Cyril Smith And Child Abuse

[Update at end of post]

In the wake of the still mounting allegations about the past conduct of Jimmy Savile have come other stories of young people being routinely abused. The North Wales care homes scandal has been re-examined, and now there are murmurings about the late Cyril Smith, famously oversized MP for Rochdale from his 1972 by-election victory until stepping down in 1992.

He really was that fat

And now the Police are to re-examine their records from the 1960s and 1970s to try and clear up whether Smith was indeed involved in less than appropriate behaviour in his interactions with young males. But the current coverage does not go into any detail, which is interesting, given that it has been there for more than 33 years, having been detailed in Private Eye back in May 1979.

Moreover, the Eye had merely taken previously published copy from the Rochdale Alternative Press (RAP), and in neither case was any action taken by Smith or anyone acting on his behalf. The allegations centred on Cambridge House Boys’ Hostel, opened by the Rochdale Hostel for Boys Association. Smith was its secretary at the time (all of the cases date from the early 60s, the hostel closed in 1965).

Eye 454 - click for full size image

The Eye account is reproduced here, so that Zelo Street readers can peruse it. Three accounts have been quoted: the first man told that “He took me into the Quiet Room. He told me to take my trousers and pants down and he hit me four  or five times with his bare hands on my bare buttocks”.

The second man’s account was rather more eyebrow raising: “He then told me to take off my trousers and pants and bend over his knee. He trapped my hands between his legs. He hit me many times with his bare hand, and I pleaded with him to stop, because he was hurting me. This took place at the hostel. Afterwards, he came to my bedroom and wiped my bare buttocks with a sponge”.

And a third man recalled “After a few days I was given a kind of medical examination by Cyril Smith. He told me to take my trousers and pants down. He held my testicles and told me to cough”. These accounts were not the only ones given under oath to the RAP – there were four others. And, on top of those, there was an account given by a detainee at Risley Remand Centre, which triggered a Police investigation.

After all of that, it is not certain what happened to the file generated by that investigation: the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) appears to have developed selective amnesia about it at the time the RAP tried to find out. But, even though the Staggers also reprinted the allegations, no writs flew and no action was as much as threatened. Maybe the new investigation will find out.

But it’s another example, like Savile, where the facts only emerge after they die.

[UPDATE 28 November 0930 hours: it has now been confirmed that the DPP were asked to consider prosecuting Smith on no less than three occasions, but each time no further action was taken, as it was believed there was not a reasonable chance of obtaining a conviction.

However, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has now ruled that "prosecutions that would not have been attempted in the past are now brought successfully". Moreover, "if the same evidence was presented to the CPS today there would have been a very realistic prospect that Smith would have been charged with a number of indecent assaults, and that the case would have been brought to trial".

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have concluded that Smith did sexually abuse young men in the 1960s]

Let’s Kick The New BBC Man!

So there will be a new Director General (DG) at the BBC from next March: to much relief within the Corporation, the job recently vacated by George Entwistle after less than two months will go to Tony Hall, aka “Head Prefect”, who had previously served the organisation for 28 years and had been Director of News in the 1990s. His is widely regarded as a steadying influence, a safe pair of hands.

This, for many editors and proprietors within the Fourth Estate, and a variety of Beeb bashers elsewhere, cannot be allowed to pass, because a BBC taking a safe and steady course means less opportunities to smear it, and therefore less opportunities to fill papers with cheap copy on the back of the Corporation’s misfortune. So Hall has to be given the obligatory roughing up.

And pride of place in that campaign goes to the “Toff” smear, because Hall has been elevated to the peerage. But Hall is a crossbencher, so this one is difficult to make stick. It also doesn’t help that the Fourth Estate has its own roster of gong holders, such as Simon Jenkins and Max “Hitler” Hastings, as well as Viscount Rothermere, who owns the Daily Mail, yet cannot control the Vagina Monologue.

A more potentially fruitful avenue now being explored is that Hall once contributed an article to Marxism Today, although this was back in 1986. Here was the smoking gun, the proof that the BBC was in thrall to the rotten lefties. And that article was about nuclear power, so maybe Hall was also a closet greenie. Sadly, one look at the piece shows it to be less than controversial.

Hall’s article sticks very much to historical fact about the nuclear industry: he is spot on about the secrecy and misinformation – the cost of electricity generated by the civil nuclear programme was claimed for many years to be far lower than that for coal fired stations, except that it wasn’t – and also that the likes of Margaret Thatcher were enthusiastic about more nuclear power despite the drawbacks.

Those drawbacks included open-ended decommissioning bills, revelations that some of the second generation AGR stations had gone way over budget and would never perform as first advertised, the facts about the Windscale fire, and the fiasco over fuel reprocessing. And Hall was dead right that the Chernobyl accident made new nuclear construction far more of a challenge.

But mere facts will count for nothing, and nor will Hall’s deputy chairmanship of Channel 4 do him any good when the likes of Paul Dacre get their teeth into him. Fortunately for the Beeb, politicians on both sides of the Commons have praised Hall’s appointment and cited his formidable track record. But he will not get a honeymoon period: the first slip after his arrival will start the criticism going.

After all, where would papers be without Beeb bashing? No change there, then.

Leveson Is Served (31)

AT LAST THE REPORT

So now the date has been set: Lord Justice Leveson will present his report at around 1330 hours on Thursday November 29, at the QEII Conference Centre, which is conveniently situated on Broad Sanctuary, opposite Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster. That makes the venue easy to find for hacks and politicians alike, so expect lots of both to fetch up there.

Leveson will make an introductory statement, but will not give interviews, and nor will he take questions. Some have read all sorts of sinister motives into this news, but it is not for him to do the politicians’ job for them: they ordered the Inquiry, and Leveson is a mere functionary in the whole scheme of things. His report, and the proposals it contains, will do the talking.

