So a Times journalist works out the identity of Orwell award winning blogger, Nightjack. Nightjack, a police officer and wanting to maintain his anonymity, takes it to the courts, loses, and is outed by The Times who duly crow…

Mr Justice Eady… , who is known for establishing case law with his judgments on privacy, has struck a blow in favour of openness, ruling that blogging is “essentially a public rather than a private activity”.

Bloggers, ‘can no longer be sure that their identity can be kept secret’, it seems. I was wondering if there were any other enterprises which were ‘essentially a public rather than a private activity’. And then it hit me – of course there are – politics and journalism.

(more…)

Can I just say again how bloody horrible it is when pampered members of our so-called editorial elite revel in the fact that Alan Johnson’s parents died when he was a kid?

Last time it was the awful John Rentoul saying Johnson’s childhood loss gave the Secretary for Health ‘a biography to die for’. Now it’s the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee licking her chops over the graves:

Orphan boy, genial postman, self-made, clever but modest, he has the grace and charm to match his perfect backstory.

You hear that? A perfect backstory. Thank Christ for the sacrifices all the Johnsons made, eh Polly? They’ve given you a new hero to credulously rally around now Gordon’s let you down. Now go and count your money.

Rentoul and Toynbee blithely talk about this apparent determinism in Johnson’s upbringing (though not the pain, you’ll notice) like its some kind of weirdly prosaic remake of The Boys from Brazil. It makes me want to puke.

Update: And you know, Johnson hasn’t been a postman for over 20 years. Since then he’s been a machine politician who’s slavishly voted for war, ID cards, internment and nuclear weapons. How this makes him the working class hero of popular wishful legend is anyone’s guess.

Tim Ireland plays another blinder.

Far be it from me to add to the sum total of ‘meaningless emo-porn‘ doing the rounds today.

Instead I’d like to direct you to two very fine pieces on this 20th anniversary. One by Merrick and one by Chris Applegate.

‘They do not help him’

You could watch the Guardian’s footage of Ian Tomlinson’s last minutes all day and never stop coming up with questions to ask. What was going through his head at that point, a man on his way home work? An ordinary man is struck by a policeman and gives out his last in the gutter. Is this London?

James Graham says it for me…

I watched it about 20 minutes ago and my heart is still racing. More than anything, it frightens me. That could have been me, minding my own business. If I had been tripped over in that way by a mob of coppers, however angry I might have been I would have been shitting myself. I think my heart could have taken it, but I don’t know. I have absolutely no interest of putting it to the test – and absolutely no way of preventing it from happening if I ever get unlucky. This is what it feels like to be afraid of the state.

It’s the casualness of it all. Everybody’s strolling. They all stop for a look, sort-of-interested, like they’ve seen a beetle wriggling on its back. ‘They do not help him’. The dogs get more attention.

What are the chances of punishment? You know, real punishment like we could expect? Where’s the outcry across the political spectrum, newspapers, blogs and politicians? Where’s the outrage? Power and those who speak for it will be worth watching in the next few days.

If this shows us anything, then it’s that this could have been any of us. You, me, our dads. It could have been one of the Lib Dem MPs on their way home from being legal monitors of the protest. It could have been a city type dressed down for the day (there’s some currently silent who would have been shouting a little louder had that been the case). It could have been Guido Fawkes staggering home from another bender (ditto).

(Tim Ireland has lots of links.)

From UK Indymedia.

So, according to Sky News…

Police said they were pelted with missiles believed to include bottles as they tried to save [Ian Tomlinson's] life.

Eye-witnesses speaking to the Guardian said…

There were a lot of people around him trying to help him and asking for medics. “One or maybe two plastic bottles were thrown, but it was by people further back in the crowd who did not know what was going on.”

Is that really ‘pelted’? As in ‘to strike or assail repeatedly with or as if with blows or missiles; bombard’? I know what I think.

The inimitable Evening Standard went one better. Earlier today it was saying the ‘police were pelted with bricks‘ as they helped the dying man…

The story, along with the bricks, has now gone, changed without explanation as is the case with these things. Unfortunately I neglected to take a screen grab when I first spotted the original. But the URL on the Evening Standard’s website still tells the tale (click for the full effect)…

So, where did the bricks come from and where did they go? Did the police make them up or the Evening Standard? Can anyone tell me if this made the print edition? You can’t make that go away with a click of a mouse.

