Guido Fawked – No Research, No Result (3)

Another day, and still the appalling Piers Morgan is there at CNN in his 9pm ET weekday slot, despite the attempts of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer Henry Cole, the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere, at the Guido Fawkes blog. The latest episode of Staines’ attack on Morgan has included the mirth inducing claim that a dossier is about to be passed to the Metropolitan Police.

This follows the Fawkes blog exhuming a piece in the Daily Mail – one of the papers with which Staines has a nice little earner – from 2006, in which Morgan says he was played a tape of a message left by Paul McCartney on Heather Mills’ mobile. This has caused Staines to become particularly excited, so much so that he then claimed Morgan “played the recording ... to the newsroom for fun”.

Sadly, Staines’ perusal of the Mail does not include Alison Boshoff’s article, where she tells – in 2006 – that “by last year, even before their daughter Beatrice had reached her second birthday, the problems in the marriage were too profound to be ignored”. So it was known that the relationship was in trouble in 2005.

This is consistent with the Guardian’s assertion that Mills was considering taking action against the Screws – not, notice once again, the Mirror – after being given information seized from Glenn Mulcaire “which cover his activities in 2005 and 2006”. The article continues “It is understood that Mills’ name and mobile phone number are listed in Mulcaire’s notes”.

And it is consistent with the Screws – in this archived article – telling of an argument McCartney and Mills had over the phone, which suggests that more than voicemail interception may have been at work. But let’s cut to the obvious flaw in the Staines attack: the evidence of Mills having her phone hacked points to it happening in 2005.

Piers Morgan was sacked from his post as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004.

And thus Paul Staines was once again undone by a little research.

So when Staines blusters that “we’re taking our dossier to the Metropolitan Police”, I urge him to follow through and do it. After all the recent bad publicity and the resignations of Paul Stephenson and John Yates, they could do with a good laugh.

Zelo Street will be examining the Fawkes blog crusade against Piers Morgan further in a later post. Because, like the Met, we're always up for a good laugh, too.