The Sun and the News Corp AGM

October 22nd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Is this really all The Sun had to say about the News Corp AGM?…

£1m Milly Dowler hacking payouts

Published: Today

NEWS Corp chief Rupert Murdoch yesterday confirmed he has personally donated £1million to charities chosen by Milly Dowler’s family.

The company, owner of The Sun, confirmed it is paying the murdered schoolgirl’s family £2million after the News of the World hacked her phone.

Mr Murdoch told a News Corp shareholder meeting in Los Angeles there was “simply no excuse” for the scandal.

They don’t mention anything about what else happened…

At the company’s annual meeting in Los Angeles on Friday Murdoch made a defiant and uncompromising address, insisting News Corp’s history was the “stuff of legend.” However, he was berated by shareholders and some of the world’s largest investors voted against his re-election, and that of his sons, to the News Corp board. They also did not approve of the $33m (£21m) he was paid as chairman and chief executive this year.

Murdoch owns 12% of the company but controls about 40% of the votes because of News Corp’s two classes of shares. But the fact that major investors voted against his re-election and that of his sons and other directors is a major blow for the 80-year-old chairman and chief executive.

News Corp plans to release the full details of the vote on Monday. Before the meeting, shareholders told the Guardian that James Murdoch was likely to receive the biggest vote of no confidence. If the votes go against him, it will cast further doubts on his future at News Corp. The youngest Murdoch son is already facing questions about evidence he gave to a parliamentary inquiry into the News of the World hacking scandal and shareholders at Murdoch-controlled BSkyB have called for his resignation.

Hmmm. I wonder why?

What’s in it for me?

October 20th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

The new former minister of defence Dr Liam Fox has been cleared of anything serious by the report into his and his best man, John Werrity, concluding that national security and didn’t financially gain from the breaches of the parliamentary code of conduct.

There is one question that keeps appearing in the back of my mind, though. It makes me unsure if I’ve missed some thing, am socially inept or if it just hasn’t been mentioned.

If Liam Fox didn’t gain financially what did he get out of his arrangements with Werrity? Surely, it was a bit early in Foxs’ career to be paving the way for a job after politics?

All of us would help a mate out if needed, without asking for anything in return, especially as good a mate as Werrity is supposed to be to Fox. He was Foxs’ best man after all. But what sort of bloke puts his mates job and career on the line?

Werrity used Liams’ publicly funded office and shit for his own business purposes, had Liam attend meetings, and, I think, had meetings set up for him by Liam, and had business cards, which gave the unmistakeable impression that he worked in an official capacity for the then Minister of Defence (of which Fox, in my opinion, could not have been unaware of).

As I say, we would all help out a mate in need, but Werrity, from the outside at least, doesn’t look like he was in need of a bed for a few days till he got his own place, or a loan just to tithe him over until pay day.

So, with all the connections and other stuff Liam Fox was giving Werrity access to, just what did Fox get in return if it wasn’t financial?

(This post was put together on my phone, so if you want links, find them yourself. If you want correct spellings, you can bugger off.)

The Second Annual Media-Watchery Meetup

October 10th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Do you fancy a pint?

The gang behind The-Sun-Lies, Mailwatch, Expresswatch and numerous other media watching blogs are having Their second annual Media Watch Meetup. The first one, held in August just gone was such a success they couldn’t wait another twelve months so it’s being held in a couple of weeks.

Do come along for a drink or two and a chat about the papers, blogging or just to say hello. Best of all it’s free (apart from the beer which you’ll have to pay for yourself. We’re not *that* nice). There’s no entrance fee and you won’t need to buy anyone a beer to gain access to any of our top bloggers and you can stay as long as you want or until the pub kicks us all out. You can just turn up or or go to the Facebook event page and let us know to expect you.

So, are you coming then?

The Monarch pub, Chalk Farm Road, Camden (map).
Saturday 29th August October
3pm on

3 tunes for a Sunday evening

October 9th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Update:
I used to have compilation of Dutch Techno with this on. It’s just as good as I remember it.

