Enter Gordon Brown, with dynamite

RMH

If only he had been PM, he could have sorted this mess out.

Prodicus

Bet Sarah Brown regrets organising Rebekah Wade's birthday bash and her cosy weekends at Chequers.

Sally Chatterjee

It sounds like Brown knew about these shady activities long ago. Yet he only speaks up now. How come?

R.McGeddon

'But Gordon is an honourable man.....'

Maggie

21 November 2007 - HM Revenue & Customs loses personal child benefit details - names, address, dates of birth, bank account, employment - of 25million mothers, fathers and children.

15 September 2008 - NHS loses personal details of 18,000 current and former staff

17 December 2007 - Driving Standards Agency loses personal details of three million driving test applicants, including their names, home addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers.

13 October 2008 - MOD loses personal details of 1.7million people who en quiried about joining the armed services.

29 October 2009 - Rural Payments Agency loses personal details of British farmers

How on earth could Gordon Brown or any Labour politician dare to complain about invasion of privacy when they carted so little for ours.

John Goode

If there's one thing that Gordon does well it is to bear a grudge

Sres

How strange this wasn't important while Mr Murdoch was best buddies with the Labour Party...

2trueblue

RMH, my sentiments entirely, if only......

Peter Hoskin, dynamite. Where? The man had his opportunity and he blew it.

Trem

I can't wait til Murdoch gets his revenge. There'll be fireworks by the container-load.

jay mason

Is Tom Baldwin involved, that would be delicious

JohnOfEnfield

If I were a politician I would NEVER make an enemy of Rupert Murdoch. Ever. Not even when he appears to be down on the floor being kicked to death.

He might spend the rest of his days and ALL his money trying to screw me by all the means he has at his disposal.

Ugly. Very ugly.

JR

I agree. Too timid to do anything in power and now coming back for afters. At least Prescott, for all his terrible points, was consistent on Murdoch's influence.

But, and this is a big but......if Brown majors on medical and family records being accessed this could be the announcement that leads to Murdoch selling/closing all of the UK papers in one of the most dramatic moments in recent political history (for good or bad).

Ian Walker

So this will make three days work this year?

He's in danger of 'representing' his constituents at this rate. Oh no, he's only doing something for himself. Phew!

RCE

Prodicus,

Brooks' 40th (2008) was AFTER this (2006).

The only reason I'd invite someone to my house (or organize their birthday party) after they'd done this to me would be to administer cyanide.

But then, I'm not a son of the manse.

Richard Marriott

Reading the Guardian article on Gordon Brown, many of his allegations are based on hearsay, without any real evidence of how any information was obtained or by whom.

The whole Brownite gang are out to get the press in a typically Brownian act of revenge. The Telegraph should watch out, since it revealed MPs expenses, it will be next on the Brownite hit list.

Something is being orchestrated here and it ain't pretty! But the hypocrisy of Labour is pretty breathtaking!

JR

"21 November 2007 - HM Revenue & Customs loses personal child benefit details - names, address, dates of birth, bank account, employment - of 25million mothers, fathers and children."

Maggie - if it's any help the very strong rumour is that this was never lost. The poor temp (on £10k a year) didn't send the disc and then couldn't admit it when they phoned to ask where it was so he just sent a second one.

And that might be a theme because what unites all of those incidents is strangly the data appears never to have been used for criminal purposes.

Still terrible but I hope it puts your mind at rest that whatever happen didn't actually harm anyone apart from a few reputations.

Chris lancashire

Dear, dear Cameo Parkway, all the hallmarks of a badly educated Leftie - abuse, grammar, tsk, tsk.

Rhoda Klapp

Gordon who? Who cares about the squeaking of a non-entity? Strange how the inability to get Murdoch on side has now become a putative badge of honour.

I'm fed up with this story now. I don't expect the whole truth will ever come out. I don't actually mind Rupe, he does what he does. He could not MAKE then fawn over him, the ones who did it, who are still doing it, are the ones to blame. Nobody has to buy his papers or watch his channels.

TrevorsDen

Hang on - the Guardian are saying it seems that the Sun contacted the browns to say they had obtained details of Browns son's medical records.
Now have I missed something? The Sun illegally get someone's records and then tell then?
We also seem to be in the realm of 'blagging' Brown's financial records - well does not this seem to correlate with Lord Ashcrofts claims about Baldwin?

