After The Shooting

With politics focusing on the trials and tribulations of the GOP Presidential hopefuls, some may have lost sight of the recovery from her near-fatal shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. Following the traumatic events of last January – when six were killed – she has been undergoing a long and difficult programme of rehabilitation. And she has a long way to go yet.

Rep. Giffords and husband Mark Kelly, the latter now a former Space Shuttle commander, have given an interview to ABC’s Diane Sawyer, to show the progress that the Congresswoman has made since the shooting. Kelly has been on the Daily Show and told host Jon Stewart that his wife was improving every day. His optimism is as boundless as it is inexhaustible.

But the reality is that Gabrielle Giffords has had to walk a very long, singularly lonely and emotionally exhausting road just to get to where she is now. She has had to re-learn her speech, how to smile, how to coax both legs into doing what she wants them to do. The short video above, where she finds adversely on Sarah Palin’s now infamous “crosshairs” map, comes from before the shooting.

And here is video from ABC, with some of the interview. There is humour, warmth and determination in Giffords, great support from Kelly, and Sawyer is a sympathetic interlocutor. But Gabrielle Giffords is not there yet. One should not be surprised: she was shot through the head and the round tore through one side of her brain. No-one knows how far her recovery will go.

Right now, some of Gabrielle Giffords has returned. More will certainly follow: she is determined to keep improving, as is her husband, as are her family and supporters. But after that shooting, it is possible that part of her will not come back, that some of her cannot be recovered. That is what happens when people get in the way of instruments built for killing.

And when the usual suspects clamour for more guns on the streets, not less – yes, Ann Coulter, I mean folks like you – it should be borne in mind that the more guns there are, and when they’re easier to get hold of, then sometimes they will fall into the hands of those like Jared Lee Loughner.

Maybe, one day, it really will be time to put the guns down. But don’t bet on it happening just yet.

Leveson Is Served (2)

The Leveson enquiry this morning heard from the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger. But the participant to watch was David Sherborne, representing 51 “core participants”, a sample of those who were targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, whose notes, he reminded the enquiry, are still being pored over by the Police over five years after being seized.

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet talked of the fear of speaking out, of the pressure on journalists: “relentless, often to unpredictable and unreasonable timescales, and without the resources to do the job well”. She stressed it was important “to understand the reality of newsroom culture and the pressures ... to write stories that are inaccurate or misleading”.

She also told of the hostility of the Murdoch press to organised labour on the one hand, but its cynical attempt to legitimise the work of PI Derek Webb on the other, by telling him he had to “stop being a private investigator and become a journalist”, and that he had to join the NUJ and obtain an NUJ press card. Ms Stanistreet called this “cynical”. Her talent for understatement is masterful.

Rusbridger clearly wanted to maintain hope that self-regulation could be made to work: to believe otherwise is, for any newspaper editor, to admit failure. He found adversely on the PCC’s absence when Phonehackgate kicked off, and proposed a revised “Press Standards and Mediation Commission”, a “one stop shop disputes resolution service”. Other editors’ reaction will be crucial.

These, though interesting as they were, served only as warm-up acts for Sherborne, who showed that he understood the Fourth Estate by summarising its acts thus: “Illegally accessing people's voicemail ... blagging, blackmailing vulnerable or opportunistic individuals into breaking confidences of well known people ... the vilification of ordinary members of the public; the hounding of well known people, their family and friends”. Got it in one.

And he captured the modus operandi of too many titles thus: “what you can't get you buy, what you can't buy you procure through deception and lies; what you can't procure you steal or you make up because it sounds right and sells newspapers”. He also asserted that the Screws did not have a public interest defence for any of its many intrusions into others’ privacy.

Where Sherborne misses the target, if only slightly, is when he tells that it is “a scandal” that reporting of Phonehackgate was confined to only “broadsheets and broadcasters”. It is, of course, because of the unwritten rule governing those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet: “dog doesn’t eat dog”.

Many of those Sherborne represents will appear later. It’s warming up nicely.

Express To Cheap And Scary

Nothing epitomises the cheap and nasty nature of the Desmond press better than today’s edition of the Daily Express: between them, both print and online editions demonstrate that proof reading and lead story fail any kind of quality control test. The online edition has for once been updated with news that has come too late for the front page, and the lack of sub-editing shows.

Such is the eagerness to once more kick the EU that the expression “toe the line” has come out as “tow the line”. The Express of Max Beaverbrook would never have let such a basic error pass sub-editing, but the paper under Richard “Dirty” Desmond sent those staff down the road as a measure not so much of cost-cutting as profit enhancement. The result is singularly unsatisfactory.

Also cheap and nasty is the main lead in the print edition: not for the first time, this is a scare story about energy bills. “Energy Bills To Rocket By 60%” thunders the front page banner. Given the use of the term “rocket”, the inference is clear: this is not a gradual increase of a few percentage points a year, but a sudden and violent hiking of prices. Isn’t it?

Well, no it isn’t: a look at the supporting small print reveals that one-third of those on a panel of “experts” advising SmartestEnergy (who supply energy generated by the independent sector) say that prices will rise 60% by 2021, in other words by around 5% per annum over the next decade, with 90% of that rise being down to increased wholesale energy costs.

There is also the increasingly tired “Experts blame the upward trend on the green agenda”, although the best the Express can manage is one pundit who tells of “the need for the major suppliers to invest in green technology”. This subject has been the source of significant misinformation of late, with climate change denialist lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) leading the way.

