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Politics

Press versus Politics

Murdoch's papers actually boasted that they could decide elections

What’s happening in Britain today is pretty damn exciting. Bluntly put, politicians have been running scared of Rupert Murdoch for decades. He has been a kingmaker. He owns enough of the media, including dailies and sundays in both the broadsheet and tabloid markets, to influence the entire political agenda, arguably even deciding the outcome of elections.

Politicians have feared him, politicians have tried to appease him. And not just because he could shape the agenda of public debate. He could also use his papers, and the people employed by them, to exert personal pressure. The man who owns the London Times also kept a couple of rottweilers, and had no qualms about using them to intimidate.

The more success he had at pushing politicians around, the softer they went on media regulation and ownership, so giving him more power. His ownership of leading names in all the paper markets was leveraged into a major interest in Sky, the biggest money-earner in UK TV. Money which helped further increase his market dominance and so his ability to push politicians around.

This was never going to end well.

And it looks likely to happen all over again in the US, where his Fox News has helped shift the debate drastically towards the right – and indeed away from debate at all, to a place where actual democratic politics is paralysed by polarisation and shouting. Murdoch is a businessman willing to damage the public cultures of countries within which he operates in order to profit.

What we’re getting to watch here is the worm finally turning. And it’s wonderful to see. Realising that public opinion might for once be on their side, cowed politicians are beginning to get a gleam in their eyes. They are imagining a world where they are not afraid. And they are thrilled by what a better world that could be.

For once, you can sympathise with the politicians. The press must be powerful, it must be free and strong. But dominance by one man and his organisation is every bit as pernicious as dominance by government.

Categories
Politics

The George Michael Revelations

George Michael has claimed on Twitter that Rebekah Brooks told him her paper got celebrity dirt first and foremost from the police. Now it seems investigators want to interview him about this. He’s delighted to help…

I’ve edited his tweets into continuous prose and skipped a couple of remarks on other topics, but that aside these are his words unadulterated. It began on July 7th:

Hey boyz and girls, a message to my English fans in particular. Today is a fantastic day for Britain. Those of you that have wondered why I have had nothing to say this week about Rupert Murdoch, all I can say is that the time will come.

But this much is worth saying now. Rebekah Brooks sat two feet from me in my own home and told me that it was never the public that came to them with information on celebrities, and that the Police always got there first. I think that’s enough to be going on with.

Don’t ask me how she got there. Believe me I didn’t invite her.

Rebekah, glad to help 🙂 How does it feel?

By the way, the things I have to say on the NOTW’s corruption of the British justice system are by way of a public warning. These beliefs are in no way an excuse for any of my behaviour in recent times. I was happy to do my time, because I was so ashamed. But I believe every individual, whether privileged or the average citizen, deserves the law. And many of us rich or poor have been denied it by News International. For many, many years. Like I said, today is a FANTASTIC day for Britain. XXX

You gotta have faith in Karma. Today it’s very real. And I hope the families of Milly Dowler and all the others who died Get way more than an apology. God bless them x

It continued Sunday evening:

Good evening everyone……still basking in the fire that’s been lit under News International….very tempted to go out and buy the NOTW so I could put it to good use, but I’m pretty sure it would leave ink on my backside! BOOBOOM!

One thing puzzles me, why is nobody talking to or about Sir Ian Blair? The man was obsessed with celebrity scandals. And he was in charge at the time that the so called ‘list of victims’ was discovered along with the names of the Royals hacked. Why has he disappeared into thin air? Isn’t it possible that he had something to do with the decision NOT TO INFORM the hundreds (thousands?) of citizens of the danger? And we all remember his economy with the truth when it came to the poor Brazilian man who died on the tube post 9/11… Just a thought you understand. But the implausible becomes more plausible hour by hour as this all plays out. I just want to know… Why did the Metropolitan Police choose to hold on to the list for MORE THAN THREE YEARS?

