In the light of the last post, don’t forget Will Lewis’s role at the Daily Telegraph. The Guardian wasn’t willing to say that the whole affair of the leaked Vince Cable tapes sounded much more like the actions of someone trying to sabotage opposition to the BSkyB takeover than someone trying to spoil the Torygraph’s fun, but oddly enough the FT did. Of course it’s a BOGOF – there’d be some fun in nicking the scoop off the competition, but it probably did the story no end of good that it broke on the BBC and avoided being just another street of shame quarrel.
And I would really like to know how many other ex-NI press officers have been installed in government. The type case here is Wallis, who managed to be with NI, the Met, and the Tories, and who was specifically hired to push the Met’s line with No.10. I can’t emphasise that enough – it combines the role of the Met and ACPO as an independent political force with than of NI and meant that the police and the prime minister communicated via Murdoch’s man.
I think the priority is still the vetting issue, then Wallis and the wider network, and the telecoms surveillance issue. A question: I seem to have mislaid a link to a news story concerning the different networks’ respective behaviour in terms of user notification. At least one operator didn’t bother to do any on the grounds the police hadn’t given them a full list, which of course they didn’t ask for.
I also still think a long-range target has to be the football rights.
I wonder if ACPO are in fact as far in the NI loop as the Met or the Tories. Given Orde’s line of recent days (which has got me wondering whether he doesn’t want to be Met Comm, or only wants it if he can get the title ‘The outspoken…’), I’m not so sure. Also, ACPO _really_ don’t like elected police commissioners (unlike, say, me) and the Camerons appear to have put it into the box marked ‘Labour’ some time in the late noughties.
CW