GWPF main man Benny Peiser (not a scientist, and with no peer-reviewed literature to his name) claimed that “green costs” added between 15 and 20 per cent to energy bills. The actual figure for environmental costs is 4% for gas and 10% for electricity, so if you’re using an equal amount of both, “green costs” add around 7% to your bill, and contribute none of the wholesale price increase.

None of which you’ll find in the Express. Today’s front page story is yet another feeble attempt to frighten the supposed target audience into buying Des’ cheap and nasty rag. But thus far it makes a profit, so that’s another Benchmark Of Excellence.

Making A Killing From Lincoln

As if being top rated host on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) is not enough for the vain and hypersensitive Bill O’Reilly, he also has a sideline in authoring – or co-authoring – books. The latest in this line, which he co-authored with Martin Dugard, is titled “Killing Lincoln”, and is about the events leading up to the assassination of the then President.

Sad to say, though, the O’Reilly and Dugard book is not without flaw: for instance, it places Lincoln in the Oval Office more than forty years before the Oval Office existed (1909). There has been much adverse comment on the flaws, and in turn, O’Reilly has reacted unhappily to the criticism, in the process adopting the tactic recently deployed (unsuccessfully) by Ricky Gervais.

Bill-O declared that those who criticised his book did so at least partly because of his success, that they were his “enemies”, and that there were “guttersnipes” out there in the media. His assertion that “We also know the media lies at will these days with little accountability” may provoke a wry smile among those who know of Fox’s occasional relationship with factual accuracy.

This has not impressed critics of Fox: Eric Boehlert of Media Matters For America (MMFA) described the book during an appearance with MSNBC’s Ed Schulz as “The Fox News Version of US History”, and suggested that the number of mistakes within its pages may be rather more than the four conceded by Bill-O. He also dismissed O’Reilly’s disparaging remarks about history teaching in the USA.

And the folks at Salon.com have reprinted the criticism of the book by Rae Emerson of the National Parks Service, which runs Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was shot and fatally wounded. Moreover, they have cited another scathing review of the book. Bill-O has tried to deflect some of the criticism by saying folks are nit-picking over dates, but if a historical volume can’t get dates right, it’s can’t be called reliable.

But “Killing Lincoln” has accomplished its primary mission: it’s sold over a million copies, and made Bill O’Reilly a lot of money. Combined with the millions he makes out of Fox, it all adds up to a nice little earner, and will secure Bill-O a more than comfortable retirement. After all, he’s not getting any younger, and after being at Fox for all those years, who else will have him?

Leveson Is Served

The Leveson Enquiry is now under way, and today those representing Rupe’s troops and Associated Newspapers have been having their say. Rhodri Davies, for News International, has queried the previous assertion that 28 hacks from the Screws were soliciting phone hacking from Glenn Mulcaire, which is a brave move: for all he knows, the real number could be yet higher.

Davies has also disputed that actor Jude Law had his phone hacked on behalf of the Screws. I am not confident that this, either, will prove a fruitful avenue along which to travel. But at least he has conceded that the Fourth Estate is not above the law. Meanwhile, Jonathan Caplan, batting for the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, has suggested that the Mail did not intend to break it.

That might raise a few eyebrows, given that the Daily Mail – the figures I’m using are those quoted by Nick Davies in Flat Earth News – was found to have made a total of 985 requests to PI Steve Whittamore over a three-year period, more than one for every working day, and that for requests where a conclusion could be drawn, all were “certainly” or “very probably” in breach of the Data Protection Act.

Whittamore’s ten most active journalist clients alone paid him a total of over £164,000 to obtain 3,291 pieces of information which were either “certainly” or “probably” illegal. It is inconceivable that none of those journalists worked for Associated. Yet Caplan has had the brass neck to state “[There is] no evidence that they ever asked Mr Whittamore to do anything illegal”.

Excuse me, but the bullshit detector just went off. If the Dacre hackery asked Whittamore to get them information that they could not secure by legitimate means, how then do they think he obtained it? So they merely asked him for information. They aren’t wet behind the ears. Hacks would know full well that Whittamore had to break the law to get it. Caplan is dissembling.

Caplan has then told the enquiry that Whittamore “was also hired by others, including banks, and local firms of solicitors”, which, freely translated, means “look over there!” and does not make the information Whittamore obtained for the Dacre press in any way legal. Hopefully someone will see through Caplan’s gambit and get some answers out of Associated.

Meanwhile, the representative of Richard “Dirty” Desmond is this afternoon’s star turn. That could be interesting. And I doubt that Associated’s involvement in Operation Motorman has passed without notice.

Dick Dabbles In Demonisation

Having been absent from the pages of the Daily Mail for a week – but no doubt still trousering yet more of that close to £1 million a year package at the same time – the talentless and unfunny Richard Littlejohn has today returned, with a subject and method he and his legendarily foul mouthed editor know well: picking on foreigners by telling packs of whoppers.

This time, the attempt to slip the tray of fresh porkies under the readers’ radar employs the tired and over-used diversionary tactic of reminiscing about Minder. The goings-on around Arthur Daley, Terence and the rest were moderately funny once, but Dick has flogged them half to death in the attempt to paper over the gaping chasms in his un-researched stream of bigotry.

Eastern European, guv? They're criminals, innit?!?

