News of the World Hacked to Death

The final issue of News of the World, in a surprising display of humour they covered it with some of the more dubious and exploitative headlines the newspaper has run in the past.

By Elliot Adams

I was going to wait until after reading the News of the World‘s final issue before weighing in on the latest batch of News International’s wrong-doing, very bravely taking shots at the things everyone else already hates. But even without the normal parade of witch-hunts, libel and outing of people’s sex lives the ‘Screws of the World has become famous for – it is junk food news, cheap to produce but devoid of any real content; I just can’t bring myself to do it.

The way NI have been addressing the situation has been reprehensible, and it is this that I want to now gripe on about. Putting aside for a moment allegations about the bribing of police officers and hacking into the private communications of union leaders, victims of terrorist bombings, fallen soldiers and murdered schoolgirls(in one instance leading her parents to believe she was still alive). Admittedly this is a fairly large aside, a fast stream of feculent ordure that threatens to choke News International, and the police, the Prime Minister and the self-regulated free press along with them – it is not called the gutter press for nothing.

There’s been a fervour to the hyperbolic coverage from the NotW‘s contemporaries; some bemoaned ‘The End of the World’ and its passage to the gallows, perhaps feeling that the mob could call for their own sacrifice in time. Others were shouting down the foul recreant with revolutionary zeal, a link Henry Porter made explicit in The Observer:

A lightning revolt with a whiff of the Arab Spring about it … a feeling of liberation at the end of this highly charged week and we can say that our society seems better off: our political system is freer and, I would suggest, a little bit cleaner; relations between the media, politicians and the public have changed for good.

While I agree that politicians have been given a scare with regards to how they cosy up to figures like Murdoch, the current situation is more akin to the Terror in Revolutionary France; conspiracies(both real and imagined) are rife and heads are rolling, but all the wrong ones. (Alongside Clive Goodman)David Cameron’s former director of communications Andy Coulson has been fired, arrested and fired again – but so far he is an exception. Though it has rapidly become apparent that the ‘one rouge reporter’ defence was about as silly as it sounded, executives, managers and editors calling the shots have remained safe while hacks, photographers and office workers at the NotW are put out of work. It seems they are being sacrificed on behalf of a what James Murdoch freely admits was as failure of NI corporate governance.

Murdoch's continued protection of Brooks may be due to dynastic concerns, reputedly his wife and daughter are not fond of her, but she is integral to James Murdoch's work - to turn on her might cause in-fighting.(Image: World Economic Forum)

In a structure based heavily on top-down authority it makes no sense for accountability to stop on the ground floor. Even with those who indulged in phone-hacking, you can’t expect a tabloid hack to have the self-awareness to critique the editorial guidance of his corporate overlords, these are pitiful creatures that think ‘ethics’ is a county just north of London. If they were not so blessed with the complete absence of self-awareness the job’s suicide rate would be atrocious, every day the clattering of keyboards would be punctuated by the sad thud of heads on desks as the pentobarbital takes effect, while James Murdoch whirrs past in a street sweeper keeping the aisles clear of corpses.

Maybe I am being too quick to judge though, Rebekah Brooks claims it is “inconceivable that [she] knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling [actions]allegations” well there you have it, literally incon-fucking-ceivable. There is no way anyone could conceive of a bizarro world where the head of a major newspaper would have any awareness of what was being published in said newspaper or where those stories had come from. Clearly those at the helm of NotW are the victims of some kind of cruel prank where they’ve been tricked into thinking that they were running a newspaper, are they entitled to compensation perhaps?

Likewise Brooks and Coulson are misunderstood on the allegation that they bribed the police for information. Now admittedly they did both inadvertently confess to this in front of a Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee hearing. But when asked if they would do so again Coulson was very clear;

We operate within the code and within the law and if there is a clear public interest then we will.

That’s reassuring, ‘within the law’. Clearly not the law we’ve had for centuries about not making payment to a police officer acting within his duty, but another law – perhaps the one outlawing wearing a suit of armour in the Houses of Parliament. So really News International is a paragon of truth and virtue.

The spontaneous closure of the News of the World was  seen by many as a virtuous move, doing the right thing by falling on their sword, but the cynic in me finds this unlikely. Last week, News Corporation posted a press release announcing a new “managing editor structure” at its newspapers in a move towards integration of daily and Sunday publications. To this end, a group managing editor position was created with responsibility over both The Sun and News of the World and News of the World‘s managing editor Bill Akass was to be moved to a safe regulatory executive position.

We will take a comprehensive look at where there is common ground across our titles and where we should remain unique. Where there is common ground we will find ways of implementing efficiencies to editorial systems and processes and, where appropriate, we will find ways of introducing seven day working.

Clearly News Corporation were already planning on merging their daily and Sunday titles, is it really a stretch to see this as evidence that the death of NotW was also planned before all this kicked off anyway?

I disagree with the notion that NotW was a toxic influence that had to be killed off before it tainted Murdoch’s fitness to takeover BskyB, there’s plenty evidence that another of NI’s rags the Sun is also tainted by the phone-hacking scandal. Even if there wasn’t, the Sun is currently waiting to hear if they’ll be prosecuted for breaching contempt of court laws in their reporting of Joanna Yeates’ murder – so hardly a ‘clean’ example of NI’s responsibility. NotW‘s closure was merely expedient.

