Mark Reckless – Pants On Fire

According to this week’s poll from Michael Ashcroft, former Tory MP and recent convert to UKIP Mark Reckless holds a twelve point lead over the official Conservative candidate Kelly Tolhurst in the run-up to next week’s by-election. But, while the Tories are going into negative attack mode against Reckless, they seem to have missed one of the local Kippers’ larger whoppers.

Mark Reckless greets a passing lush

Reckless, although he apparently made no objection to it when he was a Tory, has attacked the provision of a bus-only road at Strood Riverside, which is part of the local “Quality Public Transport Corridors” – making buses more reliable and thereby encouraging more people to use them, leaving cars at home. The road also provides space for pedestrians and cyclists.

The Kippers don’t like that at all: “Joining the campaign for UKIP’s Mark Reckless in Rochester & Strood today, Jill Seymour MEP and UKIP Transport Spokesman strongly endorsed the campaign to open the £13 million Medway Tory ghost road” declared Reckless’ campaign website late last month. However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, the road is not closed.

So it would be difficult to open it, as it is already open. Moreover, the Kippers do not tell how they would accommodate all the extra traffic that will be generated by their proposed free-for-all, but then, thinking through their policies is not UKIP’s strongest suit. Then we come to the whopper, and it’s a big one: Reckless maintains that the road has cost the eyebrow-raising sum of £13 million.

The claim is all over Reckless’ website. What’s the real number? Here’s the Council blurb from 2010: “Strood Riverside – provision of a new link between Canal Road and Commissioner’s Road for buses, pedestrians and cyclists only; this will also serve as an emergency route from the future Strood Riverside development and is essential enabling development for the site; estimated cost - £1.3M”.

Yes, UKIP has achieved its Big Scary Number by simply moving the decimal point. The new link was part of a number of measures which, in total, added up to £13 million. Locals have challenged Reckless and his campaign team to admit they got it wrong, but answer there has been none. My information is that local Kippers have not even bothered to acknowledge requests for clarification.

What is worse, I’m also told that local Tories haven’t called Reckless and his pals out for the claim. You might think that, with only a week to go before they might lose a second Parliamentary seat to UKIP, they would be bringing the voters’ attention to the Kippers’ burning trousers. But no – instead, Young Dave is desperately telling Labour and Lib Dem supporters to vote for his candidate. Which they won’t.

The Tories: so useless they don’t deserve to win. No change there, then.

Sun Exclusive Energy Deal – No It Isn’t

The Super Soaraway Currant Bun was not backward in coming forward to blow its own trumpet yesterday, as its editorial told “Ed Miliband says he’ll briefly freeze energy bills if he wins power. So what? The Sun has already cut them for 20,000 readers”. Yes, a freeze lasting years is “brief”, while what the Sun is talking about is a deal for just 12 months.

So, just to distract the easily distracted, out comes the smearing brush: “When the Labour leader said high prices could simply be banned, we said the more sensible and realistic answer was switching suppliers”. Hello Trevor Kavanagh! Hello Tom Newton Dunn! Hello Steve Hawkes! Exactly when did he say that? What’s that? He didn’t actually say that? Well, knock me down with a feather!

But here’s the real sleight of hand: “Now we have harnessed the buying power of thousands of Sun fans to negotiate a stonking tariff from Extra Energy, cheaper than any on a price comparison site ... Indeed, we got involved when we found those sites hiding the best deals if they didn’t pay commission ... We don’t make any money on ours. Our readers get the savings instead”.

Yes folks, Rupe’s downmarket troops have got their readers not just a good deal, or even a very good deal, but a STONKING one. I mean, Phwoarr! But, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, there was only one thing wrong with this idea – it was bollocks. For starters, one does not have to go anywhere near the Sun to discover that Extra Energy are offering a good deal.

Nor does one have to band together with Sun readers, or indeed anyone else, to secure that deal. We know this because there are other ways of getting information on comparing energy price deals than price comparison sites, and they are just as widely read as the Sun. You think I jest? I give you This Is Money (available on Mail Online) and ITV This Morning.

This Is Money said back in August that “The cheapest one-year fix currently up for grabs is Extra Energy’s ValuePlus Fixed Price September 2015 v1 deal, costing an average of £990 a year”. It cited – guess what – price comparison site MoneySupermarket.com! The following month, ITV This Morning pitched the same figures to its viewers and readers.

There is nothing exclusive about the Sun’s deal – anyone can get it. And, despite the suggestion that it can’t be found on price comparison sites – it can. So the Sun doesn’t make any money on it? Fine – ignore the Murdoch doggies and go direct, so they still don’t make any money, and you don’t have to lower yourself to reading the Super Soaraway Currant Bun.

The Murdoch Sun: celebrating 45 years’ lying to the masses on Monday next week.

Brendan O’Neill Backs Misogynist Tosser

[Update at end of post]

Star attraction at the so-called online magazine Spiked, so named because most of it should have been, is semi-professional contrarian Brendan O’Neill, the “semi” bit meaning that he is not very good at it. He reminded the world just why this is yesterday, when he embraced the cause of “comedian” Daniel O’Reilly, aka Dapper Laughs, who, he claimed, was a victim of the intolerant left.

Brendan O'Neill

He told of “The terrifying censoriousness of the campaign against Dapper Laughs” and went on “For an insight into the new intolerance, into the modern illiberal urge to harry and squash and ultimately kill any idea that dares to offend us, look no further than the fury over Dapper Laughs”. Those who recall what happened to Abi Wilkinson of UsVsTh3m might have other thoughts as to who is being intolerant.

The disapproval was not just of Dapper Laughs, but of the welter of misogynistic vitriol that spewed from his supporters when Ms Wilkinson dared to suggest that the “comedian” was being slightly hypocritical in raising money for the homeless after he had verbally abused a homeless person. Perhaps O’Neill would care to explain to her why she has to take all that just for exercising her freedom of expression.