Star Wars sandwich

October 4th, 2011 § 4 comments § permalink

Star_wars_sandwich

I had a creative burst while making sandwiches for school/work tomorrow. My lad is a huge Star Wars fan, I just hope he recognises what it’s meant to be.

 

The colours are a bit off as I only had a red, blue, green, and yellow food colouring pens. The yellow doesn’t really show up that well*.

 

*at all.

Posted via email from Sim-O

“A source said…”

October 4th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Everyone fucks up. You do, I do. Everyone does sometime or other. We either say the wrong thing, misunderstand something or as happened tonight at several newspapers, press the wrong button.

Amanda Knox won her appeal against her conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Several papers, as the verdict was given, published their stories. The problem was that they jumped the gun a little and published stories about Knoxs’ conviction standing. The Sun did it. The Guardian did it.

Knox was found guilty of slander against a bar (or was it a hotel) owner she accused of the murder, and it was this guilty verdict declared by the judge that these papers hit the big red ‘publish’ button on. Ooops!

All three papers corrected themselves pretty quickly, as you can imagine, and in itself isn’t a problem.

Since the beginning of time, newspapers have always raced to get the story out first. On an occasion such as this, the newsdesk will have written two stories. One for a ‘guilty’ verdict and one for an ‘innocent’. In their rush to be first, these papers fucked up and published the wrong story.

That might’ve been that last of it, apart from a lil’ bit of ribbing on Twitter.

What this mistake has done, however was call into question, again, the use of anonymous sources and how can we be sure someone actually did say what the paper says was said?

You see not only did the Mail publish their story about Amanda Knox staying locked up, they also included in it quotes from one of the prosecutors team that were made up…

Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice has been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail’.

This quote along with other details such as…

Following the verdict Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away.

…are complete fabrications thought up by someone in London.

Now, we all suspect that these nameless ‘sources’, ‘insiders’, ‘someone close to…’ and ‘…who wished to remain anonymous…’ are sometimes made up, only real in the head of the reporter or editor, but because of the presses right not to reveal their sources it is extremely hard to pin down the actual source of a quote.

There is one little difference between this nameless source and the usual anonymuos quote: There is a tracability to the false quote. The quotes aren’t quite anonymous.

The prosecutor is Giuliano Mignini. There is your starting point. I’m sure a better blogger then me, or even a proper journalist, could get an official denial/confirmation from him.

But what of this big fat lie? Well, the Press Complaints Commission are unlikely to do anything. The story was written in advance and published by mistake and quickly taken down again. It was never put into print for there to be any need of a correction and the amount of people who would’ve actually seen the article would be relatively small. As far as the PCC would be concerned, there is nothing for them to do.

What it shows is that the Daily Mail is prepared to lie about a fairly big thing. With a path to be able to fact check it’s quotes from a major player in the story.

If the Mail feels it can make up a massive part of it’s story with made up quotes from one of the major people in an event, then what about the smaller stories, the ones that feed the papers agenda?

Is the Mail really going to go to the trouble of getting a quote from Joe Bloggs who’s been passed over for a council house in favour of a Somali pirate seeking asylum or because of the equalities commission isn’t allowing him to call a lesbian a dyke in his office or are they just going to print what Paul Dacre thinks and attribute it to “someone close to Mr Bloggs”?

The Mail fucked up. They made a mistake anyone could’ve done, but with that mistake they’ve revealed so much about the dishonest way they conduct business.

On Osbornes’ plans to hand businesses more power over us

October 3rd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

This really pisses me off…

Workers will not be able to claim for unfair dismissal unless they have been in a job for at least two years – not one, under government plans.

The extension is part of Chancellor George Osborne’s plans to help business by changing employment law.

Two years?! Two fucking years!

Within 12 months a company can fuck off an employee with nothing more than a weeks notice. No reason is needed to be given. Fair enough I think. I’d rather it was less than 12 months, but it’s a compromise. I’m told it costs to recruit people and you never really know if you’ve hired the right person till they’re actually doing the job, so a probation period, for both parties is a sensible thing.

