The downfall of Kelvin MacKenzie?

I found this video of Kelvin MacKenzie being doorstepped by Channel 4’s News’s Alex Thompson.

Suddenly, MacKenzie doesn’t look as tough as he once did. I especially like the bit where he says “Please, Alex, please…”, as if begging an executioner for mercy.

Squirm, Kelvin, squirm! Feel the pain and suffering of those you once lied about.

He hates Liverpudlians, he hates the working class and he hates the Scots too, despite being of Scottish parentage. Let’s hope this miserable bastard’s career is finally finished.

Hillsborough: the truth at last

Liverpool is a unique city in many ways. It is a city that is divided by football but also united by it. My family is like a lot of Scouse families: we’re split between the red and the blue halves of the city’s footballing divide. I’m a Liverpool supporter, so was my grandfather, my mum and one of my aunts who’d married a Kopite. The others, my uncles (one of whom played for Tranmere) and aunt, are/were Toffees.  You’d always find Blues and Reds at Prenton Park on Friday nights to watch Tranmere Rovers before going to their respective side’s matches the following day. What other city would you find supporters from rival sides getting on so well? Only in Liverpool. Hillsborough affected not just the city of Liverpool but the rest of Merseyside.

It was 1989 and I was in the final year of my undergraduate degree at Newcastle Poly. I’d gone to the Student Union bar with some of my friends with the intention of watching a cracking tie. Within minutes of the kick-off it was obvious that something wasn’t right, the camera had panned to the Leppings Lane stand and we could see people clambering over the bars at that end of the ground. After a lot of end-to-end action, police and officials appeared on the pitch and the match was stopped. Within minutes we got the news that people were being crushed to death. I started sobbing; it was uncontrolled sobbing. I told my mates that I could have been there. I could have been one of those supporters who’d been crushed. I felt the unfolding tragedy. I can still feel it today.

In the days that followed, stories emerged in the press that pointed the finger of blame, not at the police’s lack of crowd management skills, but at the fans. The Sun, as we know, was the worst of the lot, with its editor, Kelvin Mackenzie, standing by its front page splash.

Mackenzie was unrepentant. In the years following Hillsborough and the subsequent Taylor Report, he repeated his  version of the ‘truth’ on each and every occasion when he has been asked to retract his lies. To this day, no one on Merseyside buys The Sun. Mackenzie has apologized but it’s 23 years too late. We don’t want his apology. He can go to hell.

Today, the truth behind that tragic day has been revealed when documents were released which includes letters of complaint to the Press Council , the local press agency story from which The Sun’s ‘truth’ was derived (Tory MP Irvine Patnick was also a source), the coroner’s reports and the shocking revelations that 41 of the 96 victims could have survived and the 3.15pm inquest cut off point that sealed the fate of the unfortunates.

Thatcher also believed the lies told her by a senior office of the Merseyside Constabulary.  Many documents and CCTV footage have mysteriously disappeared leaving plenty of unanswered questions. What was Bernard Ingham’s role in all of this? As Thatcher’s press secretary, Ingham was a master practitioner of journalism’s dark arts. He accepted the police’s version of events and went on record as saying,

“You can’t get away from what you were told,” Ingham said. “We talked to a lot of people; I am not sure if it was the chief constable. That was the impression I gathered: there were a lot of tanked-up people outside.”

Ingham was asked about the Taylor report and said rather tellingly,

“I think the police are a very easy target.”

We now have the truth about what happened on 15 April, 1989. What we now need is for those responsible, and I include The Sun and Kelvin Mackenzie for their smear campaign, to face justice. The liar Patnick should also be stripped of his knighthood.

Then perhaps we can get some proper closure.

Justice for the 96!

Don’t buy The Sun!

The BBC. Left wing? Don’t even think about it!

If the bloggers at the Telegraph and their followers are to be believed, the BBC is a rabidly left wing broadcaster, whose sole objective is to inject their filthy Marxism into innocent minds. The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. The BBC is the state broadcaster and as such it is a conservative institution. The BBC’s coverage of the recent riots being a case in point.

There are many examples of how the BBC turned the riots into a discourse about young black men and gangsta rap. Fiona Armstrong or Lady MacGregor of MacGregor, if you prefer, interviewed Darcus Howe on the BBC News Channel. In it, she appeared to suggest that Howe had participated in past riots and was condoning the looting. Howe was furious and so were many viewers.

Here’s the exchange between Lady MacGregor and Howe

The Voice expressed its outrage and called on the BBC to apologise. The Corporation has yet to do so.

Newsnight’s coverage of the riots was spectacularly bad. On the Monday, we were treated to the spectacle of a studio ‘debate’ between Michael Gove and Harriet Harman. Gove came across as petulant and bad tempered, while Harman was cool and measured. But Gavin Esler allowed Gove to shout and talk over Harman. Then Kelvin MacKenzie was invited to make a contribution and, surprise, surprise, he didn’t disappoint with his usual spiel about socialism and nanny states. Here is the studio ‘debate’ with Lyn Costello, the rapper Reveal (who was very good) and a student.

