DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

In defence of dignity
Justice for victims vilified in courtroom

Exclusive by David Wooding
July 3, 2011

RUTHLESS lawyers will be banned from berating murder victims' families in court in the wake of the Milly Dowler trial.

Tough new rules to be unveiled this week will protect their privacy and dignity - with judges forced to halt intimidating, humiliating or distressing questioning.

The safeguards come in a revamped courtroom code aimed at ending the nightmare ordeal faced by thousands of witnesses and innocent victims of crime.

It follows the shameful treatment of Bob and Sally Dowler by lawyers defending their 13-year-old daughter's killer Levi Bellfield.

The distraught couple endured cruel questions about their sex life, Bob's porn collection and letters which showed Milly was unhappy.

vs

The Dowler family then granted an exclusive interview to the News of the World in which they talked about their hope, quite unaware that it had been falsely kindled by the newspaper's own intervention.

whenever dignity needs defending, there's the news of the world

wtf

Harry Cole is currently doing some mad Cap'n-Save-A-Murdoch on Twitter, especially re: the Sky deal. More "they're on our side so it doesn't matter" obviously.

so the police knew that the notw had hacked her phone and ignored it?! wtffff.

no:

"Detectives from Scotland Yard's new inquiry into the phone hacking, Operation Weeting, are believed to have found evidence of the targeting of the Dowlers in a collection of 11,000 pages of notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator jailed for phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World."

yes:

After it had hacked the message from the recruitment agency on Milly's phone, the paper informed police about it. It was Surrey detectives who established that the call was not intended for Milly Dowler. At the time, Surrey police suspected that phones belonging to detectives and to Milly's parents also were being targeted.

One of those who was involved in the original inquiry said: "We'd arrange landline calls. We didn't trust our mobiles."

However, they took no action against the News of the World, partly because their main focus was to find the missing schoolgirl and partly because this was only one example of tabloid misbehaviour. As one source close to the inquiry put it: "There was a hell of a lot of dirty stuff going on."

ah right. tbf that doesn't sound like they happily chose to do nothing about it. this concrete evidence appears to be new.

Bloody hell, I knew they were conniving unprincipled bastards but this is really shocking. I hope these fuckers end up in jail.

That Harry Cole - he's a right wag.

http://twitter.com/#!/MrHarryCole/status/87922477283549184

"wag" is one word you might use, yes.

he seems to be back-pedalling quite hard now. Wade was editor in 2002, right? Wonder if she'll survive this one.

can we have harry cole's twitter background as the background of all ilx pages

This was mentioned in an article in the NS back in April by..er..Hugh Grant. It's an illuminating read.
http://www.newstatesman.com/newspapers/2011/04/phone-yeah-cameron-murdoch

Me Do you think Murdoch knew about phone-hacking?

Him Errr, possibly not. He's a funny bloke given that he owns the Sun and the Screws . . . quite puritanical. Sorry to talk about Divine Brown, but when that came out . . . Murdoch was furious: "What are you putting that on our front page for? You're bringing down the tone of our papers." [Indicating himself] That's what we do over here.

Me Well, it's also because it was his film I was about to come out in.

Him Oh. I see.

Me Yeah. It was a Fox film.

Bloody hell, I knew they were conniving unprincipled bastards but this is really shocking. I hope these fuckers end up in jail.

― The multi-talented F.R. David (Billy Dods), Monday, July 4, 2011 6:17 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah i feel pretty burned out on the whole but this is really fucking bad

jeremy hunt is a cunt

Is this story plastered over the front pages of todays papers?

I haven't seen any papers yet myself, but apparently not according to Paxman on last night's Newsnight.

It's on the front of the Guardian, Independent, Telegraph and Times.

Train maker Bombardier is cutting more than 1,400 jobs at its plant in Derby after the Government decided to award the Thameslink contract to German manufacturer Siemens because its bid offered "better value for money for the taxpayer".

Why do the Mail and the Mirror not go in more aggressively here? Surely the Mail must be pretty clean in this regard, you don't need phone hacking to run thunderous front pages about bin-collecting and discrimination lawsuits.

Be amazed if Brooks survived this, she must have been right on the edge as it was. Can only see Murdoch pulling a night of the long knives here.

