Mail Leveson No Bombshell Shock

Today, the Mail tells the world that it has found the smoking gun. All those blue chip companies using rogue private investigators (PIs) are finally revealed. But, beneath the screaming headline “REVEALED, 15 blue-chip firms linked to rogue private eyes... and kept secret by police: Bombshell evidence piles on pressure for Leveson to extend hacking inquiry beyond the media”, all is not as it seems.

For starters, Lord Justice Leveson has completed his Inquiry into the “Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press”. It would not be up to him as to whether there was to be any further inquiry. Moreover, the list from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) is just that: it does not form part of any investigation, and is therefore unlikely to be of evidential standard.

That means it would not get very far if tested in a court of law. But that is not to say that the Mail should not be applauded for going after potential lawbreaking. So what have they uncovered? “The world’s biggest accountancy firm Deloitte, powerful banks Credit Suisse and Chase Manhattan, and giant law firm Richards Butler, now part of Reed Smith –which represented Gordon Brown at the Leveson Inquiry – are all on a secret list belonging to a corrupt private detective”.

A secret list, with names on it? Very Dad’s Army. But do go on: “A Mail on Sunday investigation has also established the rogue investigators jailed last year for illegally accessing information by ‘blagging’ appeared to be linked to international solicitors’ firms Herbert Smith –which represented former RBS boss Fred Goodwin – and Clyde & Co”. But only “appeared to be linked”.

But, as the man said, there’s more: “Last night a senior Westminster source indicated that all six firms are on the classified Serious Organised Crime Agency list currently locked away in a safe opposite the House of Commons”. The plot thickens folks, and not a granule of Bisto in sight!

So readers are given the impression by this stage that lots of big companies have been commissioning some Very Bad Things, that these are worse Very Bad Things than the Fourth Estate ever got up to, and that Leveson could, and should, do something about it, but isn’t doing, because they’re all ganging up on the poor hacks and editors and it’s rotten and totally unfair.

This is total bullshit. Leveson does not have the power to reopen his Inquiry or start another one. What was in the SOCA report wouldn’t persuade a court of law. And what’s this, in the eighth paragraph of the Mail’s piece? “There is no evidence that those named knowingly employed the rogue detectives in criminal activity on their behalf”. The Mail wants an Inquiry on the basis of no sodding evidence.

The sheer brass neck of the Fourth Estate in a nutshell. No change there, then.

HS2 – TPA Fast One Pulled Again

Some observers of the continuing arguments over the HS2 project may have felt a sense of déjà vu this morning, as a report has appeared in the Independent asserting “The wrong side of the tracks: Lobbyists for HS2 rail line funded by the taxpayer”. Taxpayer-funded lobbying, eh? Where have we heard that one before? And what is the connection here?

What is not in question is that two staff from Westbourne Communications, which offers a skill set that includes lobbying, have been seconded to HS2 Limited, the company which is developing and promoting HS2. The company is wholly owned by the Department for Transport (DfT). This has been sufficient for our old friends the HS2 Action Alliance (HS2AA), named because it doesn’t want any action, to cry foul.

On top of the secondments, HS2 Ltd paid Westbourne £80,000 in the year to July. And the DfT has paid Westbourne £24,000. So the shout has gone up: this is held to have been taxpayer funded lobbying. Government, or Government owned company, pays firm that does lobbying. Therefore Government is paying said firm to lobby it, and hence the conclusion.

Where we have heard this one before is with the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), who, back in August 2009, produced another in their series of dubiously researched “reports” detailing £38 million of payments by Government to firms which, like Westbourne Communications, offered a skill set that included lobbying. But there was a problem with the TPA’s logic.

Nobody argued that the payments were made, but what the TPA did not demonstrate is what the payments were for. The firms concerned did not just perform lobbying. The TPA did not show what even one of the payments was actually for. At the time, Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole fame called out the TPA, to subsequent amusement as Matthew Sinclair failed to address the issue.

But the TPA is not present on this occasion, so why is their “dodgy dossier” mentioned? Ah well. The TPA and HS2AA worked closely together on attacking HS2, with the latter being heavily promoted in the TPA’s knocking copy. And HS2AA was no stranger to the kind of easy dishonesty that characterises TPA propaganda, with the “Bradford is bigger than Edinburgh” whopper a prime example.

Today’s Indy piece is just recycling the TPA’s “taxpayer funded lobbying” line – no proof of such a practice is offered, save the usual nudge-nudgery, and  none will be – along with accusations that the Westbourne secondments amount to the same thing, which will also not be backed up with any evidence. So into the maelstrom of lame knocking copy is thrown a little more. Nobody should be surprised.

And the main reason for HS2 – capacity – is not addressed. That’s not good enough.

Top Six – August 25

So what’s hot, and what’s not, in the past week’s blogging? Here are the six most popular posts on Zelo Street for the past seven days, counting down in reverse order, because, well, I have to go out later. So there.

6 Miranda Detention – Wanker Speaks One former hack cheering on the cops in their dodgy detention of David Miranda, partner of Guardian correspondent Glenn Greenwald, was none other than Neville “Stylish Masturbator” Thurlbeck. Here’s why the security services might be better off without his support.

5 Don’t Menshn Reality The descent of Louise Mensch into a jibbering clone of Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips continued, as she dismissed anyone dissenting from her view as “liars” and “fools”. Many commenting at her blog tried to reason with her. This was pointless.

4 Guardian Spook Visit Double Standards The deeply subversive Guardian was forced to destroy two computers on the grounds that they could not be trusted to keep the data on them secure. The command came from the Government, which has, er, demonstrated that it cannot keep the data on its computers secure.

3 HS2 – IEA Report One Huge Turkey At long last, the IEA “report” into the HS2 project was published. And their “£80 billion” price tag had been achieved by adding in Crossrail 2 (a trick already pulled by the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance) and doubling the price. And adding in billions of other stuff, just for good measure..

