VICTORY World’s End And Cremorne Estates Safe

Regular visitors to Zelo Street may recall the attempt by the Tory controlled Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) to move the proposed Chelsea station on Crossrail 2 from the area around Chelsea fire station to what was termed Chelsea West (details, including maps, HERE and HERE). This “option” had been added to the proposals for the new line last year, but only advised to residents last month.

World's End Estate, with Cremorne Estate at top right

This new proposal, it was confirmed, “would require additional land for a station between King’s Road and the River Thames ... and could only proceed in parallel with plans for wider regeneration and redevelopment of the area”. That would mean that some, or indeed all, of the Cremorne estate, and even part of World’s End, would have to be demolished.

Getting a response from RBKC was not easy, and at first, local MP Greg Hands appeared to distance himself from the whole business, suggesting that worried constituents arrange one-on-one meetings with him. However, and this is a most fortunate however, Hands has since then got more deeply involved and concluded that the Chelsea West option was not A Good Thing.

Greg Hands is to be commended for doing exactly what the Member of Parliament job spec says on the tin: addressing the concerns of those he represents. His advocacy has probably been instrumental in persuading RBKC to be a little less enthusiastic about Chelsea West and consider the Crossrail 2 options strictly on their merits. That conclusion will have been a blessed relief for all those council tenants.

Because RBKC has now circulated residents with a letter that states at the outset “The Council is backing Chelsea Fire Station as the right place for a Crossrail 2 station”. Councillor Tim Coleridge makes a brief complaint about “scaremongering” (thanks for that, Tim), but later in his missive admits what Zelo Street has said all along – that some demolition would have been necessary for Chelsea West.

For that site, “there is just too much uncertainty at present about the impact on Council tenants and leaseholders. Major redevelopment of council homes would only ever be countenanced by Kensington and Chelsea when supported by cast-iron guarantees about how residents’ interests would be protected and even enhanced”. So Chelsea West would have meant demolition. As I said at the time.

Coleridge also seeks to shift any blame for station location: “In the Council’s own submission to last year’s consultation we ... asked TfL whether there might be a better location further to the west. However, it was TfL that selected the actual site and it will be TfL that takes the final decision about where to build the station”. But it was RBKC that started the Chelsea West process going.

Fortunately, that option will not be progressed by RBKC. Good news for residents!

Tory Youth Wing Row Worsens

The Conservative Future (CF) website tells that Sarah-Jane Sewell “will be working with the National Executive and regional officers to promote best practice to increase membership and improve efficiency, as well as focusing on Social Action and increasing social media presence of Conservative Future”. Except that she won’t: Ms Sewell has just left the Tories, effectively forced out by a smear campaign.

CF’s Deputy Chairman (Membership) is the second recent high profile departure, following hot on the heels of departing chairman Oliver Cooper. Her letter of resignation bears scrutiny. Take, for instance, “I must tender my resignation thirty one and a half months since the day I was elected to the position of Conservative Future National Deputy Chairman Membership”. Why “must” she?

There’s more: “I am left concerned that a widely suggested candidate for national chairman has apparently been promoted using the Conservative Party’s Team2015 mailing lists and the Conservative Party social media accounts. I do not believe such conduct is in the spirit of democracy that our party has always stood for and I am not prepared to appear to condone this by remaining in office”.

Do go on: “Furthermore, I worry for anyone else who wishes to run in what should be a fair democratic process. I myself have been besmirched in the most abhorrent fashion, and I have little doubt that other opponents would be subject to similar treatment from those who seemingly act with impunity. I can only hold my head high knowing that they are untrue”. Anonymous and untrue smears. How democratic.

So who is behind this less than savoury episode? Well, let’s consider a few pointers. Team2015 and RoadTrip2015 are very much the area of one Mark Clarke. And the preferred candidate to replace Oliver Cooper, the now ousted Chairman of CF, is Alexandra Paterson, who, as a look at Mark Clarke’s Twitter feed reveals, appears to be being endorsed by him.

Moreover, one of those Retweeting a dig at Oliver Cooper from the RoadTrip2015 Twitter feed is – yes, you guessed it, Mark Clarke. And who would be hosting a gathering at the Two Chairmen pub, starting round about now, “Celebrating departure from high Tory office of a former Royal Holloway CF chair” [this is code for Sarah-Jane Sewell]? Step forward ... Mark Clarke.

Behold the actions of a total and utter shit

All of which suggests that Mark Clarke is behind the campaign to remove Oliver Cooper and Sarah-Jane Sewell. What remains to be revealed is who he is working for. At least one Conservative Party account is being used – is this an official ousting, then? Would Grant “Spiv” Shapps care to comment? Or are we seeing the mark of, say, the Young Britons’ Foundation all over the whole sad business?

Whoever is behind this, it is gutter politics. There will be more on this soon.

Littlejohn – What If He Wasn’t A Twat?

Journalists love a “what if”: a lack of decent copy can always be livened up by one of these. No need for facts, nor for research – the author can just make it up. So it should surprise nobody that the Daily Mail’s tedious and unfunny churnalist Richard Littlejohn has resorted to a “what if” to illustrate his apologia for what the Israelis are getting up to right now in Gaza.

"What if", Guv? Bit dodgy, might mean sums, innit?!?

“Let’s just imagine, for a moment, that a rocket fired from Gaza had hit a plane coming in to land at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. What if a British Airways jet had been brought down over Israel, with a similar loss of life to the 298 people who perished on Malaysian flight MH17?” asks Dicky Windbag, inventing a false equivalence between the Buk surface to air missile and what Hamas can muster.

