From a horse to an ass – English law and order today

 Jon Snow, News International, phone-hacking, Rebekah Brooks, smoke and mirrors, subversion, Tom Watson, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Feb 282012
 

I’d be inclined to think we should look a gift horse in the mouth – at least today.

It started off this morning with a story which appeared absolutely incredible.  Apparently, the Metropolitan Police is in the habit of lending its older horses to those who might be able to keep them.  In this case, Rebekah Brooks of News International fame.  As Tom Watson tweeted:

At least the horse’s head didn’t end up in my bed! http://t.co/UfwsVlmY Unbelievable. Quite unbelievable.

But later on, the suspicion arises that the timing of this juicy but relatively trivial piece of news has just been one massive exercise in smoke and mirrors.  The really big news has come from a quite different quarter – the Leveson inquiry and the declarations of a certain WPC.  The declarations first:

Do read para 40 of police officer Jacqui Hames’s #Leveson statement on surveillance:

“The News of the World has never supplied a coherent explanation for why we were placed under surveillance. Ill 2003, David, together with Dick Fedorcio and Colnmander Andre Baker, met Rebekah Brooks to discuss the matter.

“She repeated the unconvincing explanation that the News of the World believed we were having an affair. She agreed to iook into Alex Marunchak’s associations with Rees and Fillery but to my knowledge nothing further was ever said about the subject, indeed Mr Marunchak was subsequently promoted.

“I believe that the real reason for the News of the World placing us under surveillance was that suspects in the Daniel Morgan murder inquiry were using their association with a powerful and well-resourced newspaper to try to intimidate us and so attempt to subvert the investigation.”

As Jon Snow commented on his Twitter feed this afternoon:

Devatstating testimony from former WPC Jackie Haymes to Leveson: NOW subversion of a murder investigation? http://t.co/UjTxhaeM

Which brings me to my final piece of comment picked up from the ether:

#Leveson: Police collusion with NOTW to subvert murder inquiry. Met: HORSE! HORSE HORSE HORSE, LOOK AT THE HORSE! Murdoch: *silence*

If the above sequence of events is really how it has happened, and underlying it all is really a case of smoke and mirrors as already described, then it’s not just an old story about the alleged subversion of a murder inquiry but an absolutely hot potato of current news management.

By the police.

By certain parts of the media.

By the Lord only knows who else.

Rebekah Brooks, the Met and that hacking horse

 hacking, horses, Metropolitan Police, Rebekah Brooks, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Feb 282012
 

This story beggars belief: 

In a twist that even the brain of Chris Morris couldn’t have dreamt up, the Met Police is revealed to have “loaned” Rebekah Brooks a police horse in 2008. The Evening Standard reports that Brooks “rode the retired horse for a year at her farm in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire before it was put out to pasture.”

In the light of the above, then, the following Wikipedia page seems really appropriate:

Hack within the activity of equestrianism commonly refers to one of two things: as a verb, it describes the act of riding a horse for light exercise, and as a noun, it is a type of horse used for riding out at ordinary speeds over roads and trails.[1]

Although the latter part of the definition does beg the question whether the behaviours then mentioned have actually been shown by the parties to the agreement:

The term is sometimes used to describe certain types of exhibition or horse show classes where quality and good manners of the horse are particularly important.

A case of a hacking horse loaned by a hacking police force to a hacking editor?

Hacking in a horsey sense, of course.

Letter to a not entirely unknown lady?

 a con, Clive Goodman, James Murdoch, News Corp, News of the World, Parliament, phone-hacking, Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch, Tom Watson  No Responses »
Aug 162011
 

I studied a brilliant film at university called “Letter from an Unknown Woman”.  And its director, Max Ophuls, will forever remain one of my all-time favourites.

Meanwhile, the briefest of synopses at the IMDb website indicates the following:

A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember whom may hold the key to his downfall.

