So, the News of the Screws has gone. No more will I learn of the indiscretions of “models” with C list “celebs” from Eastenders under its red top banner. The priapic exploits of footballers will have to be gleaned elsewhere. Although I don’t think I shall want for sources.

A cause for celebration?

In his excellent article of yesterday, Thaddeus J. Wilson pointed out that there is a distinctly dark side to the arguments being assembled against the press.

Here is my take on it.

Our politicians love their persona of honesty, concern, selflessness. Some exhibit this characteristic. I am thinking of Frank Field MP, a man of enormous expertise and integrity – tellingly reviled within his own party. But many – no, most – do not. When the MP’s expenses scandal broke, if the standards which applied to a rigorous company had been applied, at a rough guess about half our MP’s would have been capable of disciplinary action and dismissal.

Despite every effort to avoid prosecution, some have been proved to be so fundamentally dishonest as to end up as guests of Her Majesty in a way which they might not have expected when starting off their career in the Mother of all Gravy Trains. Sorry, (slight slip of the key board there) Parliaments.

It is worthwhile remembering that the information which finally exposed these greedy and dishonest freeloaders had originally been sought under a Freedom of Information Act request. It is also worthwhile remembering that there had been repeated and protracted legal challenges to revealing the facts by the House of Commons authorities on the grounds that the information was “unlawfully intrusive”. In short that the Parliamentarians, including the then Speaker, the dour, greedy, self aggrandising “Gorbals Mick”, wouldn’t tell anyone how their “club” worked.

No, they fought tooth and nail. They fought on the beaches and on the benches. They fought on the radio and in the courts. They would never give in!

I will stand corrected on this, but as I remember the deadlock was broken only by a mole who supplied The Telegraph with the information on disk. I think there must have been quite a few criminal offences involved in that, probably including theft. Well done the thieving mole! Well done The Telegraph, the receiver of those stolen goods! There was at the time, as I further recall it, some suggestion of prosecution of both mole and newspaper, but this was abandoned in the face of the conclusion, reluctantly reached, that the public simply would not allow it. Even politicos have some shame. Or perhaps just a basic survival instinct.

But the politicos were deeply hurt. Wounded by the simple revelation of their greed, graft, free loading and dishonesty, they moaned, whined, thrashed and gnashed their teeth. How dare the Little People question them, the Anointed Ones, the Almighty! How dare the mere tax payer question the MPs’ just, albeit corrupt, desserts!

And so now the revenge. The News of the Screws has handed the politicos a stick with which to thrash and crush the press. Don’t get me wrong. Frankly, I don’t care if the papers hack the odd awful celeb or awful MP’s phone. But hacking the phone of a missing teenager who has in fact been murdered is beyond the pale. It threatens the investigation and strikes me as akin to grave robbing. The perpetrator(s) should in appropriate order of priority be (a) horse whipped (b) sent to prison to reflect on the error of their ways, and (c) horse whipped again.

But, back in Westminster, I sense not outrage, but positive glee. Finally, the political classes smell revenge on those who baited them in their hour of torment. It’s payback time against the press. The Empire Strikes Back!

I watched Prescott on TV this evening. The vast, corpulent frame, foaming with malice and indignation. He was not satisfied. Like some great greedy pig, already full but ever hungry for more. A man full of ermine and pensions, happy to use the Milly Downer issue to further his interests. He moaned and foamed and railed at the Murdoch Empire. He sensed, and wanted, more blood. He wanted to muzzle a free press.

I have no brief for Murdoch. What the NOTW did was horrible. But do the politicos care? Yes, but only in this sense. They are delighted. Here is a gold plated chance to muzzle the press. A chance to crush not just the News of the Screws but at the same time anyone who would intrude on the corpulent self serving party that is public life. A little law here, a regulation there. And so it begins. The slippery slope.

Long live illegality!

