Revenge of the red tops - well, maybe

We read that rock-chick and tory rottweiler Louise Mensch took a couple of smacks to the snout the other day. The first was in having to provide Piers Morgan with a fulsome apology for “misreading” his accounts regarding the use of phone-hacking. The second involved desperately fending off press enquiries into her own chequered past.

Mrs Mensch told a recent culture, media and sport committee that the former Daily Mirror editor had confessed in his memoirs to various misdeeds. She was protected by parliamentary privilege at the time and sensibly declined to repeat her allegations outside. Libel proceedings aside however, misleading a committee is just as heinous an offence for an MP as a media mogul (honest!). An apology was therefore prudent.

The powers of darkness nevertheless decided that further retribution was needed – if only to send out a message to MPs that the press still has a modicum muscle at its disposal. Hence several disclosures have emerged of semi-riotous behaviour by the MP for Corby in a former life, thanks to usually reliable sources.

A comment seen on a media blog this weekend is that anyone in the Palace of Westminster who thinks that Grub Street is on the ropes is either deluded or on strong medication. This seems to imply that exposure as a “corrupt crack-head paedo” in the Sunday Spurt is the penalty for confronting press excesses. It will be interesting to see if the message remains as defiant once the Leveson inquiry gets underway.

Secrets

Sometimes a story stands out for what it doesn’t say. But the aspect which singles out a Sky News exclusive of computer hacking claims by a former Army intelligence officer is the manner in which the BBC is studiously ignoring the story.

Ian Hurst, who spent 12 years “gathering information for the government” alleges that his computer was hacked by a private investigator retained by News Of The World (NOTW) who was searching for details of an IRA informer.

The news channel state that Scotland Yard is launching an investigation into information (allegedly) gathered illegally from him by a private investigator who (it is alleged) was working for the tabloid.

Hurst however is a lot less circumspect in his statements and adds that the Met has been caught trying to sweep his case and others under the carpet. His forthright view is that "it more than bad policing that allowed the gathering of information to go on for so long".

He stated, "Fundamentally, what lays behind this whole cesspit - not since 2006, it predates it by many years before that - we're dealing with institutionalised corruption. It's endemic within the Metropolitan Police and that has to be dealt with."

It’s all heavy stuff from someone who, presumably, speaks from wide experience in territory covered by official secrets restrictions. Given the serious of the allegations and the sensitivity of the information involved, it is a reasonable expectation that the security services would also have had an involvement by now. Perhaps they have.

So is there something more than professional pique that presently inhibits the Beeb from repeating these claims? Or will be they doing slightly different new slant and prefacing it as something “the BBC has learned”? We shall see.

Nothing for the weekend

Possibly nothing serves more to underline an apparent sparsity of Welsh news than a Western Mail published on a summer Saturday, i.e. during the close-season for sport and politics.

It’s a pity therefore that Martin Shipton, in having previously urged London journalists to get out more, goes on to demonstrates his own cloistered perspective in respect of political blogs – especially those known for taking the piss out of a distinctly lacklustre shadow cabinet.

Shipton’s stooge source in advancing the view that Peter Hain’s intermittent frontbench performance makes him unfit material for shadow Welsh Sec is Jonathan Edwards. However, the Carmarthen MP comes over as less conclusive as to whether the Westminster sinecure is actually sustainable in a post-devolutionary Wales. Or is it just a case of being more comfortable clinging to the somewhat battered premise that you have to attack Labour (or at least one of its faded icons) in order to promote Plaid.

Who knows – and when all said and done - who really cares?

Diverting stuff

On a day when the UK economy is confirmed as floundering with just 0.2% recorded growth – and that is an improvement on what was expected – only Peter Black could extrapolate bad news by digging something up from the Washington Post.

A selection of UK newspaper reviews - borrowed from the Beeb – has the Daily Telegraph complaining that the economy has failed to develop the momentum being shown by competitors. The Sun says the country is "going nowhere, slowly” and that we “should be doing better”. Meanwhile, the Guardian's view is that the economy is so flat, the coalition would have to run as the pancake party if there were an election tomorrow.

