Obsolete

First up, the Scum did at least have the guts to report the jailing of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, but didn't admit to belonging to the same parent company as the News of the Screws. The story also isn't by-lined, which is odd. Perhaps the journalist involved was frightened of the repercussions of reporting their colleagues' misdemeanors, when usually News International completely ignores them.



On then once again to the continuing shrieking about a situation that the Scum has had more than a hand in creating:

EMBATTLED John Reid was under fire from all sides yesterday as the prisons crisis spiralled out of control.

Judges were in open revolt after being forced to free more dangerous criminals because of the cells shortage.

But other judges were accused of being opportunist and using Reid’s plea to jail only the worst-case criminals as an excuse to go SOFT on other menaces to society.

Neighbour Jamie Jones, 18, said: “He’s a beast and a nonce and should be locked up for life.”

Valerie Williams, 27, who has a girl aged two, said: “What more serious offence can there be than paedophilia? It ruins a child’s life. It’s worrying he could be wandering around and looking at my child and others in the street.

“I want signs and photos of him and to put them around the area. People need to be aware of the risk.”

Donna Armitage, 24, mother of a lad aged three, said: “He could look through my windows and see my son. That man should be in a hostel.”

Labels: John Reid, paedophilia hysteria, prison overcrowding, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

JOHN Reid was dealt a new hammer blow yesterday when a PAEDOPHILE was freed because of his failure to build prisons.

Paedophile Williams — who had more than 180 sickening images on his computer — was let off with a six-month sentence and suspended for two years. He was also placed on supervision.

Married Williams, 46, of Blaenau Ffestiniog, was ordered to be placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years. He was caught after his wife called in police. The revelation that a paedophile is among those escaping justice makes any hopes Reid might have of succeeding Prime Minister Tony Blair seem ludicrous — without taking account of the crime figures released yesterday.

The APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition, Text Revision gives the following as its "Diagnostic criteria for 302.2 Pedophilia":[27]

* Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger).
* The person has acted on these urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty.
* The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children in Criterion A.

It is unacceptable that people who have committed crimes against children are not jailed simply because prisons are too full if the severity of the crime requires a prison sentence."

JOHN Reid skulked off to his office yesterday as The Sun stepped up the hunt for his missing brain.

He looked blank as he emerged from his smart Westminster town house.

I said: “Good morning, Mr Reid. The Sun and our readers are desperately trying to find your brain — can you give us a clue?”

He stared at the floor and shuffled to a Jaguar.

I asked: “Can you recall the last time you used it?” — but he sped off.

...

Finally, Tim went to the last place likely to know anything — the Home Office. Staff wanted to help — but said they were “not fit for the purpose”.

THE Sun yesterday found a prison ship John Reid could use to ease the jails crisis — the SAME ONE the Government sold just six months ago.

HMP Weare is still moored at the same Channel port as it was when the Home Office got rid of it for just £2.5million in August.

Mr Reid repeatedly told The Sun that the Weare had been sold off and could not be bought back — while his aides even said it was being lined up for the scrapyard.

But last night it was revealed the vessel has undergone a huge refit and could be bought back — but at THREE times the amount the Home Office got for it.

The Sun stepped in after disclosing the scale of John Reid’s failure to deal with the prisons overcrowding fiasco.

Within a few hours we discovered the Weare, which was opened in 1997 and closed in 2005, is still moored at Portland, Dorset.

It had been completely refurbished by its new owners, Sea Trucks Group, a Nigerian-based firm specialising in supporting the offshore oil industry.

Sea Trucks have spent a small fortune upgrading the vessel to provide accommodation for up to 1,000 people such as oil rig workers.

“As I understand it, when it was used as a jail it only had the least dangerous prisoners so that the security measures did not need to be the very highest.”

At the height of its use the Weare — built in the 1970s and used to accommodate soldiers in the Falklands — held 400 low-risk inmates.

NINE top civil servants are responsible for day-to-day running of the Home Office.

They are meant to ensure prisons, probation, immigration and other services meet ministers’ targets.

Sorry to break it to you lot, but if the Home Office’s current shambles is the best you can do, you need your heads examined.

THE fiasco that is the Home Office gets more ludicrous by the minute.

It is now clear that John Reid is not the only one whose brain is missing in this benighted government department.

There are 73,359 public servants serving under the Home Secretary and his clutch of ministers and senior mandarins.

Not one of them has managed to find an answer to the problem of a prison network littered with signs declaring: “Sorry, No Vacancies”.