So what will it contain? On this I generally agree with Steve Richards, who has written in Independent Voices that Leveson will recommend some kind of statutory underpinning for a totally independent form of regulation. And what frightens the Fourth Estate here is not the statutory underpinning – after all, it never stopped the broadcasters having their say – but the independence.

How would the new regulator operate? It could be an offshoot of Ofcom, but without any of the requirements for impartiality that dictate news coverage for the BBC, ITV and Sky. In other words, it would utilise an existing organisation, perhaps with a “press panel”, if you will, and therefore incur only a marginal cost to whoever has to pick up the tab. This could be set up within weeks.

Some of the existing PCC codes of conduct – those that many papers are so keen to ignore whenever it suits them – could be adapted and incorporated, but this time there will be no backsliding, no wriggling out of potentially difficult complaints, no fobbing off claimants by pretending that forthright dishonesty and smears count as fair comment, and no allowing papers to submit evidence unchallenged.

And that takes us back to the I-word: independence. This frightens editors as nothing else, as it would remove for ever their ability to manipulate the regulator. An advisory function for those editors and their journalists would be fine, but not a decision making one. Lord Black’s proposals, once again trailed in the Maily Telegraph, do not bring this. That’s why his “PCC 2” is not good enough.

The only fly in this particular ointment is that certain parties will get a sight of the report before publication. As those parties include Party Politicians, expect the news to be leaked to a slavering and baying Fourth Estate. But it’s too late: Young Dave can’t kick this one into the long grass for long. Some of his party might turn on him if he adopts Leveson’s proposals, but the voters will finish him off if he doesn’t.

Nadine Dorries Is Not A Celebrity

So the time came for the first eviction from the current series of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here and to no surprise at all the honour fell to (yes, it’s her again) Tory MP Nadine Dorries. This has resulted in the usual over-the-top newspaper coverage, but the cold reality is that most people probably don’t care, and Ms Dorries will not have moved her career forward one millimetre.

She had some fairly clear objectives when the whole adventure started, including the idea that getting on the show would put politicians like her where the public was, and thereby raise their profile and show that they were human beings too. But once the circus has moved on, and everyone returns from Australia, is when reality will hit, and that is when she will find out what really matters.

Because, as MP for Mid Bedfordshire, what really matters is her constituency, which has not had an MP serving it since she flew off to Brisbane without telling her local association. On top of that, she didn’t tell anyone in the party at Westminster either. But this morning, exclusively on ITV’s breakfast show, the fragrant Nadine was sure of one thing: none of this was her fault.

She accused former Tory chief whip Andrew “Plebgate” Mitchell of “being clever with words”, insisting that she had been given a month off, only not to appear on a reality show from down under. The reason the party whip had been removed from her must have been because Young Dave and his fellow jolly good chaps were frightened of being bad-mouthed by her (again).

As there was no means of her finding out about her suspension from the party, this doesn’t make sense: it wouldn’t have stopped her saying what she thought, as she didn’t know about it. But what of those causes that she was going to talk about in the jungle? What of her campaign to lower the time limit for abortion? What about connecting with all those millions of viewers?

Sadly, that part of the Dorries strategy has also failed signally. A combination of broadcast impartiality rules and the ever-pressing need not to bore the audience meant that all of the Dorries campaigning was cut out. None of it got through. And now she has to face up to the fact that her only other income is representing a constituency where 45% of Tory voters say they will be less likely to vote for her again. Most of those voters disapproved of her publicity stunt.

Moreover, two thirds of Tory voters said Young Dave was right to suspend her from the party. Even those under 25 were more likely to disapprove of her choice. What Nadine Dorries needs to do now is not to even consider any more grandstanding, but to make her peace with the party leadership and work to regain the trust of her constituents in time for the next General Election. If the Tory Party lets her.

Del Boy And His Corby Dodgy Motah

With almost a week having passed since the Corby and East Northamptonshire by-election, Zelo Street has been looking once more at the activities of the clueless Tory MP for Daventry Chris Heaton Harris, and those of his pal James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole. And thus far there is little sign that either of them is back to their confident best. This should surprise nobody.

Heaton Harris, in fact, left Twitter for a whole week following revelation of the Greenpeace sting that exposed his collusion with Delingpole’s plainly fraudulent candidacy, and he’s not been exactly burning up the airwaves today. Del Boy has been rather more loquacious, but one subject is absent from his regular torrent of abuse dressed up an entries on the contents list at Telegraph Blogs.

No prizes for guessing that the missing subject is the Corby by-election, and especially the thought that he and Heaton Harris have been reported to the Police for possible abuse of election rules. The potential charge list could include “Corrupt withdrawal from candidature”. Del is as keen as ever on putting the boot into anyone showing the remotest of enthusiasm for renewable energy, but quiet on elections.

Delingpole did manage one brief snark at Greenpeace after the Tories lost the Corby contest, but sadly the only sources he was able to cite in support were the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which exists to rubbish climate change, and Matthew Sinclair, chief non-job holder of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance, whose stance on the issue is all too similar.

He might be better advised checking out the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which has superceded the 1983 Representation of the People Act. This states that a person becomes a candidate “(b) otherwise, on the day on which he is so declared by himself or by others or on which he is nominated as a candidate at the election (whichever is the earlier)” [my emphasis].

So Del Boy, according to the 2000 Act, cannot argue that he was never a candidate, because even if he did not submit nomination papers and a deposit, and apparently never intended so to do, he did declare on September 6 that he was a candidate. Now, take that and match with Heaton Harris’ assertion to Greenpeace that the sequence of events that led to Delingpole withdrawing was “contrived”.

Add the fact that the Tories provided staff to assist Delingpole, and that service having some value, and you have what looks very much like a good case for an investigation by the Police into both his conduct and that of Heaton Harris. Whether John Hayes could get drawn in to the imbroglio, given the timing of his speech that Del used as his excuse not to put up a deposit, is always possible.

