Did anything change? Remember the day four years ago when Rupert Murdoch appeared in parliament to answer to his newspapers’ phone hacking, and he called it “the most humble day of my life?” No one in their right mind believed it.
This week, not humble but gloatingly triumphant, he put Rebekah Brooks back in charge of his News Corp UK: two fingers up to parliament, victims and everyone.
As she wasn’t found guilty of complicity in industrial-scale phone hacking by her employees, then she was surely the most incompetent executive, cluelessly paying out shedloads of expenses for unknown purposes. She lost the company £300m and hundreds of jobs in the scandal while taking a £16m payoff herself, as her colleagues went to jail. However, back in the saddle, her newspapers will continue their ideological assault on the public sector as wasteful and badly managed, without a blush.
So, woman found not guilty is guilty anyway ‘coz we all know ‘Bekkah is a bad’un.
How unlike our own dear justice system that is.
It’s Harriet Harperson’s Court of Public Opinion, isn’t it? Either that or Poll has had an expense claim rejected.
‘She lost the company £300m and hundreds of jobs’
Bit rich for any Guardian writer to complain about a newspaper losing money and laying people off.
Hypocrisy – the defining characteristic of the metro left.
“lost the company …. hundreds of jobs”
That’s called efficiency luv. Moving The Sun to a seven day operation put them years ahead of the competition in terms of cost base management.
Isn’t Polly saying that she is incompetent not guilty ?
She is accusing Brooks of incompetence in signing off claims for hacking-work without apparently knowing what it was. She is not disputing the verdict. Strange how Tim’s minimal gallantry extends to those protected by the rich and unaccountable but not to other women more concerned with the larger public interest.
@ DBC Reed
Since when was it the CEO’s job in a trillion-pound organisation to vet individual expenses claims?
DBC Reed, if you think Polly’s ‘concerned with the larger public interest’, then I’ve a bridge to sell you…
OK, DCB. Shall we start a list of left wing luminaries prospered despite having erred? Or to save time, a list of those who haven’t?
john77:“@ DBC Reed
Since when was it the CEO’s job in a trillion-pound organisation to vet individual expenses claims?”
Well, quite! especially galling given the Left fight tooth and nail not to have to sack incompetent public sector bosses because workers at the coal-face screwed up…
John77
I would agree ‘not his job’, but the ‘responsibility’ ultimately of the CEO and / or FD?
And at least we haven’t been spared the cloying “lessons have been learned” and “time to move on” statements we are assaulted with whenever the public sector screws up.
JuliaM
Amen to that
@dbcreed – I have a couple of interesting opportunities in North Korean Small Businesses and Iranian Breweries – post here if you fancy a flutter – on a side note who decides ‘the wider public interest’? Is it those fine folks in ‘civil society?’
“her newspapers will continue their ideological assault on the public sector as wasteful and badly managed”
Yep, newspapers are supposed to ignore public sector waste and mismanagement. Who needs an informed public in a democracy? Just vote Left, people! We’ll tell you if we’re doing a good job.
Polly was understandably disappointed that Rebekkah wasn’t burnt at the stake, hence whinge. The editor has implicitly agreed by giving her column inches, despite one hopes a better grasp of the facts.
When are the Mirror trials?
Besides, Murdoch needn’t take any lessons on realpolitik or looking-after-your-own from Polly and the Public Sector.
No Murdoch was directly implicated or charged, and Brooks was very close to prison.
No wonder Rupert is grateful.
I’d have a bit more time for her “attack on the public sector” comment if the Guardian actually called out the times of gross incompetence in the private sector at a level far beyond Rebekah Brooks’.
And frankly, Murdoch can spend his money where he likes. Don’t like the Sun, don’t read it. Don’t want to contribute to his fortunes, don’t buy Sky. No-one forced me under threat of violence to pay for X-Men: Days of Future Past, a Fox picture.
And the Guardian hired an ex-MP that was convicted of perverting the course of justice without a single word from Toynbee on the matter.
But ZOMG EVIL BABY EATING MURDOCH 11!!11
The creatures outside looked from Polly to Bekkah, and from Bekkah to Polly, and from Polly to Bekkah again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
For consistency, she must call for the dismissal of the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire.
Doesn’t Poll believe in “rehabilitation” and giving second chances?
She was found not guilty–end of story.
Both Pol and Bekaa are nasty cows. Bekaa punched and blacked the eye of her ex-hubbie Ross Kemp. He chose not to retaliate and was characterised as a “big girls blouse” by the tabloids. He could have lobotomised the bitch with one good punch but then the same tabloids would have been calling him a monster.
Stigler,
No harm in employing ex-jailbirds surely?