2 Super Soaraway Twitter Swindle The Sun’s Twitter account for information on Liverpool FC had over 7,500 followers, despite the paper being persona non grata across Merseyside. How was this achieved? It was stuffed full of fakes, that’s how.

1 Don’t Menshn The Invention Into the row over David Miranda’s detention waded the member for Manhattan Upmarket, Louise Mensch. And, despite admitting that she had no idea what Glenn Greenwald’s partner might have been carrying, there were a giddying number of wild accusations about it. This from the former MP who made damaging accusations against Piers Morgan under Parliamentary privilege which she later had to withdraw.

And that’s the end of another blogtastic week, blog pickers. Not ‘arf!

NASDAQ Data Loss And 1929

When there was a three-hour communications problem on Thursday, hitting the NASDAQ in New York, some may have thought that it was no big deal. After all, this was during the summer holidays, many business folks were out of town, and trading volumes were expected to be low. But others have seen the scale of how dependent traders are on electronic systems, and started to wonder.

There are two kinds of problems that “digital dependency” can cause. One, clearly, is the downtime and the consequential loss from all those trades that depend on being done immediately, that bet on, take advantage of, and generally depend on market movements that happen immediately after the time they are enacted. These need the computing power just to be possible.

Another problem with “digital dependency” is the development and use of trading algorithms, especially with the high-frequency trades that are a feature of hedge funds. These can cause price movements to act as a “hair trigger”, if you will, setting off large-scale selling that can wipe huge sums from stock values in frighteningly short spaces of time.

Added to these is the fear, maybe even panic, sparked by loss of information: the thought that events may start to move so rapidly that there is no time for rational consideration. The market sees a rush to sell, so investors join in, and if there is a data loss, or delay in reporting, the urge to sell does not abate, but gathers pace. In this way nothing has changed in 84 years, save the size of the sums involved.

In 1929, when data was carried in more primitive forms – literally, the ticker brought news of changes in the price of stocks – this was all superbly illustrated when, on what has become known as Dark Thursday, 24 October, there was an unexpected and sudden rush to sell stocks. Many investors had bought “on margin”, or loaned most of the money to pay for their investment. Brokers tried to contact them.

If investors could not be contacted, or were unable to offer up more margin, their holdings were sold. The ticker fell way behind. This loss of data merely resulted in a wild panic as yet more investors rushed to sell. True, there was some respite later in the day, but then, the following Tuesday, there was yet another torrent of selling. The market carried on down for almost four years.

Now we no longer depend on the ticker, but on the installed power of computers and communications networks. And this week’s NASDAQ crash has showed that this dependence may have its downsides. Data loss, hair trigger trading algorithms, and old fashioned panic could yet combine to set in train another Great Crash. The only improvement over the years is the likely speed at which it will happen.

Yet so much is invested in Governments snooping. Which is more important?

Snowden – Why The Independent?

Yesterday, a second front in the campaign by the deeply subversive Guardian to reveal more about the information from Edward Snowden was announced: there was to be a partnership with the New York Times, signifying that there really was a copy of Snowden’s information in New York, as Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger had previously told. But then, another UK title got in on the act.

The Independent ran an exclusive about a GCHQ listening post in the Middle East, and the “information on its activities was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden”. But both Snowden, and Glenn Greenwald, say they haven’t given the Indy the information. The suggestion has been made that the security agencies may have passed it. But does that make any sense?

Well, yes it does, and we can count several reasons why this might have been done: First, Snowden and Greenwald have been at pains not to release any information that could put anyone’s life in danger, despite some of the wilder assertions to the contrary. So nothing about specific “listening posts” has been published. The Indy story makes Snowden, and maybe also Greenwald, guilty by association.

Second, the Independent report, if it was indeed authorised and passed by a Government agency, sends a message to Snowden that “we know what you copied”. Third, this stokes the climate of bluff over the information David Miranda may have been carrying when he was detained last Sunday: “we’ve broken the encryption and here’s a sample”. They may have done this, but then again, they may not.

Fourth, setting Guardian and Independent against one another plays into the hands of the Government-supporting part of the Fourth Estate, which would willingly copy information on MPs’ expenses and entrap individual politicians, but knows to behave itself on matters of that much-vaunted “National Security”, a phrase rolled out in court last week by Government lawyers. Rotten lefties split!

Fifth, it diverts attention away from the announcement that the NYT will be running a series of stories which will get round any constraint imposed on the Guardian by Government and its agencies. Sixth, it allows the suggestion to enter that Greenwald hasn’t got as much of the Snowden data as he makes out – again, the idea that Miranda was carrying stuff his partner needed.

And Seventh, if the intention was to get this information published, well, the Indy would be the paper that would oblige. It’s not the kind of stuff the tabloids want, and the Times and Telegraph might wobble and chicken out. So, far from it being a daft idea that Government may have fed the Independent their story, it makes very good sense. And the Indy clearly thinks it’s come from a bona fide source.

So that may well have been a rather better day at the office for the spooks.

HS2 – Monty Speaks

[Update at end of post]

As if there were a shortage of those wanting to express an opinion on the HS2 project, along has come noted transport expert Tim Montgomerie to add his ninepence worth to the debate. In a piece on ConHome, Monty says, more or less, that because a number of other pundits have said HS2 should not be built, then this is the right answer.

High speed rail in Spain. Almost four and a half years ago

Sadly, his first citation is the IEA report from earlier in the week which this blog has comprehensively demolished: Richard Wellings’ assertion that HS2 could end up costing £80 billion was only propped up by fraudulently adding £20 billion for Crossrail 2 – a trick already pulled by the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance but with the price doubled – and including several more projects in the bill.

