End of the World

Bill Kristol-Balls

All well and good, but if the NOTW had been half as good at investigating themselves as they were at investigating others, it would still be going strong.

jazz606

I think Murdoch (or someone) panicked. Closing down the News of the World was a mistake and won't save the BSkyB deal.

The revelations promised by Rebekah Brooks must really be something. Maybe they tapped the Queen's phone ?

Baron

Fraser, welcome back, and cheer up, he who laughs last, laughs longest.

you so right about stressing what good the paper has done in its long history, more of you should come out, say so, your readers deserve it.

on the scale of things historical, the paper’s past mishaps, even if they touched on criminality by some individuals, cannot and will not sully its great achievements, you should be proud to be associated with it.

what saddens, saddens a lot is the millions of the NoW readers are the ones everyone in power is ranting about, but everyone in power also despises, ignores in deeds, looks down upon, they are the ones, the descendants of the ones, who fought for the country, who smoke, who went to pubs when the pub was still a part of the country’s fabric.

there will come a day when the healthy but currently impotent core in the society will revolt against those who think they know best, you’re young enough to hope to live to see that day, and you will.

bob

What an absolute avalanche of nonsense.

Mike

I liked Matthew Parris's comment that dismissing the NOW as a scandal sheet was the Establishment's way of sneering at the proletariat by proxy. It was an important piece of the furniture of the UK, and closing it so abruptly as a cynical commercial manoeuvre is a disgrace, given its popularity.

Chuck It, Smith

"I miss my money" would have been shorter.

Marcellus

There's something rotten in the state of Murdoch.

Kennybhoy

Absolute caca!

But then I would would expect no more from the author of the filth at the link immediately below...

ttp://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6358123/salmond-scotland-and-political-opportunity-in-crisis.thtml

Back on October 10th, 2010 11:31pm I advised you to:

"Do us all a favour and stick to the "News of the Screws." "

Alas that option is now closed to you. But no' tae worry Maister Nelson, I am sure that you will find another such gig to supplement your income. One appropriate to both your talents and your morals.

Mark Cannon

Of for goodness sake! For all your reseach into your predecessors you seem to have missed the late, great Auberon Waugh who rightly described the News of the Scews as Wankers Weekly. It was a scurlious, if vicous, rag but no one, and I mean no one, ever thought it had anything to do with serious politics. If Winston Churchill wrote for it, it was because he was paid shed loads of money for doing so (he was always broke). The NoTW was about naugty vicars or, more recently, naughty footballers. But in doing so, it is now clear that it went too far. I don't mean the mobile phone messages of so-called celebs or of politicians with eccentric personal lives. I mean the mobile phones of murder victims and the relatives of deceased servicemen. I am unable to locate the quote by Auberon Waugn about the death of William Stead on the Titanic, but, as ever, he nailed the point precisely - the News of the World gave rise to the hypocritical, sanctimonious school of British journalism. Whatever was said about politics had nothing to do with its sales and was of no interest to its readers.

Andrew

umm, yes it will. It'll be called the Sunday sun.

Andrew Fletcher

Dry your eyes dear, it's just a sleaze rag. Forgotten by next weekend when it's tawdry replacement will be on the shelf .

Jez

Brilliant article Fraser. A price of history.

They lost the plot though, for a while.

I was probably one of the first to toast what I saw as Karma coming back to put past wrongs right.

But. There is an hysterical drive to shut down what the liberal Left see as the 'Right leaning' media in all of this maybe.

The Telegraph needs to be at least aware of this.

This Sunday Sun needs to drive forward too or the subsidised papers that relied on the NotW will be in trouble too.

Anyway. Well done Fraser.

daniel maris

Well, Fraser, your essay improved towards the end. The only really important issue here is the freedom of the press. Murdoch sometimes threatens it, sometimes defends it. The thought that the super-rich will sleep more easily at night is not a nice one as a result of this debacle is not a good one.

I don't think Mellor ever wore the blue strip by the way. Naughty of you to give that dubious claim further circulation.