While officials and ministers shrugged, it took The Sun just two hours to find a jail ship floating on England’s south coast.

It is empty but spruced up and ready to take 1,000 criminals.

Laughably, it is the same ship decommissioned by Charles Clarke when he had his turn at making a mess of the Home Office.

If you presented this as the script of a Carry On film it would be rejected as too ridiculous.

But you would have to be an idiot not to know our jails were heading for disaster.
# Convicts and suspects have been crammed into police cells, taking hard-pressed officers off the beat.
# Courts have been told by John Reid to cut the numbers being sent to jail.

Which helps explain why yesterday’s crime figures showed robberies rising, and big increases in vandalism and drug offences.

At the centre of this mess the Prime Minister, The Chancellor and all four Labour Home Secretaries are unable to answer a few simple questions:

Why weren’t extra prison places built years ago?

Who is to blame for this monumental error?

What about using old army camps in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as England?

How about that floating jail that has been staring them in the face?

And why does a crisis have to be a catastrophe before this government gets its brains into gear?

But then, we were almost forgetting. Some of their brains are missing.

Labels: John Reid, paedophilia, prison overcrowding, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

Labels: Cudlipp lecture, Daily Mail, Lance Price, Paul Dacre

So, farewell then to Clive Goodman for four months at least. The News of the Screws piss-poor royal editor has been sent down for intercepting messages on the phones of the royal family, while his private investigator co-conspirator Glenn Mulcaire has been sentenced to six months.

That Goodman has been sent down for accessing such banal information that not even the average News of the Screws reader would care about says much about the tabloids in the age of the internet. The scramble to get any tidbit of celebrity gossip has become so fierce as a result of the dedicated celebrity weeklies and websites such as Popbitch that the methods of journalists are increasingly entering the realm of the illegal, as the log books of a private investigator showed. As a result, they are bringing the whole profession into disrepute with their tactics.



One can only hope that Mazher Mahmood is the next one to feel the long arm of Inspector Knacker. Oh, and it'll be interesting to see if the Scum covers Goodman's sentence tomorrow.

Update: The Scum's website is reporting it, but we'll see if it actually appears in tomorrow's paper.

Update 2: Coulson's gone. Did he jump or was he pushed by Murdoch?

Labels: Clive Goodman, Glenn Mulcaire, News of the Screws

What a happy coincidence it was for the first full debate on Iraq since 2004 in the House of Commons to come on the same day as John Reid was forced to go cap in hand to the judges, begging them to only jail serious and persistent offenders due to the crisis created by the government's perpetual crackdowns, spurred on by the tabloids. There was only ever going to be one topic on the mind of the Sun, but even by their standards the coverage given to the debate is utterly derisory and spectacularly dishonest. The article itself is dumped right down at the bottom of the online news page:

PM's rap for Ming over Iraq

TONY Blair dismissed calls yesterday for him to name the day British troops will leave Iraq.

The PM said it would be “disastrous” to set a deadline for withdrawal while killing continues.

He branded Lib Dem chief Sir Menzies ‘Ming’ Campbell “irresponsible” for demanding our forces are home by October 31.

Mr Blair vowed to see through the mission to put Iraq on its feet.

He stormed: “Our troops are there under a United Nations resolution, with full support of the government of Iraq.

“For us to set an arbitrary timetable — saying we will pull them out in October come what may — would send a disastrous signal to the people we are fighting in Iraq.

“Whatever its superficial attractions, it’s deeply irresponsible, which is probably why it’s Liberal Democrat policy.”

Mr Blair hit out after Lib Dems called for a phased withdrawal of our 7,000 troops from May.

Sir Menzies also rapped him for refusing to lead last night’s Iraq debate. But Mr Blair hit back during Question Time saying: “I’m debating the issue NOW.”

Last night 152 convicts were being held at police station and court cells as the number “in jail” hovered above 80,000.

The fiasco will smash Reid’s proudly-held reputation as a self-styled tough guy.

Reid cockily assured Sun readers in October that he would supply prison ships. He even ordered officials to scour ports looking for disused ferries.

The Home Office said at the time: “The Home Secretary has made it clear he wants to explore innovative solutions. We hope it will see us with extra capacity on floating vessels.”

But night Home Office officials admitted NO ships have been bought.

In November, Reid vowed to open disused Ministry of Defence sites as prisons.

He said at the time: “We are in negotiations with relevant authorities over a number of sites in England and Wales.”

There is still no news of ANY MoD sites in the pipeline.

Once again we are faced with letting out offenders early — or not sending them to prison at all — while judges are urged to give more soft community sentences.