Daniel O'Reilly aka Dapper Laughs

O’Neill also goes badly wrong in his choice of straw men: “The Dapper-bashing crusade started in the respectable media. [He] was accused of contributing to ‘rape culture’”. Er, hello Brendan? He said this of an audience member at a recent show “She’s gagging for a rape. Yep, we’ll have a chat afterwards. She’s having a chat about ‘yeah, I get quite tight but I get a bit’… poor girl”.

Never mind, though, have a go at the Staggers, rotten lefties that they are: “The New Statesman told its readers ‘you should be worried about Dapper Laughs’ because he is ‘normalising sexual harassment’. ITV2 monkey see, ITV2 monkey do”. That’s right Brendan, trivialise the effects of the copycat behaviour that sees yet more young women having to experience all those LADS expressing their freedom of speech.

Brendan O’Neill’s contrarian rants all suffer from the same problem: in framing his argument, he has to strip out the other side and discard it as irrelevant. So, while he supports Dapper Laughs’s freedom to spray the word “rape” around as if it is normal and acceptable practice, the frightening effect of this on other young people is ignored. He also ignores the freedom of decision making at ITV.

So he perhaps failed to anticipate that ITV would exercise that same freedom enjoyed by any business, and decide not to commission another series with Dapper Laughs. That, though, is not censorship: it’s a business judgment. Meanwhile, if Dapper Laughs wants to go on spraying the word “rape” around as if it’s something cool that LADS do, he can do. Venues are equally free to decline his custom.

Freedom of expression is for all of us. What Brendan O’Neill won’t be telling you.

[UPDATE 12 November 1120 hours: such has been the success of Brendan O'Neill's support for Daniel O'Reilly's Dapper Laughs character that O'Reilly fetched up on BBC Newsnight yesterday evening to tell that he was putting the "character" to rest.

So, following O'Neill's Spiked article, ITV have binned the Dapper Laughs show, and now the character has been killed off. So now we know how to deal with purveyors of misogynist abuse - get Brendan O'Neill to support them. Job done!]

Gove’s Commons Euro Cockup

All the work, mainly by the right-leaning press, to hurl abuse at Mil The Younger was undone yesterday evening: the press could only look on as the BBC, ITN and Sky News (“first for breaking wind”) beamed directly into the nation’s living rooms the news that the Tories had been trying to pull a fast one on the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) vote – and had been caught out.

Yes, you, "Oiky" - it's your f*** up

This might not at first seem too significant, until you consider that Young Dave, under questioning by Miliband, fended off his enquiry by telling the Commons that there would be a vote on the EAW before the Rochester and Strood by-election. Yesterday evening was supposed to be it. But when the business put before the House was scrutinised by Speaker Bercow, he rumbled the Tories immediately.

And his words will not make comfortable reading for the whips’ office: “It may be the sort of thing that some people think is very clever, but people outside of the house expect straightforward dealing. And they are frankly contemptuous, and I use the word advisedly, contemptuous of what is not straight dealing. Let’s try to learn from this experience and do better”. Ouch!

“The sort of thing that some people think is very clever”? Who might the Speaker have had in mind? As if you need to ask: who runs the whips’ office? That would be the newly-demoted Michael “Oiky” Gove, who was such a roaring success at Education that Cameron had to move him in order to have any chance of persuading more than a small minority of teachers to vote Tory next May.

Gove loves to portray himself as being terribly clever, considerably more so than all those ghastly Labour types on the other side of the Commons. And it is either Gove, or someone with his approval, who tried to deal off the bottom of the deck – and got caught. Labour’s attempt to stop the vote being taken sent the Tory whips into headless chicken mode. Cameron was recalled from the Guildhall banquet.

Theresa May’s credibility drained away; Yvette Cooper’s, meanwhile, rocketed. And all she had to do was point to the smoke coming from Gove’s burning trousers. Even normally loyal back benchers, like Damian Green, Richard Shepherd and Jacob Rees-Mogg were contemptuous of the move. Douglas “Kamikaze” Carswell, no longer silenced by party loyalty now he is a Kipper, condemned the exercise.

Gove was, despite all the spin applied by his press pals, a disaster at Education. He has been no better as Chief Whip. If Cameron has any sense, he will sack the SOB, and sack him in short order. Perhaps “Oiky” can be found a job as, oh I dunno, “Minister without portfolio but with special responsibility for briefing to his pals in the right-wing press”. It’s about all he’s fit for.

If Dave doesn’t sack him before PMQs tomorrow, he certainly will soon afterwards.

Fake Sheikh – It’s Streisand Time

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

The sense of anti-climax was not only felt on Zelo Street yesterday evening: across the country, many who had waited eagerly to see Mazher Mahmood, aka the Fake Sheikh, exposed in a BBC Panorama programme for the absolute shower that he is were deeply disappointed when the broadcast was pulled from transmission less than an hour before its scheduled 2030 hours slot.

Updated version arriving imminently

At first it was assumed that the Beeb had caved, either to the lawyers acting for Mahmood, but bankrolled – generously, I’m told – by Creepy Uncle Rupe, or to the suggestion by the Police that the broadcast would prejudice any future action against him, despite their having not as much as suggested there would be one. But it seems the delay was precautionary, and the expose will go ahead.

And this could be even worse news for the Fake Sheikh than allowing Panorama to go out eight days ago, as first intended. Why should this be? Ah well. Here we encounter what is known as the Streisand Effect – intending to stop unwanted information getting out, only to draw attention to it, so that when the information ultimately gets out, a lot more people get to know about it.

The first delay in broadcasting Panorama increased the potential audience. Last night’s increased it even more. So all that those expensive lawyers are doing – apart from trousering More And Bigger Paycheques For Themselves Personally Now – is to boost the Panorama audience, and make sure that even if the programme is scheduled at short notice – ie not on Monday next – they will be watching.