And today, it reaches the dramatic climax:

So sorry to bore those of you who live outside of the UK, but the phone hacking scandal is so important to the future of Britain. Ed Milliband doing a great job at the moment on TV, he can see that Cameron’s relationship with Coulson and Brooks could actually threaten his position as Prime Minister. And in doing so he keeps mentioning JOHNATHON REES ! Finally !!! Rees is the ex-jailbird hired after his release by Andy Coulson when he was still working at the NOTW, paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in return for private information, and perhaps most importantly HACKED INTO COMPUTERS all the time. The two photographers who sat outside my house in their cars night after night for several years were regularly seen with computers open on their laps. I presumed for years that I was under surveilance. In fact, one night in particular, I strolled over the road to one of them and tapped on his window….. 🙂 ‘I hope you like my taste in men.’

So you see people, in  years it’s gone way further than phone hacking… Google JOHNATHAN REES, particularly the Guardian’s articles. The Guardian are the true heroes in all of this. No question. Respect 🙂

[Tweet from a] Daryl Photoshop @GeorgeMichael: This article?

Yes daryl but there are “related articles” about him in the Guardian that tell you about the computer hacking. This thing is going to have legs, people. And not the pretty kind. 🙂

Just spoke to my lawyer…. apparently they want to interview me about my comments on Rebekah Brooks here on Twitter. Like I said, glad to help… 🙂 I have way more to tell the police than I can tweet to you here…

Unfortunately, the Weeting Enquiry doesn’t cover those years after Johnathan Rees was employed by Andy Coulson and the computer hacking began. From a personal point of view, those are the details I’m interested in. Not that any of it is likely to surprise me. From the very beginning of my self made introduction to the police and the crown prosecution service, my main outrage was not for me, it was that I had been as naive as most of us who find ourselves dealing with the justice system for the first time… I really thought the law was the law.

Don’t get me wrong, I met (a lot !) of perfectly decent policemen and women in my darkest, most shameful hours, but I knew that the press would get to my house before I did. On every occasion, some little creep in that police station would have called the press, cap in hand, and made a nice little wad of cash. I just became resigned to it. Perks of the job in the Met.

But it was the first court trial that blew my mind. Right now I am trying to get together transcripts and other information. Not because it will make any difference to me. It won’t. In fact I can safely say that I am one of the few people amongst the thousands of News International’s targets to have genuinely benefitted from Murdoch’s attempts to destroy me. No, if I decide to say anything about how my first conviction came about, besides the fact that I was an idiot, it will be because I love my country, and I believe its judicial system MUST be trustworthy. And I’ll leave it at that for now. Have work to do for my lovelies.

Sorry, one last thing, I am NOT trying to exonerate myself of anything, I did something bad and got my Karmuppance, as i like to think of it. Its just that the sequence of events between my being arrested and finally convicted for sleeping pills and exhaustion seemed extremely… Well, let’s just call it… illegal. I was going to say odd, but sod it, they seemed at the very least, outside of normal legal procedure 🙂

These are only my suspicions, but I think that if they hold water, then it’s very important that they come to light for everyone’s sake. And now, I REALLY have to go to work. Thanks for listening to me rambling on boyz n girls xxx

“I have way more to tell the police than I can tweet to you here.” Oh this is fun.

Categories
Politics

Beginning Of The End Of An Empire?

Detail from photographic portrait of Charles D...

Like many others, I bought the News Of The World for the last time today. Like many others, I also bought it for the first time today. Morbid curiosity. Of course this issue is hardly representative. It’s devoted to showing what a loss it is to the news publishing world.

To this end they reprint their very first front page from 1843. It sets out the paper’s stall in prose which, if you didn’t know was the real thing, you’d take for a parody of long-winded Victorian pomposity:

The general utility of all classes is the idea with which this paper originated. To give to the poorer classes of society a paper which would suit their means, and to the middle, as well as the rich, a journal, which from its immense circulation, should command their attention, have been the influencing motives that have caused the appearance of “NEWS OF THE WORLD”. We shall make no apologies for these motives, because, we conceive, that in their accomplishment we shall attain an end, that in the present state of England is not only desirable, but absolutely necessary. Journalism for the rich man, and journalism for the poor, has up to this time, been so broadly and distinctly marked, as the manners, the dress, and the habitations of the rich, are from the customs, the squalor, and the dens of the poor.

Can’t seem to decide there whether the poor are objects of pity or their market. Maybe the adverts said “Read it in the comfort of your own hovel!” And what was, with all of those, freaking, commas?