Monty also cites apparent disquiet reported in the FT by Treasury officials, who claimed the cost of HS2 “might reach” £73 billion. Ah, the wonders of taking today’s prices and compounding in a bit of inflation, without realising that the same inflation will make the benefits larger by around the same proportion. And neither citation acknowledges the contingency already built into cost estimates.

But Monty has a trick of his own: despite his being a good Conservative, he is happy to quote former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, who talks about upgrading the East Coast Main Line (not at present on the agenda), the line out of London’s Liverpool Street terminus towards Norwich (ditto, except for Crossrail, which is going ahead) and the Great Western Main Line (also going ahead).

So HS2 is not impacting on any of these routes. And, as Darling refers to road improvements, it isn’t impacting on the managed motorway upgrades to the M1 and M62, which are also going ahead. This might be because HS2 is not incurring its final price tag immediately, but over a number of years, with the spending in any one year not likely to exceed around £2 billion.

Am I an advocate for HS2, then? Put it this way: if there is a solution to the approaching capacity shortage that does not mean having to build a new line, then I would love to see it. And I mean a practical and cost-effective one, not pretending that Atkins RP2 is other than a theoretical exercise, and not suggesting that, if only we re-routed more trains into Paddington, all would be well (it wouldn’t).

The capacity crunch, as I’ve pointed out previously, is shown to good – or maybe that should be frightening – effect by the Rail Freight Group, in their graphic showing the predicted excess of demand over supply for freight paths by 2030. If the railway can’t accept that traffic, that means hundreds more lorry movements on our motorways. Every day of the week.

What Tim Montgomerie has not taken into account, which is why he hasn’t told you.

[UPDATE 24 August 1410 hours: Andrew Adonis, who was one of the early advocates of HS2, has written about the current spate of knocking copy - and bogus "reports" - in the Staggers. He points out, as I have, that none of those calling for cancellation has any alternative to the looming capacity crunch.

Excuses such as "we could have a new bus fleet in every city in the UK" are of little help in the discussion: if the problem is a shortage of capacity to move people and freight between the South-East (and its ports) and the North of England, it is manifestly not going to be solved by renewing city bus fleets.

Adonis also recalls a number of previously cancelled transport projects which at the time were deemed "wasteful", including the Channel Tunnel, built rather later and at rather greater cost, and the new London airport at Maplin Sands, which never got built, with a consequence that is all too clear]

Friday Food – Quick Pan Of Chilli

I’ve been neglecting Friday Food – apologies – so here’s a simple recipe for a popular pan of nosh that should appeal to almost everyone. Chilli Con Carne is, by definition, made with meat, but if you have a trusted vegetarian substitute, then by all means use that.

Maybe not quite that much chilli

All you need: one can of red kidney beans (rinsed), one can of chopped tomatoes, onions (I use 500 grams, because it’s half a one kilo bag), just 250 grams of minced beef (you bought a 500 gram bag? Put the remainder away in the freezer or freezer compartment and do another pan later), a teaspoon of chilli powder, and 45 grams of spicy chilli paste (quarter of a 180 gram jar).

The paste, which I got from Asda – so I assume other large supermarkets do something similar – is the secret ingredient. Make sure you store the opened jar in the fridge.

Pausing just to state the obvious – that you need a pan that’s going to hold all of those ingredients – let’s make a start.

Soften the onions in a little olive oil (doesn’t have to be an expensive brand, the £3 a litre Aldi kind is fine). Make sure they’re softened up before the key step, which is to stir in the paste and chilli powder. Make sure it’s well distributed – the onion should have yielded a little fluid to help you here – and then give the whole a few more minutes before stirring in the mince (or veg alternative).

Stir that regularly and make sure the meat is cooked throughout. Don’t let anything stick to the bottom of the pan. Then add the chopped tomatoes and kidney beans, stir through, and heat gently for another fifteen minutes at least. And that’s all there is to it.

The recipe makes three large or four small portions, and what you serve with it is down to choice. I do pitta breads because they’re quick and easy.

Simples.

Littlejohn’s Pretend Guardian

Roaring back to the Daily Mail fold today – inasmuch as waddling can be so described – has come the talentless and unfunny churnalist Richard Littlejohn, whose chosen target, as so often, is the deeply subversive Guardian. The sage of Vero Beach is not at all happy that Alan Rusbridger and his team have shown insufficient concern for his mate Jim Davidson.

The Guardian, Guv? They talk funny, innit?!?

“The Guardian has spent most of this week howling with outrage about the detention at Heathrow airport of the partner of one of its journalists” he protests, demonstrating that he cannot tell the difference between newspapers that “howl with outrage” as they supposedly report the news – like the Mail – and those, like the Guardian, that simply report the news and separate out the comment.

“He was in possession of classified material provided by U.S. defector Edward Snowden” protests Dicky Windbag, although he doesn’t know what David Miranda was carrying – just like all the other wannabe intelligence “experts”. But there is a point to the rambling discourse, and that is that Littlejohn is convinced that the Guardian does not deserve our sympathy, as it didn’t support his mates.

“When the homes of tabloid journalists were raided and ransacked at 6am by detectives investigating alleged phone hacking, there wasn’t a peep of protest from this self-appointed sentinel of civil liberties” he wails. Once again, he fails to understand the separation of news and comment, and has managed to miss a Comment Is Free piece by his old mucker Neil “Wolfman” Wallis.

Had the Guardian not cared, it certainly wouldn’t have given Wallis houseroom. But Littlejohn has now planted in readers’ minds the idea that the Guardian is on the wrong side. Having achieved this, he moves the discussion to Jim Davidson, who is asserted to have been “treated like an international terrorism suspect”. How can you tell someone’s being treated like a terrorism suspect? Don’t ask.