Just what are the banks doing with peoples records - let alone the health service?

Publius

Nauseating hypcrisy from this pusillanimous politicians. How they all rush to stick the boot in now they think their man is down!

What weak, spineless apologies for men they are.

Baron

first piece of good news for the Senior’s camp, whatever this dour Scots touches goes wrong.

let’s hope he doesn’t disappoint, his capacity for vindictiveness is well known.

Maggie, a 1st class point, lost on the fruitcakes, I'm afraid.

2trueblue

Richard Mariott, Something is certainly being orchestrated here and everywhere on our television, and the lefties are loving it. Liebore were in charge when this all began, Liebore had the opportunity and failed miserably as they did with sorting out the expenses fiasco. If I were Liebore I would be very afraid as someone has a lot of info and it will come to the fore.

Hugo Chav

The front cover of the Sun on election day is the epitome of David Cameron as a PR spiv. Look at it on Google Images and you'll see the spiv in full PR mode. Loving it up with Brooks got him this revolting front cover.

Brooks should be fired immediately. What the hell has happened to Rupert?

Labour have been waiting to unleash this mega attack, they know were the bodies are buried because they hushed it all up.

Cameron is a total t****r.

The UK is in deep trouble and this is the priorty of our elite, no wonder we are in serious decline, decadence rules.

Cynicus Economicus - April 2011:

Despite talk of 'austerity' and hysteria in the left leaning media, the state is not set to see any real depth of reform or any depth of fiscal consolidation. It would be easy to blame the government, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal. However, the problem is that the people of the UK have yet to grasp the severity of the problems that they are facing. Even as their living standards slide, the big state trundles forward largely unchanged. In fact, the state is setting out to hobble any hope of the manufacturing renaissance that is necessary to move the UK forwards. As just one example, the UK's energy policy is leading towards ever higher energy costs, and the possibility of energy shortages in the future ( a few lonely voices are raising the alarm). And then there is the legislation and regulation, whether from the UK government, or from the EU. And the ever more complex tax systems.

In other words, despite talk of austerity, and reform, there is no real appetite for change. As long as the government can keep borrowing and spending, nothing will really change. The problem is that this cannot go on forever, and something must eventually change. The question is to ask what might force the change. The decline in living standards might be just such a driver, but it is just as likely that the decline will prompt ever louder voices for ever more state intervention, ever more state borrowing and ever greater debt accumulation. It is the idea that something must be done to halt the decline, and that the state that has been behind the problem might now solve the problem. The other possibility is that the UK goes down the same road as Greece, Portugal and Spain i.e. the county loses the trust of lenders.

-----

We are in an econmic emergency and still we are living in the sordid leftovers from New Labour.

TRAGIC

Archie

As someone remarked elsewhere; "If Murdoch goes down, are we stuck with the ghastly Beeb/Guardian/indy triumvirate for our news?"

Baroness Helena Handcart QC

Happy for his kid to be in the public eye now, isn't he? Funny, that.

Matthew Blott

@ JohnOfEnfield

"If I were a politician I would NEVER make an enemy of Rupert Murdoch. Ever. Not even when he appears to be down on the floor being kicked to death."

Perhaps the reason for this scandal has passed you by but let me remind you: it's because of views such as yours have been the attitude of too many politicians over the past 30 years that the Murdoch machine has felt it is above the law and can do what it likes.

MK

I really don't see why Brown woudl have a problem with people looking at his data, after all if he's got nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear....

Baron

listen to this:

The Sunday Times, owned by News of the World owner News International, is alleged to have targeted the personal information of the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the BBC understands.

anything that strikes you? The superb crafting of the item, it tells everyone that the ST is owned by the same people as the maligned NoW, that having saturated the media with dirt on everyone connected with the NoW, it’s the turn of the ST now, the next stage, I reckon, will be the Sun, followed by the Mirror, Express, the DT, the Guardian left last.

and he BBC understands? How, whom from, why?

Joseph Goebbels should have been born later, in modern Britain, the scope for hiring spinners would have shocked even him.

Woody

I believe these revelations go back to when Brown was Chancellor, so I take it Sarah Brown organised Brooks birthday AFTER they knew their personal details had been hacked and when Brown was PM. How interesting that the Brown's have released these facts todayand isn't he the man that said he would never use his family for political purposes.
What dirty, dirty politics.