2trueblue

A bold move to cut something so quickly. It may turn out to be not such a clever thing to do. It displays arrogance and lack of care. It was better than him, so I hope it does not assist him in getting what he perceives to be the icing on the cake. Fish rot from the head.

Reed

Daniel Marris @ 12:36
'The thought that the super-rich will sleep more easily at night is not a nice one as a result of this debacle is not a good one. '

This assumes that the super rich are uniformly evil and up to no good. I'm not sure that's the case, but then I'm not one for that kind of class warfare prejudice. Perhaps you mean the super powerful, who should certainly remain scrutinized.

Ruby Duck

jazz606: "I think Murdoch (or someone) panicked. Closing down the News of the World was a mistake and won't save the BSkyB deal."

Murdoch's not the sort of bloke that panics.

Yes, it is very sad to see the passing of the NoTW. I have fond memories of it from 40 years ago when my youngest brother did a Sunday morning paper round and brought us the stray copies NoTW, People, Mirror etc to read that we were far up ourselves to buy.

Herbert Thornton

I don't know whether Fraser is right to describe the sudden demolition of the NOTW as 'the end of an era in British investigatory journalism', and to say that 'Something has been cut down today, never to grow again' - but I do hope that he is overstating it.

A great many people believe that the rest of the media - including the BBC - are no better than was the NOTW.

I don't know whether Fraser would agree that that the operations of Julian Assange's Wikileaks are investigative journalism, but to my mind Wikileaks epitomise investigative journalism just as much as if Wikileaks were a newspaper.

What is clear though is that many very powerful people are terrified of - and so detest - any kind of investigative journalism. It is also clear (as we have seen from the example of Julian Assange) is that powerful people - even in the supposedly free west - will go to almost any lengths to silence people.

First they came for Wikileaks. Then superinjunctions crept into the scene. Then they came for people at the NOTW.

Who will be next? Will it be somebody who has hacked the Prime Minister's phone or email? Will it be somebody who leaks details of financial misdoings of European politicians and bureaucrats? Will it perhaps be people in the BNP who are publicising the scandal of Muslims 'grooming' young British girls? The BBC would doubtless approve of a clampdown but I think we should all be very apprehensive.

biggestaspidistra

yes, well done Fraser. All a bit sad, the reaction as much as the crime.

Fergus Pickering

The NoW had nothing to do with the rise of hypocritical, sanctimonious journalism. The British Press is H and S because the British People are H and S and surely the last few days ptoves that. You would have thought tapping Millie Dowler's phone was
Satan's masterpiece, that the Digger was Satan himself. You would have thought that Beaverbrook had never existed, or Rothermere, or Northcliffe. And of course if the saintly State intervenes then you get Pravda. How many of you know a little rhyme?
You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.

Which does not refer to you, Fergus. I think you bare one of the good guys.

Adam

Maybe the spectator should fill the investigative gap? Take on the mantra of a British Millenium...

Fergus Pickering

What I meant to say was that you, FRASER, are one of the good guys. Fergus is Satan incarnate. When the stuff about her phone came up he didn't even know who poor Millie Dowler was.

Holly ......

I no longer buy newspapers.
Full of pages of tosh.
Yet even I got caught up in the 'last edition' frenzy, how everyone should buy a copy for posterity,. How the last edition would be fantastic, go out with a bang etc.
I even asked the local newsagent to save me a copy FGS.

I have now come to my senses and will not be buying any.
My opinion of the UK press is still the same, and my disgust at the recent goings on has increased my disgust. So why on earth would I buy one now?

A jolly he said, she said. Day in, day out.
An hysterical, he did X, yeah but, he did it first fest.
PATHETIC!
And all the while the hacked & intruded upon
have watched in disbelief at the lows some, even now, have reached.

Mass condemnation of some, for decisions they made, yet nothing of those who made even worse ones to start with.