Comments that are obviously far too mundane for the eclectic Mr Black to address – or maybe just too painful?

ConDems backtrack on DNA commitment

The Telegraph points out that today’s announcement of a government ‘change’ in its previously stated commitment to end the “indefinite storage of innocent people’s DNA” marks the fourteenth policy u-turn since the ConDems took office.

The Protection of Freedoms Bill, which Nick Clegg introduced in January, will no longer contain a provision for wiping out the DNA of more than one million people who have been arrested but not convicted. Instead, the authorities will be able to retain “anonymised” samples.

However, and as the newspaper states, this means that the names and other identifying features will be removed from the police database but kept elsewhere, enabling agencies with the right expertise to join the pieces of data together again and identify the DNA. So much for Court of Human Rights judgements, it seems.

It will be revealing to see just how many Lib Dems in particular offer up mealy-mouthed rationalisations for this abandonment of a very clear manifesto commitment.

Update: Quote of the week (so far) from Isabella Sankey, policy director at Liberty, who stated, “The minister’s assurance that criminal offences under the Data Protection Act are sufficient safeguard against DNA being re-identified is like saying that phone-hacking offences protected people’s privacy from the News of the World.”

 

Rumours of discontent

What’s this we hear about fisticuffs in the corridors of Calamity Hall? Is it true that tempers flared amongst the comrades causing furniture to get scattered - along with a few delegates?

Whatever the truth, it is doubtful that the councillor overheard spreading this particular piece of gossip has any first-hand knowledge given the extent of the cobwebs that presently adorn her ‘cabinet suite’ office.

Free speech?

The disgraceful action by DVLA management in preventing campaigners from collecting petition signatures to save Swansea’s coastguard service has been roundly condemned by the local newspaper.

No comment so far (as far as we are aware) from local Conservative and Lib Dem 'activists' as to whether they also decry this government-inspired edict against free speech.

Update: Perhaps they should follow the lead set by health minister Andrew Lansley.

Businesses don't rate Lib Dem plans

We read that representatives of business groups, including the South Wales Chamber of Commerce and Federation of Small Businesses, have made sceptical noises about the quick-fix Lib Dem plans to boost local economies by  assigning control of business rates to local authorities.

A chamber spokesman opposing the idea was worried that the extra revenue would simply go into the general running of the local authorities. He argued that control of adjusting the rates should stay with the Welsh Government.

“Allowing local authorities to alter business rates for their areas would create polarisation between areas across Wales, harming growth and business development for Wales as a whole.”

Another key bit of information that you won’t find of the Freedom Central spin-site.

A claim too far

It had to happen. The phone-hacking saga finally hit the credibility buffers tonight with the Guardian quoting claims by “Lib Dem insiders” who say News International officials threatened to persecute the party if Vince Cable, the business secretary, did not advance its case. As if.

Nameless sources profess that “accounts are only now coming to light” but the evidence is that Murdoch had the tory vote sewn up and that gutless Lib Dems really weren’t worth the effort. The same goes of the Miliband camp whose influence in the matter proved minimal until the Dowler factor took effect.

But surely the kicker is that it was the Daily Telegraph who did the sting on Vince Cable by using undercover reporters to tape his comments attacking Murdoch and News International.

Who is bullshitting whom?

Maybe it’s an overreaction, but it’s not easy deciding which is the more unsettling: that South Wales West Conservatives are suddenly leading on the campaign to retain coastguard services at Swansea (despite the decision by tory minister Phillip Hammond to close the facility by 2015) or that no-one in the media seems to think that this campaigning might be a just a smidge hypocritical.

Delusions of strategy

Patrick Minford is one of those individuals who rarely minces his words. As such, no-one should be too surprised that his response to Deputy PM Nick Clegg’s suggestion that Wales’ economy needs re-wiring (whatever the hell that means), was to say, “It’s nonsense. The man’s deluded.”