I am reminded of this film, for some peculiar reason, in relation to a slightly different matter.  To my unreasonable delight, in amongst the awful fireworks of the recent riots in England (for I still haven’t read anywhere a satisfactory explanation as to why they’ve only happened in England), it would appear today that the News International phone-hacking scandal has been reignited by the release into the public domain of this letter.  Not exactly a letter from an unknown woman then – as it was in fact written by Clive Goodman.  But, in the light of recent events at News International, including the resignation of its former CEO, Rebekah Brooks, its publication today couldn’t half be construed as an indirect missive to a not entirely unknown lady.  As well as a number of prominent gentlemen out there.

And if the implications of Goodman’s letter are as the Guardian describes them, I do wonder how these clever and powerful people could have believed with such impunity that telling incomplete truths was a secure and politically intelligent way forward when dealing with parliamentary committees of the kind we have here.  Unless, of course, their whole and daily ecosystem was made out of the kind of slippery relationship with reality that not only eloquence but also wealth and massive yes-people deference bring to one’s ability to maintain a sense of proportion.

On Twitter, this affair is rightly tagged #hackgate – precisely because the people involved should have remembered what happened to Nixon.  It wasn’t in the evil deeds that his people committed where his ultimate downfall lay.  Rather, it was in the arrogance of believing that he was beyond the reach of any jurisdiction because of the power he had acquired prior to and after the events in question.

When you commit indiscretions, do not get immediately caught and then learn to live with their permanent reality is – exactly – when you acquire a curious patina of Teflon-like impermeability to that sense of proportion I mention above.  If the corporation can be described as a kind of sociopathic entity – not because of its people as such (many of whom are well-minded to act honestly) but, instead, because of its ultimate and exclusive mission to increase shareholder value to the exclusion of everything else – is it at all surprising that some of its top-flight leaders may also acquire disagreeably disconcerting qualities which separate them so dramatically from ordinary people far down below?

And given that only very occasionally do they need to step outside their bubbles of yes-people deference, is it also at all surprising that when they do they get it so dramatically wrong?

What we saw in July, when Rupert and James Murdoch apparently told incomplete truths to a parliamentary committee, was two powerful gentlemen who expected the same treatment from the representatives of the people as they get in those daily ecosystems I referred to earlier.  It’s not that they expected to get away with telling porkies.  It’s, rather, that they didn’t expect for their authority to be questioned once laid down.

The psychology of power laid bare – that is what we are witnessing now.  And it’s really not a pretty sight.

A cardiac arrest, one might say

 a con, arrest, David Cameron, Guardian, in a hole, Michael White, police, Rebekah Brooks  No Responses »
Jul 172011
 

After struggling for twenty-four hours to find my satnav’s AC charger (no luck), I turned to my computer for some light relief.

Only to read this:

Ex-News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks has been arrested by police investigating phone hacking and bribery at the News of the World.

The 43-year-old was arrested by appointment at a London police station and remains in custody.

She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and on suspicion of corruption.

As this BBC report goes on to point out:

Mr Peston added: “It’s certainly the most extraordinary development. Rebekah Brooks is incredibly close to the most powerful people in the UK – the current prime minister, the previous prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. More or less every senior person of influence within Britain.”

Meanwhile, Michael White, of the Guardian newspaper, is reported as having observed the following:

The assistant editor of the Guardian, Michael White, believes the arrest is an attempt by police to deflect attention away from them.

“I’m wary when the police are trying to show the world they have been on the case, because for two or three years they’ve not been on this case properly and now they’re, perhaps they’re over compensating a bit to be honest,” he said.

Now White may believe this is an attempt by the police to overcompensate – and he may in fact be right.  But I just wonder if there isn’t a longer-term goal and a motivation we might approve of: in such a maze of corruption and influences, the easiest way to obtain the full collaboration of the ordinary-at-heart is to lop off as high as one can get the heads that normally roll last of all.  Those two hundred News of the World journalists who I criticised a couple of days ago for not telling their stories might – in the light of today’s events – be more inclined to be forthcoming about the realities they must surely have witnessed and turned a blind eye to, if not actually participated in.

Blow open this barrel of laughs by showing no one any longer is above the law – and even the mice who abandon the ship without so much as a squeak will begin to think twice.