So let me put Littlejohn straight: what hit flight MH17 had around 70kg of high explosive on board. The missile could take out planes flying at twice the height of the downed Boeing 777. By comparison, what landed near Ben-Gurion Airport earlier this week was a pea-shooter, which managed to damage a house, but failed to get anywhere near any aircraft, let alone one carrying passengers.

Moreover, had Dicky Boy bothered to do any research – OK, maybe that’s expecting too much from Paul Dacre’s million pound pundit – he would have found that Israel’s transportation ministry has reassured travellers: “Ben Gurion Airport is safe and completely guarded and there is no reason whatsoever that American companies would stop their flights and hand terror a prize”.

But he’s got another line of attack: “Hamas hides behind women and children, in schools, hospitals and mosques”. That’s another canard that has been well and truly debunked. Gaza is 41km long, but less than 6km wide in places, and the Israelis are ordering the 1.8 million inhabitants to move at least 3km from their border with the area. The “human shields” claim is another myth.

And woe betide anyone who protests against Israel’s behaviour: “Yet among the gormless rent-a-mob, there are dangerous people who wish not just Israel but all of us serious harm. They’re the same hardliners who cheered as the planes hit the Twin Towers, who justified the London Transport bombings and want to impose Sharia law in Britain”. Yes, paranoid twattery of the crudest kind.

From what Littlejohn is proposing, we should all look the other way and take what Israel’s spokesmen say as gospel fact, and if we don’t, well, we’re a load of Hamas supporting “hardliners”. That’s so insulting, I’m not going to give it the time of day. It’s yet more insulting from an obscenely overmonied sleazebag who spends most of his time thousands of miles away in Florida.

What if Littlejohn wasn’t a twat? Don’t bother. It’s an impossible scenario.

Richard Desmond’s Zombie Newspapers

“My B Bro Baby And The Show’s Killer Curse” leers the Daily Star this morning, tempting readers with an “exclusive”. But the fayre is as unappealing as ever: there is no baby, nor any killer curse, just the usual prurient attempt to leverage interest out of an increasingly tired reality TV format. A front page lead cobbled together from a phone call and a few readily available photos.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

Sister paper the Daily Express is no better: basically, it’s telling its dwindling readership that the weather will be generally warm and dry today, and that these conditions may recur in the days and weeks ahead. A widely available photo is included for a little novelty value. Welcome to the world of Richard Desmond’s press empire, of zombie titles, of dead newspapers walking.

The Express and Daily Star titles began to shed jobs more or less from the point that Desmond walked through the door: he famously had the Express’ investigations team sacked because he didn’t know what they did. Anyone might wonder why an intelligent man didn’t take a moment to find out. Sub-editors were dismissed en masse; only the short-term bottom line seemed to matter.

All of Des’ titles have been effectively devoid of original journalism for years now. The Daily Star recycles sleb tittle-tattle and PR, occasionally venturing into the realm of creative invention to pad out the paper. The Express exists on a diet of invented EU scare stories, migrant scares, weather scares, property price and pension scares, and cruelly hoaxing its ageing readership with tales of miracle cures.

Much of that is obtained through churned over PR fodder, press releases, quack weather forecasters, and creative exaggeration. But the papers make a profit, and, as that is all that matters to Des and his money men, all is well. Except that he now wants to make even more money out of the operation, and so is reducing the headcount at his titles from around 650 to 450.

Have a think about that: the Express and Daily Star are already run on a shoestring. The amount of original journalism is so small as to be undetectable. As the unions have rightly pointed out, those papers were used systematically and shamelessly to promote Channel 5 when Des owned it. That promotion has helped him to trouser £450 million from its recent sale to Viacom. He paid just over £100 million.

But who would want to buy the Express or Daily Star titles? Anyone with suitably deep pockets would be going digital from day one, or looking elsewhere. Remember, the Daily Express once sold four million copies a day. Its journalism was respected and feared in equal measure. Now it is one of Desmond’s zombie titles, a joke newspaper, its readership slowly dying off and no salvation in sight.

But it’s making Dirty Des a profit, so that’s another Benchmark Of Excellence!

Gaza Shelling Has To Stop

Apart from noting the distinctly OTT behaviour of some pundits, and the questionable behaviour of others, Zelo Street had not thus far ventured into the unrest in Gaza. My mind was forcibly changed earlier this afternoon when a UN school being used as a shelter by hundreds of already displaced Palestinians was shelled, with the deaths of at least fifteen people.

(c) Steve Bell 2014

As I have told on more than one previous occasion, I’ve visited Israel twice – and, on both occasions, flown El Al, three hour check-ins, double security grilling, check-in areas with armed guards, and all the rest. Even the Cypriots were unhappy at letting me in after that. And it’s a measure of the state of discourse regarding anything Israel-related that I have to keep re-stating that.

I have no problem with Israel’s right to exist, and in a state of peace. However, and here there is a significantly sized however, I also have no problem with the Palestinians having a right to also exist in a state of peace. Both these objectives need not be incompatible with one another. And save me anything even going near the puerile “they threw something first”. I don’t want to know.

Gaza is home to approximately 1.8 million inhabitants. Right now, none of them can leave the area. So if they are fleeing from military action, their scope for travel is limited to other parts of Gaza. And the Gaza strip has that name for a reason: it may be 41km (25.5 miles) long, but at its narrowest point is less than 6km (well under 4 miles) wide. Not much room for anyone to get away from the shelling.

