The Leveson Enquiry

On Wednesday I intend to watch SKY News when Rupert Murdoch and son James attend the Leveson Inquiry. The recent revelations from other sources means that they will be unable to get away with their normal 'bullshit'. They know that they have been rumbled so will they now attack? Will they begin to threaten? News International must have so much 'dirt' on so many people but will they expose, or threaten to expose, leading public figures?


There has been so much hypocrisy, mendacity and duplicity in modern politics that it is becoming difficult to recognise honesty. All the mainstream politicians lack sincerity, belief and passion. They do not communicate their beliefs because most of them don't have any. There only belief is power. It does not matter how it is achieved because it is the only goal.


This has led to the Leveson Inquiry. We have seen them all paraded forward. Many of them have been economical with the truth but piece by piece the truth is slithering into the public zone. Phone hacking was not the practice of the odd journalist, editors were aware of this method of obtaining information and senior police officers were regularly entertained by News International.


So my starter for 10 Mr Murdoch is ....who could you not buy?

News International lied...surely not!?

James Murdoch

I am watching ITV news at the moment and they are stating that a former News International chauffeur has evidence of payments to police officers by News International! Already their former employee Clive Goodman has blown their evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee apart.


I believe that this rotten empire, founded on sleaze and sex, is about to collapse. It will collapse because eventually all rotten enterprises collapse. The big question is who will be brought down with it? How far will the tentacles of any News International enquiry reach? Now that the genie is out of the lamp who will be brought down? David Cameron is the prime candidate because for whatever reason he employed Andy Coulson and nobody knows why.


The primary attack dog for the socialists is Tom Watson. I believe that he is a Gordon Brown (aaagh) supporter and as we all know News International recognised the incompetence of that man and deserted him. Gordon Brown is venomous when angry as we saw in Westmonster recently. Somehow he commands support from very powerful quarters. I wonder just what friends Gordon Brown has cultivated in his socialist years in power.


Of course of all this means that James Murdoch, his dad Rupert, Rebekah Brooks et al have all been lying to the Westmonster committee. Are we really surprised? One thing is certain and that this story will run and run! Oh Goody!

I don't believe it!!!

I have just watched Yates of the Yard embarrass himself live on SKY news. He was exposed as at best a lazy policeman and at worst incompetent. In 2006 he took one day to decide that the Guardian did not have any new evidence in the phone hacking scandal which justified further investigation.

This despite the fact that somewhere in the police vaults lay bags which contained 11,000 pieces of evidence taken from the phone hacker's house. He had a staff of 4000 people and yet still did not think that someone should trawl through the evidence to see who had been hacked!

The impression left for me is that he has somehing to hide. There has to be a reason that those bags were left alone.  I do not believe he has risen to the ranks of Assistant Commissioner without a better track record than the one he displayed before the House of Commons Select Committee today. No wonder Chairman Keith Vaz (yes that Keith Vaz) warned him that he would likely be recalled.

There does appear to be a link between Yates and News International. Nobody can yet speculate how close the link was although the mainstream media are poking about in the mire. The current person being grilled is former Met Asst Commissioner Peter Clarke and he sounds just as incompetent as Yates. Nobody can explain why those 11,000 pieces of evidence were overlooked. It stinks!!

Endemic Corruption!

The 'Hacking gate' scandal is dominating the news. We have already forgotten about Libya and Syria and only the persistence of the BBC is keeping the famine in East Africa in the news. I just wonder if this is going to wake the British public up to the endemic corruption which pervades the country.  I have already posted many times that any politician that supports the European Union must have something to hide.

Any organisation that exists courtesy of public taxes must be open to audit. If they cannot submit accounts to audit following public expenditure then they immediately become illegal/criminal.  It is surely that simple! In no other walk of life would this be permitted but our politicians continue to shovel billions of taxpayer's money into the ever gaping black hole.

Now from what I hear and read out of this black hole emerged the secretive organisation 'Common Purpose' which controls the appointments of so many of our more important public officials. Since the inception of Common Purpose the salaries of public officials have gone through the roof and the quango culture has flourished and prospered. It is of course a recipe for corruption and in my opinion our public services have been utterly runied since the early 1990's. What I have never fathomed out is how was it allowed to happen?

Surely we had honest officials/politicians/journalists somewhere who could see what was happening?
Who shut them all up? You see this is the dilemma, if the EU is corrupt then why do almost all of our leading politicians and our three leading Westmonster parties support it? The same applies to our public officials appointed by Common Purpose  It means that they too are suspect so whenever a scandal emerges in the media I am never surprised to learn about it.

In the middle of all this mire lurks Rupert Murdoch and his organisation News International. This corporation has involved itself in British Politics ever since Tony Blair arrived on the scene. I have often read that Tony Blair was far too close to Rupert Murdock and of course I am not surprised. If anything stank 'Teflon Tony' was discovered not too far away.

So now we have 'Hackinggate' and I would love to be a fly on the wall at Wapping today. I just wonder how many computers are being smuggled out of the back door? The problem is that there is no honour among thieves. If someone goes down then usually he/she doesn't go alone. There must be senior editors who are very angry and .who have knowledge of as yet unpublished secrets. I wonder how many books are being secretly planned?

I await the next revelation with a spring in my step!

