Zelo Street

Crikey Readers, Free Everything!

2012-02-21T11:52:00.002Z

Campaigning for the London mayoral election is well and truly under way. I know this because not only has spinmeister Lynton Crosby stumbled onto Twitter – as I noted the other day – but the movement to re-elect occasional mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has started recruiting supporters. Moreover, it is maintaining Bozza’s liking for paying folks in “chicken feed”.

And that “chicken feed” certainly isn’t going to be anything like the £250k a year that Bozza at present trousers off the Maily Telegraph. In fact, it isn’t going to be anything at all: the Back Boris 2012 Campaign (tm) is advertising for volunteers. The successful applicants will deal with recruitment, canvassing, and office work, and they will be doing it just for the nice warm feeling of doing it for Boris.

Moreover, the advertising is being carried by taxpayer funded website w4mp, so the Bozza re-election bandwagon gets to sponge off taxpayers of all political persuasions. And on top of that, the adverts carry a whiff of blatant ageism, telling of a “fast paced working environment”, which those of us over 35 know to be code for “old farts shove off ‘cos you’re not welcome”.

Strangely, Lynton Crosby’s Twitter feed does not carry any mention of the advert, or its presence on a taxpayer funded resource. That’s a pity: it would have been most revealing to see the great man spin this one in his client’s favour. After all, there isn’t even a mention of lunch or travel expenses. But there is at least one redeeming feature about this campaign.

And that is that Bozza hasn’t been blatant enough to ask his pal Dave to include it in the current workfare initiative. Yet.

Big Al And The Drinking Culture

2012-02-21T10:25:00.003Z

Trailed for a few days beforehand, by the Beeb and also on Twitter, was Alastair Campbell’s Panorama on alcohol use – and considerable abuse – in the UK. Given his role as Tone’s chief spinmeister at the time when all-day licensing was given the green light, some might consider him not the most appropriate person to pass judgment, but the problem, especially in London, was there beforehand.

Just the three for starters

Of this I can cite first-hand experience, having spent some time in the capital in 2000 and 2001 working by day, suffering the intimacy of the Northern Line at a variety of hours, and observing at night what was at the time referred to as the “City Culture”. This term is a misnomer: the drinking culture of working, professional London is universal, across the City, West End and Westminster.

Partly, this is because of the large number of freelance workers – and here I have to enter another guilty plea – who move around the capital from one contract assignment to another, retaining and reinforcing their social circle, and taking the mores of that circle out of the City into outside businesses, old media, new media, Government and the retail sector.

And the concept of spending the evening consuming heroic quantities of a variety of alcoholic beverages during the week was part of that culture. For many workers, this was part of the separation of work from home and family life. Thursdays were a time of compulsory attendance, with one or two other evenings per week optional. It was straight from work, and straight on to the drinks.

This, to me, was totally alien: I’m as partial to a beer as the next bloke, but drinking on an empty stomach is to be avoided. Confiding my aversion to a work colleague one afternoon, his reply – “eating’s cheating” – summed it up chillingly. Has the further relaxation of opening hours made things any worse? I doubt that it has made much difference.

That’s because, in and around London at least, the culture and the access to alcohol were there already. You may disagree with Big Al on other issues – and for me that would be Iraq, Iraq and Iraq, but not necessarily in that order – but on professional London’s drinking culture, there is little blame that can be laid at his door. It’s established, ingrained even.

Moreover, medical advice, minimum pricing and other Government action is unlikely to make a significant impact on it. Another pint? Oh go on then, twist my arm. Cheers, and, er, your good health.

Express Pension Frighteners

2012-02-20T18:21:00.005Z

There are front page stories other than the EU, Diana, severe weather, Maddie, Benefits, Immigrants and Muslims that are beloved of the Express, and many of them are to do with tax and pensions. If this subject area can be connected to the EU, Immigrants and Muslims, that’s a bonus, but the main thing is that the readers have to be very, very afraid about it.

And many of those readers are older people, so Des’ finest concentrate on retirement worries, hence “Millions Now Can’t Afford To Retire” last Thursday (mostly churned from a press release). But then, the story changes in the space of two days to sweep all those worries away, as Saturday brought “Millions Could Get New Tax Bonus” (recycled from a Centre for Social Justice “report”).

But normal scare service was resumed this morning – no surprise, given the press release from which the story was churned was from the same people as the Thursday one – as the dire news “New Tax Raid On Pensions” was announced. At this point, seasoned Express watchers may have done a double take, because this headline, or something like it, is not a new one.

Back in April 2009, there was a “Pension Tax Shock”, and talk of a “new Government tax raid”, based on, er, an alleged hint by Pa Broon which nobody at the meeting concerned actually heard. And there you were thinking that the former PM couldn’t do subtle. But then Labour lost the General Election and the hacks went off to kick the EU. And Immigrants. And Muslims.

But, never willing to let a good frightener go to waste, the subject was back on the front page last summer. “Millions Hit By Pension Gamble” screamed the headline, as the Express learnt the shock news that many funds invest on the stock market. Nothing gets past Des and his hacks. And by November came “£500 Million Pensions Tax Threat”, with the revelation that it was all the Lib Dems’ fault.

Or perhaps it was the Treasury: later that month came “Pension Tax Raid” as it was “revealed” that tax reliefs were to be changed. But they weren’t. This, though, did not deter the hacks who returned to the subject the next month (maybe the stream of severe weather headlines stopped after Nathan Rao had a day off). “£47,000 Raid On Your Pension” came the headline. This time it was the judges to blame.

But then came a hitting of the sweet spot rare even in Express land: only last week the real culprits were unmasked: “Huge Threat To Jobs In EU Pension Shake Up” came the message. It was the EU all along, but then, the average Express reader knew that already. And the story, yet again, was churned from a press release.

All those scare stories, mainly from press releases, so hacks can be kept at their desks and kept productive. That’ll be another Benchmark Of Excellence.

Euro Banknote Frightener Nailed

2012-02-20T16:40:00.003Z

Over at the bear pit that is Maily Telegraph blogland, there is eager anticipation that the collapse of the EU, or the Euro, or something European, is going to happen any day now, despite all the previous predictions of Eurogeddon having been shown to be spectacularly wrong. And head of personal finance Ian Cowie is the latest hack to volunteer to spray his credibility up the wall to support this cause.

“Greek Euros: how to spot them” is the title (Euro is spelled with a small “e” by Cowie, in accordance with the Telegraph’s wish to belittle the single currency), and readers are told how these may be less valuable than those from other countries. Sadly, this is complete garbage: a Euro is a Euro is a Euro, wherever and whenever it was issued.

A Euro is a Euro, whether issued in Lisbon ...

Moreover, Cowie admits as much as he tells “All Euros are backed by the European Central Bank”. So what’s his problem? Ah well. He tries to suggest that notes issued by central banks in certain countries are more reliable than others. But how? There is no discrimination at the supermarket till between those coming out of Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Rome, Brussels or Frankfurt.

Cowie’s talk of certain coins being worth more than others also fails to ring true. I can’t be absolutely certain, but coins with Greek script on the number side look very much like commemorative issues: almost all Euro coinage uses Latin script, and the only difference is on the other side of the coin. Spanish 1 Euro coins, for instance, bear the head of Juan Carlos.

... or in Vienna

But Cowie points up an alleged tendency for Germans to look unfavourably on Euro banknotes issued elsewhere: his citation, sadly, is another Telegraph article, from 2008. I somehow missed this scanning of Italian notes when I was in Berlin later than year. Likewise, neither Italian nor Portuguese issue notes were a problem in Munich two years later. It’s just scaremongering guff.

And a closer look shows that Cowie is actually recycling a post from July 2010: much of the content is common to the two, except that the older piece also talks of UK £20 notes and has some nice pictures of Euro ones. The potential fallout from the Greek bailout talks must have tripped some kind of editorial trigger at the Telegraph which demands instant knocking copy.

Other plausible explanations would be welcome, but this looks once more like agenda driven hackery to order, rather than the output of a supposed paper of record. As I’ve said before, if I had a tenner for every time someone at the Telegraph published an EU horror story, I’d be filthy rich by now (which, sadly, I am not). Perhaps this is what the target demographic demands.

But as half decent journalism, it doesn’t cut it. Must try harder.

The Rehabilitation Of Enoch Powell

2012-02-20T13:11:00.001Z

While the Mail plays the populist card and lays into Tesco over its participation in what looks very much like a “workfare” scheme, the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre is working to re-fashion the recent history of race relations in the UK. Only ten days ago there was an attempt to paint former headmaster Ray Honeyford as some kind of saint. Today it is Enoch Powell.

So today’s piece, by Abhijit Pandya, begins by telling readers “Ray Honeyford was vindicated”, which he was not. As I pointed out recently, Honeyford had contributed an article on “race and education” to the Salisbury Review, which at the time took the stance of advocating “repatriation” for immigrants and their extended families. And much of what he said in his article was couched in the most unfortunate terms.

It was not the first time Honeyford had been in trouble with his local education authority. Moreover, the unnecessary and prolonged media scrum around Drummond Middle School, its pupils, its teachers, its governors, and the parents, was entirely avoidable and down to Honeyford and his writings alone. The Mail has always either ignored or demonised the parents, and that will not do.