More than 700 Palestinians have died in the recent unrest, of whom it is estimated that at least 77% are civilians – well over 500 people. The idea that high-explosive munitions can be loosed off in such a crowded area without what dispassionate military observers call collateral damage is ridiculous. And no-one should be impressed with the antics of the Israeli Prime Minister.

Yes, hello Bibi, I do indeed mean you. Just pack in trotting out the “It’s Hamas’ fault” when more Palestinians get killed. Whose weaponry is doing the killing? Who’s giving the orders? Who pulls the trigger, presses the firing button? That would be your commanders, and your military. You don’t pretend that anyone attacks a steel toecap with their groin. So don’t blame your decisions on your targets.

It takes very little effort to stop the killing. You just stop firing and withdraw from Gaza. So some rockets might be loosed off? They’ll stop. And in any case, you’ve got that Iron Dome gizmo to shoot them down. Nobody disputes Israel’s right to self defence. But this is beyond ridiculous. Start behaving like grownups – and that means treating those in Gaza as you would expect to be treated yourselves.

Israel is making its friends ashamed to stand alongside it. Yes, it’s that bad.

Peaches Geldof – We Don’t Need To Know

The excuse so often advanced by the press when asked why they are once again serving up a diet of Wayward Sleb Shock Horror stories – apart from falling back on the tired but reliable “it must be what our readers want because they keep on buying our paper” – is that there is a public interest justification. The public need to know, it will somehow benefit them, is the ultimate get-out clause.

Peaches Geldof enjoying a happy moment. Unlike Katie

Well, with the latest ghoulish expose to be splashed across the front page of all the red-tops, and well-represented elsewhere, the Fourth Estate is going to have a problem: there are some stories where we don’t need to know, and the fallout from the untimely death of Peaches Geldof is one of them. That has not dissuaded the tabs: one jumps, and the others feel obliged to follow.

And the one jumping first was, to no surprise at all, the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, telling readers “Peaches’ Heroin Secrets ... Overdose 10 times bigger than Paula’s ... Baby was in house with body for 17 hours ... She lied over habit and hid stash in loft”. How much of that do we need to know? None.

So there is no excuse for the Mirror, which follows obediently after its right-leaning rival with “Tragic Star’s Drugs Hell ... Peaches’ baby alone with body for 17 hours ... Horror of heroin addict’s last day ... Fatal dose hidden in sweet box”. It’s only fatal if you administer it, not knowing what’s in the deal.

That leaves the Daily Star, which, given Dirty Des’ latest staff cuts, won’t be offering anything original. And so it came to pass, with “Peaches hid her heroin in a sweetie box ... like mum who kept drugs in Smarties tube”. Did Paula Yates do that? What the hell, she’s dead and so there won’t be any blowback.

The Desmond cost-cutting extends to the Express, so to back up another of those cruel hoaxes on older readers – “Single Jab To Fight Arthritis” – readers are treated to “Peaches: Heroin kept in sweetie box”. Same wording as the Daily Star? So Des’ remaining hacks are saving on manpower already.

And no Daily Mail reader should feel left out: despite not making the front page, there is an article going into a not-really-necessary level of detail. The headline, “Peaches' heroin overdose was 10 times bigger than the one that killed her mother Paula: Baby son was alone with the body for 17 hours, inquest is told” tells you more than you need to know.

Someone who was occasionally on telly has died prematurely, and there has been an inquest into their death. It’s not news. They already reported on the death. And there is a family that might benefit from a little peace and quiet. This coverage has no public interest: it is just another shameless excuse to flog more copies.

Guido Fawked – David Ward Hypocrisy

There has been much discussion of the latest verbal intervention in the Gaza crisis by Lib Dem MP David Ward, who Tweeted on Tuesday evening that “The big question is – if I lived in Gaza would I fire a rocket? – probably yes”. This generated well over 8,000 Retweets and a significant amount of highly adverse reaction, much of which alleged that Ward was inciting violence against Israel.

Remember who The Great Guido supports

Now, Ward has form for taking the side of the Palestinians, and this causes two thoughts to enter: one, that he knew that his remark would be leapt upon, and two, that there were plenty out there waiting to duly leap upon it. And it has to be said that, although he is clearly trying to get across the desperate plight Gazans find themselves in, he could, and should, have worded it differently.

This has echoes of Cherie Blair getting it in the neck for saying of those Palestinians living in the West Bank that “As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress”. She said that shortly after 19 Israelis had died in the suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem. The difference then was that, in 2002, we did not have today’s blogosphere.

Which brings us once more to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, who have had a field day raking over Ward’s comments. “Lib Dem MP Backs Hamas Terror Attacks” was followed in short order by “Cross Party Condemnation For David Ward”. A letter from Danny Finkelstein to Nick Clegg suggesting Ward was guilty of anti-Semitism was reproduced in full.

Ward was further condemned for going on Radio Leeds and not apologising to the satisfaction of The Great Guido. The Lib Dem statement, when it came, was greeted with mock horror as not being sufficient. But, at the same time, the thought enters that Staines and his pals are sounding off from a very draughty glasshouse: take the idea of hate speech and intolerance, for starters.

While David Ward’s CV can point to his work against racism, and building links with diverse communities in Bradford, Paul Staines has links to the Apartheid regime in South Africa and that most regrettable episode when, as chair of the Federation of Conservative Students branch at his college in Hull, he tried to form a pact with the BNP. And then there is the clear anti-Semitism on the Fawkes blog.