IF, when this is sorted, the reality is a country mile from the speculation we hear today, the journo's will of course tell us. All with straight faces, all forgetting how they have reported it so far, believing themselves to be informative & reliable.
Some of course, will buy it.
Some will not.

strapworld

Herbert Thornton highlights a very pertinent issue. The Guardian printed Assange's stolen documents, surely that is a crime?

Likewise the Telegraph printed stolen documents relating to MP's expenses, why is that not a crime?

Yes, the News of the World led from the top have done disgusting things. Hacking is a criminal offence and some, yet not the real culprits, will become the sacrificial lambs. But to close the most successful newspaper is a panic measure.

Others have highlighted that without the BsB deal the Murdoch empire is finished.

After all this, after they callous manner in which hundreds of decent journalists and others were left without a job I really do hope that Murdoch and his family are run out of this country. It would be fitting for Murdoch senior to be arrested and questioned on the whole sorry business. Let us face it, he is the top honcho and the buck must stop with him.

But it time that the hypocrisy of Milliband and his band of bruvvers and sisters be exposed. His crowd of incompetents covered this up for years.
(Blair is implicated in reports today).

Baron hits the note. We english have not spoken yet!

Barry

Is there any limit to the importance that these heroic journalists attach to each other?

Only a journalist could make such a virtue out of self righteous, dumbed down, simplistic rubbish gathered by dubious means without any regard for the consequences.

Utter bollocks

The type of cant we have come to expect from charlatans such as yourself.

If not think of the shame of the paper in hacking into Milly Dowler, the victims of 7/7, then think about the ordinary people who's slight indiscretions it sort to expose - which led to their suicides - all for prurient interest.

It will not be missed, it's diet of filth and lies, was after all simply to keep people sucking on the teat of ignorance. It's aim was to protect the interests of wealth power, don't delude yourself otherwise.

strapworld

The question will be, if this story is still big news in a weeks time, that CAMERON is so badly damaged he has to stand down.

From Oborne's and other reports Osborne is as badly wounded and will we be getting William Hague as leader? He is not tainted by News International.

Interesting times.

Gawain

A sad, sad day and you are right that we now live in a country where money and position are becoming too powerful again. The one point that is worth adding is that the news media desperately needs to distance itself from the world of 'celebrity' and politics. There are just too many conflicts of interest. The boundaries between news and public interest, on the one hand and celebrity and money making, on the other, have become much too blurred.

The creepy moralising of seedy actors and comedians on BBC news and current affairs programmes is a dreadful portent of what might now be coming our way. Not only will the rich and powerful be able to use the law to stop ordinary people knowing what they are really like, they will have free access to a pulpit to preach and corrupt us all. Politicians and clerics preaching is bad enough but now every two bit millionaire will be at it. We need another Murdoch to step into the breach to demonstrate that the 'king' is wearing no clothes.

TomTom

So Fraser get some VC funding and turn Speccy into NoTW to boost circulation and please posters on this thread. Market opportunity

Stephen Byrne

News International - more specifically, The Sun - stopped supporting the Labour Party in September 2009. In the General Election of May 2010, Labour came second and could not reach an agreement with the Liberal Democrats about forming a coalition. Now, only now, more details come out about phone hacking; and Inspector Yates announces that, two years ago, he failed to investigate the matter properly. Would this be happenning if Labour were still in power? Who was in power when all this hacking was going on, and who benefitted from Mr Murdoch's support? We would all benefit if journalists would investigate this thoroughly and bravely.

Rhoda Klapp

Strange that journalists think of their 'profession' as one of nobility let down by the occasional bad apple, while the rest of us know it is a mass of sleaze, laziness and inaccuracy illuminated by flashes of virtue, few and far between.

EC

"It took me ages, trying to do what those brilliant red-top journalists can do instantly: distill complex facts and issues down to their essence; write wasting not a single word nor a second of the reader's time."

Well, you certainly didn't waste any of our time reading your promised Neathergate post. Not distilled but completely evaporated, eh Fraser?

widmerpool

@Jez

You have said it all but I still wanted to say well done Fraser it must be tough!