From a photo of Davidson’s house being searched, Dick moves effortlessly on to talk of a “witch-hunt”, and that while it was OK to have gone after Stuart Hall – Cos He Done It – he’s not sure about Dave Lee Travis, and hints that the case against Jimmy Tarbuck and Rolf Harris may be a bit shaky (why? Nudge, wink, don’t ask about that one either). And don’t forget about the Guardian (he hasn’t).

“One might have hoped that the Guardian would extend the same support to Jim Davidson as they have to their own man. But while Miranda has the right credentials — gay, fashionably Brazilian, Left-wing, anti-American, anti-British — Jimbo ticks all the wrong boxes”. Where to start? “He who is not with my pal Jim, he is against him”. The Guardian is caught bang to rights doing proper journalism.

Dicky Windbag is making little sense, as usual. No wonder comments are closed.

Don’t Menshn Reality

There is something both sad and compelling in the sight of a highly intelligent person allowing their conviction of purpose to turn into faith so blind that only the reality they allow to be defined is real to them. Anyone dissenting from their absolute certainty is denounced as a liar, anything they offer in evidence is fake. That person is, after all, on the side of the Good Guys. Welcome to the world of Louise Mensch.

Has she got news for us? Only if we truly believe

In support of my contention, let Ms Mensch speak for herself: “we had Alan Rusbridger trying to deflect the attention of the UK’s papers from the Guardian’s lies, smears and omissions on the Miranda mule story by diverting their attention to the smashing of Guardian computers by GCHQ. ‘We had copies of the data in New York and Rio’ he said, tweeting an obviously faked picture of a MacBook Air he said heavies had smashed that was actually the components of all sorts of different computers, leading to suspicions by normally on-side geeks that the Grauniad was faking the photo for effect with random computer parts”.

Yes, the Guardian dissents from the Mensch Weltanschauung, hence “lies” and “fake”. And of course GCHQ did not do the smashing of the computers, but hey ho. Then follows the ultimate expectation that reality be suspended: the rest of the press is held to be “swallowing the spin ... uncritically”. The Guardian’s “spin”, that is.

Now, I hate to have to break news of real world intrusion to Ms Mensch, but the last thing the remainder of the Fourth Estate does is toddle along after the Guardian. But she’s off and running: Glenn Greenwald? “Repeated lies”. David Miranda – does she believe him? “I absolutely don’t”. They don’t fit her view, therefore they lie!

In any case “they are stealing, storing and disseminating classified intel about not just NSA snooping but America’s intelligence programmes against China, Russia and so forth. They are, in doing so, risking countless lives”. Then she asks the questions that everyone else should ask, so she can give them the right answers.

And these include the assertions that Edward Snowden “should rot in jail for it for the rest of his life”, and that he has indulged in “filthy treachery”. The South China Morning Post is held to be a “state engine” of the Chinese regime (it’s privately owned). Information from the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) becomes “CIA data”. Theresa May is always right! Yvette Cooper is weak, weak, weak!

Anyone demurring is merely dismissed as not knowing what they are talking about, whatever their qualifications. A leading QC? Who are they compared to an English Lit graduate? And just wait until the next blog post, which by definition the outside world is eagerly awaiting. But, as the Fourth Estate lives in the real world, it is not: some speculation is too wild even for them.

“Listen to me, world” shouts Louise Mensch. But nobody who matters is listening.

Boris Signals Beeb Bashing Ramp-Up

London’s occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who to no surprise at all is not paying any attention to events in the capital right now, is devoting his time to a book tour, and has fetched up in Australia, no doubt to the thought entering with some of the locals that they would rather the UK had not given this one-man human shambles an exit visa.

And Bozza has wasted no time telling anyone there who will listen that their mate Rupe is getting an unreasonably hard time from the dastardly BBC. And after all those things he’s done for us – satellite TV (which we could have got from another provider, thanks), cornering a large part of the newspaper market, Page Three, and of course dragging journalism into the gutter with phone hacking.

At which point it does not need saying to most Bozza watchers that this assault on the Corporation is not a coincidence. Since the news earlier this month that, in a 12 month period, around 165,000 licence fee evaders had been prosecuted, and that magistrates are floating the suggestion that such matters be decriminalised, the Beeb bashers have had a new focus.

And that focus, to no surprise at all, is at the paper that pays Bozza £5,000 a pop in “chicken feed” for his stream of consciousness columns, rustled up while awaiting Sunday luncheon at the house of whichever acquaintance has drawn the short straw of inviting him round. The Maily Telegraph first carried the BBC bashing in its blogs, with Janet Daley leading the way after the CPS released its report on bias.

Sadly, as I subsequently pointed out, the CPS report wasanother steaming pile of poo, no matter how ideologically pure. But the marker had been put down, and soon there was another instalment of bile from Cristina Odone, forgetting for a moment the oxygen of publicity that the Corporation gives her from her appearances on shows such as Question Time.

These two pundits, of course, are serial Beeb kickers, but this time it was organised, with a Telegraph editorial this morning describing the licence fee as “A criminal waste of taxpayers’ money”. There were so many more channels nowadays, you see. Then backup came from Graeme Archer, who just happens to be a leader writer for the paper, declaring “we must abolish the hated BBC poll tax”.

Hated? I hadn’t noticed, thanks, but then, letting the cat out of the bag, came occasional Tory MP Douglas “Kamikaze” Carswell telling that “The BBC’s mid-twentieth Century TV poll tax should be consigned to the history books”. So the agreed line is that it’s a “poll tax”. Good of the Tel to let us all know, for when the characterisation gets used again – as it inevitably will.

It gets the hacks nowhere, but beats doing real journalism, so that’s all right, then.

NHS Campaigner Abandoned By Press

When the controversy over care standards at Stafford Hospital was at its height, the name of Julie Bailey was frequently in the news. The founder of pressure group Cure The NHS could be seen on TV, was feted by the press – especially that part of it that loves putting the boot into the NHS – and meetings at her cafe in Stafford were the subject of many a positive profile and story.

