Guido Fawked – Wilful Blindness

[Update at end of post]

Goings-on at the Leveson enquiry are, as I write, not being reported by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer Henry Cole at the Guido Fawkes blog. This may not be unconnected to the allegation made earlier by actor Hugh Grant that the Mail On Sunday must have hacked his phone: the Fawkes blog has a nice little earner with the Dacre press.

What do you mean I have to stay awake?

And it isn’t the only news item where the less than dynamic duo are behind the curve today: the appointment of a political editor for the BBC Newsnight programme is apparently imminent, so the Fawkes blog has to show that it has the contacts and the knowledge. This consists of recycling a Tweet from Adam Boulton of Sky News (“first for breaking wind”).

This by itself might, however, give the game away and demonstrate that Staines and Cole haven’t a clue (again), so there are a couple of paragraphs of accompanying verbiage where the supposed candidates pass before inspection before the Fawkes blog so that its superior insights may be applied. Eventually, readers are told that “Guido would put a readies [sic] on [John] Piennar [sic] if there was a book open”.

No doubt this is completely unconnected to another Tweet, this from Neil Midgley, that Pienaar had already been appointed, according to rumours coming out of the Beeb. But this is a mere taster for the routine hypocrisy exhibited by Cole this afternoon over Leveson. Responding angrily to a wind-up Tweet by Alastair Campbell, he leapt to the defence of the Mail.

Big Al had suggested that, following Grant’s assertion that the Mail had been hacking his phone, the law should in short order be heading in the general direction of Dacre Towers. This caused Cole’s humour circuit to overload and short out, as he fired back “er the evidence being?” as Campbell chortled into his BlackBerry. Thus the double standard was exposed.

Cole and Staines have churned out post after post in their attempt to pin phone hacking on the appalling Piers “Morgan” Moron, and none of them has contained even a sliver of original information. No new evidence has been provided, and they are yet to follow through on their laughable claim that “we’re taking our evidence to the Metropolitan Police”.

But as soon as someone suggests the rozzers home in on their new best pal Dacre, the evidential bar is hoisted rather higher. Staines and Cole are not merely clueless, they’re blinkered tribalists who can’t bring themselves to look at Phonehackgate unless they can pin something on those rotten lefties. Which paper was top of the Operation Motorman charts, lads?

Have to hurry you, no conferring ...

[UPDATE 22 November: the Curse Of Guido has struck again, as John Pienaar did not get the Newsnight job, which went instead to the Guardian's Allegra Stratton. Whether Staines and Cole actually put any money on their hunch is something that probably won't see the light of day. Another fine mess]

The Clueless Telegraph

The Maily Telegraph, it has to be conceded, does not produce the level of Europhobic drivel that comes out of the Daily Mail. Instead, it produces a more upmarket kind of drivel, one that attempts intellectual rigour while not quite managing to stand up the argument. Events over the weekend have served only to highlight this tendency among the paper’s punditry.

Poor Benedict “famous last words” Brogan is as unconvincing as ever: he lauds Young Dave’s supposed concession on the Working Time Directive in exchange for changes to the Lisbon Treaty as a good deal. But the Tories had already committed themselves to a referendum if there was any treaty change. Ben hasn’t improved much on his mistaken pronouncement on Andy Coulson.

But it’s good to see the Telegraph returning to its default value of cheering on the Tories whether their performance is good, bad or indifferent. And reinforcing this unthinking praise for anything right of centre is our old friend Dan, Dan the Oratory Man, who has worked himself up into an advanced state of excitement over the result of the General Election in Spain.

“Spain rejects socialism” trumpets Dan, unaware that there is not much that is socialist about the outgoing PSOE. Just having the S-word in its name – like the PS in Portugal – doesn’t alter the fact of the matter, which is that both are Social Democratic parties. The winning PP is hardly “Conservative” either, but roughly equivalent to the Christian Democrats in Germany.

And Dan omits to tell his gallery of cheerleaders that the PP won an equally decisive majority in 2000, only to have it wiped out four years later after their party leader – that would be Mariano Rajoy, the bloke who won yesterday – ineptly tried to call the Madrid bombings as an ETA attack, which they very obviously weren’t, merely for political gain.