HampsteadOwl

The News of the World died as it had lived: crushed by scandal, outrage and cant. It is not just a fitting end for the paper but, in its way, rather glorious as well. And certainly far more heroic than petering out in an exercise in news room rationalisation, which is what News International had originally planned for it.

alexsandr

but we must remind millitwat at every opportunity that liebour were as much in bed with NI as was cameron.

Magnolia

Never read it and not going to start now.
I will take Fraser's word for everything that was good about it.
It will reopen in a year because RM has shut down The Times for a year before and RB gave the game away when she said "you will understand in a year".
The readers will be cross when they've got over their indignation and they will want it back.
Why was it shut down and not just sold off to new management if it was going down for ever?
The phone hacking was disgusting but we live in disgusting times where disgusting behaviour is plain to see everywhere.
The question for me is will our PM go down with them?
At the very least he's now in with the group of the living dead in his own cabinet.
More regulation is not the answer, it's just what big statists reach for every time.
I feel like I'm re-living the knee jerk reaction government of the Labour years.

strapworld

That is true alexsandr, but if Cameron cannot beat Brown, after all this can Cameron ever win a majority for the Conservatives?

Is the time coming for a more leisurely time in Chipping Norton for some of its residents?

Publius

Who is Millie Dowler?

libertarian

As with the dinosaur newspaper Barons, and the utterly laughable NUJ, you are so far up yourselves its untrue. For the first time in history REAL important investigative journalism is now possible, we don't need newspapers they are all a dead throwback, a delivery mechanism that has been replaced by technology. The rise of the freelance journo/blogger is what will actually replace this stuff.

People are sick and tired of the endless made up stories, the churnalism of press releases and a "expert" predicts nonsense.

This is the end for ALL newspapers, it just depends how drawn out they make it by throwing good money after bad.

JACKAL

It thought it was above the law. The working man's paper rhetoric you espouse combined with the fact that those who actually read the paper know it was full of drivel, makes me feel a little patronised. This article combined with Coulson making some sort of romanticised gesture to the paper’s employees yesterday as if all NotW’s they're good honest men victim to some larger conspiracy stinks. As if you didn’t know the minute you walked through the door what you were dealing with.

Simon Stephenson.

"It took me ages, trying to do what those brilliant red-top journalists can do instantly: distill complex facts and issues down to their essence; write wasting not a single word nor a second of the reader's time."

Let's take food. I should have thought that part of the delight of being alive is to try out different tastes, to investigate the foods that other people find delicious, to imagine what may go well with what, to experiment with different cooking methods, to continually be trying to produce something that will give new. previously unexperienced pleasure.

Then, every now and again, the most powerful desire is for a bit of nursery food - grilled steak, fish and chips, liver and onions - something simple, something powerful. As far a the analogy to communication goes, this is the equivalent to the occasional piece of magic which crystallises a widespread concern into a carefully chosen shorthand that is widely absorbed into to memory, without effort.

Credit where credit's due - tabloids have played a big part in supplying the nursery food urges, and sometimes they've done this very well. But the rest of their content, and this is 99% of their total output, is the culinary eqivalent of TV dinners and baby food in adult-sized cans - unstimulating stodge that someone else has put together, whose only redeeming feature is that you don't have to put any effort into dreaming it up or preparing it.

TrevorsDen

The first words in the first edition of The News of the World were,
'The cheapest and best mode of advertising'

Lets not forget that the NOTW closed down because another newspaper actively campaigned and conspired to stop advertisers using it and threatened pressure on them if they did not.

The NOTW editor is quite right when he asserts who 'got' them, and we should remember that this was done for base low political reasons and a crude commercial self interest.

The Guardian may find this comes back to bite them.

Holly ......

Magnolia.9.31.
You feel you're living back in the Knee jerk years of Labour.
Harman thinks the government is dragging it's feet on this.

We do live in curious times.
Let's just hope Cameron does not rush, does this calmly and, completely ignores the likes of Harman.
The outcome of this may be clearer when the panel set up, is known.

