I shall blog about last night’s Panorama shortly. But first I should like to draw attention to STV’s disgraceful Stephen Daisley, who I last mentioned joining in a mainstream media Twitter hatefest against me for revealing that MI5 were targeted on the SNP.
Well Daisley has been at it again, this time with a seriously nasty tweet about the mysterious murder of Hilda Murrell. It was sent to Murdoch shill David Aaronovitch, to whom Daisley tweeted
Yep. “Hilda Murrell. How the State silences dissent one elderly rose grower at a time.”
Whatever you believe about the Murrell murder, it is not something Daisley – a broadcast journalist – should be making jokes about. It is also fascinating that both Daisley’s tweet about me and his tweet about Hilda Murrell were both in defence of the security services and both sent to David Aaronovitch.
Aaronovitch found the Murrell joke so hilarious that he retweeted it at 3am on 25 September. Which is a pity for Daisley, as he apparently woke up, remembered he was a broadcast journalist, and deleted it. At any rate the retweet is on Aaronovitch’s twitter stream but the original not on Daisley’s.
It is however instructive to look at Daisley’s twitter stream. It is amazing to me that a supposed “journalist” working for a broadcaster would be so completely open about their anti-SNP, unionist, anti-Corbyn and far right agenda. Daisley is only very small beer, a stinking, sweating foot-soldier of the forces of reaction. But if you can stand it, the way the unionist establishment interacts and thinks is revealed very clearly from a study of his twitter feed. Messages are exchanged with Aaronovitch of Murdoch, Nick Cohen of the Guardian, with John McTernan of the Blairites and with J K Rowling of the 1%, and a great many others. The SNP and Corbyn are smugly derided by all. These well-paid state supporters live in a cosy Panglossian paradise and have contempt for anyone who is not “in”.
The other thing that comes out of the feed is this peculiar obsession with Israel. Of all the media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn’s “anti-Semitic connections”, Daisley’s attack is the most astonishing. STV should be deeply ashamed to carry this; it breaks every rule of good journalism. It is a bizarre hotch-potch of mostly deliberate lies and misrepresentation, and crucially there has not been a single attempt to contact any of the people named to obtain their side of the story.
To tackle just two of about sixty wild inaccuracies. Daisley accused Raed Saleh of a “blood libel” which Saleh has repeatedly denounced and stated that he has never said, and which a British court found there was no evidence that Saleh has ever said. Nonetheless Daisley regurgitates this Israeli propaganda.
Daisley quotes Paul Flynn as questioning the loyalties of Matthew Gould, appointed as British Ambassador to Israel. But this is gross misrepresentation by Daisley. What Flynn queried was Gould’s avowal that he was a “committed Zionist”, not his ethnicity. Would we appoint an Ambassador to Cuba who declared himself an avowed communist?
Daisley also perniciously omits what Flynn had said at the start of his remarks which sets the entire context, which was that Gould had held eight secret meetings with Liam Fox and Adam Werritty, of which the FCO refuses to disclose the subjects discussed and who else was present. Daisley knows that, and his censorship of that context is inexcusable as it completely distorts what Flynn was saying in order to portray Flynn as an anti-Semite.
The last few paragraphs of this attack on Corbyn beggar belief in their lack of balance. There is no nod whatsoever to the plight of the Palestinians, the illegality of the Israeli settlements he names, or the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The Israeli government itself would not dare publish anything so unsubtle and totally one sided. That STV should do this, in the context of an attack on Jeremy Corbyn, is absolutely incredible.
I know Daisley is a very, very insignificant figure. But the humdrum media enforcers of the establishment are vital to their ability to keep the 99% working for the 1%. That such a hate-filled and crazed right-winger as Daisley should be employed by mainstream broadcast media says a huge amount about the society we live in.
UPDATE HOW THE UNIONIST ESTABLISHMENT WORKS
As if to confirm the thesis outlined below, at 10.57am today, Duncan Hothersall, Labour’s New Media Czar in Scotland, retweeted Stephen Daisley’s approving tweet of an extract from Tory Secretary of State David Mundell’s Tory Conference Speech:
Good Stat: More people voted No in Indyref than have ever voted for any party in any election in Scottish history.
The tweet carried the Conservative Party Conference hashtag, so there is no doubt Red Tory Hothersall knew he was spreading Blue Tory Propaganda. The seamless web of Red and Blue Tories and mainstream media functions as usual. It is delightful to be proved so completely right so quickly:
Craig Murray
07/10/2015 9:52am
The death of Hilda Murrell was a vicious and grisly murder, which remains unsolved, and she still has family living. It is in the worst of taste to jeer on Twitter about it, no matter what the truth of the matter is.