Phil

Brown was so outraged that his wife invited her for a sleepover at No. 10 a year or two later.

Maggie

Labour politicians keep squeezing out crocodile tears for the victims of the 7/11 bombing. If they hadn't lied, sexed up dossiers and taken us into an illegal war, there wouldn't have been any 7/11 victims.

Red Rag

Nice to see where the sewer on the right stands regards to their hero Murdoch. You lot must be bursting with pride, from Help For Heroes to Hacking for Heroes....why doesn't Guido and The Spectator merge, there is not much difference between the two now and both are attracting the same kind of reader.

Gramsci's eyes

Cameo Parkway- in some respects probably the most astute observation I have read.

It will come to pass.

Get a taste at 4/1 on Ladbrokes for Cameron to be replaced as Tory leader by the next election (probably his resignation will trigger it). I would look forward to those TV debates with call me Dave. "Did you PM compromise the security of the State?"

Oddly, this may not cause too much damage to the Tories in the medium term if they act by returning to an old fashioned probity - but as of now Cameron is a problem for them, not the solution.

What those under fire such as Murdoch, Brooks and by default Cameron seem to fail to understand is that the methods they are using to manage the crisis wont work - simply because this is a new world today, not a world in which the old methods work.

The future is not so tenebrous.

PS. I thought Hunt was actually very good-seemed to have substance and some talent. He is where he is because of circumstances. One of the few Tories who has impressed me as a political talent.

PPS. Chris in Lancashire who traduced the wisdom of Cameo for his grammer. Your first line should read "Dear, dear, Cameo" , not Dear, dear Cameo -

Hoisted and petard come to mind.

TrevorsDen

Woody- you make a good point - it all seems a bit strange. Sarah organising birthday parties and slumber parties for the Murdoch's and their employees. ?? AFTER these things were known/

Brown inviting Murdoch to chequers to tell him about the election which (even as he spoke) never was - even after these detailsm became known?

If thats the time line it all seems very strange.

Now my experience of journalists is that they all seem incapable of getting your name straight - so I do not expect any of this to be untangled.

Cjamesk

The left aided and abetted by the BBC won't stop until all perceived "centre right / right" publication and broadcasting are stopped.

Although I'm sure team Ed have smiles on their faces now I wonder if it will come back full circle and hit them hard too.

Hold the front page - Journos are dodgy

Rhetorical question: Why do people appear to be more concerned about journalists bending the law (surely a dog bites man story) than with the public servants who appear to have sold off our details. Any policeman or other public servant (including MPs) trading off privileged information should be jailed for 5 years minimum, no questions asked, such is the breach of trust concerned. When the police firearms officer next visits my house I'm not sure I want to tell him where I keep my guns. The bent scum in the ranks should be excised with great vigour pour encourager les autres.

strapworld

Well said Maggie. I do hope the PM has this information to hand on Wednesday. And again my old mate Trevors Den hits the right note.

strapworld

Baron. We could also ask WHO in the police is giving the Guardian this information? |Are they paying someone as well? It is all so irregular.

Michael

I suppose the problem for Brown was basically that because he kept destroying Nokias by throwing them at people, he never had time on the new ones to change the answerphone code from the default 00000...

RCE

This has got, got, got to backfire on Brown and Labour. Irrespective of the hideousness of News Int's activities the venality of our politics and all our politicians is being exposed with each passing hour.

To say that Brown was afraid of Brooks et al is simply not good enough. Rather than standing up to this behaviour he actively rewarded it by schmoozing these lowlifes after they had violated his family - disgraceful, pusillanimous, self-serving. Clearly his political career was more important than his self-respect. And those around him were no better (with the possible exception of Purnell); they knew the measure of the man and did nothing.

There is a poetic symmetry to the whole affair. Everybody involved stinks to high heaven.

Dimoto

So, the Sunday Times had Brown's medical records.

So that story about him being on medication (which his flunkies denied), was/is probably true.

The Sunday Times argued that it was a matter of public interest and who can argue with that ?

So, Miliband, Balls and co were covering up the truth about our former, mentally disabled PM ?

anyfool

Guardian specifics overy and allen have already stated that they had no dealings with brown, your blog is already worthless like most of the of the biased rubbish written here, is your source the BBC

Fatbloke on tour

PH

At what point does the SpeccyLand GIB'bies start to realise that the behaviour of NI has gone too far?