All that needs to happen is people are given the FREE right to reply/defend themselves to anything printed about them.

TomTom

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there's no occasion to.

Humbert Wolfe

Simon Stephenson.

TrevorsDen : 10.39am

"Lets not forget that the NOTW closed down because another newspaper actively campaigned and conspired to stop advertisers using it and threatened pressure on them if they did not.

The NOTW editor is quite right when he asserts who 'got' them, and we should remember that this was done for base low political reasons and a crude commercial self interest."

And you're sure that you have no personal interest in the health of News International that we should bear in mind when considering your views on this situation?

daniel maris

TrevorsDen -

If you believe the NOTW was closed because of the threat to advertising revenue then you are very naive.

TomTom

"All that needs to happen is people are given the FREE right to reply/defend themselves to anything printed about them."

and then the Suckers line up to buy the newspaper and read 120 page editions each day.

You have a sound business mind Holly ? Do you spend much time in Carey Street ?

strapworld

daniel maris, Trevors Den is just repeating what the first edition of the paper said- read his post- I happen to agree that The Guardian should be extremely careful now. Guido Fawkes did some excellent work last year highlighting their 'charity' status and tax avoidance.

Perhaps a conservative MP could ask the chancellor how much tax each newspaper pays. Then look at the salaries paid to each newspaper executives and editorial staff.

Leonard

I cannot help thinkng that Britain is a better place without the NOTW.

ISM

That's one particular sewer closed down. Sorry about your reduced income, Fraser. Utter cant.

TomTom

"highlighting their 'charity' status and tax avoidance."

Don't think Rupert Murdoch will rock that boat....boy, if News International actually PAID ANY TAX !!!

TomTom

"Perhaps a conservative MP could ask the chancellor how much tax each newspaper pays"

How droll....and where do the Barclay Bros. live ? Where is DGMT ownership ? I do wish a Conservative MP would get up and ask such a question about Newspapers.....Banks....Telecom Cos.....Retailers.......and then join UKUncut

Tankus

"As I was told when I joined: You don't work for this newspaper. You work for its readers."

nah .. you worked for Murdock .......

and Murdock giveth and taketh away .... on a percentage !

Surprised you don't feel soiled !

alcazar

Fraser, you have re-hacked your NOTW copy in the article above, really classy - 2 for the price of 1!. And why should we be worried about Robbie William's ditties? You didn't pay for that ticket yourself, did you?

Auberon Waugh's "Wankers Weekly" is just about right. And finally we will not have to read anymore from FN: "as I say in my NOTW column today".

Cromwell

Methinks you do protest too much.

Lets review the situation;

Widespread criminal activity - hacking
Loss of any sort of moral compass - Millie Dowling and the Soham girls
Bribery of police officers on an apparently large scale - Brooks admisson
Interefring in murder invtestigations on behalf of suspected muderers - see Nick Davis and C4 news.
Lying to parlaiment - James Murdoch
Improper payments - James Murdoch
Doing every thing possible to stop this coming out. Rather than just admitting it.

Yup - these were self inflicted wounds indeed.

How can you talk about 'Sarah's law' when at about the same time the NOW were hacking Millie Dowlings phone and interefrring in a murder investigation.

How much real 'Care' was there for Sarah and others if the same institution could be have so callously to Millie's family?

You are half right though- the rich and powerful are getting away with far too much. And until this week the leaders of that pack were the Murdochs.

But it was journalists who sunk them. Not you though.

Not good enough Fraser.

Oscar

On and on they go the apologists for the News of The World as though because they got a few things right it makes up for all their failures and law breaking (and I'm still not sure what the benefit of Sarah's Law is except for pandering to pedo panic).
Not one of those bleating about the closure of NoTW - who imply that somehow the reporting of the misdeed of those in the public eye will now vanish yet comprehend that the heinous antics of this rogue tabloid were exposed by another tabloid that did it all legally. No greater proof of that is there than Ms Brooks declaring The Guardian brought them down rather than their own antics.

daniel maris

Yes but will it be "As I say in my Sun on Sunday column..."?

