Murdoch hacking scandal latest

[ahinton]

A curious view it strikes me Mr. H! My mother would never for a moment have considered entering "business", nor either of my grand-mothers, nor any of my great-aunts, nor any of the generations before them, and I am sure they were right and their principles appropriate. Money is simply not a thing for ladies. A maiden aunt admittedly did some "nursing" during the War, but wars are by definition men's time for being nursed are not they. Even Her Majesty did a little lorry driving in those out of kilter days we understand. And of course neither she nor my aunt thought for a moment of money the while.

What your mother, grandmother or any others of your female forebears might have "considered" doing was, as indeed it should have been as far as it went, their prerogatives and I am most certainly not suggesting that women should be forced or otherwise coerced into business against their wills, but to what extent can you be certain that your female relatives' avoidance of involvement in the workplace was a matter of perceived rightness and principle on their part rather than something forced upon them by unfortunate social circumstance? Women need money and financial responsibility as much as men, not only in the workplace but in the home, particularly given that both members of couples of the opposite sex who live together usually have to work for a living, either by being an employee or by running a business or even both. In Britain today, the legal profession in particular would be pretty thinly represented were all of its women practitioners suddenly to up sticks and quit. Even women who do not work and can afford to spend their time running a home as a matter of personal choice rather than external force of circumstance need to be financially acute and astute, for it is as important for both men and women to be capable of taking - and to take - due responsibility for other people's money as they can of their own.

Quite what any of this has to do with the unfolding Murdoch situation is unclear to me.

[mercia]

A maiden aunt admittedly did some "nursing" during the War

what's the difference between "nursing" and nursing ?
i.e. what are the inverted commas for?

meanwhile back with the NotW, I heard a couple of pundits on TV say that a scandal like this couldn't happen in America. Why not? Do they have some mechanism or laws in place which would prevent such goings-on, or do they not have tabloid-type newspapers? Aren't they as interested in sleaze and tittle-tattle as we Brits apparently are?

[Frances_iom]

:.. heard a couple of pundits on TV say that a scandal like this couldn't happen in America. Why not?

they accept that Congress is totally corrupt - run by coporate lobbyists who 'bribe' via the large contributions to re-election funds without which the TV commercials blacking all opponents can't be aired (and expect payoffs in terms of special laws) - likewise the courts are also 'the best money can buy' - deep pocketed coporations make it impossible for any John Doe to get an airing without backrupting said person - however the UK (or maybe just England) is headed this way.

[Stillhomewardbound]

They're going to double the print run for the last ever edition of the News of the World because there's going to be such demand tomorrow. Oh, really??!! What did the nation suddenly go out and buy budgerigars and now their are millions of bird cages that need lining.

[vinteuil]

I don't usually look at what Grew's written now, once I've seen his name. [ ... ]
I find this Grew persistently foolish but I'll turn a deaf ear to his idiocies from hereon.

And yet that wd in a way be a shame. Syd: Grew often sets out to provoke - but when he is not being silly in this particularly tiresome way he often has original and unexpected thoughts to contribute; I read what he says with with interest: it is not difficult to discard and ignore specific irritating grewistic efflorescences.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I very much hope that no-one buys the NOTW tomorrow, but I fear I'll be disappointed. I'll just console myself by watching the James Bond film "Tomorrow Never Dies".

[mercia]

so is Rupert jetting in tomorrow to say farewell to his newspaper, say sorry or help with the shredding ?

[amateur51]

Oh, really??!! What did the nation suddenly go out and buy budgerigars and now their are millions of bird cages that need lining.

[mercia]

on Radio 4's Any Questions Matthew Parris sort-of implied that without the revenue of the NotW, other titles in the NI portfolio might not survive, what do you reckon?

[Chris Newman]

I would agree with vinteuil. Syd was born with a wooden spoon in his hand. I rarely believe a word he says as he likes to provoke us into looking at everyday life from extreme points of view. He is a circumlocutory, grandiloquently pretentious rogue who pretends to be a left over from the days of Empire. His loquacious manner can be a trifle tiresome but all is meant in the style of those moth-eaten columns that lurk in the pages of Private Eye; think of him as a sort of Lunchtime O'Boulez or E.J.Thribb. Syd can be compared with those irritating little features: when most of us are arguing over the big business scandals that Private Eye is so famously far-sighted and accurate with predicting he comes along with some ironic flippancy. He is good at making us question why we like modern music or neglect some composers. We all call him Syd to annoy him, but in truth he is too much of a gentleman to rise to such trivial bait.

[amateur51]

And yet that wd in a way be a shame. Syd: Grew often sets out to provoke - but when he is not being silly in this particularly tiresome way he often has original and unexpected thoughts to contribute; I read what he says with with interest: it is not difficult to discard and ignore specific irritating grewistic efflorescences.

How utterly butterly gorgeous, vint!

[Frances_iom]

so is Rupert jetting in tomorrow to say farewell to his newspaper, say sorry or help with the shredding ?

to make sure James doesn't do anything silly I suspect - said James has already admited to attempting to buy off the civil prosecutions and he just might admit where else money was used

[kernelbogey]

Paul McMullen. Never heard of him but he's an absolutely shameless fool. What a degraded buffoon.

Looking at the Youtube clip (thanks,Stunsworth), he looks to me as though he's been drinking - and rather the worse for it. Coogan is great!

[amateur51]

Last night on Newsnight, Steve Coogan suggested that attention will soon move to other users of the phone hackers, in particular Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre. According to Alastair Campbell (who?)'s blog:

" [Dacre] will however be a central figure in any public inquiry into the standards and practices of the modern press, because the Mail's influence has been so strong upon the rest of the media and because there is already the previous work of the Information Commissioner for a judge to have as a useful starting point when seeking answers as to why newspapers need to spend so much money on private detectives like Stephen Whittamore, Jonathan Rees, Glenn Mulcaire and many more.

The Mail was the biggest user of Mr Whittamore. When police investigating a murder trial involving Mr Rees raided his home, they found invoices totalling thousands and thousands of pounds relating to inquiries into many public figures for many different papers. The inquiries on me, for example, were made by my former paper, the Mirror. As for Glenn Mulcaire, well we know a lot about him, but there is a lot more to come.

So Mr Dacre and his Mail Group, whose coverage of the phonehacking scandal has been minimal until recent days – wonder why? – will be an important part of any serious and rigorous inquiry."

Linking Dacre/Daily Mail to phone hacking and police misbehaviour would be a very interesting development because the previous two New Labour Governments clearly walked in fear of Daily Mail's right-wing Middle England woman-centred readership. So much of Blair's policies and policy pronouncements were hobbled by the need to keep Daily Mail readers on-side, it was quite sickening.

[Bryn]

SG's nonsense reminds me of Kim Il Sung's choice of a woman as finance minister on the basis that women were held to be good at housekeeping.