Will the BBC be sufficiently determined to follow through with the broadcast? One perusal of the Guardian’s latest report tells you that it is. “The BBC was presented with fresh information about one of the stories covered in the programme by lawyers for Mahmood at 7pm on Monday” BUT “The BBC is understood to have been asking for further information from Mahmood’s lawyers for 10 days”.

The timing of that information delivery was almost certainly not an accident. Panorama editor Ceri Thomas added “Since the programme is concerned to expose the claimant’s lack of journalistic integrity, particularly when deploying his undercover disguises, it is clearly in the public interest for his appearance to be revealed”. And, as the man said, there’s more.

Manuel Barca QC, representing the Corporation, put it plainly: “If the thesis of this programme is to say, this man is a wrong’un – in terms readers of the Sun would enjoy – part of that is showing what he looks like. If he did not work again in that capacity it would be no bad thing”. Yes, the Fake Sheikh is about to get both barrels – and the audience, for Panorama, is going to be huge.

Order more popcorn and prepare for short notice rescheduling.

[UPDATE1 1520 hours: confirming my assertion on rescheduling the Panorama programme, Roy Greenslade has told that it will be "most probably on Wednesday or Thursday". That would be Wednesday or Thursday this week.

He also confirms that the new information provided by Kingsley Napley, who are representing Mazher Mahmood, is not going to cause any change to the programme. The eagle-eyed will note that Roy even gives Zelo Street a name check, for which my sincere thanks.

So get ready for the full Streisand effect, folks. I'm sure Maz would have wanted it this way]

[UPDATE2 12 November 1600 hours: the BBC have now advised that the Panorama programme on the Fake Sheikh will air THIS EVENING at 1930 hours.

So put off that visit to the pub, woof down the evening scran early, or delay eating for a while - Mazher Mahmood is going to get the full Streisand effect.

And, for those who can't make it, the broadcast will no doubt be available for another fortnight on the BBC iPlayer]

UK Blog Awards 2015

[Update at end of post]

Zelo Street has been entered in the UK Blog Awards 2015, in two categories. So there are two entries on the list of blogs, and so you can vote in either category – or both.

If you’ve enjoyed reading what this blog provides over the past year, a vote would be much appreciated. Two votes would be appreciated even more. Hint. Cough.

All you need to do is to follow the instructions; if you’ve voted successfully, there will be a confirmation email winging its way to you. Hopefully.

Don’t forget – Zelo Street is, as you’d expect, at the end of the blog list. You only need to scroll down and forget the rest, says Ron Hopeful.

The UK Blog Awards logo should be visible at top right, and should click through to the site. Many thanks for reading, and hopefully, voting. For me. Hint.

[UPDATE 12 November 1210 hours: there has been a response problem with the voting system, but this should now be fixed. Please let me know if you're still experiencing problems]

Don’t Menshn How The Law Works

Sun on Sunday editor Victoria Newton may be watching anxiously this evening as the hated BBC broadcasts its Panorama investigation of the “Fake Sheikh”, Mazher Mahmood, for the inevitable hit to her paper’s reputation. She might also usefully look at the apparent failure of her staff to fact check the rantings of (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch.

(c) Doc Hackenbush 2014

The latest Mensch muddle is hidden away behind a paywall, but a Zelo Street regular has made available a snapshot of the column (see how that works, Rupe?). And the lead item, “Who polices CPS when they act above law?”, once again makes one wonder how she was able to become an MP, such is the crashing ineptitude on show. But let’s start at the beginning – a very good place to start.

“We’ve had ... the shameful scandal of thousands of raped white children being neglected and hurt by the politicised Police” she tells. HOLD IT RIGHT THERE. The Police in South Yorkshire (for it is they) take cases of missing children very seriously, as a BBC documentary from last week showed. It also showed that as many of 60 officers are needed to work on some cases.

In other words, it has sweet jack to do with politicisation, but resources. No Police force has unlimited amounts of officers and backup. But on she goes: “Did you notice [that] once the headlines moved on, nothing was done in Rotherham, where the Asian grooming scandal took place?” How does she know what is being done in Rotherham? What is this, a tinpot dictatorship?

We don’t just go and round up The Usual Suspects: there is such a thing as due process of law, before which there has to be evidence gathering, and if we’re talking about the CPS, that evidence is then considered before any decision to prosecute. But, as the man said, there’s more: “South Yorkshire Police haven’t arrested a single one of their own officers”. Why should they?

Moreover, what has the CPS to do with whether South Yorkshire Police carry out arrests? But back comes Ms Mensch: “The CPS failed to prosecute anyone over the 1,400 Rotherham abuse victims and have pursued just handfuls of grooming gang cases ... they are as much to blame as the Police and councils”. We don’t know what will happen in Rotherham. Did Ms Mensch find out before writing this?

As if you need to ask: no she didn’t. The Police are most likely still gathering and assembling the evidence. As to the “handfuls” of cases, well, each gang tends to have been responsible for rather more than one case each. Often they involve hundreds of vulnerable young people. But we do not just haul folks off the streets in this country for the fun of it. Louise Mensch is merely parading her ignorance.

That Ms Newton doesn’t have it fact checked is doubly unforgiveable.

Miliband Attack Turns Desperate

It’s almost predictable: the attacks, some of them, it has to be said, self-inflicted, upon Mil The Younger do seem to coincide with the Coalition, and in particular the Tories, once again fouling up Royally. So it has been with the latest barrage, which by pure chance came hard on the heels of the Rt Hon Gideon George Oliver Osborne, heir to the seventeenth Baronet, lying badly about the EU.

Yes, he's still there, RW press types

Yes, Osborne spins the budget adjustment payment so badly that he even disgusts Dan, Dan, the Oratory Man, the Tories face a rebellion in their efforts to appease the Daily Mail by renouncing the European Arrest Warrant, and Young Dave’s migration “promise” turns out to be anything but. So put all of those together, and what do you get? Simples. More “Disaster For Flailing Miliband”.