The “sketch” of the last PMQs before the Summer recess asserted that Ed Miliband “dances at the despatch box like a spastic marionette”, following that with talking of his “convulsive string master taking another swig of the meths”. So The Great Guido is associating Jews with marionettes and puppet masters on the one hand, while laying into David Ward for anti-Semitism on the other.

But at least Staines is consistent in his hypocrisy. Another fine mess, once again.

Toby Young’s Trojan Horse Excuse

Over at the bear pit that is Telegraph blogs, the loathsome Toby Young is taking yet more time away from his day job – being CEO of the West London Free School (WLFS) – to let the world know that, despite the removal of his hero Michael “Oiky” Gove from the helm at the Department for Education (DfE), he is the go-to expert on all matters educational, whatever the subject.

The view from the Weinbunker

“The Trojan Horse plot is an indictment of local education authorities, not academies” he asserts grandly today, still assuming that anonymous letter alleging a plot was rather more genuine than has been concluded. “The argument is that if you allow taxpayer-funded schools to break free of local authority control, it's inevitable that some of them will be taken over by extremists” he postulates.

And so he walks straight into a false assumption: religious conservatism is not “extremism”. One might have hoped that someone who runs a school with an intake from a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds might be a little more steady on the hyperbolic tiller. But, as Clive James might have said, I digress. Tobes is on a mission, however dishonest, to smear local authorities.

“The school at the centre of the plot, Park View, only converted to academy status last year” he asserts. April 1, 2012, was not last year, Tobes. So when he says “the Islamist infiltration of Park View and other schools was brought to the attention of the local authority two years ago, when the schools were still Birmingham City Council's responsibility, and officers did nothing”, there is a good reason for it.

The school concerned was not Birmingham City Council’s responsibility, so there was nothing officers could do – not directly, at any rate. And when Tobes tells his readers “When the schools became academies, by contrast, and became directly accountable to the Secretary of State for Education, the plot was investigated and action was taken”, this too is bunk. Gove did stuff all for two years.

In fact, the DfE was told four years ago. Remember “How did it come to pass, for example, that one of the governors at Park View was the chairman of the education committee of the Muslim Council of Britain? Is it true that Birmingham city council was warned about these allegations in 2008? Is it true that the Department for Education was warned in 2010? If so, why did nobody act?” Theresa May’s letter?

One might have expected Tobes to remember that, being part of the row that told Young Dave that he would have to demote Gove. Yes, Gove’s department was warned about potential religious conservatism being applied in some schools four years ago, and it did precisely nothing. Tobes telling fibs will not help matters. And, in any case, his latest post is just a re-hash of one from last month.

I do hope WLFS pupils don’t get to read his stuff. It would set a terrible example.

Tories’ Youth Wing In Turmoil

Back in the 1998, William ‘Ague must have thought he’d sorted the fractious behaviour of the Tory Party’s youth wing for good, after three disparate groups were brought together under the single banner of Conservative Future (CF). But it seems that CF may be about to cause the Conservative Party proper a whole lot more grief – less than a year before the next General Election.

CF is at present chaired by Oliver Cooper, who was elected in March last year. Elections are, it seems, held every year, but now comes word that there are to be elections next month – and, moreover, that Cooper has been more or less instructed not to stand. That means he will have been effectively sacked from his post. His downfall can be traced back to the Newark by-election.

The Murdoch Times ran a piece titled “Sex and vindaloo lures young Tory army to Newark”. In preparing the article, Cooper was interviewed about CF, and the RoadTrip2015 campaign. The comments about sex were, it seems, judged to be the latest – and most serious – in a line of gaffes emanating from Cooper. He was apparently given the hard word at a recent drinks reception.

As the Blue Guerrilla blog has noted, a “senior Road Trip / party activist figure” appears to be personally involved. Well, RoadTrip2015 was founded by Mark Clarke, who was a Tory PPC in Tooting at the last General Election before being directly removed from the candidates’ list. My information is that Clarke is heavily involved in the removal of Cooper and precipitation of fresh CF elections.

Now, here on Zelo Street we are aware that Mark Clarke is a sensitive flower. He was not at all happy when Sunny Hundal called him out over the dodgy nature of his Twitter following, and I doubt he was best pleased when I passed adverse comment on his presence at the now-moribund Trade Union Reform Campaign (TURC), which seeks not to reform Trades Unions, but do them serious damage.

But the question stands: is Mark Clarke behind the move to oust Oliver Cooper, who, it now seems, has accepted his fate? What democratic mandate does Clarke, or whoever else may be involved, possess that legitimises this behaviour? Yes, this is on the face of it a purely internal CF squabble, but just imagine what those out on the right would be doing if it had been a body associated with the Labour Party.

Moreover, what is the role of the Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF) and its head man Donal Blaney in all of this? Clarke was Development Director of the YBF – that self-styled “Conservative Madrasa” – so, once again, the question stands. What is the role of Grant “Spiv” Shapps? Is Tory Party HQ aware of what is going on? If so, what has been the reaction? Will we see a straight denial of any tendency to entryism?

The impression is given that some on the right want to keep this quiet. No chance.

Thomas The Tank Engine – Lighten Up

Until yesterday, I had not heard of Tracy Van Slyke. And, having now read her latest contribution to our understanding of children’s literature, I can safely conclude that, not only have I not suffered any disadvantage by not having heard of Tracy Van Slyke, I will suffer no disadvantage if the writings of Tracy Van Slyke are forever lost to me. This conclusion can be easily explained.