But Delingpole and Heaton Harris are not out of the woods yet. More to come.

Roman Plays Sack The Manager

[Update at end of post]

Any dispassionate analysis of the goings-on at Chelsea Football Club is by definition a difficult thing: for starters, this requires some kind of handle on the thought processes and current mood of owner Roman Abramovich. Last night that mood was demonstrably not in favour of then manager Roberto di Matteo, and so this morning the latter was the latest to pass through the club’s revolving door.

In fact, in the nine and a half years since Abramovich bought the club, Chelsea have gone through eight managers, five of them lasting less than a year, although in the case of Guus Hiddink, he was only a stop-gap after another short-lived choice, Luis Felipe Scolari, was sacked (other short term occupants of the Chelsea hot seat have been Avram Grant and André Villas Boas).

Perhaps it is because there has also been success during the Abramovich years that the use of the revolving door has been accepted by fans and observers. But the owner has also had to stump up significant sums of money for new players – not all of them successful buys – and a total amount of compensation to sacked managers that at present is in excess of £80 million.

But all the sackings cannot deflect from the underlying problems at Chelsea FC. Right now, there is a core of well established players that effectively decide the fate of whoever is in that hot seat, a situation that the likes of Alex Ferguson exerted significant energies to expunge at Man United and wouldn’t tolerate under any circumstances right now. And that core is getting older.

The preferences of that core of players is what did for Scolari, Villas Boas, and yes, ultimately it finished di Matteo. That cannot continue. Right now, it looks as if the club will take on yet another interim manager – maybe Rafael Benítez – until the end of the season, by which time Abramovich hopes to be able to lure former Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola to the club. But will he want to come?

Guardiola called the shots at his old club. He made the decisions, including the time and manner of his departure. Barcelona played as he decided they should play. There was no core of players “wagging the dog”. Perhaps Abramovich realises the situation and hopes his interim choice will move one of the ageing “big names” on, to encourage the others. But I doubt it.

There comes a time when the over-use of that revolving door acts against the club’s interests. Potential managers look at Chelsea and increasingly see the footballing equivalent of Siberia: everyone knows where it is but no-one wants to go there. It is a metaphor that should not be lost on Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich, someone who knows his native Russia better than most.

But whether he stops and thinks before spinning the door again is another matter.

[UPDATE 1730 hours: Rafa Benítez is reported to be returning to the UK two days early, which suggests he is about to become Chelsea's interim manager, with Abramovich still apparently hankering after persuading Guardiola to take over after he completes his year off. So if that all happens, the club's boss will be celebrating ten years of ownership with the appointment of his tenth manager.

However, and in these matters there is inevitably a however, that would depend on Benítez not only lasting until the end of the season, but also being willing to step aside. One old partnership that could work in his favour is that with Fernando Torres, who hasn't reproduced the form he showed when he played at Liverpool during Benítez' tenure.

And the fans appear not to be happy about Benítez taking charge, because of all the needle between him and José Mourinho in the past. Maybe they should be more concerned that the Abramovich revolving door created a vacancy in the first place]

Leveson Is Served (30)

NOT THAT THEY’RE BIASED

Although the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has for the moment called off the attack dogs, the rumbling undercurrent of knee-jerk hostility towards whatever comes out of Lord Justice Leveson’s report continues. And, looking at a variety of asides from media types, it is not hard to conclude that rather a lot of them are moseying quietly towards the starting blocks ready for the off.

The two increasingly polarised points of view can be seen, meanwhile, in articles that have appeared in the deeply subversive Guardian and the far more editor and owner friendly Maily Telegraph. The former notes that a number of victims of press intrusion who are not slebs will be meeting Young Dave, Corporal Clegg and Mil The Younger today under the auspices of the Hacked Off campaign.

And the Tel piece is more or less an advert for Lord Black’s “PCC 2” campaign, also telling that “Oiky” Gove and Fat Eric are opposed to whatever Leveson might recommend, because it’s going to be jolly rotten and it’s not fair, because, well, The Internet. Once again, independent regulation underpinned by statute is characterised as “state regulation”, but fortunately there is no mention of Zimbabwe.

What there is, though, is a number of signs that as soon as Leveson reports, the barrage of opposition will begin, and that it will be unrelenting, generally as free of principle as is deemed necessary by editors and owners, forthrightly abusive in tone, and that any reputation that it is felt necessary to trash will indeed be duly trashed. One look at whingeing Tim Luckhurst’s Twitter feed provides the subject headers.

Taking the baton from Luckhurst will be the likes of Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn, who has been softening up Tory MPs who dare to deviate from the approved Murdoch line. These are mere “Old-style paternalists”, and are held to be “expenses sinners”, which means they will be fair game. He is joined by the loathsome Toby Young: Leveson’s recommendations “will now seem hopelessly dated”.

Meanwhile, the signs are that the source of last week’s hatchet job on Leveson’s advisors will be in similar mode come report time: Tim Shipman has warned any lawyers out there that “They’d better get the Prozac in for when Brian Leveson reports”. So it’s good to know that the Dacre doggies are already on message. The Vagina Monologue will be pleased to see that.

And most disturbingly, the impression is being given that even part of the broadcast media is harbouring less than impartial thoughts towards proceedings. Adam Boulton of Sky News (“first for breaking wind”) has Tweeted his approval of the Mail’s hatchet job on Common Purpose. That’s almost as fair and balanced as F ... you know who. In short, it’s going to be dirty. Very dirty. That means a press own goal is coming.

Tories And The Shale Gas Reality

One side-effect from the ruckus generated by the phony candidature in the Corby by-election of James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole and the sting on his clueless pal Chris Heaton Harris by Greenpeace is that the energy preferences of newly promoted Tory ministers like John Hayes are being subjected to public examination. And thereby hangs the problem.