When the 94th recycling of Minder episodes past is stripped away, though, the underlying story and Dick’s false conclusion can be put simply: someone tried to strip metal from an electricity sub-station (most unwise) and was rewarded with 60% burns to his body. The individual did not have a criminal record. He was 21 years old and described as “Eastern European”.

Littlejohn, for reasons best known to himself, translates this as “thought to be Eastern European”. Perhaps it increases the nudge-nudge value of his copy. Then comes the smear: “[this] in a criminal context is, generally, code for ‘Romanian’ – although when it comes to drugs and extortion, it also encompasses ‘Albanian’”. It can’t mean “Polish”, Dick explains, as they’re “hard-working”.

“This was just one of the exciting benefits of EU expansion” sneers Dick, seemingly unaware that Albania is not part of the EU. “We have ... managed to import countless criminals from former Iron Curtain countries” he goes on, demonstrating how peoples who 22 years ago were suffering terrible oppression at the hands of the Ceausescu regime were in reality just a bunch of crims.

And anyone in any doubt that Dick is in full-on demonising bigot mode need look no further than his reference to “every Dale Farm lookalike”. The assertion that courts should hand down ten-year jail terms for receiving stolen metal, while fitting the Mail’s authoritarian agenda (just don’t mention the cost and likely ineffectiveness) is a mere sideshow to cover his tracks.

Dick, you’re a bigoted dick. If you’ve got any facts to stand up this campaign against people talking foreign, then bring them forward. But then, you haven’t: Littlejohn columns consist of zero research and 99% by-product from the northbound end of a southbound bull.

No change there, then.

Guido Fawked – Hunt The Kool-Aid

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC), famous for being absent and totally ineffective as Phonehackgate kicked off on its front lawn, has a new chairman to replace the mainly invisible Peta Buscombe. David Hunt, former Tory MP for Wirral West, and loyal servant of leaders from Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron, is the third peer from the party’s ranks to take the job.

And getting the inside track for an interview has been the Guardian’s Roy Greenslade, discovering that Hunt wants self-regulation to continue (and, moreover, succeed), that he is committed to press freedom, that he wants to present his thoughts on reform of the Commission before Leveson reports, and that “the greatest challenge is with the bloggers”.

Name in paper does not equal fame

Hunt, however, appears not to have a wide knowledge of the blogosphere, and names only one, the Guido Fawkes blog, domain of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer Henry Cole, the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere. The name check has rather gone to Staines’ and Cole’s heads, and they have posted suggesting that Hunt has been calling them.

Sadly, this is complete drivel. There is a world of difference between David Hunt seeking out The Great Guido, and Cole leaving a message, only for yet another gofer to call back later when they’ve finished dealing with the really important people. And Hunt’s message, that of keeping statutory regulation out of blogging, won’t be helped by the Fawkes’ blog’s remarks about Sunday Mirror editor Tina Weaver.

The assertion that Ms Weaver solicited phone hacking and blagging is, like so much on the Fawkes blog, unsubstantiated bluster and clueless tribalism in lockstep. The newspaper group at the top of the Operation Motorman blagging charts was Associated – who own the Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday. The Fawkes blog has a nice little earner with Associated and won’t be going there.

The cluelessness and tribalism continues with a post eagerly asserting that “Mulcaire hacked on behalf of the Mirror”. Sadly, the headline from the Press Gazette only manages “Mulcaire notes suggest Daily Mirror link”. If Mulcaire was working for the Murdoch press, they might have had something to say if he was also hacking for the opposition. This has not occurred to The Great (and clueless) Guido.

What has also not occurred to Staines and Cole is that, if they want to stick it to the rotten lefties, they have one weapon available to them: do some investigation of their own. But that is too much like hard work, so they will not. Meanwhile, I am more than happy to see Staines believe that he is some kind of minor sleb, knowing that pride comes before a fall.

And right now, Paul Staines is brim full of Pride. Or maybe it’s Guinness?

Del Boy Blames The Beeb

Amidst all the froth generated by the Eurozone – and also the wider EU – some clearly believe that what they call “Euroscepticism”, or more correctly forthright Europhobia, should be rather more on the march than it is. So James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole has stepped in to talk up the prospects for his team, while putting the boot into those supposedly holding it back.

Del Boy’s stance will be familiar to those who have observed the modus operandi of our old friends at Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse): he presents his position of screaming anti-Europeanism as “mainstream”, digs out one recent opinion poll as clinching evidence, and concludes that anyone not following his One True Path is another of those rotten lefties.

So which political party satisfies the Del Boy agenda? Not the Tories: after all, Del has already condemned Young Dave by comparing him unfavourably to Sailor Heath, who took us into the then EEC. The thought that Cameron is having to manage the first peacetime Coalition for 80 years does not enter. Instead, Del comes out for Nigel “thirsty” Farage and UKIP.

This, in Delingpole’s world, is the home of true Conservatism, and the only reason that UKIP is not attracting more than a 7% opinion poll rating is down to one thing: it’s being ignored by the dastardly BBC. Coincidentally, that’s the same BBC that broadcast “Science Under Attack”, where Royal Society president Paul Nurse did Del Boy up like a kipper. Twice.

So Del’s talk of “the BBC-led media” has to be seen in context, that context being that Del is generating large amounts of the northbound by-product of a southbound bull. Even in broadcast media, Sky News (“first for breaking wind”) and ITN do not follow the Beeb’s line. And many papers (think Sun, Mail, Telegraph, Express) are consistently hostile to the Corporation.