Ms Van Slyke has penned a contribution to the Guardian’s Comment Is Free (CiF), and it is to be hoped that this is a very occasional contribution indeed. Here, she tells that there is – to her, at least – “Classism, sexism [and] anti-environmentalism bordering on racism” embedded in a genre that is lapped up by millions of unsuspecting children worldwide. What is the identity of the culprit?

This supposed vehicle for the subversion of minors is none other than Thomas The Tank Engine. Yes, I too have struggled to see how the Reverend Wilbert Awdry – an Anglican priest – was able to write such horrors into those books which followed from his bedtime stories for son Christopher, who was at the time recovering from a bout of measles. What did everyone miss?

You’ll love this: “when the good engines pump out white smoke and the bad engines pump out black smoke – and they are all pumping out smoke – it's not hard to make the leap into the race territory”. Christ On A Bike, that’s desperate. And the Fat Controller does not wear a “tuxedo”, Ms Van Slyke. It’s called a Frock Coat. We’re talking about something particularly English here.

Oh, and the most damning indictment of the Thomas genre is that James The Red Engine got the piss taken out of him when he was summoned by the Fat Controller to do a job while still in pink undercoat. Well, have I got news for Ms Van Slyke: Thomas The Tank Engine does not contain any coded messages. For goodness’ sake, these are stories for children, no more, no less.

Small wonder that one of those stopping by to comment on this hyperbolic confection observed that “peak Guardian” had been reached. Few have taken it seriously, although some of those trying – again – to pretend that CiF equals Guardian editorial line have revealed their own shortcomings in the process. Step forward the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog.

The Great Guido took grave exception to Ms Van Slyke’s talk of engines emitting smoke: “It’s not white smoke you numpty, it’s steam. They are steam engines”. Staines and his rabble must have missed the overall roof at St Pancras before it was cleaned. Likewise King’s Cross, Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool Lime Street, and yes, even Crewe. Of course they pump out smoke.

And now the smoke has gone, there are pundits to pump out guff instead.

So Farewell Then Tabloid Troll

Overnight, it appears that the abusive and threatening Twitter presence known as @tabloidtroll first went private, and then was deleted. Thus was closed a less than pleasant chapter in the realms of trolling, threatening behaviour, and stalking, to the general relief of those who would rather it had never been there in the first place. He is going to write a book – well, so long as I don’t have to read it, and all that.

Although @tabloidtroll was a singularly unpleasant individual – claims that the account had more than one author were not, as with much of its content, grounded in fact – there were lighter moments among the threats, smears, obsessive pursuits, unsolicited phone calls (I kid you not), trolling of contributors to the Leveson Inquiry, and the constant talk of arriving on the doorstep.

Take the hacking trial, for starters: almost exactly two years ago, @tabloidtroll proclaimed to the world, in the style of the woman from the Resistance in ‘Allo ‘Allo, “Saying this once: Hope Andy Coulson isn’t charged today – and if he is that whatever they lay on him doesn’t stick. Great journalist”. Thus was Coulson cursed: he is now doing a stretch in Belmarsh.

Likewise @tabloidtroll’s unequivocal support for Neville “Stylish Masturbator” Thurlbeck: “Neville Thurlbeck has told the BBC he is ‘most surprised and disappointed’ to have been charged with phone hacking  ... and that he will ‘fight vigorously’ to clear his name ... these are just charges. Proving is something else”. Nev is, apparently, sharing a cell with Coulson.

For some light relief, there was the occasional discussion of what would happen when @tabloidtroll turned up on the doorstep of one of his critics (given his behaviour, there was always a good choice of these). He was “ever more convinced one-on-one is required here”. A friend offered to accompany him; clearly no man is of perfect courage. And someone else would film proceedings.

But for sheer unintended hilarity, there was the insight into investigative journalism: “So who is this blogging clown speaking of his admiration for Gaddafi?” he announced triumphantly. He had found someone called Tim Fenton. The problem was, it wasn’t me, and I was the intended target. @tabloidtroll had not understood that there are several people who style themselves thus.

This message did not at first get through. So a little later, we got “Happily for anyone in Crewe who has forgotten Gaddafi’s war crimes the Guardian archive has this”. But it still wasn’t me. Although he knew where I lived, which would be useful, were I to forget. And @tabloidtroll did everyone a great service: nobody needed to explain the worst tabloid hack mentality. He was it. And now he’s quit.

I’d like to have something positive to say about him. But sadly I don’t. At all.

Murdoch Tulisa Hypocrisy

The press has picked up on the collapse yesterday of the trial on drugs charges of singer Tulisa Contostavlos, after Judge Alistair McCreath concluded that Sun on Sunday’s “ace reporter” Mazher Mahmood had lied to him, with the sole purpose of manipulating evidence. Or rather, most of the press has picked up on the story: no prizes for guessing which title kept schtum.

Tulisa Contostavlos

Yes, while the Mail thundered “The 'lying' Fake Sheikh who tricked Tulisa and new shame for The Sun as former X-Factor judge is CLEARED of arranging cocaine deal with undercover reporter”, and the Mirror went for the more prosaic “Tulisa trial collapses: Dramatic scenes at Southwark Crown Court as case THROWN OUT”, the Murdoch Sun remained tight-lipped and ashen-faced.

