The continuing hubris of the News International lot is really quite astonishing. These people do not seem to have realised they no longer have the world in their pocket. I thought this one really took the biscuit; Rebekah Brooks’ lawyer complains that the police have damaged her reputation. To which the reply is, what reputation?
When you consider how Hayman, Coulson and Brooks conspired to trash the reputation of newly murdered Jean Charles De Menezes by publishing deliberate lies about him, that is sick. Even more sick when you consider that Cressida Dick, who orchestrated Menezes’ murder, is now in charge of the anti-terrorist squad as a result of all the resignations.
It is particularly fascinating that the squad of police in direct charge of pumping out years of lies to bolster the “War on Terror”, in close collusion with Brooks and Coulson, was put in charge of the investigation into those two. I have yet to see a convincing explanation of why the News of the World investigation was given to the anti-terrorist squad, as opposed to any of the Met’s many thousands of other detectives. Was this Ian Blair keeping it in politicially safe hands who would not progress it? Almost certainly yes, I would say.
The most obnoxious policeman of all time has not yet come under the spotlight in all this. He will.
4:35:
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‘Nobody’s kept me in the dark!’
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— Keith Rupert Murdoch, 19 July 2011.
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@Jonangus, @Angry, sadly I can’t take credit. It was one of the comments that flew past in my tweet stream. Twitter can be v entertaining on these occasions.
Who’s this rambling idiot who addresses the principal accused as ‘Mr Rupert’? Has effect of propping Keith into sudden wakefulness.
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“Who’s this rambling idiot who addresses the principal accused as ‘Mr Rupert’?”
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I know. I thought Mr Rupert looked doddery but this guy looks like he’s auditioning for “The Old Senile One” on Last of the Summer Wine.
4:42:
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Subconscious assumption/audacity note:
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Second or third time now Murdoch has used phrases such as ‘We in this country,’ “We . . ‘ etc, as though he’s somehow a Ukanian subject or lives here.
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The explanation? Excusable force of habit. He’s still of the delusion that he owns the country.
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OMG. Keith has now been permitted to launch into a viva voce version of his memoirs.
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Hey, Ref!
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Camera! Action!
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Murdoch has been physically attacked. Nurse wendi lunges forward. Transmission is cut.
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Will James Murdoch be able to regain his cool after the recess?
He was visibly very shocked…
I said on Craig’s newer thread that that was very handy and with all those plods there too????
Replay indicates young protester attempted ‘Pie-Kill’ attack with plate of shaving foam. Nurse Wendi earns her money. Moved with karate-like rapidity. Deflected foam pie into assailant’s face. Presumably trained in unarmed combat. Doubles as bodyguard.
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Chris Bryant says: “Didn’t seem that young to me.’ He should know.
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Bryant says this is a contempt of parliament.
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Attacker deserves a medal.
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Perhaps phone-hack victims can organise a whip-round.
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Note: once he’s removed, requires 10 policemen, it seems, to hold down would-be assailant. Talk about too many cops. Yet more evidence, I suggest, of Yard overmanning & old-fashioned incompetence.
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Hearing resumes: chamber now seems to have been purged of audience. Only Murdoch’s small squad of consilieri — & of course the valiant Nurse Wendi — remain. Symbolically appropriate.
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Compliment from MP Watson to Nurse Wendi as witless Chairman Whittingdale prevents him from putting further questions;
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“Mr Murdoch, your wife has a very good left hook.’
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Just grabbed the sick bag: As Murdoch reads out Matthew Freud’s closing declaration to an angry nation.
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Jonangus your hilarious commentary has relieved several hours of boredom.
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Old geezer now just about able to read out words from consiglieri.
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Whittingdale doffs his forelock and all players leave stage left.
Would you put Nurse Wendi into the Caporegime section or the Soldiers?
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Mafia_family_structure_tree.en.svg/580px-Mafia_family_structure_tree.en.svg.png
@ Requires own category at top of tree. Beside bed. And when circumstances require, of course, in it.
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Second half now commences;
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Enter now infamous snake-headed woman . . .
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After all that excitement, must confess feel trifle fatigued.
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Even the Gorgon of Fortress Wapping now seems — somewhat astonishingly in view of her alleged crimes & jaw-dropping audacity — a species of anti-climax.
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Must sit up straight & pull myself together.
