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

piers morgan edited the mirror at the time it was the no2 newspaper for using private detectives convicted of illegally obtaining private information. wonder what his agenda is?

Stay in America as long as possible hopefully? Sorry, America.

well, i'm hoping we can extradite him at some point.

maybe piers should hold off his bid for "world's worst appalling cunt" till the field is a little less crowded.

this is turning into one of those great moments when every apologist who rolls up on the media can be safely filed in the "cunt 4 lyfe" drawer

― SB OK (Noodle Vague), Thursday, July 7, 2011 4:16 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

Toby Young is sad

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, July 7, 2011 8:28 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

eh at least you were saved the bother of rearranging the drawers.

Pretty galling to see the senior NOTW on Newsnight claiming they were just innocent victims in all this and everything bad was done by a previous generation. I assume each and every one of them will be okay on their £300k a week benefits that are really easy to get.

Well, I was thinking of a friend who works there as a sub, and how stunned the person must be.

I'm more and more conflicted about this, yeah it's shitty that people lose their jobs to save their bosses (who are going down whatever I think), but then you consider the fucking poison that paper spewed out week in week out.

If the arms industry collapsed tomorrow I'm not sure I'd be too worried about the admin staff.

um yeah this isn't exactly bombardier

...but mainly, it's unjust that Brooks hasn't lost her job along with the rest.

Cosign that. I don't think we're anywhere near the end of the revelations though - if I was Rusbridger I'd be holding something big back. At some point she'll go - you can't keep your media company run by the most hated woman in Britain forever.

Unless you're Murdoch

you can tell the other News Corp employees are basically good eggs tho by the way they're not cueing up to talk to the radio or TV about how nothing's been proved yet and Rupert Murdoch is history's greatest genius.

So the only undeleted thread about this on The Sun's MY Sun forums is entitled "Why is it ok to give bungs to the Labour party but wrong to give them to coppers?"

There's also one posted two minutes ago under the heading "How 'ethical' is it to throw 500 people to the wolves to save your sorry ginger haired hide" but I guess that'll be for the chop when the morning moderators get out of bed.

Yet working class guys flogging a bit of info is called corruption.. Strange.. Seems Oxbridge educated people have different laws.

Good point, well made.

Please let's not bring class envy into this.

'Please let's not bring class envy into this.' - someone who went to oxbridge

I'm sure none of the crowing over the News of the World's demise and its readership has had the slightest element of class bigotry.

"Oxbridge laws" presumably relate to direction in which port is passed &c.

There's an element of that in the Telegraph's profound sense of betrayal, and the Mail's picked up on it as well. How could a man as pure and moral as David Cameron be dirtied by his associations with these grubby Wapping types?

If the Mail decide to run with the image of the new, sleazier Cameron, he could be in trouble.

second chance
second chance
second chance
second chance
second chance

look at the Mail and Telegraph comments - regardless of the line the papers go on to take I think their readerships have decided that they're gonna think of Cameron in those terms already

xp even corrupt perjurers deserve a second chance!

a second chance, over and over again

MarinaHyde

say what you like, this has finally given meaning to Cameron's "we're all in this together" catchphrase. right up to their necks, etc
3 minutes ago via TweetDeck

so cameron is denying that the aide alan rusbridger warned about coulson passed these warnings on to him??

I liked Dave's "it's not adequate to point the finger at one journalist", completely missing the point that it would be totally adequate to point the finger at just News of the World journalists and the former one he hired to work in the government and the former one who's now an executive he likes hanging around with.

It's tempting to imagine that in the face of an impending parliamentary seizure of everything, lurked a secret so big that Murdoch had to close the entire paper just to dispose of it. I know, I know... but still. I cannot even imagine the number of skeletons hidden away in the NOTW's files.

it would be totally adequate to point the finger at just News of the World journalists and the former one he hired to work in the government and the former one who's now an executive he likes hanging around with.

ehhhh i'm not sure about this - agree that's his motivation but he's kind of right anyway, it's systemic

And don't forget the police. Yes the hacks were unethical but they are under enormous pressure to get information any way they can. You can see their wrongdoing as an immoral extension of their job. The police, on the other hand...

(OK I'll stop)

i was wondering, has there been a massive decline in salacious "scoops" for the notw since they supposedly outlawed this practise a few years ago? has their circulation fallen significantly since andy coulson resigned as editor?

it would be totally adequate to point the finger at just News of the World journalists and the former one he hired to work in the government and the former one who's now an executive he likes hanging around with.

ehhhh i'm not sure about this - agree that's his motivation but he's kind of right anyway, it's systemic

― lex pretend, Friday, 8 July 2011 09:18 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well, Cameron was quite happy to point his finger at one journo, when it wasn't his guy...

so cameron is denying that the aide alan rusbridger warned about coulson passed these warnings on to him??

yeah this is pretty interesting, you kinda expect rusbridger to respond. he also told clegg.

& i was like, boom, coulson

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/7/8/1310117057084/David-Cameron-speaks-abou-007.jpg

& he was all, but i- and i was all SHUT YOUR MOUTH

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/7/8/1310117598325/Prime-minster-David-Camer-007.jpg

Does this aide have a name?

So, it's just a matter of time until: Cameron:"I wasn't told about Coulson by this aide, orNick Clegg!!!"

at which point, Nick Clegg resigns......

or does he?

Think Clegg is enjoying sitting in the background and letting Cameron take all the shit for once.

What did Cameron say anyway? Surely he didn't dig himself deeper?

The Guardian's political editor, Patrick Wintour, asks if the PM is saying he had no warning that Coulson had links with a private detective accused of murder (The Telegraph's Peter Oborne and Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger both said he was warned).

I wasn't given any specific information about Andy Coulson ...I don't recall being given any information.

The PM says he is checking and will check whether any of his staff were warned.

this was the follow up, he'd previously said he hadn't heard anything specific

sort of hilariously going the 'but i just didn't happen to know about it!' oblivious route pioneered by rebekah wade

Standard evasion and blame-spread disguised as statesmanship from what I heard.

iirc rusbridger said yesterday that he was one of many who warned cameron.
really if this falls on 'the aide just forgot to tell him' my mind is blown

Cameron is setting himself up for a big fall re: Coulson tho. He's denied knowing, then bottled out and stepped back to not remembering knowing. If it turns out he has to admit to being told, he's going to have to say to the public "somebody said something about Coulson being linked to crooks but it didn't seem like a big deal so i forgot".

So, it hangs on this aide and Clegg.

All Clegg has to do is say "Hell yeah, I told Cameron! ha ha ha"

Cameron also has repeated the canard that "the bulk of this inquiry can only happen when the police investigation has finished. That is what the law requires" - Actually this is totally untrue; the Inquiries Act was passed in 2005 specifically so that politicians nor anyone else could hide behind statements like this

a "could not" in there, waiter!

Don't believe a public inquiry wd be as useful or successful as a proper criminal investigation tbh. The point of inquiries is they report months after the public has stopped giving a shit about what happened in the first place.

So, it hangs on this aide and Clegg.

All Clegg has to do is say "Hell yeah, I told Cameron! ha ha ha"

depends how hard he's pressed here, i think, whether it can just comfortably sit in the swirl of vague apology from DC