There are, so we are lead to believe, as many as twenty shadow ministers ready to call for a change of Labour leader. However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, this news has come from a total of just three MPs, all of whom wish to remain anonymous. But they want everyone outside the party to know that they are loyal to Labour. Which is, of course, why they are shit-stirring.

So when Neil Kinnock expresses his disbelief at their behaviour, they protest long and loud (but still anonymously) that “Ed risks precipitating the eruption he wants to avoid through the cack-handed way his lieutenants are slagging off MPs who are deeply loyal to their party but can no longer ignore the damage his unpopularity causes on the doorstep”.

Sadly for them, as The Conversation has pointed out, that “unpopularity” is very clearly overblown. Labour’s poll ratings would not increase significantly if the party changed leader, and in the latest Populus poll is posting 36% support, 2% ahead of the Tories, with UKIP falling back a little. The real desperation is with those attacking the party, as witness Tom Newton Dunn of the Sun today.

The paper’s non-bullying political editor leapt on a “poll of polls” apparently showing a Tory lead, only to fail to check the numbers and later find out that it was wrong. The Sun isn’t the only desperate paper: the Mail splashed with “That’s how you do it with relish, Ed! George Osborne tucks into a hot dog at Wembley… showing bacon sandwich-loving Miliband he shouldn't bite off more than he can chew”.

Yes, the Tories are better than Labour because they eat their food more stylishly! There, leaking Labour MPs, is the real panic. And that is why your pals are so teed off with you. Stop whining about the leadership, and whenever anyone brings up the subject, just show them a summary of what Miliband has already achieved, and what he and the party are offering next May.

Don’t feed the 24-hour news Speculatron. Let it eat the Tories instead.

Sandwichgate – More Migrant Bashing

The Daily Mail’s front page lead this morning appears at first glance as if someone hacked the Northcliffe House computer systems and substituted a parody front page for the real thing. But no, “Is There No-One Left In Britain Who Can Make A Sandwich?” is a real, serious headline. And the article backing it up is equally serious – and just as spiteful as the rest of the paper’s attack copy.

What's so f***ing wrong with kicking foreigners, c***?!? Er, with the greatest of respect, Mr Jay

The legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has decreed that anyone who speaks foreign is not one of the Daily Mail’s kind of people. Moreover, those that fit into that category are to be regularly frightened at the prospect of cars with non-UK numberplates fetching up on the street where they live. They are also to be fed the line that they have only come here to get benefits.

So the opening of a new factory near Northampton in two years’ time, for which the owners may recruit some of the workers from Hungary, is an ideal opportunity for the Vagina Monologue and his obedient hackery to spread the usual migrant-baiting smears, which, by fortunate coincidence in the run-up to a General Election, can be labelled as “All being Labour’s fault”.

And, as for Hungary, well – I mean, they call a railway station a Pályaudvar. What’s that about, eh? It’s foreign, innit?!? Just wait till Littlejohn sees that. And they call a square, as in Sloane Square, a Tér. With an accent. In fact, the language has far too many accents on letters not to be highly suspect. And they’re coming here to get tax credits and housing benefit.

Budapest: station with funny foreign name

Here we get to the real reason for the story: “In Hungary, the average wage is little more than £7,000. Even if workers coming here were on the minimum wage, they would earn almost double that – £13,520 a year. And they would have their wages topped up with tax credits – seen as a major attraction for EU migrants – and housing benefit”. Thet’re getting something Mail readers don’t get!

And, as the man said, there’s more: “a migrant with no dependants on the minimum wage has their net income of about £184 a week boosted to £254, studies have suggested. For those with a partner and two children, that rockets to £543 a week, equivalent to a salary of more than £28,000”. 300 foreigners! Be angry, Mail readers! All on benefits, and in clear defiance of Iain Duncan Cough!

However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, the firm may only be recruiting 151 workers from mainland Europe: the phrase was “most of”. And tax credits and housing benefit are paid to UK citizens too – yes, even to Daily Mail readers. So wage levels are lower in Hungary? So what? They live here, they pay the same price as UK citizens for everything.

This story is more demonising and xenophobic claptrap. So no change there, then.

It Was 25 Years Ago Today

Libertarians like to suggest that increasing taxes – making people pay 21 pence Income Tax in the pound rather than 20 – infringes upon personal freedom. One wonders how those former residents of East Berlin view that: for 28 long years, they could only gaze across the wall at the bright lights of the West as East Germany turned in on itself and slowly decayed. That really was about personal freedom.

Brandenburg Gate, east side: the view through the pillars would have been mostly blocked by the Wall, which was immediately to its western side

After the Second World War ended, Berlin was divided into four zones of occupation, under the control of Russia, the USA, Great Britain, and France. Although three of those four zones, or sectors, were under the control of the West, the city was marooned in East Germany. The flight of inhabitants to those western sectors began to alarm the authorities in the East. The Wall was their answer.

Brandenburg Gate, west side: this view would have been blocked by the Wall

The fraudulently-titled “Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier”, with its double wall and killing strip between, became the most immediate symbol of the Cold War. Film makers generated a slew of features with the divided city as its backdrop, including The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Funeral In Berlin, and The Quiller Memorandum. The BBC set the final scene of Smiley’s People there, but filmed it in Nottingham.

Remains of Check Point Charlie on Friedrichstrasse, looking north: bizarrely, US and Soviet tanks once squared up to one another here

Getting to Berlin was difficult and sometimes unreliable: there were motorway corridors, along which drivers and other occupants of cars were, in theory at least, not permitted to look at the East German countryside. Trains from the West were locked and manned by East German guards while crossing the country. Domestic airlines were not permitted to fly to any Berlin airport.

