Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail "hacked by News of the World"

[butchersapron]

Now we have the judiciary as well.

hem to agree to limit the range of defendants and to focus research on their own west country area. But, a police spokesman told the Guardian this week, as far as those six were concerned: "We thought we had a strong case".


The police team were then surprised and upset, when Judge Paul Darlow refused in 2005 to regard the issue as sufficiently serious to go to trial. He prevented a jury from hearing the case, saying the alleged behaviour was too trivial to justify criminal misconduct charges, and the proposed trial would be a waste of public money.


The papers in front of him identified the two ministers and an MP. Darlow specifically referred at a pre-trial hearing to the fact that "particulars in respect of the chancellor of the exchequer were sought and obtained".


But he nonetheless accepted defence claims that the illegal PNC information had been primarily passed to respectable insurance companies, finance houses and other detective agencies, in order to prevent fraud.


He asserted that an eight-week trial might cost as much as £1m in legal fees: "In my judgment it is not a proportionate use of valuable resources to prosecute these matters," he said.

 

[butchersapron]

BBC coverage is mental, They really don't know what's going on.

 

[dylans]

The police team were then surprised and upset, when Judge Paul Darlow refused in 2005 to regard the issue as sufficiently serious to go to trial. He prevented a jury from hearing the case, saying the alleged behaviour was too trivial to justify criminal misconduct charges, and the proposed trial would be a waste of public money.

Too trivial.

 

[Kaka Tim]

My feeling is that Brown kept quiet becaue they had personal shit on him.

News International were spying on everyone, News Interantional had a file on everyone and used that info to blackmail, bully and destroy people.

Thats way beyond threatening to slag of the government in your newspaper - thats a huge criminal enterprise holding the entire political system to ransom.

Thats also why talk of Murdoch dumping his newspapers as irrelevant cos they dont make much money is off the mark - they were the weapons that gave him power. He cant use sky news in the same way.

 

[Mitre10]

And Rebekah's deep in it:

As much as I dislike Gordon Brown, the fact that these people published these disgusting releases regarding his dead daughter and his son is utterly vile.

Sincerely hope the whole house of cards comes down and people near the top do some prison time.

 

[AKA pseudonym]

Skinner on form earlier...

 

[agricola]

Now we have the judiciary as well.

Is it? Its one judge, making what admittedly seems to be a bizarre decision on the limited facts we have available to us.

 

[frogwoman]

Yes because it's massive. We are used to accepting a kind of symbiotic relationship between the media and the executive with each needing the other and being reliant on the other, with the media manufacturing consent, to use Chomsky's phrase and serving as a propaganda tool for the state, but what we are witnessing the past week is the revealing of the total distortion of that relationship into one that is completely one sided. A relationship of the dominance of corporate media power over the elected executive and even the police. Murdoch, through political intimidation, has been free to act as king maker (and even if he hasn't, he has been able to convince the political elites that he has, which amounts to the same thing) and as a result has been able to operate with legal impunity even to the extent of being able to spy on the prime ministers family's (or Chancellor at the time) most intimate medical record, bank details and phone calls and the PM does nothing? Absolutely incredible.

But why did he do nothing? What does NI have on him?? thats what i am really confused about (assuming he did know of course) why would anyone allow them to do that, i thought gordon brown was an incompetent idiot but i didn't think he could allow something like that to happen AND KNOW ABOUT IT?

Is that what people are saying happened here? Im not saying anyone is wrong i just have a massive difficulty getting my head around it !

 

[DexterTCN]

In the light of all these revelations, it's almost easy to lose perspective but what the fuck was the Sun doing illegally accessing the medical records of Brown's disabled child? It's obscene.

I can't get passed this. It's fucking obscene alright. And if it's the Sunday Times and not notw....the political side of these things is terrifying.

This isn't a free press, this is a savage, political animal.

It has to end.