But, if a company doesn’t know if they’ve hired the wrong chap within twelve months of the appointment, then they need to review their recruitment process.

Twelve months is more than long enough.

We talk a lot about trade union rights – but what about the right of the unemployed person to be given a shot at a job and a career?

And how is this longer probation period helping an unemployed person? All it’s doing is leaving them in uncertainty for longer.

What about the rights of people currently sitting at home with nothing to do, desperate to get work, but the business can’t afford to employ them because they fear they are going to be taken to the tribunal?

And how the fuck is this going to bring down the cost of employing someone? It’s not suddenly going to drop the HR departments bills by half or whatever, is it? The cost saving is going to come from the drop in unfair dismissal tribunals, and that cost could quite easily be reduced by companies following a simple set of rules:

  1. Do not be a cunt of an employer

Granted, some companies might find it hard to follow that piece of guidance, but then they’ll deserve to spend money on a tribunal.

…by reducing the risk of tribunals for unfair dismissals the government hopes bosses will feel more confident about hiring people.

If you don’t have any confience in the recruitment process, fucking change it! People will litterally jump through any hoop that is set before them to get a fucking job, especially in this climate. The one thing that shouldn’t happen is for rulles to be relaxed so companies feel enobled to behave like wankers, which they will do.

What these cunts like Osborne forget (well maybe not forget but try hide or deny) is that the companies already have enough power over us. Without them, where the fuck are we? Where is our wage going to come from? Not everyone, for a whole variety of reasons can be self employed or start their own business.

All we want is a little bit of protection from being exploited too much.

Changing Education Paradigms

September 12th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Something to think about. I liked the illustrations too.

Robert Smith

September 10th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

The Guardian…
Even today, [Robert] Smith bristles slightly at the term “goth”, not because he dislikes the term, but because “it’s only people that aren’t goths that think the Cure are a goth band … we were like a raincoat, shoegazing band when goth was picking up.” The tag has stuck, probably, because of Smith’s signature look – the backcombed hair, the messily applied lipstick. “It’s an identifying process I’ve kept down the years. I wear black – I’m wearing black now, I always have. I don’t do it because I’m making a statement, I do it because it’s … I don’t know, slimming? You don’t have to wash so often? Probably the main reason is that all my clothes are black. I often ask, ‘Does it come in white?’ and people just stare at me.”

Free Schools – A resounding success already

September 10th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

When you try something, you generally give it a bit of time before heralding it as a success, but nooooo. Free schools, those schools that can be opened by anyone from Old Mother Riley and her cow to Mr Montgomery Burns with public money diverted from other existing schools, have been open a week and Cameron wants them to proliferate…

replicated many, many times up and down the country

Let’s not get over excited here. I know a week is a long time in politics, but in school life, fuck all happens in a week. Lets just wait a little longer and see what really happens, eh?

Ooooh, look at this…

But Vlachos, an associate professor of economics at Stockholm University, is standing his ground. His argument is based on his finding that students who entered gymnasium [sixth form] from free secondary schools on average went on to get lower grades over the next three years than those who had entered with the same grade from municipal secondary schools.

Vlachos suspects that, because schools rather than external examining boards mark students, free schools are more generous than municipal schools in the grades they give. “There’s been tremendous grade inflation in Swedish schools,” he said.

Sweden’s path-breaking educational reforms of the 1990s have come under question since last December when the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development published the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment.

This showed that Swedish students had dropped to 19th place out of 57 countries for literacy, to 24th in maths, and to 28th in science. This compared with 9th, 17th and 16th in studies done in 2000, 2003 and 2006 respectively.

And Swedes, used to coming near the top of just about every human development index, were appalled.

Jan Björklund, the minister of education, moved to tighten central control over schools and is soon to launch a parliamentary inquiry into competition and free schools.

“Loopholes in the legislation have meant that free schools can elect not to have a library, student counselling and school nurses,” he complained. “And as they get just as much money as the municipal schools, the owners have been able to withdraw the surplus.”

Not exactly a good omen, is it?

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