Nor does Dan explain how Rajoy and his pals will “get people back to work by reforming Spain’s sclerotic labour laws”. There are, as I pointed out the other week, 4.36 million unemployed in Spain – 21% of the workforce – and merely making it easier to hire and fire isn’t in itself going to create one more job, especially when Rajoy has also pledged to cut the country’s debt.

Having seen the clumsy way that Rajoy has behaved in the past, I have little confidence in him as a Prime Minister, rather less than I have in Pedro Passos Coelho in Portugal. What Hannan cannot, or will not, take on board is that merely because someone is labelled “Conservative” does not make them fit for purpose. But it fits the Telegraph agenda.

No change there, then.

Express Euro Doublespeak

The dwindling band of hacks who labour to cobble together the Daily Express on the smallest of budgets inevitably fall back on subjects that need little investigation, while yielding maximum why-oh-why value and – hopefully – keeping readers interested. Thus the continual tide of knocking copy aimed at the EU. And thus the number of stories about the EU budget.

After all, budget negotiations go on for many weeks every year, then that budget is set, and after that, there’s room for the pundits to pile in and string it out even further. It’s a valuable source of column inches. And so it proved this year: back on October 7, the headline screamed “Government Slams EU Budget Increase”, as readers were told this could exceed 5%.

At the same time, the piece told that “an inflation only increase of 2%” was “the most the EU should expect”. And, in case readers didn’t get it the first time, on October 12 came “EU Greedy Lot! [geddit?!?] MEPs Vote For £5.7BN Budget Rise”. This, though, needed further reinforcement, so on October 27 came “Scandal Of EU’s £116BN Budget”. As Sir Sean nearly said, I think we got the point.

Victory on Saturday ...

But the Express also needs to convince readers that its “crusade” is having an effect, so last Saturday came the crude and jingoistic “Victory In Europe! EU Budget Freeze”. “Eurocrats suffered a defeat today [the EU works Saturdays in Express land] as the EU budget was restricted to an inflation-only rise of 2%” trumpeted the piece, which affirmed that this was “a real-terms freeze”.

... Defeat by Monday

So the budget agreement was A Good Thing, or rather it was A Good Thing on Saturday. By today, the Express hacks had reconsidered, and decided it was A Very Bad Thing. “Anger Over EU’s Latest Cash Grab” screamed the headline, telling that “There was outrage last night” [the EU also works Sundays in Express land]. The UK’s contribution was pronounced “A huge payment”.

Someone missing their medication?

This editorial line even met with the approval of those who post comments on the Express site: a sample of these, incoherent, abusive, paranoid and slightly menacing, is shown above, just to emphasise that there are people somewhere out there that believe what they read in the paper.

Facing both ways on an issue just to frighten the readers and keep them buying your cheap and nasty papers? That’ll be another Benchmark Of Excellence.

Mail Order Dishonesty

[Update at end of post]

Just when the thought enters that the assembled hackery labouring in the service of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre may have lost their appetite for ripping off other papers and twisting stories to ramp up the why-oh-why value, they come running with another example of cynical unpleasantness. Today’s restatement of the genre comes from Liverpool.

Yesterday's Echo Exclusive ...

Yesterday, the city’s evening paper the Echo had an exclusive: Gary Kays, who helped Sean Mercer, the killer of 11-year old Rhys Jones, and was later convicted of aiding and abetting, had been given day release from prison, from where he has now been released after serving his sentence. While on release he fathered a child with his partner. He was then allowed release to attend the birth.

So far, so much for discussion: prisoners being let out on day release is controversial, and the activities of sometimes armed gangs in parts of Liverpool – and other cities in the UK – are not appreciated by many in the wider community who would rather they were not there. There are other issues to gang culture, too, such as the trade in currently illegal drugs.

... and the dishonest Mail rip-off

None of this, though, has taxed the Mail unduly, nor have the hacks been put off by the fact that Kays did not do the shooting, as witness the screaming headline starting “Gangster who killed schoolboy Rhys Jones ...”. The assertion is not accidental: the story itself starts “Rhys Jones killer ...”. And only in the third paragraph is the acknowledgement “it was reported in the Liverpool Echo”.

And ripping the story off from the Echo, together with a few stock photos, is all the Mail has done. The giveaway is in statements like “the fact that he was able to have a sexual relationship while serving a prison sentence will add further despair for Rhys’s family”, which is code for “we couldn’t be bothered asking the Jones family for a statement, or whether they approve of what we’re doing”.