Some have speculated that the plan has long been to replace NotW with a superficially different Sun on Sunday title. I would not be surprised if this is the case, nor would I be particularly shocked if the News of the World made a comeback in a familiar form in a couple of years time. The simple fact of the matter is that Murdoch has a metric fuckton of money and influence enough to have king-making powers in UK politics. Unless the government curbs his influence, this is not going to change any time soon. To some in the media, the 7th of July may have been “a lightning revolt” reminiscent of the Arab spring, for some politicians it was the day they re-evaluated their relations with the media, but Murdoch is media-concentration incarnate, to him it was just Thursday.

Politician Bites Watchdog

Ed Miliband seems to understand the situation a lot better than Cameron. Gone is the simpering replicant who somehow got stuck in a loop during an interview 9 days ago, he hasn’t gone to war with Murdoch, but he has been uncompromising in seeking an independent solution to the mess his company has left in it’s wake.

Apparently ignoring the rumoured threats of a lifetime cut-off of support for labour policy from News Corp titles, Miliband has passionately pushed for Brook’s resignation and a delay or cancellation for Murdoch’s BskyB bid until an criminal investigation is complete or it is deferred to the competition commission – threatening to force the issue to a vote if necessary.

This is not necessarily to his credit though, he has less to lose because Cameron’s courtship of Murdoch was far more successful than his. Team Cameron has spent years getting News International to play for them, the linking of interests between the Conservative Party and NI was the product of endless negotiating, secretive dinner meetings, promises to abolish Ofcom and scale back the BBC, and quaffing wine in exotic villas. Ultimately I think the clincher was the link Cameron trusted route to Murdoch through Brooks via her disgraced – and newly employed by the Tories – friend Andy Coulson. Ever since Murdoch’s papers have served the interests of the Conservative party, even supporting the Scottish Nationalist Party who provide a softer resistance to Tory policies north of the border.

Miliband beat Cameron to the punch in seeking reform of the PCC, but to abolish and replace it at this time would be a mistake.(Image: DECC)

Miliband’s has had no chance at wooing Murdoch, whereas David Cameron couldn’t be more ‘in’ with News International right now unless Murdoch buried his gentleman’s region testes-deep inside him, which would be about as uncomfortable for Cameron as he appears to be now anyway. Dave is tethered to NI and so has been flopping about defending Andy Coulson while condemning his actions, spitting soundbites criticising vague notions of something wrong in the UK media while constantly on running from talking about his own involvement with problematic media figures – he is loud and showboating but directionless, a rodeo clown afraid of his own Bull.

Hence Cameron’s distraction tactic of attacking the Press Complaints Commission. It is true that the PCC’s initial response to phone-hacking in 2009 was insubstantial and not enough attention was given to the evidence revealed by The Guardian, but it has since become obvious that they were intentionally misled and  the PCC have withdrawn their report from that time. Hindsight is always 20/20, but prior to this past few weeks even the police thought the matter was confined to a small number of celebrities. If the police and James Murdoch himself both could not accurately assess the scale of the problem with their greater access to evidence, how then can Cameron claim that the self-regulation apparatus of the PCC should have done?

Those calling for stronger regulation than the PCC can provide seem to be forgetting that these acts were against the law, there have been arrests and those responsible may face prison sentences – is illegality and the full force of law not ample regulation?

It seems to me like there is a drive building off Cameron’s statements for MPs to castigate journalism as a whole for recent events. I find it difficult to listen to MPs pontificating on the failings of the press without ever acknowledging New Labour’s part in the cementing Murdoch’s power or these Thatcherite-lite conservatives courting that same power.

The PCC has its failings and we have long needed a way to address the concentration of media ownership. But it should be remembered that it was a journalist applying all the bounds of good practice who exposed these latest scandals. The PCC has helped resolve a constant supply of complaints at no cost, free speech and good practice are protected by independent self-regulation, but are also fostered by it. Nick Davies and other ‘Guardian journalists have been exemplar in applying a meticulously accurate scrutiny to the News of the World. This very process has been a shining example of media plurality prevailing over media concentration and of the industry regulating itself independent of government control.

Death of Brian Haw

(image: Steve Punter)

By Elliot Adams

Brian Haw is dead. This is not an obituary though, unless the circumstances of death are extraordinary, I don’t see the point of giving strangers’ deaths undue attention – no one’s life becomes more interesting after their leaving it and no one dies before their time, to me that’s what ‘their time’ means. So it goes.

I understand that Brain Haw was a great symbolic asset to the anti-war movement, with his unmovable peace-camp shaming the government on the doorstep of their seat of power. He was emblematic of everything the anti-war movement thought it wants to be, earnest, persistent, speaking truth to power, unmovable. Even his iconic fishing hat has symbolic power, it was covered in so many slogans and badges that it looked uncannily like an old-school combat helmet – a man armoured with his peaceful ideals.

His peace-camp meant absolutely jack all to me though. The movement that gathered around him was less a protest, and more a tea-partyesque confused outburst. His protesting was about how y’know, the man is committing genocide because of oil and stuff. His ranting about how 9/11 was an inside job and accusing tourists of sticking “broomsticks up people’s arses” was hardly a notable contribution to the debate over war in Iraq, in-a-word it was ‘confused’. As were those who gathered to support him there, a motley collection of conspiracy theorists, 9/11 truthers and a small number of genuine peace protesters – even then, their arguments and goals were ill-defined and incoherent.