It is apparently pathetically easy to hack into a voicemail if you know the number and PIN (most ppl just use their birthdays) but you can't do it without someone from the police helping you out in the first place.

the sun's coverage of this story:

http://liberalconspiracy.org/images/media/sun_millydowler.jpg

it's in a fairly prominent position on the mail's website (and has been moved up since it was first put up last night), don't know what the print edition looks like though. (and obviously it's nowhere near as prominent as william & kate fluff or - good god - "Nigerian mother who cost NHS £200k after having quintuplets is working illegally as an Avon Lady")

Cameron sounded a bit shaken just now on the top-of-hour news of R4.

Now, the rumour is that Brooks was shakily hanging on to her job as it was, but a few months back Cameron intervened with Murdoch to keep her.

I still think the phone hacking scandal may blow over, which is a disgrace. When I was working in recruitment in the late 90s/00s I believe that clients answer messages were being hacked in this way to gain confidential information. The default PIN for retrieving messages was generally '0000' and most people didn't bother to change it. A relatively well known 'trick'.

I reckon it was going to blow over before but, y'know, people care about murdered children in the way they don't about the privacy of Andy Gray/Sienna Miller/John Prescott.

Bet this isn't the only time something like this has happened as well. Depends how much more is left to be shaken down.

They seem on point of Going There about Soham - and if they do find evidence of a hack there, I predict chaos and angry, angry Little Englanders.

amazed how little labour exploited coulson-gate

and here is another open goal

(i still care about u, sienna)

A Downing Street source played down the significance of the social engagement and pointed out that Brooks is one of the prime minister's constituents. The source said: "To suggest some kind of impropriety is laughable. The prime minister regularly meets newspaper executives from lots of different companies."

Cameron visited Brooks and her husband, the racehorse trainer and writer Charlie Brooks, at their Oxfordshire home over the Christmas period.

To suggest some kind of impropriety is laughable. To suggest some kind of impropriety is laughable. To suggest some kind of impropriety is laughable.

It probably will blow over. The relative lack of interest on the part of other tabloids could be explained several ways - the Sun’s got stuff on them, journalistic code of honour, back-scratching – but the most likely one is that the papers don’t think, probably correctly, that the public are that bothered. Because Dowler’s killer has been identified and sentenced, the whole thing then becomes a bit of an abstract with the public and so with news like this they go “grrr!” for a few seconds and “typical” for a few more then shrug their shoulders and carry on reading the paper which they only buy for Page 3 and the sport anyway.

Perversions of justice? Immoral behaviour? Who cares* #itsagoodstory

*slightly surprised if NoTW don’t hit back with CONFESSED PERVERT DAD-type headlines next Sunday but even they might think that would be a bit much.

Even with Soham dirt - if proven - I suspect the public will howl "NEVER AGAIN" like they did with Diana for about a week and a half and then go back to normal because #itsagoodstory

Me: So they all knew? Wade probably knew all about it all?

Him: [...] Cameron must have known - that's the bigger scandal. He had to jump into bed with Murdoch as everyone had, starting with Thatcher in the Seventies . . . Tony Blair . . . [tape is hard to hear here] Maggie openly courted Murdoch, saying, you know, "Please support me." So when Cameron, when it came his turn to go to Murdoch via Rebekah Wade . . . Cameron went horse riding regularly with Rebekah. I know, because as well as doorstepping celebrities, I've also doorstepped my ex-boss by hiding in the bushes, waiting for her to come past with Cameron on a horse . . . before the election to show that - you know - Murdoch was backing Cameron.

Me: What happened to that story?

Him: The Guardian paid for me to do it and I stepped in it and missed them, basically. They'd gone past - not as good as having a picture.

#itsagoodstory

<3

Cameron's decision to wangle a ticket through the "friend-of-a-friend" route (editor of the Sun, Rebekah Wade, and her husband, the soap star Ross Kemp helped out) puzzled onlookers who displayed high standards in their celebrity spotting. "He shouldn't be there - it's not that kind of day," said Tracey Green, 41, from beneath her umbrella.

Marcello - the public care. They care, partly, because the press, including the News of the World, amplify personal tragedies to such an extent. So if and when there's an enormous backlash its because they themselves have created the climate of enormous national sensitivity to tragic events like this. But I'm not sure it'll brush off quite that easily - sales of The Sun have never recovered in Liverpool after Hillsborough. It's not quite the same obviously, the scale of loss was much bigger, many more people knew someone who was involved or directly affected. But a the same time the press makes smaller private tragedies like the Dowler case into public property so the emotional involvement is still there - the right (or wrong) fuckup can kill the reputation of a newspaper in the same way it can any other person or organisation.