What you will not see the Dacre hackery telling the Leveson enquiry.

[UPDATE 1850 hours: the Mail has now amended its article to remove the "killer" description, which is either a remarkable coincidence, or someone at the Dacre empire is on the lookout for criticism. Could be a long-term assignment (many thanks to Tabloid Watch for alerting me)]

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The Tory Party, although it has used the Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF) for training activists, stresses that it and the YBF are separate organisations. This stance, though, is not helped by the number of Tory MPs (including serving and former ministers), Councillors and hangers-on that have lent their presence to YBF events, and to the group itself, over recent years.

To see this no doubt coincidental convergence, one need go no further than the speakers scheduled for the YBF’s seventh Annual Activist Training Conference next month. Gerald Howarth, who is Minister for International Security Strategy, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence, and an MP of 28 years’ standing, is one of those.

So is Nigel Evans, an MP first returned by the electorate of Ribble Valley in 1992, and now a Deputy Speaker of the Commons. These mainstream Tories are following former Defence Secretary Liam Fox, current Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, and former shadow Home Secretary David Davis in lending their support to the YBF, suggesting that it may not be “non-partisan”.

More controversially, those mainstream Tories will share a platform with the likes of Howard Flight, no stranger to trouble: last year he suggested that proposed benefit changes may encourage the poor to “breed” and only withdrew the remark after Young Dave caused him so to do. Flight had previously been de-selected from his seat by Michael Howard following a gaffe on spending plans.

But Flight, despite his occasional looseness of tongue, is still a loyal Tory, which cannot be said for James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole, also speaking at the forthcoming YBF event. Del Boy has condemned Cameron and asserted that he is a worse Prime Minister than Sailor Heath. And the level of abuse Del directs at both parts of the Coalition shows little sign of abating.

Even so, Del Boy appears to be the exception that proves the rule: all other speakers thus far declared for next month’s YBF event are serving or former Tory MPs. And the party’s youth wing Conservative Future (CF), of which Donal Blaney was the first national chairman, calls the YBF “one of our partners”. That assertion is made on the Tory Party’s own website.

So the idea that the YBF is “non-partisan”, or that it is in some way not associated with the Tory Party, is a sham: it is avowedly partisan, and works closely with the party. Any attempt by the Tories to distance themselves from the YBF should be seen as what it is: a cheap ploy to deflect criticism in the hope that those critical of the link will be easily fobbed off by denials and reassurances.

And just imagine the press reaction had this been a left leaning Labour party partner.

Advance Of The U-Word

It was another hot summer day in 1976 – we had a lot of those that year – when someone in the office where I was working heard the news that prompted him to get out a little-used transistor radio (this was a long time ago) and tune in to BBC Radio 4, where we heard that Prime Minister Harold Wilson, the great Labour survivor, had unexpectedly resigned from office.

Wislon, as Private Eye called him, was replaced by Jim Callaghan, who did not go to the country until the last moment – May 1979, almost three years later. But few complained that he was “unelected”: after all, the Parliamentary system doesn’t elect a Prime Minister, although this is customarily the leader of the winning party. It was the same with John Major.

After Margaret Thatcher had been removed by her own party, there was no General Election for another eighteen months. No calls of “unelected” were made. Neither, I suspect, were there any such calls when Alec Douglas-Home replaced Harold Macmillan in 1963, or when Macmillan replaced Anthony Eden after the Suez debacle. Or when Neville Chamberlain replaced Stanley Baldwin in 1937.

No, the use – in a generally pejorative way – of the U-Word is a very recent phenomenon, being deployed firstly after Tone gave way to Pa Broon. Since then, the why-oh-why part of the Fourth Estate has taken to using it against civil servants, judges, senior law officers, local Government managers, hospital managers, or indeed anyone in public service to whom they take a dislike.

Those who most eagerly call out politicians and others they don’t like as “unelected”, though, do not pause to think things through, Peter Hitchens in the Mail being a prime example. The ranting is cranked up to a level fit for the most discerning rant connoisseur – “grey dictators ... civilian juntas ... snuffing-out of national sovereignty ... putsches” and of course it’s all down to the “Left-wing elite”.