 

[DexterTCN]

But why did he do nothing? What does NI have on him?? thats what i am really confused about (assuming he did know of course) why would anyone allow them to do that, i thought gordon brown was an incompetent idiot but i didn't think he could allow something like that to happen AND KNOW ABOUT IT?

Because in 2005 no-one could fuck with them, no-one. Same in 2010 and a bit of 2011.

 

[Kaka Tim]

So how before an advertising boycott of all News Interantional publications takes off?

 

[frogwoman]

It's got very little to with murdoch.

What did it have to do with in your opinion butch? Sorry for asking all these questions i'm just really confused.

ive never believed gordon brown was capable of being a deliberate scumbag, a chracterless bureaucrat yes (and thereby a scumbag) an incompetent idiot but i never thought he had the sense/sophistication to cover up something like this, to do with his medical records, his kids??

 

[butchersapron]

Is it? Its one judge, making what admittedly seems to be a bizarre decision on the limited facts we have available to us.

Why? On a bizarre basis or because he's tied up in it? How many other bizarre decisions are reached by one judge acting alone? Anyway, it was a polemical point, i expect that something so rotten and so deep would infect all parts of society that it came into contact with. And it assuredly came into contact with the part of society that produces judges. This one will be being checked up the journos now. Oh hang on...

 

[Kaka Tim]

If Murdoch could bend politicians and policemen to his will - why not judges?

Al Capone with a scandal sheet tommy gun.

 

[agricola]

But why did he do nothing? What does NI have on him?? thats what i am really confused about (assuming he did know of course) why would anyone allow them to do that, i thought gordon brown was an incompetent idiot but i didn't think he could allow something like that to happen AND KNOW ABOUT IT?

Because the scope of this is massive, would (and will) require immense reserves of political effort and skill to fix, it involves serious people committing serious crimes, and would (as we are seeing) severely impact whichever government happened to be in power when it was exposed. These are all powerful reasons for Brown (and Labour) not to do anything about it, plus of course one should remember there are rewards for not doing anything about it - not the least of which is gaining press support for his party. Browns inaction does not mean that they have something on him (indeed, if you want to be really cynical then surely if they did have something big on him they would have kept him around).

 

[ymu]

My feeling is that Brown kept quiet becaue they had personal shit on him.

News International were spying on everyone, News Interantional had a file on everyone and used that info to blackmail, bully and destroy people.

Thats way beyond threatening to slag of the government in your newspaper - thats a huge criminal enterprise holding the entire political system to ransom.

Thats also why talk of Murdoch dumping his newspapers as irrelevant cos they dont make much money is off the mark - they were the weapons that gave him power. He cant use sky news in the same way.

The anti-Broon hacking took place when Blair was PM.

When Brown took over, they started schmoozing him instead:

To describe her as a friend of David Cameron would be to underestimate their intimacy, say friends. Brooks and her second husband Charlie, a racehorse trainer and old Etonian, live very close to the Camerons in Oxfordshire. They met for dinner at least once over Christmas, and frequently see each other at weekends with what has been termed the "Chipping Norton set" – among them the PR man Matthew Freud and his partner, Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, and Jeremy Clarkson . Brooks has even commented that unlike Murdoch senior she has no need to go to Downing Street for audiences with Cameron, since she sees him so frequently socially.

It is easy to forget that she was just as intimate with Cameron's predecessor, and the man at No 10 before that. Brooks, then Wade, was seen by many as half of a Labour power-couple, thanks to her then husband Ross Kemp 's vocal support of the party and their close relationship with the Blairs. So intimate a friend did Cherie Blair consider her, in fact, that she reproached the then editor for attending a party at 11 Downing St, seat of the hated Browns. That cooled as her friendship with the Browns grew closer – Brooks attended a "sleepover" of female friends of Sarah Brown's at Chequers in 2008. Guy (now Lord) Black, ex-director of the Press Complaints Commission, and his partner, Mark Bolland, once Prince Charles 's aide, were once holiday companions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/08/rebekah-brooks-profile-phone-hacking

 

[dylans]

But why did he do nothing? What does NI have on him?? thats what i am really confused about (assuming he did know of course) why would anyone allow them to do that, i thought gordon brown was an incompetent idiot but i didn't think he could allow something like that to happen AND KNOW ABOUT IT?

