Poor Jeremy Hunt. Poor David Cameron. All this fuss about Murdoch, BSkyB and Hunt’s favouritism is not Hunts’ fault. It’s all the fault of Vince Cable…

The Prime Minister yesterday blamed Mr Cable, the Lib Dem business secretary, for putting him in a position of having to make that appointment.

Aww, if only Vince had get his big mouth shut and not got stung expressing his personal opinion to undercover Telegraph journalists, Hunt wouldn’t be getting drawn over the hot coals for not keeping his big mouth shut to the Murdochs.

Lifes a bitch, ain’t it?

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?

I said earlier I was going to write a post but now it actually comes to it, like it seems so many other times lately, what do I write a post about?

The News International/News Corp./News of the World hacking scandal (I fucking hate the the term ‘hackgate’)? Well, I don’t have any news that you can’t anywhere else, and be more accurate and more recent too. An incisive bit of opinion that’ll make you think? Not that either.

So what do I have instead? Not a fucking lot. To give my mind some time to think while I type go and check out Septicisles’ musings on the Murdoch situation and Tim is doing his own digging in the archives to give the FBI somewhere to start looking to help bring the Murdoch empire down. Give him some support, would you. (See? even the first two links I have for you aren’t exactly original, are they? What hope have I got of writing an interesting blog post?)

Oh, and Unity at the Ministry of Truth has been kicking the absolute shit out of Nadine Dorries too, which is always a joy.

The PCC are running scared. Uponnothing hits the PCC bang on the head with just why, exactly, they are a bag of shit and are less than pointless and irrelevant using the example of a couple of women, who were raped, that had had their anonymity revealed by a paper. The PCC condemned the actions of the paper and adjudicated against them in, for the PCC, the strongest terms. What was the strongest punishment that could be handed to the offending paper?

[The PCC} contacted the owners so that they could ensure it never happened again. All well and good you might think, but imagine of this kind of adjudication happened in any other walk of life. Would the tabloids be happy if a teenager found guilty of doing something ‘exceedingly serious’ was not punished in any way, instead the judge just passed on his thoughts to the parents in the hope that they could take the appropriate action?

What if the Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror doesn’t do anything? What would the PCC do in that case? What could they do in that case?

And that is the problem with the PCC. It can do fuck all else except point a finger and that doesn’t seem to be stopping the usual suspects and transgressing the code, as the more prominent media bloggers highlight on a daily basis.

Anyway, this post about bugger all has taken me far, far longer to write than it’ll take you to read, and I’m sorry to have wasted your time waffling on about fuck all, so I’ll leave you with a link to a site that should’ve gone on my blogroll ages ago, but you know what sort of waste of space I am. It’s called Stuff and Nonsense, written by jdc325. Enjoy.

BBC…

The culture secretary is seeking fresh advice from regulators on News Corp’s takeover bid for BSkyB, amid the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

Business editor Robert Peston said Jeremy Hunt had written to Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) after the 168-year-old paper was shut down.

Our correspondent says the implication is that Mr Hunt could now refer the deal to the Competition Commission.

It might not be what most people want, referring to Ofcom, but Jeremy Hunt asking for advice is a stepin the right direction.

Hopefully Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading will give the right advice. Whether Hunt takes it or not will be another matter.

The Guardian…

Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World started illegally intercepting mobile phone messages. Scotland Yard is now investigating evidence that the paper hacked directly into the voicemail of the missing girl’s own phone. As her friends and parents called and left messages imploring Milly to get in touch with them, the News of the World was listening and recording their every private word.

But the journalists at the News of the World then encountered a problem. Milly’s voicemail box filled up and would accept no more messages. Apparently thirsty for more information from more voicemails, the News of the World intervened – and deleted the messages that had been left in the first few days after her disappearance. According to one source, this had a devastating effect: when her friends and family called again and discovered that her voicemail had been cleared, they concluded that this must have been done by Milly herself and, therefore, that she must still be alive. But she was not. The interference created false hope and extra agony for those who were misled by it.

The Dowler family then granted an exclusive interview to the News of the World in which they talked about their hope, quite unaware that it had been falsely kindled by the newspaper’s own intervention. Sally Dowler told the paper: “If Milly walked through the door, I don’t think we’d be able to speak. We’d just weep tears of joy and give her a great big hug.”

The deletion of the messages also caused difficulties for the police by confusing the picture when they had few leads to pursue.It also potentially destroyed valuable evidence.

