Archive for Peter
When will Mazher Mahmood have the collar of his djhellaba felt?
All the obvious hacking suspects at the now brown-bread Screws have been rounded up, EXCEPT the arch twaddle peddler of them all, the Fake Sheikh, AKA Mazher Mahmood. And yet, today Guy Pelly was given £40,000 by the paper for their criminal hacking of his phone. Pelly was a regular target of Mahmood, who spectacularly failed to nail the young club operator (and Prince William’s friend) in a hopelessly bodged sting in Las Vegas. Other high-profile hacking victims who were targeted by Mahmood include Kieran Fallon – in another failed sting.
For what sinister reason is Mahmood immune to the police’s attention?
Does he know more about their evil deeds than any of the other ‘journalists’ on the defunct rag? It’s unlikely that he’s a member of the same Masonic Lodge, unless the Masons are now recruiting from ethnic minorities.
Why have News International continued to employ him at the Sunday Times? Why did the Leveson Inquiry grant him a non-visible hearing?
Why did the Crown Prosecution service allow the Pakistani cricketers to be tried for a victimless offence and a non-crime which Mahmood had fabricated?
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James Murdoch… disingenuous, or just lying?
Although, as both Murdochs have assured the HoC Culture Committee, the News of the World was a paltry, unimportant adjunct to their mighty media empire. Nevertheless, as James authorised the payment of the thick end of a million quid to Gordon Taylor, he must still have wondered which journalist (among his 50,000 employees) had pursued a (unpublished) story which was costing more than a paltry amount. Or did he simply assume it was the work of former Screws Royal editor, Clive Goodman (the sole ‘rogue reporter’)?
Incredibly, that is what he expected the Commons CMS committee to believe.
If I were them, I’d be feeling deeply insulted.
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Good Luck, Mr Kuttner.
Congratulations to Asst. Dep.Com. Sue Akers for finally feeling the collar of the ring master in the circus of lies and deceit that was the News of the World. We can assume that Ms Akers is not a member of Kuttner’s lodge, which, of course will have made the job easier.
Now it only needs the Fake Sheikh to have the hood of his djellabah grasped for us to call ’HOUSE!’.
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Bye Bye Peta Buscombe – The Scourge of the Screws?
What kind of desperate vanity would have induced anyone to take over from the former incumbent, Sir Christoper “Loose Cannon” Meyer, the thankless task of running the least effective “self-regulatory” body in the country?
Baroness Peta Buscombe was mad to take over the Cup of Hemlock that is the Chair of the Press Complaints Commission, and now she’s paying the price.
She’s cocked up the job from start to finish, been bamboozled by the Screws, sued for libel by a leading media lawyer, made herself look ridiculous and – one good thing – she’s almost certainly brought this useless institution to the point of its overdue execution.
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What the MPs should have asked James Murdoch …..
Mr Murdoch, you have conceded that Gordon Taylor had to be paid because his phone had been hacked by Muclaire on behalf of the News of the World.
Your executives Myler, Crone, Kuttner, Coulson, Hinton all told the CMS committee in 2009 that there had only been one rogue reporter, Clive Goodman – the Royal editor – and continued asserting this, as did you, right up until 2010.
Are you telling us that you and your executives believed that the extensive phone hacking of Gordon Taylor and his assistants by Mulcaire was ordered by Clive Goodman, the one rogue reporter?
And did they (and you) believe that Goodman also instructed Mulcaire to hack into the phones of Skylet Andrew (a footballers’ agent), Simon Hughes, and Max Clifford, all of whom were named as victims of Mulcaire’s hacking when he was convicted in January 2007?
If they didn’t believe this (and they could not possibly have believed it), they all lied to Parliament when they re-asserted their claim that Goodman was the only guilty reporter.
The obfuscation, the hesitation, the avoidance of direct answers, the high pitched protesting whine, as well as the inconsistency of fact when James Murdoch appeared before the committee on Tuesday were all convincing indicators that he too has now lied to parliament.
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Oh Guys! You should’ve got the TestaRossa against the ropes.