Allowing Huhne, (and, blimey, McShane), to drone on about how wonderful they are, and how innocent they are …. that’s a crime against Common Decency for sure.
“back in the saddle, her newspapers will continue their ideological assault on the public sector as wasteful and badly managed,”
Surely Polly has just paid Rebekah a compliment?
This continues to be all the response needed to the idea that phone hacking was any more than the anti-Murdoch crowd jumping on anything they could find:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Gjf0DgFtw
Jack C,
“Allowing Huhne, (and, blimey, McShane), to drone on about how wonderful they are, and how innocent they are …. that’s a crime against Common Decency for sure.”
On the other hand, it’s a good way to reveal to more decent readers that the Guardian is more about tribal loyalty than serious journalism.
Maybe she’s a brilliant executive, but my first thought was this is no way to run a serious business – it seems like Rupert’s plaything.
I get the argument that either she was guilty or incompetent, but it does ignore a third possibility, competent enough to turn a blind eye to the point of achieving a not guilty verdict.
Putting on the tinfoil hat the outcome may not have been that bad Murdoch overall so throwing some staff to the wolves and the odd parlimentary appearance may have been a small price to pay
Rebekah was not so busy in 2003 when in her magnificently competent way she blurted out in front of a parliamentary committee that she had, at the Sun, paid police officers for information and had to be rescued by Andy Coulson .He said they had paid the police officers strictly within the law. But it is totally against the law per se.The Committee chairman should have had her arrested on the spot and saved a lot of bother.But our wonderful world beating Establishment would never be so bold as to apply the law to good looking women in the pay of their own establishment kind .
Don’t worry you scoundfrels you have won the class war.You told everybody everything would be better.Have we been fooled?
@ DBC Reed
As class war has only ever waged by the left, you are presumably addressing Owen Jones and his fellow rich lefties as “scoundfrels”. They certainly told us everything would be better in the workers’ paradise.
To answer your question: I wasn’t fooled because I grew up in an area run by the Labour Party and I remembered life under the Attlee government. Sadly, too many people were and wealth inequality that had narrowed under every Conservative government in my lifetime (and under Attlee and even Wilson) widened under New Labour.
Nominate this for the most politically naïve remark of the year: “A class war has only ever (been?)waged by the Left”.Wow its the way that you tell em John77.It’s all in the delivery.
Please explain how Rebekah Brooks gets away with admitting to a Parliamentary Select Committee that she has paid police officers for information while at the Sun and gets away with it, if not for the craven deference of our elite parliamentaries to anyone perceived as belonging to (or at least under the protection of) a more powerful, because more moneyed ,class.
“Don’t worry you scoundfrels you have won the class war.”
I wonder if this will be the theme for the upcoming return of “Citizen Smith” .
Surprised THIS hasn’t gotten it’s own post yet …
Given what I’ve discovered about the clown concerned from here – the prospect of this twat in No 11 Downing ST. – as slobbered out in the article linked is the sort of thing that should have people startled awake in a flat panic….
@ DBC Reed
Who was in government from 1997-2010?
Who owned The Daily Herald before Murdoch?
To which party did Murdoch pledge The Sun’s support for n years as part of his purcha\se deal?
Do you ever bother with facts?
TomO – wow; that was quite a tongue-bath, wasn’t it?
dcardno – yup – I dobbed into into Wayback for the sake of posterity 🙂
HERE
@J77
Try and keep to the subject which is Rebekah Brooks who admitted she had knowingly paid police officers to a parliamentary committee them subsequently swore blind that she had never paid hackers .
I must decline to follow you in a trip down Memory Lane to the terrible repression of the Atlee government, struggling with post-war debt added to by the Americans who at the same time were taking our overseas markets (I’m with Enoch Powell on this one); I am a bit lost about the significance of the Daily Herald and the New Labour experiment when the previous public school moron leader tried ” a third way” of letting the City and the banks do what they want contributing to the collapse of the industrial capitalist system ,which believe it or not, I think superior to the maxed out rentier system we have now .
@ DBC Reed
You are ignorantly or mendaciously claiming that the easy ride given to Brooks, by a Parliamentary committee with a built-in Labour majority under a New Labour government, when she was editor of a newspaper founded, and financed until it became too expensive, by the TUC, which supported Blair in 1997, 2001 and 2005, was due to deference to “a more moneyed class” i.e the eeevil Tories.
FYI Gordon Brown was NOT educated at a “Public School” – Kirkcaldy High School is a state-owned Comprehensive. If you are talking about the public-school-educated PM prior to the New Labour experiment, Sir Alec did NOT allow the City and banks to do what they want.
Can I have an answer to my last question “Do you ever bother with facts?”?