No way back - by Richard...

Of course,

it’s because Murdoch wants to regain full control of Sky and Sky News,

and The Guardian recognises its BBC puppet could suddenly find its left-liberal news agenda being challenged by a potentially right-leaning broadcaster.

So, as always with the hypocritical Guardian,

it is all about vested self interest rather than the public interest.

No way back - by Richard...

There is some seriously good writing on the blogosphere at the moment, not least from the consistent Autonomous Mind and Wittering for Witney.

Both, in their own ways address the Murdoch imbroglio, AM dealing with the hypocrisy of The Guardian, while WfW tilts at Douglas Carswell for suggesting that the response to the affair demonstrates that we still have a sovereign legislature. Our "rotten legislature" is getting off its knees, says Carswell, and: "Parliament is recovering its purpose".

This, of course, is pure bubble speak. But then, even intelligent men have difficulty seeing things straight when they are trapped in the bubble – so you can quite see why Carswell should have a problem. WfW puts him right on a number of issues, leaving us in no doubt as to how far from reality this man has strayed.

What is more difficult to do, however, is point to all those issues which should have been dealt with in much greater depth, and which have been swept aside by the torrent of self-indulgent media coverage about Murdoch and related issues. There is nothing in this world, now or previously, that is so important as to have warranted this amount of media attention.

Tying this in with Carswell's idiot suggestion that "Parliament is recovering its purpose", we have a powerful illustration of exactly the opposite, occasioned by an article published on Watts up with that, on carbon capture.

Thus recounts how American Electric Power has scuttled its pilot project to bury CO2 from its Mountaineer coal-burning plant in Red Haven WVa (pictured). The original projected cost, before unanticipated overruns, was $668 million. About a third of the gross output from a plant would be required to capture, compress and inject the CO2 into the ground, generating an automatic 50 percent increase in the cost of net output, before conversion costs.

"The AEP plan, announced with much fanfare in 2009, marked the first time that carbon dioxide was to be captured and buried at a US power plant", we are told. The pilot system would only have captured 110,000 tons of CO2 per year, out of a total of 7.9 to 9.8 million tons per year from the plant. The company, headquartered in Columbus, "cited difficulties in getting state regulators to approve charging customers for the costs of carbon capture".

What this does, therefore, is confirm my own argument that the imposition of carbon capture on new coal-fired generation capacity is so expensive that it amounts to a de facto ban on the use of coal for electricity generation. Thus, when we go back to earlier this week and the Huhne energy policy, what we actually see being slipped past Parliament, with neither debate nor recognition, is precisely a ban on the use of coal for our future electricity needs.

Such a momentous and expensive change doubtless should have been challenged by an alert and "sovereign" legislature, and rejected by any such institution which was acting in the interests of its electors. But rather than Parliament "recovering its purpose", it has allowed this absurd and ruinously expensive policy through on the nod.

That Parliament has so lost the plot that it has allowed this to happen is worrying enough. But when, regardless of this – and many other derelictions – we have an MP who thinks that the grossly excessive attention to the current hystérie is an indicator of a return to health, it really is time to worry.

All the signs are that the institution has sailed past the point of no return. There is simply no way back.

Is there no end to The Guardian’s self serving hypocrisy?#

Published 15/07/2011

So, she has finally bitten the bullet and resigned. Rebekah Brooks’ long standing career with News International is over. With the way The Guardian and the BBC have been pursuing Brooks and the Murdoch boys one might be forgiven for assuming a personal antagonism exists between them. But not everything is as it seems to those of us outside the bubble.

For despite The Guardian’s incitement to mouth foaming outrage and faux moralising over the interception of phone voicemails, its own conduct in its past dealings with Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade) is worth noting.

Back in January 2003, the then Rebekah Wade returned to become editor at The Sun newspaper after a spell at the News of the World. While at theScrews Wade had demonstrated her tabloid pedigree having been responsible for the campaign to ‘name and shame’ convicted child sex offenders after the murder of Sarah Payne.

But this didn’t stop The Guardian from inviting Wade to sit alongside editor Alan Rusbridger as a judge on the Guardian Student Media Awardsand announcing it on 10th March that year…

On 12th March 2003, just two days after this announcement ran in the Graun,another piece in its media section that reported:

The editor of the Sun yesterday admitted paying police officers for information.

Rebekah Wade, giving evidence to a committee of MPs, also said journalists were entitled to use bugging devices and other covert methods if there was a strong public interest in the story under investigation.

It was the first time that the editor of a tabloid newspaper has publicly admitted using such techniques, and raised questions about journalistic standards at a time when press self-regulation is under close scrutiny.

Now given it was such a major story at that time, and considering the Guardian’s current sensationalist reaction to allegations in the last week that police officers were paid by News International for information – not withstanding that Andy Coulson desperately countered Wade’s assertion – what do you think the Guardian did? That’s right, it did nothing and left Rebekah Wade on the judging panel to preside on the Student Media Awards that were to be announced in November 2003. Fellow judge, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News similarly had no problem remaining on the panel with Ms Wade.

There was plenty of time to replace Wade and find someone with whom the Guardian would be comfortable being associated. But evidently Rusbridger and friends were perfectly happy to continue rubbing shoulders with someone who had just voluntarily admitted illegal activity in front of MPs. Strangely enough there was no in depth investigation by the Guardian to expose ‘the truth’. Fancy that!