And so we come to Powell. Pandya sets the tone very deliberately by referring to him as a “Professor” and “Brigadier”. Let’s put this one to bed straight away: Powell was, in the late 30s, a Professor of Greek at Sydney University. That doesn’t validate his views on race. And, although he rose to the rank of Brigadier during World War 2, he did not see active service.

As to Powell speaking Urdu, this is true, but the reason he did so was not out of respect for Indian culture, but rather because he had the ambition of becoming Governor-General of India (he also taught himself Russian, not for any cultural reason, but because he recognised the significance Russia would have in the outcome of the war). Independence put paid to Powell’s ambition.

Moreover, Pandya’s excusing of Powell over the 1968 speech that caused Sailor Heath to sack him from the shadow cabinet conveniently omits the part about “the black man having the whip hand over the white man” and the deliberate comparisons Powell drew with the USA, which had recently seen rioting in many areas of the country with large African-American populations.

And Powell, after his final departure from Parliament, had turned up to address a meeting of the Yorkshire Monday Club in 1989, where a number of far-right sympathisers had fetched up and turned the post-speech Q&A into one on race and little else. The group was known to house elements with unfortunate views on race. Powell should have known this. It didn’t stop him attending and speaking.

Calling for the rehabilitation of Enoch Powell is a most unwise move.

Express Lavishing Attention

2012-02-19T18:29:00.002Z

Welcome to Wibble Central

It was not for nothing that Private Eye routinely referred to the recently retired editor of the Daily Express as Peter “mentally” Hill: on his watch, the paper became obsessed with Diana conspiracies, Maddy conspiracies, EU conspiracies, immigration conspiracies, and Muslim conspiracies. He then had sufficient brass neck to say “some redtop editors have lost the plot”.

Having left the building just a year ago, Hill has been let back in to contribute an opinion column for Des’ increasingly cheap and nasty version of the title that, under the leadership of Max Beaverbrook, was once shifting four million copies a day, along with some feared and respected investigative journalism. Now it is reduced to churning press releases and recycling copy from its rivals.

But Hill still has his finger on the pulse, as witness his latest piece “Qatada Has To Go”. Here, he tells of “the lavish attention being paid to the rights of Muslim [check!] extremist [check!] Abu Qatada”, who is being paid “generous benefits” [check!]. Hell’s teeth, he’s banged up for 22 hours a day Pete – how exactly do you expect him to find gainful employment when he can’t even talk to his pals?

But Hill is right about the “lavish attention”. Just look at the froth that his fellow pundit Leo McKinstry has worked up as he splutters “This Human Rights Fiasco Needs To Be Brought To An End”. Readers get “judicial destruction ... illegal immigrant ... Muslim extremist ... perverse ruling ... huge outcry ... enfeebled excuse-making ... political cowardice ... alien continental law”. Pretty damn lavish.

And there’s another ranting pundit following close behind: Frederick Forsyth is clearly incandescent with rage as he thunders “We Are Governed By Mice, Not Men”. Yes, Qatada is “freshly released ... on the taxpayer”, and is claimed to have £170,000 available to him. Really? Not really, Fred is merely “presuming” that he has, because otherwise it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the rant.

So just three pundits giving Qatada “lavish attention”, then? Well, no, there’s yet another: step forward Nick Ferrari to tell readers “Abu Qatada Has No Rights”. Sadly, though, Nick isn’t paying attention, telling that Qatada is “convicted”. Not in this country he ain’t, and what the gallery of Express blowhards isn’t telling its readership is that we don’t have an extradition treaty with Jordan, where he has been convicted.

But Nick is sure he’s right, because he had a former minister on his shamelessly plugged breakfast show. So who is this upstanding citizen? Ah well. Actually, it’s none other than “Shagger” Mellor, famous for telling Antonia da Sancha – while wearing his Chelsea shirt – that he was “absolutely knackered”. And then for generating the headline “from toe job to no job”. And then losing his seat.

Hill is right about the “lavish attention”. Pity about the rabble paying it, mind.

HS2: Gilligan Is A Disgrace

2012-02-19T13:05:00.001Z

While many have picked up on the Telegraph’s routinely trashy hatchet job on Richard Dawkins – another example of how the paper is in so many ways little more than a broadsheet Mail – the paper’s “London Editor” Andrew Gilligan has been allowed to contribute a piece of ostensibly proper journalism, on the HS2 project, one of his pet hates. It, too, is in reality a crude attack piece.

“High speed rail link ‘at risk of derailment’ because of 225mph trains” shrieks the shock horror headline, demonstrating the thoughtful and serious tone that Gilligan wishes to strike. And he appears to have a real University Professor to back up his headline, Peter Woodward, who he calls “one of the world’s leading experts on the geo-engineering of railways”.

Prof Woodward, who works at Heriot Watt University, does not make this claim himself – and Gilligan is in no position to judge, having not done any comparative study – but his bio does indeed give his subject area as “Railway Geotechnical Engineering”, and he has an impressive list of publications to his name, as well as his now patented work on polyurethane geocomposites.

But there is a problem with Gilligan’s citing of Prof Woodward: the Telegraph hack admits that the man from Heriot Watt “declined to answer questions about his work”. Yes, sadly, the Prof saw Gilligan coming. But he has done research on train/track interaction at higher speeds, and it is this that Gilligan has drawn upon to get his attention grabbing banner.

Woodward’s research considers the potential of derailment if trains reach a “critical track velocity”, but he does not say what this velocity might be (his research continues), which leaves the way clear for Gilligan to suggest that it could be less than 225mph. But there is a problem with this line of attack: trains have been run at far higher speeds without derailment, and for some years now.

Test runs on part of Japan’s Shinkansen network reached over 270mph in the 1990s, and the current speed record for railways, of just over 357mph, was recorded by an adapted French TGV set in 2007. No derailment occurred, although there was some throwing of ballast in the train’s wake. Moreover, as Gilligan admits, trains operate at 200mph in daily service.

And high speed lines in both France and Japan have an exemplary safety record going back decades. Prof Woodward’s research can only help HS2 – and other similar projects – take that excellent record forward. But instead, Gilligan, who has set his stall out to knock HS2, has tried to manipulate the facts to fit his agenda and frighten the readers.

Andrew Gilligan is a disgrace to journalism. No change there, then.

Return Of The Poison Man

2012-02-19T11:00:00.006Z

Twitter is not a happy environment for all those who seek to use it to project their message: while some broadcasters, politicians and slebs garner millions of followers and succeed in building up their image in the process, others bring controversy. This latter looks to be the fate of Tory spinmeister and dog whistle specialist Lynton Crosby, who has stumbled onto the medium recently.

Lynt clearly isn’t too fussed with following anyone: his Twitter feed is no more than a tool for broadcasting propaganda, in the style of Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips. But it is the real dog whistle deal, as he tells “Livingstone plays the politics of division and hatred. Imagine him as London’s face”, the intention being to induce widespread Pavlovian slavering across the capital.

And just to underscore this tactic – despite one fellow Tweeter making adverse comment – comes “Imagine going back to the days when Lee [Jasper] and Ken’s mob wasted your taxes”, which conveniently omits talk of vanity buses, vanity cable cars, and a less than revenue neutral cycle scheme which has caused Barclays’ bosses to laugh all the way to their own particular bank.

So then we get a change of tack, as Lynt tries to gee up the campaigners: “40 teams backing Boris on weekend. Great response. Ken going off track this wk reminds people how divisive he is. He’s got our workers going”. This makes no sense at all. Professor Unwin? “Deep joy campaigni across the widely capitole. Wonder of the blondy Boris vanqui lefty Livingstole in the forthcomi electilode”. That’s much better.

But no matter, back comes Lynt with his first deadly serious and specific attack: “Maria Eagle in Guardian confirms no money pot for Ken’s transport plans – so fare cut promise is a scam and investment at risk under Ken”. Oh dear. Maria Eagle isn’t in Government – minor point there – and Lynt isn’t up to speed on linking to the piece in the deeply subversive Guardian.

So he has another go an hour later. Sadly, though, Ms Eagle does not say anything about Livingstone’s campaign pledges on transport, and moreover talks of opposing “cuts in Network Rail and would use the cash to keep fares down” (Ken’s majoring on fares). She also talks of “cash for safe cycle lanes”. One would have thought that Lynt would have made sure of his ground before posting that one.

That causes the thought to enter that this Twitter account could be a spoof, but it has the official Tory Tree (tm), it links to the Back Boris 2012 site, and it has the authentic dog whistling one would expect. But unless Lynt can figure out Twitter and stop insulting his target audience, this isn’t going to help Bozza’s campaign one bit.

Which could be very good news indeed for Londoners.

Netroots Reflections

2012-02-18T19:42:00.001Z

Today I joined dozens of other bloggers, campaigners, activists and no doubt members of the routinely curious at the Netroots North West event, kindly hosted by the University of Manchester. It was good to finally say hello to folks including Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy, Clifford Singer of False Economy and The Other Taxpayers’ Alliance, Carl Roper, and Peter Middleman.

What I learnt was a variety of useful tips, anecdotes, and most memorably stories from those who have campaigned, often in adverse circumstances, and all too often against a Government that has already made its mind up not to listen, or, worse, to cast itself as being right, while characterising those in opposition to it as being wrong, misguided, foolish or just plain bad.