Trying to make a story out of the health problems of a 4 month old infant is to my mind just too much?

Are you a father?
If yes how can you stomach such actions?

If it had been me I would have turned up at her door with a baseball bat for a full and frank discussion, although given her record I would have taken a doing unless I managed to get lucky and put a stake through her heart in a Hammer Horror film type of way.

All I know is that she wouldn't have been so handy with her fists if she had been married to Peter Cushing.

All the CF stuff shows that she and the people who employed her are reptiles, lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut.

RCE

anyfool,

Google Translate doesn't do shite into English. Can you elucidate?

PuppetMaster

Right. So did everybody see Rupert dressed like a chav, in the car in a shell suit, showing his leg?
This has to be some alternate reality, where billionaire media moguls pretend to be oiks. But what's worse is that they think they can fool enough people with such blatant fakery.
If people fall for it, I'm going to have to consider my position as a member of the human race.

Perry, he of the Hard Heart

This is THE most wonderful news for McBRuin watchers.

Not only can he fool most of the economic gurus most of the time, not only could he pull the wool over most Tory eyes, not only could he feign expertise when none ever existed - or ever could, he now has the audacity to feign shock and hurt.

And this from a deeply flawed 'person' held aloft by a team of fixers.

Herbert Thornton

Does anybody see a parallel between Murdoch and Samson? The Philistines - i.e. Gordon Brown, the BBC, the Guardian, David Cameron, Clegg and rest of the rotten Establishment - are still trying to immobilise Samson.

They may seem at first to succeed, but like Trem (July 11th, 2011 4:51pm) I look forward to seeing the Temple spectacularly brought down - and this time I hope Samson survives - and thrives.

E Hart

Revenge! Are you and Guido Bollocks stupid? If true, it is a gross invasion of privacy. I suppose you two would be quite relaxed at the idea of a newspaper (illegally) rooting around in your phone, bank and medical records, would you?

Whatever Brown's attitude to Murdoch, his papers or their political endorsement, this matter would have superceded them in importance, don't you think?

I think you'll find that this is why Brown is irked by the allegations. However much he may have courted Murdoch, I can't believe for a moment that he would ever have considered NI anything other than a fair weather "friend".

Your suggestion of "revenge" - under the circumstances - is silly beyond belief and totally misses the point.

Chris Lancashire

There is no truth in the rumour that the hackers found he was £1.2m overdrawn and a letter on file saying he expected to pay it off over the next 62 years.

Matt

What is more remarkable is that Brown remembers were the House of Commons is, let alone the fact that he 'suddenly' remembers all the evidence he has against News International. How is this different, one wonders, from the evidence Brown had before and during his time as Prime Minister?

Baron

The BBC tossers have changed the top item on the google top page from what I posted at 5.44 to this:

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is "shocked" by allegations the Sunday Times, owned by News of the World proprietor News International, targeted his personal information.

abit disappointing really, after the “proprietor News International” they should have inserted ‘that also owns the News of the World, the newspaper that is under investigation for …."

The more I see this unfolding the more I'm warming up to the decrepit Senior, whom, I have to confess to you, I didn’t like much before. May I tell you why? In choosing between someone who’s after my money, someone who’s after my soul I rather go for the former, I reckon. To the one who pinched my soul, I will give the money anyway, voluntarily, most likely.

Baron

RCE @ 7.07:

oh, how I envy you, how do you do it? I keep a folder of the wittiest quips, this one’s already in it.

Richard Marriott

Brown seems to have conveniently forgotten about Damian McBride smearing Nadine Dorries and Osborne's wife out of Number Ten - he (McBride) had to pay compensation to Dorries as a result.

Gordon Brown was phoned by Rebekah Wade/Brooks in 2006 to tell him they knew about his son's condition and were going to run a report on it - a report which was not unsympathetic to the Browns.

Brown seemed to think it was okay because after Brooks printed this
story he threw her a 40th birthday party and Sarah had her over for a
slumber party. That’s just the sort of thing you do for people who
disgust you.

HampsteadOwl

In the understandable desire to leather in to Gordon Brown, posters here are, I think, in danger of missing the point.

These new "revelations" are about Gordon Brown but haven't, so far as I can tell, come from him.