Berlin town hall, the Rotes Rathaus, served only the East during the partition of the city

This hit only the West: East Berlin’s airport, Schoenefeld, was outside the city boundary. West Berlin was cut off from the city’s town hall; as a result, the town hall of Schoeneberg became the West Berlin town hall, and it was here that John F Kennedy came in 1963 to make his unfairly derided “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech.

Rathaus Schoeneberg became the West Berlin town hall during partition, and a plaque on the wall commemorates John F Kennedy's visit in 1963

And then, in November 1989, all was changed. For so long, the thought that those who had effectively been imprisoned across the wall might be freed was the stuff of forlorn hope. But then, 25 years ago today, the border was opened, the guards forbidden from opening fire, and the people of East Berlin were free.

The U-Bahn terminus at Warschauer Strasse was just across in East Berlin, and therefore cut off from the rest of the system. It closed in 1961 and was not reopened until 1995

Berlin has been unified for almost that long, but the mark of the Wall can still be seen in places. I’ve included some photos that show the sad, and sometimes bizarre, way in which it divided this great city, which no-one should miss off their wish-list of must-visit city break destinations.

Ideological conflict causes otherwise rational men to do the least rational things. The division of Berlin stood as a testament to that. While we can be thankful that it is long past, we should ensure it never happens again.

Fleet Street Fox Condoned Hacking

Following yesterday’s Zelo Street post on the Sunday Mirror by-lines shared by serial phone hacker Dan Evans and Susie Boniface, aka Fleet Street Fox, and the questions this inevitably raises about her potential knowledge of this particular Dark Art, information has been coming in showing that, while Ms Boniface has denied knowledge of the practice, she has explicitly condoned it.

Susie Boniface

The denial was certainly comprehensive: “I’ve never seen anyone hack a phone, never known anyone to be hacking phones, nor never been asked to hack a phone. Ditto paying coppers”. She confirmed that the first she knew of the practice was when Glenn Mulcaire was arrested. That denial was rather like Piers Morgan’s “I’ve never hacked a phone nor told anybody to hack a phone”.

Ms Boniface had the question put again recently, just before that Question Time appearance during which she excused the behaviour of Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham, also in response to a direct question from Dan Waddell. However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, this has to be put alongside her previously stated approval of the Dark Arts – including phone hacking.

The Fleet Street Fox post which excused the practice has now been deleted, but the people at Sky News (“first for breaking wind”) have quoted it at length and verbatim, so we may see the thoughts of Ms Boniface on the matter. This was the same post in which she said of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales “the driver was drunk and the daft bint wasn't wearing a seatbelt”.

Moving right along from that failure to win friends and influence people, we find that, after passing all too brief adverse comment on the now-defunct Screws for hacking a dead schoolgirl’s phone, “those dark arts should continue to be practised”. So she didn’t know about it, honestly, but it’s OK to do it. In what circumstances, perchance? “I'd do it for a minor shagging story”. We’re not setting the bar too high, then.

Any other permissible instances? You betcha, says Sarah: “To catch a dodgy politician, expose corruption at the heart of FIFA, locate someone the cops can't find”. Given the law enforcement agencies can go to GCHQ if they need to, that’s one implausible scenario. But she excuses it with “You might not like it, it's a moral minefield and it comes down to personal judgement”. Really?

Do go on. “Journalists are expected by The Reader as much as their employers to do things no-one else would”. You mean to break the law? We’re back to the Hank Quinlan defence – that the end justifies the means. That’s not good enough. But what is crystal clear is that Susie Boniface has no problem with those in her profession hacking phones. She just never saw them at it.

Whether that defence survives being put to the test may prove interesting.

Fake Sheikh – Cops Attack BBC

At the end of last week, there was a brief moment of relief as Mazher Mahmood, aka the Fake Sheikh, his legal team bankrolled by the Murdoch press, failed in his bid to stop a Panorama programme which would reveal not only his identity, but also the methods he used in a series of sting operations. The BBC had also spoken to some who had worked with Mahmood in the past.

Updated version coming - very soon

Now has come news that someone else likely to come out of the exercise with their reputation unlikely to be enhanced is voicing disquiet about the broadcast. Mahmood had one ally in his quest to procure More And Bigger Paycheques For Himself Personally Now – the Metropolitan Police. The Met is a formidable opponent, and it is unhappy about the potential content of the programme.

But, so what? One cannot object to free dissenting speech. So the Met has rushed to put forward as credible an excuse as can be mustered – that the broadcast might prejudice any action against Mahmood in the future. There was, as Captain Blackadder might have said, only one thing wrong with this idea – it was bollocks. The same Met has not so much as indicated it will charge Mahmood.

What the Met might not like telling is how closely Mahmood worked with them: “the entire job I was basically working for Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism squad. I was registered as a participating informant; every single movement I made was on their orders. Quite often, as it came out in court, I didn’t agree with what they were doing, but I had to do it as I was working for them” he told Press Gazette.

That was the so-called “Dirty Bomb” sting, which, not for the first time with a Fake Sheikh plot, resulted in no convictions at all. But what did result from this rather ripe-smelling joint exercise was significant embarrassment for the Met, and the continuing suspicion that Robert Mark and his successors had failed to purge the force of officers who were, let us not drive this one round the houses for too long, bent.

What chance of success does the behind-the-scenes leaning on the Beeb have? Not much, if Sir David Eady’s remarks last Friday are anything to go by: “while the Attorney General was ‘entitled to point out the problem that might arise if he's prosecuted, it's not grounds for the injunction as such’”. Plus, as Mahmood has not been charged, the Corporation is not in contempt of court.

The Met has put the heat on those it thinks are involved: “the Surrey home of former Metropolitan Police Superintendent David Cook was raided by detectives from the Met's anti-corruption command, who questioned him under caution over alleged unauthorised disclosures to Panorama”. Someone is getting desperate.

The BBC looks likely to stand its ground. So it should. The Met has been party to appallingly bad behaviour over the years. We should be allowed to know about it.