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Highly revealing pleonasm from Brookes. To the point of unwitting self-condemnation:
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She refers in passing to Jonathan Rees’s ‘many illegal offences.’
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*Legal* offences being the ones she can get away with.
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Hearing now hotting up, with well-honed questions from Dr Watson & sharp-witted romantic novelist Louise.
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Not quite quote of the week; that would be impossible. But a small contender:
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‘The Sun is a very clean ship.’
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Cool, calm, plausible, calculating, ruthlessly ambitious… qualities shared in common with many very successful people… and sociopaths.
Were mendacity an Olympic sport, Rebekah Brooks would win the marathon. Not just decades of practice. Her world-class ability to emit lie, after lie, after lie . . . while maintaining an un-flickering straight face forces me to conclude that the top half of her body came into this world complete with built-in botox.
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So this explains what the legions of highly-placed gullible refer to as ‘charm’. Herein lies the true nature of her dazzling corporate utility.
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In 2008 or earlier the government released a video of Luton station car-park taken from CCTV on July 7 2005. They then released another video of Luton station car-park in 2010 during the 7/7 inquest dated 26th June which was the so called dummy run according to the Met. Strangely portions of the video were removed in both instances before public release. The portions removed in fact showed the Jaguar car seen in the foreground of both videos, stop next to the alleged bombers parked cars, this according to a source who has requested anonymity for safety reasons.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql59RPRL4v0
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Despite intensive efforts the owner of the Jaguar has not been identified as a potential witness (or handler?). Do you know who owns this black Jaguar?
Recurring references — now, as in first half of show — to pesky, apparently lie-riddled, bit of paper emanating from Harbottle & Lewis.
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Prompts thoughts, must confess, of Goon Show. And the thought that firm of eminent lawyers in question need to be rebranded forthwith Bluebottle & Lewis. Or Bluebottle & Lies.
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Incidental intelligence confirming God has grim sense of humour:
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Viewers learn in passing that News International’s boss of ‘human resources’ is one Daniel Cloke. Not a betting man, but would seem logical & apt that, within the fort, its personnel department is known as ‘Cloke & Dagger’.
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Shame! Outrageous! Surely not! Mrs Brooks is now complaining that she has been the victim of lies in newspapers. Baffles me how they’re allowed to get away with it.
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Matthew Freud’s headline trick (see above) seems to have worked:
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Humble pie lie, as I’d prefer to call it, kicks off, for example, Peston’s match report.
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This whole rambling sewer comes complete with axe murder, mysterious eve-of-match death. And PR men. In the sewer of contemporary Ukanian kultur, the PR men direct the traffic. Not merely Matthew Fraud. David Cameron only ever proper job? PR man for the tinpot Carlton TV company. His exertions in which role prompted Jeff Randall, onetime editor of Sunday Business, to say:
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‘I wouldn’t trust David Cameron with my daughter’s pocket money.’
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Randall, I note, has since been given his own show on Sky TV.
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‘This was like getting an aging old war criminal before a tribunal at last.’
— former (Nu Labour) Downing Street spin doctor Lance Price.
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“The suggestion is that a cleaner thought it was rubbish and put it in the bin.” Wilson added.
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Good try Wilson but I say ‘bollocks’ – have you ever met a cleaner that found a bag containing a computer, paperwork and a phone throw it in the rubbish bin? No obviously not!
Never had the displeasure of meeting Rebekah Brooks. Now feel that, in order to get just measure of this paranormal phenomenon, I no longer need to.
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One or two cartoonists of late been portraying Brooks & her egregious mane as a version of the fly-blown lion in the Wizard of Oz. Having watched her now at length face-on, the actuality seems like some species of android rather than human being in any ordinary sense.
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One who has spent all her adult life generating in tireless fashion costly fictions disseminated as fact, has herself acquired spookily fictional characteristics: a breathing hologram engendered by Rupert Murdoch’s sprawling morphic field of threats & lies — first granted land rights by Margaret Thatcher.
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Brooks — I intend no hyperbole — seems like some horror film chroma key construction-cum-animatronic that’s somehow smuggled itself into the real world. Were she shorn of her bizarre Gorgon locks would she suddenly lose her powers?
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I ask from a genuine spirit of enquiry.
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Post-match analysis from an expert:
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‘They should all take lessons in cross-examination. They were hopeless! The only one who’d even done his homework was Tom Watson.’
— Geoff Robertson QC.
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