While the Evening Standard noted that “Tulisa Contostavlos weeps as judge throws drugs case out of court ... ‘Fake Sheikh’ tainted integrity of the court, says Tulisa judge”, and the Guardian told that “Tulisa Contostavlos trial collapses over Mazher Mahmood's evidence ... Judge says case cannot go on because of belief that 'fake sheikh' had lied at pre-trial hearing”, Rupe’s downmarket troops said nothing.

That was then ...

Even the Times only managed a footnote on the front page, which one might have easily missed, were one not looking out for it. How different it all was when Mahmood stung Ms Contostavlos: under the proclamation “World Exclusive”, the Sunday Sun headline screamed “Tulisa’s Cocaine Deal Shame ... X Factor star caught setting up secret sale with drugs pal”.

The paper’s daily stablemate was not backward in coming forward for a piece of the action, announcing beneath the claim of a “Drug Shame Exclusive” the news “We Will Arrest Tulisa Say Cops ... Star to be quizzed over cocaine deal”. So anyone trying to spin the angle “the daily wouldn’t comment because they’re two separate papers” is advised to take that lame deflection and shove it.

... but this is now

What about today’s Super Soaraway Currant Bun? You jest: while everyone else is reporting the shame of Britain’s allegedly favourite paper, the Murdoch faithful ask readers to “look over there” at Young Dave being jolly tough with Vladimir Putin, the only trace of sleb presence being Katie Price. That means they’re desperate. Not even a mention of their having suspended Mahmood.

The Guardian noted that “Often posing as a rich Arabic businessman or royal, he claims to have conducted stories which saw 100 people jailed, including paedophiles and arms dealers. He has also duped celebrities such as the Countess of Wessex and Sven-Göran Eriksson into revealing secrets”. Perhaps Mazher Mahmood might like to try a first-hand investigation of the criminal justice system next?

And perhaps the Murdoch faithful can come clean about their stables. Which aren’t.

Fake Sheikh – Pants On Fire

He enacted sting after sting for the now defunct Screws: Mazher Mahmood, aka The Fake Sheikh, was a legend among those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet. Many convictions have depended wholly on his evidence, and his activities. And yesterday he was exposed as a liar. Thus the idea that bad press behaviour ended when the Screws was shut down was exposed as a sham.

That's no Sheikh, he's 100% fake

Mahmood has, in the past, gone to great lengths to conceal his identity; he claims that, as an undercover reporter, publishing photos of him would be detrimental to his work. Well, given he’s not only a lying sleazebag, but a proven lying sleazebag, here on Zelo Street we say Stuff That For A Game Of Soldiers. So here is Mazher Mahmood, in all his less than total glory.

Mahmood’s run of good fortune came juddering to a halt yesterday at Southwark Crown Court as the trial on drugs charges of singer Tulisa Contostavlos collapsed. The judge concluded that Mahmood “told me lies when he gave evidence to me on the 27th of June ... there are strong grounds for believing that the underlying purpose of these lies was to conceal the fact that he had been manipulating the evidence”.

As Mahmood was “the sole progenitor of this case; the sole investigator; the sole prosecution witness; someone who appears to have gone to great lengths to get Ms Contostavlos to agree to involve herself in criminal conduct, certainly to far greater lengths than would have been appropriate had he been a Police investigator”, there could be no other outcome to the case.

But what was most worrying was that the Murdoch press – supposedly cleaned up after the demise of the Screws – was still prepared to indulge Mahmood. The Screws had paid a witness in the alleged Victoria Beckham kidnap trial; the trial subsequently collapsed. The payment was considered to be a factor. Mahmood and his paper had their arses wiped by the supine PCC.

That wasn’t an isolated incident: Roy Greenslade told yesterday that he had been prepared to be a witness on behalf of Ms Contostavlos: “I had prepared a statement in which I outlined the reason he departed from the Sunday Times in 1988 after lying about changes he made to editorial copy”. It got worse.

“I revealed the details of that incident to the Leveson inquiry. It led to Mahmood being recalled because he had previously lied about it in his evidence to Lord Justice Leveson”. Mazher Mahmood worked for decades in the service of the Murdoch empire. He appears to have been prepared to lie in order to progress stories. Many of his stings resulted in criminal convictions. Some may have to be revisited.

Ms Contostavlos is urging Police action against Mahmood. And once again the whole sordid business comes back to one man: that man is Rupert Murdoch.

Guido Fawked – Say Sorry To Owen Jones

One thing you soon realise about the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog is that, for them, sorry is indeed the hardest word, so hard, in fact, that they cannot bring themselves to utter it. Saying sorry, for The Great Guido, is for other people to do to them. So when they tried a smear too far against Owen Jones this morning, saying sorry was out of the question.

Remember who The Great Guido supports

Under the heading “Sick Owen Jones Papped Mocking Teen Polar Bear Tragedy”, the Fawkes folks produced a slice of magnificently creative logic, telling that Jones had passed severely adverse comment on the comrades at Socialist Worker who had, for whatever reason, thought that the death of student Horatio Chapple was a cause for mickey-taking, as he had gone to Eton.

What the Fawkes folks pulled - Take 1

Jones pointed out that mauling by a polar bear is not something to take lightly, merely because of where someone went to school, which in any case is unlikely to have been Chapple’s decision. Jones concluded that this might be the Socialist Worker’s form of socialism, but it certainly wasn’t his. Then he was photographed at the Tolpuddle festival last weekend, at the Greenpeace stand.

