Across the pond

Years ago, we had a Labour politician named Harold Wilson, who was deemed paranoid (i.e. mad) because he thought his phone was tappeded by the secret services.

Fast forward a few years, and to an age when our present Prime Minis is  has just had to accept the resignation of his his chief spin doctor, a forrmer employee of the most right wing media empire, over phone hacking. He still maintains he knew nothing about what was happening in his own newsroom.

Though one of Cameron’s senior cabinet colleagues, Chris Hughne, a former journalist, has today said, what all the journalists covering the rstory have been saying all along.

Fleet Street, from The Guardian to the News of the World, does not operate that way. Andy Coulson, was far from incompetant. But even if he were he would have been aware, like everyone else, of what was  happening in his own newsroom on the hot story of the day.

Coulson did not go to jail, with his underlings. He resigned as editor, and proclaims to this day, that he knew nothing about what was happening in his own newsrooom.

Thereby protecting his Lord and Master, Rupert Murdoch.o

Because if Coulson knew what was going on, the question becomes did Murdoch know.

Murdoch, unlike Lord Beaverbrook, does not ring his editors at breakfasttime every day. He mostly appoints them and leaves them to do  the job, according to his well known prejudices. But with anything high profile, he rings them for a chat.

Which he may well have done in the case of the phone hacking.

Coulson protected his boss by his stance. And delighted his boss when he became the Prime Minister’s chief spin doctor.

Not only did Rupert know he was welcome to tea at No 10, but he knew that every day he had a trusted lietunant telling Cameron how to deal with the press.

No-one can prove this, unless Coulson shops his boss.

But if it is true, it means that Cameron is still playing footsy, with Rupert Murdoch, in the hope that he will deliver the voters.

But even if Rupert Murdoch is the not the bloke I know, but some saint believing in truth and justice, he should not be given even more monopoly powers over the British media.

His only surviving competitor in television is the BBC, whom he cantinually attacks as wasting the taxpayer’s money, and run by a bunch of lefties. (Which shows how little he knows of the Beeb, which certainly employs some lefties, but also employs many who are even more right wing than Murdoch.)

In print he owns the top selling tabloid and the highest circulationn broadsheet, with the exception of te Telegraph, as British as roast beef, except that it is now owned by the Barclay twins, who are tax exiles in the Channel  Islands and notoriouslly secretive.

The question should be, not whether Murdoch should be allowed to take total control of Sky, but whether he should be forced to selll some of his other holdings in British media.

Just remember that it is Murdoch’s Fox Television in the US which insists that Obama is a Muslim and which incited the tea party of Sarah Palin and her campaign of hatred, which led to the appalling violence, including the near assasination of a US leftish Jewish senator.

But the British police have found no evidence of phone tapping, even though Gordon Brown thinks they tapped his phone.

The British police I deal with personally are the best in the world (much better than the French, the Germans and the US).

But I have real fears that their standards are being corrputed, by those who think there is nothing wrong with being lovey dovey with tabloid reporters, and nothing wrong with sleeping their way into protest movements, and fucking the wife of the politician they are employed to protect.