Gildas the Monk

SadButMadLad
July 10, 2011 at 11:30

Copying is the best form of fattery

From the Independent Opinion section –

Joe Public July 8, 2011 at 17:42

I do so enjoy spectating at the “Bunfight at the OK Corral”

Big Fat Trucker
July 8, 2011 at 14:52

To paraphrase the old saying ab0ut Poland, bloggers rip into a weak
government because they can, and a strong one because they have to. The only
obstacle is UK defamation law, and offshore servers can deal with that easily
enough.

I shouldn’t worry too much about press muzzling. The press muzzled
themselves well enough for years. The Guardian, wrong about most things most
of the time, at least has always had the spite necessary to turn over stones
and watch the vermin scuttle. The Telegraph did well on the expenses scandal,
calculating quite rightly that far more working class MPs would have their
noses in the trough than Tories. The rest of Fleet Street never had any
interest, as it might cost them access. Now that the people they have access
to are in the cr*p, they might decide that real journalism pays.

ivan July 8, 2011 at 13:22

Has anyone actually proved that it was the NoW that read the Dowler voice
mail? Maybe it was the Guardian with their history of hacking and publishing
e-mails or one of the others, or even one of her teen friends..

Clarissa July 8,
2011 at 13:34

I believe that the NotW informed Surrey Police as to what had happened at
the time, if I recall some of the stuff I have read on the matter
correctly.

No doubt someone will be able to come up with a link that does (or
doesn’t) confirm this.

Anna
Raccoon July 8, 2011 at 14:07

Can’t give you a link Clarissa, but I certainly was of that opinion
from reading it somewhere – I suspect in the NOW article detailing the
hoax.

SadButMadLad July
8, 2011 at 14:57

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world

The Guardian investigation has shown that, within a very short time
of Milly vanishing, News of the World journalists reacted by engaging in
what was standard practice in their newsroom: they hired private
investigators to get them a story.
…
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. …, the paper 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….

[In other places it says only the agency message was deleted not
the whole voice mail cleared. What I suspect happened is that some
friends tried leave messages – got the voice mail full message – tried
again later and managed to leave a message, therefore concluding that
Milly had accessed her voice mail]

…
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.
…
The paper made
little effort to conceal the hacking from its readers. On 14 April 2002
it published a story about a woman allegedly pretending to be Milly
Dowler who had applied for a job with a recruitment agency: “It is
thought the hoaxer even gave the agency Milly’s real mobile number … the
agency used the number to contact Milly when a job vacancy arose and
left a message on her voicemail … it was on March 27, six days after
Milly went missing, that the employment agency appears to have phoned
her mobile.”

[It is assumed that they got this info from the deleted voice mail
and not from the agency]

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.
…
[So the police were told and also could tell that
the agency call wasn’t for Milly. This is probably why the Met are
questioning Surrey Police, to see how involved they were with the
PIs]

Stannery Mouthews
July 8, 2011 at 11:47

Excellent post Gildas, and a good point backwoodsman. The BBC is full of
smarm this morning, and yet they are much more destructive to British culture,
than the rude NoTW. Four or five decades of Gramscian poison from the BBC has
almost destroyed the nation without hardly disturbing the undiscerning voter.
As for the rotting political establishment, they are overjoyed to get their
own back on the press. All that steaming self righteous hypocrisy from our
elected representatives!! With great reluctance I have to say, can the EU and
Brussels be worse than Westminster?

John Leon July 8, 2011 at 11:37

I find it quite perturbing the world including some commentators here have
only just woken up to this scandal of corruption and dishonesty. I have been
following the whole sorry saga for the last 177 days via the site written by
John Ward who has been well ahead of the curve about this affair and several
others, writing concise and thought provoking commentry on imformation given
by reliable and relevant scources. I suggest you read it for yourselves if you
really want to know what has been going on; I do not know how much of a cover
up there will be, however I expect the usual British mis-justice will be seen
to be done.