The problem that fringe parties like UKIP have – and Delingpole at least touches on this – is that they all too often rely on one high profile individual to raise and maintain their profile. With UKIP it is Farage, who talks the talk, but only walks the walk as far as the nearest watering hole. No significant part of the electorate has ever trusted him at UK Parliamentary elections.

I’ll go further: if that electorate was better informed about the UKIP presence at the European Parliament, and what it was costing (£2 million for Farage’s expenses) versus what the party was actually achieving there, many of those voters who had previously supported them at EP elections would have second thoughts.

Young Dave was right when he said UKIP were “a bunch of ... fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists mostly”. Del Boy needs to get out more.

Little Man Syndrome

[Update at end of post]

Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and by happy coincidence unopposed in both of the elections that he has faced so far, may not be short in stature. But by comparison to his father Hafez al-Assad, who ruled the country for 29 years before his death in 2000, he doesn’t have the “big man” presence. Old man Assad was one mean SOB; Bashar by comparison looks like an extra from the Muppet Show.

That isn’t to say that the son is just as capable as the father when it comes to ordering acts of violence, repression, human rights abuses, and the occasional massacre. But Bashar doesn’t carry his father’s sense of menace. So the urge to over-correct – to show everyone he’s really tough, a flaw that also affected former Pakistan leader Zia-ul-Haq – comes to the fore.

This readiness to show he’s the country’s hard man has been deployed rather too much as the Syrian people have of late tired of the al-Assad benevolence. So there have been many civilian deaths and serious injuries as protests against the regime in Damascus have spread and continued, in the face of strong-arm tactics from the Police and military.

The bloodshed has stirred the Arab League – which previously moved against Libya’s legendarily flatulent leader Muammar Gaddafi – into expelling Syria, although stressing that they aren’t (yet) asking for a no-fly zone or any other external intervention. The Syrian Government has not taken kindly to the expulsion, which came with a package of sanctions attached.

So what now for Bashar al-Assad? He’s already given the impression that the violence will end, then gone back on his word. His neighbours are tiring of the effect the disturbances are having on the region. Syria’s main ally, Iran, is under threat of further sanctions or worse over its bellicose attitude towards its nuclear programme and threatening behaviour towards Israel.

With Gaddafi, I said it was going to end badly, and that he had passed the point where he could row back and save his regime. That same point has already been passed in Syria: the best that al-Assad can hope for is that the Iranians give him and his family asylum. Otherwise he will join Nicolae Ceausescu, Benito Mussolini and, yes, Muammar Gaddafi in being humiliatingly and summarily executed.

It’s over, Bashar. Step away from those levers of power and leave the stage. Or someone else will cause you to leave.

[UPDATE 15 November: what did I tell you? King Abdullah of Jordan - who has read the unrest across the Middle East rather better than his fellow heads of state - has called for al-Assad to go, telling "if Bashar considers the interest of his country, he would step down". When the bloke next door tells you the game is up, it could be worth listening.

There have been pro-Assad rallies, especially in Damascus, but then, there were big pro-Gaddafi rallies in Tripoli, and look how that one turned out. Time to go, Bashar]

Arrivederci Duce

For much of the last two decades, one man has been Prime Minister of Italy: Silvio Berlusconi, media magnate, serial adulterer, peddler of dishonesty, pillar of corruption, yet nevertheless a great survivor. While he has survived, his country has enjoyed minimal growth, organised crime has flourished – particularly the Camorra in and around Naples – and debt has ballooned.

And now he has tendered his resignation, to the relief of many of his fellow citizens who would rather he had done it earlier. Looking back, one has to wonder what, apart from control of five of the country’s top seven TV stations, making it easier to get away with false accounting and embezzlement, and flunking his response to the Credit Crunch and Euro crisis, he has achieved.

Press freedom – paradoxically for a country with a media man as PM – has declined significantly, while the Heritage/WSJ economic freedom index also shows a decline, to a world ranking of 87th, and 36th out of 43 European countries. The Berlusconi years have seen, above all, so little progress, so little reform. And the man himself has compared himself to a previous Italian leader whose tenure ended badly.

This blog has often referred to Berlusconi as “Duce”, the nickname preferred by Benito Mussolini, who ruled the country as a dictator from 1922 to 1943. But Mussolini at least attempted to benefit his country, despite the violence and intimidation that came with the consolidation of power by the fascists. Berlusconi has been more interested in benefiting himself.

And, as if to confirm my characterisation, Berlusconi has himself made the Mussolini comparison, telling that he has “felt in the same situation”. He has an interesting view of his predecessor, having asserted that Mussolini “never killed anyone ... [he] sent people on holiday in exile”. Thus he has built up the view that he holds a less than complete grip on reality.

But Italy’s progress – or lack of it – under Berlusconi sounds one warning for countries like the UK: we have plenty of powerful and opinionated media figures ever ready to give advice to the Government of the day. “Duce” Berlusconi shows the kind of result we might get if one of them were to get their hands on our own levers of power.

That’s one thought that the Fourth Estate will not be discussing with its readership over the coming weeks.

Murdoch Is Served (62)

For so long, Phonehackgate was reported only by the Guardian and Observer, and later by the Independent, the unwritten code of Omerta around the dunghill that is Grubstreet holding firm and proving true Nick Davies’ phrase “dog doesn’t eat dog”. Shamefully, this even extended to the unfair dismissal case brought by Matt Driscoll against the Screws where he was awarded almost £800,000 – a record.