It’s an observation all the more telling in that besides being a senior academic in Applied Economics at Cardiff Business School, Prof Minford is also a leading light in the Conservative Way Forward.

Clegg seemed to be arguing that it was time of cut off the supply of state subsidy to Wales and instead invest in “cutting-edge manufacturing”. The Lib Dem leader had presumably not been briefed on the departure of companies such as Bosch, LG and Sony.  Quelle surprise.

And so it continues

As much as some of the NI journos like to insist that the phone-hacking scandal has pretty much run its [original] course, even they have to accept that the fallout continues to widen into new areas of speculation. The unpredictable way in which new threads appear however means that politicians (hacked or otherwise) are no longer leading on stories – if only because they are proving to be a lot less reliable than ‘industry’ sources.

Labour is desperate to throw up inconsistencies between what David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt had to say about what would be appropriate circumstances for the PM to be talking to anyone in the Murdoch empire about the acquisition of BSkyB. Few are listening.

Nick Robinson prefers to ponder the possible scale of immersion of Chancellor George Osborne in the murky world of Murdoch hospitality. He writes:

“For days Team Osborne have been assembling a list of his meetings to publish. A decision has now been taken to incorporate them with a list of all cabinet ministers' meetings. I have been enquiring for some days when this will be. One, in particular, will be worth looking for.

It's a dinner in New York at which Rupert Murdoch and George Osborne were both guests in the run-up to Christmas last year - that's around the very time that Vince Cable lost responsibility for the BSkyB decision.”

Meanwhile tory MP, rock chick by marriage and Have I Got News for You guest Louise Mensch (nee Bagshawe) is refusing to repeat allegations that former tabloid editor Piers Morgan had admitted to using phone hacking to get stories. Mensch declined to repeat the claim without the benefit of parliamentary privilege and is wisely keeping schtum from now on.

It takes the Independent in its leading article to highlight how much of what has happened is not so much the result of a obsession by politicians with the media but that both fields of endeavour are so prone to professional crossover.

They remark: “Even if Mr Coulson is never charged with a crime, the Leveson inquiry and the police investigations guarantee that his name will return time and again to the headlines, and the Prime Minister can do nothing to wrestle himself free. His preoccupation with public relations helped to make Mr Cameron who he is; from now on, it will burden, if not break, his premiership.”

Such observations may be based upon the kind of 20-20 hindsight mentioned in debates but they are no less accurate for that. The question however is whether any inquiry can adequately nail or even suggest how the incestuous means by which PR pervades political thinking at all levels can be curbed. We can all probably guess the answer to that one.

Bonus balls

There will be a few jaws left open at the confirmation of how up to a quarter of senior civil servants earning more than around £60,000 a year have been granted performance-related bonuses whilst lower-paid colleagues see their salaries frozen.

The Western Mail reports that those benefiting are not only employed by the Welsh Government, but by non-devolved bodies such as the DVLA in Swansea, the Office for National Statistics in Newport, the Intellectual Property Office in Newport and Companies House in Cardiff.

ConDem ministers in Westminster think that their assurances of how they are “cutting back” on bonuses will allay fears of a continuing widespread culture of performance-related pay that patently has little to do with actual performance. Lots of luck with that one.

For ourselves, we would like to know how many treasury officials will receive an additional bonus for failing to limit the extent of other corporate largesse in Britain’s unfettered financial sector.

Testing commitment to the cause

We spotted a letter in the local paper which claims that the lower echelon politicians of Swansea are too keen to appear in the press in order to identify themselves with causes beyond their pay-grade. The writer has an interesting way of challenging their commitment.

Sir,

I don’t think I have a seen a more pathetic spectacle than today’s photograph of Assembly members and councillors (Post July16) looking defiantly out to sea in “protest” at the proposed closure of Swansea coastguard.

None of the individuals posing on the headland has a shred of real influence because the decision was made in Westminster. All say they are appalled at the outcome but talk is cheap.

A more substantial gesture would be for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats pictured to resign from their parties in protest and for the others to cough up their allowances to finance a campaign. Don't hold your breath. 