It carries on in this vein for – Christ – over three thousand constipated words. You couldn’t make it up. Hell, Dickens would have had trouble making it up. All reprinting this seems to establish is that the News Of the World was every bit as much a piece of unbearable crap 168 years ago as it was, for the last time, today.

Though presumably it was at least less criminal.

Speaking of which, Murdoch may be in even more trouble than previously thought. As the Telegraph points out, his News International is a US-based corporation, and the US has a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) outlawing bribery payments abroad. If found guilty of making payments to British police, News International may be facing fines of hundreds of millions of dollars.

It will be interesting to see how that gets reported on Fox News.

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Technology

First Impressions of Google+

After using Google+ for a couple of days, it becomes clear that this is far more than a mere carbon copy of Facebook.

It also rips off Twitter, not to mention Diaspora.

To put it more positively, Google have clearly looked long and hard at what social networking does and why it caught on in the way it did. They’ve attempted to combine the best features of both Facebook and Twitter into one product.

The base is very much like an improved version of Facebook with a more open, airy look and no hint of anything that might be construed as fine print.

The differences begin with how people connect. While Facebook is all about equal two-way relationships confirmed by both parties, in Google+ you can follow anyone and read what they share – as long that is as they’re sharing it with the public. In this way it is almost exactly like Twitter.

From there though the user has the option of allowing you into a more intimate ‘Circle’. This is exactly the same idea as ‘Aspects’ in Diaspora. You can make separate circles for work colleagues, family, clients, etc. So you can decide exactly who gets to see the picture of you drinking beer, and who gets to see the picture of you drinking beer, naked, with your swastika tattoo showing.

Complicated? Well, any social networking system is. Even something as apparently straightforward as Twitter quickly gets confusing in use, as you try to figure out the consequences of one ill-judged tweet being retweeted by two or three people. (One interesting aspect of Google+ is that you can mark things as non-shareable, which is very reassuring.) It is however a fundamentally more simple model than that of Facebook.

Does it add anything new to social networking? Facebook and Twitter are distinctly different, and it would be nice to see a third innovative approach. But while it may be a little to early to say – both the others developed in unpredicted ways and Google+ may yet – it really doesn’t seem to. Quite clearly, Google+ is just the main features of Facebook and Twitter combined and cleaned up.

Which is not, to my mind, a good thing. With Google’s wealth and resources behind it, (not to mention the fact that it integrates right in with your Google search results, your Gmail, etc.), it’s really possible that Google+ will take over the markets that these upstarts created. Rather than adding to the possibilities of social networking therefore it may actually reduce them, in the process giving even greater dominance of the Internet to the company that already bestrides it like a colossus.

But even if comes about such dominance is still a long way off, and for now I like the interface and the control, and I like the fact that Facebook has a competitor. I therefore wish Google+ good fortune and success. Just, you know, not too much good fortune and success.

If you’d like an invite to join Google+, or are already there and would like to follow me on it, my address is: Richard.Chapman@Gmail.com

Categories
Humour Politics

The World’s Greatest Secret

The smile that says “I still have a job”

A secret so shocking that when it’s revealed in a year from now, former staff of the News of the World will turn to Rebekah Brooks and say “Thank you for firing us.”

That’s got to be something pretty bad.

I’m actually worried here, trying to think of something worse than what the NOTW has already done. They bribed the police, for God’s sake. They spied on the grieving families of soldiers and London bombing victims. They interfered with the phone of a child murder-kidnap victim, giving her parents false reason to believe she was still alive.

But this is something they’re ashamed of.

Oh boy.

The fact that it’s not going to be revealed for another year gives it a great Seventh Secret of Fatima vibe, but why is this the case? Most likely, something they were hiding is now bound to come out in the police investigation or the trial. But if it’s bound to, why not reveal it now and end all the wild speculation? Unless of course it’s worse than our wildest speculation.

Which again, would be pretty bad.

More likely, they don’t want to reveal it now because it has a bearing on News International’s most sensitive current business in the UK – their attempted takeover of BSkyB. And as this rests wholly on the question of whether Rupert Murdoch is a fit person to own such a significant portion of the media, it follows logically that the secret is not about the News of the World or even News International, but about Murdoch himself.