Update April 3: Many thanks to OriginalWireman for the scan of pages 6 and 7 from yesterday’s Evening Standard.

There’s a readable PDF version of the article here. Apparently it was in all editions.

BenSix’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist part one and part two ties it all together.

Days after the Hillsborough disaster (whose upcoming 20th anniversary is brilliantly commemorated by Merrick), The Sun newspaper printed a story headlined ‘THE TRUTH‘.

The story ‘told of Liverpool fans attacking ambulance crews, pissing on coppers, pickpocketing dead bodies and beating up coppers giving the kiss of life.’

The story was a vile and lying load of old shit. Nobody saw the attacking, pissing, pickpocketing and beating because they didn’t happen. Public revulsion instigated a boycott of The Sun on Merseyside that still holds to this day.

So, when I read this on Sky News, I got a nasty little nagging feeling…

The man was found after collapsing at a protest camp near the Bank of England. Police said bottles were thrown at them while they attempted to treat him.

Did protesters really bottle medics?

No, they didn’t.

Sky says that protesters threw bottles at police trying to help him – this is definitely not true.

I have an eye witness account from on the ground who saw a man who’d collapsed (rather than pushed or beaten to ground or whatever, although he may have been concussed from an incident earlier).

Protesters called for assistance from the police and helped medical assistance get through. The police were not obstructed in any way.

In both stories the journalists were a little too ready to believe the testimonies of policemen. Sky News and The Sun, the jewels in Rupert Murdoch’s portfolio.

Update: Via JimJay’s comments – another eyewitness account.

Thousands of people descend on a city to express their passion. A small minority come for trouble and the police present are attacked with bricks and glass bottles. Twenty-seven people are arrested.

They were Swansea FC supporters having a day out in Cardiff last year.

You probably won’t have read about it. The story certainly wasn’t top of every bulletin on every news network.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown did not warn the offenders that ‘violence and intimidation will not be tolerated‘.

(The idea for this post was shamelessly pinched from the venerable Chris Applegate.)

Charlie Brooker…

ANNIVERSARY SHAME OF JADE GOODY’S SONS
Tuesday March 21, 2023
By MAWLER HURRY

Jade Goody’s sons have “shamed” the memory of their dead mother with foul-mouthed boasts about sex, brawls and drink-fuelled antics as they reach adulthood.

The youngsters, now 18 and 20, have posted shocking blogs and photographs of themselves on the Internet, 14 years after being sheltered from public view in the aftermath.

Tabloid hate figure and Queen of Hearts Jade died after a public battle with cervical cancer in 2009.

In the days and months that followed the boys, then aged just six and four, were the subject of overwhelming worldwide sympathy.

But now the Daily Pecksniff can reveal how, on their web-based social networking sites, they have boasted about alcoholic binges and fights.

Good luck and God bless, boys. Though I doubt even he’ll be able to help you.

It smacks of oily sincerity. Until…

It is our belief that nobody was misquoted…

Talk about denying something they weren’t accused of. I think you’ll find that it was the fact the survivors of Dunblane were quoted at all was why we now think the likes of Paula Murray and Derek Lambie are tossers (to put it mildly).

Still, a lot of people will be watching them from now on. One hopes – rather than believes – they will think twice before filing their ‘exclusives’ in future.

Meet Derek Lambie.

In 2009, as the editor of the Scottish Sunday Express, he gave the front page of his newspaper to Paula Murray’s disgusting story about the survivors of the Dunblane massacre.

In 1996, as the editor of BRIG, the official student newspaper of Stirling University, he published this editorial:

Our thoughts are with the families of the victims, and with the town of Dunblane. They will never forget. Never forgive. Their hurt will never ease, their loss never brought back. Words cannot express our thoughts, our emotions, our sympathies. We cannot begin to comprehend. We could never understand the great sense of loss.

The best part? Lambie wrote that editorial. The years have not been kind to our man.