Edited by Anna to add: Thank-you for your comment John.
John
Ward, as you are aware, was once a welcome author on this site. Indeed, both
here and on Old Holborn, I gave considerable exposure to his piece on Gordon
Brown.
However, he became strangely upset at the fact that his name
appeared in the same size type as every other author’s name. He objected to
other bloggers referring to his piece by using the name of this site – he
claimed it gave the idea that someone called Anna Raccoon was ‘getting all the
credit’.
When I suggested that any of my commentators was more important to
this site than any individual author, a view I hold firmly, and said that
perhaps he might not get too far ‘up himself’, he left the site
abruptly.
The rest of us are quite content to be mere bar tenders at the
Raccoon Arms.
Since when he has been publishing that ‘Anna Raccoon’ has
left the Blogosphere – and refuses to allow me to comment on his site to
correct this notion.
That being so, and oneself being in an understandably
grumpy mood this week prior to surgery, you will understand that I don’t
intend to allow that comment to contain a link to his site. Normally I am far
more sweet natured.
I’m permitting myself the luxury of being a complete
cow this week. Bad timing for Spam.

JW July 8, 2011 at 13:06

I was somewhat confused as to how I had got a mention in connection with
a Blog, until I realised you meant *(NOT the Jack of Kent blog)* as distinct
from *JW of the Kent blog*, as you actually wrote.

JW July 8, 2011 at 13:11

Anna, in view of your edit my comment no longer makes sense, perhaps
you could edit me ‘out’.

backwoodsman
July 8, 2011 at 11:00

A good post Gildas. However, you ommited to mention the driver of so much
of the faux outrage , has been the viewers and listeners very own bbc. By
giving saturation coverage to the goings on at a paper which it would
otherwise not mention from one month to the next, it provided the necessary
background noise to frighten the horses for CMD and NI.
So, the correct
context is actually about the bbc trying to stop NI ownership of B Sky B.

Single
Acts Of Tyranny July 8, 2011 at
10:57

I was watching “Animal Farm” the other day (the Orwell version obviously)
and everytime Napoleon, the pig leader came on, I was reminded of Prescott.
Especially when he (the pig, i.e. the actual pig, er, the one with four legs)
was drunk for some reason.

JuliaM July 8,
2011 at 10:41

Spot on!

M Barnes July 8, 2011 at 10:04

I am sorry the NoTW is closing. As a cricket fan I owe their fake sheik a
pint. But I need to disagree with Gildas here. I think a visceral dislike of
Pezza has clouded the issue.
Are MP’s enjoying this? Oh yes. They’d rather
it was the DT but you can’t have everything.
Is Ed using it to score points
off DC. Absolutely. It’s practically the definition of a politician!
Did
MP’s close down the NoTW? No, NI did that. Clever opportunism – accomplish a
business saving by dumping the separate title and substituting in a Sunday
Sun, fend off the baying mob by taking away the focus of their rage (or at the
very least steer the debate into wider waters).
Did the MP’s do this to the
Press? No, the Press did it to themselves by the actions and inaction. I asked
yesterday: Who guards the guards? The answer should be the other guards –
after all one rotten apple can spoil the whole barrel. Unfortunately this
didn’t happen. The Press did not pursue the corrupt practices of their own
with the same lack of fear or favour with which they pursued MP’s and Ashely
Cole. So the bad un’s ran amoke.
The public – me – are perfectly able to
distinguish between an illegal practice that exposes corruption in public
bodies e.g. accepting stolen goods, and an illegal practice that is
gratuitously invasive e.g. hacking into private messages of greiving
relatives. That’s why legal action was not taken in one case and is being
demanded in another.
I really dislike this absolutist either/or that gets
screamed out whenever anyone challenges the Press. Oh look, there’s that
slippery slope again. Gosh its steep! The Press muzzled itself for years by
not investigating itself and look at the mess they are in. I simply do not
believe that industry gossip didn’t mention all the dodgy stuff going on and
not just at the NoTW. I work in a large industry and gossip is pretty
revealing and accurate.
I rather predict the issue will widen out now and
if other newspapers have an ounce of sense they will be checking their own
cupboards. I also suspect the IPCC will acquire some new muscles and I hope
the guards start guarding one another…. as other organisations have had to do
in the face of legitimate public concerns about their institutional
cultures.