Excuse me, Pete, but you and your fellow ranters still haven’t addressed my question, which is not a difficult one to grasp: just how many elections have so far been cancelled, postponed or delayed in whichever country you’re ranting about right now? Thus far, the answer is none. And don’t spin me that “Italian cabinet unelected” line. Their decisions still have to pass the (elected) Parliament.

The clearly pre-ordered line in the Mail has seen the roping in of MEP and occasional Tory Dan, Dan the Oratory Man, who has never faced the electorate in his own right, but rather has won his place in Brussels by being top of his party’s list. He would no doubt claim that he still has democratic legitimacy, while arguing that others have lost it.

It’s the way you tell ‘em.

The Laws Still Don’t Work, Mel

Out there in her own intolerant and authoritarian world, Melanie Phillips keeps on painting an apocalyptic picture of what the world would supposedly look like if currently illegal drugs were to have their use decriminalised, or even be made legal. For Mel, this is to be resisted at all costs, and one cost that she is prepared to sacrifice is that of factual accuracy.

In her latest rantfest for the Daily Mail’s RightMinds – an example of a paper putting all its frothing wingnuts together in one big e-dustbin – Mel tries to revise the recent history of drug policy initiatives, while pretending that there is no longer a “war on drugs” as the authorities are not pursuing it to her satisfaction, which means locking up tens of thousands of people while not mentioning the enormous cost.

This paragraph from Phillips bears quoting in full: “There is a failure of policing on the ground disastrously amplified by lethally idiotic decriminalisation mood music constantly tinkling from the great and the un-good who, for a variety of different reasons including the less than intellectually rigorous desire to prevent their own drug-taking offspring from accruing criminal records, are incapable of doing anything other than parrot drug legalisation propaganda” [my emphasis].

Not for nothing is she known as Mad Mel: the suggestion that some of those urging a reappraisal of current drugs policy are doing so merely to stop their family members getting nicked is as malicious as it is unfounded. She will not be bringing forward one scrap of evidence, as she does not have any. This is the kind of batshit paranoia that earned the Spectator a huge legal bill and Mel the sack.

Her attempt to paint the decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal is also misguided and selective in its source (just the one for most of the assertions made): the Association for a Drug Free Portugal is part of the World Federation Against Drugs, a network opposed to any kind of legalisation. The statistics given in support of the Association do not match the mainstream narrative.

This is typified by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), whose Country Overview for Portugal is worth a look. The picture is, as ever, complex, but many trends have shown a decline since decriminalisation. This, though, does not detain Mel, who instead resorts to personal abuse as she tries to discredit those of insufficiently authoritarian disposition.

Moreover, she fails utterly to address the fact that control of the trade in currently illegal drugs has been ceded to organised criminality, while making the flagrantly dishonest assertion that “the only way to end the criminal black market in drugs ... would be to make all narcotics available absolutely free and ... on unlimited demand”, which is pure bullshit. This issue demands a mature and rational debate, which Melanie Phillips is signally incapable of joining.

TPA – Audit Whopper

The appetite of the assorted non-job holders at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) for misinformation seems boundless: yesterday came a piece suggesting that the Audit Commission says that local Government spending cuts are “essential”, when that body has said nothing of the sort. Also, the post is categorised “Better Government”, when as any fule kno, that is not the TPA’s objective.

Author of this freshly steaming pile is Chris Daniel, whose previous smug-looking mugshot has been replaced by a much more serious-faced and even mildly menacing one (the same goes for head non-job holder Matthew Sinclair, but one can only stretch credibility so far). Sadly, though, Daniel’s approach has not improved since the last time I took him to task.

More from the comfortable of Tufton Street

This is evident as soon as the Audit Commission report, Tough times: Councils’ responses to a challenging financial climate (read it HERE [.pdf]) is consulted. Not only does Daniel misrepresent part of what the Commission says, he manages to omit significant amounts of that report, more than likely because the contents are inconvenient to the TPA.

So, when Daniel tells that the Commission says that spending cuts are “essential”, the language they actually use is, for example, “The combination of cuts in local Government funding and falls in other income mean spending reductions will be needed”. And readers are, once again, fed the pejorative term “dip” (slang for “pickpocket”) for those councils that use up reserves.

Headlines that Daniel does not relay include “Councils expect other income streams to fall by £1.2 billion on top of the £3.5 billion cut in Government support”, “Most Single Tier and County Council (STCC) will see some reductions in service volumes and increases in fees and charges”, and “Smaller services [like social care] are making a big contribution to the savings needed in STCCs”.

