Wasn’t the point of Leveson to stop the unhealthy bond between Newscorp and the Met?
Met Plod is still feeding Yewtree stories to Murdoch’s Newscorp
In The Sun last Sunday: headlined – ‘HERE’S TO YEW’.
That’s a nice tasteful headline to accompany a story about two blokes being accused of/suspects re sex offences. The tasteful copy continues:
‘OPERATION Yewtree sex abuse suspects Max Clifford and Paul Gambaccini arrive at the same star-studded bash. Showbiz guru Clifford, 70, and the BBC Radio 2 DJ, 64, were paying tribute to funnyman Barry Humphries in London’s West End.’
The imputation of the piece is that they’re somehow close, but the truth is they barely know each other. Yet again, here is a Murdoch-owned tabloid continually running inside-track smears about defendants and suspects in the anti-BBC Operation Yewtree….from the success of which Newscorp stands to benefit substantially. For only ten days ago, Tory Chairman Pants Shags casually dropped into a news briefing, “We may well take the BBC’s licence fee monopoly away from it…or ask them to share it“. Who with, we wonder?
These are the facts:
The Newstories tried to get Cable out and Jeremy Hunt in on the enquiry into Murdoch’s BSkyB takeover….despite Hunt’s known hero-worship of the Digger, and despite him having been the gobetween in New York between James Murdoch and Newscorp’s switch of press support from New Labour to the Conservatives.
Despite having been shown to have acted improperly throughout the Newscorp/BSkyB takeover decision-making process (and having held back 163 pages of damaging emails from legislators – after insisting they had seen all the correspondence) Hunt toughed it out in the Commons debate on the matter. Even Hunt himself accepted that the 163 pages of emails demonstrated that his department had “overstepped the mark” in the “volume and content” of its interaction with Newscorp aides. In fact, the almost entire tenor of these emails consisted of chummy high-fives, with nods and winks about everything going smoothly and so forth.
The emails only emerged on April 24th 2012 after a leak made clear their existence. By some miracle possibly involving brown paper envelopes, Hunt was cleared of misconduct. The verdict stands as one of the worst travesties in the long history of appalling Westminster ministerial calumny and crony capitalism.
Now I know that some folks aren’t that interested about Murdoch being on cosy terms with the Met. So let me just proffer one example of how Newscorp uses such links having sought them out. One of the charming Plods the world’s nastiest news organisation befriended some years back was Met Commander Ray Adams, a man most infamous for his heavily investigated relationship with gangster and later convicted murderer Kenneth Noye.
Adams hastily retired from the Met in 1993 for ‘medical’ reasons, and was instantly hired by Murdoch subsidiary NDS. A BBC Panorama programme in March 2012 alleged that NDS used computer hacking to undermine the business of its chief TV rival in Britain, OnDigital, by cracking ONdigital’s smartcard codes. According to the BBC, the codes were passed to Adams as head of UK security for NDS, which made smartcards for Sky.
ONdigital eventually ceased trading amid a wave of counterfeiting by pirates, leaving the lucrative pay-TV field clear for Sky. Newscorp has never sued the BBC over the Panorama programme, nor has it even denied the charges the programme made. As the legal community often observes, having the facts to prove something nasty is the best defence against a libel suit.
But the police have not moved against a single Newscorp employee as a result of the BBC’s revelations
Now, none of this behaviour is new to the Murdoch rainbow of criminality used to squash competitors. The Group is currently being investigated by three different Federal and State bodies in the US for similar gangster tactics. It has been under suspicion and accused of threatening MPs, it has been shown to have bribed police officers for information and influence, and Rupert Murdoch himself is on a public tape vowing vengeance against the Metropolitan Police for the way they had “victimised” his employees. And as we all know, two former senior Newscorp excutives are on trial at the Old Bailey for more of the same as I write.
There is no mystery here: this is a campaign to silence the BBC during the next election, besmirch it with trumped-up charges about disgusting sexual perversion on its premises, and suggest to the electorate that Newscorp is a more fit national “business friendly” broadcaster with which to replace it.
It is nothing less than a Reichstag fire with which one extreme tendency inside an Establishment political Party wishes to burn a globally respected institution to the ground…purely because it tells the truth in a mass and highly influential medium.
Unfortunately for the Newstories, as I gather evidence and details of the charges against the defendants who come under Yewtree’s gnarled and bent branches, it is blatantly obvious that almost all of the accused are the victims of clumsy, barely interrogated fit-ups involving the services of bounty-hunters and petty criminals to make “a case” – none of which could possibly succeed in a country where the Rule of Law is still alive and healthy.
I will stick my neck right out this morning and make the following predictions – about all of which I am highly confident:
* It will eventually be proved by Jimmy Savile’s family (and a mountain of evidence) that the late DJ specialised in assaults upon mentally disabled kids, and also opportunistically sought out sex with under-age (mainly 12-15 year old) girls for over forty years. But his crimes have been ridiculously exaggerated – especially the ‘He Groomed a Nation’ drivel – in a media manipulation process in which Newscorp took the lead role.
* Several police and legal officials remain uneasy with the conviction of Stuart Hall on the one charge of abusing a nine year-old girl…and how the media (again spearheaded by Murdoch) trotted out the endless mantra of “sexual attacks, some of them upon girls as young as nine”. There was only one girl of nine, and Hall still maintains he never even met her. He was renowned as a serial groper and seducer of young women: but I remain doubtful about his real ‘credentials’ as a paedophile. There are allegations that Hall was bullied into an admission of guilt in return for a lighter sentence.
* The one charge against Jimmy Tarbuck is so insane as to deny the man’s entire history of normal sexual relations…and as usual, it dates from nearly fifty years ago.
* Paul Gambaccini will be cleared of all the charges against him. So too will Max Clifford.
* Dave Lee Travis (described by one celeb last week as “a near-broken man”) was for years a notorious prankster and groper at the BBC. His behaviour would not be tolerated today – but he is not and never has been a paedophile or a rapist. I understand that he too is being slowly beaten down towards a false confession of guilt.
Many of the things I’m writing this morning represent very serious charges indeed. But none of them have emerged bolt-like from an azure blue sky: it is merely the resumption – but this time with added venom – of the media-Met police-senior politician attack on citizen freedoms that Lord Leavesthemalone was supposed to be hanging out to dry earlier this year.
I often refer to the dire need of some civilised decency in this country, but the felons involved in this gigantic perversion of our legally accountable political, media and policing system cannot be described as merely “indecent”.
David Cameron is a narrow, over-promoted man who gained his first job at Carlton Television by flexing family shareholding muscle. He has covered up and obfuscated his way through a Newscorp scandal which – in a properly run Parliamentary Democracy – should’ve done for him years ago. He constantly defended a close aide now facing serious charges at the Old Bailey, and persistently lied about the closeness of his relationship with the woman who is that man’s Old Bailey co-defendant.
Boris Johnson is a bullying, privileged yob with a long and proven track record of violent language, intolerance of being questioned, threats, and association with the dross of society. He is under a cloud of suspicion in relation to at least two serious scandals involving taxis, district redevelopment, obstruction of justice, and accepting financial support in return for stopping investigations of Newscorp criminality.
George Osborne has quickly established himself as a man who puts Party reelection before economic health and citizen finances. His cost of living index is the Chancellor’s own manipulated attempt to lie about reality, his every press release is quickly revealed to be a tissue of deceit, and he too has long-stagnant grey clouds of accusation about hookers and drugs above his head.
Jeremy Hunt made £17 million by being the monopoly supplier to ageing quango The British Council – a corrupt stipend for political failures and lobbyist seducers. Hunt was introduced, saved and then supported in his retention of contract with the BC through the influence of his family relation by marriage Virginia Bottomley. She in turn passed on her SW Surrey constituency to young Jeremy. He has a shadowy sugar-daddy who runs The Groucho Club (yet another cloud-covered institution). He has invested years in using, helping and gaining advantage from Newscorp and like Boris Johnson remains under suspicion – by most sane people with a brain – for his behaviour during the ill-fated BSkyB deal. And his two-faced actions since his utterly inexplicable appointment as Health Secretary at times beggar description.
Grant Shapps is a liar and online fraudster who started his rise to the top of the heap by posing as a wealthy American worth $17m thanks to a piece of useless software he was peddling. Why he should want to lie about his birthplace, education and middle-name remains a mystery. Perhaps his mendacity is so pathologically wired in, Mr Shapps simple can’t stop doing it. His primary task as Tory Chairman is to shut up any and all opposition to the Government, and ensure its reelection in its own right. His focus is the systematic humiliation of the BBC, and its replacement by Newscorp.
Michael Fallon rose to infamy as the head of Libor rate stockbrokerTullett Prebon. Tullett’s posted Libor prices that later turned out to have been “incorrect”. There are those in both the City and Parliament who see Fallon as a devious, propagandising ethical cripple you can see coming a mile off, although naturally I wouldn’t. I merely find it hard to believe that City Plod never so much as asked the bloke a few questions about Libor manipulation.
Michael Gove is the Education Secretary tipped by many Westminster insiders to be the next Tory leader once Cameron is eventually given the elbow. He has built a reputation very rapidly for the passage of devious Bill clauses and controlling behaviour towards communities that do not want his schools. He has turned a blind eye and a lenient manner towards systemic paedophilia in the Education system, and allowed the Higher Education sector to become a parody of degrees awarded by corrupt Dixiecrat States in the US. He used to write for Murdoch newspapers, and is another in the seemingly endless line of Conservatives who want to have his babies.
This is the lowlife waving its corporate bottom at rich donors, spreading legs for media barons, giving police officers instructions about who to fit up, and working 24/7 at the process of closing down free speech…..while preparing our country for its new future as the world’s most suppliant rentboy.
The blogosphere remains the only place now offering any resistance to this sick panoply of weak judges, wild claims, worn-out ideas and worryingly fascist tendencies. Certainly you will not find that resistance in the Labour Party beyond Tom Watson. You won’t find it among the once decent yeomanry and bourgeoisie of Britain. And as from later today, you won’t find me here either. I’m off.
The Slog 