Murdoch: Ouf! Is this meltdown?

[Mandryka]

Oh come, now, he repeatedly dyed his hair blue - say no more!! :yikes::laugh:

If you can't be an eccentric these days, it's a poor show.:whistle:

How much did he accept, Mandryka?

He got £50k from the Mirror and £18k from the Sun. That should set him up quite nicely for the rest of his life (he sounds like a shrewd investor), though his reputation has basically been trashed. If he was still working as a teacher, he would now be unemployable thanks to the 'stories' that were printed about him.

I'm surprised the Daily Mail wasn't forced to cough up, too: they had a nasty piece about how he apparently enjoyed the poetry of Christina Rossetti ('many of whose poems deal with death') and had a close relationship with his mother. There also seems to have been palpable disappointment that Mr. Jeffries has an entirely innocent private life.

Really appalling stuff. I daresay most people on this forum would have been similarly treated if one of our tenants had been murdered.

[french frank]

He got £50k from the Mirror and £18k from the Sun.

Isn't that what they have been fined for contempt of court? I think the damages have been described as undisclosed and substantial.

[mercia]

so if Mulcaire spills the beans on who told him to do the hacking (why didn't he tell the police in 2006?) should we start to feel a bit sorry for him, in fact shouldn't he receive compensation for his stay in prison? he was just following orders

[scottycelt]

so if Mulcaire spills the beans on who told him to do the hacking (why didn't he tell the police in 2006?) should we start to feel a bit sorry for him, in fact shouldn't he receive compensation for his stay in prison? he was just following orders

Nobody has yet mentioned just the possibility (I put it no higher than that) of some police collusion in press phone-hacking of murder victims' families and others. We are told that many people are murdered by relatives or others they knew well so some police involvement (and with the best, if illegal intent) doesn't require a huge leap of imagination, especially as we now know of the extraordinary links between some sections of the media and the police.

Things might then begin to make a bit more sense, however understandably shocked we currently claim to be ...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well there are now an interesting number of rats in the barrel ... perhaps a little early for the intensity of a the threat of prison to provoke too much squealing ... but it will as the critical mass of rats and the pitch of their terror is reached ... the continuing expose of wrong doing, who knew what and when, who authorised is cascading into a vortex ... 1793

if i was r or j M i would stay out of the UK .... and if i was a SkyBSB board member i would be getting my story straight, [i didn't say that!] about the 'fit & proper' concerns re the chairperson ...

yep the Met will be in the depths too, but what better career building opportunities for new brooms could there be? ... there will be a VOID with the continuing implosion in the NI cause, a rare once in a lifetime opportunity to grab power and career advantage in the media, politics and the justice system ... and a few nasty fights [just how were the board persuaded of their chair's worthiness?] ... but our elites will be at each other with a renewed passion in the next years or so ....

the single most positive side of it is the surge of energy and power of the Committees of the House .... we have not seen the like eh? ..... knitting anyone?

[french frank]

and if i was a SkyBSB board member i would be getting my story straight, [i didn't say that!] about the 'fit & proper' concerns re the chairperson ...

Pretty obvious, really, isn't it?

[Globaltruth]

What happened to Rupe?

Incidentally, compare this short video of Rupert with his humble, stumbling, sympathy-inducing appearance before the committee...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ahNKWTApGiA

the video was recorded 3 weeks earlier.

Astonishing.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

a very interesting interview with Jude Law in which he shows the other side of being such a key figure in Hackgate

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes GT. A very illustrative film clip and, Calum, an interesting interview.

One week later, the western economy appears unsteady, the "names" are on holiday, abroad obviously, and Tottenham is in flames. Conveniently it is the 30th anniversary this year of the Brixton and Toxteth riots and the 30th anniversary this month of that pop thing "Ghost Town" being high in the charts. The song about broken inner cities and specifically high unemployment.

Oh, and there's news tonight too that a credit card bill of £6.5m was run up by staff at the quango tasked with making police forces in England and Wales more efficient. Lovely. It is almost as if all that Murdoch business had never taken place.

Except....remember how we discussed the fact that Rebekah someone was very peculiarly voiceless in the public sense throughout her career - kind of secretive - and then noted our PM's strange refusal to talk about the vetting procedure for Coulson?

Just in the nick of time, here comes a smart reminder of why it was right to be concerned about the papers and almost everything else - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...l-2333257.html

For those keener on soundbites than reading the papers nowadays, it seems to confirm that Coulson "was scrutinised by an experienced investigator with strong links to both the Security Services and to the newspaper group that owned the News of the World".

I had a dream last night. Yes, I know, I have a lot of them. I dreamt there was an organisation in Britain called SNSI - "Secret News Services International." The dream ended with the words "This is just the beginning. Expect even more extraordinary dreams in the coming months. It will be Britain but not as any of us know it. And frankly it will be mindblowing."

Footnote: This is not a leftist post. The rot set in with Blair, make no mistake, if you could call him "of the left".

[antongould]

The rot set in with Blair, make no mistake, if you could call him "of the left".

IMHO you most certainly could not!

[mercia]

a credit card bill of £6.5m

of which £828 on judo equipment :erm:

[amateur51]

The rot set in a long time before Blair, possibly as far back as Beaverbrook's involvement with Government. :erm:

However under Blair it does seem to have had a significant boost ... and then Cameron added his four-pennorth :sadface:

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...er mebbe the rot doesn't 'set in' ... it might just be there as a fundamental element of the system ..... i do not believe in the golden age as a 'memory' only as an aim ......

[eighthobstruction]

Everything stinks in one way or another....many a soup does....

[Lateralthinking1]

Maybe I should replace my real photo with a pretend one then. It wasn't a post of the left or the right incidentally. I've been placed against my will on a different spectrum. Most people have been.

As every good Morse knows when considering a confusing scenario, you have to look for (a) the obvious hidden clues and (b) the red herring in what is seen.

On (a), we have a direct link between (i) the now departed Stephenson, Murdochish health retreats and all, along with the not dissimilar holiday breakfast tables across the globe - who has not scarpered off immediately to Italy, Los Angeles and wherever the Cleggs this time have ventured, following the NewsCorp revelations? and (ii) the majority who are left to negotiate the pieces of life here is sunny, inflamed, Britain, all the ones who are not holidaying abroad this year and who have been dumped in it together. By the way, the absent Miliband shows again that he is "not fit for purpose".

On (b), the symbolism of the police uniforms and indeed the juxtapositions on the Tottenham battlefield. Most decent coppers have a great deal more in common with those rioting than either group has with those who give the orders. What the unfortunate developments represent is the chaos that has been actively worked towards by the young lords and ladies of Bullingdon and the night clubs. The people against the people - when everyone knows deep down that the real lines of division are not where they seem to be on the television screens. There are currently many empty buildings in Central London and oddly they are flameproof.