What was the NOTW doing with dirt on its owner? Well in the dismissal speech she gave to the workforce, Rebekah Brooks revealed that she herself had been spied on by agents of the News of the World. Merely because she was newsworthy? Well maybe, but I have a suspicion that the operatives who were tasked with the illegal mission decided to get something on their employers too – as insurance against being disowned by them. And it seems reasonable to suppose that if they went after her, they would have gone after her boss too. Those guys got something on Rupert Murdoch.

But what? We already know that Murdoch uses his power as a wealthy media magnate to influence – arguably, to subvert – the democratic process in favour of his still greater wealth. And yet until recently it was assumed that he could still be considered a ‘fit person’ to own UK media. If that doesn’t make you unfit what do you have to do? Have sex with crocodiles, use puppies as toothpaste?

There can only be one thing. Murdoch, like many of his fellow countrymen, is instinctively opposed to the royal family. That his papers have been making them look stupid for decades was no mere commercial tactic but a determined secret campaign.

Murdoch wants a British Republic.

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Cosmography Politics Technology

The Last Bus Has Gone

Come Home Safe

A friend opened the discussion with “Space Shuttle, RIP or good riddance?” Both, I said. It’s sad to see it go, it’s been the workhorse of American space science for decades. But it really should have been gone long, long before this.

As I said in the paper, it was obvious ever since the Columbia disaster that the design was a horrible mess of compromises. NASA had wanted to get people into space for the sake of scientific research, but they couldn’t afford a vehicle. The Defense Department were willing to contribute, but they wanted to put large payloads into orbit. Anyone putting safety first would have said those are two different missions that require two utterly different machines; one big dumb heavy-lifter to fling stuff into orbit, which no person in their right mind would even stand near never mind sit on top of, and one uncompromisingly designed to get people into and back from space safely. But thanks to budgetary pressure, they cobbled it together as one thing. The Space Shuttle was really the first SUV, an overpowered truck with added passenger seats.

If the right decisions had been made after Challenger there need never have been a Columbia disaster. If they had been taken after Columbia, there might be new vehicles in place by now – vehicles that would be both safer and cheaper to run. The original error may have been made by the Reagan administration, but it was compounded by every subsequent one. To the point now that, really for the first time since the Space Age began, Americans can no longer go into orbit – not without the help of the Russians at least.

The Chinese can.

It may be perfectly true that the lunar missions were done for prestige and bragging rights rather than any scientific or economic reason, but they helped the US win a propaganda war. The lack of  a leading role in space exploration makes America look exactly like what it fears itself to be – a power on the wane.

Categories
Politics

The End Of The World (As We Know It)

Rupert Murdoch is a media mogul in the original sense of the word. He’s not a proprietor so much as he’s an emperor. In order to protect his bid to control the extremely lucrative BSkyB he has simply destroyed the jobs of 200 people, the vast majority of whom are of course innocent. Well, innocent of everything except working for the News of the World. They have been sacrificed to protect his image, to make him seem more clean and innocent. It is the act of a despotic autocrat. And surely it is also a titanic misjudgment. Does it really indicate that he should be in control of even more of the UK’s media?

An unfortunate unintended effect of his decision is that we will never get to see what would have happened. Would the readers of the NOTW have rejected their paper, or are they actually happy enough with that sort of behaviour? Would the advertisers have stayed away, or come back after a suitable interval? We’ll never know.

And so I wonder if it was unintended. Perhaps Murdoch pulled the plug before he was pushed. The public didn’t get to see how easy it would be to bring an offending newspaper down these days. In my estimation, how startlingly easy. He probably doesn’t want them to pick that idea up.

Categories
Cosmography Technology

Star Stories – 5

Liveblogging from a show. Not sure about the etiquette of this, but I’m being dreadfully discreet.

Órla McGovern is not an elderly working class Dublin widow with a naughty sense of humour, but she plays one perfectly on stage. Niceol Blue – whom I’ve mentioned before – really is a singer-songwriter born in one of those Bible-belt US States you only run away from. They make an eclectic partnership, and form the core of The Spontaneous Theatre People, a company that devises plays.