Apart from providing Rupert Rumplechops with a PR coup – a piece of reverse spin that his former (?) employee, Andy Coulson might have cooked up (as he did for George Osborne back in 2005) – which showed the world how much his athletic young wife loves a growling old billionaire, the Culture Media Sport Committee’s grilling didn’t produce more than a little warm toast.
Restricted as they were by sub judice topics in the case of Rebekah Testarossa, they might have done better to leave this session until the future, when she would not have been in a position to bat away their questions with another clutch of well-honed lies, the way all her colleagues did in 2009.
They could have asked…..
When, in May 2006, she saw that the News of the World carried a story in which they reproduced a verbatim message left by Prince William on Prince Harry’s voicemail, did she not question to the legality of the means by which the story was found? Or did she just think that Coulson, Thurlbeck and Goodman hade made it up? When she became CEO of News International did she not question News of the World managing editor, Stuart Kuttner about it?
Why was News editor Greg Miskiw sent packing in July 2005, shortly after the Gordon Taylor story went wrong?
Why was Stuart Kuttner sacked in 2009, the day before the Guardian revealed the Taylor pay off.
Why was Tom Crone sacked two weeks ago? (Yes, they asked her but they didn’t challenge the absurdity of her mendacious reply.)
Let us hope that the Metropolitan Police are less lenient in their questioning. At least we know Rebekah’s not a member of the same Lodge as the Senior MET Freemasons – that august charitable organisation still doesn’t allow women members – or does it, and they just haven’t told us?
Watch this trowel.
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‘Er Upstairs
The appearance of senior women police officers on the Wapping scent is already producing masses more than the previous bogus inquiries by the MET. Certainly the male upper echelons of the Metropolitan Police Service have not acquitted themselves well. Possibly because they are greedy and susceptible to bribery (not Andy Hayman, of course), possibly because their private behaviour lays them open to blackmail by News International snoopers, possibly because they are members of the same Lodge as the upper management at News International. Women, in general, are less susceptible, and in any case barred from membership of the Lodge. They probably also have an urge to prove their value and integrity over chauvinistic male colleagues. A female presence at the top of the MPS could be what will eventually make it an effective police force, and corruption free.
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Farewell, Testarossa. You had the fun and now you’ve paid the price.
Now that Rebekah Brooks has walked the Wapping plank, will anyone employ her again? Venal, dishonest bully, who can’t really write a good sentence – what was she doing in the CEO’s job at NI? It’s unlikely she and her husband, Charley Bonker Brooks, former race-horse trainer (manque) former purveyor of women’s underwear and wannabe writer (lots of wanna, not much be) will be able to run the Wapping Jet on his book sales. Charley’s a jolly chap, but he couldn’t write his way out of a gossamer bag.
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I TOLD SKY NEWS LES HINTON WAS IN THE FRAME
In a real time live interview I gave to Sky News at 4:30pm on Friday 8th July, when asked if responsibility for the downfall of the News of the World would reach as far as Rebekah Brooks, I stated my view that it would reach beyond her to Les Hinton, former NI executive chairman (until July 2007) and now boss of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journalm (the Jewel in Rupert Murdoch’s personal crown.)
Over the weekend, this contention has been taken up by The Guardian and the Finanacial Times, and the BBC are looking at it.
I was very unimpressed by Hinton’s video link evidence to the CMS Committee in September 2009. He looked to me very much like a man who was not telling the truth.
I hope shortly to be proved right.
My prediction for the next suspect to be arrested by the police and dragged in for questioning is Stuart Kuttner, managing editor at the News of the World for 22 years, and behind every nefarious and criminal action taken within that depraved and morally bankrupt organisation.
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How many more Screws collars will be felt?
The police seized a reported 11,000 documents from Glenn Mulcaire’s office when they raided it in August 2006. There can be no question that the information held within these documents would have been known by journalists at the paper, as well as management, who paid Mulcaire. This information included details of the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone.