Hayes is another Tory who has become enamoured of shale gas as the solution to all our energy needs. This may be linked to the incessant plugging of shale gas by Telegraph regulars like Christopher Booker, who asserted earlier this month that the USA was benefiting from “the shale gas revolution that has halved gas prices”. The Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal has also been promoting shale gas stories.

But, as I’ve noted previously, the supposed cheapness of gas from shale may not be all that it seems. Overproduction, and a glut of gas that has had to be sold off at lower prices just to raise revenue, are not a route to the much trumpeted energy self-sufficiency that some are promising for the USA in the near future. And the question of actual versus estimated reserves keeps rearing its head.

As Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed has pointed out in a piece for Independent Voices, Chesapeake Energy, a firm at the forefront of shale gas exploration in the US, had to sell off gas fields in September to raise $6.9 million and thereby stave off collapse. Production from shale gas wells can drop off by between 60 and 90 per cent in the first year of operation. It may not be so cheap to extract.

Certainly the estimates issued by Cuadrilla Resources after test wells were drilled in Lancashire recently have not been independently confirmed, but they have been widely disseminated by the climate change denial and anti-wind power lobbies (which to no surprise at all all too often coincide in their membership) as if they were fact. They are not, and ministers need to bear this in mind.

The decline rate in yields could rapidly make shale gas production unprofitable: as Ahmed notes, a former Amoco petroleum geologist has cited one area of Texas where the decline rate is so high that just to maintain current production levels would mean drilling almost a thousand more wells a year. The level of investment needed for that inevitably diminishing return would be into the billions of dollars.

On top of all that, there is a growing public resistance to the side effects of the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process and the use of millions of gallons of water, generally laced with a cocktail of occasionally carcinogenic chemicals, needed to get the gas out. All of this is likely to make shale gas an increasingly difficult sell for Hayes and his fellow enthusiasts. And the Lib Dems won’t be buying it.

But Del Boy and his pals will keep up the barrage of abuse. No change there, then.

Murdoch Is Served (87)

AND NOW THE CHARGES

Reunited today, former Screws editor and one-time chief spinner for Young Dave and his jolly good chaps Andy Coulson faced the charges with the twinkle toed yet domestically combative Rebekah Brooks. Also charged were previously disgraced royal reporter and scapegoat Clive Goodman, Sun chief reporter John Kay, and Ministry of Defence (MoD) employee Bettina Jordan-Barber.

Who she? Well, it is alleged that between 2004 and 2011 Ms Jordan-Barber was in receipt of a cool £100,000, which appears to have come from Rupe and his downmarket troops, and which also appears to fall into the category of corrupt payments. And note that these appear to have been made as recently as last year: one for those who have been following media protestations over hacking.

Moreover, the timescale on the charge sheet for Kay, Ms Brooks and Ms Jordan-Barber goes up to the end of January 2012. Meanwhile, Coulson and Goodman have been charged with offences relating to payments to public officials, including for the Royal Family’s internal “Green Book” phone directory, and that really is in the eyebrow raising category, as a moment’s thought will show.

What use would the Royals’ internal phone book be? Any hack using an otherwise off-limits number would start alarm bells ringing, unless of course the idea was to engage in a little blagging, which would merely compound the impression of illegality. Whoever had that idea should maybe have been told to have another think about it and come back with a marginally less dodgy wheeze.

But what of that not insignificant payment to an MoD official? John Kay has been described as a “totemic” figure at the Sun. He has been their chief reporter since 1990, and has garnered the British Press Awards’ “Reporter of the Year” accolade twice, which is a measure of the respect and regard in which he is held by his fellow journalists. For him it is a real tragedy.

Why would anyone with his track record find himself thus involved? Simples. Combine the pressure of bringing in ever greater scoops, personal drive – Kay would not have been made chief reporter without an abundance of that – and an ambition to leave one’s own mark on a paper’s history, rather than just being an anonymous player, and the temptation to push a little too hard easily emerges.

After all, footballers dive and feign injury, athletes across a startling range of disciplines take a variety of illegal substances, politicians buy services and in turn are bought by others, and business people use the whole range of devices to extract money from others while giving up as little as possible to the authorities. And hacks observe and interact with them all. Just another temptation too far, perhaps.

Littlejohn And Serial Dishonesty

Some years ago during a Have I Got News For You broadcast, Ian Hislop mused on the upcoming legal battle between the deeply ambiguous Mostyn Neil Hamilton and his former benefactor Mohammed “you can call me Al” Fayed. For the Private Eye editor, this was a genuine win-win: they were both worthy of being humiliated in court, so whichever way proceedings went, he was happy.

Mandelson, Guv? 'E's bent, so 'e's fair game, innit?!?

That contest came to mind this morning when perusing the latest drivel from the Daily Mail’s million pound churnalist, the tedious and unfunny Richard Littlejohn, who has selected for his latest target Baron Mandelson of Indeterminate Guacamole, who has just been made head of ethical banking at Lazards. Dick is not at all happy about this, because, well, Mandelson once lied to him.

So readers are treated to the usual spectacle of the serially dishonest Littlejohn – memorably the author of the sentiment “any Afghan climbing off the back of a lorry in Dover goes automatically to the top of the housing list” – whining that Mandelson, along with Tone and anyone else he can think of, used their political careers as a means of launching themselves into further money making pursuits.

That would be totally different, of course, to those hacks and pundits who have used their journalistic careers as a means of launching themselves into further money making pursuits, like, oh I dunno, Dick being handed a long-running series on Sky, or given the opportunity to make the occasional documentary, or being asked to appear on a variety of media outlets to dispense his all too questionable wisdom.

Still, Dick’s got Mandelson bang to rights on the property business. After all, the former minister bought a house recently near Regent’s Park, which means, er, that there must be something to do with all those Russians he knows, because Dick says the sums don’t add up. Then he tells readers that Mandelson trousered a million quid a year from Lazards as an advisor. So the sums do add up, then.