Remember Paula Murray? She was the Sunday Express journalist who wrote the outraged little article where she dredged the private lives of the survivors of the Dunblane massacre. You know, the one where they shamed their dead classmates by boasting of ‘drink-fuelled antics’ on social networking websites?

Well, you’ll never guess what Tim Ireland has found dear Paula boasting of on social networking websites…

Update: PCC targets Sunday Express over Dunblane allegations.

Courtesy of Adam on Twitter, Paula Murray’s revolting Dunblane story in the Express has been pulled from the website. You can still read the filth in Google’s cache however. Adam says the Press Complaints Commission is now looking into it.

In other news Gerry McCann has been speaking to the Commons culture, media and sport committee today. You may recognise the newspaper publisher who more than any made the McCann’s already hellish lives even worse…

Asked by the committee why he and his family only took action against a single newspaper group, McCann said that Express Newspapers were the biggest offenders by some distance but they could have easily sued more publishers. “That was not what we were interested in, we were interested in putting a stop to it first and foremost,” McCann said.

The McCanns launched a libel action against Express Newspapers for more than 100 articles that appeared in its newspapers.

A year ago, Express Newspapers published front-page apologies in the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday to the McCann family and paid them £550,000 in libel damages over coverage of Madeleine’s disapperance.

Flanked by his legal representatives, Adam Tudor of Carter-Ruck, and press representative Clarence Mitchell, McCann told MPs that it became a cause for concern that he was in dispute with Express Newspapers when the Express editor Peter Hill was sitting on the board of the press watchdog. Hill subsequently left the PCC board.

“I did think it was surprising that the editor of the paper that had so flagrantly libelled us could be a representative of the PCC,” McCann said.

Express Newspaper’s owner Richard Desmond is a pornographer.

Update March 11: Thanks to Adam the Tory Troll, we now have PDF scans of the newspaper articles. You can download them here and here. You’ll especially enjoy the section that didn’t make it online. It’s about the ‘good’ victims of Dunblane. Nice to see them get a mention for a bit of contrast, no?

In a moralising speech to the Society of Editors last year, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre had this to say about Max Mosely and the court judgement that had gone in his favour…

The judge found for Max Mosley because he had not engaged in a “sick Nazi orgy” as the News of the World contested, though some of the participants were dressed in military-style uniform. Mosley was issuing commands in German while one prostitute pretended to pick lice from his hair, a second fellated him and a third caned his backside until blood was drawn.

Now most people would consider such activities to be perverted, depraved, the very abrogation of civilised behaviour of which the law is supposed to be the safeguard. Not Justice Eady. To him such behaviour was merely “unconventional”.

Nor in his mind was there anything wrong in a man of such wealth using his money to exploit women in this way. Would he feel the same way, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter?

Would he feel the same way, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter?

Hostage to fortune anyone?

Today’s Daily Mail has an article highlighting ‘the most degrading advertisement of the year by a European women’s group.’ The Mail helpfully prints some of the offenders – less, one assumes, to raise outrage and more to pander to the immaturely prurient who makes up a large contingent of the Mail’s readership. It’s less having their cake and eating it as having their wank and hating it.

Would Paul Dacre feel the same about publishing those images, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter? In his mind is there anything wrong in a man of such wealth using his money to exploit women in this way?

Here’s ‘scantily clad Mel B‘. Would Dacre feel the same way, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter?

Here’s Rowan Pelling in her undercrackers. Did Dacre give thought to her father’s reaction before publication?

Have some long-lens shots of one of Bob Geldof’s daughters in a bikini. Sir Bob obviously was consulted by Dacre before splashing them across a national newspaper.

Gentlemen, if you are in the mood for some self-appreciation this morning, the Daily Mail should be, once again, your one-handed destination. The images are of someone’s wife or daughter but don’t let that put you off your stroke. For wankers by wankers.

Via Anton we have this piece of utter scumbaggery from Express journalist Paula Murray:

DUNBLANE survivors have “shamed” the memory of their dead peers with foul-mouthed boasts about sex, brawls and drink-fuelled antics as they reach adulthood.

So, the survivors of an atrocity try to live their lives in as normal a way as possible only to find judgement at the hands of a gutter journalist trying to stir the pot of moral outrage.