Not saying its terminal - obviously this won't kill NewsCorp or the NOTW - but it'll have a serious effect for a while, especially if advertisers pull their money out. The rest of the tabloids either have their own skeletons or they're worried that Murodch and the Sun will unleash fucking hellfire on them in the future.

The only way I can see this going is that Murdoch claims complete ignorance, makes a very public show of purging everyone involved and carries on. People will stop buying the NOTW as a result though, definitely.

Cameron will get off scot-free obviously.

Cameron is well known to love all this celeb crap, but who can blame him? He saw it work for Blair (mostly, for a while at any rate) and saw that Brown's obvious discomfort in the presence of, well almost anyone, clearly did not go over well. He's just playing the game. Mind you dressing up as the Stig to record a message for Clarkson's birthday is probably going too far.

Rebekah was surprisingly matey with the Browns as well when they were in Number 10 as well. I don't think "Cameron definitely knew about it" is necessarily a given, unless it's something the last few PMs all knew about.

It's what Cameron does now that matters obviously. Destroying potential evidence and misleading what turned out to be a murder investigation is a much bigger deal than merely listening in on voice messages.

I'm not expecting the Labour leadership to be anything other than completely supine in all this, the only noise you'll hear will be from figures who don't need to worry because their career is either behind them (Prescott etc) or just never going to happen (Abbott, Corbyn etc).

I'm not expecting the Labour leadership to be anything other than completely supine in all this,

i know platitudes are platitudes but ed really has a way of making his outrage seem particularly tepid and worn. he actually said we must get to the bottom of this, about this. it's like he's one of the guys who'd stand outside the activity room and yelp, in the crystal maze, while one of his clerical colleagues was amid a gruelling physical challenge.

Getting this nagging feeling the other tabloids aren't that bothered about this, because they know it could've been them, too? Or will be inevitably next time. So it's a back scratching thing like Marcello said, I think.

Well it's the job of the PM (party, obviously) to get the message out which will undoubtedly mean drinks with newspaper editors and, ahem, giving them jobs if necessary. I don't like it, but it's the way it is, you need to get a certain number of Daily Mail/NOTW/Sun readers on your side (no matter how hopeless that task might seem) if you want to win elections, and losing elections sucks, so yes, don't expect anything of any substance (ever) from Milibrand.

I doubt very much that Cameron knew about it. Why would he? Unless he asked Coulson whether there was anything dodgy in his past in his 'interview'. In which case we can presume Coulson said "Not that I know of, wink, wink".

xps

http://twitter.com/#!/keverrst/status/88170986737909760

The thing is that right now the public cares more about Cheryl and Ashley or Kate and Wills. Phone hacking – a complex business, difficult to condense into a snappy paragraph, not black and white, might land some connected people in trouble, therefore #notagoodstory.

I just remember everyone throwing their hands up on the Sunday morning we woke up to the news about Diana and it was all “tabloid scum we’ll never buy their rotten papers again” and then five minutes later in Sainsbury’s people were fighting over the last three copies of the Mail on Sunday.

The thing is that right now the public cares more about Cheryl and Ashley or Kate and Wills. Phone hacking – a complex business, difficult to condense into a snappy paragraph, not black and white, might land some connected people in trouble, therefore #notagoodstory.

they care a lot about murdered children too, dude.

and also mobile phones.

diana's death hypocrisy is a very daily mail thing though, isn't it? the height of prurience - tut-tutting at the tabloids' behaviour, but still wanting to look at the pix the paps get through their underhand behaviour.

like, they've run countless pieces on how awful young women's behaviour is now, alongside many lurid pix of drunk women in states of undress in town centres on a saturday night.

wish those angry angry little englanders would chill out

Phone hacking – a complex business, difficult to condense into a snappy paragraph, not black and white, might land some connected people in trouble, therefore #notagoodstory

?
feel like these things are true of the economy, of budgets, of a million other things but probably not of a newspaper hacking phones. seems really simple, lends itself to concision, black & white, & re: might land some connected people in trouble - one would hope that was, for someone, at least, still a potential strength rather than a limitation. there's a lot of journalistic potential for it.

dan wootton is the fucking WORST

i mean obviously not the worst worst, as far as i know he's never hacked into a dead girl's phone, but he is just an awful bully and reprehensible human being