Ms Bailey was back in the news this year in sadder circumstances: the Mail splashed on allegations that her mother’s grave had been desecrated. There had been death threats. Her business had been “destroyed” and she was being forced to sell up in a “cut-price” sale. Her cause was not helped by the Dacre hackery painting Stafford as a larger version of Royston Vasey.

The impression was given that the press was there for her, although, as I pointed out at the time she sold up and moved out of the town, they certainly were not. Papers like the Mail were cynically using Julie Bailey to further their cause of attacking the NHS, and today has come the sad yet utterly predictable confirmation of this fact. The Mail is no longer interested in her.

How can I be so sure about this? Ah well. The Staffordshire Newsletter – you can “like” it on Facebook – has brought the news “Staffordshire Police drop inquiry into harassment of former Stafford health campaigner Julie Bailey”. There is, apparently, insufficient evidence to allow the cops to identify anyone who may have harassed Ms Bailey, and so the inquiry has closed.

That lack of closure should have had the Mail working itself into a righteous froth. But, as I pointed out, the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and his obedient hackery are interested first and foremost with selling papers and having that all-important conversation with the readers. They don’t really give a stuff about Julie Bailey, and so today the paper has been quiet.

So has the rest of the Fourth Estate: perhaps they are now more concerned with regaining any lost circulation in the Stafford area. After all, the locals are hardly going to be enthusiastic about shelling out their hard-earned cash only to find their paper of choice roundly abusing them. And, as so many thousands joined the march to save Stafford Hospital recently, perhaps they can see they overdid the tone.

Julie Bailey did the press’ bidding: she went along with the Mail and its shrieking assault on not just the NHS and Stafford Hospital, but also on more than 120,000 people who live in the area. Now, when she will be feeling less than happy, the Police having decided to drop their investigation, Paul Dacre and his merry men have inserted fingers in ears and can’t hear her.

Never go to the press. And never, ever go to the Daily Mail. You have been warned.

Miranda Detention – Wanker Speaks

One observer of events at Heathrow Airport last Sunday, when Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda was detained for almost the full nine hours permitted under the 2000 Terrorism Act, could hardly contain himself, such was his enthusiasm for the brave and noble deeds of our security services. What the sleazy hack did not tell his Twitter followers is that he is closer to them than they might imagine.

Both hands on the table, Nev

That hack was Neville “Stylish Masturbator” Thurlbeck, former chief reporter at the now-defunct Screws, and who is one of those formerly faithful Murdoch retainers facing an imminent court date. Thurlbeck’s ability to bend the available facts to meet the requirements of the headline writers, while remaining on the right side of the defamation line, is legendary.

Eye 1215, Street Of Shame section

This was recounted in some detail in issue 1215 of Private Eye (see above), which recalled not only Thurlbeck’s full participation in the Screws’ shameful practice of promising payments for stories and then reneging on the deal, but also his legendary failed attempt to paint a naturist guest house in Dorset as some kind of rural brothel, where he had been offered a sex session with the owners for £75.

Sadly, Thurlbeck was caught not only lying, but literally with his pants down: as the owners had sex with each other – hardly a big deal as they were a married couple – Thurlbeck stood at the foot of the bed and masturbated himself. Sadly, we have not been told whether this was up to his usual level of stylishness. And this is not the only notable feature of Thurlbeck’s behaviour.

When he Tweets – not once, but twice – that “The one good thing to come out of #Miranda is that it has shown our security services are at the very top of their game”, this is not just distant admiration for the rozzers, but encouragement for his mates. Because Thurlbeck has also been revealed to be a Police informer, a relationship in which, it is conceded, information passed both ways.

You read that right: as the excellent Brown Moses blog has noted in its Hackgate Files series, in his position as Screws chief reporter, Thurlbeck would pass information to the Met in exchange for the kind of stuff the paper needed to stand up its stories. Some of this information came from the Police National Computer. Whether any of the information should not have been passed to him is not known.

So the bloke cheerleading for the security services turns out to be a purveyor of dodgy journalism, a participant in promising rewards and then cheating the recipients out of them, a seedy wanker, and a copper’s nark. Now, perhaps the Met isn’t so bothered about who cheers it on, but anyone in the PR game viewing that collection of attributes might think they could do without his support.

Let’s hope the clerk to the court tells him to keep both hands in view at all times.

IEA Transport Man Sells The Pass

Despite his report into the HS2 project having been rumbled bythis blog the other day, the Institute of Economic Affairs’ (IEA) head of transport Richard Wellings remains undaunted, so much so that he has volunteered a piece for the Yorkshire Post telling how the railways could become revitalised, if only the Government would flog them off to his pals in the private sector.

Here, everything would be left to The Market, which, as any fule kno, will optimally allocate resources and match supply to demand, so that train services will meet the needs of travellers and commuters, all requirements of freight operators will be met, and no subsidy will be required. Then someone woke up and realised that this was yet another ideologically driven crock of crap.

Let me deal directly with the clear weaknesses in Wellings’ argument, and start with his assertion that all was so much better in the 19th Century: “Ministers ignored the lessons of the 19th century ... Taxpayers were not bankrolling the railways in those days”. But there was increasing Government oversight, especially after the fallout from the Railway Mania of the 1840s.

And the 19th Century railway was mainly concerned with the carriage of freight, then as now a profitable operation. There was, moreover, little competition: there were no aircraft and no motorised road transport. Provided buyers and sellers were not so time conscious, there was the choice of transporting by canal or coaster. Otherwise, goods had to travel by rail. This is not the case today.

