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So Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, wants to shut down the 6 Music and Asian Network radio stations. He couldn’t even give a consistent and coherent reason why.

I have a fierce affection for 6 Music – its innovation, its constant ability to surprise and delight, the laughs it’s given me and the fine records it’s put in my colllection – and as a consumer of very little else of what the BBC produces, I’m feeling quite hard done by today.

Now, maybe you don’t listen to those stations or maybe even actively dislike them. But if you have any regard or affection for the BBC, you should be fighting for those stations’ survival nonetheless.

Thompson, once again, has shown himself today to be a shabby and craven managerialist with a cloth ear for what the BBC is supposed to be about (and what a section of his salary-payers want). He’s bowed before corporate interests rather than those who fund the BBC and pay his corpulent wages.

Like I said, he couldn’t even do it coherently. ‘There can be no turning back on our digital journey,’ he said. So closing two digital radio stations isn’t turning back? ‘Some critics… will never stop in trying to further erode the BBC,’ he went on. Some critics don’t need to erode the BBC when they’ve got an inside man doing it for them. It’s the abasement and the lack of fight and the willingness to please entirely the wrong people that’s hard to stomach.

As in most things, one finds oneself in agreement with Anton Vowl…

I’ve said before, personally 6Music never really troubles me at all, and I can’t stand George ‘Sacrificial’ Lamb. But on the other hand, I spent a pleasant morning listening to live cricket on Radio 4 from Bangladesh, and I’d be mightily pissed off if that sort of thing got chucked out of the window.

Anton uses a tortured movie metaphor (6 Music is the limping Richard Harris being slotted by Richard Burton – played in this metaphor by Mark Thompson – at the end of Wild Geese to prevent him suffering an even worse fate). So here’s one of my own. We’ll call it the Hans Gruber Defence.

Those with no interest in 6 Music or the Asian Network should still defend against their closure and the closing in of those with no love for the BBC. To paraphrase Hans when he threatens Bruce Willis after shooting a hostage in Die Hard: sooner or later they might get to someone you do care about. Don’t think for one minute that the hyenas of the Tory party and Murdoch’s and Paul Dacre’s slavering bands of vandals are going to be satisfied and stop with the deaths of just two radio stations. They are merely the hors d’oeuvres.

I, conversely, couldn’t give a toss about the cricket from Bangladesh that so pleases Anton Vowl (for example) but I see the pleasure it gives many people and I so know for a fact that if the BBC were to sacrifice Test Match Special to appease the howls of corporate predators like Rupert Murdoch and his princeling son, that would be a very bad thing.

This isn’t just about defending two radio stations with minority audiences it’s about defending the ethos of what the BBC stands for. 6 Music and the Asian Network provide services that simply cannot be found in the commercial sector (please don’t suggest I go and listen to offal like XFM). It’s what the BBC does best and what it was created for.

If you love the BBC then you must realise that in the years ahead you’re going to have to fight for it. So, please, campaign for 6 Music and the Asian Network. And the next time Mark Thompson bends his knee before critics far less talented and innovative and brave than his staff, and sacrifices more of the BBC to the gods of cultural barbarism, I’ll write letters defending Test Match Special or whatever it is you want to save.

(The decision to close 6 Music and the Asian Network is not final. It must be approved by the BBC Trust which is holding a public consulatation. You can email your contribution to them at srconsultation@bbc.co.uk and complete the online survey here. J Hunt has an excellent post on how best to campaign. There are signs that we’re being heard. )

Have you been threatened, smeared or libelled on Google, Gmail, Blogger.com blogs or on YouTube? Tough.

The Press Complaints Commission wants to hear from us…

The Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, which writes and revises the voluntary code of standards overseen by the Press Complaints Commission, is undertaking its annual review of the Code.

It welcomes suggestions from the public, civil society and the industry on how the Code might be revised to improve the system of self-regulation of the press, of which it is an essential component.

A group of bloggers have got together to build a group submission/petition. Here are the five suggestions we’d like to make to the PCC:

SUGGESTION ONE: Like-for-like placement of retractions, corrections and apologies in print and online (as standard).

SUGGESTION TWO: Original or redirected URLs for retractions, corrections & apologies online (as standard).

SUGGESTION THREE: The current Code contains no reference to headlines, and this loophole should be closed immediately.

SUGGESTION FOUR: Sources to be credited unless they do not wish to be credited or require anonymity/protection.

SUGGESTION FIVE: A longer and more interactive consultation period for open discussion of more fundamental issues.

You can sign the petition and make your own suggestions here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/pcc/.

Tim Ireland has all the details.