The Sun does not believe every lawbreaker should go behind bars.

But serious offenders deserve time in custody to teach them a lesson and protect the public.

Home Secretary John Reid and Chancellor Gordon Brown must stop feuding and come up with the plans and money for more prison places.

Including a prison ship. Do you hear that, Home Secretary? A prison ship. Like you promised.

Wake up Labour, and put the country first instead of your own careers.

Perhaps Wade ought to follow her own advice and from now on think what's best for this country instead of what Mr Murdoch thinks is best for this country. That doing so would result in her dismissal would be no excuse.

The failure of mass imprisonment to solve the problem of crime could not be more apparent, as today's figures released by both the Home Office and British Crime Survey show. Despite nearly 80,000 being behind bars, the chance of being a victim of crime has risen for the first time in years, up 1%, while personal robbery, fuelled by the carrying of expensive and easily sold-on mobile phones and mp3 players, jumped by 14%. Only a complete reappraisal of what prison is actually for will solve the overcrowding crisis, but it seems that no one is willing to listen, and with the Scum never ceasing to scream, this government is too cowardly to even consider such "radical" proposals as that of the ex-head of the prison and probation service, Martin Narey. The Scum is already reporting the Reid appears to have heeled to Wade's cry for ships and MoD bases to be used.

Elsewhere, the Scum is today yet again advertising the creepy charms of its MyScum MySpace rip-off community by plugging the desperate flesh-flashing of those who don't know any better, written appropriately by Dave Masters (warning: nudity):

Page 3.com editor Di James praised the girls' efforts and said it could lead to one of them being spotted by a top agency.

She added: "It's a great way to put yourself in the shop window!"

Indeed. An Amsterdam shop window.

Labels: Iraq debate, John Reid, MySun, prison overcrowding, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

"It is critical that we understand that this new form of terrorism carries another more subtle, perhaps equally pernicious, risk. Because it might encourage a fear-driven and inappropriate response. By that I mean it can tempt us to abandon our values. I think it important to understand that this is one of its primary
purposes."

"London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, 'soldiers'. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'.

"The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement."

The survey found seven in every 10 people think compulsory identity cards for all adults would be "a price worth paying" to reduce the threat of terrorism. Eight in 10 say the authorities should be able to tap the phones of people suspected of involvement in terrorism, open their mail and impose electronic tagging or home curfews.

Less than a quarter of the population said torturing terror suspects would be "a price worth paying" and only 35% would accept a ban on peaceful protests and demonstrations.

But the nation is almost equally divided on whether people charged with terrorism-related crime should be denied a jury trial - with 50% finding that acceptable and 45% unacceptable.

(i) do not take civil liberties for granted; work out why they are important without assuming anything;

(ii) in doing this, be pragmatic up to a point - recognise that sometimes the state is right to restrict our freedom, that in a democratic society, the state is us - in other words, beware of drifting into an anarchic libertarianism, because if you do, the general public will stop listening to you;

(iii) keep a sense of proportion: liberty is by no means dead in Britain; we are not living in a police state; the executive remains accountable to parliament and the courts and does not always get its own way;

(iv) take a leaf out of the book of radical political and devoted Christian communities: having worked out what you believe in, stand up for it - talk among your friends and work colleagues; attend meetings of the like-minded; proselytise;

(v) do not simply reject all politicians and those who have power in our society simply because they are powerful and/or political: praise as well as condemn; government is not homogeneous, there are different voices: people like our courageous Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken McDonald, deserve support.

Labels: British Social Attitudes survey, civil liberties, Ken Macdonald, war against bullshit

Labels: bloggocks, Harriet Harman

Well, I’m sorry to piss on their parade, but, with the honourable exception of the Telegraph, which, of course, is the only right-wing “quality” - The Guardian, The Independent and The Times are all losing money.

Such papers are effectively being subsidised.
So when The Times’s Ms Sieghart, the very embodiment of modern free-thinking women, holds forth on feminism, she does so courtesy of the topless girls in the still vastly profitable Sun.

Equally, when The Guardian’s Mr Kettle vents his spleen on the excesses of the free market he does so courtesy of the fat profits made by that fine example of the free market – The Guardian-owned Auto Trader.

And while The Guardian’s Scott Trust is a magnificent construct that allows some gloriously elevated journalism – and praise be to God for that, say I, – let’s not beat about the bush: subsidised papers are, by definition, unable to survive in a free market. Their journalism and values – invariably liberal, metropolitan and politically correct, and I include the pinkish Times here, - don’t connect with sufficient readers to be commercially viable.

