- FRONT PAGE
-
BLOGS
-
Ross Frenett
: Woolwich Attack: Should We Expect a Violent Response?
-
Theo Randall
: Recipe for the Weekend: Minestrone Primavera
-
Zoe Armstrong
: Five Ways to Fake a Break and Avoid Parenting Burnout
-
Anne Speckhard
: Examining the Woolwich Murder of a British Soldier
-
Jody Thompson
: Polo: It's Not Just for the Posh, and It's a Chukka to Play
-
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
He leans too far to the right to be Labour, and annoys his own backbenchers for implementing policy that aren't traditionally held party beliefs. His record abroad is impressive, but at home, much of the country has taken a dislike to Tony Blair... what you thought I was talking about David Cameron?
Although the first stage of the inquiry was just about to end, Lord Justice Leveson said: 'For me and for the team, however, we have only just started.' The second stage will continue once all police matters have been completed, but a first report will be released before the end of 2012. The rotten apple which dropped from its tree has bounced, rolled and spread its seed across the country to grow forests full of rotten apples.
It lasted little more than two minutes and, like the best News of the World splashes, was executed with brutal finality. Without any warning, we were called from our desks to the centre of the newsroom where Rebekah Brooks was waiting for us with our editor Colin Myler alongside her.
When the News of the World closed down, you'd think after playing a small part in its downfall, I'd be happy.
We're all in this together? Not since Marie Antoinette's infamous "let them eat cake" has a phrase so neatly captured the class divide. For despite what the likes of David Cameron and his erstwhile chum, the former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, might once have thought - we are blatantly not all in this together.
Poor David Cameron, he's not going to live this one down in a hurry, is he? Forget messing up the budget, turning off women voters, strikes across the country and a dismal showing in the local council elections. His greatest embarrassment right now, and if we dare to speculate, for some time in the future, will be his inability to abbreviate his text messages correctly. In quite possibly the highlight so far of the soap opera that is the Leveson Inquiry, ex-News International exec Rebekah Wade outed David Cameron as so far behind the times he needed advice from a newspaper editor to type his texts correctly.
This week we are likely to see yet more drama and revelations in the sage that is the Leveson Inquiry as the prime minister's former spin doctor Andy Coulson and former Sun editor and horse owner Rebekah Brooks take the stand. You may be starting to tire of the blanket coverage but please don't switch off just yet. There are big issues at stake.
In July last year I suggested that the claims made by Rebekah Brooks that she knew nothing of phone hacking under her tenure, if true, suggested she was at best a poor leader, and that if she was indeed neutral in shaping the culture under her at News International, we had to look further up the food chain for those culpable - recalling the old saying, a fish rots from the headhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/alex-jaconelli/a-fish-rots-from-the-head_b_894606.html.
There is a deliciously banal absurdity to the news that Rebekah Brooks, the disgraced tabloid editor at the epicentre of the phone-hacking scandal, was loaned a police horse by the Metropolitan Police.
It's ironic that this week Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times included a supplement listing the 100 best companies to work for. You won't find his company listed, or any other publisher or broadcaster for that matter.
Last July Rebekah Brooks told her assembled staff that "worse revelations are yet to come and you will understand in a year why we closed News Of The World". We haven't had to wait a year and the evidence from the Surrey Police published today by our House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee lays bare the scandal of phone hacking at the paper during the Milly Dowler case.
How different the world looked for the Murdochs last Christmas. The BSkyB decision had just been withdrawn from Vince Cable. It now looked as though their bid would go through on the nod. Once approved this would allow the Murdoch dynasty to straddle Britain's media like a gloating colossus, dwarfing the BBC and all other commercial competitors. Politically they would be untouchable.
Think of the issues that have raised our national hackles in the past few years; oil prices, cash for influence, expenses, bankers' bonuses...for a while we're appalled, outraged, demanding justice, or at the very least all the juicy details. And then? Business as usual. Should we do more or realise that we're a fickle bunch?
Was I the only one who expected to see Frank Pentangeli wheeled out at the Murdoch inquisition yesterday?
At 80-years-old, Rupert Murdoch has had an equally dated approach to public relations throughout the hacking scandal.
Of course Murdoch wasn't the only one who was blind. But for someone who succeeded in the past by being uniquely in touch with popular sentiment, this latest debacle demonstrates yet another source of blindness: success.