No, they have come from the Guardian and coincidentally just at the time when the story might otherwise have been starting to flag and on the day the Government announced the referral of the BSkyB takeover to the Competition Commission.

IThis looks like blatant news management, and raises the question of how long the Guardian has had this information (and indeed what else it is holding back in its locker to release next time they feel the need). All this information is relevant to an ongoing police investigation and ought to be released to it straight away. Otherwise, isn't there such a thing as obstructing the police, which I thought was illegal.

Incidentally, if the story about Sarah Brown organising Rebekah Brooks' 40th birthday party is true, it will play very badly for her. What sort of mother is it that throws a party for a woman who, less than two years earlier, ensured that the most harrowing and intimate details of your baby's health were splashed over the front of a national newspaper?

AliC

I am still not sure why anyone gives a * about all of this. We are at war, running out of electricity, and there are millions of unemployed folk.

This is not important: insensitive, possibly illegal, and most certainly cruel in places, but not actually important compared to war, famine, and electricity going up 18%................ can we focus please people?

Reed

Sally Chatterjee @ 4:30pm
'It sounds like Brown knew about these shady activities long ago. Yet he only speaks up now. How come?'

Exactly. As revealed by (I think) Ben Bradshaw, whether or not to hold an inquiry into all of this was discussed by the cabinet at the time. They decided not to, fearing the wrath of Murdoch as they looked to future elections. In effect, putting their own interests ahead of the public's. Personally, I wouldn't trust a word Brown says about pretty much anything. He's always come across as pathologically deceitful with the ability to bear a grudge like no other. Is any of this real, or just the actions a bitter failure of a man trying to settle old scores?

Alex

Ooh, fatbloke on tour - you're sooo butch!

Richard Marriott

RCE - spot on! It appears to have escaped the mainstream media that Brown was chummy, chummy with Rebekah Wade/Brooks after she had called him and told him they had his son's medical records.

Brown seemed to think it was okay because after Brooks printed this
story he threw her a 40th birthday party and Sarah had her over for a
slumber party. That’s just the sort of thing you do for people who
disgust you.

Fergus Pickering

When did Brown know about his phones being hacked. Yesterday? Or rather earlier? Did he complain to anyone about this? Why not? If the doctors records show Brown is as mad as a box of frogs, does that justify it?

Paddy

This is old news.

Alan Douglas

Jeez, if I had known this whole thing would convince Brown that he lost the election unfairly, and have his jowls glooming all over the press and blogs again, I would have handed the whole of the Beeb, and all media, to Murdoch.

Hasn't Brown got a stone to crawl under ?

Alan Douglas

TrevorsDen

mr marriot - your points are valid and it makes this whole thing mystifying.

A commentator on PB.com says that the hacking into Browns flat sale (purchase?) details was over the flat he bought from Robert Maxwell.
There is a name and a relationship to conjur with.

Andrew

Well let us hope we now find out the truth about Gordon's purchase of the "Robert Maxwell" flat.

Labour's outrage is a bit rich - the crimes were all committed ontheir watch. Why didn't they clean up things when they were in power!!

Simon Stephenson.

Rhoda Klapp : 5.14pm

"Nobody has to buy his papers or watch his channels."

So where do you stand on drugs, Rhoda? Presumably, because nobody has to buy drugs being sold on the street, you're critical of attempts to control and stamp out the suppliers?

And, indeed, perhaps all those others who excuse Murdoch because there's no compulsion to buy his TV or his papers - you too, presumably, are fervent supporters of the decriminalisation of drugs - and for reasons of personal liberty, that is, not effectiveness. Baron, Nicholas, strapworld, RCE?

dirtbox

If Gordon the Moron wants a fight with Murdoch then god luck to him, there is plenty of dirt to come out on this fool and his little friendships

Simon Stephenson.

PuppetMaster : 7.19pm

"But what's worse is that they think they can fool enough people with such blatant fakery. If people fall for it, I'm going to have to consider my position as a member of the human race."

I should start considering, if I were you.

Fergus Pickering

Stephenson, old fellow, are you seriously comparing a popular newspaper with heroin and cocaine? And if The Sun equals heroin, what does The Mirror equal. Or the Daily Mail. I think you have been carried away by a very bad metaphor. There is also the teeny-weeny difference that selling hard drugs is against the law, whereas seling newspapers is (ulp!) legal. Do you see the distinction? Oh, and one more thing. Should I worry more, or less if my child is reading The Sun rather than snorting coke.