Security in Westminster, especially around Whitehall, is tighter now than it was at the height of the IRA's mass murders. (Image:Stock)

It’s not that I’m some kind of pro-war Blairite nor that I’m against protesting the war, I marched through London’s streets and protested in Parliament Square with everyone else. For me though, Brian Haw’s death is something of a memento mori for those same protest-friendly streets. Thanks to the fight between Haw and the local authorities Parliament Square is now fenced off from the public and guarded by security patrols. Every key location throughout Westminster is peppered with blast barriers, anti-ram bollards and outposts of heavily armed policemen. Then when there is a reasoned protest, as opposed to aimless squatting, the police presence is easily large enough to occupy a small country.

With all the cordons, fences, concrete defences and machine-guns, approaching the Houses of Parliament feels a little like you are crossing the lines at Ypres. Compare this with the surroundings of City Hall over in the Borough’s Glass Testicle(I actually love the way City Hall looks, but it is somewhat testicular in shape), everywhere is open and there are wide public space always being used for events, socialising and protest.

Members of the voting public have less physical access to their representatives in than ever. The public is now prevented from entering Downing Street itself by massive spiked iron gates and armed policemen. Whereas in the House of Commons a bulletproof glass screen now separates MPs from the chamber, and it is rare that they will meet the public outside of carefully stage-managed events – and it is even worse in Holyrood.

Downing Street behind bars. (Image: Courtney Powell)

I used to think that the level of access we were afforded to our government was something Britain could be proud of on the international stage, it was no rarity to see protesters in the Houses of Parliament, unfurling banners from Big Ben, or – in one particularly memorable incident – laying down turf across the entrance to Parliament. Where else could you see that, when was the last time protesters re-landscaped the Whitehouse lawn? But now with our access to political representatives being increasingly sanitised, I can’t help but think that those same representatives are becoming increasingly sanitised themselves. So many of our most successful MPs are these chinless media types with enormous estates and meticulously controlled branding that haven’t worked outside the Westminster village in years – frankly, I preferred Brian Haw.

Update: Sad to hear all this stuff about how after his diagnosis Haw was taken for a ride by all these conspiracy theorists and snake oil peddlers. Apparently – I haven’t had a chance to properly confirm this for myself – the “doctor” who was treating him in Germany was no longer legally allowed to practice medicine in his own country and had some fraud and unlawful killing convictions to his name, word is he was prescribing Haw a treatment of vitamin C and Bicarb of soda. This low end of fake/alternative medicine is a shameful scam, the best thing their practitioners can do with their earnings at this stage is buy a nice suit to kill themselves in. 

Preventing Terrorism With Petit-Fascist Distractions?

Home Secretary Theresa May accused past anti-extremism strategies of engaging with groups that they "should have been confronting" and proscribing (image: ukhomeoffice)

By Elliot Adams

I’m unsettled by the shift in purpose in the governments counter-terrorism measures. I was rather hoping this would be one of the issues where the Lib-Dem part of the coalition won out over the Tories. Unfortunately, in the run up to last week’s release of the government’s updated Prevent counter-terrorism strategy there were numerous concerning hints in the press that this was not going to be the case.

These showed a coalition that was shifting from a strategy of preventing violent extremism by engaging with non-violent radical groups, to one of pursuing extreme views(violent and non-violent) and survielling the communities that harbour these views.

Notably, there was the revelation that National Health Service doctors will be required to identify and report people who may be “vulnerable” to future recruitment by terrorist groups. This was one example of how the new Prevent is intended to bring an end to “ungoverned spaces” in education, in the NHS, charities and discussion forums. To this end, May criticised Muslim organisations for allowing extremist speakers – and under the updated Prevent allowing such views to be discussed could lead to the gathering of organisation members being proscribed.

Furthermore, in a stunning bit of scape-goating that could not possibly aid efforts against radicalisation, May accused Universities of “complacency” in tolerating radical views on campus. I had a crack at this on the day Prevent was published, needless to say I think such attitudes do more harm than good.

I’ve had a more in depth read through of the publication since, and I find myself returning to this issue of refusing to engage with – or even to outlaw – non-violent Muslim groups that give air to extreme views(it is almost entirely Islamist extremism addressed by Prevent, despite a few cursory nods to extreme right-wing or Irish terrorism).

In the past, to counter violent extremism, previous governments have worked with groups like Jamiat-e Islami who were ideologically supportive of some forms of non-violent political Islamism.

I’m not sure if anyone is really qualified to speak as to the efficacy of this, but to me this just makes sense in our national context. Many British Muslim families are of fairly recent immigrant origin, with early migrant communities being built at a time when their countries of origin were held together by a political Islamist social infrastructure. Therefore, the ideologies of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood shaped these communities on an organisational level.

Despite their possibly illiberal views, they were non-violent, connected and were a valuable communication point between these British Muslim communities and the anti-terrorism initiatives of the Police and government.

But the updated Prevent, precludes such communication. Prevent claims that the real problem is a dangerous ideology shared by both non-violent and violent groups, and as such, the government should not work with them at all.

Adding to these problems is that ‘extremist’ isn’t adequately defined in Prevent, nor has it been outside the report. It apparently encompasses those who have ‘un-british’ values, those who do not engage in ‘full participation in society’ and those who ‘implicitly tolerate the killing of British soldiers’.

But this is so vague you can contort it to include just about anyone you want to, This is the rare occasion that I agree with the Archbishop Cranmer Blog that “By codifying a set of values to which Muslim groups will need to subscribe, the Government is effectively reintroducing a Test Act: only those who profess adherence to the orthodoxy will be eligible for … government engagement.”