(Interestingly, and as a by-the-way, the Cabinet Office published this documentation the other day, which shows all the high-level meetings carried out between the Prime Minister and top executives of the media over the past fourteen months.  Two observations come to mind: what’s out of the frame – that is to say, the months prior to his getting elected are surely of just as much interest and could quite easily be published by the Tory Party elsewhere – and why did the Prime Minister not see fit to meet with the BBC itself at all for these fourteen long months of his premiership?)

Pioneers, Prospectors and Settlers (or the end of class warfare as we have known it)

 Allegra Stratton, class war, class warfare, Ed Miliband, Guardian, new political metalanguage, News Corp, News of the World, on a high, Pioneers, Prospectors, Rebekah Brooks, Settlers  No Responses »
Jul 152011
 

I used to work for a company which broke up a certain section of its workforce into hunters and farmers – hunters were the salesforcey types who achieved new business and farmers the support staff who ensured new and existing customers stayed put.  It was a good and useful definition – an exact analogy which cut through much prejudice.  It helped both parties and the outside world understand better their roles and interactions.

Whilst reading my Kindle edition of today’s Guardian in the doctor’s surgery this morning, I came across a similar piece of clarity described by Allegra Stratton (the bold is mine):

It is at this point that sociologists normally reach for samples of opinion from swing voters and core voters, from the upper, middle and working classes. But this is a very old school way to slice and dice the country. Graeme Cooke, at one time head of David Miliband’s brains trust, has since been working on a thesis that the electorate has changed as much as the challenges for politicians.

He has analysed the British Values Survey and broken us all down into three types: Pioneers, Prospectors and Settlers. These are dispositions, not policy proclivities. These are the new tribes, and they do not have life-long loyalties to political parties.

Pioneers (41% of Britons) are global, networked, like innovation and believe in the importance of ethics. Prospectors (28%) like success, ambition, seek the esteem of others and if they think a party can help them help themselves, they are on board. Settlers (31%) see things in terms of right and wrong, are wary of change, seek security and have a strong sense of place – patriotism and national security motivate them to vote.

And it would seem that where politicians manage to cut across and satisfy all three strands – as Ed Miliband appears to do so over the News of the World scandal – a jackpot of sorts is hit.

So what are the implications?

All the social classes split up in roughly the same proportions. Settlers were most numerous after 1945 but as people became steadily more affluent, “post-material attitudes” dominated and so now Pioneers are the largest group.

And so to Murdoch. Pioneers would have liked Ed Miliband to tackle Murdoch long ago but while they are a big group, they are not big enough to wage a campaign and indeed, eventually, win an election. A fortnight ago Prospectors would have been wary of what they would have thought a quixotic campaign against Murdoch. Settlers would have disliked the squall of a fight. After the Milly Dowler hacking revelations, a campaign suitable for Pioneers suddenly became appealing to Settlers too. Prospectors joined in as it became clear to them at some point that Miliband was “winning”.

Prospectors are looking for someone who can advance their standards of living and social status.

It’s reductive, yes, but it shows the spectrum of dispositions with which we all have come to the Murdoch tale, and will bring to future moments of reckoning. And it’s how political strategists will be thinking about events.

This is fascinating stuff – as fascinating as the hunter-farmer dichotomy I mentioned at the beginning.  I’m only just beginning to absorb its truths.

The world gets far more complicated – for this is perhaps the end of class warfare as we have known it.  A completely new and far more level playing-field for us all.  Perhaps the political equivalent of open-data access, in fact.  For here you have to satisfy every social class’s needs. 

And those politicians, who think they need to use new technologies to broadcast the same messages as before in order to connect with the social classes of old, will not only be sadly and confusingly mistaken but will also eventually find themselves out of the political running through an apparently bewildering lack of any fault of their own.

They simply won’t get things their electorate does get more and more because their concept of the electorate will be woefully inexact.

Not only the politicians – I daresay even those businesspeople who ignore these new ways of seeing.

In fact, I daresay even those businesspeople who believe closing down newspapers and resigning from posts are actions in themselves sufficient to compensate for previous ills.

