I don’t often link to the Daily Hell but this is a special occasion. A4E in police fraud inquiry. On a similar theme, here’s a piece on Tory discontent with the NHS bill that names names. Specifically, Gove, IDS, Osborne, NI Secretary Owen Paterson, and horrible old thatcherite gargoyle Sir George Young. That sounds like…
Read More more nonprofit profitBack in the summer, as the News International scandal (well, beyond the scandal of its very existence) cranked up, we had a look at how the government buys newspaper display advertising and made an effort to reach out and touch the people in charge of it. I see no reason not to go round the…
Read More contacting the Government’s media-buying functionThis Afghan news item is telling. Mr. Hasas’ seven-mile road construction project went so awry that his security guards opened fire on some of the very villagers he was trying to woo on behalf of his American funders. Mr. Hasas was a point man in a $400 million U.S. Agency for International Development campaign to…
Read More non-profit, but nonprofit for who?While we’re back on the Murdoch trail, readers have probably seen this story, in which the police have taken steps to keep Rebekah Brooks’ personal assistant from fleeing the country. And of course this bit: Ms Carter was also a beauty editor for The Sun and is a partner in a cosmetics business with former…
Read More Not particularly hidden persuadersTom Watson runs for the gap, specifically yet another ugly little employment law story at the Sun. Readers will know that they’re like that among themselves and there’s something of a press tradition of not mentioning the names. On this occasion it’s Our Boys Go In Editor “Tom” “Newton” “Dunn” vs. their Whitehall editor Clodagh…
Read More A slight return to 2004. Wasn’t that fun.Ho hum, a spun day at the Guardian with this piece covering a double page spread on 8-9. Amelia Hill interviews a panel of prominent feminists about the Prime Minister’s new “women’s advisor”. You may have already guessed that they aren’t particularly impressed (an accurate headline might have been Thinking Individuals Find Sop Unsatisfying, Faintly…
Read More How to control the newspapers (aka. Explicit is better than implicit)Music! Bonus extra: If I scripted something to chuck random music links into a G+ hangout, would anyone listen?
Read More non-Thursday music linkA while ago I noticed that a detailed story in Le Monde about their telecoms-interception-scandal-of-the-week had bizarrely vanished from their archives. It is baaack and I can share it with you! So if you read French and want to know what happens, in operational detail, when a prosecutor orders an illegal trawl of call-detail records…
Read More we know where your dog goes to schoolJust to recover something from my twitter feed, last Friday, BT announced its Q4 results and (among other things) its management said that they were scaling down their capital investment plans, and that one of the reasons was low interest rates. What? Well, as a UK company BT has to capitalise the net surplus or…
Read More nonlinear response to interest ratesThis Ha’aretz piece is interesting for the insight it gives into Israeli policy and especially into process, but also for a couple of other things. Notably, it’s remarkably frank about the Obama administration deliberately trying to stop Netanyahu going to war, and the role of dodgy casino guy Sheldon Adelson in both US and Israeli…
Read More Churchill was wrong for most of his career, you know…