And no-one has talked about new legislation or muzzling the Press and I get
no sense from public discussion that there is an appetite for it. So lets cool
it on the apocalyptic visions eh?

Gildas the Monk
July 8, 2011 at 10:30

Good and interesting points. I shall also miss the fake sheikh. However,
I think I stand by the main thrust, which is that the political classes will
use this as an opportunity to fetter the annoying and impertinent press.
Listening the PM’s press conference as I just have, I am bound to say that
sounds very much like what will happen. The word “regulation” was much to
the fore. And why do we need to “sort out” the press with new regulation? If
phone hacking and tapping are illegal (as I understand they are) then why
does there need to be another law? The law is there. Just use it.

M Barnes
July 8, 2011 at 11:08

There may be some dim politico’s who will try it on but I am not
convinced they will get anywhere. Looking at the public debate, say on
Question Time, the general mood is a healthy awareness of politicians
grinding axes. Politicians seeking to muzzle the press may find the public
are still very aware of expenses!
There is a lot of ‘sound and fury’ at
the moment. There will be a delay for any criminal cases and then the
review will start. So I expect, as is usual, that cooler counsel will
prevail. If not I will man the barricades: I want a robust and outspoken
press. But they need to understand that the rules of law and ethical
business apply to them too – they aren’t a special case. My personal
opinion is that that sense of being ‘untouchable’ is what has led to their
downfall. Hubris… ya gotta love that word!

ukFred July 8, 2011 at 09:58

Gildas, my dear friend, Methinks you have put yourself in line for a
battery of libel suits. I know of no pig who would willingly be compared to
John Two Jags Prescott. That life-form (Prescott), if indeed it is alive is,
thankfully unique. Singlehandedly, he makes Gerry ford seem a model of
multitasking excellence.

Andrew Duffin
July 8, 2011 at 09:54

Well said, sir!

And what a great qotd: “A man full of ermine and pensions…”

Wonderful, thank you.

Gildas the Monk
July 8, 2011 at 09:53

As I am writing I am listening to Cameron on press freedom. Looks to me
like it’s totally f[continued on page 47]

Michael
Fowke July 8, 2011 at 09:51

“I watched Prescott on TV this evening. The vast, corpulent frame, foaming
with malice and indignation. He was not satisfied. Like some great greedy pig,
already full but ever hungry for more. A man full of ermine and pensions,
happy to use the Milly Downer issue to further his interests. He moaned and
foamed and railed at the Murdoch Empire. He sensed, and wanted, more blood. He
wanted to muzzle a free press.”

Yeah, he’s a lovely character, ain’t he?

PT July 8, 2011 at 09:41

Well said Gildas, very pers….prespic….you see things so clearly!

Pete July 8, 2011 at 09:39

Does this now mean that Vince of the Cables is vindicated for his comments
on Murdoch and the sky takeover…. ummmmmmm. A man ahead of his time yet again

D

Wigner’s Friend
July 8, 2011 at 16:06

Except that he was supposed to make an impartial and unbiased decision,
and demonstrated that that was something of which he was incapable. He may
eventually be proven to be right, but it would have been for the wrong
reasons. St Vince has demonstrated that he is totally fallible.

Peter MacFarlane
July 8, 2011 at 09:37

Hear! Hear!

My sentiments exactly

HASurvivor July 8, 2011 at 08:41

By the way, a quick WHOIS reveals that http://www.sunonsunday.co.uk/ was registered on Tuesday 5th
July – 2 days before the Screws closure was announced.

binao July 8, 2011 at 08:06

I agree.
No amount of legislation will prevent unnacceptable behaviour,
instead it offers yet more opportunity for abuse by government and local
authorities.
The greatest defence against the alleged offences is
ourselves- by making our own judgements and decisions.
Mr Prescott’s
indignation does not enhance the reputation of the House of Lords.

Geo July 8, 2011 at 07:22

The end of the World is nigh.

DeathRidesATryke
July 8, 2011 at 06:45

Quite so. The MPs will try to crush all opposition.