To angry for words, but just who, exactly, do these cunts, and not just the fuckers at the News of the Screws, now and then, but the red tops and the press in general, think they are? All in the pursuit of profit. Fuck the feelings of people. They not only tried to get exclusives from this right fucking good wheeze of listening in to a dead girls phone, but also took an exclusive where the parents explained how they were clinging onto hope that the News of the World itself was feeding. Did no one feel a little bit guilty? no one had a little nagging feeling at the back of their mind that what they were doing wasn’t just illegal but so fucking morally wrong?

They must be cunts of the highest order, because I bet no one involved, the private investigators or the reporters, made a shitload of cash out of it, not enough to stuff in the black hole where their soul should be. The Editors, didn’t do too bad, Coulson became the spin doctor to a Cameron, Rebekah Wade is now Murdochs’ man in charge of the UK and is very friendly with the political classes of all colours.

And what exactly were the fucking police doing, too?…

The newspaper also made no effort to conceal its activity from Surrey police. After it had hacked the message from the recruitment agency on Milly’s phone, the paper informed police about it. It was Surrey detectives who established that the call was not intended for Milly Dowler. At the time, Surrey police suspected that phones belonging to detectives and to Milly’s parents also were being targeted.

Couldn’t they fucking multi-task? Can they only do one crime at a time? The News of the World goes to the police with a message from Millys’ phone, and the police don’t ask where they got it from? The papers aren’t the only ones that need a kick in the face.

News International, part of Murdoch’s media empire, said: “We have been co-operating fully with Operation Weeting since our voluntary disclosure in January restarted the investigation into illegal voicemail interception. This particular case is clearly a development of great concern and we will be conducting our own inquiries. We will obviously co-operate fully with any police request on this should we be asked.”

Yeah, and look how the previous internal enquiries turned out.

The New Statesman…

So I was sent to do a feature on Moulin Rouge! at Cannes, which was a great send anyway. Basically my brief was to see who Nicole Kidman was shagging – what she was doing, poking through her bins and get some stuff on her. So Murdoch’s paying her five million quid to big up the French and at the same time paying me £5.50 to fuck her up . . . So all hail the master. We’re just pawns in his game. How perverse is that?

If Vince Cable, for expressing his opposition to the Murdoch take over of BSkyB, is unsuitable to decide whether it is appropriate or not, then surely Jeremy Hunt is as well.

Apart from privately meeting James Murdoch, Jeremy as openly said he has no objection to the deal. This statemnet might not be as inflamatory as Cables’ ‘war’, but still shows that he has preconceived ideas about it.

The business secretary is supposed to look at the reports/evidence or whatever and then make his mind up. Jeremy Hunt and Vince Cable are two sides of the same coin. Cable is coming at it from the side of opposition and would need a great deal of persuasion to approve the deal. Jeremy Hunt is coming at it from the other direction and would need persuadeing that it is a bad idea. Both are going to be influenced not just by whether this deal is good for the media as a whole and the plurity of the press but also by their chosen ideology, party pressure and of course, what they think the public want.

The business secretary is supposed to be ‘quasi-judicial’ in these cases, but just like the home secretary when it comes to reveiwing whether to release prisoners with a minimum sentence, they never could independent of party politics.

At least with an organisation like OFCOM/monopolies commission (or whoever it is) in this case, or a proper judge in the case of prisoners, there won’t be the consideration of trying to please the electorate, the party, lobbyists, businesses. With a non-political organisation looking at it a better decision can be made. Of course what that organisation is and how it’s put together is another discussion.

Personal bias will never be iradicated, but why add to it?

Should Sky be hosting a debate of the three main party leaders?

Sky may be a big name, but they’re not exactly a national broadcaster, are they? They have what? Ten million subscribers (and expected to lose about 17% of them) and the whole of the Sky owned channels have about 7% of the nations viewers. They are not open to everyone like the terrestrial channels are.
For example, if you hardly ever watch the BBC, you could still switch over for and watch the debate about domestic issues, but if you want to watch the debate based on international affairs, which is the one Sky will be hosting, you can’t unless you subscribe to Sky for 12 months. Big important football games are shown on terrestrial and not just satellite channels, so why is this debate restricted to such a small audience?

Many people not only do not want Sky, but cannot justify the expense. In these days of everyone having to tighten their belts and the nature of these debates, being part of the general election campaign, should such a massive amount of people not be able to see it?

The Scots may be moaning about the way that there will be no representative from their major parties (aren’t they having their own debates now?) but with Sky showing one of the debates, it is like one of the terrestrially broadcast events being shown only on STV.