There are a number of reasons for Governments of all stripes to behave in this manner: the tendency to centralise and rule from the comfort of the Westminster Village in itself distances those in power from those directly affected by its decisions, while the disproportionate influence of the Fourth Estate distorts the prism through which those that govern see the world.

On top of all that, the use of Astroturf lobby groups – which have little or no grassroots support (check out how many Twitter users follow most of those at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), for instance) to effectively bypass the electorate and buy influence distorts yet further. Then there is the information overload to which so many MPs and peers are regularly subjected.

Small wonder, then, that those in Parliament do not always listen, to the clear frustration of campaigners like that convocation of the less able who brought us the now legendary Spartacus Report. Moreover, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has been shown to have serially misinformed the public on the subject of benefits, as has the press.

That last does not surprise me, and nor did it surprise Clifford Singer: after all, former TPA staffer Susie Squire went through the revolving door to become a SpAd at the DWP after the last General Election. But what groups like the TPA and their friends on the right are playing is a very dangerous game: people shut out of the process of Government and demonised in the process do not merely run along quietly.

And that isn’t a threat: it’s a fact. Another fact is that this is not a purely left-wing thing: some on the right have forgotten about their pals in the Countryside Alliance, who were also frustrated not to be heard. Given the toolset offered by social media and the support of a network of like minded people, folks will be heard, whatever their political stance, especially if they are the many and not the few.

All of which should make for an interesting future in and around politics.

Crash Bang Hypocrite

2012-02-18T10:14:00.004Z

There was joy in the right leaning part of the blogosphere recently when the scary looking Mark Wallace, after trawling around Facebook in search of wrongdoing – stamp collecting and spotting various kinds of transportation devices is clearly so last century – found a Labour councillor “liking” something IRA related, and then saw said councillor suspended by the party as a result.

Used car, Sir?

This sparked off a round of righteous bluster by those of like mind: comments by the general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association that there was little sympathy in parts of the north east towards Margaret Thatcher caused flannelled fool Henry Cole, tame gofer to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, to engage full righteous victimhood mode.

So it might be thought that some kinds of comments directed at political opponents should be considered beyond the pale, off limits, and the subject of disciplinary action. But that thought may be premature. Wallace, as well as supposedly working full time for Portland Communications, is also retained as a “Senior Fellow” by the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), one of whose area reps has recent form here.

Last September, TPA Manchester rep Liam Billington, observing the aftermath of an apparent arson attack on the Labour Club at Stalybridge, Tweeted “Stalybridge Labour Club ‘arson’: we’re all clear that this is an insurance swindle right?” and the Tweet was only deleted after I pointed it out to TPA director Matthew Sinclair. This was not about former Prime Ministers, but folks in the local community.

And one of those folks had suffered significant burns in the arson attack. But there was no suspension: Billington, as far as is known, is still TPA rep for the area – just the one, you understand, showing the depth of those fabled “grassroots” – and moreover there was no apology to the Stalybridge Labour Club, just an exercise in keeping heads down and hoping nobody would notice.

The only subsequent action has been that Billington has – perhaps wisely – taken his Twitter feed private, thus demonstrating the TPA’s commitment to transparency and openness – which as any fule kno, is for them to demand of others while managing not to practice themselves. One thing is for sure: “Senior Fellow” Wallace won’t be talking about this any time soon.

Can you smell hypocrisy?

Express Euro-Budget Spin Horror

2012-02-17T16:38:00.003Z

What with all the weather shock horror front page splashes recently, the Express has not run an EU frightener for some time. And, as the paper is running an alleged “crusade” against the EU, there needs to be a regular supply of EU frighteners. So today, with the weather not bringing death and destruction in its wake, came “Greedy Euro MPs Demand Pay Rise”.

And not only that, the demand was being made “as the EU falls apart”. It’s falling apart? Heck, I must have blinked and missed it. Martyn Brown’s rant cranks up the frothing to the max: “Grasping Euro MPs ... fury last night [it’s always “last night”] ... brink of catastrophe ... shameless demand ... rake in £360,000 in expenses ... hugely inflated ... staggering ... juggernaut ... gravy train”.

Sadly, one of those they turn to for a comment is Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, who knows all about raking in expenses – a reputed £2 million of them so far. But there was also a contribution from Matthew “Gromit” Elliott of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (expenses not disclosed) to press the required buttons: “rife with waste ... hoover up cash ... pointless spending ... affront”. Sir Sean says I think we got the point.

OK, so what is actually happening? Well, it depends on who is setting the scene: a report from RTT news (they’re in Williamsville, NY) on the same subject carries the headline “European Parliament’s 2013 Budget Frozen For Expenditure Cut”. There will be a real terms freeze, along with an attempt to find further savings, particularly where there may be overlaps across budgets.

And what’s this? “All the individual allowances for MEPs will be frozen until the end of this parliament’s term. All travel-related budget lines ... will be frozen at 2012 levels. The overall travel budget has already been cut by five percent for 2012”. There’s more: “MEPs also adopted an amendment ... ‘the real and biggest saving could be made by having a single seat for the European Parliament’”.

The Express, though, just parrots the usual “astronomical amount ... gold plated pensions ... and other costs involved in a Parliament that meets in both Brussels and Strasbourg”, thus missing the very significant news that there is a move in train to end the practice of having two locations for the EP. Seeing that through would produce real savings and show that MEPs were serious about saving money.

In reality, of course, the Express will spin whatever comes out of the EU to make it fit the agenda. Actually informing the readers does not enter: that would not frighten them sufficiently to get them to pick up the paper from the news stand. Today’s front page will do just that. And it won’t have cost more than a few phone calls.

And we know what that means. Yes, it’s another Benchmark Of Excellence.

Guido Fawked – Internship Hypocrisy

2012-02-17T12:18:00.002Z

Internships are a much debated topic around the Westminster village, not least because many of them are unpaid, although some lucky souls get lunch and travel expenses reimbursed. And hot on the employers who are getting away with this are the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer, the flannelled fool Henry Cole, at the Guido Fawkes blog.

Indeed, the less than dynamic duo have posted several times on the subject: last April, it was the Lib Dem HQ at Cowley Street getting the flak, by October the target was Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, in December it was the Tories again (“Tories recruit hundreds of interns for free”), and most recently Tone got it in the neck. A true cross-party rogues’ gallery was unmasked.

So it must be assumed that Staines and Cole have judged this practice to be A Very Bad Thing Indeed. And they are also hot on anyone caught sponging off the taxpayer, as shown by their campaign to bring the subsidy of Parliamentary wining and dining to a wider audience, which they have even managed to get into the hated and deeply subversive Guardian.

It was therefore something of a surprise to see an advert placed yesterday on a taxpayer funded website for an unpaid internship connected to the Fawkes blog. As can be seen, this was for The Commentator, a newly formed repository of right-wing frothing, ranting and victimhood, whose “UK Political Editor”, as proclaimed on his Twitter bio, is none other than Henry Cole.

Moreover, this is not just an unpaid internship, but on the face of it one without any reimbursement for travel or food. This is a truly exploitative exercise. It would be interesting to hear the excuses for the exploitation, and of course the routine act of sponging off the taxpayer, or as Cole’s pals at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance would put it, “the hard pressed ordinary taxpayer”.

Clearly there is one rule for the targets of the Fawkes blog, and another for its authors. And Staines should desist from pretending he’s racked by poverty: he’s got as many houses as Polly Toynbee, who he likes to paint as a “millionaire”. Fact of the matter is that he and Cole, the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere, are a pair of stinking hypocrites, and they just got caught.

Another fine mess, once again.

Mad Mel Makes Mail Exit?

2012-02-17T10:44:00.001Z

Last June, Spectator publisher Andrew “Brillo Pad” Neil and editor Fraser Nelson were reputedly left “fuming” as they were landed with a five figure bill for damages and costs after Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips libelled Alastair Crooke. Mel said she left the Spectator because they apologised. Most others reckon she jumped before being pushed.

So Mel was left with her own blog, and the bully pulpit given to her by the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and the preposterously pompous Simon Heffer at the RightMinds part of Mail Online. Here, she continued to rant and froth at the world, notably in two particularly nasty kicks at Rory Weal, the 16-year-old who committed the unforgiveable sin of speaking at the Labour Party conference.

In the second of her two attacks on young Rory, Mel gloated “Well that didn’t take long, did it” as she gleefully laid in to the teenager, safe in the knowledge that Dacre and Heffer wouldn’t allow someone who associated with the likes of Mil The Younger to have the right of reply. Such people were not the Mail’s “kind of people”. Mel was at this point dutifully doing her editor’s bidding.

Sadly, though, Mel has a habit of going off-piste whenever she talks about the Middle East, and especially Israel. This, after all, was where she came unstuck in her rant against Alastair Crooke. Thus it was that in late October she penned a post titled “The moderate fanatics of the Islamist Winter”, telling in apocalyptic terms that the “Arab Spring” meant Sharia Law, and that this was A Very Bad Thing.

As she ranted, Mel repeated allegations that one Rashid Ghannouchi had threatened to hang two opponents. This, like so much else in the Phillips oeuvre, was not true, and this time it got past the watching eyes of the Mail’s lawyers, who will no doubt have been suitably wary, given the circumstances of her departure from the Spectator. The paper has now apologised.

What is interesting about the apology is that Mad Mel is not mentioned anywhere in it. And what is yet more interesting is that her last Mail Online piece was a relatively mild one about “Oiky” Gove and education. There hasn’t been anything mentioning Israel for over a fortnight (a post on Syria did not, unusually, say anything about its neighbour to the south west).