Even as the grim story of Milly Dowler’s phone being hacked, and the possibility that the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had had theirs accessed illegally, unfolded, most of the press pack merely followed the story as the Screws was closed down. But yesterday that changed: the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has clearly put the word out, and the Daily Mail has begun to lead on the affair.

Under the by-line of Stephen Wright, the Mail told “Hacking Police find ‘bombshell’ emails: now detectives may want to question James Murdoch”. Wright speculates as to whether Junior will be questioned, or perhaps arrested, as part of Operation Weeting, the potential of a cover-up which may also involve the twinkle-toed yet domestically combative Rebekah Brooks, and possible deletion of emails.

It’s true that the Commons Home Affairs Committee has been warned that hundreds of thousands of emails were deleted at News International’s request recently, and that more than one organisation was thus involved. And there is the potential here to test Junior’s repeated assertions that he was not the “mafia boss” as characterised by Tom Watson, but merely badly informed.

And that poses a problem for the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, where a report into Phonehackgate, informed by its hearings going back to 2009, when Nick Davies showed them a transcript of the “For Neville” email, is in preparation. The Guardian has suggested that the Committee will indeed conclude that Junior was not the real villain of the piece.

But the Committee’s potential dilemma is, on this occasion, the supporting act. Because the move by the Daily Mail, firstly from Omerta to merely following, has crossed the journalistic Rubicon: Dacre and his hacks are now prepared to lead on the story, which suggests they are confident that the Murdochs are sufficiently damaged as to be beyond salvation.

Or, as the Mail piece puts it in signing off: “It is possible the most shocking revelations in the phone-hacking scandal are yet to come”. It Certainly is.

Express Invents Euro-Storm

Both the Mail and Express are equally hostile to the EU. Both are also alert to any threat to house prices. So a story that coupled both the EU and a threat to house prices would be a perfect storm of frightening. But how to achieve it? Well, today, the Express has done just that, as its front cover thunders “EU Rules To Slash House Prices”. Except – no surprise here – it’s not true.

What the Express is alluding to is the proposed (as in only being discussed right now) Mortgage Credit Directive, which is to do with responsible lending, balanced and clear marketing of mortgage products, comparable and clear pre-contractual information, sound financial advice, good creditworthiness assessments, and supervision of brokers and other intermediaries.

However, eagle-eyed observers will have noted the date on the document: 31st March this year. So the proposal has been around for seven and a half months before the Express has hit the panic button. Why should this be? Ah well. Someone at the paper has discovered that buy-to-let mortgages could, maybe, no longer be based on projected rental income.

And it is this group that the Express is now championing unequivocally, telling that this would “force hundreds of thousands of people to sell up”, which, if they had already secured mortgages on their properties, it would not. So no crash in house prices would be caused, although new mortgages may prove more difficult to secure. But the proposal is still just that – a proposal.

Moreover, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has, as would be expected, made its own submission, working with the Treasury. The FSA has put at the top of the list of changes it would like to see “the exclusion of ‘niche products’ from the scope of the directive ... such as buy-to-let lending”. And the news coming out of discussions on the proposal suggests that buy-to-let will indeed be exempted.

But none of this is disclosed by the Express to its dwindling band of readers. Instead, there is the usual frothing pundit from UKIP, and comments from the Building Societies’ Association and the Association of Residential Letting Agents which are suitably qualified and give the impression that both spokesmen were fed the story as the Express has published it.

Cheap and nasty knocking copy that demonises a favourite bogeyman, while in reality not being even partly true, and all just to frighten the readers into buying an equally cheap and nasty newspaper? That’ll be another Benchmark Of Excellence.

TPA – Demonise And Be Damned

Someone who occasionally looks in on Zelo Street has suggested I check out the latest attempt by the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) to demonise those in society least able to defend themselves against knocking copy, that being the disabled. The TPA has not produced its own copy on this, but has instead (tellingly) taken a Daily Mail attack piece as data.

Leading the TPA charge against the alleged ease with which some access Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is non-job holder Emma Boon, their Campaign Director. This title means she is available for issuing soundbites for broadcast media, formulaic copy for hacks, and otherwise to look smart and presentable so the more gullible viewer misses her putting the boot into the poor and vulnerable.

No further checks on the story is indeed unsatisfactory

Such is the modesty of Ms Boon that her Twitter background consists entirely of stills from TV appearances by Herself Personally Now. But her action in suggesting that DLA is being accessed fraudulently is deadly serious, and not at all pleasant. And the Mail, having splashed another pic of the totally modest Ms Boon alongside its knocking copy, has now cynically dumped her.

Currently perfect? You ought to know

The original Mail story, under the by-line of Kirsty Walker of EU flag frightener fame, asserted dishonestly that 94% of new claimants for DLA started getting payments “after only filling in paperwork”. Then it was claimed that 16% received DLA – “worth £70 a week” – after “merely filling in a claim form”. It was only later in the piece where Ms Walker conceded that 78% of claimants provided backup evidence.

Did you bother finding out about even one of them?

The article went on: “Critics warned that thousands of benefit cheats were being allowed to ‘slip through the net’”. The only independent critic quoted was Ms Boon: indeed, she also told that “there is a chance that more cheats have slipped through the net”. Emma Boon and her fellow non-job holders at the TPA have between them supplied details of cheats totalling precisely zero.