Then he really drops a clanger: “Network Rail (NR) ... should be abolished, with chunks of the network sold off to train companies. These firms would then be free to merge and create larger enterprises”. Really? With NR’s debt pile at around £20 billion, and (say) ten train operators taking equal shares of the infrastructure, that’s £2 billion they each have to raise. Who is going to lend them that much?

On top of that is the cost of maintaining and upgrading the network, assuming liabilities for damage and accidents, and all without any assistance from any Government agency. How does that pay for itself, let alone make a profit? Sure, property could be sold off, but this is a finite resource. The only similar example is what happened in the USA starting in the 1960s.

And that tells us that operators concentrated on freight, because it made money, and that, without intervention by Federal, State or other Government agencies, the USA outside major cities would not have a passenger rail service. The UK would get the same: passenger trains slowed down and sidelined for freight, or withdrawn altogether, no network expansion, and commuting only if Government paid for it.

Wellings is welcome to put that before the public. He knows the answer he’ll receive.

Miranda – Don’t Menshn The Law

As the arguments continue over the detention of David Miranda at Heathrow last Sunday, one question that is now being asked, and answered in a variety of ways, is that of whether it was legally sound. Now, while dear Louise Mensch has already examined the relevant statute and concluded that the law was being applied correctly, some who actually know their law do not agree.

Has she got legal news for us? Afraid not

And Ms Mensch is not alone in the certainty that what happened to Miranda was within the law: Dan Hodges, the Colonel Nicholson of the Labour Party, assumes this when he justifies the detention, and then in a later post not only declares that this is a small price to pay for “keeping us safe”, but also shows his credulousness in accepting what his “Whitehall source” tells him about data security.

So was the detention legal or not? Ms Mensch is convinced that the definition of terrorism in the 2000 Act covers it. But “being in possession of information stored electronically while in a transit lounge with intent” is certainly not covered by the definition she cites (for starters, there is no “use or threat of action” that can be even inferred from just the possession of information).

I am not alone in questioning the legality of the action, and of the excuses subsequently wheeled out in its defence: David Allen Green, who writes the excellent Jack Of Kent blog, has concluded after considering Schedule 7 of the 2000 Act that “if the questioning, detention, and search of Miranda was for a purpose other than to determine if he was a terrorist, then it was unlawful”.

There are others raising concerns. Joshua Rozenberg asks “Why, then, was Miranda detained for eight hours and 55 minutes before being released without charge?” and concludes “It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the power was used disproportionately and therefore inappropriately”. But the most telling intervention has come from one of those who introduced the bill in the Lords.

Charles Falconer “said that the act makes clear that police can only detain someone to assess whether they are involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism”. He specifically told the Guardian that “I am very clear that this does not apply, either on its terms or in its spirit, to Mr Miranda”. He was equally clear that Miranda did not fall within the definitions described in Schedule 7.

This is his interpretation: “The reason that doesn't fall within schedule 7 is because: even assuming that they think there is material which has been obtained in breach of the Officials Secrets Act, the action of Miranda or anybody he is acting with could not be described as somebody concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism”. I’ll take that over Hodges and Ms Mensch, thanks.

Although I’m sure the Member for Manhattan Upmarket will be back for more later.

Guardian Spook Visit Double Standards

When Alan Rusbridger, editor of the deeply subversive Guardian, told that the paper had been visited by representatives of GCHQ, who had then supervised the destruction of two computer hard drives which had contained, among other items, the data from Edward Snowden, some thought he was venturing into the realm of fantasy. He was not. And the story is now out there.

This place is getting bypassed, folks

Yes, even the Mail has run with it, not surprisingly as even the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre understands all too well the implications for his “freedom to edit” of the spooks rocking up at Northcliffe House with an angle grinder and an equally prejudicial attitude. And what makes this affair so much more serious is that it has been authorised by Government diktat.

The decision to have GCHQ give the Guardian the hard word was taken by Young Dave personally. And the instruction to Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, to have the deed done was also approved by Corporal Clegg and William ‘Ague. Whether Cameron was leaned on by the White House is unknown, but the implications for press freedom are in the category of the bleeding obvious.

But where the whole business requires a total suspension of disbelief is in the reasoning behind having the Guardian destroy the data. Quite apart from the mildly inconvenient fact that there are other copies of the Snowden files elsewhere – like, oh I dunno, an apartment in Rio de Janeiro for instance – the catch-all excuse that the data may fall into foreign hands is bunk.

We are told that there was a fear that the Guardian’s website might be hacked. At first this sounds plausible. But would accessing that site also give access to the two hard drives? No it wouldn’t. To get hold of the data, a hacker would have to access the machines in which the disks were installed, and would then have to hope that any encryption could be overcome. So that’s a false excuse, then.

And aren’t we forgetting something here? How did the Guardian obtain the information in the first place? That happened when it was copied from whichever US Government system was hosting it. And, who knows, there might be another Edward Snowden out there somewhere. So anyone representing Government telling the Guardian that they don’t really know how to keep data secure is coming it.

Worse, the number of supposed libertarians, and hacks, excusing the Government’s action because it’s the Guardian is stupidity of the most worrying kind. Tabloids may not be interested in anything that isn’t Sport’n’Slebs, but the rest of the press, and broadcast media, is equally at risk from this new variation on The Knock On The Door. We’re talking expediency here, not high principles.

“Do as we say, not as we do, and we know best”? I think not.

Super Soaraway Twitter Swindle

When it comes to Premier League football, Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun think of everything – right down to Twitter accounts for the participating clubs. This feature, despite the paper’s less than fraternal relationship with the locals, has been extended to Merseyside, and there are accounts for both Everton and Liverpool.

One Zelo Street regular, unconvinced that a paper with form like the Sun could so easily muster over 7,500 followers from Liverpool supporters, decided to have a sniff around the list of those followers, and, like 007 with Mr Wint’s aftershave, he soon smelt a rat. Why might that be? Ah well. We have been here before. Let us consider the first of our screen shots.