But Newsnight’s worst moment came on the Friday when Emily Maitlis allowed David Starkey to talk over the other studio guests after making the suggestion that ‘whites’ were turning ‘black’. Maitlis is a pretty lightweight anchor and should never have been given the job of hosting Newsnight.

Within days of the riots, the BBC aired a special edition of Crimewatch in which it asked the public to turn in rioters.  The Telegraph complained that the rioters were being referred to by the BBC as “protesters”. In this article it cites “political correctness”.  To be honest, I watched a great deal of the BBC’s awful coverage and I didn’t, at any point, notice the reporters or newsreaders referring to rioters as “protesters”. The BBC’s riot reportage was unequivocally conservative in its tone.

The BBC World Service, which is hated by the Tories, aired an edition of World Have Your Say in which it used the heading “Is there a problem with young black men”. It was forced to issue an apology.

There may be a few left-wingers working for the BBC but for every left-winger, there is a right-winger. The opponents of the BBC will claim that there is a “left-wing bias” when no such bias exists. Some will claim that the Question Time audience is made up of left-wingers but they suffer from selective blindness when the programme is recorded in the shire counties where the audiences are mainly composed of Tory voters.

There is a Guardian article here about the decline in standards on Newsnight.

John Simpson, in this article in the Telegraph said that BBC News has never been “left-wing”.

The Daily Mail recruited Peter Sissons to claim that the BBC is “left-wing”. The Mail has always been one of the loudest voices to call for the BBC to be abolished.

Here is a Telegraph-approved site called Biased BBC

Hannan moans about the BBC.

Delingpole moans about the BBC.

I suspect the reason why so many right wingers complain about BBC bias is because they want the BBC to tug its collective forelock in deference to them. But they wilfully overlook examples of real bias in order to advance their thesis that the BBC should be abolished.

John Pilger has written of examples of blatant right-wing bias on the BBC particularly in relation to Israel-Palestine. Remember Mark Thompson’s refusal to allow the DEC to broadcast an appeal in the wake of Operation Cast Lead?

Some people have very short memories.

Murdoch: hoist by his own petard or playing a long game?

My work took me much longer to finish than I expected, hence the long gap between blogs. A lot has happened over the last couple of weeks. Events in the phone hacking scandal have moved very quickly: no sooner than we hear of one revelation, another comes along within hours to take its place. Needless to say, Murdoch’s minions have overstepped the mark and acted criminally. Phone taps normally require a court order. The News of the World thought that it was above the law. It wasn’t.  Now the rest of News International and its parent company, News Corporation are under suspicion. The Sun and The Times have both been accused of phone hacking and in the US, it was believed that one of the News Corp companies hacked into the phones of those killed in the Twin Towers attack of September 11, 2001.

The News of the World is no more. No doubt it will be replaced by something just as vile. In many respects The Sun and the News of the World are the same paper. They both print the same kind of gossip and sleazy scandal and both papers believe that they have the right to intrude into people’s private lives.

I had originally begun drafting a blog a couple of weeks ago. My angle on this was the city of Liverpool and how The Sun and NotW had been boycotted by Scousers. The people of Liverpool have known for a long time what News International is capable of doing.  In the aftermath of the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989, The Sun made up a story about Liverpool supporters urinating on the dead. Kelvin MacKenzie, then editor of the paper, refused to apologize and even went so far as to rub more salt into the wound by standing by the ‘story’. To this day, the sales of The Sun and The News of the World on Merseyside are the lowest anywhere in the country. No self-respecting Scouser, red or blue, would contemplate buying such a vile rag.

Many of us have known for some time that Murdoch media and the government enjoy a close relationship. When Cameron hired Andy Coulson as his press secretary, Coulson was already up to his neck in shit.  But what we have seen is that the relationship between the Tories and the Murdoch media is somewhat closer than a mere business arrangement; these people meet socially. Cameron, Rebekah Brooks and Coulson have  broken bread together. Indeed Cameron, Coulson and Brooks live rather close to each other.  They are even referred to as the “Chipping Norton Set”.

The Murdoch press may not be able to inject its views into the heads of its readers but it is an opinion former and its views are taken seriously by many people. British politicians work to please the Murdoch press and will do their utmost to avoid upsetting papers like the The Sun, a paper that can ruin lives and careers at the drop of a hat.

In 1992, The Sun claimed to have won the general election for John Major’s Tories. The day before the polls opened, the Scum ran a front page that said “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave in Britain turn off the lights”. Labour lost the election but in the years that followed the Tories were battling allegations of sleaze.

Before the 1997 General Election, Tony Blair met with executives from News International. He understood that he needed to get the Murdoch media on his side in order to win. But it was a poisoned chalice, the Blair and the Brown governments found themselves dancing to Murdoch’s tune.