The Sun newspaper is 40 today. Forty years of lies, tits and an all-round lowering of our standards, morality and expectations. To mark this inauspicious occasion I’d like to dedicate this excerpt from Saturday Night Fry to Rupert Murdoch’s tool…

One is a fat, wonkey-eyed loser with repugnant attitudes towards immigration, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs break down foreigners’ doors at dawn, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs intern foreigners and their children, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs regularly and frequently beat foreigners, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs traumatise foreigners’ children, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One is loading darkies on to planes and sending them back to some of the world’s worst hellholes, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

As the Yarls Wood door clanged shut on her, no doubt Adeoti Ogunsola said to herself, ‘thank God Gordon Brown isn’t a fascist’.

As the life drained out of him, no doubt Manuel Bravo said to himself, ‘thank God Gordon Brown isn’t a fascist’.

As the bullets thudded into him, no doubt Adam Osman Mohammed said to himself, ‘thank God Gordon Brown isn’t a fascist’.

Half the country seems up in arms that Nick Griffin is being allowed near a television studio but when a man, who has done things to foreigners that would give Griffin wet dreams from here to eternity goes, goes on GMTV barely anybody squeaks. Hell, a huge chunk of them voted for him.

Some fat wannabe-Nazi pillock goes on the telly and you’d think the barbarians were at the gates. The Prime Minister is shipping darkies off like so much freight and we’re more worried about whether the one with all the teeth from Girls Aloud is lip-synching on Saturday night TV. And yet Griffin’s never going to wreck the number of lives Brown has – not if he lives to be a thousand.

Griffin’s a bastard in a small, squalid way. You want to see a proper scumbag? He’s running the bloody country.

You need to have a serious talk to someone about how the Internet and search engines work. This was the first page of Google.co.uk search for Trafigura earlier this morning…

Click for the bigger picture

For those coming in late…

‘London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations,’ have gagged the Guardian from reporting parliamentary proceedings. That’s the parliamentary proceedings that you and I are completely free to read by simply going to the online version of Hansard.

So why have lawyers stopped a newspaper publishing quotations from the record of our democracy? It’s all to do with a company called Trafigura and what it may or may not have got up to in Africa.

It seems the Guardian has been prevented from publishing this written parliamentary question tabled by Paul Farelly MP…

61 N Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

You can download your own copy of the Minton report from Wikileaks.

It appears that some or all of these slops were disposed of at waste sites in and around Abidjan, Ivory Coast approximately in August 2006. This is alleged to have caused, or in part contributed to, a high incidence of health problems being reported, including nausea, breathing difficulties, vomiting, diarrhea.

Read section 3 in particular – ‘Health and Environmental impacts’ – all kinds of horrible stuff were involved.

Nick Barlow has more, as do many others. There’s also much being said on Twitter (if you want to Twitter about this, use the #Trafigura hashtag – it’s currently trending on Twitter’s front page). You might also be tempted to blog about Trafigura.

This is what Trafigura doesn’t want you to know. Now you do. If they hadn’t gone running to their lawyers, it’s very possible you wouldn’t. The Streisand is well and truly out of the bag.

More background:

Independent: Call for murder charges to be brought over toxic dumping

The settlement of the High Court case, expected to be finalised within weeks, concerns claims by victims who suffered short-term illnesses. But it does not apply to allegations, which will now not be tested in the British courts, that the dumped waste caused more serious problems, including deaths, miscarriages and birth defects.

Video: Newsnight – Dirty tricks and toxic waste in Ivory Coast

George Monbiot (on September 17): Trafigura’s attempts to gag the media prove that libel laws should be repealed

In Britain, libel (or defamation) is used as the rich man’s sedition law, stifling criticism and exposure of all kinds of malpractice. Dating back to the 13th century, it was reframed during the past 200 years specifically to protect wealthy people from criticism, based on the presumption that any derogatory remark made about a gentleman must be false. The law of defamation is the only British instrument which places the burden of proof on the defendant. Given the inordinate costs involved, it’s not surprising that it discourages people from investigating abuses of power.

Guardian: How UK oil company Trafigura tried to cover up African pollution disaster

The UN human rights special rapporteur, Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu, criticised Trafigura for potentially “stifling independent reporting and public criticism” in a report the oil trader tried and failed to prevent being published in Geneva this week.

He wrote: “According to official estimates, there were 15 deaths, 69 persons hospitalised and more than 108,000 medical consultations … there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping.”