Anyone looking at all this might conclude that Melanie Phillips has been warned by the Mail to tone down the ranting and stick to the kind of stuff that Dacre and Heffer want their pundits to produce. It will be interesting to see how much longer she remains a Mail Online presence: after all, if she won’t toe the line there, and the Spectator doesn’t want her, the options don’t look promising.

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

The Freelance Misunderstanding

2012-02-16T18:05:00.002Z

[Update at end of post]

Every so often, the Fourth Estate works itself into a lather about people being paid through limited companies. This is especially true where the individual concerned is working for a Government body or public corporation – think John Birt at the BBC – and it totally fails to appreciate the nature of the UK’s labour market. Make that the flexible nature of that market.

We are constantly being told that the labour market should be more flexible: well, folks working through limited companies are one sign of that flexibility. I know this, as I am a freelance worker, and I work through my own limited company. There is nothing underhand or devious about this arrangement: indeed, in the past this was the (then) Inland Revenue’s preferred way of dealing with freelances.

And all the guff about “loyalty” is just that: this depends on the length of contract agreed, any notice period or lack thereof, and the relationship between worker and employer – as would be the case with permanent staff, except with a freelance, a whole load of less convenient stuff (pension provision, holiday pay, taxation, sickness, even professional indemnity cover) is down to the worker.

That, along with the ease of disposing of them when demand dips, makes freelances a much more attractive proposition. Moreover, the talk of tax avoidance may also be just talk: if the freelance works only for one employer, they are usually said to be “caught” for the purposes of the detested IR35, and so cannot avoid liability for National Insurance payments by taking some payment as a dividend.

So, having explained what should not really need explaining, it was strange to see the Guardian covering this story in the way it has – given that it, and all the other papers running it use freelance workers (Nick Davies of Flat Earth News and Phonehackgate fame is a freelance) and should therefore be well aware of what is going on. It should not be new news.

Instead, the story has been lifted by the Mail, where the assertion has been made that “More than two dozen senior officials at the Department of Health are being paid their salaries via private companies in an attempt to avoid tax”, which is complete baloney. Moreover, the sums quoted are not the salary that the individuals are paid, but the gross payment made to the limited company.

This – deliberate – misunderstanding is something that the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) uses when trying to make freelance assignments with Government agencies look more generous than they are. Rule of thumb, as I’ve noted previously, is that a rate of £10 an hour equates roughly to £10k a year when all the costs loaded onto the limited company are paid.

The TPA, of course, wants a flexible labour market. So why the complaint?

[UPDATE 1850 hours: Sadly, it seems that ignorance of freelance workers and limited companies extends to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer, the flannelled fool Henry Cole, at the Guido Fawkes blog. The less than dynamic duo have served up a substantial helping of steaming bovine by-product this afternoon in an attempt to kick Labour's Andy Burnham.

Like the Mail, the Fawkes blog describes folks at the Department of Health being paid through limited companies as "a Whitehall-wide tax-dodge", then tries to suggest that there is something wrong with Burnham's advisor Kevin Lee being paid in this way. It is in fact a very good way to offload all sorts of costs on to Lee and his company, as I pointed out (see above).

Then the Fawkes blog gets all confused and tries to infer that Lee's directorship of another limited company means he was benefiting from NHS work that company did. Sorry lads, you'll have to go through the books to figure that one out - and I suspect the accountants are not about to let you. Another fine mess, once again]

Tesco: Not Worth It Even Without The Gate

2012-02-16T15:58:00.001Z

Supermarket giant Tesco is in the news today, and given the nature of the story, its management may rather it were not: the retailer has been caught offering jobs that pay “JSA plus expenses”, the JSA being Job Seeker’s Allowance. Yes, Tesco is looking to fill jobs – night shift ones at that – with the unemployed while not actually paying them anything bar expenses.

Many have been outraged, and more and more voices are telling how they are boycotting Tesco until they cease this practice. My reaction was to ask what kept them: I kicked Tesco into touch years ago, following a number of examples of poor customer service, dishonest advertising, and a particularly unnecessary standoff in the foyer of the (now demolished and rebuilt) Crewe store.

The advertising was dishonest for one reason: flyers would be distributed with a number of special offers on them. Arriving at the store, there would be no sign of many of those offers. But you were in the store and therefore more likely to buy at least something. That was when the staff could be arsed to talk to you. At the Crewe store they were more likely to spend their time talking to one another.

So, what of the standoff? Well, back in early 2005 I needed a cheap portable TV, and Tesco had some on offer for around £43. This was not an onerous sum, and so I bought one. Sadly, later that year the device went zip, and so it was taken back to the store for a refund, given that it was less than twelve months old. This proved less than popular with the staff, who initially declined to make that refund.

The store manager was summoned. He too was most reluctant to refund the princely sum of £43. Excuses were deployed. Obstacles were placed in my way. After some time, and realising that I was not intending to run along and make their day marginally less inconvenient, the clinching excuse was given that I had to call a helpline (this is a popular Tesco blocking tactic).

After some further to and fro, the manager at least allowed the call to the helpline from a store telephone. And, following the wasting of another 20 minutes of my time, the call was answered, with the poor soul on the other end telling that the set was “not repairable” and that it was “manager’s discretion”. In other words, the manager could (and should) have made the call himself rather earlier.

This is not an isolated incident, as the experience of Peter Ward and his wife at Tesco’s Batley store (also over a broken TV) showed. At least I didn’t get the threat of forcible eviction from the store (which sounds like a security guard exceeding his authority). The contrast with Argos – where electrical goods are swapped out without fuss – could not be greater.

Yes, lowering prices is in the Tesco DNA. Especially the ones they have to pay.

Super Soaraway Yuman Rights

2012-02-16T11:19:00.001Z

As Littlejohn is so fond of saying, sometimes “you couldn’t make it up”, and one of those times came when Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Sun decided to fight back against the increasing tide of arrests – and assertions of potentially sustained criminality at the paper – by hiring Geoffrey Robertson QC to spearhead a human rights challenge in the courts.

Yes, hacks at the paper that for so long railed against what Dicky Windbag calls “Yuman Rights” have decided to invoke their, er, Yuman Rights. On the face of it, this looks like a straightforward, and outstanding, example of rank hypocrisy. But the supposed costs of human rights legislation, and in particular the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), have not exactly been soundly reported either.

As the Sun reported last April, the source for their “Human rights law costs £9bn a year” story was one Lee Rotherham, who you can tell as he’s a doctor. What the Sun piece did not tell – although this was admitted by the Express when it picked up the story the following day – was that Rotherham is one of the assortment of non-job holders at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA).

Instead, Sun hack Rhodri Phillips lauds Rotherham as an “ECHR Expert”, which will induce hollow laughter among all who have encountered this singularly nervous and serially dishonest individual. The suitably scary looking numbers quoted by the Sun come from a TPA “report” called “Britain And The ECHR”, where Rotherham asserts that the cost to the UK of the ECHR over the years has been £42.9 billion.

Not only that, he also claims that “The UK has to date lost three quarters (331 out of 418) of the rulings that have progressed to the top Strasbourg court”. It is only later on that this is clarified to “lost the case or settled out of court”. And most of that £42.9 billion is down to the “compensation culture”, which “the Convention has played a part in developing” (allegedly – no cite).

So Rotherham has effectively told his audience to take him on trust for a cool £25 billion. It gets worse when the various cases making up the remaining £17.9 billion are examined: Rotherham says the numbers are “known or assessable costs”, but does not provide any citation for this. So we have to take him on trust for the £17.9 billion as well. Think of a number – he’s a Doctor.

This is an appalling steamer, even by the TPA’s standards, although as it’s still live on their website it has to be assumed that they are prepared to stand by it. The conclusion, though, is that the shock horror bluster from the Sun was build on sand, on what appeared authoritative but was in reality a conflation of premeditated dishonesty from someone who has previous in this area.

So it can be disregarded when the hacks are in trouble, then.

Lame Mail Appeal To Authority

2012-02-15T17:41:00.002Z

[Update at end of post]

The all too predictable assault on supposed “secularism” from the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has continued, via an encouragement to readers to “Have Your Say” on the subject of “Militant Atheist” Richard Dawkins, and has now engaged the services of The Queen in its campaign. But all is, as with so many Mail headlines, not what it seems.

“Christianity is ‘under-appreciated’: Queen’s staunch defence of a traditional faith under increasing attack after prayer ban ruling” thunders the eponymous Daily Mail Reporter, thus telling readers exactly what to think, and confirming what Nick Davies concluded in Flat Earth News, that “Dacre kills with headlines”. The problem here is that what The Queen said doesn’t match the bluster.

Her Majesty was speaking at a multi-faith (as in “not just Christian”) reception at Lambeth Palace. And what she said bears relating in full: “Here at Lambeth Palace we should remind ourselves of the significant position of the Church of England in our nation’s life ... The concept of our established Church is occasionally misunderstood and, I believe, commonly under-appreciated ... Its role is not to defend Anglicanism to the exclusion of other religions. Instead, the Church has a duty to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country”.

So The Queen did not say that “Christianity” was “under-appreciated”. She said that the concept of the established Church was under-appreciated. There are other strands of Christianity – Catholicism and more rigorous Protestantism, for instance – that are not part of the established Church.