This will make impossible many valuable partners for the government and police against terrorist security threats. The little guidance Prevent gives on the matter implies that problematic views on gender rights would be enough to exclude a group, which is a subject that could exclude even moderate faith groups.

I understand the hesitancy to engage groups with Islamist influences that may have sympathy for more violent organisations, but we already have heavy-handed and impractical laws that forbid such groups from inciting violence
or religiously-based hatred. The conviction rate with these laws is miniscule, but as these groups haven’t even been threatened with prosecution surely they should be acceptable on those grounds?

To counter Islamist terrorism I can’t see why we wouldn’t want to work with – rather than against – the British Muslim community. They have been conducting a debate on these issues for a long time and, I think, because of these in-group discussions the influence of Islamism is nowhere near the strength it once was. I fear the attitudes revealed by Prevent risk undermining moderate positions in that debate, and legitimising more radical elements by publicly making a Pariah of politically-engaged Muslim groups.

Universities “complacent on Toryism” Islamic Extremists Warn

Worthy organisations like the Bullingdon Tory Studies Club, which were set up to monitor Tory extremism and promote more moderate views, have in fact become Tory recruitment centres giving the world the extremism of David Cameron and Gideon Osborne.

By Elliot Atherton-Adams 1st Earl of Edinburgh

Extremist Islamic group,  Harkat-ul-Jehad, have accused top British Universities of complacency in dealing with people openly preaching the kind of extremist views one would normally expect to hear from the Conservative party. These Universities they warn, have become a training ground for Tory extremist groups.

Hafiz Saeed from the influential terrorist thinktank said, “Too long has Oxbridge been complacent in tolerating Tories on campus. They are completely blinkered, I think they have secretively placed a fatwa supporting of Tory extremist preaching on their campuses.”

Harkat-ul-Jehad has claimed that Oxbridge universities were at risk of becoming “recruitment centres for Conservative Future[a.k.a. 'The Cameron Youth]‘.

Guy Maquillé the National Union of Students president shares a concern about the threat identified by Islamic extremist groups.

“There has indeed been growing problem of conservatism within universities, these Tories have braisenly peddled attitudes to public services and society that amount to anti-Western propaganda.

He went on to say that there has been an increasing problem on campus of pelting the poor with pennies and taunting the underclasses. There had been troubling incidents of “barbour-jacketed, hunter-booted toffs chasing the the working classes through campuses for sport on horseback”. Most disturbingly, there is evidence of students in possession of copies of Tory literature, for example the novels of Edwina Currie – we can only hope that the dangerous deviants checking these books out of the library will be executed in due course.”

However, the Prime Minister’s lib-dem vassal, assures us that there is “no case for claiming that universities are complacent about Tory recruitment on campuses.”

“We have to distinguish between extreme views, and violent extremism. We must allow Tory perspectives that do not break the law to be expressed, no matter how repulsive and offensive we find those perspectives.”

He claims, “British universities are working with student associations and the police to swiftly deal with anyone who is dismantling welfare, the NHS or other public services.”

Tory propaganda being circulated in universities

Gerald and Ollie, two young British Tory students in the Purple Turtle Union Bar however paint a different tweed-shaded picture. It is a portrait of Britain under Tory law; horseback hunting of single mums and ‘hoodies’ would be legalised, Thatcher would be made Britain’s patron saint, double-barrelled names would be compulsory, the BBC would be replaced with mandatory clockwork-orange-style Sky news propaganda absorption sessions and Cameron would rule over us from atop a throne made from union leaders’ skulls – while Andy Coulson and Gideon George Oliver Osborne squatted at his feet rasping and picking their teeth with the bones of librarians.

Gerald made his position clear, “Labour left our university system infested with the working classes, the burden of poor students is one we all face, we are all in this together, we simply need to drive these rapscallions into the ocean and make it impossible for the damnable poor to go to university in the future.”

“Whiff whaff?” enquired Ollie, confused.

There are many young Tories in our universities like Ollie, who clearly lack the capacity to notice their indoctrination into more extreme forms of Toryism, “this the sad fact we need to address” says Hafiz Saeed, so that “our universities return to being a mecca for “only those with a healthy thirst for knowledge and burning hatred of the decadent west.”

Addendum: apparently a fellow by the name of ‘Spacey‘ fabricated a similar  comical confabulation over on his blog – so all credit to him for that, and clearly being a gentleman of infinite jest.

Al Jazeera Vs. the BBC’s Faltering Global Voice

The BBC claim they aim to continue being the world's best known and most trusted provider of high quality impartial and editorially independent international news. But considering the alternatives to BBCWS is that enough?

By Elliot Adams

As much as I like to claim I hate blogging, it does provide an alternative outlet for my irritation to that of repeatedly bitching to my girlfriend about the same topics untill my fickle humming-birdesque mind flutters off to extract chagrin-necter from a new source. Of late she has been putting up with my gripes about presumptions old people, the borderline-corruption of the SNP and, most frequently, the painful cuts to the BBC World Service.

World Service is facing severe reduction of non-news programming, losing radio broadcasting in seven languages, stopping service fully in five further languages, closing hundreds of posts, cutting airtime down across the board and through all this reducing its audience by a conservatively predicted 30 million.

I have posted before praising the work the BBC World Service do globally – specifically the World Service Trust which provides media infrastructure as a form of international aid – so it isn’t surprising that I consider these cuts a loss. But my concern goes further than this, weakening the World Service at this time poses a threat to democracy and the international free press. For how and why, we should look to the small Gulf state of Qatar.

