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

[ViolentPanda]

I'm guessing that by 'going sub-free' what you really mean is that the jobs of designer and sub have been combined, though.

That was already happening in the early '80s, on a piecemeal basis throughout the industry. Nowadays "sub-free" generally means trusting the software, and hoping that your over-worked "designer" spots the howlers. Had fun explaining to my mum recently how so many simple errors ("formally" for "formerly", for example) get past. Software isn't context-sensitive enough, and tired eyes skim over the less than egregious errors.

 

[8den]

A wax-based marker pencil.

Fuck, I'm SO fucking old!!!

I've got a box of chinagraphs in my work box.....

 

[ViolentPanda]

Alistair Campbell really has no sense of shame at all.

This is the bloke who punched someone for telling the "Captain Bob-bob-bobbing along" joke after Maxwell's death. Of course he's got no shame.

 

[ThirtyFootSmurf]

Sky shares down 7%

Also News Corp down by 4% within day, 5.5% week on week, wiping a tasty 2.6 billion dollars of their market capitalization since last Friday. God, Rupes really must love Rebekah to drag his investors down into the shit like that.

 

[dylans]

He had known connections with them, going back to WW2, when he worked for military intelligence and his name wasn't Robert Maxwell. It allowed him to "make himself useful" to SIS and the other alphabetties while also helping himself. It's part of how he pulled off some excellent academic publishing coups.

He was also a close friend of Israel and it is alleged that he used his contacts with Czech military intelligence to help arm Israel during the 48 war of Independance/Nakba by delivering military aid and airplane parts. He was also instrumental in allowing up to a million Jews to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union due to his close friendship with Gorbechev. There are also persistant rumours that he spied for Mossad and may have been involved in tipping off Israel about Israeli nuclear scientist Mordachai Vanunu. He was given what amounted to a state funeral in Israel following his death attended by the whole Israeli political and military establishment including 6 serving and past Mossad cheifs. Israel's PM Yitzhak Shamir said "he has done more for Israel than can be told".

 

[ViolentPanda]

well daddy owns 39% so he's the biggest shareholder, no one else owns more than 39% so it would be difficult to oust him.

If the share price continues to fluctuate because of the ongoing issue, then an EGM is entirely possible. The big institutional shareholders who make up most of the other 61% won't sit still for too long if it means losing money, however powerful Murdoch is.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I would doubt many journos working at NI have started at the bottom there and worked their way up in any case. Their usual mo is to poach experienced staff from elsewhere by offering them a big salary - I've seen that happen quite a bit, especially with senior staff. One magazine editor I worked for accepted a more junior position - assistant editor to a mag - at NI in return for a Wapping big pay rise.

Well quite! Kizmet's contention was that NI was somehow an incubator of fresh talent, without which journalism would lose an important source of cub-training.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm a walking middle-class cliche, VP, I don't deny it. Besides, we've earnt less than one minimum wage between us over the last seven years, so I don't feel very middle-class, all right.

It's down to how much of a compromise and how difficult the situation, really. Bailiff? You'd have to be very desperate, and able to prove it ... but people can get that desperate, there's no denying it. 14,000 more people are set to be excluded entirely from the benefits system with the IDS 'reforms' and plenty are already. We more or less are. Both hidden disabilities which don't prevent us working, just from getting work. We own our rusty old boat with no mooring so no housing benefit but bills, licence and maintenance are relatively massive. We move around, so signing on would be difficult, especially long-term. Lots of people are in a similar position, but without the fortunate choices we have. But we still have to compromise.

I used to be employed by the NHS, which sometimes meant working for Capita. Should I have refused? I dunno, perhaps. Depends on the project. Now I'm self-employed, I just charge them two to three times more, and tax them to subsidise what I charge the NHS. It's the best I can do.

We're all trapped in a shit system. I just think these sentiments need to be expressed carefully. A lot of people hate the left solely because they feel they're being sneered at from a position of moral superiority, and it's not helpful either for broadening support or for reducing the schisms and somewhat strained ideological divisions. That's all.

You're missing my point, which is that exercising your conscience isn't merely the purview of "middle-class lefties", but of everyone with a conscience, and that people of almost every stratum of society have chosen, sometimes at great personal cost, to exercise them. It's not about whether you can afford to, it's about whether YOU feel that you can afford not to.

 

[ViolentPanda]

He'd better get someone else to empty the fridge though.

You never know, he might enjoy finding a head in the fridge. he could act out that scene from "American Psycho" and scare the shit out of his missus!

 

[Barking_Mad]

Sky reporting Brooks as telling NoTW staff (paraphrase) "In a years time you will understand why we took this course of action (ie closing down NoTW)." Apparently she has "visibility of worse revelations to come"

 

[Bakunin]

You never know, he might enjoy finding a head in the fridge. he could act out that scene from "American Psycho" and scare the shit out of his missus!

I'd have thought being married to Rupert was punishment enough for one lifetime.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I've got a box of chinagraphs in my work box.....

They're still used for editing film, aren't they?

 

[ViolentPanda]

He was also a close friend of Israel and it is alleged that he used his contacts with Czech military intelligence to help arm Israel during the 48 war of Independance/Nakba by delivering military aid and airplane parts. He was also instrumental in allowing up to a million Jews to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union due to his close friendship with Gorbechev. There are also persistant rumours that he spied for Mossad and may have been involved in tipping off Israel about Israeli nuclear scientist Mordachai Vanunu. He was given what amounted to a state funeral in Israel following his death attended by the whole Israeli political and military establishment including 6 serving and past Mossad cheifs. Israel's PM Yitzhak Shamir said "he has done more for Israel than can be told".