Moreover, she also emphasised the duty of that established Church to “protect the free practice of all faiths”. So that’s a duty to protect the followers of Judaism, Buddhism, and yes, Islam to practice their chosen faith. And by inference, it’s also a duty to tolerate those of other faiths, or who have no faith.

And what The Queen’s comments are nothing to do with are the actions of former Councillor Clive Bone, whose action meant that his local council in Bideford could not make prayer a minuted part of their meetings, although the Mail has put Bone’s photo in the article and inferred that this would mean the potential end of the Coronation Oath (this last is complete rot).

The article is an illustration of the desperate lengths to which Dacre and his hacks will go in order to push their “Christianity under attack” agenda. Not only does there have to be the usual why-oh-why and victimhood bluster, but there also has to be a clumsy co-opting of The Queen, who they well know is not likely to speak out and correct them. This is a truly barrel scraping act.

Small wonder, then, that no hack would put their name to it. It’s not good enough.

[UPDATE 16 February: even the Express, characteristically coming to the story a day late, has managed a decently balanced headline, with "Queen: Why The Church's Role Is Misunderstood", which reflects what was said, rather than what the editor's agenda would like to have been said.

Sadly, though, the piece does stray close to going gaga on occasion as it quotes George Carey apparently saying that "homosexual rights trump religious rights", which is an interesting way of justifying homophobia. Sayeeda Warsi also gets a mention for her ridiculous "militant secularisation". Heck, if only there were more "militant secularists", there would be none of that political party in-fighting, less protests and demonstrations, and very little terrorism]

Silence Of The Young TURCs

2012-02-15T14:14:00.003Z

[Updates, two so far, at end of post]

As was noted on Zelo Street at the time, the so-called Trade Union Reform Campaign (TURC), named because it does not want to reform Trade Unions but drive them into the ground, finally had its launch event on January 24, attended not by “dozens of Tory MPs and Peers ... and even some Lib Dems”, but by 30 to 35 individuals, some merely after a free beer.

This latter was the apparent act of deception practiced on former England cricketer Darren Gough, who stressed after the event that he had no connection with the group, and just happened to be there visiting a friend. So the honesty bar had been set rather low, which was no surprise given the presence of the flannelled fool Henry Cole, tame gofer to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines.

But there was the prospect of TURC actually doing some campaigning, as on January 30 its Twitter feed told of a “Busy week ahead. TURC meeting tonight and we will be advertising our first staff hires this week”. That week passed without any advertisement for “staff hires”, or indeed for anything to do with TURC. So did the week after that. So has this week thus far.

And the TURC’s pals over at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) have not been exactly busting a gut to support: there was an item yesterday by new boy Jonathan Isaby attacking Peterborough Council for having workplace union representatives – who he pejoratively calls “activists” – and characteristically calls this a “subsidy” to the union concerned, though that union does not see any of the money.

Isaby has previous on this, but then, so do his colleagues: the TPA line is that facility time means “taxpayer funded Trade Unionism” and that somehow this is a zero sum game whereby the unions concerned get millions of pounds of public funding which they then use to organise strikes and other industrial action. But at no time do they explain what workplace representatives actually do.

And unless they do explain that, their argument cannot be stood up: Isaby’s use of the term “fatuous” can equally well be applied to him. It can also be applied to his friends at TURC, who have gathered together a group of almost all new intake Tory MPs to attack facility time arrangements, but who have done little more than name calling and promotional puffs since the group was formed.

That is not going to help the attempts by the TPA and TURC to get the Coalition to amend the 1992 legislation which formalised facility time arrangements. While there is lots of hot air expended from the right, the recent actions of the TPA amount to little more than a damp squib, while those from TURC amount to, well, more or less nothing at all.

Hardly worth their while starting the campaign, then. Another fine mess.

[UPDATE1 1615 hours: the TURC Twitter feed has coughed back into life following this post - not of course that Master Cole looks in on Zelo Street, which of course he doesn't, and those anonymous comments that look like his are by someone else, 'cos he says so - to endorse Jonathan Isaby's lame TPA piece referred to above.

But it's not much of a "campaign", is it? Where are the "staff hires" promised over a fortnight ago? Where is the action? Where are the first signs that the Government is even considering changing the legislation on facility time? Where, indeed, is any progress other than the further expending of hot air? Bit of a stiff, this one]

[UPDATE2 1840 hours: news has now emerged - thanks to Political Scrapbook - that prosecutors in France have decided to launch a full investigation into the Nazi-themed stag party attended by TURC Chair Aidan Burley MP. This news, to no surprise at all, has not been reported by TURC, nor the Guido Fawkes blog, co-authored by Master Cole. The latter is too busy kicking actor Patrick Stewart for, er, having an opinion. Another fine mess, once again]

Gilligan Caught Bendying Facts – Again

2012-02-15T11:02:00.001Z

As opinion polls continue to show Labour challenger Ken Livingstone running neck and neck with London’s occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Bozza’s cheerleaders in the press are starting to get nervous, and the veracity of their copy is getting increasingly shaky, as shown by Maily Telegraph “London Editor” Andrew Gilligan’s latest effort to rubbish Ken’s legacy.

“Boris Johnson’s new bus: only another five days to go as another city dumps bendies” gurgles Gilligan enthusiastically today. So which “other city” is “dumping bendies”? Well, according to Gilligan, that city is York. And there we have a problem in standing up his story, as York is not actually “dumping bendies” at all, given it got some new ones around three years ago.

Bus services in York, run by First Group, include a number of Park and Ride routes – five in all – which are operated with support from the City Council. These use a mix of conventional single deckers and – wait for it – Mercedes Citaro bendy buses, the last of which were delivered in January 2009. The latter are particularly useful in mopping up crowds at peak time (bit like with the 507 at Victoria, then).

So, once again, Gilligan’s propaganda piece unravels in short order: he had homed in on a totally different issue, that of the First Group concept bus called the ftr (that’s “future” without the vowels), an articulated vehicle it developed in conjunction with Wright Bus – yes, the same folks who developed the BozzaMaster – and which has proved to be controversial in its operation.

The ftr was introduced around six years ago on one route in York – the 4 which runs from the city’s University across the centre to the suburb of Acomb – and its use was plagued by problems. The buses are designed as a kind of “tram substitute”, but in reality they have problems with raised kerbs where space is tight, and boarding proved so slow that a conductor was needed at most times.

The extra crew member (any alarm bells sounding in London yet?) made operation more expensive, meaning that the City Council had to bung First more in subsidy to maintain the service. Ordinary bendy buses, or conventional double deckers, could have run the route equally well, and the 4 will revert to the latter later this year when the contract to run the ftr expires.

So, rather than showing how rotten ordinary bendy buses are, Andrew Gilligan has exposed a parallel between the expensive and unwanted ftr in York and the BozzaMaster that he has been championing for so long. The ftr proved difficult to manoeuvre in city streets and its conductor meant it was far more expensive than an ordinary bus. It wasn’t worth the novelty of the concept.

Thus an unintentional word of warning from the great Gilligan.

Dave And A God Whistle

2012-02-14T16:35:00.001Z

One can imagine the cabinet meeting and agonising over how to keep up the appeal to the voters. The shine has come off Young Dave’s jolly good veto deployment in Brussels, there has been more bad economic news from another of those – admittedly next to useless – ratings agencies, and of course there is Abu Qatada yet again being very, very dangerous. Allegedly.

What the Coalition needs is a good old fashioned dog-whistle issue that will appeal to the kinds of papers which can sway opinion. With the Sun, or at least several of its hacks, in the mire, that means the Daily Mail. And there, the touchstone issue is that Christianity is under attack. But what if Cameron could broaden that to include all religions? And maybe get a non-Christian to spread the message?

By the happiest of coincidences, that is exactly what Sayeeda Warsi has done with a piece in the Maily Telegraph. The sole Muslim minister in the cabinet is heading a delegation to the Vatican, and making an appropriately bullish defence of religion, and Christianity in particular: “those who wrote the European constitution made no mention of God or Christianity” she laments.

And rightly so: there would have been many Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, Scientologists, Pagans and others who would have taken instant exception to anything that even hinted at a sole claim on religiosity – not to mention all the various flavours of Christianity that would project their own take on the scriptures onto any mention of that religion. This is a subject wisely left alone.

Moreover, Warsi’s assertion that there is a “militant secularisation” (just to make sure you don’t miss that, she says it twice) is baloney. She’d have been far nearer the mark had she said “apathetic” instead of “militant”. Secularism never did car bombings, assassinations, invasions, annexations, and of course crusades. I do hope Sayeeda remembers crusades. They featured lots of religious conflict.

And I don’t go with her assertion that “totalitarian regimes” means “targeting of organised religion”. Mussolini didn’t do that in Italy, nor Hitler in Nazi Germany (the saying “kuche, kirche, kinder” has a clue in it). Spanish currency during Franco’s reign referred to “por la glorie de Dios” (by the grace of God). Salazar’s Estado Novo reflected Catholic social doctrine and papal encyclicals.

Sayeeda Warsi says she will be “fighting for faith”, but she has no need to. The constant stream of inflated stories asserting that Christianity is “under threat” is so much hot air, the result of faith groups playing a victimhood agenda. The established Church has a guaranteed place in the legislature. The head of state is also head of that Church. There is little point in fighting for something already thus privileged.