Baron

The piece about Brown son’s condition was quite sympathetic to the guy, the son, the family, it wouldn’t surprise if he approved of it, it was a touching human story, hence the invitation by his wife.

As Fergus says so charmingly if Brown is as mad as a box (or two) of frogs, he’s doing a U-turn, his newest recollection, or the news of it, suits the tone of the new revelations. It’s a madhouse of many a box of frogs.

Baron

Simon, as often before you absolutely right except that drugs are illegal, the law bans them because those in the know say drugs kill people, impoverish families, cost the NHS a fortune; am I wrong in thinking that publishing, broadcasting news, commentaries and stuff is till legal here, nobody has yet come up with the idea of banning it because it kills people, impoverishes families….?

of course, for someone who knows, says piffle, my take may be out of date, feel free to put me right.

Foxgoose

Here's the link covering Sarah Brown's 2008 "slumber party" for Rebekha Brooks - other guests were Murdochs's daughter Elisabeth and his wife Wendi.

Today Sarah tweeted to the world how "hurtful" she found the leak of her son's medical details by Rebekha two years earlier.

Clearly Sarah is overflowing with the milk of human kindness.

Simon Stephenson.

Fergus Pickering : 10.50pm

No, I'm seriously challenging the validity of an argument which proposes that the public's right not to buy something is sufficient grounds for deeming that the product is not subject to further state regulation or control - and yet for a different product the public's right not to buy it is deemed to be insufficient grounds to obviate state involvement.

If your argument is that Murdoch's products are harmless and therefore we needn't bother to control them, then make this argument. Don't try to gild the lily by claiming that the right to refuse to purchase is a further argument against control, unless you are prepared to accept that this argument applies equally to other products.

Baron : 11.05pm

Well, if what you say is true, how about not making the asinine argument that the public's right to refuse to buy products is sufficient to obviate the need for their supply to be controlled?

Baron

AliC @ 8.39:

your post, excellent, worthy to be taken seriously, but won’t be, illustrates why the NoW was so popular even though many are rejoicing its vanishing, I guess it’s just human nature to imbibe the salacious, titillating, lustful rather than the opposite we face day in day out, just think of the combination – powerful politicians, corrupting journalists, mysterious meetings, seedy hackers, a sexy redhead, an old man, am sure there is a book, a play, or at least a TV drama in all this, Alistair Campbell may already be at it.

Fergus Pickering

Come Mr Stephenson, let's cut to the chase. Do you think the supply of newspapers to the public should be controlled by the state. Yes or no, old fellow.

Baron, I do, charmingly or uncharmingly, think that Broon is mad. I don't know what the polite way of saying that is.

Kennybhoy

Maggie on July 11th, 2011 5:56pm:

"Labour politicians keep squeezing out crocodile tears for the victims of the 7/11 bombing. If they hadn't lied, sexed up dossiers and taken us into an illegal war, there wouldn't have been any 7/11 victims."

You really believe this caca? That the Jihad is a response to Western provocation? Are you a Cifite in disguise or merely yet another of the local Michael Moore Conservative contingent?

Sir Everard Digby

We ask the wrong questions. Do not take part in the politico/media pantomime.

If NI has committed these offences and at the moment this has yet to be proven in a court of law, I suggest the first question we should ask of the mainstream media is:

'How do you get your stories?'

They are in a competitive business,so on the balance of probabilities what works for one will have been adopted by all.Otherwise they go out of business.

If indeed,St Ed of Islington and his acolytes are keen to redress the problems,why do they continue to encourage the very behaviour and practices which they describe as disgusting?

This issue has everything and nothing to do with politics. Politics lacks any compassion and morality,which is mainly why we feel politicians are disconnected from us.

Those with no compassion or morality will not have a problem in using the media,who are also allowed to operate without constraint to further their own ends. No-one sees the problem. 'It's just politics'

That same mindset is evident in our economic situation. The bankers,like the media are fuelled by greed but of a different sort. Politicians with no moral framework basically let them do what they liked.

After all,they could always blame them when something went wrong.

That's the other side of the problem. It's no use St Ed pretending he is a spectator who did not understand the rules and never played the game. He is/was a player who used them to his own ends, without question.