Ministry of Truth: TRAFIGURA AND THE MINTON REPORT

The concentrated sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) is one, as anyone coming into contact with it on the waste dump would be likely to suffer severe chemical burns to the skin or lungs, from vapour inhalation, and as, I’m afraid to say, scavenging from waste dumps is not that uncommon a practice in the developing world… Do I really need to spell out the rest?

Greenpeace: Trafigura background

On July 2, 2006, the Probo Koala (chartered by Trafigura) attempted to unload waste in Amsterdam. Noting the strong-smelling nature of the waste and probable toxic nature, harbour authorities told the ship that the waste would be more expensive to dispose of. The ship refused to pay extra treatment costs and left Amsterdam…

Econsultancy: Social media turns toxic avenger for The Guardian (#trafigura)

This tidal wave of tweets makes for particularly bad PR, given the banning order against the newspaper. It’s a bit like an artist achieving a Radio 1 ban, which can result in chart success. What you seek to suppress only generates further interest.

Update @ 13.00: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has just posted this to Twitter:

Victory! #CarterRuck caves-in. No #Guardian court hearing. Media can now report Paul Farrelly’s PQ about #Trafigura. More soon on Guardian…

Wikileaks: Ivory Coast toxic dumping report behind secret Guardian gag

Statements made in parliament, including those of Paul Farrelly MP, traditionally enjoy an absolute exemption from molestation by the regular judiciary. Parliament does not, insomuch as it believes itself to be an expression of the national will, subordinate itself to any other court.

Knowing this, lawyers for Trafigura, Carter-Ruck, obtained a second, secret media injuction to prevent reporting of Paul Farrely MP’s questions. That this alleged order was granted is a bold and dangerous move by the High Court towards the total privatization of censorship. Is a multi-billion pound commodities trader a truer expression of the national will than the House of Commons? The question is no longer rhetorical.

Wikileaks: The Independent: Toxic Shame: Thousands injured in African city, 17 Sep 2009

The PDF presents a copy of an article originally published in UK newspaper The Independent, but censored from the Independent’s website.

Well, it’ll save us all a walk to the local primary school next May, if nothing else. Screw the voters, the results of next year’s affront to democracy are in. Those who really matter have declared their verdict. Here’s state-funded gossip-monger, the BBC’s Nick Robinson…

Asked what Cam[eron] was going to focus on in his speech tomorrow, Robbo replied:

“Well, the Prime Minister will once again want to focus on the big issue that George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor was talking about..the deficit…”

And advertising-funded gossip-monger…

ITV’s Tom Bradby has called George Osborne “the Chancellor”.

Why else would Tories propagandists have the balls to start publishing this kind of guff.

‘We’re all in this together,’ said the heir to the Osborne baronetcy of Ballentaylor in his party conference speech – a previously undeclared hankering for inclusion (AKA ivory tower buck-passing). It’s just some of us are deeper in than others.

…The Sun was one of the principal cheerleaders and propagandists for it.

See also, courtesy of Alex Ross.

Here’s a tip for budding comedy critics out there. Before writing an article accusing a comedian of arguing ‘that racists have a point’, of having a ‘purported hatred of Pakistanis’, of supporting ‘the BNP’s policy to deport all black people from the UK’, and leaving it at that with no context, might I suggest you actually go and see that comedian’s show first. Before, you know, cherry-picking quotes and portraying him as something he isn’t (that is, a racist bigot).

Let’s be clear. Richard Herring’s latest stand-up show, Hitler Moustache, is a passionate and heart-felt attack on racism. How do I know?

Because last night, I went to see the show.

If the spitting fury Herring shows towards those who failed to vote in the recent European elections, and so allowed two BNP members to get elected (‘that’s not a joke, by the way’ he growled), isn’t genuine then Herring is as good an actor as he is a comedian.

Yes, the show’s poster gives pause and provokes an instinctive liberal recoil. Yes, in the show he toys with issues of racism to the point where the audience holds its breath. He uses the word ‘paki’ over and over again and you wonder and worry where he’s going with it. But. But. When you get there and you see what he’s doing, it’s immensely satisfying (and reassuring) and, yes, funny.

In the end, the show is a scabrous, uplifting, profane, inspiring, and fantastically funny plea for tolerance and a love letter to common humanity and compassion. Take out the swearing and Herring could do this show at schools and what a huge service that would be.

Any comedy critic worth the title, particularly one working for the Guardian, would have done the (not at all onerous) spadework to find this out. As Herring himself says, of Guardian critic Brian Logan’s article: ‘It’s either malicious or incompetent as far as I can see neither of which reflects very well on him as a critic’.

Update 31/7: Herring gets a right of reply in the Guardian. Logan, in hole, continues to dig.

Interminable.

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.