S.M.Evans
 

It's an intriguing suggestion and we will be monitoring events closely - as the politicians often like to say.

Is Cameron toast?

A palpable feeling in the Westminster village is that MPs are beginning to contemplate the unthinkable in anticipation of today’s select committee hearings. Although a succession of questions will be put to the Murdoch entourage, it will be David Cameron in the dock.

A good number of confused tories believe the PM is displaying more of his flawed judgement by going on lightweight foreign aid visits at such a critical time. For them, out of sight hardly means out of mind when key figures are so easily consumed by scandal. It is only a matter of time before the flames leap the firebreak and a senior politician is linked to News International by something other than a spot of hospitality.

A damaged print media clearly hold this opinion. The Guardian has been urging Nick Clegg to oust Cameron from power whilst the Telegraph sees Teresa May as a worthy successor. Neither of course would normally have the power to act or even the ability to succeed the PM. Nonetheless, the events of the past few weeks ably demonstrate that the rules have changed sufficiently so that anything is now possible.

Update: The Beeb eagerly report that former NoW deputy editor Neil Wallis was "advising" Andy Coulson just before the election. Oops.

And in other news ...

The Independent reports that groups of farmers will be licensed to organise the widespread shooting of badgers in the West Country, the worst-affected region, where nearly a quarter of all cattle farms were hit by tuberculosis infections last year.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman is expected to announce the pilot scheme measures in the House of Commons today following nearly 15 years of argument over links between badgers and the disease.

The paper states that if successful, it could lead to a potential cull of tens of thousands of badgers in a four year operation carried out at farmers' expense.

Michael McCarthy, the paper's environment editor says the long-awaited decision, which reverses the previous Labour government's policy, will be politically controversial and may even lead to problems of public order, with animal rights activists attempting to disrupt shoots.

Meanwhile, Prof Chris Gaskell has been named as the expert in who will chair an independent Welsh review of the evidence for eradicating bovine TB. A west Wales badger cull was put on hold in June as it was announced a panel would examine the science behind the issue.

Another day, another departure

With Yates of the Yard added to the phone-hacking casualty list, the fashionable game at Westminster is guessing how long the cabinet can continue to face-off against an onslaught of innuendo and implicit guilt.

The incomparable Dennis Skinner posed the question this afternoon as to when would there be resignations among “Millionaire’s Row” (his description of the Front Bench) and whilst rank-and-file coalition MPs responeded in chorused heckles, the jeers were half-hearted enough to indicate that they shared vaguely similar thoughts.

Labour has inevitably latched onto the comparison between Met commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and David Cameron, who both hired former NoW senior hacks but exercised different extrication strategies when the proverbial hit the fan. But an uncomfortable aspect for tory ranks is the degree to which opposition finger-pointing was obliquely echoed by London Mayor Boris Johnson in his coded rationale as to why the two top cops had to go.

Idle talk in the tea rooms is that the PM may yet offer up a few sacrificial demotions to deflect further questions on the Coulson link and offset any prospect of a future leadership challenge. Very few however think that this is Cameron’s only ploy. He knows that the focus of Wednesday’s recall debate will be on the issue of “judgement” – and so does Ed Milliband. As such, the priority is to undermine the Labour leader’s moral high-ground by highlighting how his own party carries the Murdoch taint and then upstage him at the Dispatch Box. Easily done, based on past performances.

The government will not fall (if only because the procedures have not been agreed) and the unspoken aim of both leaders to land a few blows, claim their respective victories and then send off their loyal followers for a well deserved and slightly overdue recess. Tra-la.

Unless, of course, there is another resignation.

Has the bad news been buried? Probably not

Although few believe that that the phone-hacking saga has peaked at a political level, a not entirely unexpected viewpoint emerging among the print media is that the story has run its course as a scandal. All that remains, say the senior pundits, is a satisfactory but final body count of News International executives.

It’s an entirely understandable reaction from a newspaper fraternity badly un-nerved by the unprecedented humbling of Rupert Murdoch. Many in the industry are struggling to come to terms with the absurd situation whereby they are suddenly answerable to public opinion when the job is supposed to be all about influencing it.