Am not demonising, and am totally modest

Moreover, FullFact has cautioned against unconditionally accepting the Mail story. And, although the Mail followed up Ms Walker’s knocking copy with a comment piece of singular nastiness “Of course, there will always be people who are too ill or disabled to work ...but”, the paper, under the same hack’s by-line, has now performed a volte-face.

“Disability benefit crackdown ‘will hurt the most vulnerable in society’ claim campaigners” is today’s headline. Comments have been sought from Mind, the Disability Alliance, and the National Autistic Society. The emphasis is on concern for those who may lost benefits. But there is no room for the TPA: Emma Boon has been dropped, as has her talk of “cheats”.

Swim with the sharks, get bitten. You know how it is, Emma. Stay modest.

In Remembrance

Today is the eleventh day of the eleventh month. And it is because the Armistice that ended the Great War came into effect at the eleventh hour of that day, and on that month, in 1918, that this is Remembrance Day. Who do we remember on this day?

From that Great War, the last war when the ruling class instructed the rest of the population to go and fight on their behalf, we remember more than nine million dead from the military of the two sides. It is as if most of the population of Greater London had been systematically wiped off the face of the earth over a four and a half year period.

From the Second World War, we remember well over twenty million dead, military and civilian, as the Third Reich and Japan waged aggressive campaigns around the globe. The numbers may not have included as many dead from the UK, but in campaigns such as that in Russia, many millions died in the most bloody, intimate and unyielding of conflicts.

From campaigns since 1945, we remember those who died in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Middle East, Central America, Afghanistan, the South Atlantic, and those lost to acts of terrorism.

But above all, this is not a celebration of war, nor an approval of it. It is when we remember those who went to fight for their country, and never came home.

And perhaps our leaders will remember the haunting conclusion of Harry Patch, who survived the Great War that consumed so many of his contemporaries: “It wasn’t worth it”.

Flagging A Dead Horse

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

Are you frightened of the EU? If not, you may not be benefiting from the collected wisdom (or, maybe, lack of it) of the obedient hackery toiling in the service of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre. This has been demonstrated superbly today by Kirsty Walker, whose name appears on the Euro-Frightener “After Fifa poppy fiasco, the latest bright idea from Brussels? EU flag on England shirts”.

Sadly for Ms Walker, not only did viewing this headline set the Zelo Street bullshit detector ringing loudly, but also the thought occurred that we’ve been here before, although that was in July when the Maily Telegraph’s resident contrarian Christopher Booker made similar claims. The idea of athletes being forced to wear the EU flag was drivel then, and is still drivel.

And the Mail piece concedes this, starting “The measures stipulate that the EU’s blue and yellow flag should be worn by all our teams”, but then adding “member states should be allowed to make the final decision on whether the EU flag should be displayed on clothing”. Ms Walker asserts that this was “following an outcry”. Bullshit. There hasn’t been an outcry, and no change has been made.

Also giving off a particularly rank aroma is the attempt to turn FIFA into some kind of EU associate organisation, by including the “poppy row” in the piece. FIFA, as any fule kno, has nothing to do with the EU and is based in Zürich, in Switzerland, which is, er, not in the EU. Most likely it has been included because of the poppy business, and because it’s full of people who talk foreign.

But Ms Walker is in the misinformation groove: next comes “Brussels already has the power to fine organisations in certain circumstances for not flying the EU flag”. No it doesn’t. Next? “Recently it emerged that the University of Northampton was fined more than £56,000 for not displaying the EU logo to acknowledge it had received funding from the European Regional Development Fund”.

It didn’t emerge, Kirsty, because there was no fine. Northampton Uni didn’t acknowledge that they’d been partly paid by an EU fund and so didn’t get the full grant from the UK Government who were administering the funds, and who allocated the money elsewhere. No-one was fined. Nor were Daily Mail readers told about the main thrust of the EU resolution on sport.

Europolitics has a rather different headline: “MEPs recommend measures to ‘clean up’ sport”. That’s because much of the resolution is about combating hooliganism, doping, match-fixing, illegal betting and money laundering, while improving the lot of retired athletes and looking at standards for sports agents.

The Daily Mail and its readers could agree with all of that. But it would not sell papers and demonise the EU.

[UPDATE 1: Mark English, who is Head of Media at the European Commission office in London, has also found adversely on Kirsty Walker's piece, and a further article which recycles Jonathan Isaby's misinformation from the so-called Taxpayers' Alliance, which I considered earlier]

[UPDATE 2: Chris Moncrieff, yet another of the rabble that make up the Dacre hackery, has confirmed that this is a bone which the Dacre attack doggies are not for putting down. He has dishonestly told that "MEPs were voting to urge ... sporting teams ... to have the EU flag emblazoned on their national team shirts", which they were not.

But Moncrieff, like Kirsty Walker, is in the misinformation groove, continuing "this ludicrous, and indeed sinister, proposal ... is, of course, yet another small and stealthy step towards the creation of the Europhiles' dream: a United States of Europe". Facts, eh? Who needs to bother with them when you've got Dacre in your ear and a nice full bottle of Kool-Aid?]

TPA – EU Accounts Whopper

One of the hoariest of EU-bashing chestnuts is the assertion that the accounts have either never been signed off, or haven’t been signed off for many years. This has been recycled into appropriate knocking copy by Jonathan Isaby, the newest non-job holder at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), who has claimed unequivocally that “The EU’s Accounts Are Not Signed Off ... Again”.