And anyhow, if we’re talking ostentatious property acquisitions, there is always Dick’s purchase of that luxury pad in the gated Florida compound, which was no doubt facilitated by his trousering, er, a million quid a year from the largesse of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, demonstrating that if it takes one to know one, Littlejohn is the right bloke to turn to here.

And get a load of this: “His political stock in trade has always been dissembling, distortion and downright dishonesty” moans Dick. That’s from the hack who routinely demonises the disabled – by use of, er, dissembling, distortion and downright dishonesty. Richard Littlejohn has absolutely no room to call out Peter Mandelson, or anyone else, on that score. His glasshouse is well draughty right now.

Still, it keeps his editor happy and the money coming in. So that’s all right, then.

Mad Mel Twitter Hypocrisy

In the wake of Alistair McAlpine’s decision to take legal action against the BBC and ITV, plus an apparently open ended number of Twitter users, over the erroneous association of his name with the North Wales child abuse scandal, the punditry has seized on one thing, and one alone: Twitter is The One Wot Did It. This alone is held to be responsible for all that is bad about social media.

Still neither fair nor balanced

And no pundit is more sure of their ground on this one than Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips, who has asserted that the McAlpine action is “A watershed moment as the sadistic mob who rampage across the web are finally taught a lesson”. Yes, “Twitter and the net have become weapons of mass intimidation”, she continues. How so?

“With single Tweets sometimes reaching thousands or even tens of thousands of people, someone’s character can be falsely assassinated and their reputation shredded across the world in a matter of seconds ... Such fabrications, fantasies and  falsehoods take on a life of their own  and can come to represent a settled  view which, despite being without any foundation whatever, starts to supplant reality”.

Tens of thousands of people? That, to quote London’s occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, is mere “chicken feed”. There are web platforms out there that can reach not just tens of thousands, but millions of readers. And one of those is the online version of the Daily Mail. Yes, Mel, that would be the same paper which is carrying your rants, two of the most memorable of which appeared last year.

More specifically, these were published during the Labour Party conference that year after a 16 year old called Rory Weal spoke to the gathering about the suddenly reduced circumstances in which his mother and her children had found themselves after his father had gone bust and his parents separated. He eloquently spoke in favour of the welfare safety net and against its erosion.

For this heinous crime, Rory Weal found himself on the receiving end of, yes, a sadistic mob, one which published story after story of smears, abuse and whatever other character assassination could be dredged up. And, after the first wave of abuse came the following day’s gloating, which was equally sadistic. You can see my observations of the Weal affair HERE and HERE.

And one pundit was involved in both days’ attacks, the copy being among the most sadistic, hateful and gloating: no prizes for guessing that the name in the frame is Mad Mel herself. The difference between her and the average Twitter user is that her ranting reaches millions of readers, and is given the gloss of credibility because it’s carried by a national newspaper. That’s the crucial difference.

Otherwise, it’s just more Melanie Phillips hypocrisy. No change there, then.

Murdoch Is Served (86)

[Update at end of post]

UNDERHAND UNDERPANTS PAYMENTS

Back in 2005, two events took place that did not at the time garner any attention from the convocation of investigative journalists and law enforcement agencies that has proved so inconvenient to Rupe and his Troops since Phonehackgate broke. But now, one of those events is being re-assessed in the light of potentially illegal payments made to US officials. The other may also have involved lawbreaking.

That warning siren loud enough, Rupe?

The event that is now being pored over is the Sun’s publishing of photos of Saddam Hussein in his underwear. The images were splashed, more or less simultaneously, by the New York Post, another Murdoch owned title, suggesting some degree of co-ordination and possibly the involvement of top management at Newscorp. These were held to be genuine and exclusive photos.

We now know that the Murdoch press almost certainly paid someone in the US military for the originals: this act would have been illegal. US law contains sanctions for those who make corrupt payments to foreign officials: this has already triggered an investigation into the Murdoch empire. And there are yet more sanctions available against those who make corrupt payments to US officials on US soil.

That the Murdoch press was the only organisation that could have made such a payment is not in doubt: the Sun trumpeted its exclusive copyright in an effort at the time to garner as much incremental revenue as possible from other news outlets who wished to print the photos. And it is also possible that their publication breaches the Geneva Convention, which the Sun laughably disputed at the time.

The defence was that Saddam had himself breached the convention, and that this meant it excused the Murdoch press, and anyone else they sold the photos on to. But this is bullshit: every case of breaching the Geneva Convention stands on its own, and cannot be excused by pleading “he did it too”. And then there is the other story from 2005, concerning potential hacking and wiretapping.

This is the splash by the Screws about the break-up of the marriage of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, which the paper ran in January of that year. The intimate details of phone conversations between Pitt and Angelina Jolie suggest that either someone enjoyed quite remarkable recall and access to one or other of the three people involved, or the information had been illegally obtained.

So, while watching the story of the Saddam photos unfold, it should be borne in mind that there is another potentially damaging episode from the same year that the Murdoch press may in due course have to explain away. And that’s in addition to the other potential Stateside hacking allegations, some of which stem from the pursuit of singer Charlotte Church, as I explained previously. It’s all warming up nicely.

[UPDATE 20 November 1145 hours: News International has not denied the central allegation of the story about the Saddam Hussein photos, namely that a US Government official was paid for them. The spokesperson said "We didn't believe then, and we certainly don't believe now, that it was wrong to acquire and publish newsworthy photographs of a notorious war criminal".

Hussein had not, at the time the photos were taken, been convicted of any crime. And whether or not he was a war criminal is not going to wash if payment was indeed made to a Government official. But good to see Rupe's troops not denying that action. More later, no doubt]

Guido Fawked – No Trust, No Principles

One rule that some of us in the blogosphere like to adhere to is that anyone wanting to get in touch can do so in confidence. Observing and maintaining that confidence is vitally important: without it, nobody, but nobody, is going to trust us any further than they could chuck us. And when we get things wrong, there has to be a capacity to come clean and apologise.