Qatar is the home of ever-controversial news broadcaster Al Jazeera, the strongest contender of a number of state-funded broadcasters ready to fight for a monopoly in territory World Service is being forced to withdraw from.

It’s not that I’m taking a dig at Al Jazeera here, there is much the fledgling broadcaster should be commended for.

They have been refreshingly progressive, as with their creative commons release of photographs and video footage(free to publish as long as you attribute it correctly) or their social media experiment The Stream, which, instead of reporting, merely use a selection of extracts from twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social networking sites – it has predictably been an abject failure, but the point is they tried to stir things up technologically.

Likewise they stir things up politically, they haven’t just been reporting recent

As BBC Worldwide is closing its Serbian radio service, Al Jazeera is stepping in with 'Al Jazeera Balkans'.

pro-democracy uprisings, they have been catalysing them and one can’t help but feel sympathy for their plight in facing the threats and attacks of government forces in Cairo. As they did before in Iraq, being bombed by both the US airforce and by factions loyal to Saddam. Yet in both situations they provided fast on-the-ground coverage where others could not.

But this is Al Jazeera English, a slick and professional media operation – shaped in its early days by BBC staff and now itself staffed by many former employees of the BBC and it’s counterparts from Australia, the USA, Canada and the rest of the English-speaking world. It has no significant bias and covers the needs of a large international news agenda. But Al Jazeera Arabic is a different story. Long anti-western rants commonly pass without evidence or counter argument, there is a suggestion that its sympathies lie wholly with Islamist extremism as an ideology and its bias becomes disturbingly clear on a number of issues, especially on Israel and the occupied territories.

for example, watch this Al Jazeera English coverage of Lebanese man Samir Kuntar’s release from the prison term he served for remorselessly murdering a four-year-old Israeli girl – caving her skull in on the ground with his rifle butt. The coverage uses journalistic distance to observe and record the positive welcome he receives on release.

Now compare this footage from Al Jazeera‘s normal service, where the sycophantic interviewer tells us beloved “brother Samir” “deserves more than this” at the party Al Jazeera throws for Kuntar – complete with fireworks and a personalised cake.

This fork-tongued coverage is the least of it though, more troubling is when Al Jazeera walks in hand with the will of Qatar’s absolute monarchy. For example Al Jazeera has enthusiastically embraced pro-democracy movements in Yemen, Egypt, Syria and Libya, but has strangely been downplaying events in Bahrain. This point is subjective and just my opinion, but it is one shared by Al Jazeera’s Beirut bureau chief who resigned on that same opinion. The Emir of Qatar, like Al Jazeera supports change in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria – but not in neighbouring Bahrain, where he has sent Qatari troops to quiet the revolt.

Al Jazeera allows Qatar to exert cultural influence on a scale previously unavailable to it through military or economical means, which perhaps explains the Emir’s astronomically great investment in a cutting-edge communications satellite to extend Al Jazeera’s reach deeper into Africa and Central-Asia.

The Emir of Qatar isn’t the only one to be trying to exert international power through the opinion-shaping power of international state-funded broadcasting. Iran has its Press TV, President Putin has The Voice of Russia(previously Radio Moscow) now broadcasting in 38 languages, and on television Putin’s media advisor Mikhail Lesin created Russia Today – broadcasting in English, Spanish and Arabic to echo Putin’s interests and prejudices. Whereas President Hu Jin-tao of the People’s Republic of China has already committed billions to the “fierce struggle in the domain of [international] news and opinion.” Lobbyists are getting in on he fight too, with billionaire Alex Mashkevich announcing what has been dubbed the ‘Jewish Al Jazeera’ to broadcast Pro-Israel opinion internationally.

I know that it may seem like an expensive extravagance to be providing news and other broadcasting around the world. But being selfish for a moment, I honestly don’t think that we can afford to leave large parts of the world with their international news dominated by propaganda outlets, denied impartial and honest news, to be aggressively lectured everyday by powers who’s aims and values are so directly opposed to that of the free society. I do not agree with this notion (that Clinton, Putin and Hu Jin-tao suggest) of a global war for influence in the airwaves, if BBC World Service(whether you believe they are truly impartial or not) is there to insure that there is more than one voice, more than one account, more than one truth – then it limits the options of those who would seek a monopoly for their voice, they must debate, they must engage with democracy and then their war is already over.

Gaddafi, Nick Griffin, Judge Death and Frank Booth Want You to Vote Yes2AV

Contrary to popular belief Ming the Merciless actually would prefer full Runoff Voting

By Elliot Adams

With the AV referendum so close, I was hoping the Yes and No campaigns would actually start to treat the voting public like adults. Alas no joy. Both camps, who have adopted absurd textmessage-styled monikers like a 11-year-old girl’s AOL screename, reduced the debate to soundbites of course – for example, the No2AV camp are still endlessly reminding us that Clegg called AV a ‘miserable little compromise’, back when he considered that an insult and not his career choice. But this is sadly typical for referendums, where campaigners have truly gone above and beyond the call of idiocy is in their ludicrously deceptive scaremonging.

Both camps have been pathetically scrabbling for the right to use all the best hate figures, like they’re picking schoolyard teams for a game of assholeball. Team No2AV picked Nick Griffin first, claiming every vote for AV benefits the BNP. But Yes2AV also tried to nab Griffin for their team, arguing that what the BNP truly want – aside from a good slap – is a system of AV voting. Interestingly, theoreticians who subscribe to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Assholery theorise that this will leave Nick Griffin entangled in a quantum state where he is simultaneously pleased and disappointed, no matter how people vote – schrodinger’s twat.