Kind regards,
John
More on Daisley.
http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/stephen-daisley-and-israel.html
Stephen who?
Thanks for providing this warning account of just another bad fascist word smith, it will go on to the list of others to be lined up to feed the pigs when the time comes, the only animal I know that eats everything.
this individual cog in the fascist machine seem to be feeding the likes of Aaranovich and Phillips with the usual phlegms of hatred, so they can keep up their hate filled flailing, throwing around their weak accusations of antisemitism to all and sundry that dares to question the Zionist resolve in Palestine.
By your article here, SD will get more infamy and hopefully someone will put up a picture of him, just in case he should show up at Brian’s Dojo…:)
Best not get into Tweet.
I don’t have a TV, but I would to do what I can to get rid of this bunch and try to get a encourage a decent media.
Is there a website where I can find who advertises on STV? I want to make sure that I am at no time giving my custom to them.
Another hack that Daisley is in regular contact is John Rentoul, who fits your description of “smug, well-paid” and is contemptuous of those outside their cosy coterie, such as socialists and the SNP.
I dabbled with Twitter in 2012/13 and to be fair it did widen my horizons. I found blogs like yours Craig via Twitter.
But I also realized that it is as pernicious as most of the mainstream media is. The best policy is to simply stop looking at it. That is the policy that I adopt with the whole of the mainstream media now, Twitter included. This is particularly true of television. Why do you think that all governments, of whichever flavour, have always pushed tv at you? “That’s right folks, don’t touch that dial”.
It is amazingly liberating when you do disconnect from their spew. Your mind is not filled with their ugly half truths and outright lies. You get a much better perspective from a distance.
And you are not “out of the loop” in any way if you use your common sense. There are plenty of independent clear thinkers, like Craig usually is, who will do the sifting for you. All power to the independents. Once they join the political/media club, whichever club, then they are not independent any more, and we readers are so much the worse off for it. “I wouldn’t join any club that would have me as a member”
A lot of poisoning of the well within the media, but focusing specifically on Mr Daisley, who I have come across on twitter, perhaps a hypothetical question for musing on our attitudes to nations and tribes, real or potential (genuinely not begging the question at the end by the way)
You go to school at age 5 and discover that all the other kids have football teams. They’ve grouped themselves based on the team they support, so there are little gangs. You, on the other hand, aren’t accepted by anyone because you don’t have a team. You’re on your own. You go home and say to your dad. Dad, which team do I support? Dad says ‘don’t get into that tribalism laddy, be yourself and maybe when you’re older you can choose a team for yourself, but not because you want to fit in’. You try but you just don’t fit in at school and it makes you lonely, so you choose Rangers and now, after a few rites of passage and tests on your knowledge to prove your commitment, you become one of the Rangers gang. One day, you get attacked by some of the Celtic supporting kids. You go home to your dad crying saying ‘they hate me because I’m a prod. I was beaten up because I’m Protestant.’ Your dad is puzzled. But I’m Jewish, and you? you’ve not been in a synagogue in your life.
Question is: do you choose Rangers, another team, or no team?
Crisiscult
An important question. To which the answer is to end segregated education in Scotland.
Craig, Mainstream Media is a term past its sell-by date. Corporate Media is a better description and also sets Daisley’s employment in a more comprehensible context.
I will be very interested to see what your impression was re last nights PANORAMA I was pretty shocked by how chaotic its presentation was. Was barely worth watching to the end and very very many viewers did the “bye bye” well before the end. I hope no female undercover cops or BBC reporters got pregant during its production.
‘That such a hate-filled and crazed right-winger as Daisley should be employed by mainstream broadcast media says a huge amount about the society we live in.’
Craig- I followed the link to Daisley’s twitter stream given above and noticed that yesterday that you and Daisley were apparently singing from the same hymn sheet in disapproval of May’s immigration speech- Daisley retweeted Alex Massies’ tweet which referred to her speech as ‘tawdry’ and ‘contemptible’
Smug Scottish Tory hacks of the world unite with cybernat antiwar antizionist hero shock horror!
May I again take the opportunity to suggest greater Twitter activity Craig? Of course if you follow the wrong people it can be depressing and aggravating, but if you follow the right people it can be interesting and useful. And of course tweeting yourself is an opportunity to spread reasonable ideas. Worth dipping your toe in a bit more I would say.
Hi Craig. I enjoy your posts. I know my story isn’t exactly on topic, but my thinking re Daisley is that he is the kid who has chosen (or been told to choose) Israel in this scenario and not Scotland. Personally, I was the kid who chose neither. Paradoxically, that means I can support both (if that makes any sense).
