Here’s an odd story….

In the little Indie on 23^rd May 2011, under a spot on their gossip page 15, called “iquotes”, we read that actor Dominic West tells the Sunday Times how he and a friend reacted when the now  Samantha Cameron said she was to marry David, the future Prime Minister. West is quoted as saying ‘We were like: “Why do you want to marry that Tory boy?”.’

I wanted to check the story in the Sunday Times – presumably recent (although, maybe not, if the little ‘i’ is really scratching its arse for tattle) but couldn’t, because I cannot sign up to the News International PAYWALL. Given my current relationship with NI news harlot, the News of the Screws, whose lawyers Messrs Farrer & Co are threatening me with legal action if I don’t apologise to truth-molesting  Mazher Mahmood for damaging his reputation (which I’m not going to), and knowing their methods of information-gathering, I think it would be unfair to give them my  address, email address, mobile telephone number, landline number or bank account  details, because they might be tempted to plunder private data about me – not that they would find anything of interest to the public or even in the public interest, so squeaky clean has my life been.

So I looked elsewhere and I found a piece in the Guardian dated 17^th July, 2008 nearly three years ago…..

‘David Cameron was a couple of years ahead of (Dominic West) at Eton. “I didn’t know him then but I do now,” West said. “I know his wife a bit because my best friend used to be crazy for her. When she wound up marrying Cameron, we were like, ‘Why do you want to be with that fucking Tory boy?’” West now lives just a stone’s throw from the Camerons in west London but claims not to have infiltrated the Notting Hill set. “I must try harder to ingratiate myself with them,” he laughs.’

Odd, don’t you think,  that the Sunday Times should have repeated the story almost verbatim, give or take a “fucking”, three years later, especially when you consider the relationship between the PM and News International’s boss, Rebekah Brooks, who has without any doubt instructed all the editors of newspapers under her control to be very Cameron-positive.

At first sight, most readers might see West’s assessment as a little negative. On the other hand, last year before the election, Andy ‘Soon-to-have-a-Felt-Collar’ Coulson, then (as a result of DC’s distressingly poor judgement) running the Conservative propaganda show, arranged for it to be ‘leaked’ that the lovely Sam Cam had once voted Green, not Tory, thereby immediately improving her profile as a modern independent woman (not the Sloane-Ranging, Tory-loving young Hooray Henrietta the public might have expected DC to marry), thereby giving her and him (as a broad-minded chap who understands that bright young females don’t always vote Tory [bet she does now though]) some useful street-cred. (Coulson performed a similar reverse spin for George Osborne in the Screws five years ago, when they became firm friends).

Andy Coulson may have gone, but his fingerprints linger on, with the help of his old mates at the Sunday Times.

And here’s a side note, Cameron’s claim that the reason he had dinner last Christmas with Rebekah Brooks, who is now clearly seen to have been in charge of what was effectively a criminal organisation in Wapping, was that he was an old school friend of  her husband, Charley Brooks, looks pretty thin.

Brooks was three years older than DC at Eton, and in a different house, thus very unlikely to have had any intercourse with him – other than of a rather beastly nature. And frankly, the ambitious Cameron’s interest in Charley Brooks the race-horse trainer manqué, not to say Ladies’ Underwear merchant ( also manqué), and novelist – most would agree, manqué – would have been non-existent.

But Bonker Brooks has made it to home base with Rebekah the Testarossa, and for DC being on good terms with Ole Rupe is a Number One PR priority – otherwise why would had have taken the absurd risk he did in taking the mendacious Coulson to Downing Street, just to keep Rupe happy?

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Andy Coulson has finally bowed to the inevitable and walked from his job in Downing Street. Mr Cameron’s judgement would have been called into question less if the decision had come from him, before he went to Downing Street.

But what next?

Andy Coulson, called as a witness in the perjury trial of Scottish politician Tommy Sheridan at the end of last year, declared under oath that he had no knowledge of all the phone-hacking that was going on at the News of the World when he was in charge there.

Over the last 18 months, since he blatantly dissembled in front of the Commons Culture Media Sport committee, it has become increasingly unlikely that this is true.

Could another perjury trial now be on the horizon?

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IN the Independent this morning, Stephen Glover (who co-founded the paper in 1986) takes a worryingly soft approach to Rupert Murdoch. He suggests that because the old cobber is now 80 he has become less of a threat to a diverse press in the UK, and anyway, his English newspapers don’t concern him as much as they did 25 years ago – as if he no longer had an agenda in Britain.

But Glover must know that if the Murdoch bid to own all – rather than just 39% – of BSkyB succeeds, it will make a clear and potentially dangerous difference to the channel’s editorial drive. It is patently the case that without a co-owner to balance the Murdochs’ pursuit of their own interests and priorities, they will simply deliver a version of political news and events that matches their aspirations, as they already do in the papers they own.

For instance, when the story of the News of the World’s first phone-hacking pay-off to Gordon Taylor was revealed by the Guardian 18 months ago, Sky News sent a unit to Ludlow to interview me – as an informed  commentator and clearly identifiable critic of Murdoch’s approach to British media – and broadcast the interview live and unedited. It seems inconceivable that a 100% Murdoch-owned Sky News would do the same.