Top Six – November 9

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

6 Dapper Laughs – No It Isn’t Misogynist abuse is not “banter” merely because it appears on ITV2.

5 Don’t Menshn Romanian Beggars Louise Mensch told another pack of lies following the much-publicised incident in Manchester when Mil The Younger gave money to a young Romanian woman.

4 This Is What A Mail Smear Looks Like The Mail titles published a well-planned hatchet job on the factory that produced the “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirts”. But it wasn’t a “sweatshop”.

3 Guido Fawked – Sadiq Khan Hypocrisy The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog passed severely adverse comment on Sadiq Khan for allegedly behaving illegally while at the wheel of a VW Golf. Er, hello Paul? You’d know all about that.

2 Murdoch Censors Free Speech Creepy Uncle Rupe’s papers want their readers to “look over there” at the Leveson Inquiry, and pretend that this is what is going to censor free speech. Then they go to the courts to stop a BBC Panorama programme, or, in other words, censoring free speech.

1 Fake Sheikh’s Last Stand Mazher Mahmood, backed by the Murdoch press, went to the High Court to try and stop the Panorama programme which would reveal his identity – and his methods. And, as I suggested, he lost. Let joy be unconfined.

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

Is Fleet Street Fox Foxed?

[Update at end of post]

“I don’t think it was entrapment ... they had a tip. In this particular case, Brooks Newmark responded to this journalist ... on seven occasions seeking explicit pictures [and was] quite enthusiastic when given the opportunity to misbehave”. So said Susie Boniface on BBC Question Time, excusing the behaviour of Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham, who posed as a young woman to entrap an MP.

Susie Boniface

Yes, Susie Boniface, the hack behind Fleet Street Fox, and someone who gives the impression that butter wouldn’t melt in her North and South. The instinct to wave away suggestions of bad behaviour seemed to kick in automatically, almost as if she had done this kind of thing on more than one previous occasion. When and where that might have occurred we do not know.

But what we do know is that Ms Boniface worked at the Sunday Mirror at the same time as Dan Evans, who has recently admitted hacking phones both at that title and the now-defunct Screws. The Guardian told that “Evans began as a freelance news reporter at the Sunday Mirror in 2003, later joining the staff, and said he was taught by an unnamed senior staff member how to hack voicemails”.

I’ll go further: Evans and Ms Boniface on occasion shared by-lines. One of these I’ve unearthed concerns a story titled “Lucy Falls Into Arms Of Acrobat”, which appeared in the Sunday Mirror on February 8, 2004. The “Lucy” in question was Lucy Benjamin, who has successfully sued Trinity Mirror for hacking her phone. One line of the copy stands out rather prominently.

“Two weeks ago the couple ordered £108 worth of booze for Lucy's [hotel] room at 12.30am as they partied through the night” the article says of Ms Benjamin’s relationship with gymnast Bobby Hanton. Knowing that said booze had been ordered, perhaps by seeing it delivered, is a perfectly plausible explanation. But being able to place a price tag on it is rather more difficult.

Then there is the story of John Leslie’s break-up with Abi Titmuss, “Jealous John Dumps Abi In Cheating Row”, the story appearing in the Sunday Mirror on October 12, 2003. Ms Titmuss talked to the paper; Leslie, it seems, did not. But the paper did know that he had told a friend that “This is the final straw. I know Abi has been seeing an old flame and I am not taking it any more”.

Susie Boniface was immediately ready to deflect criticism of the Wickham sting – but the paper has already paid out an undisclosed sum to Newmark’s fellow Tory MP Mark Pritchard. Evans was, by his own admission, a serial hacker both at the Screws and Sunday Mirror. Those two articles give the impression that some of the information they contain may not have been obtained legitimately.

So, Susie Boniface: what did you know, and when did you know it? No pressure.

[UPDATE 1905 hours: a third shared Susie Boniface and Dan Evans by-line has come to light, this time on a story about con man Peter Foster, and Carole Caplin, former friend of the Blairs.

Titled "He Cheated On Carole", the second line contains another of those "quotes from friends". Once more, the question has to be asked of Ms Boniface]

Murdoch Press Says Bribery Is OK

Journalists getting guilty, the Sun’s veteran apologist for bad behaviour of all kinds Trevor Kavanagh concluded last week, was A Very Bad Thing Indeed. “If journo goes down, so does a free press” he warned as he perused the plight of those known as the Sun Six, who are on trial at Kingston Crown Court on charges relating to various, shall we say, acts of personal initiative which may have been illegal.

He speaks your weight. For a Tip Fee

Kavanagh, as so often, requires a total suspension of disbelief to be credible, as he shills blatantly for the defence, after the Murdoch press railed against prejudicial court reporting in the earlier hacking trial – a tactic used by those representing Rebekah Brooks to try and get the trial stopped, using the court’s time to complain about as many uncomplimentary Tweets as could be mustered.

He also believes that Sun readers are so easily fooled by his obvious partiality, describing John Butterfield QC in the most reverential tones, and praising his every utterance. What Kav is actually saying is OUR QC IS RIGHT AND THE OTHER BLOKE IS NOT. This, too, is not in the least prejudicial, which applies to his claim that “Payments [to public servants] are [a] vital weapon”.

Kavanagh wants readers to believe that this “vital weapon” is part of getting those “Scandals Outed”, and “Democracy’s Key”, rather than a cheap and nasty way of selling more papers for the benefit of His Bosses Personally Now. And the interests of Creepy Uncle Rupe are, by the most miraculous coincidence, perfectly aligned with the interests of the wider public.

So it will be interesting to hear how Trev spins away this week’s happenings at The Old Bailey, where a former Screws hack (who cannot at this point be named for legal reasons, but worry not, he will be soon enough) has just been convicted of “conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office”. Also convicted were “Prison officer Scott Chapman and ex-partner Lynn Gaffney”.