Ah, say the bien pensants, but such papers are hugely concerned for the common good. But there is a rather unedifying contradiction here. For the Subsidariat, as I shall dub them, are actually rather disdainful of common man, contemptuous even, of the papers that make profits by appealing to and connecting with millions of ordinary men and women.

How often do you read in the Subsidariat, or hear on Newsnight, contemptuous references to the tabloid press as if it was some disembodied monster rather than the very embodiment of the views of the great majority of the British people.

Fair enough, you might say. The tabloid press – and it’s getting confusing here,because The Times and The Independent are, of course, tabloids now – is big enough to look after itself.

Except I don’t think it is fair because such arguments ignore the ever burgeoning growth of the most powerful media organisation in the world. I refer, of course, to the hugely subsidised BBC.

Now before the liberal commentators reach for their vitriol – and, my goodness, how they demonise anyone who disagrees with them – let me say that I would die in a ditch defending the BBC as a great civilising force. I, for one, would pay the licence fee just for Radio 4.

But as George Orwell said “to see what is in front of one’s nose requires constant struggle”. And what is in front of one’s nose is that the BBC, a behemoth that bestrides Britain is, as Cudlipp might have put it, TOO BLOODY BIG, TOO BLOODY PERVASIVE AND TOO BLOODY POWERFUL.

Firstly, consider the sheer vast size of the Corporation which is, despite its bleating about being underfunded, a conglomerate that employs 26,000 people, has a vast £3.2bn budget, and thinks nothing of paying £18m to a chat show host.

Freedom of Information enquiries tell us, and we should be very unsurprised here, that the BBC Newsroom has more copies of the statist Guardian delivered than any other paper and that 90% of the Corporation’s job ads are placed with that paper.

Thus are the values of a subsidised newspaper that sells 380,000 copies embraced by an organisation that reaches into virtually every home in Britain.

But then, the BBC is consumed by the kind of political correctness that is actually patronisingly contemptuous of what it describes as ordinary people. Having started as an admirable philosophy of tolerance, that political correctness has become an intolerant creed enabling a self-appointed elite to impose its minority values on the great majority. Anything popular is dismissed as being populist which is sneering shorthand for being of the lowest possible taste.

This, I would argue, is perverting political discourse and disenfranchising countless millions who don’t subscribe to the BBC’s world view. Told repeatedly that their opinions are not considered respectable or legitimate these people are disconnecting – one of the reasons, I would suggest, for the current apathy over politics.

Or it could be that the politicians themselves are now so indulgent of a minority - which, shock - is the same lower middle class that Dacre so eulogises and which the BBC apparently hates, also known as the "aspirational", that politics has become meaningless. Of course, tabloid attacks on politicians, regardless of allegiance have also had no role in undermining faith in those who govern us, oh no.

How instructive to compare all this with what is happening in America. There, the liberal smugness of a terminally worthy, monopolistic press has, together with deregulation, triggered both the explosive growth of right-wing radio broadcasting that now dominates the airwaves and the extraordinary rise of Murdoch’s rightwing Fox TV News service.

And here I wish to digress for a moment and address an issue that should deeply worry all those who believe in press freedom: Britain’s judges –whose dislike of much of the media should not be underestimated – are itching to bring in a Privacy Law by the back door.

Under the Human Rights Act we are witnessing the development, at a frightening pace, of an aggressive judge-made privacy law over which Parliament has no control.

Indeed, had you told me 36 years ago that a cuckolded husband didn’t have the right to speak about his wife’s adultery, that a paper would be banned from referring to royal indiscretions contained in a round-robin journal distributed to scores of people and that the media cannot reveal the identity of a Labour ex-Education Minister who sends her child to private school – three issues that have come up recently on the privacy front - I would have simply disbelieved you.

Such restrictions are not conducive to producing adventurous journalism but, the judges, I fear, are all part of a movement by a liberal establishment to curb what they see as the excesses of the press.

Such papers need to be sensational, irreverent, gossipy, interested in celebrities and human relationships and, above all, brilliantly entertaining sugar coated pills if they are to attract huge circulations and devote considerable space to intelligent, thought-provoking journalism, analysis and comment on important issues.

The bitter irony, of course, is that when, for once, the BBC was proactive in its journalism and did stand up to the Labour Party by breaking a genuine story, the Corporation and its craven governors all but imploded under pressure from a rabid Campbell.

And what is interesting is that this contrasted with the ruthless support for the Iraq war that Rupert Murdoch imposed on his papers and their equally ruthless suppression of any criticism of the invasion whether it involved the Attorney General’s malfeasance, virtually ignored in The Times, or Dr Kelly, all but hung drawn and quartered by The Sun.