Nor are readers told that “Planning and cultural services face the largest reductions in spend in STCCs” (worrying when the planning process is also under attack), “Central Government support to STCCs fell by 12 per cent and to District Councils (DCs) by 16 per cent in real terms”, and “There is a strong link between local deprivation and the scale of funding reductions (STCCs only)”.

One might hope that the TPA didn’t mean to be so selective in their analysis, but that hope would be misplaced: once again, this Astroturf lobby group pursues its sole objective, to demonise Government together with public service and public works, by whatever means serve.

It’s not good enough, but again, it’s to be expected. Another one for the bin.

Express Daybreak Never Comes

The latest story from the world of TV – not that it’s any surprise, given all the adverse publicity and bad ratings – is that ITV’s breakfast offering Daybreak is to part company with presenters Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley. The Mirror got the inside track on the news and the story leads its print edition. The reaction from the rest of the pack is equally interesting – and revealing.

The Super Soaraway Currant Bun picked up on the item and ran its own spoiler, which has at least been re-written to look original. But there is no credit for the Mirror, something which the Mail has also managed to miss from what looks like a more blatant lifting of the original. At least it gives hack Paul Revoir a change from his usual diet of Beeb bashing.

Even the quality end of the Fourth Estate has the story: the Maily Telegraph has an item linked from the front page of the paper’s website, plus they credit the Mirror. But one newspaper group has missed the story completely, although I’m sure they would dispute my contention that it’s because of the cheap and nasty approach of the titles concerned.

Yes, the empire of Richard “Dirty” Desmond has not – as at 1100 hours today – even mentioned Chiles’ and Bleakley’s axing. There is nothing on the website of the Daily Star, and the only item on that of the Express is a recycled press release about Ms Bleakley doing Dancing On Ice next year, which only serves to make the omission look that much worse.

That’s what happens when a paper is made more profitable by cutting resources to the bone. Everybody else gets the story out – sooner or later in the morning – but Des and his dwindling band of hacks miss it, even though it’s the kind of news they should be chasing. That’ll be another Benchmark Of Excellence.

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What would the Fourth Estate conclude if one of their number discovered an organisation with a forthrightly left-wing agenda that was dedicated to radicalising young people, and then placing those thus radicalised into jobs in the City, politics, academia and the media? There would almost certainly be cries of “indoctrination” and even “entryism”. So what happens if the organisation is a right-wing one?

Thus far, the answer is that very little has been reported about one such organisation, the Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF), inspired by the conservative movement in the USA, and which is open and honest about its stance and objectives. The YBF has been described by its co-founder and CEO, Donal Blaney, as a “conservative madrasa”.

So who is involved with the YBF? The gallery of faces is no doubt meant to impress, but the first entry, Daniel Hanann MEP, YBF President, is not an auspicious start. Zelo Street has recently inspected the lack of candour exhibited by Dan, Dan the Oratory Man, especially his obsequious appearance before professional loudmouth Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

And CEO Blaney has what might be called “previous”: while he was a Hammersmith and Fulham councillor, an accusation of racism was levelled at the “Fulham Homes for Fulham People” campaign which he had led (along with Greg Hands). One leaflet accused the Council of denying a house to a “local mum” and giving it to “asylum seekers”. Asylum seekers cannot by law be housed in permanent accommodation.

More recently, Blaney – as revealed on Zelo Street – attempted to bully Tim Ireland and Dan Taylor into obtaining legal representation and revealing details about themselves. This would have been potentially very expensive for both, but neither Ireland nor Taylor accommodated Blaney and the actions fizzled out. In both cases, Blaney had made accusations of defamation.

This, though, is no bar to political activity, so let’s move right on to the YBF’s modus operandi. The orientation of the group follows from the assumption that the education system and “mainstream media” in the UK has an inbuilt left-wing bias. This in turn follows the rationale of Fox News Channel, that it’s not Fox that is “out there”, but everyone else. Blaney considers Fox to be fair and balanced.

And this is the organisation that the Tory Party recommends for activist training, not that it has any formal links with it, of course. What that training produces, where those trained fetch up, and a little more on the web of groups in that “conservative movement”, I’ll consider later.

Although who pays for the YBF is not clear. This does seem to be a recurring problem with that “conservative movement”.