It seems that “Chapman, 42, made up to £40,000 by selling information to journalists” about James Bulger’s killer Jon Venables. That would be the same Jon Venables whose photo is very prominently splashed over the Kavanagh story in the Sun. “The Old Bailey heard that Chapman started selling stories about Venables when he was returned to prison in 2010 for child abuse images offences”.

That’s the same Jon Venables whose photo features in Kavanagh’s article. So how is the Sun spinning this development? Simples. They say he was right really: “Guilty for lifting lid on Bulger killer perk” it screams. But the best is left for last: the reporter “paid a tip fee to a prison officer”. A “tip fee”? A “TIP FEE”?? Oh just f*** right off. It was a bung. A bribe. Wedge. A drink. Tip fee my arse.

I can’t wait for the Kavanagh excuses. This is just beyond ridiculous.

Osborne Surrenders EU Rebate

Margaret Thatcher famously played hardball with her fellow EU heads of Government in order to win a rebate on the UK’s budget contributions. The right leaning press approved wholeheartedly of her cry “I want my money back”. And when Tone gave up a part of that rebate, they were aghast. So it might be thought that anyone surrendering our rebate would meet the same fate.

But that thought would be misplaced: the condemnation only occurs when it is a Labour Government doing the surrendering, as witness the reporting of the abject caving-in of the Rt Hon Gideon George Oliver Osborne, heir to the seventeenth Baronet, to his fellow EU finance ministers yesterday. The budget adjustment that means the UK has to pay an extra £1.7 billion stands – unaltered.

Osborne has, of course, engaged the spin cycle to pretend otherwise, claiming that not only has he delayed payment and won the concession to pay it in two instalments – which is true – but also that he has halved the amount to £850 million, which most certainly is not. The sleight of hand is achieved only by returning the UK’s 2015 budget rebate – surrendering the rebate.

What would Mrs T have said to that? Oh I dunno, how about “No, No, No, No, No”. Had it been Pa Broon cutting that deal, the Tory-supporting press would have never let him forget it. But, as it is one of their team doing the surrendering, they are more than happy either to play along with the lame spin, or, in most cases, keep the story off the front pages and tell readers to “look over there” instead.

How has this been achieved? They found a terror plot! Well, there were some arrests on suspicion of terrorist related activity, but what the hell, there’s a readership to distract from Osborne hauling up the white flag and, just in case you didn’t already get this one, surrendering the rebate. The Mail does its duty, with “Remembrance Terror Plot”, making sure readers know that Scary Muslims (tm) are involved.

The Murdoch Times also knows which side its bread is buttered on, so readers are told “Poppy ‘plot’ smashed by anti-terror Police raids” (notice the quote marks). The Telegraph does likewise, with “Foiled: Remembrance Sunday ‘terror plot’”. The Tel also pretends “Osborne declares victory over EU as £1.7bn bill is halved”, but it is only halved by, don’t forget, surrendering the rebate.

Then the Sun goes completely OTT with “Plot To Kill The Queen”. I mean, how DARE they? It is left to the deeply subversive Guardian to remind us of “Osborne’s sleight of hand: turning EU £1.7bn bill into £850m victory”. In any case, the right-wing press are too late, as Osborne’s capitulation was all over the TV news last night. The readers are not fools, and the press should not take them as such.

The Tories talked tough. Then they surrendered. No spinner can change that.

Dapper Laughs – No It Isn’t

[Update at end of post]

Comedy on television. A phrase to strike fear into the hearts of those commissioning programmes. Whatever is served up, it’s never as good as what went before, it doesn’t get enough laughs, some or all of the target audience doesn’t get it, it’s derivative, it’s crude (or too artsy), it’s on at the wrong time or on the wrong channel, or it offends rather a lot of people.

Hilarious. With the sound off

And then there is the cost of developing a new comedy genre. So you get more stand-up, more chat shows (with a rotating cast of interviewees), and more cheaply shot programmes involving an unsuspecting public. And into that last category has arrived former cruise ship entertainer Daniel O’Reilly, aka Dapper Laughs, because he’s not dapper, and most people are not laughing.

Perhaps it’s ironic comedy? Sadly not: this is lad comedy, as in blokes who use words like PROPER and TOP LAD. They drink pints of F***ING STELLAH or CAHLIN, except for the few who venture into the world of SMOOV or even F***ING GINNIS. They talk about NAUGHTY things, which are by definition MEGA and SORTED. And they watch an ITV2 show called On The Pull.

Here, Dapper Laughs chats up young women, who are supposed to consider this torrent of misogynist attitude some kind of favour. Those passing adverse comment are subjected to a social media assault consisting, generally, of abuse, threats, and what those participating call BANTER, or even PROPER BANTER. Most people would call it yet more misogynist abuse.

And on ITV2 and recognised TOP LAD enclaves it would have stayed, but for the reaction from all those TOP LADS to Abi Wilkinson when she called out Dapper Laughs for claiming he was helping the homeless when he had made a recording where he told a homeless person “you smell like shit”. Dapper Laughs got his pals to give her a PROPER torrent of misogynistic abuse.

So it was only PROPER for UsVsTh3m to point out that each streaming of a Dapper Laughs song would only raise £0.004, and that the public would have to listen to 10,000 of them – a prospect as horrific as it is unlikely – to raise just £40. On top of that, Shelter have decided they aren’t interested in taking any of Dapper Laughs’ proceeds. Best just make a donation and cut out the creep.

Does it matter that behaviour like this is challenged? Well, yes it does, because one thing that has come clear from the exercise is that Dapper Laughs influences other young men’s behaviour and thus spreads the TOP LAD BANTER, or as most people call it, misogynistic abuse. Protesting that it’s “only comedy” and that it “can’t be harassment because he’s on TV” won’t wash.

If this gobshite gets put back in his box, perhaps ITV2 will kick him off theirs.