There’s a real representative bunch of Kopites. Or maybe they have season tickets for the Kremlin. More likely they have neither. But this could, of course, be mere coincidence. Heck, it’s not as if it’s blatant, and after all, we’re talking more than seven and a half thousand followers. Well, hurry up and fix your make-up, because if you want blatant, it’s coming right up.

I bring you the less than coincidental presence of Eight Guys Named Bright (including Bright Endroad, Bright Crimecourt, and Bright Deathbed). That would be bang to rights, Sun people, and, as the man said, there’s more.

The Sun’s Liverpool FC Twitter feed also features a lot of followers called Charles, and here are four of them, by the merest coincidence all together.

Just the four? Heck no, here’s another five of them, demonstrating that we have journeyed well beyond the shores of coincidence.

And lo, here’s another three of the Charles clan, including Charles Wonsome and Charles Lostsome, keeping each other company. And let’s cut to the conclusion: this Twitter account is stuffed with phony followers. Whether Sun hacks were involved is immaterial: it’s their account, and their lookout.

Only one conclusion can be reached from this exercise: that the Sun is so reviled on Merseyside that their LFC Twitter account only got past 7,500 followers by being chock full of fakes. What a complete shower.

Don’t Menshn The Invention

Into the controversy and debate surrounding the detention of David Miranda, partner of Guardian correspondent Glenn Greenwald, at Heathrow on Sunday has waded the former Tory MP now representing the distant constituency of Manhattan Upmarket, Louise Mensch. And you must pay attention to her, because, well, it’s written, that’s why. And she’s been on telly recently.

Has she got news for us? Er, no

Ms Mensch has titled her rant on the affair “The smears of Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian – a primer” [note that the URL has “lies” instead of “smears”], which suggests that this is some kind of wholly factual text giving readers a straightforward, yet comprehensive, briefing on events. Sadly, though, and by her own admission, it is nothing of the sort. But there is invention and abuse in spades.

The tone is set at the start, as we are told of Edward Snowden “putting our agents at risk around the world, and aiding some of the world’s most repressive regimes”, an accusation that Ms Mensch does not stand up with any of those pesky things called facts. We have to take that as read – on her say-so. And remember, anyone wavering, Snowden “was just a shitty little spy”. And this is a “primer”?

Whatever. Glenn Greenwald is accused of having Stockholm Syndrome, and then the abuse ratchets up as Greenwald is accused of being a liar over his description of Miranda as “not even a journalist”. Ms Mensch fails to understand that one can be working with a journalist without actually being one. But she’s nailed Miranda with another “lie” over his claim not to have been allowed a lawyer.

Once again, she fails to understand that being offered an approved lawyer by a clearly hostile interrogator does not cut the mustard. The Guardian had sent legal representation to Heathrow, and Miranda was refused access to them. But then she goes ballistic: “Glenn Greenwald admitted to the New York Times that David Miranda had been carrying, as a mule, stolen, encrypted thumb drives actually containing intelligence data that Snowden stole from the CIA”.

Greenwald made no such admission. But Ms Mensch is not detained by such trivialities, banging on about “top secret ... stolen” information (which, on Twitter, was also “classified”), while also admitting in an exchange with me that she had no idea what information Miranda was carrying.

And Louise Mensch, of all people, should tread carefully when casting around the word “liar” as if it were so much confetti. This is, after all, the same Louise Mensch who twice used Parliamentary privilege to make wholly untrue (and highly damaging) statements about Piers Morgan which she subsequently had to withdraw. She would be best advised to put facts before embellishment in future.

In the meantime, this blog will certainly not be taking lectures on honesty from her.

Frack Attack – The New Battle Of Britain

Once again, the disconnect between what is shown by broadcast media and what some in the press want their readers to believe is brought into sharp focus by arguments about what happened yesterday near Balcombe in West Sussex. While the BBC showed a number of people protesting, and many getting arrested as a result, others have declared that acts of treachery and treason are upon us.

Wait, what? Well, as I pointed out a while back, the closer that the process of extracting gas from shale by hydraulic fracturing – fracking for short – comes to London, the greater the protests will be. Balcombe is prime commuter belt, and if there is going to be fracking there, rather than somewhere near Blackpool where very few hacks and pundits live, then that means it’s serious.

So, while very few turned up to protest when Cuadrilla Resources fracked happily away in Lancashire, things were not so quiet in Balcombe. This is turn has spooked proponents of fracking, and today has come a lashing out at protesters, and of course the BBC for, er, oh I dunno, but look, the Beeb is always to blame, whether it turns up and reports, or not. It’s written, that’s why.

Especially spooked has been Christopher Booker, who has been given a platform by the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre: “A new 'Battle of Britain'? Caving in to the anti-fracking fanatics is a craven surrender to mob rule” he splutters and froths into his suitably upmarket high tea. Fighting them on the landing grounds, then, Chris? But he’s serious: “insanity ... threaten[ing] Britain’s entire energy future”.

The protesters are wrong: “fog of misconceptions ... suicidal energy policy ... deluded”. This is because “Scarcely an iota of their scare story bears any relation to reality” and fracking, Booker tells readers twice – just to make sure – means “cheap gas”. To no surprise, no figures are quoted, nor any analysis cited. It’s cheap in the USA, therefore it must be cheap here. So be told.

Booker’s rant is reinforced by an editorial in the Maily Telegraph which covers remarkably similar ground, and takes an almost identical attitude to protest, as Booker. “Anti-fracking zealots are the enemies of progress” howls the headline, while readers are told that the Government must somehow stand up to the protesters, who are depicted as “new Luddites” and “hysterical”.