Apology, Stanley? Soitanly not!

Here at Zelo Street things do occasionally go wrong: that means saying sorry. This is not subject to spin or evasion – it has to be done, promptly and unconditionally. Sadly, not all blogs bother with such trivialities, and nor do they maintain the confidence placed in them, if only implicitly, by their sources. You know who I mean: yes, it’s the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere once more.

Much store was made at the weekend by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his odious tame gofer, the flannelled fool Henry Cole, over a supposed apology they were making to newly elected Labour MP for Corby Andy Sawford. As the Fawkes blog does not do apologies unless leaned on suitably heavily, this at first appeared to be the turning over of a new leaf by the less than dynamic duo.

Never indeed

Sadly, though, there wasn’t a real apology: this was just the Fawkes folks pretending to be bothered. Where they should have been issuing retractions and owning up – such as the flagrantly dishonest timeline for their pal James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole and his fraudulent candidature in Corby, which I corrected for him last week – there was just silence and the hope nobody would notice.

Once is unfortunate ...

Thus the routinely unprincipled and dishonest behaviour that is becoming known to more and more people of independent thought on a daily basis. And Staines fares no better when it comes to keeping schtum about his correspondence: he let all his Twitter followers know that the Guardian’s master cartoonist Steve Bell had emailed him, something the latter would expect to be kept private.

... twice is bang out of order

But Staines doesn’t understand such minor details as principles, and so broadcasts the email receipt to all and sundry. And it wasn’t an accident: it seems Bell contacted The Great Guido once more, and once more the event was made as public as possible. Why doesn’t this happen with Zelo Street? Don’t well-known people get in touch with me? That, folks, is for me to know, and everyone else to guess.

The maintenance of confidence is what delineates the principled from the dishonest and opportunist. Paul Staines has demonstrated by his actions that he falls on the wrong side of that line. Worse, he clearly does not see that that is the case, being so consumed by vanity and the belief that, as he’s “#1”, this in itself justifies behaving towards others as he damn well likes. It does not.

So remember, media people, you can’t trust Paul Staines. Another fine mess.

Nasty Party Hires Nasty Campaigner

Cast your minds back to the 2005 General Election. Although leading the polls, Tone and his pals had had their popularity diminished significantly by the needless and bloody adventure in Iraq, and there were opportunities for both Tories and Lib Dems to make gains. But for Michael Howard and his pals, that was until their credibility was shot apart by their choice of campaign chief.

Who're youse looking at, bladdy Pom?!?

Because Howard had decided to follow his antipodean namesake John and hire Lynton Crosby, who duly brought along his dog whistle to taint the Tory Party and blunt their edge. They did indeed make gains, but Tone was still able to point to a significant majority. The “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” slogan had become an object of ridicule. Crosby did not return for 2010.

But now Lynton Crosby is back, and will mastermind the Tories’ next General Election campaign. This has been hailed by the terminally clueless Tim Montgomerie of ConHome as “Great News”, but this is one of those occasions on which Monty fails to engage brain before broadcasting. There are very good reasons why a Crosby campaign could, and probably will, backfire spectacularly on the Tories.

I'm sorry, I haven't a clue

And the single most significant of those reasons was splashed over the front page of today’s Mail on Sunday, where – uncharacteristically – the paper is complaining about someone slagging off followers of The Prophet (“how dare someone else demonise Muslims? That’s our business”). The someone is Crosby, who told Bozza during the London Mayoral campaign to forget “f***ing Muslims”.

It is entirely in the Crosby character to do this, and not even the dissembly of Grant “Spiv” Shapps can deflect attention from it. It was, after all, Crosby who put the words “We will decide who comes to this country” into John Howard’s mouth, as well as the pretence that only his party had done anything to better the lot of Australians, while the opposition was smeared as a bunch of inept whingers.

Sadly for the Tories, though, the kind of voters the party needs to reach out to in order to secure a majority next time round are likely to be put off by anti-immigration and Islamophobic ranting. It will be like the problem for the Republicans in the USA: groups like Latinos and Asian Americans should be a natural part of their constituency, given as they are to hard work and getting on.

But the GOP sending out the signal that their membership hates them means they run in the direction of away – and straight into the arms of the Democrats. Who just won the Presidential contest, Tory people? Young Dave and his jolly good chaps need those votes. The likes of Crosby will alienate them. And in the meantime, Mil the Younger will welcome them with his friendly smile – to the Labour Party.

It’s not rocket science. But it’s still too difficult for many Tories to comprehend.

Free Press Poll Rumbled

The so-called Free Speech Network, which managed an own goal at its launch by turning away someone of potentially inconvenient thought, has now commissioned a “Free Press Poll” from Survation [.pdf]. To no surprise at all, it has yielded results that will give the organisation much comfort. But a quick look at the questions asked shows that the way these have been selected and structured is the main reason.

After the softening up process of the first few questions, which satisfy the “It’s not as important as unemployment or inflation” get-out, we get to the serious – and seriously misleading – part with Question 8. The choice? It’s between “I am proud that the United Kingdom is regarded by some around the world as a model of press freedoms and freedom of speech” on the one hand, and “It is not relevant or important to me what other countries think of the UK’s press freedoms or freedom of speech”. This has sweet stuff all to do with what’s being discussed.

Then comes Question 9. You’ll have to patient – it’s a rambling preamble. “Recently there has been much criticism of press practices such as phone hacking, making payments to public officials, hacking of computers and contempt of court. These practices are all illegal, and some people believe that the solution to press misbehaviour is make sure the existing law is fully enforced and that journalists that commit such offences are prosecuted for doing so. Other people believe that the law needs to be changed to add further regulations to the behaviour of journalists. Q9. What should the government focus on to stop bad practices and misbehaviour by the media?”