This is a referendum on the methodology of accurately applying the mandate of the body politic to its representatives, it is not about how best to ward off the Bogeyman, Nick Griffin or Ming the fucking Merciless.

Both sides seem to have shown astounding contempt for the public’s intelligence. The No2AV camp, ran adverts balancing the alleged cost of changing our electoral system against the option of having policemen or bulletproof vests for soldiers, as if that was the choice anyone was offering here.

Then there were a slew of poorly thought out sporting metaphors, because clearly the proles can’t understand electoral reform unless it’s put in the context of ball games or hitting each other. Conservative campaigners have run a billboard showing two boxers, one of whom is lying defeated on the floor – but the referee has claimed him as the victor, because ‘Under AV the loser can win’. It’s been a while since I’ve bothered watching the boxing, but I seem to remember boxing matches only involving two fighters. I must be forgetfully getting the details of pugilism wrong though, because otherwise it wouldn’t work as a metaphor for AV at all would it? Cricketers, footballers and the grand national made an appearance to tell us how AV would be like cheating in that particular sport – by extension of course that means it’d be cheating in elections too because all sports are essentially identical to voting, with their winning and losing and suchlike.

The most absurdly emotive and reductive argument though was from the Yes2AV camp. This occurred with the release of a video starring a frail-looking world war II veteran. Accompanied by soulfull piano music, he explains how he fought the Nazis for democracy and yet our current evil and dastardly electoral system has ‘confiscated’ his vote in every election since. It is claimed he ‘might as well have died … on the D-Day beaches.’ Not voting for AV basically means people shouldn’t have bothered trying so hard to win World War II.

The Yes2AV camp is relying solely on a narrative of irrelevancies and terrifying unlikely potential outcomes that are completely irrelevant to AV. While the No2AV camp have used equally ridiculous claims and scare mongering, apparently motivated by the belied that we are too stupid to understand AV – ie. too stupid to understand the notion of marking a piece of paper with numbers instead of a single ‘X’.

At the end of it all, no matter which way you vote in the referendum none of these politically useful bogeymen like Nick Griffin are going to suddenly find themselves in power. So un-baton the hatches, unlock your daughters, and throw away those last few bullets you were saving for you and the children – though you should still probably vote No2AV because I heard Ming the Merciless was voting yes.

Bravemouth

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Alex Salmond at the launch of the failed and much maligned ‘national conversation’ on independence [Image: Harris Morgan

By Elliot Adams

In our childhood it's easy to find ourselves deifying action film heroes. But because their personalities are so ludicrously adonised by hollywood scripts and interviews, they are almost fated to disappoint - by their descent into such ugly areas as alcoholism, racism or even politics.

With Sean Connery there have been many such disappointments. From his repeated advocacy of hitting women, to his being entangled in corruption scandals. Most lamentably though, despite living thousands of miles away and essentially rejecting the UK until it is dismantled as a nation, Connery insists on using his considerable finances and fanatical devotion to the Scottish Nationalist Party to meddle in UK politics from abroad.

With an election in Edinburgh looming, he's sticking his oar into UK politics again with a pundit-piece in today's  'Express - 'why it must be the SNP', or something similar. The argument was the same independence-obssessed pomposity that he normally trots out about vague notions connected with political wrangling back in 1704 or based on the - extremely fictional - movie Braveheart.

The first issue with this is that - as Sean Connery would know if he hadn't been living elsewhere for decades - at present the SNP have practically nothing to do with the idea of Scottish independence. Now don't confuse my self-conscious snarkiness for an interest in any sort of independence-debate, like most of the population of Scotland nothing bores me more(the Union Jack in my avatar is only there because it looks rad), it is simply a dead issue.

Studies and surveys have shown negligible support for the idea and the half million the SNP wasted on 'the national conversation' - consulting the public on independence - was reported as having been met with "absolute indifference" outside a small racist core of SNP activists.

There are lingering legal questions about Connery, who lives as a tax-exile abroad contributing financial to a political party in the UK.

This is actually good for the SNP and the incompetent shitehawk at their helm, Alex Salmond. They currently have the backing of many centre-right voters and some of the right-wing press, The Sun for instance. But only because independence isn’t on even the longest of the SNP’s long-term agendas. If it were, then their ephemeral popularity would disappear as they are unfriended, unfollowed and blocked by their friend-list of Conservative voters and even more so with the press – none of the major newspapers in Scotland support independence.

Not that this deters Connery, who considers independence a certainty, and soon at that – what can I say, some people see a glass and say it’s half full, and other people see a glass and say it’s a fucking aquarium. As Connery is doing in California, the elections for the regional Scottish executive are certain to be wrongly interpreted in a context of national politics and independence by most of fleet street. Labour gains will be seen as public anger at the coalition’s attacks on public services, Lib-dem losses will be seen as the student voters’ revenge for the tuition fees betrayals, and SNP gains will be seen as somehow endorsing independence. In reality the SNP will merely be the most convenient stick to beat labour with, without voting for the lib-dems.

The axioms of Scottish politics have long dictated that a Conservative government combined with the bureaucratic muddle of the Scottish executive would be a boon for the SNP. The theory being that nationalists would be supported by an electorate reacting strongly against the rule of a government with so little mandate granted to it in Scotland. But untill recently Labour had been pulling way ahead of the SNP in the polls, as the public seemed to be deciding that Labour would be more suited to the task of protecting Scotland from Conservative policies than the SNP who have relied on Conservative votes to pass all their budgets.