If only the doctors and counsellors who treated the wounds and mental scars of those children all those years ago had had the foresight to say: ‘Now, children, you most now go forth and live the lives of angels, not only in tribute to your dead schoolmates who no doubt would have wanted you to live puritanical lives, but also to avoid the predations of journalists barely worthy of the name who, as soon as you turn 18, will ransack your private lives in search of cheap, revolting scoops.’ All this could have been avoided.

Paula Murray is an idiot.

Polly Toynbee, once again gearing up to urge us to vote for authoritarian war criminals, offers a prescription for better political engagement in Britain…

It needs a change of culture in political parties, in the media, among sneering intellectuals, among ranting bloggers, and in civic engagement.

One notes that it is only intellectuals and bloggers that she felt the need to prefix with pejorative adjectives. How very… engaging of her. One has, of course, never seen a ranting or sneering politician or journalist.

The purpose of the site is simple; editors will be quietly documenting outright lies peddled by the Daily Mail, and seeking to bring this culture of fear and falsehood to the attention of those Mail readers curious enough to use a search engine or browse the evil underground world of weblogs.

Go see. They’ve got a hell of a roster of writers.

In the Times today columnist David Aaronovitch goes to work on the popular idea that we as citizens are caught on CCTV camera 300 times a day. He’s tenacious, dogged and vociferous in his quest to debunk the misconception.

He should be congratulated on his little scoop. It’s worthy of a blogger, in fact. If only, however, he’d shown the same tenacity, doggedness, and vociferousness in chasing down the facts in 2003 when spurious statistics and misconceptions were left to fester in the public imagination without correction and ended up taking us to war.

If I remember rightly, Aaronovitch was quite happy then to take the peddlers of those spurious statistics and misconceptions at their word. Indeed, he crowed those false assertions from his column in a national newspaper. Afterwards, feeling a little sheepish, he said on the subject of Iraq’s WMDs:

If nothing is eventually found, I – as a supporter of the war – will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again.

Given his propensity to shovel down and regurgitate any amount of government say-so since he said that, we can only assume his promise of future disbelief was also a misconception of some kind. Would anyone care to chase it down with Aaronovitchesque tenacity?

I note the irony that Aaronovitch once won the Orwell Prize for journalism. Can anyone pinpoint the precise moment he went from speak to power to speaking for it?

In November last year more than 200 people were killed in central Nigeria in clashes between the Christians and Muslims communities. You won’t have heard about it. It didn’t make the rolling news headlines. Whitey wasn’t there and he didn’t lose anything in the conflagration. The video footage (not that there was any) wouldn’t have looked like the thrilling money shot from a Terminator movie.

You know, if I was the British Foreign Secretary this morning I’d be on my knees thanking God that a former prime minister has a racist daughter and that it’s still snowing like billyo. Today should pass for him without to much hoo-ha in the media, one would imagine.

I’ve said before that Catcher in the Rye is possibly the most over-rated book ever written and tome of choice for Beatle murderers and permanent adolescents everywhere.

However, after listening to I’ve Never Seen Star Wars on Radio 4 this evening, I might just have changed my mind. In an attempt to get the mighty Barry Cryer to embrace the book, Marcus Brigstocke suggested reading it in the voice of E.L. Wisty.

Trust me, it works. I’m off out to buy a second hand copy tomorrow.

Look at this bastard, January 2009:

BBC boss Mark Thompson has again defended the decision [not to broadcast a charity appeal for Gaza], saying it would jeopardise the BBC’s impartiality.

Look at this bastard, November 2005:

[D]irector general, Mark Thompson, has recently returned from Jerusalem, where he held a face-to-face meeting with the hardine Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Although the diplomatic visit was not publicised on these shores, it has been seized upon in Israel as evidence that Thompson, who took office in 2004, intends to build bridges with the country’s political class.

(Via Anton and Lenin)

I remember hearing this on Jimmy Savile’s Old Record Club when I was a kid and thinking it was the most amazing thing ever. Finding it on the jukebox in the student union when I was at poly was a thrill. Me and mates took it on ourselves to torture the rest of the spotty herberts with it…

Bye Dave. ‘If Music Be the Food of Love… Prepare for Indigestion’ has to be one of the finest album titles of all time.