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

From 2002:

Last week, Charles Begley, the News of the World's former Harry Potter correspondent, revealed his humiliation at being required to impersonate the schoolboy wizard.

His breaking point came on the afternoon of September 11, when he was summoned to the office of the editor Rebekah Wade and rebuked for not being "in character". Begley, then 29, was told to appear in full Potter regalia at the next day's news conference. He parted ways with the paper a few weeks later and is now considering legal action against his former employers. (His initial claim was turned down because he had been on staff for only six months.)

Begley's account was this week dismissed by Stuart Kuttner, the tabloid's managing editor, as "deeply flawed". In a letter to this paper, he said that his former reporter was a "fantasist" and Ms Wade had "made no request" for Begley to "parade as Harry Potter".

It's a shame he left, Brooks could do with some wizardry, or at least some cheering up, at the moment.

Meanwhile in other news - Cameron's going to privatise everything.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14101481

Or rather...""So let me tell you what our change looks like: It's about ending the old big-government, top-down way of running public services, releasing the grip of state control and putting power in people's hands."

Pictured: some people, yesterday.
http://reuniting-europe.blogactiv.eu/files/2011/07/Brooks-Murdoch1.jpg

Ultimate smug face:

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0dU34xG1HB7MM/x610.jpg

i dunno, i see a hint of fear in there for a change

Trevor Kavanagh agrees with the 'unauthorised' tweet about who's to blame for the News of the World's demise

Don't worry, not a link to the Currant Bun.

"EBAY bidders were last night offering up to £30 for a historic final edition of the News of the World."

Heh, The Sun. Totally made up. Should have gone with the £10,000,000.00 figure, anyway.

Brand new condition

Last ever copy of Britain's oldest newspaper.

Complete with supplements & still in sealed bag.

£850,000 of the proceeds will be donated to Save the Children to make a difference to the lives of starving children in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Kenya.

- Will ship Internationally -

To be fair, one seems to have been bid up to £45, judging by the 'completed' ebay page.

Mostly, they're going for around £2.50 or less.

(How much was the shop price?)

Uhm, isn't it cheaper to just go for the free version?

(or am I missing the meaning of 'souvenir copy'?)

Very limited edition of 5,000,000 apparently.

I notice they don't ask for your mobile number...

Miliband demanding Cameron answer questions about Coulson, postponement of BSkyB bid until after all inquiries and investigations.

cleggo going one further and calling for murdoch to withdraw the bid

for the time being

today is going to be a race to the bottom

10.51am: Here's the Nick Clegg quote in full.

On the BSkyB bid, Rupert Murdoch is now in town in London seeking to sort things out. I would simply say to him, look how people feel about this. Look how the country has reacted with revulsion to the revelations. So do the decent and sensible thing and reconsider, think again, about your bid for BSkyB.

10.42am: Nick Clegg is urging News Corporation to drop its bid for BSkyB altogether. Rupert Murdoch should do "the decent thing" and reconsider the bid, he says. "Reconsider" is a euphemism for abandon. Until now, Liberal Democrats have just been calling for a pause. This means that the Lib Dems - and the coalition as a whole, because Clegg is deputy prime minister - have now trumped Labour, who have just been calling for the bid to be delayed.

Postponing, Withdrawing

effectively it's the same thing: The bid as of now wouldn't be 'attractive' in 6 months time, either to the bidee (x)or the bidder.

http://i.min.us/ibIt9O.png

Sent the phonehack link to one of my senators and my congressman. The senator is Al Franken, author of this masterpiece: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_and_the_Lying_Liars_Who_Tell_Them so wahey, this could be fun.

This means that the Lib Dems - and the coalition as a whole, because Clegg is deputy prime minister - have now trumped Labour, who have just been calling for the bid to be delayed.

ehh, i don't think so; I think that being first to raise something trumps going to a slightly greater degree. i also think that for all intents and purposes calling for a delay is equivalent to calling for it to be scrapped. really just reacting to how flaccid clegg is being here, belatedly trying to righteously straddle a populist cause, as w/the NHS bill.

Nick Clegg still exists? Huh, I presumed he died.

nah you're thinking of the Labour party

That's what you throw for someone on the day a friend is going to give birth, right?

/young person in new world politics

This is an advantage of being in power. Cameron can delay/postpone/cancel the bid now and it doesn't matter who bought it up first, he'll look quite the decisive statesman.

maybe true, i still think it leaves him looking pretty limp & late to the party. it also seems like, the extent to which he was loyal to coulson bespeaks how enmeshed he was with the murdochs & the extent to which he feels obligated to be involved with them. it's still a blow to him to have to nix the deal in the face of overwhelming opposition (which there was before hunt okayed it, over which they still okayed it, let alone now)

This is getting fun:

@GeorgeMichael
Just spoke to my lawyer.... apparently they want to interview me about my comments on Rebekah Brooks here on twitter...

"they"?

Police, apparently - he says Rebekakakaka showed up at his house (as a gatecrasher) in the company of friends who had been invited and proceeded to tell him all kinds of hubristic shit about what the Sun/NoW had been up to.

that would all be hearsay surely?

doesn't have to be evidence, it could be a bunch of lines of enquiry

Then there was a puff of smoke and he woke up with his car crashed into a Snappy Snaps.

george is an intensely private man and wd never say a bunch of stuff just to get his face in the papers

Just read the full Kavanagh piece in a cafe on lunch, it's a doozy. Think his line is basically that phone hacking is really bad but that it's also really rude to keep pointing this out, and thus the Graun is the real enemy because nobody likes a gloater?

He seems hilarously unable to decide whether he can bring himself to credit the hated Graun with striking the killing blow, or whether the NoTW's wounds were self-inflicted and it went out in a blaze of heroic macho stupidity, so he just argues both in different paragraphs.

Overall Trevor Kavanagh seems confused, and upset.

I guessed he missed the training day on Journalism 101 where they advise 'don't give your rivals anything to write about.'

xp Probably also tired and emotional.

Maybe as more people get dragged into this we will enter a golden age of publish-and-be-damned drunken editorial nihilism

the fall of whatever the opposite of civilization is

I flicked a look at the Sun in the newsagent, and saw his col.

Something about the "death of the newspaper" bringing a "lump to the throat", etc.

More Twitter:

@BBCMichaelCrick I hear that Gordon Brown going to make statement re activities of Sunday Times this afternoon.

This is an advantage of being in power. Cameron can delay/postpone/cancel the bid now and it doesn't matter who bought it up first, he'll look quite the decisive statesman.

You mean like Gordon Brown did during the expenses scandal? There's no way Cameron can come out of this looking good.

Overall Trevor Kavanagh seems confused, and upset.

Good and even better.

xp speaking of Gordon Brown...

@BBCMichaelCrick
I hear that Gordon Brown going to make statement re activities of Sunday Times this afternoon.

http://twitter.com/#!/BBCMichaelCrick/status/90393397713580032

Upthread, Cis. I am assidiously on this thread today as am in limbo, waiting on plumbers' comings and goings.

aha.

i can't remember whether i saw something first on twitter or ilx or the graun or the beeb liveblog any more, it's all one big multicoloured news mulch.

NEWSMULCH

keeping your news moist and aerated for over 50 years

fieldproducer Neal Mann
by Dorianlynskey
Woah if true RT @MichaelWolffNYC #MURDOCHGATE Get out of Dodge strategy being discussed at News Corp: Sell all of News Int.