The Times and the Sun, for instance, (unlike the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Mail, and Glover’s own paper, the Independent) seem happily unaware that the Prime Minster may be harbouring in Downing Street a man who was not only party to, and therefore chargeable with criminal offences under the Regulation Of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), for which two of his employees were jailed, but also heard to declare under oath at Tommy Sheridan’s recent perjury trial that he had no knowledge of the illegal activities going on at the News of the World, when he was editor. Very few informed observers believe that this is possible; thus it could be that Andy Coulson could be facing a charge of perjury himself at some future date.

Glover (with either startling naivety or gross disingenuousness) goes on to ask why those who castigate Murdoch don’t do the same to Richard Desmond.

But, of course, they do, so far as there is a comparison to be made between Dirty Dick and the Dirty Digger. Desmond is the worst kind of sleaze merchant to be operating a national newspaper or TV channel, but the possession of low standards of sexual morality and bad taste are lesser crimes than the desire to influence in an utterly undemocratic way the operation of a sovereign government.

Neither Mr Desmond himself, nor any of his senior executives are close personal friends of the Prime Minister, as Murdoch’s Rebekah Brooks is. He doesn’t have a trusted ex-employee installed in an office a few doors down from the PM.  His national newspapers (the Daily Express and the Daily Star, whose Sunday edition employs former criminal and Screws royal reporter, Clive Goodman)  are low-grade, clapped out arse-wipers that carry zero authority. His TV Channel is a despised depository for much of Britain’s worst television. I don’t imagine anyone in Downing Street gives a toss what a Desmond paper says.

It’s hard to guess Glover’s own agenda in writing this piece. Perhaps his paper’s new owner, Alexander Lebedev (also not an ideal candidate for British newspaper ownership) asked him to. Or perhaps he’s not getting on well with Mr L and he’ll pop up in the pages of a Murdoch newspaper one day soon.

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The last time a High Court judge ordered Glenn Mulcaire and the Met to produce disclosures about their part in the Coulson/Screws phone-hacking saga, they were let off the hook when Max Clifford, whose lawyers had asked for them, accepted the tainted Murdoch shilling (and the rest) and dropped his claim.

If his assistant, Nicola Phillips, now suing the Screws for the same thing, sees it through and it is confirmed that Ian Edmondson, senior news editor under Andy Coulson, specifically ordered the targeting of her voice-mail, the Screws and Coulson and, by extension, the Prime Minister will have a lot of egg on their visages. However, the judge is unlikely to award her more than a miserable £20K – £30k for the personal affront of having her voice-mails recorded on the paper’s behalf by Glenn Mulcaire.

But past events suggest that the Screws will make her a much larger offer. We can only hope that she has the principles, the bollocks and enough collateral support to see the case through, because I’m not so sure that George Galloway will when his case reaches this stage.

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 In the furore raging over the Murdochs’ plans to purchase the 61% of the shares in BSkyB that they don’t already own, it isn’t only competing national newspapers who are fearful of the combined might of News International and BSkyB in this country; millions of punters, ordinary Joes, voters like you and me, would see the resulting media conglomerate as deeply damaging to our democracy.
    It’s unhealthy enough that NI should control 37% of national newspaper circulation in this country through the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World. With leading (if mightily slipshod) publishers Harper Collins in its stable, News Corp (the global entity) can call in many favours from writers it has paid handsomely to publish. It can demand of them that its global interests be immune from adverse comment. It already wields considerable influence and earns profits from the 39% of Sky which it currently owns. With the rest of the Sky shares in its bag, the powerful cross-references that will allow between its print, broadcast, American TV and movie property, Fox  and internet media (MySpace), its influence will become almost unchallengeable. 
    And now with unreconstructed ShagRag editor and truth juggler Andy Coulson lurking by the door of the cabinet office, News Corp have their own placeman in  Downing Street with a direct conduit to Rupert Murdoch through his close friend and former boss, the TestaRossa, Rebekah Brooks. The millions (60%) of us who voted for Cameron or Clegg did not have any intention of voting for Murdoch, pere et fils, and we must join the battle to contain, even reduce the extent of the Murdochs’ media reach.
   We can’t sit back and leave it to the unlikely alliance of the Barclay Bros,  Paul Dacre, Trinity-Mirror and the Obserguardian (where are the Indie in all this?) to fight the Murdochs without any help from us.
There’s a lot that the punter in the street and the ordinary Joe like you and me can do.
We can cancel our Sky sub, or refuse to sign up, and learn to live without Champions League Footer or House or Mad Men. If enough do it long enough and determinedly enough, Sky would no longer be able consistently to outbid the BBC and ITV for these properties.
We can stop buying Murdoch ShagRags and buy the Mirror, even, God help us, the Daily Star instead (which, at least, is cheaper). We can swap the Times and Sunday Times to one of the three other high quality broadsheets published in this country (four, if you include the specialist but broad enough FT).

And important or best-selling authors, or their estates,  like Jonathan Franzen, Bernard Cornwell, Michael Crichton, Janet Evanovich, Paul Coelho, Colleen McCollough, Joanne Harris and Frank Delaney should not contract with Harper Collins to publish their work.

A well-supported boycott can and often does work, if enough right-thinking people care.

 For the sake of Freedom of Expression and the right of commentators of differing views to air them, we must support the papers who are lobbying the Government to do whatever it takes to block the Murdochs’ total control of BSkyB.

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