Is that what people are saying happened here? Im not saying anyone is wrong i just have a massive difficulty getting my head around it !

Yes, that Brown said nothing because he was scared. fwiw I don't buy into the whole "they had something on him" line. I think the answer is much more simple than that. He kept quiet because some in the shadows of the party, told him, "attack NI and say goodbye to a labour victory". This is what they believed. This is what Blair believed and the lesson of the infamous Kinnock front page is one that has reached the level of lore within the Labour party, piss off Murdoch and lose the election. This was the mantra, this was the legend and the myth and they followed it and in doing so they made the myth a reality. There is no need for a corpse under the floorboards or a set of compromising photos in the drawer. This.the belief that Murdoch makes the kings, was enough. Brown was told, and Brown did as he was told.


And Murdoch fucked him anyway.

 

[agricola]

Alistair Campbell on BBC - "We knew this was going on, we just didnt know the extent of it"

One more for the fib count, then.

 

[laptop]

News International said it would investigate the claims.

In a statement, the company said: "We note the allegations made today concerning the reporting of matters relating to Gordon Brown. So that we can investigate these matters further, we ask that all information concerning these allegations is provided to us."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14112097

The Met: "for fuck's sake don't give the cunts a thing".

 

[8den]

Yes, that Brown said nothing because he was scared. fwiw I don't buy into the whole "they had something on him" line. I think the answer is much more simple than that. He kept quiet because some in the shadows of the party, told him, "attack NI and say goodbye to a labour victory". This is what they believed. This is what Blair believed and the lesson of the infamous Kinnock front page is one that has reached the level of lore within the Labour party, piss off Murdoch and lose the election. This was the mantra, this was the legend and the myth and they followed it and in doing so they made the myth a reality. There is no need for a corpse under the floorboards or a set of compromising photos in the drawer. This.the belief that Murdoch makes the kings, was enough. Brown was told, and Brown did as he was told.


And Murdoch fucked him anyway.

If you want to look at journalistic integrity, look at the exchange of e-mails between the blogger Girl with a one track mind and the Sunday Times Journalist who outed her;

"Pretty much we have you, we have everything about, we're going to publish all your personal details, now be a good girl, get in the car we're going to send for you, tart yourself up for the photoshoot and lets be having ya".

 

[butchersapron]

We note the allegations made today concerning the reporting of matters relating to Gordon Brown. So that we can investigate these matters further, we ask that all information concerning these allegations is provided to us.

Check your emails.

 

[dylans]

Check your emails.

very mysterious. please do expand

 

[teqniq]

Well well well.

Chickens, roost?

No, there doesn't seem to presently be an adequate metaphor.

*awaits an interesting selection of floating bodies*

 

[butchersapron]

The quote is the NI response. The reply indicate that the evidence is in the never reported emails.

 

[laptop]

Maybe NI IT accidentally deleted the emails dealing with the Plymouth case?

 

[trevhagl]

Skinner on form earlier...

legend! He was quite funny at the Miners Gala too, as usual

 

[laptop]

Ah. NI decided to lett Jeremy Hunt off the hook...

Forty-five minutes before Hunt was due to get up and address MPs to update them on how he would handle the Sky bid, Murdoch's News Corp said it was "withdrawing its proposed undertakings in lieu of reference to the Competition Commission".

Without the undertaking – spinning off Sky News into a separately listed public company 39.1% owned by News Corp – Hunt will have no alternative but to refer the bid for BSkyB to the Competition Commission.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/11/news-corp-bskyb-bid-hunt-competition-commission

So neither he nor Cameron needs to to a U-turn and block the bid: their hands are tied.

Still.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Can anyone sum up in a few words wtf's happened today for me please?

Ta

 

[teqniq]

best can of worms, ever.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

the shit has hit the fan, agin