The show is about stories. About stories about stories. The actors play storytellers, playing characters. One enchanting tale, told by Zita Monahan, is of a woman who was hairdresser to an international spy. Another was about an unhappy wife who went into space, launched by… But that would give it away.

I’d tell you to come and see it, but it’s a run of one performance. You can catch it though at the Electric Picnic.

In space there’s a spaceship chip shop, that sells spaceship-shaped chips.

Categories
Technology

Facebook and Microsoft?

May I be the first to run around the room with my arms flailing? Facebook may merely be working with Skype to introduce video calling, and Skype may have only been recently bought by Microsoft, but it immediately makes you fear that Microsoft are on the point of buying Facebook. And that would be almost unthinkable. The lumbering old PC monopolist, owning the nimble new social network. The folks at Redmond, with their hands on our personal profiles. Shiver.

Yet… It seems a compelling match. Though not officially on sale yet, the estimated asking price of Facebook is The Largest Number You Can Think Of – a sum which Microsoft just happens to have.

Will they? Would they? They may have to. If Google actually begins to rival Facebook with its Google+ network, it is going to have a fantastically powerful strategic position. And remember, as the main way that the world interacts with the Web and the maker of what is going to become the world’s most popular phone OS, Google has a strategic position already far in advance of anyone.

It’s clear already what they’re planning to do with Google+. They’re going to blend social networking in. They want a person’s online activities, their socializing and their Web searching, to merge casually and seamlessly together. Search for an air fare to Italy, let your friends (or a certain group of friends) see that you’re searching, get their comments and tips. It’s amusing that just after all the browser-makers introduced an “In Private” feature so that you could explicitly search without being seen, Google realised that an “In Public” option would be even better.

This will work. People will like their social networking being blended into their general online activities. It will make using the Web as a whole a much more social thing, a lot more like being with people. It will be great and Google will become even more fantastically powerful.

So if Microsoft want to stay in the game, they need Facebook. The chances of them successfully introducing their own social network system seem poor. There’s really just one question. If Facebook becomes a property of Microsoft, will it instantly become uncool? It seems likely that being owned by Mr. Fox contributed to the demise of MySpace, possibly a similar effect could strike down Facebook. Especially if Google are successful in selling Google+ as the cooler alternative. I’m not sure. Facebook is so big now that it seems almost unimaginable that it could falter. And yet, anything can happen on the Web.

Then again, Microsoft could actually improve Facebook’s image. MS is not exactly the world’s most trusted and loved company, but it is at least known to be businesslike. Facebook is so good at giving the impression of being fundamentally unreliable that Microsoft could actually make it seem a lot more trustworthy.

What’s more, if MS keeps blundering around with the sense of direction it’s displaying right now, if Apple and Google keep running rings around them like this, it’ll soon be able to portray itself as the loveable underdog.

As I say, anything.

Categories
Cosmography

Galway’s Other Arts Festival

There’s a TV ad running for the Galway Arts Festival. I don’t recall its wording exactly, but I’d almost swear it was something like “for all your arts and culture needs”. I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll say it again, the Festival has become too commercial.

There have been a number of attempts to get back to its roots, though generally they come from outside the organisation. Project ’06 showed that the community spirit was still there, but it was never intended to compete. More has been achieved perhaps by starting other, more focused festivals at less coveted points on the calendar. Most successful of these would probably be the Galway Theatre Festival, but we are certainly not short of small interesting celebrations.

Some though still go for the big one. The Colours Fringe Festival is attempting the whole shooting match – a festival of theatre and film and music and literature and the visual arts. Yes it’s small and maybe a little disorganised, most of the acts involved are local, some aren’t even professionals. But that’s exactly what the Galway Arts Festival was like, back when it was cute and loveable.

I should have written about this sooner, it’s running right now. In particular I’m going to blatantly plug some friends of mine, the Spontaneous Theatre People, who are doing an hour-long show called “Star Stories – 5” at 3:00 tomorrow afternoon in Kelly’s on Bridge Street, but there’s a full calendar of events over the next two days.

Details at: http://coloursfringe.blogspot.com/