This makes his utter hypocrisy even worse,along with every other politician who demonstrates faux outrage to furtehr their own agenda.

What a miserable,corrupt, ignorant,useless bunch they are.

Andrew

Why on earth did Coffee House mention Gordon Brown? Does he have any credibility about anything? Can we now have an investigation into his flat purchase? Can we have an investigation into the Smith Institute? Can we have an investigation why Gold was sold so cheaply? Why? Who benefited? etc

Simon

This Gordon been blagged tape is quite funny:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/audio/2011/jul/11/sunday-times-gordon-brown-property

I asked the Land Registry why it published the price I paid for my house online and if I could have such private information removed. I was told that this had passed into law and they couldn't be removed.

But, we can't know the transfer value of GB's property bought from Robert Maxwell? Seems like there wasn't too much involved in this blagging and the solicitors gave the information easily. Is this standard practice?

Simon

Were the health records hacked? If so, we should be very concerned about the IT systems security the Government put in place. I think GB needs to raise in parliment that the system Labour put in place is not secure and the peoples records are at risk.

Or, were the details blagged from or leaked by someone working in the NHS?

Rhoda Klapp

Simon S, your drug thing is a straw man. The NotW was a sleazy eag long before Murdoch was born. It maintained its best-selling position because it was a sleazy rag, supported by customers who were not forced to buy it but did, through choice. Now, the same thing might apply to drug supplies, but in the end it is the users who create a market, and there will always be someone to satisfy it. Newspapers are legal. They are controlled by the law. In this case the law was broken, but it was there to control all the illegal activities, no further laws are required, just better appication and enforcement of existing laws. If we (the police, the politicians, whoever) failed to apply and enforce the existing laws, it is pointless to propose further controls, except as an opportunist attempt to impose control over the media.

Dimoto

In other news - Simon Stephenson has announced that in his humble opinion, not more than three angels can dance on the head of a pin, and not more than one on the point.
(but daniel maris has insisted, that with the aid of wind power, at least ten should be possible).
Yawn.

Simon Stephenson.

Fergus Pickering : 2.31am

What I think is that there are two conflicting principles at stake - one that we want newspapers to be informative distributors of news and views so that the public can both be entertained and be reasonably well-informed of what the other 6 billion people in the world are doing, with some discussion, perhaps, of why they are doing it. And two, we want a purity of process so that what is produced by this service develops entirely from the desires and demands of the general public, and that the content is unadulterated by the subjective whims and agendas of either publisher or State.

You, and others like you, argue that this latter principle is guaranteed by the fact that people can vote with their feet, and that Mr Murdoch and the other proprietors are in effect slaves to the wishes of the public, because they are not able to hold a gun to their heads and force them to buy their publications. That public choice, therefore, is entirely sufficient to prevent newspaper proprietors from following their own agendas and/or from catering only to the lowest-common-denominator demands which would cause newspapers to fail to comply with objective one.

Fine, this is the proposition you have made, and there is no way it can either be proved or disproved, but the point I made is that it is inconsistent to argue that public choice is all-embracing in ensuring that the outcomes of newspaper production are only "good" ones, and therefore never "bad" ones, but that the same public choice is not enough to ensure that the suppliers to the recreational drugs industry will never be the creators of "bad" outcomes.

What of course you do, albeit sub-consciously, is to create a circular argument, differentiating between newspapers and drugs by saying the first is good and the second is bad. But by doing so you destroy the argument that public choice is capable of determining good from bad - because, in your revised model, it is only with products which have elsewhere been determined to be good that public choice is competent to decide whether they're good or bad. Some competence!

So we need to discard the "no one's holding a gun to their head" argument, because it means nothing if it is only applicable to things which have elsewhere been deemed to be good, and focus our attention on the "elsewhere", and what conditions the elsewhere imposes to ensure the "goodness" of the supply to the public.

Simon Stephenson.

Rhoda Klapp : 8.57am

No, Rhoda, mine is not a straw man argument. It tests the validity of the assertion that public choice is powerful enough to make it unnecessary to be proactive elsewhere in attempting to prevent anti-social behaviour by newspaper proprietors. If anti-social behaviour by newspaper proprietors is knocked on the head by public choice, then why doesn't the same thing apply to anti-social behaviour by drug suppliers? Or, the other way round, if society feels the need to intervene to protect some of its number from being harmed by drug suppliers - because some of its number will make bad choices - why should it be so relaxed about assuming that as far as newspapers are concerned, the public will only make good choices?