Actually if I was with the Mail on Sunday I'd definitely argue for producing a downmarket sister title "News of the Week" perhaps - using the same journalists in the main but with more celeb and NOW type copy.

It would be a cheap way to tap into that market and skewer Murdoch before he can recover. They could copy NOW's font style so it looks virtually the same.

Patricia Shaw

You re as bad if not worse than Wade/Brooks. Smell the roses Nelson.

Mark

When did anyone challenge effectively Murdoch's power over the political establishment or the media. The notw was part of the problem as long as this was the case. It was an awful rag. I will not miss it one iota.good riddance.

Phil

This whole saga,in my opinion,boils down to an unholy alliance of the left wing media, including the BBC and the Labour Party to stop Murdoch's BSkyB takeover at all costs.In the case of the guardian He is a powerful competitor whose right wing editorial philosophy they despise and has consistently outperformed and made a success of a genre that they have not.The BBC, who really are the elephant in the room when it comes to plurality issues,dominate the media in this country and recognise in Murdoch a serious threat to their monopolistic left wing stranglehold.
Labour led by millibandwagon are opportunistically attacking with the ferocity of a spurned lover.
Does any of this have anything to do with phone hacking? I doubt it bearing in mind that it is likely in the coming months that most of the holier than thou brigade will be tarred with a similar brush.
The tipping point that kicked off this war was phone hacking but it could easily have been any of a number of peccadillos real or imagined.

Verity

Herbert Thornton writes - "What is clear though is that many very powerful people are terrified of - and so detest - any kind of investigative journalism...".

With respect, H Thornton,I would cut it a bit shorter and just write, "What is clear though is that many very powerful people are terrified ...".

Summat's up and it's not what we're being led to believe ...

Jabba the Cat

Trouble with the NOTW was that it took too long to find the semi-literate bits deeply lost amongst the garbage for the plebs. Hence, always best avoided...

disenfranchised

being the most successful sunday rag means nothing at all in this shambles of a country.
hard hitting social and political analysis? oh come on! it was nothing but a scandal sheet, and no thinking person will notice it's passing.....

Frank Sutton

daniel maris 3:33pm
"It would be a cheap way to tap into that market"...
Sadly there is now way cheap way to do anything in the newsprint world. And anyway, the NOTW, according to reports, was scarcely breaking even anyway.

Roy Watson

Right, so the NOTW held "the rich and powerful" to account. It's aphrase that resounds through the article. And who are the examples given of "the rich and powerful"? Robbie Williams and "a famous actor". Whoopee. Yeah, this is what a crusading free press is for, these are the stories that matter. And I am Aretha Franklin. But this time, I shan't say a little prayer for you.

David Lindsay

In the farewell souvenir edition, it was heartbreakingly easy to trace the decline in the writers' educational and cultural expectations of their readers. Murdoch is not solely to blame for this. But he is hardly blameless of it, either.

As the praise for the News of the World from George Orwell on its own final back page indicated, this was a paper of the wider culture of working-class self-improvement underwritten by the full employment that was itself always guaranteed, and very often delivered directly, by central and local government action: the trade unions, the co-operatives, the credit unions, the mutual guarantee societies, the mutual building societies, the Workers' Educational Association, the Miners' Lodge Libraries, the pitmen poets, the pitmen painters, the brass and silver bands, the Secondary Moderns (so much better than what has replaced them, turning out millions of economically and politically active, socially and culturally aware people), and so much else destroyed by the most philistine Prime Minister until Blair, who in her time as Education Secretary had closed so many grammar schools that there were not enough left at the end for her record ever to be equalled.

For the first hundred or more years of its domination of the Sunday market, that domination coincided with a high degree of weekly churchgoing in this country. Its strongly working-class readership must have contained a well above average proportion of what are now called traditional Catholics, but in the days when there was no other kind.