Isaby then homes in on what is called the “error rate” of 3.7%, this being around €4.5 billion for 2009-10. The inference he draws is that something less than honest is going on here, but as with anything claimed or inferred by the TPA, a reality check is in order. And that reality is that “error” does not mean “fraud” or “waste”: moreover, the accounts actually have been signed off.

So why do these “errors” happen? This is because most – around 80% - of EU spending is administered by national Governments. Not all of their processes and controls pass muster with the Court of Auditors in Luxembourg. And there are, on occasion, breaches in such things as procurement rules. Some member states are not keen on an independent audit of problem items.

And how does the UK measure up on the EU audit standard? Ah well. Sir John Bourn, UK Comptroller and Auditor, has said that if the UK had a similar test to the EU one, he might have to qualify the whole of British Central Government Expenditure. That’s another way of saying that the EU standard sets the bar high, as well as conceding that the UK might not.

The latter suggestion is not hard to point up: the 2009-10 Commons accounts had to be qualified after the Auditor General refused to sign them off. The National Audit Office (NAO) refused to sign off the MoD’s accounts – for the fourth year in a row – stating that the Ministry had failed to account properly for £6 billion of equipment. That’s more than half as much again as the EU’s “error rate” in one department.

But what about that suspicion of fraud? The proportion of the EU budget affected is not 3.7%, but 0.2%, and this is, remember, suspected fraud. And the figure does not appear anywhere in Isaby’s post. Jonathan Isaby is an intelligent individual, who could have found all these figures and links, had he been so inclined. That he has apparently not been so inclined suggests one conclusion.

And that is that the TPA – not for the first time – is generating knocking copy to fit its own agenda, rather than considering the fact of the matter. Thus the EU accounts myth is propagated, the TPA get their copy in the papers, and another organisation marked “Government” is casually demonised.

No change there, then.

Guido Fawked – Wrong Call On Hacking (Again)

It is hard for some to break the habits formed over the years, and apparently impossible for the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer Henry Cole, the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere, at the Guido Fawkes blog. Staines called Phonehackgate wrong at the start – Cole, at the time blogging as Tory Bear, did even worse – and they can’t climb out of their rut of cluelessness.

At least they're holding it the right way up

So the appearance of Murdoch Junior before the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee yesterday, instead of being assessed strictly on its merits, was used by the Fawkes blog for yet another cheap snark at Labour MP Tom Watson, with the headline “Watson’s Grandstanding Slammed – Won’t Stop TV Headlines Though”. In support was a Tweet from, er, a Daily Mail hack.

Watson’s shot at Junior – “You must be the first Mafia boss in history who didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise” – might not have pleased Staines and Cole, but the characterisation is entirely apt for a company that exercised power over elected politicians by fear, hacked phones, blagged information, indulged in surveillance and whose newsrooms saw a culture of bullying.

Moreover, the Murdoch empire carried on that way substantially because it considered itself untouchable. The Mafia comparison runs deep, and the headline writers (not the TV ones) knew it. So even Rupe’s troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun have reported the remark. The Express has gone with “MP’s Mafia Boss Jibe At James Murdoch”.

Even the Daily Mail – pals of Staines and Cole – has come up with “Don’t Call Me A Mafia Don”. Online news source the Huffington Post – not TV, folks – has splashed with “You’re Familiar With The Word Mafia?” to head its coverage. So why has the Fawkes blog fixated on “TV headlines”? Simples. Staines is equally fixated on the BBC as the source of all that is evil in the media.

That means he and Cole yet again look the wrong way as Phonehackgate breaks out from the rule that “Dog doesn’t eat dog”. But their pals in the Fourth Estate are equally clueless: Quentin Letts (let’s not), trying in vain to generate humour at the Mafia remark, told “Mr Whittingdale allowed it to stand, so I suppose he’ll now have to be sent to the bottom of the Bay of Naples wearing concrete boots”.

Very good, Quent. But organised crime in and around Naples is not the business of the Mafia, but of the Camorra. Small wonder that the Fawkes blog is routinely clueless, when its pals in the MSM are equally so.

Murdoch Is Served (61)

So today, Murdoch Junior returned to face the Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and encountered a suitably fired-up Tom Watson, plus full supporting cast. And the MP for West Bromwich had a surprise for Junior: he’d been speaking to Neville Thurlbeck, former chief reporter at the now-defunct Screws. And Nev says Junior saw the email containing transcripts of hacked messages.

Watson offered Junior the chance to come clean and admit he misled the Committee back in July. The offer was declined. Instead, Junior dropped former Screws editor Colin Myler and legal man Tom Crone in the mire, suggesting it was they who had done the misleading. Crone described Junior’s evidence as “disingenuous”.

And Crone isn’t the only one on the legal side that has suggested Junior may not have been totally candid about what he knew, and when he knew it. As the current issue of Private Eye (#1301) has pointed out – it’s on Page 6 and the magazine is on sale at all good newsagents for just £1.50 – blaming the lawyers didn’t work with Harbottle & Lewis, nor with Crone.

Moreover, it didn’t work with Julian Pike of Farrer & Co, who told the same Commons Committee that “there was wider involvement in phone activity than [Clive] Goodman”. News Group’s own counsel Michael Silverleaf concurred: “There is overwhelming evidence of the involvement of a number of senior journalists in the illegal enquiries ... a culture of illegal information access”.