What the Fawkes folks pulled - Take 2

This featured a polar bear that was most definitely not a live one: it was part of the Greenpeace campaign to persuade oil giant Shell to desist from further exploration in the Arctic. Jones was pictured in front of the display. The ridiculous and out of order conclusion of the Fawkes rabble? “Here are Owen and two friends at Saturday’s Tolpuddle festival, mocking Horatio Chapple’s death”.

And here's a particularly stupid Tory MP

The grammar is reasonably correct, so this was probably the invention of newly anointed teaboy Alex Wickham, who makes up for his slight presence by being just as full of crap as his pals. The idea that Owen Jones was mocking someone’s death by being photographed in front of the Greenpeace stand was even more stupid than a stupid idea from the department of stupidity at the University of Stupid.

One person emerges with dignity intact

But was there an apology? Was there heck. But at least this spiteful and unnecessary post was taken down. Also removed was a Tweet in support of the Fawkes rabble from Tory MP Stewart Jackson, although he too was not big enough to say sorry, either to Jones or to Peterborough’s Labour prospective Parliamentary candidate, who he managed to smear by association.

Owen Jones has now Tweeted that he considers the matter closed, as the offending post has been removed. By doing so, and with the Fawkes rabble and their now-disgraced Tory MP pal too yellow to apologise, he has the moral high ground while The Great Guido and his associates once again find themselves occupying a space somewhere between gutter and sewer.

They’re full value for their 4% positive trust rating. Another fine mess, once again.

Mail BBC Bashing Weather Washout

Another day brings another attempt by the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre to put the boot in on the hated BBC, and today’s specialist subject is Regional Weather Forecasts. “Why does the BBC waste your money on so many weather forecasters? One forecast last week - and a dozen different faces across the country” is the headline on Ross Clark’s rant.

What's f***ing wrong with my journalists' research, c***?!? Er, with the greatest of respect, Mr Jay

Er, hello, this is rather obvious, isn’t it? The regional forecast gives the kind of local detail that the national picture cannot do, for reasons of both time and relevance. But on ploughs Clark: “At a time of austerity, when the Culture Secretary has indicated he is prepared to be radical in reconsidering BBC funding, claiming many families find the annual £145.50 licence fee ‘a lot of money’, how much do all these weathermen — and women — cost?” he demands.

And, guess what, the Beeb won’t tell him: “Strangely, I have discovered this is confidential information. The number of weather forecasters and presenters employed by the BBC is, apparently, a secret ... The Beeb simply refused to tell me how many regional forecasters it employs”.

That, Dacre doggies, may be not unrelated to many of them performing other duties apart from weather forecasts: here in the North West, it is not uncommon to see Dianne Oxberry and Eno Eruotor on reporting duties. And talking of our resident evening forecasters, which one has the Mail featured? Ah well. This is where the Dacre doggies sell the pass big time.

So that's Mel Coles, is it?

Clark’s article has a photo for every regional presenter (what a busy life these Daily Mail hacks lead, eh?). And here’s the North West one, captioned “Mel Coles seems happy in the North-West”. Riiight. We have a problem, Northcliffe House bunker: that is not Mel Coles. And Mel Coles is not at BBC North West. Just so you can see that it is not Mel Coles, here she is.

Er, maybe it wasn't, Dacre hacks

The photo is regular BBC North West weather presenter Dianne Oxberry, who will be spending most of today getting teed off by fellow staff members calling her Mel. But, you may point out, Mel Coles does occasionally pop up on North West weather forecasts – so how can that happen if she doesn’t work there? Simples. The BBC has been making cuts in the number of weather forecasters it employs.

Those cuts mean presenters from BBC East Midlands also record a North West forecast as well as one for their home region – especially at weekends. Yes, the cuts the Dacre doggies want to see happen have, er, already happened. And the effect of those cuts has been most keenly felt at the Daily Mail, where it has caused Ross Clark to get his regional forecasters confused.

You want proper journalism? You won’t get it from the Daily Mail, that’s for sure.

MH17 – Citizen Journalism Shames The Press

“Damning US intelligence puts Russia in the dock” proclaims the Times’ front page lead this morning. Thus the orthodox line: only at superpower level can you find the quality of intelligence to nail Vladimir Putin and his followers. This recalls the aftermath of the then USSR shooting down flight KAL007 after it had accidentally strayed over Soviet airspace.

Old media: the Murdoch Times

The USA had what we now know as Global Positioning System (GPS): their military could see that the Russians were dissembling. But what the Times, and most of the mainstream press would rather not admit, is that, with less and less being spent on proper investigative journalism, but more ordinary people having access to the video technology and the internet, the incriminating evidence can come from anywhere.

And nowhere has this been seen to better effect than in the pursuit of evidence to show that a Buk missile launcher was in the rebel-held area of eastern Ukraine at the time Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down last Thursday. Photos and videos were linked to the towns of Snizhne and Torez by using tools such as Google Earth and local language skills.

Not that you would know this from reading the report fashioned by the Daily Mail, which does not credit those who did the hard work, but instead subsumes the results of their research inside a much longer piece giving a wider picture of the shooting down. For citizen journalism to get the credit it deserves, you have to look in at the deeply subversive Guardian.

New media: Eliot Higgins in sofa over-occupation shock ((c) Guardian)

Here, Eliot Higgins (aka Brown Moses) and his new venture Bellingcat are name-checked. Why is this project important? Ah well. Here we enter a world that the Times doesn’t want to talk about, and the Mail doesn’t want to credit. Eliot has made Bellingcat open for anyone to view for the next 48 hours, so you can see how he and his contributors located the Buk.