That it is looking like the SNP might win the day is solely a testament to the power of television. Alex Salmond is an awkward troll of a man, with a face like a knuckle balancing precariously above several chins, he seems to me ineloquent and easily confused at first minister’s questions. But Salmond’s charismatic performance on-screen is superior by far to his opponents – particularly Labour leader Iain Gray. Any serious Westminster politician would have ripped Salmond and the SNP apart on their record and desperate eleventh-hour undeliverable promises, but the current opposition in Scotland are simply not up to the task.

I’m really embracing my bias here, but I find the idea of voting for the SNP in the coming election repugnant and it truly makes me fear for the future of Scotland.

There are of course problems with the SNP’s consistency and credibility as a serious political entity, for example think of their last-minute U-turns over issues like the proposals of the Calman commision – which they were seemingly opposing just because the Unionist parties were supporting them.

Then there are also ethical concerns with the SNP’s behaviour, they orchestrated the selling off of Scotland’s forests by stealth, despite their assurances to the contrary. They constructed a case for Scottish fiscal autonomy on skewed figures and omitted evidence. Most morally shaky is the fact that they had apparently prepared a deal to release the Lockerbie bomber in quid pro quo trade for human rights exemption over prisoners ‘slopping-out’ and perhaps also devolved gun control if they could swing it – a fairly large departure from the party-line that it was a ‘compassionate release’ guided by Scottish law.

But it’s not these or even a sense of self-preservation as a student in Scotland that disturbs me about the idea of voting SNP in May – it’s the SNP’s lacking economic literacy.

The nationalists have come under fire from small business, the public sector and big business for their lack of economic competency during the financial crisis. Cancelled transport projects, a failure to reform the public sector, the imposition of a supplementary business rate and other slip-ups contributed to this, particularly in rousing the Confederation of British Industry’s ire. But generally it has been the perception that they have been fiddling while Rome burns with their expensive and often pointless schemes to hold a ‘national conversation’ on independence or translate Scottish road signs into near-dead languages. Then there’s the SNP’s huge administration costs, this sort of failure to impose efficiency cuts on themselves when they are cutting so much elsewhere has been absurd.

It’s going to get worse too. The build up to these elections have been taking place under the threat of the most dramatic change in Scotland’s finances since the acts of union. The Barnett Formula gives £1600 a head more public expenditure in Scotland than in England. Starting next year the OBR will be attempting to devise a substitute for Barnett, most likely needs-based. That would leave Scotland with a funding shortfall of about five million pounds. It is in this context that Salmond has produced an election manifesto postponing financial cuts, pledging no compulsory redundancies for civil servants and promising a council tax freeze for five years costing more than a billion pounds.

So, in short: screw you Sean Connery, Timothy Dalton was a better Bond anyway. Out of vitriol, goodnight.

Like a Toff Version of Jason Voorhees

George Osborne today uses emergency budget review to announce further cuts.

By Elliot Adams

I think I might be a ‘deficit denier‘. I don’t deny that UK has the largest deficit it has had since the war, nor do I deny that there will, and should, be significant cuts. But the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have chosen to brand those of us who are critical of the coalition’s austerity measures, and would prefer to delay spending cuts and tax rises until we can secure growth, as ‘deficit deniers’ – I don’t think I need to point out all the grim connotations of such a term, lumping dissenters in with some of the most myopic idiots the world has to offer.

Chancellor Gideon Osborne, heir of 17th baronet Sir Peter Osborne, will today be driven in to Westminster from his £1.85 million five-storey Victorian residence – or perhaps his grace-and-favour country mansion, Dorneywood – to unleash a flurry of brutal cuts like a toff version of Jason Voorhees. The coalition assures us that those with the broadest shoulders will bear the greatest weight of these cuts; unfortunately, bankers, stock traders and MPs with multi-million pound trust funds and jobs that come with a free country mansion, are not known for their broad shoulders – rather that trait is normally developed by having a real job.

I do welcome some of the coalition’s austerity measures, for instance I like that it will no longer be possible for families as wealthy as David Cameron’s to claim child benefit. Also it’s not that I deny that this is a precarious time for Britain’s economy, a time of large-scale financial crisis. But time and again, it has been shown that recovering from such crises can be a slow and faltering process. What we need is a plan to secure growth and then attempt to reduce the deficit with a careful and clear balance of employment, taxation, spending and cuts – over a far longer period than the government is attempting.

In ridiculing, ignoring and attempting to stifle dissenting voices of economists like Robert Skidelsky, Alan Budd, Paul Krugman, Anatole Kaletsky et al. the government is not only ignoring alternatives to the cuts, but also ignoring some very basic issues – including the simple question of whether taking billions from public services and family budgets is right at this time, and what the knock on effects from this will be on jobs, growth, social unrest and of course the public debt itself.

But here we are, being told that this is what the markets demand, that the deficit is the only issue that matters in economic policy, that there is no alternative; and so vehement is the conviction in this, that dissenting voices are shrugged off as ‘deficit deniers’.

History, that great register of shit we could have avoided, teaches that this might not be the smartest move. Economic policy-making missteps by any blend of government in Britain have regularly been accompanied by ridicule of dissenting economists and claims that there is no alternative, that the markets demand it and that there was a popular and political consensus in favour of the measures.