These comments come from 2008. That’s a year before Nick Davies and the Guardian first began to prise the lid off the Murdoch can of worms. And it’s the same year that Davies brought us the go-to book on the workings of the Fourth Estate, Flat Earth News. It was while talking about the part of the book examining The Dark Arts when Davies was aggressively challenged by Stuart Kuttner of the Screws.

“Nick Davies lives on another planet. What’s he talking about? It was one journalist at News Of The World, who did it once, and he was fired and went to prison” asserted Kuttner. Davies knew this was untrue, and the tone of Kuttner’s attack caused someone with more information to contact Davies. The Murdoch empire had effectively advertised its guilt to the world.

The aggressive tone continued when the Guardian first splashed on Phonehackgate, with the twinkle-toed yet domestically combative Rebekah Brooks suggesting that the paper was misleading the public. The Metropolitan Police, coincidentally being advised by former Screws hack Neil “Wolfman” Wallis, leant on editor Alan Rusbridger to back off. The reek of corruption is unmistakeable.

And now the Murdochs have turned on their own lawyers. Everybody’s out of step bar Junior, as far as he can recall. Roll on the next revelation.

Climate Change For Libertarians

The latest word has come from the International Energy Agency (IEA): the world is headed, they reckon, for “irreversible” climate change within just five years, unless the existing energy infrastructure changes. Its chief economist has used the ominous phrase “the door is closing” to point up the rapidly diminishing window of opportunity for mankind to take action.

This, it might be thought, would serve as a call to any and all interested parties to get real about the situation, but that would be to misunderstand the denialist lobby, for whom any restriction on seeking out, extracting and burning fossil fuel resources is held to be an assault on their fundamental freedoms, and moreover can only come not from rational human beings, but mere rotten lefties.

Also, anyone also thinking that the denial lobby could not sink lower that the welter of sneering abuse routinely hurled at anyone opposing him by James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole” should wise up: some out there in Libertarian La-La land have dispensed with Del Boy’s wordiness and have instead resorted to effing and blinding as their favoured intellectual weapon.

None in this field is more expert at liberally (but only classically, folks) scattering the original and genuine F-word around his writings than Chris Mounsey, wisely no longer the face of the Libertarian Party UK, but still sounding off at the Devil’s Kitchen blog, despite the unfavourable reception of its contents last year by Andrew “Brillo Pad” Neil on the Beeb’s Daily Politics.

So when the arguments started over Cuadrilla Resources and their use of hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) at a test site near Blackpool, Mounsey linked to a suitably slanted analysis – asserting that an earth tremor of 2.3 magnitude is in itself no big deal (true) while managing to miss the fact that there has only been a test well bored so far – and then let loose against campaign group Frack Off.

Those folks are characterised as having “absolutely f*** all idea about science or economics ... stupidity [twice]”, being “arseholes ... stupidity [again] ... pig-ignorant”, although Mounsey does not tell what his own qualifications are, rather like Del Boy and his pal Christopher Booker, who rubbish the expertise of anyone they dislike, while having no scientific background themselves.

Hopefully for Mounsey, his scientific and economic expertise is better than his grasp of geography: on Twitter recently he asserted that I was “in the area”. Very good Chris – Crewe and Blackpool are around 70 miles apart. For those in the south-east, that’s like saying Northampton is in the Central London area. And that won’t do the “humble devil’s” credibility any favours.

Which is probably as well, given the cluelessness of his insights.

TPA On HS2 – But Missing RFG

The desperation exhibited by the Comfortable of Tufton Street at the lack of traction their opposition to HS2 is gaining was clear yesterday as the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance’s chief non-job holder Matthew Sinclair span a report from the Commons’ Transport Select Committee to suggest that the project should be called in for review. But that wasn’t what the Committee actually said.

Moreover, Sinclair cites in support the Maily Telegraph’s deputy editor Benedict “famous last words” Brogan, though no link is provided, and the words attributed do not appear under his by-line. Brogan’s Twitter feed for the last few days does not mention HS2, so either he is being uncharacteristically modest, or Sinclair is pulling a fast one.

Sinclair also continues the TPA policy of inflating its own propaganda, by describing its press releases as “research notes”, when they are nothing more than knocking copy cobbled together from figures of their own invention (already dismantled HERE and HERE). But the latest offering from the TPA’s “rail expert” Chris Stokes has at least, and at last, mentioned the previously missing F-word.

That’s F as in Freight, the capacity for which is already constrained on the southern part of the West Coast Main Line (WCML) and also on parts of the East Coast Main Line (ECML). That’s not good, because demand for container and other intermodal traffic is rising inexorably. We know this because the Rail Freight Group (RFG) lay out the figures HERE in a letter to the Transport Secretary.

While Stokes suggests in the report cited by Sinclair that putting in a grade separated connection at Nuneaton will somehow be good enough to satisfy the demand for freight paths, RFG Chairman Tony Berkeley is clear that this will only satisfy “some” demand, and that by 2030 – soon after the first part of HS2 is due to open – that demand will need far more capacity.

What Stokes and the TPA also don’t appear to appreciate is that running 125mph passenger services and 75mph freights on the same railway is not a good use of capacity. Two pairs of tracks enable them to be separated, but that in turn constrains the ability to provide 100mph commuter and regional services. Transferring most of the fast services to HS2 eases that constraint.

So while the TPA continues to pretend that the WCML can be enhanced – with little or no disruption – to deal with future demand, bodies like the RFG are unequivocal on the need for HS2. As Tony Berkeley has said: “The country needs it”.