As a coda, I looked at the scotgoespop blog text and was shocked to see the perceptions on Israel v Lebanon 2006. I was there at the time, and although that doesn’t mean I’m the source of all knowledge of what went on, I can definitely say that people seem to have chosen their sides based on the tribe or team they want to be in rather than on empirical data and a philosophical answer to the question: what is blame/fault, what is justice, what is the value of a human? Israel’s response to ‘fault’ – was it appropriate? Would it be an oversimplification to look at the death and destruction tally to guide us to an answer? Anyway, that’s a conversation I missed on another blog!
Cheers.
“Would we appoint an ambassador to Cuba who declared himself an avowed communist?”
No because that is not the way it works. The way it works is to appoint Jewish ambassadors to Israel from the UK, US and Canada to silence any real objective comment the year Netanyahu bombed and killed thousands of civilians in his lates genocide. Aaronovitch, and his master, would both approve of those appointments.
As to Hilda Murrell, many years ago I read Judith Cook’s book on the subject. What convinced me that it was the spooks in a burglary that allegedly went wrong was, if I recall, they tried to fit somebody up for it with learning difficulties. Every country in the world – and I get sick of repeating this – would be better off without their spooks.
Michael Mansfield believes the case of Hilda Murrell needs reopening. About as much chance as getting an Inquiry into Lockerbie. Or an inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly.
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/mar/20/who-killed-hilda-murrell
I have been trying to post the above comment for more than half an hour. When I went to copy the Michael Mansfield link I was frozen out on Firefox. I am even now. Funny I was writing about the spooks at the time.
Hansard, 19/12/1984
Mr Tam Dalyell (MP for Linlithgow)
The story that I am told is as follows. In the early spring, the Prime Minister and Ministers close to her were getting very nervy about incessant questioning on the Belgrano in general and about signals, intercepted signals, and GCHQ at Cheltenham, which would call into question their truthfulness to the House, in particular. This was pre-Ponting. There were a number of suspicions about people dating from 19 and 20 December 1983, when I tabled questions to the Prime Minister about GCHQ Cheltenham, which are recorded in the Order Paper and Hansard.
Because Commander Robert Green was known to be unhappy about certain aspects of the Falklands war and was known to have wanted to leave the Navy, he came under a cloud of suspicion, wrongly, to the best of my knowledge, but certainly under a cloud of suspicion. It was thought that he might have copies of documents and raw signals that incriminated the Prime Minister, some of the originals of which had been destroyed on instructions from a very high level by the intelligence services.
Just as those of us who have had certain documents have taken the precaution of keeping them in friends’ or relatives’ houses while we have them, so it was thought that some of Rob Green’s supposed records might be in the home of the aunt to whom he was close.
I suppose—I say this in the presence of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown), who I hope will have the opportunity of contributing to the debate—that one cannot complain that the suspicion fell on Rob Green, as he was one of the officers at the very heart of the Falklands operation. He was one of the very few to have left the service, although I understand that he had decided to go before the Falklands crisis blew up.
I am also given to understand—and I am happy to accept it—that there was no premeditated intention of doing away with Miss Murrell—only a search of her house when she was out. Alas, on Wednesday 21 March she returned unexpectedly to change. The intruders either arrived while she was dressing or were disturbed by her. Being a lady of courage and spunk, often found in that generation of women, Miss Murrell fought them. They too had to fight. They injured her and panicked.
I am informed that the intruders were not after money or nuclear information but were checking the house to see 463 if there were any Belgrano-related documents of Commander Green in the home of his aunt. Things went disastrously wrong. They had no intention of injuring, let alone killing, a 78-year-old ex-rose grower. Yet, being the lady she was and in her home, Hilda Murrell fought and was severely injured. She was then killed or left to die from hypothermia, and the cover-up had to begin, because I am informed that the searchers were men of the British intelligence.
If Ministers cannot solemnly deny my belief about the participation of intelligence, on whose ministerial authority, if any, did the search of Miss Murrell’s home take place? Was there clearance, or was this the intelligence services “doing their own thing”? Did they do it on political orders, and if so, on whose orders? Some of us have had increasing misgivings about the role of the intelligence services in this country—again I say this in the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover—in connection with the miners’ strike.
It is high time that there was a Select Committee of Privy Councillors to keep an eye on our intelligence services. Such a Select Committee would be a more appropriate forum than a Consolidated Fund debate, but until that happens, and given my opinion of present senior Ministers—un-British in their behaviour compared with Ministers of previous Governments — I have no alternative but to ask these questions under the cloak of parliamentary privilege, none of the situations for which the privileges of the House of Commons exist.