Express EU Drinks Break

[Update at end of post]

The dwindling band of hacks whose task it is to labour in the service of Richard “Dirty” Desmond and put together the increasingly cheap and nasty Daily Express seem to be running an office competition: to top the last ridiculous EU scare story by putting about even more ridiculous EU scare stories. Facts to support these need not enter: whipping up fear and hatred is more important.

So we come to today’s Express front page: “EU Says Water Is Not Healthy” it thunders. In a supposed “exclusive” (which is code for “no other paper was sufficiently desperate or batshit enough to cobble up this story, given the lack of facts to support it”), Giles Sheldrick asserts that “it took three years to issue a new rule that water cannot be sold as healthy”.

The pejorative language then piles in behind the headline: “scarcely believable ... bizarre diktat ... beyond parody ... bizarre regulations ... extraordinary conclusion”. Readers are told that “any producer breaching the order ... faces being jailed for up to two years” (no they don’t) and are fed the usual drivel about curved bananas and Cornish pasties.

But there is, as usual with Express EU frighteners, a grain of fact buried somewhere under the steaming pile of bovine by-product being shovelled about by those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has been considering claims made for a whole range of products as to their supposed benefits – or lack thereof.

In the three year period cited by the Express, over 2,700 such claims were considered. Scientific evidence was consulted. One might think that the work, which has exposed quack remedies and baseless claims, would have its benefits recognised, rather than the press taking out of context the attempt by two food industry scientists to get approval for their preferred form of words, and failing.

Because that is what is behind the Express story. The claim “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration” was not allowed by EFSA. And the reason was let slip by the Maily Telegraph, quoting a spokesman for the Nutrition Society: “The EU is saying that this does not reduce the risk of dehydration [my emphasis], and that is correct”.

“This claim is trying to imply that there is something special about bottled water which is not a reasonable claim”. So nobody says “Water is not healthy”, which the Express headline claims. Bottled water cannot be claimed to protect against dehydration, because it doesn’t. Sure, it can help to keep the body hydrated, but that’s not what was claimed.

Cheap and nasty frightener out of nothing? Another Benchmark of Excellence.

[UPDATE November 19: the Express has attempted to spin a press release by the manufacturers of Highland Spring water as support for its article, rather than a routinely cynical attempt to get some free publicity on the back of yet another EU-bashing piece. This latest Express article recycles so much of the company's blurb that it extends to telling readers how long the brand has been in business, and the name of its current owner. And there's a quote from UKIP's appropriately named Paul Nuttall, of course]

Germany’s Last Resort

Would Douglas Adams have called the bank at the end of the Eurozone Milliways? Millibank? Whatever. While the usual suspects drone on about loss of democracy in Europe (clue to clueless pundits: no election has been cancelled or even deferred thus far), the German Government, headed by the ever-cautious Angela Merkel, is resisting the inevitable.

And that inevitable thing is that the European Central Bank (ECB) becomes the Eurozone’s lender of last resort. Merkel’s reluctance is entirely understandable: the great inflation of the early 1920s is burned on the German psyche far deeper than the fear of another Great Depression in the USA, or indeed severe inflation in the UK, despite the latter being well within living memory.

But banking models that have endured since the 17th Century suggest that the Germans are this time on the wrong side of reality: Sterling has, since 1694, had the Bank of England (BoE) as its lender of last resort. It is the UK Government’s banker, but crucially the BoE is responsible for the currency, and maintaining confidence in it. The currency is still around over 300 years later.

Looking across the north Atlantic, the Federal Reserve (or just The Fed) is, equally, lender of last resort for the US Dollar. The USA, where states enjoy a significant degree of autonomy, may prove instructive for Germany: the Fed was set up partly in response to a series of banking crises and intended to act against bank runs. Crises and bank runs are what the Eurozone is facing right now.

Nevertheless, the German response is to refuse to allow the ECB to go the same way as the BoE and the Fed, and push instead for fiscal integration and reform. But if there is no lender of last resort, the markets will keep on teasing out the weakest links and betting on them falling. So the crises and bank runs will continue – until the Eurozone has what the UK and USA have had for decades.

The alternative – to keep kicking this particular can down the road – will merely invite more speculation, more uncertainty, more instability, less growth, potentially more unemployment, together with a growing number of dissatisfied electorates. That direction may lead to the single currency collapsing. The Germans don’t want that. So they need to ask themselves one question.

