News of the World

[Paul McKeown]

Rebekah Brookes has been arrested...

[Paul McKeown]

Who reckons Rupert will take a dive for his boys when Congress, the FBI and the SEC start taking lumps out of News Corp in the States?

[Paul Cooksey]

He is running out of underlings to carry the can in the US.

Hackgate: The Movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Fufrqhp0eE

[Nick Thomas]

The NOTW going out of business is one thing, but if Fox News could be exterminated, shutting up Bill O'Reilly and his moron sidekick, the average intelligence of the Western World really would rise significantly.

[Paul McKeown]

Amen to that, brother

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Coulson, Brookes, Les Hinton (in the USA), and now (back in the UK), Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has resigned. You wonder where it will stop and where the buck stops.

[Paul Cooksey]

Even if Cameron survives hackgate itself, the current spike in unemployment stats it's causing might finish him off

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Who reckons Rupert will take a dive for his boys when Congress, the FBI and the SEC start taking lumps out of News Corp in the States?

If only the dirty digger had never been born.

[Arshad Ali]

Thus do Murdoch's foes and betrayers perish:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/ju ... sean-hoare

Poor blighter never heard of the Law of Omerta in Murdoch's fiefdom.

[Paul McKeown]

Poor blighter never heard of the Law of Omerta in Murdoch's fiefdom.

There is no suggestion of foul play.

[Paul McKeown]

I've just read that Cressida Dick is to be appointed Assistant Commissioner in charge of counter-terrorism, replacing John Yates.



Is this the Home Office and/or the Metropolitan Police taking the absolute proverbial? That must be the single worst instance of firing (literally) the innocent and promoting the guilty in the whole history of the British establishment. Awful. I can think of no one less suitable for that role.

[Rob Thompson]

I'm not entirely convinced that Yates is completely innocent in all this, though I agree that Cressida Dick wouldn't be my first choice either.

[Paul McKeown]

Rob,

I'm afraid I wasn't referring to the firing of John Yates, but that of Jean Charles de Menezes. Under her command, de Menezes, innocent, was (literally) fired to death in a murderous episode of Keystone Cops. It makes her uniquely unsuitable for this role, it seems to me.

[Arshad Ali]

Speaking of Omerta and the mafia style generally, a pertinent article in today's Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... corruption

The fear that those who crossed him would be given the full tabloid treatment over their personal misdemeanours, real or imagined, has proved to be a powerful Mafia-like racket.

It was the warning that News International would target their personal lives that cowed members of the Commons culture and media committee over pressing their investigation into phone hacking too vigorously before the last election. Barely a fortnight ago, Ed Miliband was warned that Murdoch's papers would "make it personal" after he broke with the political-class omerta towards the company. The same vow of silence meant that when Rebekah Brooks told MPs in 2003 her organisation had "paid the police for information", the bribery admission sank like a stone.

The Sopranos style is deeply embedded in the Murdoch dynasty.

[Arshad Ali]

I've been a fan of John Pilger for over two decades (ever since I came across his book, Heroes). Here's his perspective on the NOTW scandal:

http://johnpilger.com/articles/amid-the ... s-as-usual