HERE he analyses a video showing the launcher driving through what was claimed to be the town of Snizhne. Crowd-sourcing and online tools and maps were all that was needed to confirm that it was indeed taken in Snizhne, the apartment block used as a vantage point, and therefore that the Buk was around 10 to 15km from the crash site around the time MH17 was shot down.

HERE the language skills of Aric Toler are used to pinpoint the location where a Buk launcher was seen minus at least one of its rockets. This was shown to be the nearby town of Torez: the yellow facade of the store was key. There is a Kickstarter open for Bellingcat, and you can contribute HERE. I have already done so, as have around 450 others. If the press won’t do this work, there is one alternative.

You want it done properly? Do it yourself. Please support Bellingcat – today.

Reshuffle – It Was Wonderful. Or Not

Tokenism. Insulting. A takeover by “The Blob”. All sentiments from right-leaning pundits after Young Dave completed his ministerial reshuffle last week. But time is ticking down to next May’s General Election. It is time for all loyal Tory-supporting pundits to come to the aid of the party, however lame the narrative. And so in they all trooped, spin prepared, to tell that it was really rather good. Well, nearly all.

Yes, "Oiky", the pundits like you. But you're still demoted

For starters, having Michael “Oiky” Gove demoted to Chief Whip, according to the odious Quentin Letts (let’s not), was No Bad Thing: “Michael Gove sat in the end-of-bench berth reserved for Chief Whips ... To see the Gover in that august position perhaps reminded one that Chief Whip really is quite some job”. Then he pretended that Young Dave had won last week’s PMQs, as he always does.

Letts told that Philip Hammond was another rather good choice, even suggesting him as future Prime Ministerial material (does he have a wisdom tooth excuse, though?). So Letts is already saying it was all excellent. Bruce “Brute” Anderson at the Telegraph tried to outdo even that: the reshuffle was “just about the most abused ever. In my view, the critics are completely wrong”.

What of the Gove sacking? “The removal of Michael Gove was the most dramatic aspect. It aroused great alarm and despondency: would this mean the end of the Gove reforms? There is a simple and emphatic answer to that: absolutely not. Mr Gove was not only a good education secretary. He was a great one, and he brought to his daunting tasks radical energy, indomitable courage and a profound idealism”.

So that’s another inhabitant of cloud cuckoo land, then. But there was no shortage of eager pundits wanting to talk up Cameron’s new team, as witness Matthew d’Ancona, whose Gove take is, er, interesting: “Cameron had tailored an entirely bespoke role for his friend and colleague ... It is certainly true that Gove had discussed a move of this sort with both Cameron and Osborne”.

You think that was barking? The peroration was even more out there: “This reshuffle was not a victory for Left or Right, men or women, but for sturdy Tory pragmatism. It is this which has guided Cameron’s career for 20 years. More to the point, it is this which he believes, with growing confidence, will steer his party to victory next May”. Cue endless re-runs of that Smash advert. Anyone care to dissent?

You betcha, says Sarah: at the Spectator, under the title “David Cameron’s Stepford Ministers” [ouch!], Melissa Kite observed that “As women routinely break through the glass ceiling purely on their merits, in arenas from banking and law to engineering and information technology, Cameron presides over the last bastion of soft misogyny”. No invites to 10 Downing Street receptions for you, Ms K.

And she may have something: Cameron is, after all, a former PR practitioner.

Gaza – Mad Mel v Mandela

The situation in Gaza has become desperate: hospitals have been overwhelmed,  mortuaries are overflowing with the death toll rising beyond the 400 mark, most of those civilians. So when a huge demonstration took place yesterday in London, one might have thought that even the most hawkish right-wingers would pause for thought. But not Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips.

Definitely not Fair and Balanced

Mad Mel was at her screaming, intolerant worst. That the Israeli Government might be overreacting and indulging in disproportionate behaviour was not allowed to enter. Anyone dissenting from her view was hell-bent on the destruction of Israel.

The demonstration was her main target. “‘From river to the sea’: London demo reveals true aim of Gaza mob is racist destruction of historic Jewish Israel” she frothed, not realising that Israel is, historically, just 66 years old.

And note that a peaceful demonstration is, in the retelling, a “mob”. But there was more: “Hamas double war crimes ignored; instead Israel defence against them called war crime. Mass moral derangement in UK”. The Guardian doesn’t agree with her.

But someone does: “Douglas Murray calls out real agenda for pro-Gaza demonstrators as Jew-hatred. All decent folk should share disgust”. Yes, I’m disgusted that anyone should take an Islamophobic bigot like Murray on trust.

That, though, did not concern Mel: “Largely Muslim Jew-hating Gaza demos London and Europe threaten harm not to Israel but Europe, says Douglas Murray”. Citing Murray in support even once is bad. Twice ... you figure it out.

And then there was a suitable canard to finish: “As others have observed, if Gaza demilitarised there would be peace and no dead Palestinians. If Israel demilitarised there would be genocide”. And what kind of comparison is that?

It’s a pretty poor one. And we can get some idea how poor when considering how someone who experienced decades of the Apartheid regime in South Africa viewed how Israel is behaving towards the Palestinians. Nelson Mandela noted that “The so-called ‘Palestinian autonomous areas’ are Bantustans. These are restricted entities within the power structure of the Israeli Apartheid system”.

He continued “Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular, waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children”.

Before Melanie Phillips talks of “demilitarisation”, she should heed those words. But she, and too many others, will not. There is no military solution available in Gaza.