One of the most disturbing features of the entire News International/phone hacking has been the systematic elevation by the BBC of a rogues gallery of moral hypocrites; John Prescott. Steve Coogan, Hugh Grant, Chris Bryant and now, of course, Gordon Brown.
Brown has joined in the jiahd against Murdoch and the BBC have played it with violins for him. However as Guido points out, the Brown allegations are far from clear cut and NI seems quite content to counter his allegations. But the BBC coverage rolls on – desperate to damage Murdoch as much as possible and oblivious to every other angle.
So it looks like he gave out the story about his son not a ‘hack’! and as it’s near impossible to prove answer phone calls have been tampered with especially since G.C.H.Q mess about with every mail and call how can you sort out who did what ? and as for his bank account which is a police matter if he has reported it ? so he should shut up before he screws up any fair trial!, mind I do find that funny as hell sorry but how do you pass yourself off as the worst P.M in history and not laugh!
Matthew,
I was at university at the same time as Gordon the Moron, though, luckily not the same uni. Up here in the land of mists, no mellow fruitfulness, dourness , nursing wraths and Irn Bru, and that is if you are lucky.
His nickname, even then, was “Gay Gordon”, because he was always having a laugh. 😀
What’s a ‘nursing wrath’, Grant ? Is it some sort of kilted barrow wight ?
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.
It’s from Tam O’Shanter. Those lines always makes me visualise a wife with arms like Charles Atlas, slapping her rolling-pin on one palm and wearing a hair-net with curlers.
Grazie tante. So it’s a grudge rather than (as I’d rather hoped) a wraith.
“Those lines always makes me visualise a wife with arms like Charles Atlas, slapping her rolling-pin on one palm and wearing a hair-net with curlers.”
Puts me in mind of the late and unlamented Ted Heath, personally.
Guardian published this story on Wednesday 29 November 2006 21.10 GMT
Sun Published on 30 Nov 2006
So who briefed the guardian ?
Brown was contacted about this story before it was published and did nothing to stop it and after his wife held party’s and sleep overs with the Murdoch family and sun staff ?
crocodile tears!!!
Matthew,
In Gordon’s case “Hell hath no fury….. “.
During the interview this morning Brown said quite pointedly, on four occasions, “i’ve never talked publically,” Has it not occured to anyone at the BBC/Guardian that his wife Sarah was very close to Brooks at the time. Is it not possible that Sarah blabbed?
Asking searching questions of anyone except News International has not been a hallmark of the BBC during this episode.
Nor, it has to be said, of any of the MSM who seem to be taking the line that if anyone says their phone has been hacked it must have happened and it must have been Rupert wot dun it.
I wonder how many of any of these allegations will ever be proved? In truth I don’t doubt that many NotW hacks were, well, hacking people’s phones but I don’t doubt either that it is a widespread practice amongst other papers. I can’t get worked up about most of it – if you, as a prominent personality, don’t change the default PIN it’s the digital equivalent of leaving your front door unlocked for anyone to come in and nose about.
But that aside, how do you prove that anyone has accessed your voicemails, short of a written confession? Even if they’re stupid enough to delete messages, how do you prove who accessed them? Is there anyone here with the technical knowledge to explain that?
If Brown was SO upset about it why did he then go to Brooks wedding the week after. The whole thing stinks.
I’ve just listened to the full interview with Brown, and it raises questions about Sarah which, if I were a NI journalist, i’d be very eager to ask of her.
You mean like, “What’s up with that great slumber party you had at Chequers with Murdoch’s wife and daughter, along with the editor of the Sun?”
Ah, I understand now. Gordon Brown is a hero because he broke Labour away from the steel grip of nasty Uncle Rupert, and that’s why the evil media mogul “cozied up” (Iain Watson’s term) to the Conservatives. BTW, prepare yourselves for a full week of promotion for Mr. Brown’s exclusive interview on Panorama next Monday. They sure know how to milk it.
And again it’s stated as fact that Millie Dowler’s phone was hacked, when it’s only an allegation. I can’t remember the BBC rushing to state allegations as fact in criminal cases like this. Well, actually I can: when they reported that bogus story about Jews stoning a dog to death.
The beeb will do gordon’s bidding,but when its all over the spotlight will turn to the beeb and what their involement in this affair.N.I wont let the matter rest,both liebore and the beeb are rubbing their collective hands in glee but just wait untill the news breaks that the liebore party told the met to go easy on N.I because it was one of bliars and g morons pals…
Will the beeb tell the truth then? i think not.
The BBC has its stable of approved victims, McRuin a man who poisoned and smeared and briefed his way through a decade and a half in the newslavelabour party.
The BBC does not think we need to know how McRuin employed McBride and Draper and Campbell. The BBC wont be keen on explaining that it was probably Mcmental himself that allowed the release of that cringe making fawning story about his rug rats illness to drown another negative story breaking at the time.
The BBC does not want us to know just who invented the press lobby, the insider trading in political stories, the dirty tricks. Newslavelabour thrived on some simple rules.
1) how to bury bad news via its stable of stooge MSM hacks.
2) Scum like Bliar and McLoon asked one question when dealing with enemies, ‘how can we smear this person through the MSM?’
3)Withold access to stories and grant special access to insider information, use the lobby to place regime doctrines into the MSM by rewarding compliant hacks and punishing critical hacks.
4) Use poisonous smear merchants to dig up the dirt and provide dirt on their enemies to hacks for publication, the newlabour age was dedicated to the pursuit of attacking their enemies through the MSM and they were experts at it.
