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

GeorgeMichael

Rebekah Brooks sat two feet from me in my own home and told me that it was never the public that came to them with information.....
6 minutes ago via web

on celebrities, and that the Police always got there first. I think thats enough to be going on with. (Don't ask me how she got there)..
3 minutes ago via web

Believe me I didnt invite her.
3 minutes ago via web

Really appreciate everything you come up with and post here Ned. Just hope you didn't hack someone's phone to get the news ;)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxps

did brooks break into his house?

Just hope you didn't hack someone's phone to get the news ;)

Would you mind not moving around so much, the signal is breaking up.

Sorry Ned, that was the van outside your home a-rocking. Will tell the boys in the back to be quiet from now on

Mail headline: THE PAPER THAT DIED OF SHAME

I can't even

haha omg

haha ned. my brother does usually have good (unpublishable) stories from gchq or about computer hacking, but sadly no prince philip stuff.

judging from the comments even mail readers are seeing right through this though

Allegedly the NOTW paywall is down. I am going to go and learn things! Behold!

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/notw/_lifestyle/good_sex_guru/

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00267/big_05_619x400_267141h.jpg

Is big really better?

Tracey Cox on whether size really matters and all your other relationship and sex questions

damn, daily mail. that is ice cold.

Wouldn't replacing the NoTW with a Sunday edition of the Sun just serve to highlight the link between the two papers, which would seem to be what they want to avoid?

Shhh, you're giving it away.

@Dowd, most people are morons. They wouldn't connect the dots and merrily buy the Sun on Sunday and be impressed by phone-hacked-together stories.

i think he's in a pub somewhere, as presumably are quite a lot of journalists tonight.

some of them as a result of today's events

More via C4/Guardian:

Mulcaire secretly filmed by one of his hacking victims, admitted that the decision to order phone hacking was made "by committee". A statement sent to the programme by his lawyer clarified that Mulcaire did not mean there was a specific committee at the paper responsible for order phone hacks, rather that it was carried out on the orders of several individuals on the newsdesk, not a lone reporter.

The phone hacking victim who secretly filmed the former private investigator was a victim of sexual assault whose personal details were leaked to the press. She told the programme that journalists were aware of the detail of her personal statement about the assault she suffered. She said it was "traumatic" that the press "seemed to know everything about me."

C4 News also spoke to Steve Roberts, former head of the Met Police anti-corruption squad, who said he was aware of information being leaked by officers to the press. But there was a reluctance to take on the media over the issue.

Paul McMullan, former features executive, told the programme more details about how payments were made to police officers for information. He said money was passed on via officers' relatives rather than directly. He repeated his claim that senior figures at the paper, including Rebekah Brooks, were aware of the practice. "If it wasn't a significant amount it would be put on my expenses and that would be authorised by my boss - Rebekah Brooks."

Passed on via officer's relatives? Doesn't that make THEM complicit as well? What's UK slang for lawyering up?

"brown envelope"

No Win No Fee

8.19pm: The National Union of Journalists has confirmed that journalists at The Sun walked out in protest at the treatment of their News of the World colleagues.

An NUJ official told the Guardian "the whole subbing desk" walked out – "around 30-35 people".

talking abt having yr cake and eating it

holding the country to ransom amirite

i'd send in the army

@subedited: All our execs have vanished. Suspect they're arming themselves and drawing battlemaps. Tonight's going to be busy.

this is the kind of worker solidarity that led to all those pro Miners Strike headlines in the 80s and that stunning appeal for everybody to vote Labour in 1992

Deep roffles:

Just when you thought it couldn't get funnier... tonight, David Cameron is at the police bravery awards hosted by The Sun!

"I'd like to salute the brave officers who...arrest suspects that...corrupt...press...can I go home?"

Some new Sophy Ridge posts:

sophyridge sophyridge
News of the World journo said staff were "milling around like zombies" after Rebekah Brookes announcement

Colin Myler has told staff they are free to speak to the media if they want. But many wary as their jobs are still up in the air

Told by a source at the Sun that editor Dominic Mohan was as "shocked" as everyone else to hear news of News of the World closure

NYT on what happened in the NOTW newsroom today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnVrK38xI-A&feature=share

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00620/cartoon070711_620970a.jpg

8.50pm: More on the reports that subeditors at the Sun have walked out in protest at the sacking of colleagues on the News of the World. A source told the Guardian that some subs left their desk for 30 minutes but are now back at them.

Stay strong, comrades

less a protest more a tea break

Desperately clawing back a bit already, I see:

Features editor Jules Stenson told Sky News that staff showed 'quiet pride' rather than 'mob anger' when the announcement was made.

'There was shock, bewilderment, there were a few gasps, there were lots of tears from the staff. It's been reported that there was a lynch mob mentality which is completely untrue, there was none of that.

'There was bewilderment, there was disappointment but there wasn't any kind of mob anger, quite the contrary. There was a lot of quiet pride from a team of brilliant journalists.'

Dan Wootton, the paper's showbiz editor, said he and his colleagues were 'devastated' and that some had been in tears. He also claimed many staff felt sympathy towards Brooks.

'There is devastation and fear. It is grief for the newspaper, that is what it is. It's not anger, it's grief. We were devastated. There were tears, and I know from a personal level we had huge sympathy for Rebekah Brooks delivering that news.'

Wootton added that in recent years the paper had changed:

'For the last four years we have delivered a quality newspaper, a newspaper that bears no resemblance to the newspaper that I have been reading about in the press this week.'

Think an afternoon of abuse is getting to Giles Coren:

@johnprescott Do you think maybe with 250 journalists losing their jobs, your endless gloating might be beginning to look a bit gratuitous?

Hmm, who is this Coren guy?

BREAKING NEWS: po-faced sanctimonious holier-than-thou clench-arsed joylessness to be made illegal. Guardian to be closed down.

@gilescoren That's right 'cos notw was a beacon of non-judgemental, Dionysian frolics

less a protest more a tea break

― � (a hoy hoy), Thursday, July 7, 2011 7:59 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

real lols

ned, he's a pile of dogshit with a career as a journalist because his dad was famous

http://www.waterstones.com/wat/images/nbd/m/978184/894/9781848949805.jpg

^ he's the author of this book

Good day for Rupert Murdoch:
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/imageBank/t/tdf11st6-boasson_wins.jpg

weirdly enough giles's sister victoria is actually funny and a good writer

also he publicly berated a sub who corrected a woeful blow-job joke he snuck into a restaurant review a few years back, so i'll take his crocodile tears abt the NOTW journos with a tub of free Daily Express salt

xxxxp

So basically he's not living up to his book title, then.

on reflection perhaps i should buy a copy?

if wrote another called 'i'm a tory dickwipe' then maybe

Remember this Ned?

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i'm assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.
1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles