The fact that there was a run on the bank in the autumn of 2007, when bank deposits had been guaranteed by the Government since effectively forever, was a political fact that should have told us much, much more than it did. Discuss. I seem to spend all my time watching enormous institutions that seemed…
Read More things fall apartBack in 2006, I said to Charlie Stross that the zeitgeist of the near future would be exasperation. I also said something similar as a comment on the Halting State book-in-progress, so if you think everyone in it seems grumpy, you’ve got me to thank. But, of course, we’ve now landed in the near future…
Read More Yes, they are all blackPeter Oborne‘s piece on post-Murdoch Britain is interesting, although mostly for the sheer otherness of his thinking. He’s at least got the good sense or moral minima required to end up on the right side of the debate, but he gets there through some truly odd reasoning. Can anyone remember even one instance when any…
Read More the giant squid meets the criminal octopus as the last Tory sings his swan songA comment pulls me up for inventing the Labour statesman “Nye Bevin”. Whoops. But this gave me an idea. Labour mashups! Take the front half of one significant socialist and match it with the back half of another, and see what you get. For example, Harold Cripps is obviously a 1960s trade union leader. Tony…
Read More as for that bastard Hopi Wegg-Prosser, though…This blog raised the question of Coulson’s vetting. It demanded that Dick Fedorcio be called in. It demanded an audit of telecoms intercept logs. So here’s another question. A timetable for defence vetting processes can be found here. A request for developed vetting, i.e. a top secret clearance, or what Andy Coulson was meant to…
Read More trumpetI thought I’d put together a list of things that upshot from the Murdoch hearings and immediately afterwards. NI was still paying Mulcaire Yates was told not to tell Cameron by Ed Llewellyn James Murdoch says it was all others’ fault, i.e. Hinton and Brooks Rebekah Brooks says George Osborne recommended Coulson 10 out of…
Read More he’s making a list, he’s checking it twice…I expect there’s going to be a hell of a lot of ink spilled in the next few months about different schemes for “regulating the press”, how the very idea is an abomination and this has nothing to do with my column in some Murdoch rag, how this outrageous behaviour makes it utterly necessary for…
Read More against the PCC, for the Competition CommissionAm I right in thinking that Andy Hayman’s testimony yesterday fingered Met press chief Dick Fedorcio? Hayman admitted he’d regularly had dinner with News International executives while he was meant to be investigating them. He mentioned that he had done this in the company of the head of communications of the Met, presumably with his…
Read More a city wired for soundThere’s been a little progress on some of the lines of inquiry in this post. First up, the question of whether or not Coulson was subjected to security vetting before joining No.10 Downing Street, and if so, what the Defence Vetting Agency said about him. This one took a relatively long time to spin up,…
Read More this is a security announcementI still can’t get over this morning’s Cameron press conference. The incredible thing, as I said, was the transition in what was respectable to discuss. The Guardian went the whole hog and brought up the whole ball of police corruption, and Michael Crick of the BBC pressed very hard on the question of the money.…
Read More transmission belt