The choices are “Ensure that the existing laws are actually enforced in full to bring perpetrators to account”, “Add new laws and regulations” [my emphases] and “Don’t know”. This is brilliantly loaded: note how “perpetrators” are already being “[brought] to account” before the alternative is asked, and that is worded to assert that it means “more laws”, rather than a different regulatory structure.

Not surprisingly, this gives the required answer: 70.7% of respondents chose the first option. But this is contradicted by the response to Question 14, “How soon should the Government be aiming to introduce any new system of press regulation?” which elicits a 77.7% total saying this should be within one year.

And the biscuit is well and truly taken by Question 19: “There has been a lot of discussion about journalistic standards in the recent past. Which issue has concerned you most?” to which the choices are phone hacking, payments to Police and public officials ... and allegations of a cover-up over Jimmy Savile! Seriously!!

To no surprise at all, this total non sequitur gets over 50%, proving that if you load the question the right way, the public will indeed “Look over there”. This is an outrageously desperate exercise. But no-one should be surprised.

Top Six – November 18

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’ve got a vat of curry to prepare. So there.

6 Paul Dacre – Not Waving But Drowning Still no-one knows what is to be proposed by Lord Justice Leveson, but his report is probably complete and ready for publication. But that didn’t stop the Daily Mail’s legendarily foul mouthed editor devoting eleven pages of his Friday paper to the ultimate hatchet job. Pointless.

5 The Delingpole Dissembly Unravels The excuses advanced for the blatantly fraudulent candidature of James “saviour of Western civilisation” in the Corby by-election began to fall apart. More excellent spectator sport to come.

4 David Mellor Pants Down Special The odious former MP openly smeared a man who had been serially raped as a child. Not only was this bang out of order, he also had no room to call out anyone, as this post demonstrated.

3 Arsenal FC – Be Careful What You Wish For Gunners fans, including Piers Morgan, have been agitating for a change of manager. Here’s why they should be very careful, and what it was like before Wenger (not good).

2 Greenpeace Stings – Fawkes Blog Lies Chris Atkins and Rich Peppiatt stung dopey Tory MP Chris Heaton Harris, who admitted he had put James Delingpole up to his Corby candidacy and that the latter was never going to put up a deposit. So the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines put up a false timeline to spin it away. Fail.

1 Corby Conspiracy – Delingpole Speaks While the clueless Chris Heaton Harris kept his head down in advance of a monumental bollocking from Young Dave, James Delingpole trotted out his excuses. He convinced nobody. Meanwhile, a complaint had been made to the Police about possible breaches of election law.

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

Leveson Is Served (29)

THE OWN GOALS CONTINUE

After yesterday’s collective brainstorm at the Daily Mail – which I covered HERE – one might have thought that the rest of the attack hackery of the Fourth Estate might stop and think before joining in what was so obviously a counterproductive hatchet job on what Leveson has not yet recommended. But that thought would have been misplaced, so devoid of rationality is the press at present.

Because they’re all at it today, blindly churning over the Dacre outpouring of bile in an effort to get as much dirt as possible to stick. Even the sometimes aloof Maily Telegraph has come down from its lofty perch and is getting down and dirty with the tabloids, although not with the total lack of subtlety of the Murdoch Sun, which has to no surprise at all copied the Mail in going after David Bell.

The headline is a classic: “The leftie plotters with one Common Purpose ... to gag the press”, which is followed by “Jimmy Savile scandal opens up a can of worms for Leveson”, which is purest invention. Common Purpose is a “shadowy left-wing lobby group” and is asserted to be “secretive”. And the Media Standards Trust (MST) is “a campaign group desperate to muzzle Britain’s free press”.

It gets worse: the Sun then uses an “MST therefore Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) therefore Newsnight therefore JIMMY SAVILE!” frightener, with a photo of David Bell underneath. So Bell is connected to Savile, readers! And DAC Sue Akers must be somehow connected because she was appointed by someone who went on a Common Purpose course! Conspiracy!!

At least we now know that Rupe has ordered his troops to pitch in with Dacre and the rest in kicking anyone remotely connected with Leveson, as has the management at the Telegraph, which has followed the Mail in accusing Common Purpose of breaking the Data Protection Act (DPA). The Tel’s Sunday edition, remember, had David Kelly’s phone logs the same day he died. Obtained illegally.

And the Tel also sniffily says that “critics” refers to Common Purpose as the “modern version of the freemason’s handshake” and “the Left’s version of the old boys’ network”. So who are these “critics”? Sadly, there is just one, an employment law advisor who met a Common Purpose group in 1998. And the Telegraph cribbed the comments from the Mail’s story published yesterday.

All of which merely shows the desperation of the Fourth Estate. They want resignations and to have organisations closed down for the Newsnight debacle, but there were no resignations or closures when the Mail hatcheted the Taylor sisters, obsessively pursued Colin Stagg, or the rest. They might as well shout “we’re so batshit out of control, we can’t be trusted”. Because that’s what folks are hearing.

Guido Fawked – Lobby Group Hypocrisy

On the side of the Daily Mail and its legendarily foul mouthed editor – as I noted yesterday – over the hatchet job on those who have dared to advise Lord Justice Leveson is the rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog. This is an alliance borne out of fear of the unknown, as the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines is frightened of anything that might impact on his nice little earner with the Fourth Estate.

So it should surprise no-one that the Fawkes blog has gone after the Media Standards Trust (MST) in its efforts to assist the Dacre smear machine. The MST is held to be “Unaccountable and Undemocratic” and it is concluded that those involved “really are enemies of a free press”, although, as is usual for the Fawkes rabble, no credible evidence of how they seek to make the press less free is forthcoming.

This leads us to one conclusion: any group that seeks to lobby Parliamentarians must, in the eyes of The Great Guido, show where it gets its financing, and moreover must elect its board of management, doing so in an open and transparent manner. There must be no cliques, no self-selecting elite, no network of pals, and no attempt to evade any inquiry about its activity.

