Guido Fawked – Wrong Kind Of News

The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer, the flannelled fool Henry Cole, at the Guido Fawkes blog spend a lot of time relaying the moves around the Westminster Village of media types. So yesterday they gushingly told of the move to CCHQ by former TPA spinner Susie Squire, who most likely gave them the news herself – directly or indirectly.

What announcement? I can't see anything

But today the less than dynamic duo was struck dumb. There was a significant appointment in the world of strategy and communications, but not only did the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere not get wind of it beforehand, it was also someone they did not like – and who doesn’t give them the time of day. Step forward Tone’s former spinmeister Alastair Campbell.

Big Al has been given a berth by Portland, who have also recently disposed of the creepy looking Mark Wallace – another from the TPA misinformation academy – to the IoD, which is, more or less, sending him back to the Astroturf lobby groups from whence he came. The odious Cole, realising who was moving to Portland, displayed signs of distress on Twitter, but declined to pitch the name.

And nor did the Fawkes blog – which is usually more than happy to mention Campbell when they can portray him in a suitably negative light – make so much as a peep about the appointment. So while the rest of the media world was giving Big Al an e-pat on the back for his success, Staines and Cole sulked and scowled at the thought that one of those rotten lefties was doing a bit of achieving.

So the Fawkes blog managed to bodyswerve today’s big appointment in the media world, no doubt with the accompanying excuse that they’re “#1”, but as soon as the name of Piers “Morgan” Moron came up during the proceedings of the Leveson Inquiry, they were all ears. Sadly, while rushing to condemn Moron on the basis of The Testament Of Pax Jeremiah, they failed to check the timeline.

Moron and Paxo were at a lunch together with Ulrika-ka-ka-ka in September 2002, where Moron showed Paxo how to change his mobile phone’s voicemail PIN. But this was just relaying information he had been given the previous year. And the hacking of Sven’n’Ulrika had been done – by the Screws – the previous April, as I described in detail last year.

As is widely known, the Mirror was tipped off – this then confirmed by Melanie Cantor, Ulrika’s PR, in exchange for sympathetic treatment – and scooped the Screws, which had cleared several pages of its next edition, being able to fill it with all the voicemails its hacks had, er, hacked. Paxo’s appearance before Leveson changes nothing, although it illustrates the Fawkes blog agenda superbly.

And it confirms my previous conclusion: no research, no result. Another fine mess.