Sun Hack’s Boycott Hypocrisy

The collective mardy strop exhibited by those in our free and fearless press towards retail chain Paperchase over its decision to bow to consumer opinion and end its association with the Daily Mail shows no sign of coming to an end any time soon.  Nor does the alternate reality, where a number of hacks and their sympathisers claim that Paperchase is in terrible trouble as a result of its actions, whatever the reality.

David Wooding - far less pleasant than he looks

And nowhere has this idiocy been shown more clearly than by the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, who are desperate - which you knew anyway - and also want to show solidarity with the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre in his latest hour of need. So it was that editor for the time being Tony Gallagher, who has stopped telling his followers how many expensive restaurants he visits following Zelo Street calling him out for being out of touch with his readers, endorsed the actions of one of his colleagues.

That colleague was the singularly repellent Sunday political editor David Wooding, who, by complete coincidence you understand, agreed with the rest of the press establishment that the Paperchase action was A Very Bad Thing Indeed. “Here's my opinion. I don't buy goods from firms who are easily intimidated. I am cutting up my loyalty card, will never enter your stores again and will encourage friends and colleagues to do the same”.

This will be a great relief to all those staff and customers who wish he had done that rather earlier. But it also puts him in what Spike Milligan might have called A Very Difficult Position. Because Wooding has twice been associated with organisations that have been successfully targeted by advertising boycotts - indeed, he works for one of them.

You think I jest? Wooding was associate editor (politics) at the late and not at all lamented Screws, which the Murdoch mafiosi closed down in 2011 after the phone hacking scandal burst open and the paper was vilified for hacking a dead schoolgirl’s phone. Advertisers fled. The Screws became the Siberia of Fleet Street - everyone knew where it was, but no-one wanted to go there. Advertiser pressure partly did for the paper.

Yet the supposedly principled Wooding did not leave the Murdoch fold in disgust: indeed, he was soon back in harness at the Sun, then in 2013 he became the political editor for the Sun on Sunday, or Son of Screws. He had no problem buying goods from firms who were “easily intimidated” on that occasion. Nor does he do so when it comes to football.

Wooding is a fan of Liverpool FC. Have a think about that. The Sun trashed the reputation of those who died in the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989 thanks to the routinely bad judgment and entrenched bigotry of then editor Kelvin McFilth. The paper has been the subject of a sales boycott across Merseyside ever since. And on top of that, LFC has now decided not to allow Sun hacks into their ground.

Yet stinking hypocrite David Wooding continues to do business with the club. That’s because, like so many of the press establishment and its hangers-on, he’s full of crap, and devoid of any genuine principle. Don’t Buy The Sun.