Can you not see the inconsistency?

I suppose the crux of my position is that we must find a different way of justifying the decisions to take the authoritarian route in one area and the libertarian route in another, because at present the arguments put forward in support of the authoritarian route are directly contradictory to those put forward when the libertarian route is followed. In one case the State knows best, and in the other it is only the public who can decide what's best. I think we focus too much on processes and too little on outcomes, and this is why we so often get into a pickle with our arguments. So the Murdoch defenders, to my mind, are over-concentrating on the inviolability of a process - that the State should never compromise the freedom of expression - to the exclusion of the thought that freedom of expression can be compromised otherwise than by the State. We should be looking at how to get the best possible solution to the problem of freedom of expression, and if we tie our hands behind our back by having a pre-requisite that the State remains totally uninvolved, then to my mind we're denying ourselves the opportunity of getting anywhere near the best possible solution.

Baron

Simon, for the last time, not on drugs/NoW, just in theory.

roughly, one could have two systems to regulate quality, dependability, to reduce risk that things go wrong, to ensure happiness after the burgher acquires the thing, the service.

a light regulation of the sort that the product must be what it says on the tin, mustn’t cause harm, should be replaced i faulty, anyone selling a product/service that harms the buyer gets punished according to the degree of harm, the court decides, due process applies, up to and including the supplier losing his/her life if he/she caused the harm deliberately. That’s market driven regulatory ststem, it costs little, works well in many sub-Saharan countries in the most basic form (no cries from the NGO fruitcakes about epidemics caused by food, pile-ups by faulty cycles and stuff), hate to repeat it, bore everyone with it again, the market as in “the voluntary decisions of the millions”, or

a heavy regulation, that’s what we have now: tons of legislation, constant changes fattening the pockets of lawyers, a number of agencies both general (Health and Safety), or specific to an industry, profession, thousands of inspectors, committees, conferences all costing hundreds of millions. If things go wrong the overpaid overseers sit down on their expensive arses facing the press, put a sad face on, say: sorry, we’ll learn’. That’s the apparatchik driven regulatory system.

as you may gather, am in favour of the former, not the latter, I believe there hasn’t been a measurabl massive improvement in any of the major categories of incidents, food poisoning… after the H&S began messing up our lives

Simon Stephenson.

Dimoto : 9.32am

Bored? Go somewhere else - the internet's a big place, and there are exciting productions all across it.

Simon Stephenson.

Baron : 10.32am

Light regulation

With respect, what you've done here is take a process that fits in with your idea of how things should be ordered, and then listed the great outcomes that your sense of order calculates will come out of it.

How is "harm" actually determined in such a system? Who decides what is "due process" and what is not? The courts? OK then, who sets out the rules under which the courts make their decisions? Or are there no rules? Are decisions made by adjudicators on the basis of what they consider to be the current public opinion? How do we find such adjudicators who are so completely unaffected by their own, personal opinions that it can be guaranteed they will always follow the public will?

Your dream is predicated on the idea that the equilibrium position to which public opinion tends will always be a good one, and, moreover, there is no way other than following public opinion that this eternally good position can be reached. How on earth do you think that Hitler built his power base in the 1930s? By ignoring public opinion and acting in contradiction of the messages it was giving him? Your solution is extreme wishful-thinking, because in addition to paving the way to the free-world wonderland you envisage, it also gives carte blanche to the manipulators and the megalomaniacs who would destroy your world before you can say knife. It's a manifesto for the mob rule and the lynch-gangs, leading inexorably to totalitarian repression as the "only" way to restore order. This ain't what I want, thank-you.

Dimoto

Simon Stephenson:

Indeed, as there are on coffee house, assuming of course, that the blog bores can restrain themselves.

Herbert Thornton

"Enter Gordon Brown with dynamite"?

A lot of people would have felt more cheerful if it had read - "Enter Gordon Brown wearing suicide vest".

AliC

Furthermore, why do we even give Broon five minutes when he was supporting his little media unit (that ugly redfaced man,McBride now working for CAFOD) who was outed as he prepared to make up lies about opponents including Cameron and Osborne - which he was going to leak to the press. How can Brown not have known? Live by the sword, die by the sword.