The Official Newscorp/UK end of season finale/Rebekah Brooks did 9/11 thread

The sad thing is that I feel like in the US there are stories unearthed about how some company basically asked a legislator to take some action or even handed him a pre-drafted bill to present all the time, and they rarely blow up into anything. Hopefully the timing of this plus the blatant anti-competitiveness of it will help it gain steam.

yeah i mean it fits p neatly into the narrative currently being, they were too cosy, they met a lot, they discussed deals maybe in breach of propriety laws &c

it's pretty difficult to prove influence, is the problem

Wait for it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/interactive/2011/jul/19/rupert-murdoch-twitter-pie

or 'why not to use twitter'

i am so amazed by the technology of that sort of thing that i lose any critical faculty. the way the bubbles gravitate towards the centre & that the bubbles represent people's writing. like i just don't care whether it's good or bad.

i see they weren't counting "wtf" though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsJwM1DnLu4

sort of wonder if it would be legal to 'buy' an mp and get them convene committees at which they randomly slander and abuse public figures

pretty sure that ilx poster ismael klata is in fact one of the millibands, tbh? not narrowed it down to which yet obvs

they're jewish......

server glitch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZtVm8wtyFI

boy you take your throwaways pretty seriously nakh

http://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/9HNiV.jpg

The facial expressions Mensch pulls in reaction to Morgan's patched-in voice are fantastic, I'd like to see what she'd have come up with if they'd been together in the studio.

The “guilt by association” is also painfully reminiscent of the McCarthy era in the United States. “Are you or have you ever been...” translated from accusations of Communism to “...employed by, associated with or regularly met, the Murdoch family or News International.”

All of this is now in danger of diverting our attention from the two key elements which are surely at the very root of the challenge faced by Press, police and politicians. Namely, deep-seated corruption and totally unacceptable intrusion into privacy.

SHEFFIELD MP David Blunkett was on a contract worth £5,000 a day with News International as an advisor on a social responsibility project - which finished at the end of June when the News of the World phone hacking scandal intensified.

The Labour politician, who represents Brightside and Hillsborough, was paid £25,000 for the six-month appointment but said he had only worked five days on the project, run by Rupert Murdoch’s company to help deprived youngsters.

ffs

LIVE Keep up with all the developments as Ed Miliband releases details of his media diary since May 2010

yeah... story kind of needs more juice about now

Looks like your wish will be fulfilled:

The chancellor refused to be drawn on a dinner he had with Rupert Murdoch two weeks before the media regulator was due to decide on whether to approve the takeover of BSkyB. He said:

When it comes to my meetings with proprietors and editors of all newspaper groups, we are very shortly going to publish the details and I think I will leave it until that is published.

I'm assuming that senior politians and media barons don't actually say certain things out loud in meetings unless they're complete idiots - there's going to be a lot unsaid or implied. They wouldn't be publishing the details unless they were relatively clean or whitewashed (and the latter would turn out to be more trouble than it was worth).

it's hard to imagine it being any spicier than george osbourne's press engagements hugely weighted towards NI mtgs, in keeping with cameron's, everyone else's etc. unless there's details and it says they played twister, etc. the telegraph story yesterday seemed like a better continuation of that story.

but yeah i don't know what the next thing with this story will be, sorta forgetting where we're up to with each strand on account of them all having been shittily-half-explained &c

this picture is priceless:

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01954/tor_1954107c.jpg

they both look like ventriloquists dummies

Chunderturds are go.

xxpost: "Yay, we're going to play twister again!" "I like twister!"

Roffle

Also I've been away for a fortnight but I am so happy that 'UK End of Season Finale' has caught on. I suspect the Evening Standard lift came from Twitter rather than ILX, as I made the same joke there and it got RTed a shedload of times.

I suspect that we're into the slow and disappointing beginning to the following season mind. Feeling a distinct lack of pay-off looming.

bit of a mid-season lull, writers need to spice it up with some new characters

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_rHOBCQz3geI/SahHGBMvhwI/AAAAAAAAAhM/w8yxN4Ff0ow/s320/Poochie.gif

As long as it's not:

http://www.amoeba.com/dynamic-images/blog/Charles/lost-jacob-and-nemesis.jpg

bit of a mid-season lull,

aka parliamentary recess which seems even sillier than ever right now

yea we should be having parliamentary ... excess

lol at Dispatches, sounds like it has been narrated by Chris Morris in full-on parody mode.

oh it's Peter Oborne NM.

A NoTW tale

The Guardian reporter Nick Davies has been signed to write an authoritative account of the News Corp. scandal for Faber and Faber Inc. Financial compensation wasn't disclosed.

The book, to be titled "Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught up with the World's Most Powerful Man," will be published in the fall of 2012. Davies previously wrote "Flat Earth News."

Fucking lock-in.

i've only read some of flat earth news but it's good.
sorta hope that by 2012 'caught up' refers to more than the gruelling culture committee appearance the world's most powerful man had to endure.

By the way, do we have a new British politics thread for non-NI stuff?

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

George Osborne met News International chiefs 16 times

... more times than i've met my mother in the same period

How many times has George Osborne met your mother?

My mother will be publishing that information soon enough, she assures me she has nothing to hide

When did George Osbourne stop meeting your wife?

Tom you really should visit your mother more :)

Labour leader Ed Miliband had 14 meetings or social contacts with News International executives over the same period, while PM David Cameron had 11.

oops - there goes Ed's ammo.

Murdoch merch isn’t moving very well over at gag retailer Zazzle.com, either, which is currently selling an apron that reads “I’m Grilling the Murdochs” and a “News Corp. Hacked My Phone” shirt. “The items appeared fast and furious,” said vp of marketing Jason Kang. “However, Rupert Murdoch isn’t something that translates well into being a hot consumer item.” Why not? “When bin Laden got taken care of, people felt enormous pride,” Kang explained. “The Murdoch thing is funny, but doesn’t engender the same emotional response.”

Passed this on the bus today

lol piers morgan

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/news-out-to-ruin-me-nixon-20110727-1i0ek.html

Murdoch's papers destroyed the last two Victorial Police chiefs. One of them has finally found the guts to speak out about it.

uh oh

tom_watson tom_watson
The hacking scandal is about nosedive to a whole new low. How could these people do what they did?
12 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

still conflicted that i'm enjoying this more than i'm appropriately outraged/depressed &c, but i await the revive anxiously

I'm not sure how much lower it could get but hey.