Mr Coulson's defence that he did not know how his own newspaper was landing some of its juiciest scoops. It was not just an implausible explanation, it was an insult to the intelligence."

His latest post is a complaint about punctures on his bike, and why he thinks he's getting more of them.

In 2006, no-one who was paying attention could have failed to understand the scale of what was happening on Fleet Street, or Coulson's involvement in it. It wasn't necessary to work in Fleet Street or Wapping, or have dinner with those who did. A hermit on South Uist with an internet connection and maybe a subscription to Private Eye could have kept up pretty well.

Cameron took a gamble, based on the odds at the time, and lost the bet.
From a Machiavellian point of view that doesn't mean he made the wrong decision in 2007, though keeping him on in 2009 looks like poor judgement, even from the most cynical point of view.

daviesee

notsoblue wrote:

Does anyone think that things will be different after all this has run its course? Will it change politics for the better? Or will there just be different players fulfilling the same roles with more insulation?

A little.
No.
Yes.

mybreakfastconsisted

Oh my God, Rupert's banging on the table!

sketchley

Rupert's not doing well at all....

tailwindhome

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

jedster wrote:

I think this stuff is really serious. Using blackmail and intimidation to stop our elected representatives doing their job is corruption and abuse of power on a grand scale.

It is interesting that people seem so easily persuaded that this affair (which again I believe to be massively over hyped) rests with Murdoch.

Surely the more important issue is how politicians of all shades over the last 3 decades are so quick to sell out to gain public support via the support of The Sun. Now we really know wot won it.

Seems to mean that the public are being duped.

It is impossible to blackmail an honest man.

Do you think it's a trifling matter that NI interfered with at least two murder investigations?

Which two and how?

Without the cut and paste frenzy if you don't mind.