AMATEUR NIGHT AT THE WESTMINSTER PALAIS

According to the Daily Mail, Cameron has said that he was "furious" to be dragged to the Commons to answer questions about Hunt, the English Culture Secretary, the man who is ultimately responsible for the London Fiasco Olympics as well as the Murdoch bid for BskyB and who's in the soup at the moment over his relationship with News International.

Cameron had wanted to spend the day electioneering and the audacity of the Speaker demanding that he attend first to his day job, was obviously a bit too much for prime minister, whom we know operates on a fairy short fuse, as indeed do many people promoted beyond their ability. 

I just can't stand to watch of listen to him, or indeed any of the rabble at Westminster, so I haven't seen what happened, but by all accounts Cameron was tetchy all the way through, and made some remark to Dennis Skinner about it being time he retired (a bit rich from a bloke who is putting up retirement age and wants people to go on working for as long as possible, rather than take a pension...possibly because they won't have enough money to pay the pensions after they pay for the Olympics).

Now I happen to think that Bercow is an obnoxious little toad, way too full of himself for anyone's good. (He's been known to order people to clear the corridor for him and his entourage like some Middle eastern potentate.) But the truth of the matter is that, like it or not, the Speaker of the House of Commons is the blokey in charge of what happens in the Commons, and no matter what school Cameron went to or how many friends he has at Buck House, Bercow is his superior. 

It was, at best, amateur of Cameron to let it be known that he was furious, and it was,again amateur to snap an ageist comment at 80 year old Skinner. (Not that I think that the Beast of Balsover will be bothering much about it; it won't have hurt him.) But it was "un-prime ministerial". It was insulting to parliament and to us that he was angry at having to give up electioneering to do his job.

I wonder if he's worked out a way to get Jeremy off the hook over this, or if, as I suspect, he is going to look a proper Charlie when Hunt eventually "resigns".

Am I dreaming, or were we all told that the massive security cost to the taxpayer of the royal wedding back in April would be rewarded many times over by the shot in the arm (over half a million) that it would give to the “British” (for which read south of England) economy? Nope, I checked back, and it seems we were, in fact, told just that. So why is Gideon (Call me George) using his chums’ wedding as an excuse for the appalling mess he is making of running the financial affairs of the UK with growth figures a derisory fraction of comparable countries?

I was moved by the quiet demonstration of solidarity all over Norway in the wake of the atrocities in Oslo and on Utoeya. In Oslo alone, from a population of around half a million, it was reckoned that over 150,000 people took the streets carrying flowers to demonstrate that they want no change in the open and democratic society in which they are lucky to live.

I was listening to the 7 o’clock news this morning, wondering if I could doze for just a little longer, when I was shaken awake by Sarah Montague (no, it wasn’t a dream, but she was only on the radio) telling me that the Westminster government wastes vast amounts of money on IT. I could have guessed this, of course. After all they waste vast amounts on most things... but one of the examples they gave was the cost of a normal PC... something you or I could buy for a few hundred pounds from PC World, but which is (despite economies of scale) costing the government over £3,000. Question to Call me George: Why are you taking money away from people who are likely to die of the cold this winter, when you waste £2,500 on every PC you buy?

There seems to have been an extremely unhealthy relationship between News International on one hand and the UK government and its opposition on the other. Cameron, Miliband, Gove, Osborne and Hunt seem to have spent half their waking hours with management of media organisations, and a surprisingly large number of them with News International (and I don’t include in that Michael Gove’s wife who works for NI). I can only imagine that now that Cameron has ordered the statistics for such meetings to be published, the number of contacts will fall dramatically. Or do they intend to make prison visits?

Another government minister is in trouble. Jonathan Djanogly paid £5,000 to a private detective to monitor his constituents following the publication of a Telegraph article about his expenses. Now preliminary inquiries, conducted by the Information Commissioner’s Office, are underway. This is embarrassing given the prime and deputy prime ministers’ condemnation of the practice of “blagging” and his position in the Justice Department, tasked with overseeing changes to legislation regarding the use of private detectives to garner information. Of course Djanogly denies all wrongdoing (don’t they always) but I find it rather suspicious that the detectives’ report was sent to the offices of the law firm where, until recently, he worked (almost like he was trying to hide it), and that the report admit having used subterfuge to obtain the information it contains. Quite apart from the dodgy situation that this leaves a junior justice minister in, it begs the question: why was he spying on his constituents, his employers?

'ALLO, 'ALLO, 'ALLO: WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN?

So according to the Met’s Assistant Commissioner, John Yates, the reason they didn’t re-open the investigation into the phone hacking allegations back in 2009 was that the ‘News of the World’ declined to co-operate with them.

OK.