But it might get the opinion polls to turn upward, so that’s all right, then.

Express Scare Switch

2012-02-14T12:43:00.004Z

As the snow and ice gradually retreats and temperatures rise, one might think that the Express’ weather shock horror front page splashes – such a lucrative attention-getter, and at next to zero cost – might be on their way out. But that thought has today been shown to be misplaced, as Nathan Rao (busy fellow, our Nathan) has moved on to “Britain Faces Drought Crisis”.

It does? How can that be? It’s not been the driest winter here in the north west, but of course rainfall varies from one region of the UK to another. For the past two summers, while London’s Hyde Park was looking distinctly parched, the grass had no problem growing in North Wales and the Lake District. Rao has figured this out, as he tells “Water Shortage Worst For 90 Years”.

What, worse than 1976? Well, not everywhere: this only applies, and even then only potentially applies, to East Anglia and the South East. And maybe parts of the Midlands, although for some reason Rao manages to miss all those water sources in Wales that provide for this part of the country. Also, the research fails when it comes to 1976 – badly.

There was no widespread deployment of standpipes (none, for instance, in West Yorkshire), as he asserts, and nor was rationing otherwise imposed across significant areas of the UK. The potential was certainly there, but days after Denis Howell was made “minister for drought”, the heavens opened, and soon after he became “minister for floods” instead.

Rao’s geography is also shaky: he talks of “Anglia’s reservoir in Rutland, near Lincoln”, which is a bit like saying “Brighton, near London”. The two are around 50 miles apart. Can’t the Desmond press stretch to a map for the office? Actually, the thought occurred that the answer to that question, given Des’ parsimony, could well be “no”, so the howler is no surprise.

In any case, the lower than average rainfall has been with us for the best part of two years – although mainly in the South and East of England. Like so much that gets splashed by the Express, it isn’t new news, merely reheated stuff given a sprinkling of shock horror and a dramatic looking headline. But it costs no more than a few phone calls to pull together.

And that means yet another front page that gets punters to pick up the Express, but still costs Des very little money. It’s good for the bottom line, and therefore qualifies as yet another Benchmark Of Excellence.

Dick And The Rozzers

2012-02-14T11:12:00.002Z

Comedy gold of the unintentional kind comes to the Mail today as obscenely overpaid and otherwise tedious and unfunny hack Richard Littlejohn attempts to ride to the rescue of his former colleagues at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun. “Scotland Yard Stasi and this sinister assault on a free Press” howls the headline, as Dick launches into the rozzers for, er, doing their job.

And he slips a porkie into the first sentence: “Squads of up to 20 police officers ...” he begins. The Met has confirmed that “no more than ten MPS officers” attended each address. Then comes “six o’clock in the morning” and “dozens more detectives rip out car doors, tear up floorboards and search through underwear drawers and beneath mattresses”, all of which he just made up.

Dick’s creative retelling is then underscored with “Nazi Germany ... Communist East Berlin under the Stasi” and the clinching “Gestapo tactics”. It gets better in short order as Littlejohn sternly tells “No one is condoning criminality”, although you know that just around the corner is “But”. Following the “But” is “they are being treated worse than terrorist suspects” (how?) and Abu Qatada.

Behold the Acme of truly distinguished journalism

What has Abu Qatada got to do with this? What the heck, he’s A Very Bad Person and he’s not been nicked. Sun hacks, on the other hand, have “distinguished careers”. Yeah, right. So distinguished that today’s top stories include “Shakira Attacked By Mad Sea Lion” and Coleen Rooney modelling a variety of bikinis. And there’s Abu Qatada being A Very Bad Person again.

Whatever. Dick knows who is to blame for his pals getting the heavy treatment from the rozzers. It’s Bernard Hogan Howe, newly appointed Commissioner of the Met. Giving him the job was clearly A Bad Thing, because it should have gone to Hugh Orde – after all, Dick says he was “the outstanding candidate”. He wasn’t saying that last August when he was pushing for Bill Bratton to get the job. Hypocrite.

But Littlejohn has the inside track here: “My colleagues on the crime beat say that since Hyphen-Howe (laugh? I thought I’d never start) was installed as Commissioner ahead of the outstanding candidate Sir Hugh Orde, normal relations between the police and the press have ground to a halt”. As if you get your “colleagues on the crime beat” looking in on your gated Florida compound. Making it up again.

Equally made up is the inference that Theresa May – someone Dick dislikes to the extent of going into sneering, patronising sexist mode whenever he talks about her – should have questions to answer. The only ones protesting are Sun hacks, and their pals. As I pointed out yesterday, those same folks had no problem when the boot was on the other foot and it was the hacks’ targets getting nicked.

Dick, you’re a dick. Don’t get paranoid. Get real.

Mail Currency Repeats

2012-02-13T18:44:00.002Z

[Update at end of post]

The word has clearly gone out at the Mail to administer one of those periodic kicks at the Euro, given that the single currency did not collapse at the weekend as many of the assembled hacks would have liked. So instead, we get a story of a village in Spain that is supposedly going back to using the Peseta for its currency. Except that it isn’t doing any such thing.

“Spanish village goes back to peseta as Euro crisis takes hold” begins the headline. But all that the residents of Villamayor de Santiago have done is to dig out notes and coins that remained unspent when the Euro notes and coins were introduced. It’s a typical piece of Mail story inflation. And it’s not a new story, either, as a look at the paper called, er, the Daily Mail shows.

Yes, back in March last year, the Mail was telling its readers about Murgardos, in the north west of the country, where ... “The peseta returns to Spain to boost economy”! This time, the story was more accurate, telling that there was an estimated €1.7 billion worth of the old currency not accounted for after the changeover to the Euro. So the Mail is recycling its own stuff.

But it’s a place in a different part of Spain, and the angle can be changed to make it look that bit worse for the Euro, so that’s all right, then.

[UPDATE 17 February: right on cue, Richard Littlejohn has picked up this non-story, telling readers "A Spanish town has turned its back on the Euro", which it hasn't.

Dicky Windbag also calls for the return of "pounds and ounces", so no doubt he'll be able to tell his adoring public how many of the latter there are in one of the former. And how many fluid ounces there are in a pint (clue: the answer is different for liquid). And how many pounds there are in a stone, stones in a hundredweight, and hundredweights in a ton.

Doing all your sums in Base 10 is easier than farting about with base 16, 14, 8 and 20. And don't start me on inches, feet, yards, chains, furlongs and miles. Dick, you're a dick. Try engaging brain first and including the odd fact in your copy]

A Sense Of Proportion?

2012-02-13T13:19:00.001Z

[Update at end of post]

Following my observations yesterday about the state of play at the Murdoch Sun following another round of arrests – these of senior executive staff, on suspicion of “bribing police and public officials” – Trevor Kavanagh, the paper’s veteran associate editor and former political editor, has come out with guns blazing. The whiff of victimhood is palpable.

“Witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on Press freedom” he protests, not realising that “ex-Soviet” means “no longer Soviet”, and ignoring his own title’s going after two less than fully mobile pensioners in Nottingham a week ago because they had claimed universal (and therefore not means tested) benefits. And he claims this is part of “the biggest police operation in British criminal history” (it isn’t).

This last, of course, continues the “Littlejohn feint”: attempting to get public opinion on-side by asserting that the Met’s finest should have better things to do than arrest hacks who may have bunged public servants the odd bundle of used notes, no questions asked. Kavanagh trowels it on by asserting “Major crime investigations are on hold” (like which? That’ll be another long wait, then).

Kavanagh begins with a lame appeal to authority: “The Sun is not a swamp that needs draining”. Really? We’ll leave the Met and the courts to judge that one, thanks. But there’s worse to come: “30 journalists have been dragged from their beds in dawn raids”. Yeah, like when senior figures in and around the Labour Party got the same over “cash for peerages”. Our Trev was hot on that one. Not.

Then comes the brass neck deployment: “It is important that we do not jump to conclusions”. Wha-hey! Where do we start on that one? Winston Silcott, Hillsborough, “The Big Earner”, Jean Charles de Menezes, the Forest Gate two, Robert Murat, Christopher Jefferies, Fat Reg From Pinner and no rent boys, Anders Breivik, and last but not least, Freddie Starr. Yeah, right.

On top of all that, Kavanagh admits wrongdoing: “Sometimes money changes hands”, he observes, before excusing this with “This has been standard procedure as long as newspapers have existed”. Trev, a word in your shell-like: remember a bloke called Robert Mark? The one who used to run the Met, and said the force’s objective should be “to catch more crooks than it employs”?

Kavanagh has been scrabbling around the dunghill that is Grubstreet for long enough to remember that Robert Mark was a ferocious opponent of what those Stateside would call graft. The routine of bunging officers a few drinks in exchange for inside information was largely ended on his watch. There has been nothing “standard” about this “procedure” since the 1970s.

And this “witch hunt” is just the Met doing its job. Deal with it.

[UPDATE 14 February 0930 hours: the Met has put out a statement about the raids and arrests, which demonstrates that Trevor Kavanagh has been more than a little creative in his retelling of events.

It stresses "the MPS does not believe that the level of resources devoted to the three inquiries is in any way disproportionate to the enormous task in hand", then goes on "At no stage has any major investigation been compromised as a result of these deployments".