News International have now “admitted” they have had this information for four years (at least five, in fact). I watched Andy Coulson (former editor) Colin Myler (current editor), Stuart Kuttner (managing editor/chief dirty tricks organiser for twenty years and at least 8 editors) and Tom Crone (head legal honcho) of the News of the World tell a parliamentary committee that there was absolutley no further evidence of phone hacking, and that Clive Goodman (jailed Royal claptrapper) was a lone rogue reporter.
They were all lying…..
Here’s how I reported it at the time …
The MPs on the Culture, Media, Sport Committee must have been asking themselves yesterday, what on earth a reasonable person could do when confronted with three hardened, well-rehearsed liars, all desperate to avoid having their collars felt?
Experienced interpreters of body-language can enjoy a revealing session by tuning into the video-archive of yesterday’s oral evidence in front of the CMS Committee in Portcullis House.
Andy Coulson – bullish, assertive, knowing his best defence is attack, with a dash of cheeky chappy charm.
Tom Crone – for once not so sure of his ground, nervously cutting in a little too quickly when little Colin Myler gets it wrong, with a giveaway sheen of sweat on the strong, ruddy features.
Stuart Kuttner – eau de nil, haunted, shaking like an aspen, fiddling, fiddling, picking up his water, putting it down undrunk, rearranging files and pens, moving his large spectacles from side to side – meaning, for those who speak body language, that he is shitting himself; that after an ignominious dismissal by … who? Which Mr Murdoch? … his long, wicked career at the Screws is well and truly on the skids.
Little Colin Myler doesn’t need to lie. He wasn’t there when events at the centre of this enquiry took place. [When he’d arrived, he did arrange a few training sessions in act-cleaning-up for his newsroom hacks. But did Mazhher Mahmood and Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck attend? From the continuing and relentless shoddiness of their output, it seems they were excused – or just weren’t paying attention.]
When Crone, legal boss of News Group is asked about the terms of a pay-off to Glenn Mulcaire, a former investigations contractor who has been imprisoned for carrying out tasks from which his company profited, and he claims he doesn’t know what those terms were (although he’s very sure that Mulcaire did not sign any non-disclosure agreement), you have to conclude either that he is suffering from severe amnesia and should instantly be relieved of his post, or that he is not telling the truth.
He directed the MPs to ask Stuart Kuttner.
When Kuttner told the MPs, confirming that an arrangement had been made with Glenn Mulcaire, he too was utterly unfamiliar with the terms, conditions and size of the pay-off, and that he didn’t know who in an organisation of which he has been Managing Editor for 22 years was responsible for making such arrangements, you have to conclude that he has become insane – for imagining that any rational person would believe him.
When Andy Coulson tells his questioners that he has no recollection whatever of a story, flagged on the front page of an issue of the paper that he’d edited, occupying the whole of Page 7, depicting a verbatim transcript of a message left by one prince on another prince’s voicemail, knowing that not a single person in the Wilson Room in Portcullis House, or viewing the session on Parliament TV, or in the evening news broadcasts would believe him, you a have to conclude that here is a youngish man who sees his whole future in jeopardy if he breaks and admits to a scintilla of knowledge of the phone-hacking that was involved in acquiring the story.
It was very clear that before the three men came in to answer the awkward questions that would be put to them, they had agreed between themselves that they would simply declare either that they didn’t know the answers or that they couldn’t remember the events.
Although this made them look utterly ridiculous, and Tom Crone, as a senior media lawyer, a disgrace to his profession, they knew, if they toughed it out, there was little the MPs could do, for, naturally, there was never a paper trail to confirm the involvement of any of them in the Goodman/Mulcaire case – and short of getting them to submit to US Intelligence gathering techniques on the waterboard, there was nothing more the committee could do to extract the verité.
It was a sad day for British justice and the state of British popular journalism.
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Hello Peter
Listening to you at the Leveson Inquiry today, I thought you might be interested to have a look at ...
@Fleur,
I suspect he still has a job because he knows where the bodies are buried. 
Not much to write home about Neville? 
hi peter,great website. i bought your book news of the world and managed to get hold of CAMERA ASSASSIN 2 ...
they finally caught the little toad if he can lie at a small tribunal he certainly can rely on ...