Well, with no more competition from what the News of the World lately allowed itself to become, why not one or more People's Papers again, affordably hooking people in with a bit of entertainment in order to educate and inform them on the premise that they deserve nothing less than the human dignity and respect of education and information? Central and local government, the trade unions, the co-operatives, the credit unions, the mutual guarantee societies, the mutual building societies and the Workers' Educational Association all still exist. Just for a start.

What are they doing "to give to the poorer classes of society a paper that would suit their means, and to the middle — as well as the rich — a journal which due to its immense circulation would demand their attention"?

LibertarianLou

"Who will now step into the breach? Something tells me it won't be the Guardian on Sunday."

Er. The Guardian exposed this entire story at the risk of threats and all sorts from Murdoch. (The Independent have had James Murdoch storming into their office yelling at them over a factual story he didn't happen to like. Miliband has received threats. Tom Harris has received threats. Chris Bryant was outed as gay six months after raising the issue.)

How is covering the cricket fixing story a risk, financially or otherwise? It made them loads of money surely?

Ridiculous to complain about the Guardian when no other paper could even be bothered/dared to keep their nose on this story.

Minnie Ovens

A very perceptive analysis.
Thank you.

hugh

I am starting to miss the News of the World already. It held a mirror up to our society and its horrible values. Everyone is missing the point..... Politicians live for news management, police are taking bribes, the public is obsessed with celebrity. ..... The News of the World scandal has shown up all these cracks in our society... and we are making it the scapegoat.

RocketDog

Nelson. Perhaps you'll have the time now to get around to that article on Neathergate that we are all waiting for

bill

Bull-ship. The News of the Screws was a vicious little comic written by immoral louts for lumpenprole cretins who read moving their finger along the text. It belonged to the age of lynch mobs. It lied and distorted, it bullied innocents, messed up people’s lives, gloated over others’ misfortune. It was one of the bigger things that added to the stench at the bottom of the barrel of British society. Pigswill. Good riddance. You need to work on your judgment, Mr. Fraser.

robert jackson

Complete rubbish from start to finish

Herbert Thornton

Verity (July 10th, 2011 7:54pm)

Yes, I take your point - the three words detracted from it by going off at an unnecessary tangent.

We all need to ask ourselves - what's it all really about? Maybe the politically correct Establishment (with the BBC and Guardian leading the pack) are so dismayed at the acquittal of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, that now, in Britain, they are conspiring to silence every kind of dissenting voice? Murdoch is nothing like Wilders, but his voice is potentially the loudest, and he isn't (for example) anti-Jewish, so they've decided to come for him first?

Summat is, as you say, definitely up and what we're being told to believe is certainly not what it's all about.

Herbert Thornton

I notice that a lot of posters have more or less allied themselves with Fraser. Now, so do I. I've come round to believing that the real reason for this cause celebre is the ambition of powerful and not necessarily rich on the scale that Murdoch is rich, but certainly ruthless people in the Establishment - led by the BBC and the Guardian. Their ambition is to achieve a permanent stranglehold on Britain's hitherto more or less free press and to ensure that TV and radio are a permanent BBC monopoly. That is their ambition and their main strategy is to thwart Murdoch.

Verity says that summat's up and I think that's what's at the heart of it. If Murdoch succeeds in his bid for BSkyB, the BBC's power to stifle independent thought and influence public opinion towards a mindset of the BBC's (and the Establishment's) liking will be greatly reduced. Consequently they will use whatever tactics will help them, and their current tactic is to take ruthless advantage of the News of the World's unfortunate misdemeanour to prevent his taking over bSkyb.

Gordon Brown? His role in the matter is somewhat like those both Clegg and Cameron - a trio of useful idiots.

On a lighter note, I took a look (for the first time) at the Sun on line. I don't know whether this sort of news is par for the course in the Sun, or whether it's a first step in replacing the News of the World, but it reports an incident in Russia when a young man tried to rob a beauty salon. The woman running the salon has a black belt in judo. She incapacitated the would be robber, tied him up for a few days - and force fed him Viagra. The Sun then describes what followed.....