In any case, if that incident had not done enough to raise question marks over the suitability of Wade to have her name on the Guardian’s judging panel, Rusbridger and his comrades had another golden opportunity to dispense with La Wade’s services before the showcase awards.

This time it was over the infamous headline in the Sun in September 2003 ‘Bonkers Bruno Locked Up’ in reference to Frank Bruno mental breakdown and institutionalisation. The Sun was forced to edit the headline in its later edition. Strangely enough The Guardian’s write up of the story, and swipe at the Sun and Wade, made no mention of the fact she was judging the Student Media Awards for The Guardian alongside editor Rusbridger. Wade remained on the panel and News International was unmolested.

So given all this a reasonable person would be minded to ask why such behaviour by a newspaper under control of Rebekah Wade (Brooks) in 2003 was perfectly acceptable to The Guardian and its smug, morally superior editor, but in 2011 results in the closure of the News of the World, is cause for demands for Press Complaints Commission investigations, fit and proper person assessments of the Murdochs, false allegations of illegal news gathering activity, Parliamentary inquiries and so on.

Of course, it’s because Murdoch wants to regain full control of Sky and Sky News, and The Guardian recognises its BBC puppet could suddenly find its left-liberal news agenda being challenged by a potentially right-leaning broadcaster. So, as always with the hypocritical Guardian, it is all about vested self interest rather than the public interest.

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Responses to “Is there no end to The Guardian’s self serving hypocrisy?”

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1. 

   BJ

   16/07/2011 at 12:18 am

   Believe me, having had personal experience of a ‘red top’ – there’ll be plenty of acid left in the Duracell.

   I’ve ordered the popcorn and cola, and I’m looking forward to the fan redistribution.

   Unless something is agreed in private we are about to see some very spectacular bloodletting.
2. 

   Uncle Badger

   16/07/2011 at 12:33 am

   I sincerely hope BJ is right! If Murdoch is half the man his opponents claim, he will have a vast storehouse of ammunition kept for just this sort of moment.

   Hateful old reptile that he may be, I will cheer him to the rafters if he unleashes what he has on Rusbridger and his cronies, the BBC, Trinity Mirror (probably worse than NI, as Cranmer points out) and all the sanctimonious scum of the earth politicians (Prescott, Vaz, Brown, Cameron, Clegg and all the rest) who are currently up on their hind legs braying, hoping we will forget their treasons against us in the ensuing noise.

   Go on, Rupert. Bring down the temple!
3. 

   DennisA

   16/07/2011 at 7:48 am

   On the day before Andy Coulson was arrested, a Guardian reporter was boasting that Andy Coulson would be arrested the following day. How did he know?
4. 

   permanentexpat

   16/07/2011 at 4:23 pm

   A “Diana” moment was needed to focus the righteous wrath & indignation of the normally sullen, apathetic & complaisant British paople….

   ,,,,and along came Millie….& Murdoch was finished (for the while)

   One has to say it: There has been some brilliant manipulating & manoevering by the socialist establishment.
5. 

   Uncle Badger

   16/07/2011 at 6:29 pm

   Oh, I don’t know, it’s not so hard when you control the near-monopoly state broadcaster.

   Ironic, isn’t it?
6. 

   john in cheshire

   16/07/2011 at 7:05 pm

   I too hope that Mr Murdoch retaliates, and wreaks havoc on all the miscreants who purport to influence and rule our lives; the press, the politicians and particularly the leftwing press, radio and tv media (that’s the bbc and the guardeen, by the way). Mr Murdoch, if you have any dirt on the ‘today’ staff, then it would make me smile if you splashed it across the nation’s, nay the world’s, sources of news. Revenge is a dish best served cold, I think the saying goes.
7. 

   Sven

   16/07/2011 at 8:46 pm

   You’re all mad. He he he.
8. 

   Uncle Badger

   16/07/2011 at 8:58 pm

   |A typically reasoned response from the Left there.

POSES AS DEMOCRACY.

THURSDAY, 14 JULY 2011

A sovereign legislature

The title of a post from Douglas Carswell, because the Murdochs have been ordered to appear before the Commons; that the Speaker insisted on a three-hour emergency debate and that MPs like Tom Watson have been making all the running; resulting in our rotten legislature getting off it's knees, Parliament thereby recovering it's purpose.

Well, I can only hope Douglas Carswell will forgive some rain falling on his parade when I say that I will only believe our legislature is getting off it's knees when I see Parliament actually attempting to rectify the situation whereby political party leader's iron grip on candidate selection is removed; when MPs begin to take notice of the current scandal of the misuse of power exercised by local authority's child protection services; when MPs cease obeying the directives of their whips on how they should vote; when the supposed new eurosceptic intake of Tory MPs begin making their views known; when MPs actually do begin to represent the views of their constituents, rather than their own; when MPs begin acting like adults in the House of Commons rather than trying to impersonate children in a kindergarten class; when MPs actually do decide to make Parliament sovereign, instead of just talking about it; when MPs force their party leaders to adhere to manifesto and other 'cast-iron' pledges; when MPs do finally exhibit a sense of principle and honour; when MPs who pontificate about devolving power returning those powers that they have usurped to the people, actually do just that......

I believe that will do for starters, Mr. Carswell.

Over to you......................