Indeed, I would suggest that the intimacy and power-brokering between these two papers and No 10 and the question whether Mr Blair would have got away with his falsehoods and misjudgements over Iraq – indeed, whether Britain would have gone to war at all - without the support of the Murdoch empire, is a brilliant doctoral thesis for some future media studies student.

And what’s in front of one’s nose is that Britain needs greater freedom, plurality and diversity in its media.

Labels: BBC bashing, fisks, Hugh Cuddlipp lecture, Paul Dacre

You recently signed a petition asking the Prime Minister to
"Resign immediately."

The Prime Minister's Office has responded to that petition and
you can view it here:
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page10809.asp

Read the Government's response

The PM has made clear that he will be leaving office before the next Labour party conference.

Labels: Blair resign petition

Yet, while London awaits its fate, Scotland Yard is fiddling away on an enquiry into the alleged sale of honours. How can the Metropolitan commissioner defend this enquiry as the best use of scarce police resources?

In criticising the Metropolitan Police commissioner for a serious misuse of police time I have not assumed that there is no case to answer on the honours front. No 10 has at the very least been sailing close to the wind. The whole saga is tacky, to put it mildly.

The way that the police have conducted the enquiry suggests to the media that it is the PM who is in the frame. But where did those senior Labour party figures who run the party, particularly in the run-up and during the election, believe the £18 million spent on the election came from, if not from wealthy donors? When the small group of top Labour officials, including the prime minister and the chancellor, mapped out the campaign, did they all believe that the £18 million or so they were committing to election campaign grew on trees?

What is the financial control structure in the Labour party that allows the treasurer to claim that he had no idea of the source of the £18 million? Does not the Labour party have an audit committee to ask such elementary questions before money is committed?

These are some of the very important questions the Labour party leadership needs to answer. They are not questions which have so far been put in public debate. But we shouldn't have to turn to the police to gain answers to questions which tell us something pretty fundamental about how political parties are run in Britain today. That a full scale police enquiry was put in hand raises not for the first time the judgement of Ian Blair the commissioner.

The commissioner has found himself in choppy political water recently and it was obviously easier for him to allow the enquiry to advance than to defend that with all the issues facing the Yard, the honours for sale fiasco was no where near the top of his agenda. But the easy option is, in this case, a negation of leadership.

During Ian Blair's watch the nature of the terrorist threat to Britain has fundamentally changed. Irish terrorists were about destroying buildings, usually after giving a warning. The nature of the threat posed by Islamic extremists is carried out by suicide bombers. What none of us know is when the next outrage is going to occur.

Nor is the threat, awful as it is, confined to such horrors visited on innocent individuals. An explosion of a dirty bomb could make parts of London uninhabitable for decades or more. Such an explosion would bring down more than the surrounding buildings. Twenty per cent of Britain's income comes from the financial services sector. A dirty bomb would see much of this industry leave our shores. At a stroke our national income would be reduced from being at the top of the league of advanced countries, to the bottom, with huge repercussions for income and employment levels.

Likewise, bombing the Thames barrier at a record high tide with strong incoming winds would not only flood Canary wharf. Such an attempt would result in a pack of financial lemmings scuttling from our shores with the same devastating effect on national prosperity as a chemical or dirty bomb attack.

It is against the need to try and prevent a catastrophe on this scale for our country that I continue to question the use of police time over the alleged sale of honours. I know it's much easier for the police to chase a somewhat old fashioned crime as the alleged sale of honours than to try and foil the next, and then the next, terrorist outrage.

The commissioner has put what we are told is his most gifted senior policeman onto this task but it is these very gifts that we need to employ trying to keep ahead of the new terrorists. Given the choice between ruffling some feathers of the smaller creatures at No 10 for perverting the course of justice or reinforcing the unglamorous daily grind of trying to protect the security of our country, Ian Blair's judgement looks eccentric, to put it mildly.

Labels: fisks, Frank Field, Hazel Blears, loans for peerages, the end of Blairism

Following on from Mad Mel's non-apology about the Sun's inaccurate Windsor Muslim yobs report, the Tory MP Philip Davies has been good enough to retract his plea for those responsible to "fuck off", with again, major kudos to Mask of Anarchy for bothering to contacting him:


Anyone up for attempting to contact Damian Green MP and Sir Andrew Green to see whether they'll also do the decent thing?

Labels: Philip Davies MP, Windsor "Muslim yobs"