As in 1925, with Churchill‘s return to the Gold Standard- resulting in deflation, unemployment and a general strike. Or in 1967, with Howe and Thatcher’s massive hikes in taxes and interest rates to tackle inflation – resulting in years of social upheaval, millions of jobs lost, communities scarred forever and the worst recession since the war. Again in 1990, John Major joins the European Exchange Rate Mechanism – resulting in massive rise in interest rates and the longest recession since the war. Every single time the same reasoning was proffered.

In 2010, Cameron and Osborne push through massive austerity public cuts, all dissent is ignored and it is claimed to be unavoidable and demanded by the markets – resulting in? well it’s too soon to say, but my call is that these economic policies will, if sustained for any significant period, not only increase unemployment and social dislocations, but they will also increase the deficit. Consequently, Westminster will be dependent on the Bank of England to boost growth through measures such as the creation of electronic money as today’s measures speed the slide back into recession.

Could be wrong, hope I am, but regardless we should remain cautious of economic policymakers who claim markets demand a particular policy, or that there is no alternative and those who suggest one are ‘deniers’. There are alternatives, let them be discussed.

Newspaper Anti-Union Bias Against ‘Red Ed’

The newspapers may have been backing Miliband D, but is it really their place to criticise the fact that hundreds of thousands of the individuals who voted for Miliband E are members of trade unions?

By Elliot Adams

Running through the coverage of the intensely dreary Labour leadership contest between David and Ed Miliband has been a particularly nasty suggestion that somehow the trade union support for Ed Miliband is undesirable and undemocratic – his links to this support base leaving him portrayed as “Red Ed”, a pinko Stalinist to be feared and abhorred. I think this is partly motivated by simple snobbery, partly by an irritation that the public has chosen the ‘wrong’ Miliband, but I think it is mostly motivated by a palpable jealousy of the political power of organised labour – influence which they feel rightfully belongs to our media giants and fleet street’s political pundits. They seem incapable of understanding how and why people who don’t have the ‘right’ friends, the ‘right’ wealth and the ‘right’ Oxbridge PPE degree, can shape political change in Britain.

What’s more, the fleet street figures with all those ‘right’ elements wouldn’t be

The winning Miliband brother has already started to cave under anti-union newspaper pressure in his conference speech, condemning "irresponsible strikes"

the people who should be making this decision anyway. I would step short from fully buying into a Chomskyite propaganda model of the media, but the press really does structure news around an underlying elite consensus, based on the media’s vested interests in supporting the axioms of private and state power. Now that it is trying to shake off the remnants of new labour and the Blairites, the labour party should again be the mass party, the party of collective labour groups – without ordinary members and union affiliates, there would be no NHS, no welfare, no labour party.

Many newspaper proprietors have an anti-union bias and are uncomfortable with union influence in any sphere. So of those who didn’t just lump all voters in favour of Ed Miliband into the category of “trade union votes” criticised the unions for encouraging those individual voters to vote for ‘Red Ed’.

Essentially they’ve managed to both say that about a quarter of a million individual voters should not be allowed a political opinion on the Labour leadership because they joined a union, and that unions shouldn’t be allowed to tell their members that Ed is their preferred candidate – though the same newspapers can say that David is theirs.

Listen fleet street, it’s the ‘Labour’ party, that he has the support of organised labour is a good thing. And on the charisma scale David Miliband was less electable than even Gordon Brown was with his terrifying smile, David Miliband is dull but beneath his passive exterior beats the beige limp heart of a man so boring, scientists are, as we speak, using him to create an ennui-based renewable power source to solve the energy crisis -Whenever he opens his mouth the world visibly greys around him as the vacuum of interest his conversation creates sucks in light from the non-dreary spectrum. He wasn’t your Miliband, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is the wrong one, get over it.

It’s Not a Small World After All

The Small World ride at disneyland paris, applying the same journalistic standards as the daily mail we can extrapolate that it's led to the neglect of two children by their mother..

By Elliot Adams

Both the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Metro have run the story that a mother addicted to an online game called ‘Small World‘ neglected her children and left her two pet dogs to starve so that she could play the game – for those of you not familiar with the Metro, it is a free Daily Mail owned newspaper distributed on public transport in the UK and designed to be read in under 20 minutes. Coverage generously lifts text and images from the game’s own advertising and the story has quickly been repeated elsewhere.

It’s an interesting anecdote of the dangers of the disconnect we feel with the rest of our lives when over-dependent on more mediated communication, but there is one major problem with the story – ‘Small World’ is a board game and cannot be played online in any way. I assume the game the woman played was smallworlds.com,  a sandbox online role-playing game which has a social networking element accessible through facebook.

Aside from downplaying the less controversy-generating influence her husband’s tragic death had in making the woman a virtual recluse, this piece of google-journalism is a troubling fact-checking failure that shows the true extent of the laziness of the UK’s tabloid press.

I predict that they will of course take the articles offline and make the usual apologetic statement saying that they try their hardest to fact-check all stories, but they receive many stories like this through press agency wires and lack the time and resources to ensure minor details are correct. But really that’s like saying you try your hardest not to have sex with farmyard animals but that you do sometimes fuck corpses – it doesn’t really fix the problem. Even on this relatively minor level, misrepresentation in the press affects people’s lives and one day when they approach one of those ‘major’ stories with this sort of sloppy journalism, it really will be game over.

UPDATE: The Daily Mail have deleted the offending article from their online edition and Days of Wonder who produce the game Small World say that they are “currently considering legal action regarding this misrepresentation … and [hope] the newspapers responsible for these defamatory statements will give similar coverage to a retraction.”