Most of the stuff about Israel that Bower and his successors dug up has been confirmed over the years, and s you say, you don't get a burial plot on the Mount of Olives, attended by Israel's establishment, if you're just some schmo. The bouncing Czech was in it up to his fat neck.

 

[laptop]

They're still used for editing film, aren't they?

Retro-clockwork-punk film, these days

 

[Barking_Mad]

Sky reporting Brooks as telling NoTW staff (paraphrase) "In a years time you will understand why we took this course of action (ie closing down NoTW)." Apparently she has "visibility of worse revelations to come"

Apparent "criminal activity".

 

[ThirtyFootSmurf]

Rebekah's been relieved of her role to lead the internal investigation at NI. And so it begins...

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'd have thought being married to Rupert was punishment enough for one lifetime.

Yeah, but footage of Ms Deng-Murdoch running screaming from the bungalow as Rupert prances around inside with his cock rammed up the mouth of a disembodied head would be quite funny, so I'm prepared to extend her punishment!

 

[ViolentPanda]

Retro-clockwork-punk film, these days

That's right, make me feel old again!


(Remembers days when punk was original, not "retro", and am-pro film cams were indeed clockwork )

 

[dylans]

Sky reporting Brooks as telling NoTW staff (paraphrase) "In a years time you will understand why we took this course of action (ie closing down NoTW)." Apparently she has "visibility of worse revelations to come"

Oh good. Round two.

 

[ymu]

You're missing my point, which is that exercising your conscience isn't merely the purview of "middle-class lefties", but of everyone with a conscience, and that people of almost every stratum of society have chosen, sometimes at great personal cost, to exercise them. It's not about whether you can afford to, it's about whether YOU feel that you can afford not to.

Fair enough. Plenty of people outside the 'middle class' (whatever that is) have choices. I just object to an overly simplistic approach. 'Hair-shirt leftism', if you like, where the one lecturing others has a shirt made from angora goatskin and those being lectured have ones made of cat's tongue. Or some better analogy.

I accept that this isn't necessarily the view being pushed by anyone here.

 

[Barking_Mad]

....

Statement from the Guardian on the information it gave to the government regarding Andy Coulson:

Before the general election the Guardian contacted all three party leaders to tell them of certain facts about Andy Coulson which the Guardian could not at that stage report.

In a telephone call around February 25th, Guardian deputy editor Ian Katz told the prime minister's director of strategy Steve Hilton a number of details about the case of Jonathan Rees, a private detective who had worked for the News of the World, which the paper had been unable to publish due to ongoing legal proceedings. These included:

• Rees's name – he had been described in a Guardian report published online on February 24th and in the paper edition of February 25th only as "Mr A"

• The fact that he was awaiting trial for a murder in which the victim was found in a pub car park with an axe in his head

• The fact that Rees had been jailed for seven years for conspiring to frame a woman by placing cocaine in her car, after which he had been rehired by Coulson's News of the World.

• The fact that Rees's illegal activities on behalf of the News of the World had been prominently reported in the Guardian before he was rehired under Coulson.

None of these details was included in any report for several months until after the collapse of Rees's trial in March 2011. The thrust of the conversation was that Rees was a murder suspect who had been involved in massive corruption on behalf of the News of the World of which Coulson could not have been unaware. The Guardian understands No 10 chief of staff Edward Llewelyn was informed of this conversation.

Downing Street's reference to the private detective working for Panorama is baffling and irrelevant to how the Rees information was handled. There was no suggestion that Rees ever had any connection with Panorama until March 2011, many months after No 10 was told the details of the Rees case.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Radio 4 says that Brooks is being taken off the internal investigation & some American NI bod is doing it instead

 

[butchersapron]

Ian Bone has just announced that he's relaunching the NOTW from sunday 17th. Any NOTW people working your 90 day notice reading this...

 

[Citizen66]

Haha

 

[agricola]

Apparent "criminal activity".

Probably more Whittamore-style corruption of civil servants, cops and some others in order to get stories / access to databases, or failing that one or two stories about paedos who have escaped justice as the result of antics of (or worse yet, been facilitated by) hacks at the NOTW. There is also the exceedingly remote possibility that the NOTW accidentally left proof lying around that it helped the last government take us into Iraq - resulting of course in the deaths of so many of the soldiers it professed to be the champions of - on a knowingly false basis, though I dont for a minute believe that would ever be allowed to come out.

Also in supreme irony, someone has secretly recorded Brooks' meeting with NOTW staff today. Its on Sky News now!

 

[frogwoman]

According to brian whelan at least one of the ex notw hacks isn't real.

 

[sunny jim]

Is it me or are Sky News not toeing the "Murdoch/partyline" at the moment? Tbh I dont watch it that much but they just played an illicit recording of todays meeting between Brooks and the rest of the staff which didnt put Brooks in a good light.

 

[sunny jim]

Ian Bone has just announced that he's relaunching the NOTW from sunday 17th. Any NOTW people working your 90 day notice reading this...

Hahahaha!

 

[ThirtyFootSmurf]

Is it me or are Sky News not toeing the "Murdoch/partyline" at the moment? Tbh I dont watch it that much but they just played an illicit recording of todays meeting between Brooks and the rest of the staff which didnt put Brooks in a good light.

Aye, that's what I thought. Should they really show some journalistic integrity? Then again, the recording wasn't all that juicy, and Becky B came across relatively unbitchy, so I suppose they reckon they can get away with it.

 

[temper_tantrum]

Rupe has always been a bit half-hearted about anointing a successor, hasn't he? The Murdoch siblings have carved up the empire to some degree. Is James the favoured son these days? I thought Elizabeth had been doing better in recent years.
Just wondering how this all affects the internal Murdoch empire politics ...