So much for all the guff about other investigations being hobbled - the idea that the Met should be out catching "real criminals". And, as for Kavanagh's assertion that "up to 20" officers turned up at some of his colleagues' houses, there was this:

"We would like to make it clear that no more than ten MPS officers attended each of the home addresses of the persons arrested as part of Operation Elveden on Saturday, 11 February".

So that's Trevor Kavanagh caught spraying his credibility up the wall by telling whoppers. Old habits, and all that]

Royal Landing No Shock Horror

2012-02-13T11:40:00.001Z

Anyone who uses air travel regularly knows what “going around” means: the aircraft is on final approach, the gear is down and flaps are set, but the runway does not get cleared in time. So, to ensure that there is no chance of a collision, Air Traffic Control gives an instruction to “go around”, and the plane climbs away from the runway, does a circuit, and makes another approach.

And this is especially prevalent at busy airports like London Heathrow, where there is inevitably a queue of aircraft on approach at most times of the day, and the slightest delay in a landing flight turning away from the runway means whoever is next in line will have to abort their landing and have another go later. This, though, has not prevented the People inflating a “go around” into an exclusive splash.

Partly this is because it’s cheap copy, but mainly it’s the presence on the approaching aircraft of Prince William and wife Kate. “Kate Middleton left terrified after narrowly avoiding air accident” screams the headline, followed by the breathless “Kate Middleton [for some reason not “Duchess of Cambridge”] was left terrified after she and Prince William narrowly missed a catastrophic air crash”.

And, as the man said, there’s more: “the captain [they knew who was Pilot Flying (PF)? Er, no] was forced to take emergency action to avoid ploughing into another aircraft on the runway”. Baloney. Modern aircraft just need a couple of switches to be flicked, and it’s not an emergency, which would mean a PAN call at the very least. And there wasn’t one of those.

As for the “circled the airport for several minutes”, well, Heathrow’s a busy place, so it would have taken a while to re-jig the queue of approaching planes to fit another one in. This supposed “incident” did not warrant an entry in the Air Accidents Investigation Branch bulletin reports (February one HERE). But it did mean the deployment of “a source” to make it look more dramatic.

And that source tells that “This really was a serious incident” (it wasn’t), “it would have been extremely worrying” (only until the PF got on the PA and explained what was going on to the passengers) and “it would have been very frightening” (bullshit). And the man from BA emphasised that it was “a perfectly standard operation with no safety implications”. So that should have been that.

Oh no it wasn’t: such is the appetite of the Fourth Estate for this kind of drivel, especially when Royalty is involved, that the story was lifted both by the Express (“Duke And Duchess Of Cambridge In Flight Scare”), and the Mail (“Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in ‘mid-air emergency’”). When it’s the Royals, it’s a story, even when there’s no story there.

Because it might tempt another punter to buy. So that’s all right, then.

Whitney – Quick, Before The Pundits Arrive

2012-02-12T16:17:00.002Z

Some stars are stars because, well, they just are. They are not stars for being edgy, rebellious, pioneering, political, or even controversial. Their talent, their ability, their sheer force of personality makes them so. And so it was with Whitney Houston, who has passed shockingly early at the age of just 48, in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.

The speculation has already started over what caused her death, and this blog will not be going there. Suffice it to say that the rumour mill is going into overdrive, and after the rumours will come the pundits, all chasing after the filling of yet more column inches with their theories, judgments, moralising and faux regret at a career supposedly racked by domestic unrest and drug use.

We know what to expect, as we know the agenda of the various parts of the Fourth Estate, in the UK at least. The prosecution, led by the mid-market righteous, will warn of the horrors of currently illegal drugs, using Ms Houston’s death as some kind of frightener with which their hacks and editors will imagine that they can move readers firmly back to the straight and narrow.

In the meantime, the singer’s achievements will be marginalised or forgotten: an utterly unforgettable voice, an ability to take on almost any song and make it her own, a compelling on-stage presence. Add to that the tens of millions of albums sold, the many film appearances, the influence on those who came after her, although few reached as high as she did.

Yes, illegal drugs can be very, very dangerous – because they are produced by organised criminality, which does not care about what happens to the poor souls who buy and use the end product. Fame and fortune are no bar to the side effects of adulteration and chemical enhancement. And, in any case, Ms Houston had by all accounts freed herself from the grip of addiction.

But before the pundits arrive en masse, consider this: somewhere in the world right now, someone is listening to Whitney Houston for the first time, while all over that world, many others are listening to I Will Always Love You one more time, while sobbing quietly into their hankies.

The defence rests.

Murdoch Is Served (66)

2012-02-12T14:53:00.001Z

It would be tragic, were it not so farcical: as those on the right try and point the finger of blame for phone hacking, email hacking and other wrongdoing towards Trinity Mirror Group – while simultaneously working to rubbish the Guardian – News International sinks deeper into the mire. Last week it was an admission of email hacking by the supposedly upmarket Times. Now it’s the Sun hacks getting nicked.

As I pointed out the other day, the latest allegation against Sunday Mirror editor Tina Weaver has come from the thoroughly dubious Max Keiser, accomplished exponent of the drive-by e-shooting, and should by any credible journalist be instantly discarded. This of course has not stopped the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines, who styles himself Guido Fawkes, taking the Keiser steamer as data.

Then there have been those on the left wanting the assertions of Hugh Grant – that the Daily Mail got information about him through phone hacking – to prove true. The problem here is the same as that confronting those wanting to pin hacking on the Mirror: without any evidence, they are going nowhere. The law does not recognise nudge-nudgery as sufficient proof.

But while the Mirror and Mail are regarded with mere suspicion, Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun are assisting the Met’s finest with their enquiries, while Murdoch groupies like Staines – who lists former Sun editor Kelvin McFilth as an inspiration – stay quiet about it, and keep trying to get their readers to look over there. But folks are, instead, looking at the Sun car crash.

The arrests, on suspicion of “bribing police and public officials”, included the paper’s Deputy Editor, Deputy News Editor, Picture Editor, Chief Foreign Correspondent, and even John Kay, the Sun’s Chief Reporter, who has been with the title since 1974 and nowadays works as an ambassador for the paper. This was not a group of out of control gofers. These were the senior executives.

Small wonder, then, that a parallel is already being drawn with the events leading up to the closure of the Screws last year, but so far Rupe is staying with the title he bought back in 1969 and turned into what Private Eye soon called “The Dirty Digger’s tit’n’bum daily”. But he is flying in to deal with the fallout personally. That is no surprise, as this could cause a US Department of Justice enquiry.

That’s because the Murdochs’ parent company is based in the USA, where much of its businesses are based. There have already been suggestions that phone hacking may have occurred on US soil, and if any firm evidence comes to light, Rupe will be right in the mire. Whatever future front page headlines the Sun might bring us, though, there is one that they won’t be recycling if Rupe does get nicked Stateside.

GOTCHA!

How Independent Is ConHome?

2012-02-12T11:34:00.001Z

The whole point of ConservativeHome, we are told, is that it is not beholden to the Tory Party, that it is independent, and that it therefore has no problem giving a platform to conservatives who are not of coincident view to Westminster Tory MPs or the party leadership. But events of the past two days have thrown that independence into doubt, as well as raising further questions over influence.

Those events kicked off on Friday with an opinion piece by Tim Montgomerie: “The unnecessary and unpopular NHS bill could cost the Conservative Party the next election. Cameron must kill it”. Monty claimed that three cabinet ministers were of similar view. But the backlash was as immediate as it was vicious, with Monty sneered at for his association with an unpopular past party leader.

In his defence, Montgomerie claimed that he “had been virtually instructed to write the opinion piece by Conservative cabinet members”. Think about that for a moment: ConHome, supposedly independent, “virtually instructed” to take part in Government in-fighting. The clear inference is that ConHome is being used as a conduit for party briefings – and that it is not properly independent of it.

Moreover, if ConHome is not truly independent of the Tory Party, the thought then enters that the Tory Party may not be truly independent of those who are given a platform by ConHome, despite claims to the contrary. A slew of Astroturf lobby groups, such as the Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies, Institute of Directors, Policy Exchange and Institute of Economic Affairs feature there.

And most significantly our old friends at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) enjoy a regular slot on ConHome, plus former ConHome stalwart Jonathan Isaby has recently gone through the revolving door to join the TPA, not so long after former TPA staffer Susie Squire went through that same door the other way to become a SpAd to Iain Duncan Smith (former boss of Tim Montgomerie).

Added to all of that is the influence of groups like the Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF) which trains party activists and enjoys links to the Freedom Association and the Heritage Foundation in the USA (who provided the moderator for the CPAC debate I considered yesterday). Several YBF trained activists have become councillors, notably in Hammersmith and Fulham, and Parliamentary candidates.

The YBF, too, gets a voice through ConHome. Its CEO does too. Tory MPs and ministers speak at its events, and at those of Astroturf lobby groups given a voice by ConHome. The more that this particular can of worms is prodded, the more it appears that ConHome is not independent at all: rather, it uses, and is used by, the party, the lobbyists, the briefers and the entryists.

And it is for that reason that ConHome should be watched. Very closely.

Christianity Still Not Under Attack

2012-02-11T16:58:00.001Z

Under the less than benign leadership of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, the Mail has today cranked up the righteous-outrage-o-meter to the max following news that Christianity is yet again under attack. Really? No, not really: the followers of the Vagina Monologue are mixing “Christian” and “British” in a bid to whip up outrage against folks who are not the Mail’s “kind of people”.

