There was rather a nice symmetry to my commute today. On the way into work, various BBC noisemakers were getting all het-up on the Today programme over the Grauniad's non-scoop about the News of the World being, well, the News of the World, complete with Andrew Neil suffering what sounded like an early-morning bout of moral outrage. It was enough to make one feel a little dyspeptic. A little.
Fast forward to the homeward journey and Five Live had Derek Jameson (I thought he was dead) telling everyone to grow-up and that the Graun had got the whole thing completely wrong - hypocritically, stupidly wrong. Good on the old bugger.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, a senior bobby called Yates announced that there would be no further investigation into the matter, despite the Graun's hysterical allegations, because there was no new evidence of phone "hacking" beyond the stuff already dealt with in court a couple of years ago. (See Guido for excellent techy explanations and superior coverage generally of this, a very dreary tea-cup squall.)
Story dead, then. A nice, round trip. Not quite. Grotbag Brown waded in earlier this afternoon claiming that there are "serious questions" to answer over this, er, non-scandal. Well, not according to the Yard, Gordo. Seems you got that one wrong, too. Consistent. But it does demonstrate from how high up the political energy for this desperate straw-clutching is coming.
So it appears the dull lefty knives are out for Andy Coulson, regardless of the fact that they are now blunted. Guido has just wondered aloud whether or not this Coulson bloke will survive a Select Committee bashing by Labour woodentops. Not only will he survive it, Fawkes, I reckon he will come out with all guns blazing and take the fight to them. They are long-overdue a streetfight arse-whooping. This could well be the making of the man.
I mean, the standards of journalism of the Left media have never been more smeary, rotten, deceitful and slapdash have they? They're out of control, aren't they? So sure, there is a job going at The Sun, GF. And Alan bloody Rusbridger should be applying for it.
I doubt they would have him.
This has a distinct whiff of Lord Shirtlifter of Boys about it! Perhaps a little hum from McBride,too.
ReplyDeleteThey really are trying to get payback for the expenses and smeargate scandals with one major difference. The expenses and smeargate scandals were true - this one is not. Yates has even announced publicly that Prescott's phone was not tapped.
They are, however, not going to let it go - not yet anyway.
They'll probably keep plugging away in vain hope for a few more days at least (a kind of 'Cargo Cult' mindset?).
ReplyDeleteThey're grasping in furious desperation for something that's 'emotionally equivalent' to the blows that have recently landed on themselves - substance is very definitely *not* the issue (as if it ever was, with that lot).
Wasn't there some kind of weird thing between Hain and Guido a bit back where someone tried to feed Guido a false story about Hain but he did some checks and never ran it. Hain later came out with a sob story defence of his blantant corruption which stated that Guido had run the planted story.
So, Hain's people tried to plant false info at order-order (bad, wrong, deceitful); it failed, and they still ran a defense that assumed it had worked (wishful to the point of madness).
What the f***!