So, does that mean that if a ned had broken into an off licence and made away with a couple of hundred pounds worth of drink, leaving his DNA all over the shop, and then the Met had picked him up and he had said: “Right, like I ain’t gonna co-operate wiv ya, right, innit”, the Man from the Met would have replied... “Oh, right son. We’ll not bother to follow this one up. Off you go then”.

I think someone might like to inform the assistant commissioner with ambitions to be the commissioner that that’s actually the way that police work often works. Usually criminals don’t much want to co-operate with the police. Indeed they have been known to tell lies and obstruct the police... No, really, they have.

Maybe it’d be better if he got that under his belt before he applied for the top job...although, judging by some of the wing nuts they have had in the past, for example Ian Blair, who said the phone hacking was just a "tiny fragmentary event... not seen as particularly significant",... in particular, he continued, when compared with the fact that they had had terrorists to chase!

I wondered who would come out with that old chestnut. The massive Metropolitan Police of the English capital, couldn’t, it seems, walk and chew gum. They were busy with terrorists, so the that police bribery and the fact that everyone who was anyone’s phone messages were being illegally listened to, just couldn’t be dealt with.

Just as well that when I was in London I didn’t lose my wallet. How far down the important list would THAT have been?

The trouble for these people is that they are lying to politicians, and if there’s one thing that most politicians are good at....

Pics: Yates of the Yard.... 10 times he asked them nicely to co-operate? Or maybe it was ten something elses.... and his then boss Labour's other Blair.

IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR CAMERON?

David Cameron has made some errors of judgement since coming to power just over a year ago.

A coalition of his right of centre party with a left of centre party may have been the first, for, although it seems not to have hurt him in the country, he has made some dangerous enemies inside his party. From there on in he has U-turned himself into something resembling a corkscrew on health, welfare, law and order, crime and punishment, the environment, finance, the EU, the “respect” agenda, and on and on... so much so that whilst those of us who are of a different political colour have not known whether to laugh or cry, followers have found themselves with an easier choice and a bill for Kleenex!

I’ve always said that Cameron had no substance; that he owed his success to a mixture of wealth (and the clout that that brings), a distant familial relationship with royals (and the clout that that brings) and his natural ability as a PR man. He lacks depth and intellectual vigour and his upbringing has left him with as much idea of what goes on in the head of Monsieur Tout le Monde as I have of the passing thoughts of the Sultan of Brunei.

But perhaps the most important example of his lack of judgement has been in his choice of friends.

Every prime minister, it appears, has to make some sort of respectful concession to one of the country’s most powerful men, News International’s (NI) Rupert (I have a file on everyone) Murdoch, but David, because he could, decided to go farther.

Not only did he court friendship with Rebekah Wade-Brookes, inviting her to dinner, and dining at her home while her organisation was in the midst of negotiations to acquire BSkyB, over which the business and later culture secretary had the final say, but he insisted on employing, as press secretary, her disgraced colleague, Andy Coulson, who had resigned from NI over the scandal of phone hacking minor royals. “I believe”, he said, “in giving people a second chance”.

I wouldn’t have touched him with a tarry pole. He was damaged goods, and either he lied through his teeth to get the job, or Cameron believed that with the police in the pockets of NI, all would be well. The people at the top would look after each other, as they always had.

But bit by bit the stitching came apart. More and more people reported their phones had been tapped. This time “celebrities”, then politicians...then Coulson resigned, leaving us to suppose that the worst was yet to come.
As come it has. Victims of crime have been hacked; police inquiries into murder have been hampered; police have been in the pay of NI, and the person who signed the cheques was Cameron’s boy Andy (Second Chance) Coulson.

The last I read was that phones of soldiers killed in action may have been hacked. Just how much lower is there to go?

Mr Cameron is associated closely with the people at the top of an organisation which knew these things were going on no matter how hard they try to act as if they didn’t, despite everyone expressing “shock and horror”; Rebekah, David and even Rupert.

So, were all these people naive, gullible fools who just sometimes wondered where all these fabulous stories were coming from? Or are they hard hitting million/billionaires, who knew but didn’t care?

And are David Cameron and his premiership forever tainted by association with them? Indeed is it time to look for a prime minister with a little substance?

PHONE HACKING IS SO 2010

No, don't worry, Rupert hasn't taken us over, yet.

The phone hacking scandal isn’t going away anytime soon.

That is one of the messages from this programme (which I think can only be seen in the UK).

I’d recommend you watch this if you can find the time. The unpalatable truth it uncovers, not just on the News of the World or indeed, News International, but a wide range of other organisations, including the police and the prime minister, is worth knowing.

It seems, as Munguin’s Republic has been saying for some time, that there are far too many people who are scared of Rupert Murdoch. People didn’t like to admit it, indeed Alistair Campbell denied it, but big John Prescott admitted that they were very wary of taking on the Sun or the News of the World. On all four occasions when MPs on the Cross Bench Media group asked Rebekah Wade (senior manager of NI) to testify before them, she declined. An option to ask the Serjeant at Arms to issue a warrant for her was dismissed because (it is alleged) they were afraid that their personal lives would be put under the microscope by the paper.