Yesterday, Murdoch had full page apologies printed in his papers and those of his rivals.  He’s done it again today. I suspect that his lawyers have advised him to do this, so that he can come back in a year’s time with a renewed bid for BSkyB. All he’s doing is trying to remake his image and that of his papers. As far as out politicians are concerned, they talk a good talk but they’re scared of Murdoch. They’ve done just enough to give the impression that they’re reining him in. Ed Miliband has called for a ban on multi-media ownership by a single person or group. This would be welcome. But the press cannot regulate itself properly. The Press Complaints Commission is run by the newspaper industry and membership  is not compulsory. The PCC does not have the power to sanction errant newspapers nor can it impose fines. All it can do is get the paper in question to print an apology, which is, more often than not, a single paragraph buried inside the newspaper.

I’ll leave you with this mindless drivel from LMer and professional shit-stirrer, Brendan O’Neill who blames the NotW’s demise on a “dictatorship of do-gooders”.

When small groups of professional activists help to shut down a newspaper read by millions of everyday Brits, that is not “people power”. When celebrities and well-to-do commentators help to deprive 7.5 million people of their Sunday read – and what’s more, claim to be doing it in order to save those 7.5 million people from being morally corrupted – that is not a “democratic moment”. It is more like a dictatorship of do-gooders.

Lest we forget that O’Neill’s former magazine, LM was shut down because it lost a libel case against ITN whom LM had accused of misrepresenting the Bosnian Civil War.   A “dictatorship of do-gooders” had nothing to do with the NotW’s demise; its death was caused by slipshod journalistic standards and blatant lawbreaking. I, for one, am glad it’s gone. I think that I should point out that O’Neill also writes for the Australian, a title owned by guess who?

Looking forward to the Emergency Budget?

The heir to the Baronetcy of Ballintaylor  appeared on the Andrew Marr Show this morning in advance of  Tuesday’s Emergency Budget. What struck me was his continued insistence that the public sector should take the brunt of the cuts. He also kept adding to the lie that the deficit was the fault of those on benefits and not because of greedy bankers – this was later repeated on The Big Questions when Kelvin MacKenzie told us that the recession was the fault of the last ‘socialist government’. In that case, someone should tell Blair that he was leading a socialist government because he never once claimed to be a ‘socialist’ nor were any of his government’s policies socialistic in any sense of the word. The Honourable George also seems rather content to continue rewarding  rich parasites while bashing those who are unemployed or on low incomes. Because if last week’s Dispatches on Channel 4 is correct, then we are heading for another financial crisis. Will Hutton – who has now been welcomed into the Con Dem big tent – says that while bonuses have been cut, salaries have risen to compensate for the lower bonuses. His friends in The City will continue to bleed us dry while telling us that without them the country would go down the plughole and George is happy to keep them onside: they are the soi-disant ‘Masters of the Universe’ who hold the rest of us to ransom. Banking is not an honourable profession. On the contrary, it is a crooked profession that relies on the exploitation of gullible investors. It is a profession that rewards greed and demands more and more power than it is really entitled to. As Hutton pointed out, The City of London is the most powerful borough council in the country and it wields the kind of power that other councils can only envy. It also has access to the kinds of funds that allows it to buy influence in parliament.

Accompanying this talk of cuts is the talk of the ‘need for growth’. Even the last government talked about ‘growth’. But it is the drive for economic growth that is killing us – not that these politicians are capable of seeing this. If we look at the ‘natural’ world, we can see that growth doesn’t continue indefinitely; it has to stop at some point. Yet the custodians of the national economies of the world insist that growth is not only necessary but that it can continue indefinitely.  Growth is seen as the alpha and omega of western capitalist ‘democracies’. As Baudrillard notes “Growth means affluence. Affluence means democracy” (2003:51)  or, at least, that is the myth. The reality is that only a few will become affluent while the rest of us continue to struggle to make ends meet. What Baudrillard is suggesting here is that two words exists to bolster the argument that the current system needs to be defended and even extended. Growth and affluence are used to convince people that we live in a real democracy when we, in fact, live in a plutocracy that gives the illusion of freedom. But it is only the rich who are truly free since they are the ones who have no need for mortgages or loans. The majority of aspiring property-owners will eventually find themselves shackled to their banks; their home, while theoretically owned by them, is in fact owned by the bank. There can be no freedom unless it comes through the banks.

If this government wants economic growth then it is going about it the wrong way. Slashing public spending and raising taxes will have the following effects: job losses, greater poverty and less money to spend. It is the latter that this government will have to be worried about. Because our western economies are built on the consumption of largely meaningless products (as well as consumer credit), the amount of money that the State receives in VAT will be lower. So much for getting more money into the nation’s coffers.

As for the budget itself, I expect to see a rise in income tax and VAT; cuts to benefits; businesses will close and less money for local government. Make no mistake, much of the drive for cuts comes from banks and other financial institutions that are integrated into the political machinery of the country. As Hutton reminds us, much of our economic activity comes from a financial sector that produces ever more  intangible financial ‘products’ while refusing loans to manufacturing businesses. But who is ultimately responsible for this sad state of affairs? Was it the “last socialist government”  or was it the Thatcher government of the 80’s? Under Thatcher the  manufacturing sector was allowed to decay and collapse and was replaced by a service sector that was mainly built on finance – and the reason why this was allowed to happen was purely ideological.

It’s only a matter of time till some Tory bright spark pops up and tells us how we ‘need’ flat taxes.