A couple of other Murdoch/Leveson things. Something to thank Rebekah Brooks for: it seems we were spared John Reid as Prime Minister because he gave an exclusive interview to the Sunday Torygraph before speaking to the News of the Screws, and Becky Asbo decided to zap him out of, basically, pique. I remember actively planning with Chris Lightfoot to start a Web site dedicated to muckraking him.
(Trade gossip column: note that Ben Verwaayen, much respected BT and later Alcatel-Lucent CEO, was in the room when Piers Morgan blabbed about the voicemail exploit. This may have been the only occasion anyone at didn’t regret that his predecessor sold their GSM network for a song.)
Like hail after rain: Axel Springer Verlag as potential buyer for the papers.
“Whenever Cameron was mentioned, Rupert used to screw up his face and mutter dismissively ‘PR.’ It’s not just me.
He didn’t look like a baddie; he looked like a weakie, pure victim. Key lobbying gatekeeper and Minister for Government Policy, Oliver Letwin, is pathetic:
“If you are on the same side as her, you have to see her every week. This was how it worked. It was what was demanded if you wanted them on your side.
You thought Back to ’95 was a nightclub: but here’s a key witness in a Tory scandal whose legal defence is wrecked by a public interest immunity certificate issued by the Attorney General.
Follow the budget: expect at least another 18 months of relevations at the average rate since 2010.
Where is the outrage over Rupert Harrison leaking bits of the budget to NI? More to the point, where is the question?
That Beast piece does quite a job on Rebekah Brooks – she comes out of it as a sort of professional schmoozer, with no other real skills or interests. Which more or less eliminates her from the list of suspects when it comes to managing the Project – I see her as an element in other people’s plans (“then Rebekah does her networky thing *here*, network network network, gossip smear gossip”), not as one of the ones making the plans.
Then again, Peter Jukes and Paul McMullan are both men with a reason to dislike this powerful woman, as indeed am I.