But this display of high principles does not survive the first encounter with the reality that is the Fawkes pals’ network, where self-selection of the least transparent nature combines effortlessly with an inability to tell where the money comes from. Take, for starters, the place where Staines was drinking the evening he had an unfortunate encounter with the Metropolitan Police while driving his wife’s car.

That was the Adam Smith Institute (ASI), the museum of outdated economic thought that has fraudulently appropriated the name of the founder of economics. Here, there is persistent lobbying of Parliamentarians, while not letting on who pays the bills or how the management is selected. It is the same at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), and also at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

And there is no more stark example of unaccountable and undemocratic lobby groups than the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), another outfit whose propensity for churning out selectively sourced propaganda is not only notorious, but also much favoured by the Fawkes rabble. Whenever the TPA issues one of its “reports”, based on its apparent “research”, the Fawkes blog obediently plugs the result.

The TPA consistently refuses to say who pays the bills, yet it seeks openly to influence the print and broadcast media. One might conclude that this influence is rather greater than the MST. So if The Great Guido wants to demand accountability and democracy, he knows where to start. But there will be no such demand, because Staines and his pals won’t dump on their drinking buddies.

That’s because they’re all hot air and hypocrisy. Another fine mess, once again.

Corby And Other UKIP Failures

The tide – or perhaps that should read tsunami – of Europhobic ranting and frothing from a significant part of the Fourth Estate has been washing over its readership for so long that one might think it would impact on the democratic process, and deliver success for a party that was unequivocally opposed to everything the EU did and stood for. We have such a party in the UK, and it’s called UKIP.

So now we have the results from three Parliamentary by-elections, all of them with lower turnouts than the preceding General Election. Those low turnouts can spring surprises, and offer a chance for a well-organised outsider to do well, and maybe even sneak a win. And UKIP has previously tasted success at elections for the European Parliament, so hopes were no doubt high.

Well, they might have been before the votes were counted: in Cardiff South and Penarth (sound familiar? That might be because it was represented for many years by former PM Jim Callaghan), UKIP got just 34 votes more than in 2010. True, their share of the vote more than doubled, but only because turnout more than halved. They were fifth in 2010, and fifth yesterday. No change there, then.

In Manchester Central, UKIP improved from sixth to fourth and tripled their vote share, but again, this was mainly down to an abysmal turnout of just over 18%. Even with what looked like a significant improvement, they lost their deposit. This minor misfortune also befell the Tories: indeed, apart from the victorious Labour candidate, only the Lib Dems avoided that humiliation.

And so we came to Corby and East Northamptonshire, with the Lib Dems this time being the ones looking to avoid the shame of a lost deposit, so much so that they demanded a partial recount as their vote came up a few short of the 5% line. Here, UKIP had high hopes of at least getting second place as unhappiness at Louise Mensch upping sticks to New York, and the Heaton Harris sting, took their toll.

But this was not to be: although the Tories got the kind of drubbing that will take some explaining – and will earn Chris Heaton Harris an Olympian size bollocking from Young Dave and his jolly good pals – UKIP were well back in third. As the party did not contest the seat in 2010, Nigel Farage will no doubt hail this as some kind of minor miracle before heading for the nearest pint of Landlord.

The real news is that Labour has achieved a swing of over 12.5% in Corby, far greater than national polls have suggested. Although some of that can be put down to the Mensch factor, the ineptitude of Chris Heaton Harris could just as easily have been a General Election factor had it been revealed early enough in the campaign. Tory stupidity and indiscipline could up-end their prospects next time.

But that shouldn’t make UKIP any more palatable, and it seems the voters agree.

Lord McAlpine, Twitter, And Consequences

Alistair McAlpine has instructed lawyers. They have settled with the BBC – for £185k plus both sides’ costs, with statements to follow – and are now poring over Twitter. For the latter, this is something new and potentially very important, although exactly how m’Learned friends can go after someone who merely observes that a name is trending could be a difficult one to prove.

Miraculously, though, those sneering at the likes of George Monbiot and Sally Bercow do not appear to have stopped and thought about the potential consequences of this action. If McAlpine’s lawyers successfully obtain redress against Monbiot and Ms Bercow, neither of whom referred to the infamous Newsnight feature, rather more claims could follow.

After all, McAlpine’s legal team are arguing over such concepts as reputational damage, as well as the more straightforward ones like dishonest and malicious defamation, and especially that which is premeditated and therefore cannot be excused as some kind of accident. Using Twitter as a means of spreading that kind of smear is not confined to peers of the realm.

And that is why many out there in the Twittersphere, along with a posse of lawyers prepared to operate on a pro bono basis, are watching the McAlpine proceedings with interest. This is because accusations of paedophilia – as well as a number of other unsavoury smears – have been the stock in trade of some on Twitter in the past. So what other malicious assertions have been made?

Well, for starters, there is the old chestnut of stalking. This has become the go-to term of abuse for many who have an aversion to criticism: in order to shut the critics up, they are smeared as “stalkers”. The term cannot be interpreted other than as a directly pejorative one: it is as loaded as Billy Connolly’s F-word. Yet many, including those in elective office, bandy it about without a thought.

There are a whole range of other malicious terms deployed in the same vein, too, but shouting “stalker”, without any further reinforcement, is itself beyond the pale. To make such an accusation is to equate the target with those who bombard slebs with unwanted communications, threats, visits, and worse. It may not be quite as nasty as shouting “paedo”, but if the latter term is actionable, then “stalker” is equally so.

Yet nobody seems to have woken up to this inconvenient fact. Perhaps there is an assumption that this can be passed off as exercise of free speech. But there is free speech, and there is hate speech. False accusations of stalking, merely for a bit of fun or to silence someone of inconvenient thought, are firmly in the latter category. And they are highly likely to satisfy the reputational damage criterion.

The sneering may continue for now, but pride, remember, comes before a fall.