And a stable banking system does not depend on whether you feel lucky.

Gilligan Bendies History

Some habits are hard to kick: Maily Telegraph “London editor” Andrew Gilligan got found out being less than totally honest and principled when he dropped the BBC in the mire, and he’s still less than totally honest and principled when it suits him so to be. Today has brought an excellent example of Andy’s inconsistent relationship with reality as he once again sings the praises of his political hero.

That hero is of course London’s occasional mayor and regular collector of “chicken feed” from the Telegraph, one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Bozza is about to complete his irrational crusade against the bendy bus, so Gilligan celebrates by marshalling a host of not always correct facts, while glossing over Bozza’s appetite for vanity projects and dishonest use of figures.

Andy starts badly by telling that the Routemaster managed 51 years’ service in London. Wrong. The first prototype was completed 51 years before the RM bowed out in 2005, but did not see service for another two years, and not regular service, either. Production RMs did not enter service until 1958, but then, what’s four years when you’re laying into the opposition?

That opposition, it seems, is not just Ken Livingstone, but the hated Guardian and its London man Dave Hill, who is portrayed as a “diehard bendy-bus fan”, rather than a regular user of public transport who would rather it worked half decently. Gilligan gets himself over-excited by telling that the vanity BozzaMaster will enter service next year on a route serving Dave’s manor.

Then it’s back to creative retelling of the facts, as Andy tells that removing “bendies” has meant “vastly more seats”. The TfL blurb he cites makes no mention of this, and with good reason: more buses does not mean more seats, but it does mean more drivers, more maintenance, and longer dwell times – especially for double deckers – which means slower journeys.

And the supposed cost savings for eliminating bendy buses (TfL estimate just over £7 million annually) are all to do with fare evasion. This is too often blamed on those buses, but in reality is down to TfL’s own revenue protection regime. The same kind of buses run in cities across the UK and mainland Europe without such problems, and will continue to do so for many years to come.

What Gilligan fails to mention is that the aforementioned BozzaMaster will cost rather more than that £7 million. Design, development and five prototypes into service equals £11.37 million. Compare that to off-the-shelf hybrid drive double deckers at £350k a throw, and no orders from outside the capital as yet. Why? Because all those rotten foreigners are happily running bendy buses.

What Gilligan failed to tell his adoring public, take 94. Cable car next, Andy?

Keeping Up With The Beeb

The line taken by the Daily Mail on the BBC and Christianity is at least consistent: the Corporation is said to be pushing an agenda of “aggressive secularism”, trying to “obliterate” Christianity, stands accused (falsely) of issuing “diktats” to ban the use of BC and AD, and is even accused by the likes of Peter Mullen and Melanie Phillips of being “bigoted”.

So last night’s main 2200 hours news bulletin must have posed a problem for those previously laying into the Beeb, as it gave prominent and generous coverage to the service at Westminster Abbey, attended by the Queen and Prince Philip, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. The Archbishop of Canterbury, another favourite target of the why-oh-why brigade, presided.

One can only imagine the darkening mood of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre as the piece was broadcast – the online version has video from the news item – as he and his obedient hackery tried to figure out how they were going to spin this apparent deviation from the often told mission to wipe out any trace of Christianity and install something unspecified but secular in its place.

The bad news is that the Daily Mail did not manage to get anything into its print edition – at least not the early one – but the good news for the Dacre hackery is that an article not mentioning the BBC even once, under the by-line of John Stevens, has been added to the paper’s sleb and goss heavy website, accompanied by a number of agency photos and stressing the Royal angle.

Sadly, though, the Mail does not go to the same lengths as the BBC, which provides links to two other online pieces, together with the King James Bible Trust and Radio 4’s “The Story Of The King James Bible”. Anyone might conclude that the Mail wasn’t really interested in the event: after all, much of the text of their piece is word-for-word identical with that in the Express.

At least the Maily Telegraph has produced, via its Religious Affairs Editor Martin Beckford, some reasonably original copy, and dated the same day as the ceremony, too. However, the Mail punditry, under the less than benign leadership of Simon “Enoch was right” Heffer, has remained silent. But then, it’s not easy to stand up accusations of “obliterating Christianity” when the target beats you to the punch.

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.