Only when that certified mental case Brown poisoned his way to ultimate power in ways that would the Borgias look like girl guides did he destroy the machine that Bliar ran so effectively. Like everything that McMental touched, the Midas touch in reverse he was able to destroy the very machine that he used with such enthusiasm to destroy his political enemies.
The BBC is telling us half the story and no back story at all, no history and no detail and no context. All we get is an approved list of approved victims and none of them are innocent. It looks like what it is, a tribal political attack on the enemies of the left.
It was Gordon Brown who wrote that book on “courage” wasn`t it?
No mention of David Kelly-Mary Jo Kopekne-Yelena Bonner or even Vaclav Havel/Lech Welesa as I recall- but Robert/Ted kennedy or JFK?…these are the kinds that Gordon thought “heroes” for being so courageous and all!
Well any Prime Minister who rails at Rebekah Brooks for dragging his sons health all over her redtop…and then goes to her wedding after that?…safe to say he`ll never trouble himself with a chapter on his own courage!
Are we the first country to have a jellyfish foisted on us as a Prime Minister…none of us asked or voted for him did we?Still that`s the Labour Party and democracy for you!
Well, Call Me Dave can at least bring out his own family tragedy card.
Coming soon on the BBC !!
“Gordon Brown : War Hero, man of courage, all down the centuries”.
This drama / documentary , presented by Peter and Dan Snow traces the little-known military career of the greatest hero in history.
New evidence, and previously unseen footage, of Brown advising Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae , with Nelson at Trafalgar and Rommel in North Africa, literally turns history upside down.
Only on the BBC . You can trust us to tell the truth. ( NB Press the red button if you think this is bullshit. )
Battle of Cannae Run The Country, more like.
How many times when Brown was in trouble/before an election did we have in the papers or on the TV that he cried for the loss of Jennifer (including the last election ie several years after the child died). If he used the death of a child to promote his election then how does this differ from NOTW using the death of Milly?
I have also worked on the principle that I do not believe a word that either Brown nor Tom Watson have said – and it hasn’t let me down so far.
Deborah,
Agreed. For anyone, Brown, Cameron or whoever, to use children for political purposes is disgusting.
Another glorious chapter in the strange career of McDoom as, confronted with an open goal, our intrepid hero twats it over the crossbar.
The Sun’s political editor Tom Newton Dunn has mounted a vigorous defence against the Brown allegations, under the headline Brown wrong.
He describes the allegations “as FALSE and a smear”.
Here are some extracts:
And when we approached former Labour leader Mr Brown and his wife Sarah with the story, she gave us their consent to run it.
The dad, who has links with the Brown family, learned of Fraser’s condition in the weeks after he was born.
He said: “It was difficult knowing the truth, then to hear the lies being put out just to screw the papers.
The Sun ran the story after speaking to Mr Brown and wife Sarah. She gave us their consent to run it.
We agreed not to publish until they were ready to go public.
They also asked that the story be allowed to run in other newspapers. We agreed. In the following months the Browns showed no sign of any discontent with The Sun.
They attended a number of functions with The Sun’s then editor Rebekah Brooks and the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch.
Now, you would think that the BBC, when reporting this (and especially when linking to this very article), would mention the two crucial claims by Mr Newton Dunn that do most damage to Brown’s allegations against the paper – that Sarah Brown gave her consent to the Sun publishing the story and that the informant “has links to the Brown family”.
You would have also thought it proper for the BBC to report Mr Newton Dunn’s claim that the Brown inner circle asked that other newspapers also be allowed to publish the story, as this would further destroy the Brown case.
Yet the BBC article carefully omits these details. Why? What possible good reason could there be for the BBC seriously weakening the Sun‘s defence in the eyes of their website readers by missing out most of Tom Newton Dunn’s main counter-allegations?
It’s a disgrace, and Cameron allows them to get away with it.
The Today programme spent quite a lot of time pushing Gordon Brown’s allegations yesterday – in all three paper reviews and in various discussions across the programme’s three-hour length, ending with James Naughtie and Norman Smith passing on Brown’s allegations – without questioning them, repeatedly stressing how genuine Brown’s outrage was and how serious his allegations were and how significant it is that such a man with such weight and importance as Brown is intervening in this way, and how his intervention changes the whole direction of the scandal….such a BIG story!
As Brown’s take on the story has now been seriously challenged, you would have thought that Today would have devoted a similar amount of time to the story this morning, airing the counter-charges from NI, discussing the links between the Brown administration and the Murdoch Empire, challenging Brown’s tendency to re-write history.
Not a bit of it. Except for short mentions in the three paper reviews, Today dropped the Brown angle this morning like a lead balloon tied to a sack of potatoes. There were no discussions about it. The BBC juggernaut moved onto new lines of attack instead.
Shouldn’t a professional, impartial news organisation always seek to reexamine a story the following day, if the nature of the story seems to have radically changed overnight, instead of just ploughing on regardless and leaving what the Sun describes (if its version of events is correct) as “a smear” hanging unchallenged in the air?
The BBC should be held to account over some of it’s coverage of the hacking – but I won’t be holding my breath.
The BBC are now, effectively, setting the news agenda, and the rest of the media are so scared of them they are allowing them to get away with it.
BBC-NUJ-Labour: love-in for Brown against Murdoch, apparently now, on all BBC-NUJ TV and radio news channels for a whole half hour. Brown makes clear his affection for BBC-NUJ as his preferred, Labour-friendly, broadcasting monopolist.
(Meanwhile death toll of Islamic jihad massacre in Mumbai is now 21 and will increase. Hold an inside half page.)