The smell from the sewer is getting close to Downing Street!

Things are moving at such a pace in the hacking scandal that it is difficult to keep up! What is interesting is that suddenly people do not seem to be so scared of Rupert Murdoch. He has always been dubbed the 'maker' of the next PM largely through the editorial support of his newspaper 'The Sun'. It was alleged that Tony Blair would not make a decision until he ran it past Mr Murdoch.

Having said that the former editor of the News of the World and current News International Chief Executive, Rebekah Brooks, has presided over a sewer. The methods of NOTW reporters, the scope of their targets and the populist articles targetting minor celebrities often could not sink lower. They dealt in trash and they were well rewarded because it sells.

How does this involve David Cameron? Well the distinguished political journalist Peter Oborne (always worth a read) was on the Daily Politics today and revealed that the PM had Christmas dinner with Rebekah Brooks! Their families are apparently quite close. He also hired Andy Coulson as a Downing Street aid fully knowing that Coulson had allegedly been involved in the NOTW phone hacking scandal. He has since resigned from that post.

I cannot understand how an astute, hardened, politician like Cameron could not see the danger in these liaisons. It could just be however, that he required the backing of Murdoch and these two 'babes' would guarantee a good review. It also makes decisions on potentially the most damaging acts of betrayal of the British public difficult for him. He is backed into a corner. On either side of him are Murdoch and Brooks and in front of him Ed Miliband!

Speaking of Ed Miliband his performance on SKY news was priceless. He is such a naked opportunist and such a bad actor. I don't think he understands the meaning of 'sincerity' because he just reeks politics and could hardly contain his glee that this damaging act of treachery had occurred on Cameron's watch!

So what now? I suspect that the PM will have to bow to pressure and instruct a judge led enquiry (will he find an impartial judge?). The police will have to be investigated but the public are the final jury. Could the public and the corporate sponsors put the NOTW out of business? I always hope for fair play but I suspect in six months time David Cameron will still be PM, Rebekah Brooks will still be CEO News International, millions will still buy the NOTW and no police will have been charged.

We might have a couple of minor journalists serving jail sentences but that will probably be the lot. A lot of newsprint but no justice. I do hope that I am wrong.

The News of the World and the Police...



Rebekah Brooks Editor of the News of the World




The mounting scandal related to the hacking of the phones of private individuals is threatening many people who thought that they were bombproof.

To be honest the NOTW reporters have longed been known to be unscrupulous when it comes to their stories. They have a reputation probably second to none for their ability to descend into the gutter so frankly I am not surprised that they would pay for the phone numbers of private individuals.

Having said that the editor in charge of the NOTW, Rebekah Brooks, if she has any sense of shame (Ha!) should find her position untenable. For some reason however, she is trusted by Rupert Murdoch and apparently often rubs shoulders with the Camerons. At that level, as we know, it is all wheels within wheels.

The real cancer in this scandal is without doubt, once again, the conduct of the police.
Someone somewhere has been making money from the sale of telephone numbers given to the police in confidence.  It is the ultimate betrayal of the public! If we cannot trust the police to protect our security then where do we go from here? It would appear that they cannot be trusted and so what is the point of them? They are not fullfilling their purpose so unless the guilty are rooted out and punished they will have lost any  remaining credibilty.

By that I don't just mean those who actually made money from this disgraceful act but I also mean their bosses and anybody who had links to the release of this information. I personally think that everything will eventually be swept under the carpet because if subsequent enquiries are really effective then the building blocks of the endemic corruption which exists within the Political Class and the Police would be swept away. So many people would be exposed, because there is no honour amongst thieves, that they will not dare to dig too deeply.

Remember Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, who recently resigned as the media head of Downing Street and was heavily involved in the hacking scandal, have the ear of the PM.  I have therefore long since lost the confidence in anyone to hold a public enquiry which would really seek to discover the truth and punish the guilty. It never happens because we will not be able to find a person who is sufficiently qualified but not in someone's pocket. It highlights the state of the nation and won't change until we change it.

Phone Tapping and Politics

I watched the statement made by Home Secretry, Teresa May, in the House of Commons about the involvement of Tory media chief Andy Coulson with the phone tapping scandal which happened a little while back. I also watched the concerted attack by NoLab politicians to get the government to hold an enquiry into the affair.

Her oft repeated reply was purely that this was a police matter and if new evidence came to light then they would reopen the enquiry. If the words of the NoLab MPs are to believed the original so called enquiry was a pretty sketchy affair and most of the muck was swept under the carpet.

Now the New York Times has entered the fray claiming that this was a large operation led by Coulson on behalf of News International (The Sun and News of the World) aimed generally at leading politicians. There are also suggestions from other blogs that in this case the police knew what News International was doing and turned a blind eye. The problem is that the New York Times is apparently refusing to release the evidence that it has so the police can legitimately claim that no new evidence is available.

I'm afraid this is not good enough. If Andy Coulson was leading an operation to tap phones and I know from my past life that it would have to be a major operation then the police are obliged to investigate. The longer they hesitate the more the public perception will be that they are concealing something that stinks to high heaven.

The relationship between the Politicians, the Police and the Public in this country is sinking ever deeper into the mire. The longer the police delay any action the more it will appear that they have something to conceal. News International can risk having a dodgy reputation but the police cannot.