And, just to put the lid on the whole thing, Booker’s pal James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole has asserted that “the fracking pollution issue has been invented by green activists as part of their anti-growth, pro-renewables campaign”. The thought that, given the tax breaks on offer, fracking would be off and running if this really was the new Klondike, is not allowed to enter.

But it isn’t, and so the ranting is pointless. No change there, then.

Greenwald Partner Detention – Libertarians Uninterested

When David Miranda, partner of Guardian correspondent Glenn Greenwald, was detained at Heathrow Airport at the weekend while in transit from Berlin to Brazil, and held for the maximum nine hours provided for by the 2000 Terrorism Act, there was outrage – but not across the whole political spectrum. The right, and especially the libertarian part of it, was not so much as interested.

Only during the day has press coverage reached outside the Guardian, with the Mail at least publishing a reasonable account of the detention, together with adverse comment from a variety of Labour MPs – among them Tom Watson, Keith Vaz and Yvette Cooper – plus Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty, and to his credit Nick Pickles of Big Brother Watch. So what’s the problem with the libertarian right?

Sadly, as soon as someone says it’s the Guardian, and it is known that Labour MPs are speaking in support, there has to be an instant polarisation of the incident into a left-versus-right narrative. So the passing of the relevant act by a Labour Government, although there has been no sign of repeal by the Coalition, has been held to mean it’s all their fault.

That the detention was down to the interpretation of the act – making someone in a relationship with someone who has been given information by someone else that the USA would very much like to extradite and cause to stand trial on its own soil into a terrorist suspect – does not seem to enter. And no-one has asked if there might have been a way of excusing the detention, had the 2000 Act not been present.

So at the bear pit that is Telegraph blogs, we see Rob Crilly arguing “David Miranda's detention is not as sinister as it sounds. But our sweeping anti-terror laws are”. Yes, it’s OK to detain Miranda, but the laws are A Very Bad Thing. So Crilly is telling the readers that the authorities at Heathrow ought to have found another excuse to nick Miranda, because, well, he was carrying documents.

This is developed further by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his newly anointed teaboy Alex Wickham at the Guido Fawkes blog. Greenwald is described in typically uncomplimentary terms – the kind accorded to real journalists who achieve what the Fawkes folks never will – and the best they can say about the nine hour detention is that it is “eyebrow raising”. And it’s all Labour’s fault.

All of which shows, once again, that from phone hacking to climate change to the most basic of human rights, the right has a problem. And that problem is that they cannot rationalise an increasing number of issues other than in a right versus left way. Rather than do the decent thing and agree that the denial of liberty is wrong, the immediate reaction is to dig around and find a way to kick the rotten lefties.

That is a sad reflection on the libertarian right. And, ultimately, it’s their problem.

HS2 – IEA Report One Huge Turkey

[Update at end of post]

So the much trailed IEA “report” on the HS2 project, whose central assertion that the cost should be more realistically put at £80 billion, has been released (read it HERE [.pdf]). And, as I mentioned yesterday, much of its justification for the shameless inflation of the price tag comes from using the same idea already used by the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), and previously debunked.

High speed rail in Madrid. Four years ago

Much of the text strikes a mildly paranoid tone, telling how politicians of insufficient ideological purity and other proponents of “pork barrel” politics saddled unfortunate taxpayers – and, with a nod to the target audience, these were most unfortunate if they lived in and around London – with enormous bills for projects which the heroic private sector would undoubtedly have delivered for a fraction of the cost.

Thus a kind of loosely defined but omnipresent conspiracy of those nudge-nudge inducing “vested interests” subjugated the will of The Market, which as any fule kno has all the answers, if only it can be left alone to sort them out, aided no doubt by Adam Smith’s “guiding hand”, demonstrating how what Smith meant, and the meaning placed on his words by free marketeers, can be so divergent.

But the way in which the £80 billion figure has been arrived at can be summarised very easily: the cost of the HS2 “Y Network” is increased to £50 billion (no citation is given), and then has, for starters, the whole cost of Crossrail 2 added to it. The only difference between the TPA and IEA is that the latter have taken the TPA number (£10 billion) and doubled it, to make it twice as scary.

That is plainly fraudulent, and twice over, but, as the man said, there’s more. A spur from HS2 to Liverpool is added in (not part of the project) because it is held that more of those vested interests will successfully lobby for it. That the city will see journey times to London cut to little over one and a half hours under the current proposals is not mentioned.

More transport schemes are added to get to the £80 billion figure: as I expected, all the cost of extending the Nottingham tram system to Toton figures, as does a tram extension west to Derby, the business case of which would stand on its own, thanks. Railway electrification in West Yorkshire – already planned – is similarly held to be part of the HS2 cost. And the benefits are talked down to a mere £30 billion.

Would the methodology overstate the economic benefits of HS2? Ah well. The IEA, along the way, has discussed the Jubilee Line Extension, but what it has not told its readers is that benefits were not expected to cover costs. However, after completion, the numbers were calculated again: despite significant cost overruns, the benefits had been underestimated, and by many billions of pounds.

Thus the selective presentation of the IEA. So that’s another one for the bin, then.

[UPDATE 20 August 1150 hours: Richard Wellings, the author of the IEA's report, has responded to my post, giving a perhaps unintentional insight into that mindset of free market dogma, while also bringing equally unintentional hilarity to proceedings.

See - if HS2 is a publicly funded project, it means "deadweight losses", while had it been provided by the free market - not that any significant similar project has been in the recent past - it would have been miraculously transformed into "investment". HS2 cannot, by definition, be a productive asset unless it comes from a source which he deems ideologically acceptable.

Then, despite being aware that he was encountering resistance to his product offering, Wellings called me out for misrepresentation. Yes, the author who dishonestly added the cost of Crossrail 2 to the HS2 business case, along with a host of other projects that may interact with HS2 in some way, says someone else is guilty of misrepresentation. Littlejohn says You Couldn't Make It Up]