Something else, (via BorisWatch’s Twitter feed): I didn’t know Coulson lived so close to the infamous pub at the centre of the Southern Investigations case. Come to think of it, News International people always liked to project a gangsterish image, ever since they moved to the East End, even though the choice of Wapping was…
Read More plastic gangstersThere’s been a little progress on some of the lines of inquiry in this post. First up, the question of whether or not Coulson was subjected to security vetting before joining No.10 Downing Street, and if so, what the Defence Vetting Agency said about him. This one took a relatively long time to spin up,…
Read More this is a security announcementMore progress from here. In comments, we have an explanation of the PoCA 1906 vs. BA 2010 issue. It’s actually much simpler than I imagined. Basically, the old Act was in force at the time of the crime, and it’s not clear whether the new one is operational yet in the absence of the Ministry…
Read More simpleI thought I’d reorganise the information in this Peter Oborne post. I plotted the number of times each newspaper group reported on the phone-screwing case against the number of times they were caught paying for information. Even I was surprised when the R^2 correlation came out as 0.94 – a near perfect inverse relationship. The…
Read More fun with charts!I still can’t get over this morning’s Cameron press conference. The incredible thing, as I said, was the transition in what was respectable to discuss. The Guardian went the whole hog and brought up the whole ball of police corruption, and Michael Crick of the BBC pressed very hard on the question of the money.…
Read More transmission beltIn an effort to clear some of the NOTWFail stuff out of my mind, I thought I’d try to come up with some useful pointers for further investigation. 1. The Daniel Morgan/Southern Investigations line of inquiry This is by far the most serious accusation, in every sense. It has police corruption, a murder, and the…
Read More neeeews of the worldIt looks like rusty old thatcherbot Sir George Young announced a COI review of government advertising in the News of the World today. Fortunately, the Grauniad published a list of the top 50 NOTW advertisers by spending, and they’re not on there, so you can be reassured the whole exercise was as pointless as everything…
Read More corruption production, fag packets, protection rackets…It looks like rusty old thatcherbot Sir George Young announced a COI review of government advertising in the News of the World today. Fortunately, the Grauniad published a list of the top 50 NOTW advertisers by spending, and they’re not on there, so you can be reassured the whole exercise was as pointless as everything…
Read More corruption production, fag packets, protection rackets…The Government’s Central Office of Information, essentially its in-house advertising agency, spent £193 million on advertising in the financial year 2009-2010. The year before, it spent £211 million, making it the UK’s single biggest media buying desk. Is it appropriate for the Government to be spending taxpayers’ money propping up the deeply discredited News of…
Read More Who controls Government ad spending?The Government’s Central Office of Information, essentially its in-house advertising agency, spent £193 million on advertising in the financial year 2009-2010. The year before, it spent £211 million, making it the UK’s single biggest media buying desk. Is it appropriate for the Government to be spending taxpayers’ money propping up the deeply discredited News of…
Read More Who controls Government ad spending?