And certainly not their “kind of people” are gays, so a ruling against a Christian couple who would not let two civil partners share a room at their B&B means readers are told this “confirmed the supremacy of gay rights over Christian belief under the Sexual Orientation Regulations brought in by the Labour party”, which expertly presses all the Dacre hate buttons in less than one sentence.

Plus, as the man said, there’s more: “Anger as major court rulings go against British worshippers” is next up, with the assault becoming one on all Brits, and not merely those who follow in the footsteps of Christ. Here, a council has been banned from putting pre-meeting prayers on its agenda, and as the Mail notes at the outset, the sinister National Secular Society is involved.

Further down the story, it concedes that the Christian Institute is also involved, but it’s those dastardly secularists that are clearly the bad guys. The pundits are suitably appalled: George Carey, who was once Archbishop of Canterbury, opines that “the Christian faith is now becoming increasingly marginalised in this country”. He is shocked. He may also be stunned.

And George Pitcher, who has previously asserted that the National Secular Society appears “like it is fighting a war to expunge religion from peoples’ lives”, has said that “Two judges have today given a two-fingered salute to the Church of England”. He worries about Parliament. After all, there are prayers before each day’s business, given by the Speaker’s chaplain. Are these, too, to be “expunged”?

Worrying stuff. So worrying, in fact, that over at ConHome, the battle has been joined by – yes, it’s her again – Mid Bedfordshire MP Nadine Dorries, who warns “We must stop anti-religious groups from removing the Christian fabric of our society”. Here, too, a logic leap has been made: merely because the National Secular Society acts against the imposition of religion does not mean it is anti-religious.

And the fragrant Nadine gets it all wrong: nobody lost his job for “hanging a crucifix from his cab mirror” (the Colin Atkinson case). Moreover, she demonstrates the difference between Parliament prayers, which occur five minutes before formal start of business, and councils making them part of the agenda – then proposes the council does, well, the same as Parliament.

This is fabricated froth over next to nothing. There isn’t an attack. End of story.

The True Face Of Conservatism

2012-02-11T12:51:00.003Z

The modern conservative movement in the USA comes together each year at the Conservative Political Action Conference, generally known as CPAC. Among those most prominent in CPAC’s organisation is the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), in whose image the Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF) in the UK was formed. We’ve looked at the YBF recently (HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE).

CPAC happens every year in Washington, DC, and the 2012 event has been held this past week. For GOP Presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, attending and speaking was obligatory. For pundits like the increasingly scary looking Ann Coulter, it was a necessary way of maintaining their profile among those on the right. And kicking Barack Obama was de rigueur.

But the Prez was not the only public figure on the receiving end of right-wing ire, as was demonstrated by Cal Thomas, a pundit on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse), who was speaking at a panel debate on contraception, and the latest ruling by the current administration. After a video of the previous Sunday’s Meet The Press was played, there was hissing and booing from the crowd.

This was because the show had featured a contribution from top rating MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who is hated by the right not merely for being liberal and gay, but also articulate and popular. Thomas, to significant applause, responded that Maddow was the “best argument in favour of her parents using contraception”. The moderator, from the Heritage Foundation, was not unhappy to hear this news.

This unpleasant and gratuitous smear allowed the debate to bodyswerve Maddow’s point, which was that the GOP was “waging war on contraception”, and apparently taking a position in opposition to the one many of them took as recently as 2001. Instead, Thomas’ remark took centre stage, with Fox host Greta van Susteren calling for him to personally and publicly apologise.

Meanwhile, Maddow turned Thomas’ remarks back on him: “Mr. Fox News person speaking there, I am sorry that you feel that way about me that you wish I had never been born. Personally, I'm glad that you were born. Otherwise how would Republicans get the special Fox News bat signal that it's time to be outraged now, about what used to be Republicans' own policy idea?”

Fortunately, Thomas saw sense and called Maddow to apologise, as she confirmed at the end of her Friday show. This is to be welcomed unreservedly. But the joy on the face of the moderator from the Heritage Foundation – a group that boycotted CPAC last year over the presence of LGBT Republican group GOProud – along with all the enthusiastic applause, had let the world see the reality.

And that reality was the baying, intolerant nastiness that is modern Conservatism.

King Of The Keiser

2012-02-10T17:49:00.009Z

[Update at end of post]

During his testimony to the Leveson Inquiry this week, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines, who styles himself Guido Fawkes, attacked Tina Weaver, editor of the Sunday Mirror – who also sits on the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) – for being involved in phone hacking. Staines told that he had been given this information by two journalists.

At this point my bullshit detector went off: previously the Fawkes blog had attacked Ms Weaver on the basis of a Tweet from Russia Today (RT) host Max Keiser, who had only the other day repeated his assertion. Keiser, who also appears regularly on Iranian broadcaster Press TV, claimed that Ms Weaver had “told me personally she and Piers Morgan were aware of phone hacking”.

Perhaps Tina Weaver has met Max Keiser. More likely she hasn’t, and this is just another example of the Keiser appetite for what I call the drive-by e-shooting. This can be explained by looking at a few more of Keiser’s creative excursions into the Twittersphere, starting with this magnificently fraudulent one from today, “British forces enter Syria to aid American special forces”.

Right. And this steaming pile of bovine by-product came from where? The Voice Of Russia is reporting this “news”, which in turn came from the neo-conservative Israeli alarmist website Debka.com. Max is earning his nickname of Dubius Maximus here. But you should take him seriously. He doesn’t like not being taken seriously.

Late yesterday he complained “No Israeli/US/UK hawks will come on my show. PUSSIES! Your wife and kids wish secretly that you just top yourselves”. Looks like those hawks saw him coming and booked a collective hair appointment.

Yet more bizarrely, Keiser has today Tweeted “Germany is a natural ally of Russia/Iran/China/Lebanon”. Did he really mean that?

Two minutes later came the confirmation that he really did: “Germany needs to cut a deal and focus on Russia/Iran/China/Lebanon”.

And if that isn’t far enough into Wibble territory, a few minutes later came “W. Blackpool (aka N. Ireland) should volunteer to pay Anglo-Irish debts just to be neighborly”.

Somewhere out there, a barking noise can be heard. It could be a dog. Or maybe it’s Max Keiser. This bloke is seriously away with the fairies, and why Paul Staines (or anyone else) places any trust in his ramblings is one of life’s continuing mysteries. Perhaps the Great Guido could enlighten everyone?

Most likely it’s because it’s what he wants to hear. Another fine mess, once again.

[UPDATE 12 February: the Fawkes blog cited Keiser in a post dated 15 July last, although for some reason Max's creative retelling was not mentioned. He was given another name check eight days later. At no time were readers of that blog told that Keiser was prone to post exaggerated, purely provocative and downright untrue items on Twitter (see above).

I'm sure this is a mere oversight, and that the Fawkes blog will reconsider the veracity of this witness and inform its readership accordingly. Or maybe not]

Jim Gets Posthumously Fixed

2012-02-10T12:38:00.002Z

Private Eye once characterised the espionage writer Chapman Pincher as “‘Body’ Pincher”, adding the observation “dead men don’t sue”, after the publication of books such as Their Trade Is Treachery, where Pincher made a number of allegations against those who had worked for the security services, and several Labour politicians, but only after they had passed.

Pincher’s characteristic has been seized on this week by the Oldie magazine – coincidentally edited by former Eye man Richard Ingrams, who occupied the hot seat at a time when the magazine was in receipt of rather more writs than nowadays – which has hardly allowed the body of Jimmy Savile to go cold before alleging that the former presenter sexually groomed and molested under-age girls.

And there the story might have rested, but for the allegation that at least some of this activity took place at Television Centre. Beeb bashing is a popular sport among right leaning hacks and their editors, and a lifetime of hosting much-loved shows and pulling in tens of millions through his charity work – not to mention his unpaid volunteering at Stoke Mandeville hospital – has not protected Savile’s memory.

From the Oldie, the piece went first to the Maily Telegraph, the kind of paper whose demographic might be more likely to be in tune with Ingrams’ mag. Here, Anita Singh tells that “BBC ‘buried Savile sex abuse claims to save its reputation’”, a most unsubtle title from what was once a paper of record. As in the Oldie, it is suggested that Newsnight had investigated the former presenter.

Then it is asserted that “bosses” had the investigation dropped, with a “BBC News source” (which could mean anyone who had ever appeared in any part of the Corporation’s news coverage) telling of “the extreme nature of the claims”, that “the allegations directly involved the BBC”, and that a number of young women “were abused on BBC premises”.

It was only a matter of time before a paper that really hates the Beeb picked up the story, and so the Mail has thundered “BBC shelved Savile sex abuse investigation ‘to protect its own reputation’”, with hack Emma Reynolds drawing the short straw, and the same “BBC News source” quoted faithfully. The Mail does, however, mention that Surrey Police had investigated a complaint against Savile, but took no action.

What proclivities Jimmy Savile had I do not know, and nor do I care. The story may be partly or even entirely true, but that is hardly the point. What this is about is the righteous part of those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet trampling on a dead man’s reputation to kick his one-time employer. This episode shows us all that is prurient and desperately opportunist about so much of the print media.

But it’s good for circulation, so that’s all right, then.