[UPDATE 10 November 1845 hours: following a number of complaints, and a petition with more than 50,000 signatures calling on ITV to axe Dapper Laughs, the channel has done just that.

ITV has put out a statement this afternoon, telling "ITV has decided not to consider comedian Dapper Laughs' show for a second series, following a series of complaints".

All of which means that this particular TOP LAD is WELL SORTED, only not in the way he might have expected. PROPER!]

Miliband – What If He Went?

Another week in politics has brought another story of dubious provenance peddled mainly in the right-leaning press alleging disaffection among Labour MPs, and another outing for the 24-hour Speculatron of rolling news. And, as so often, few seek out the actual substance of the story, while not giving any thought to what would happen to Labour if Mil The Younger were to be ousted.

Yes, he's still there, folks

While the Mail tells of a “Bonfire Night Plot To Oust Ed”, and suggests Labour is “in crisis”, and the Murdoch Times pretends there is a “Secret plan for end of Miliband”, the actual story does not support much of the spin. This is clear from a perusal of a piece from the Telegraph – and there is no paper more ready to shill for the Tories and put the boot in to Labour.

Under the headline “Ed Miliband must go, say Labour MPs”, the reality is rather less than that. Typical is “At least two MPs are understood to have told David Watts, the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, that they believe it is time for Mr Miliband to go ... Mr Watts has reportedly told the MPs that they are not the first to raise concerns about Mr Miliband's leadership with him”.

Indeed, the Tel had to admit that “Mr Watts declined to comment when contacted by The Telegraph”. Otherwise, all that the article has to fall back on is comments from Damian McBride, who no doubt wants the leader to be more like Pa Broon, while the likes of Dan Hodges will not stop whingeing until he gets a clone of Tone. Then we come to the question of what would happen if Miliband went.

This should be a no brainer: papers like the Times, Telegraph and Mail would not give anyone else an easier ride. This can be easily illustrated by considering the two MPs thought to be front runners in any succession race, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham. Ms Cooper would immediately be charged with the heinous crime of being married to “Auguste” Balls, a singularly damning indictment.

Following that would be the usual torrent of sexist and misogynist abuse: anyone wanting a sample only has to look at the outpourings of the odious Quentin Letts (let’s not). Burnham would fare potentially less well: whatever the fact of the matter, he would face a barrage of abuse over Stafford Hospital. It will be asserted that he personally killed over a thousand elderly patients there.

Also, Burnham is from Merseyside, so the Murdoch press will kick him yet harder in retaliation for all those lost Sun sales since Kelvin McFilth made his fateful decision in the wake of the Hillsborough stadium disaster. Anyone in the Labour party who thinks that the abuse will stop if they ditch Miliband is, as they are occasionally wont to say on Merseyside, not dealing from a full deck.

There is no benefit to Labour from changing leader before next May. End of story.

Fake Sheikh’s Last Stand

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

While most of the press is hoping that there is enough going on in the political world to distract their readers, the Murdoch empire is today helping one of its most prized assets to mount a last stand against the hated BBC, as Mazher Mahmood, aka the Fake Sheikh, goes to the High Court seeking an injunction against the Panorama programme that has already been delayed for a week.

An updated version may be available on Monday

As I predicted earlier, the expose will not only reveal his methods, but also his face. He managed to keep that hidden from public view even through his testimony to the Leveson Inquiry, and claims that, were his identity to be revealed, he would be in danger from some of those he has helped convict. Not everyone is convinced, and there is a more likely alternative explanation.

Back in April 2006, Mahmood failed to prevent publication of his identity. As Press Gazette has noted, “Mr Justice Mitting rejected Mahmood's claim, saying that he was satisfied that the true purpose of the application was not to protect his life but to protect his earning capacity and his position as an investigative journalist for the News of the World”. That is why the Murdoch press is footing the bill today.

It gets worse for the Fake Sheikh: we now know that the Panorama programme has much more to reveal. As the Guardian has observed, not only has “A reporter ... spoken to some of the highest profile targets of Mahmood”, but also “The programme, which was already been delayed once, has interviewed his targets, and the men who helped him expose them, to provide an examination of his methods”.

My understanding is that some of Mahmood’s former accomplices are no longer well disposed towards him, having in some cases been, let us say, shat on by him. So when the chance came to make a full and frank disclosure to the Beeb, some of them needed very little inducement to do so. The suspicion of criminality in Mahmood’s dealings has been there for some time.

How might the hearing play out? Well, the portents are not good for the Murdoch press and their suspended star: for starters, there is that last attempt to stop publication of his identity, which ended in failure. He has been branded a liar and manipulator of evidence by a judge recently. Two further trials involving his work have since collapsed. And then there are the victims.

Some of them are deeply unhappy about the use of entrapment to secure convictions. One thing is for sure: Sir David Eady, formerly Mr Justice Eady, before whom the case is scheduled to be heard, is unlikely to have much time for bullshitters. I understand the main reason the Murdoch press has taken it so far is that its own reputation will take a serious hit if Panorama goes out.

Mazher Mahmood’s wild west show may be about to make its last stand.

[UPDATE1 1615 hours: What did I tell you? News has just arrived on Zelo Street that Mazher Mahmood has lost his bid to prevent his identity being revealed.

As a result, the Panorama programme will go ahead - unedited - on Monday next. The damage to the Murdoch empire, which has just seen sales of the Sun, which has a poor internet presence, dip below two million sales a day for the first time since 1971, could be severe.

A man who is regarded as little more than a criminal who has dabbled in journalism is about to get his comeuppance. Let joy be unconfined]

[UPDATE2 10 November 1655 hours: Mazher Mahmood made another attempt to stop the Panorama broadcast today, when he took his case to the Court of Appeal.

It can now be revealed that he lost his appeal. Panorama will go ahead at 2030 hours this evening, as planned, and without any editing being necessary. Mahmood may well have created his own Streisand effect, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving fellow. Bring it on, John Sweeney]