I ought to add that Commander Rob Green was, I am told, the person who physically sent the signal to Conqueror that sank the Belgrano. I understand from his friends that he was also responsible for passing signals from Endurance which had shown beyond any reasonable doubt that an invasion of the Falklands was likely to happen.
Rob Green considered the Falklands to be an unnecessary war, and the Belgrano sinking appalled him—albeit he judged it to be an unfortunate necessity—as it did some other senior officers of the senior service. He took early retirement after 20 years in the Navy and left. From this Prime Minister and her colleagues he would come under suspicion. It is from the head of our security services that Parliament should be demanding an explanation, because of one thing I am certain—that there are persons in Westminster and Whitehall who know a great deal more about the violent death of Miss Hilda Murrell than they have so far been prepared to divulge.
Supported by Paddy Ashdown MP and Clive Soley MP.
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/dec/19/miss-hilda-murrell-murder
Kind regards,
John
Hilda Murrell’s nephew is Robert Green. He and his wife Kate were over from NZ some while back for the launch of his book A Thorn in Their Side. I have a copy.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thorn-Their-Side-Threatened-Murdered/dp/1782194282
He was a RN Commander so no ‘conspiraloon’.
A Thorn in Their Side
The Hilda Murrell murder
Robert Green with Kate Dewes
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster62/lob62-murrell-murder.pdf
Good Stat: More people voted No in Indyref than have ever voted for any party in any election in Scottish history.
Think I’ve already mentioned this, but more people voted Yes than for any party in Scottish election history, too. Conclusion: the issue interested more people than any party in Scottish election history has.
Go figure. Shouldn’t take anyone long.
Thanks for trawling this up John S.D., it does not leave much to guess who’s done the job. Its amazing what our intelligence services get away with.
Ref Aaronovitch
I heard him on LBC earlier rubbishing the testimonies of those who say they were abused by the powerful and casting aspersions on the credibility of those who believe what is being alleged.
I did not hear Exaro’s Mark Watts who apparently preceded Aa.
https://twitter.com/markwatts_1
https://twitter.com/DAaronovitch/status/651667074729803776
Nor did I see Panorama but will watch it on IPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06h7jbl
This is Chief Constable Simon Bailey on Radio 4 Today. He oversees the inquiries.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p034l2pg
“Good Stat: More people voted No in Indyref than have ever voted for any party in any election in Scottish history”
The problem is not the stat itself, which has been kicking around for a while, but calling it a good stat. It isn’t, it’s a pretty meaningless stat, because the same can also be said of the Yes vote. Unlike other elections there were only two choices in the referendum. With a decent turnout that stat was guaranteed before a vote was cast.
Oh dear! The man of my dreams. Not.
http://i4.dailyrecord.co.uk/incoming/article5600219.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/JS62292593.jpg
Stephen Daisley: I have no idea how I am going to vote, head and heart will compete in very election, but now history is calling too http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/stephen-daisley-no-idea-how-5599700
29.4.15
More important to figure how murdered opponents of nuclear weapons like Hilda and SNP leader Willie McRae.
Was it all part of a security service plot to make the Soviets think that the USA-UK were planning to use them in a non-nuclear conclusion to the Cold War when a non-nuclear one was in the works?
And did Mathew Gould provoke those implicated in Operation Crevice to carry out 7/7?
Sorry for using how instead of who in the first sentence, and nuclear conclusion in the second.
Lost completely an earlier post which I had the greatest problem in writing.
This site is apparently invested by spooks.
We need our own version of “neighbourhood watch” to protect us from our own government.
You can say that again, Robert, as I am unable to get any attorney to prosecute a case against our spooks for killing leaker John P Wheeler.
Their refusal is because since I have survived their attempts to kill me, or to set me up as part of the plot which killed Wheeler, I have no case!
Was it all part of a security service plot….etc…
A rare shot of John E Bartholomew with his accomplice Ernest Wiseman, after their acquittal at the Old Bailey, on charges of selling explosives to Matthew Gould in the course of a secret mission to destabilise Ohio. Both were, of course, Masons.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/08/12/article-2025246-009E6E211000044C-902_468x525.jpg
Those who kill on behalf of the government must realize that the public who feel they are being watched do take steps to leave a “boobytrap” in the event of their murder.
They must surely know that eventually they will be brought before the courts along with their masters.
When you know something is being hatched against you it is time to take action to highlight your concerns in case the evil deed comes into being.
You might still be murdered, however it is possible, and essential, that you leave road signs pointing in their direction of the murderers, in a remote location, just in case.