MSNBC on the phone-hacking scandal at the heart of News International

 a con, James Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch  No Responses »
Jul 072011
 

You read it and tweet it and think about it and wonder, but it takes the immediacy of video to truly horrify us all over again.  From across the Atlantic, this is how MSNBC is reporting recent events.  And at the foot of this post, how Fox News did so by accident!

More background here.  Thanks to Symbolman’s Twitter feed.
____________________

Further reading: here, Fox News covers the story without realising that it is doing so.

Update to this post: it’s just been announced that Rupert Murdoch will sacrifice the News of the World and close down the paper after this weekend’s edition.  Chinese walls have always been Murdoch’s way – consummate businessman that he is.  News International is more important as an entity than its component parts. The real objective here is the purchase of BSkyB at absolutely knockdown prices this autumn.  Just wait and see.

The implosion of British journalism, the deconstruction of the British establishment and the need for a Fifth Estate

 blogging, cheapo chequebook journalism, Fifth Estate, Fourth Estate, in a hole, Internet, journalism, News of the World, Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Jul 052011
 

And I say the implosion of British journalism, because a helluva lot of what goes under the guise of journalism here is in the hands of editors like Rebekah Brooks who work for companies like News International.

Anyhow.  According to the Guardian, Rebekah Brooks (who used to be Rebekah Wade – therein her possible confusion about exactly what happened during her tenure at the News of the World) is apparently “sickened at news of the Milly Dowler phone hacking”.  Meanwhile, over at Stumbling and Mumbling, Chris explains how remote-control management – where leaders spend their time in strategic meetings but never get down amongst the “dirty dirty” of daily process and activity – can lead to such awful things happening. 

And quite unbeknownst to the upper echelons in corporate structures. 

He concludes thus:

[...] Could it be that remote control managers function much as the gods did in ancient times. They get blame when things go wrong and praise when they go right, but in fact have no power at all, except that which ignorant people impute to them? They are, technically, redundant and are sustained in their lucrative positions only by superstition and ideology.

He also points out that there could well be an alternative motive for not wishing to get too involved in the unseemly realities of ordinary work:

[...] Like Mafia bosses, senior managers leaves the dirty work to their underlings.

To be honest, I think what’s really happening here is a massive deconstruction of the British establishment.  There we were, in our tolerantly racist ways, criticising the PIGS for their corruption and instability – when really the puff-pastry approach to governance is just as widely practised here as anywhere else.  The first chapter was MPs’ expenses; the second chapter is the absolute absence of journalistic and media integrity; and the third chapter will – if Paul has anything to do with it – mean the total implementation of the “Mediterranean” method of running nation states, an implementation which will surely outdo anything Italy or Greece have ever achieved to date.

For after MPs were outed by the Fourth Estate, who is left to out the journalists but other journalists?  And when was self-observance ever a guarantee of conceptual hygiene? 

I tell you what we do need.  We need to harness the power of the ordinary man and woman.  And we need to give it a name. 

How about the Fifth Estate?  As Wikipedia notes (the bold is mine):

Nimmo and Combs assert that political pundits constitute a Fifth Estate. Media researcher Stephen D. Cooper argues that bloggers are the Fifth Estate. William Dutton has argued that the Fifth Estate is not simply the blogging community, nor an extension of the media, but ‘networked individuals’ enabled by the Internet in ways that can hold the other estates accountable.

Yep.  That’s what we need.  And perhaps that’s what we’ve now got.  Mr Cameron may believe that all he needs to do is to rework Blair ten years on.  But ten years on, things are different out here – and the Internet is an element whose behaviours cannot be easily predicted.

Paul may be right when he says:

Once the fuss has blown over, Hunt will give the whole thing the go-ahead. And any hopes Labour had of not being savaged relentlessly by the Murdoch press over the next four years are now gone.

But the relentless savaging, from a 20th century editorial empire, anchored in a world where MySpace was once worth hundreds of millions, was then seen as a channel for corporate content and now is a backwater of the Internet, may not – in an innovative social media world where much of our time is spent creating our own content – be half as effective as it was held to be in New Labour times.

My money’s on the ordinary man and woman.

What do you think?