The police certainly seem dislike investigating any accusations levelled against News International and the programme looks at the reasons behind this. Could it be that they fear over cautious scrutiny of their personal affairs? Or could it be that Murdoch has the power to offer a career change? Certainly the officer in charge of the original enquiries into phone hacking which saw a royal correspondent and a freelance detective imprisoned, and was then dropped for supposed lack of evidence, now strangely works as a columnist for a Murdoch newspaper. A well paying, and relatively easy job (after all Coleen Rooney can do it). And him just a simple bobby!

Cameron’s judgment must come into question. Why did he employ Coulson? The NoTW editor was hands on to the point of micro management, but didn’t know his journalists were phone tapping? He was also accused of bullying his staff at the paper, and yet he was employed by Cameron at the very heart of government. Did Cameron ask any questions about his part in the phone tapping? After all he resigned over it. Did he ask about the bullying? If so, did Coulson lie, or did Cameron just take him on anyway? Or did Rupert make it a condition of his support. Was it the Sun what done it?

We also have to doubt the wisdom of the prime minister while his government was discussing the News International deal with BskyB, having dinner with Rebekah Wade, and passing it off as a meeting with a constituent (which she is), but neglecting to admit that James Murdoch (who is not) was also at the dinner. As Ms Wade is married, it’s unlikely that he was only there as a partner on a constituency matter. In any case, does the prime minister have the time to have dinner with all his constituents?

He should have been anywhere but near either of them while these matters were being examined.

The final part on this story looks to the future in the tabloid world. Phone hacking is now ‘stone age’ (and in any case most celebrities are wise to it anyway), but to replace it we now have wifi hacking where a journalist will hack into the wifi systems in, say, an hotel lobby where meetings are going on. (S)he will then feed spyware into the computers of the users in the lobby and be able to hack into documents, downloads, emails etc....

It’s worrying. And because the government and the police are afraid of the press, it’s not about to stop.

One cheering note. It appears with the information that is coming to light, that friend Coulson may have lied at the trial of Tommy Sheridan, as a result of which, he may be joining the tan man in the pokey in the not too distant future.

Pics: You can't really blame them. He is, after all scary! Bet that suit cost more than my house!! Dave "over my shoulder go 500 cares" Cameron. Rebekah sweetie, be careful with that phone. Maybe someone will play you at your own game. Wouldn't it just be the jam on the toast if someone wiped the supercilious grin off this one's face by putting him in the same cell as Tommy?

ANDY IS SAYING GOODBYE ...GOODBYE

Andy Coulson has resigned as David Cameron’s media chief in the light of revelations of illegal phone tapping at the News of the World when he was the editor.

He, somewhat belatedly in my opinion, decided that his position has become untenable. Apparently however, he will stay in post for a few weeks, presumably to show that he was not a wrong doer and has not been sacked.

The problem with Mr Coulson’s situation was that, if he knew that illegal phone tapping was the chosen method for the exposés that the News of the World was getting, then he was complicit in it, and therefore, as the boss, overall responsible for law breaking.

If, on the other hand, as he repeatedly claimed he had no knowledge of the hacking, it makes you wonder how such an incredibly incompetent and irresponsible journalist would make it as an editor of a national newspaper.

Tabloid newspapers make their money out of sensation. Their readers are interested in who Jordan is married to this week; how mad Cheryl Cole is and what therapy she is undergoing; what Prince Charles was saying on the phone, late at night, to Mrs Parker-Bowles from his four poster; whether David Beckham has been having an affair (thinking that his wife had left him... and unaware that her latest diet had left her invisible to the human eye). In order to keep a supply of these ever more salacious stories coming, reporters have to find more and more outlandish and possibly illegal ways of investigating the lives of the rich and infamous.

Either Mr Coulson neglected to ask how his reporters were getting the big exclusives they kept turning up for him, or he was naive enough to believe that the reporter’s next door neighbour’s sister was a close friend of the woman who cleaned for the neighbour of whichever prince or “star” they were investigating.

Either way he was a poor choice as close confidant of the prime minister.

Of course, in fairness to Mr Cameron, is it not possible that the choice was made by Rupert Murdoch as a quid pro quo for him swapping horses, and dedicating his all-powerful British news machine, including The Sun, The Times, The News of the World, and BskyB to the Conservative cause in the run up to the UK general election.

Cameron was said to be "very sorry" that Mr Coulson had felt "compelled" to resign due to continuing pressure. Well, whatever Dave, but no one believes anything you say now.

Pics: Andy Coulson, who will not get any unemployment benefit, because he left a job of his own free will. Rupert the shar pie, and Cameron looking happy, must have been before he got the job.