No surprise either that the denizens of Grub Street are dead anxious to dampen down, if not totally extinguish, any possible spark of collective guilt which is likely to come out of next week’s parliamentary grilling(s).

Among those flagship titles eager to draw a line – but only to ensure future press freedoms are protected yada, yada – is the ever reliable Daily Mail who portentously remind their readers that there is “a world beyond the Westminster feeding frenzy over phone-hacking”.

You can appreciate why they would adopt this perspective when you look at official figures published by the Information Commissioner in 2006. These showed (gasp) that the 182 “identifiable transactions”, i.e. instances of selling and/or securing confidential information by the News of the World were vastly overshadowed by the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday who had sanctioned 1068 such intrusions between them. The Mirror Group, which includes the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the People notched up an astonishing 1626 instances in the same period.

For many toiling in newsrooms the gathering mass of revelations listed under the heading of “press abuse” can be likened to a shit snowball rolling downhill. It may miss you but you are certain to get splattered one way or another. Old school editors and proprietors who think that the best option is to hunker down until the storm passes could well find this to be a facile strategy. What many of them should know is that there is a lot of motivated payback out there and it is not just restricted to vengeful MPs either. Based upon the number of reported ‘hacks’, a national newspaper HQ will soon become recognisable by the queue of litigants outside and it is noticeable how broadcaster references to the “newspaper scandal” serve as self-exculpatory shorthand.

Whether a depleted and damaged newspaper industry is in the national interest is a debate yet to come. Yet it may well be one that is never properly conducted. For whilst the terms of the promised judicial inquiry tend to signal that the proceedings will be more of a ‘watershed’ than a ‘Watergate’ for the press & political establishments, all concerned are acutley aware that it could be a close thing. Governments under pressure are habitually prone to knee-jerk legislation and ministerial timing will be critical in more ways than one.

Of course this is all conjecture and who knows what fiendish developments will surface next week (or even tomorrow) to give public outrage new impetus. Even so, and whatever the messy outcome, one factual footnote to be written on the final account is that it was the Dowler family, and not the Murdochs or the Mosleys, who were eventually pivotal in terms of breaking the news.

Update: Don't rush to judgement over Murdoch, say Guiliani. Nice.

Exodus

We hear talk that a sizeable chunk of the Labour group on Swansea Council will be standing down at the next election.

The latest count is that up to a quarter of their number could be about to hang up their boots. Whether this mass exit is related to recent reports of a serious bust-up between local party officials is unclear. A commonly heard theme however is that a certain English “incomer” has seriously disrupted their turgid fraternal proceedings once too often.

Trotskyist insurgencies aside, our e-mail source maintains that Labour in  Swansea still has a serious ‘top-down problem' (a phrase which earns the euphemism of the week award) and that the only outcome of the rumoured exodus would be a likely drop in the average age by nearly two decades and not much else. Ouch.

A sort of health warning

We hear that whilst Arty Davies sees his party as offering “a real alternative to the failed Labour ideology in Wales" a succession of NHS bodies still apparently regard Welsh Conservatives as a toxic brand.

Having been his party's shadow health minister until November 2010, original thinkers among tory officials probably thought that announcing the leader election result in a hospital would be entirely appropriate. They had to abandon the plan however when a succession of health bodies across South Wales turned down the 'unique opportunity' to play host.

It was a pretty stupid suggestion from the outset but it does raise one significant question, namely, does the fact that the requests went out to hospitals last Monday represent sufficient grounds for the Ramsay camp to demand a re-run?

Coastguard: It's just business

Today’s announcement of the closure of coastguard services in Swansea has provoked the predictable range of responses from political spokesman. But Conservatives and Lib Dems currently making regretful noises should take a closer look at a document entitled Protecting our Seas and Shores in the 21st Century.



No financial reasons

This is published by the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (an agency of the Department for Transport) who are charged with rationalising coastal services. Their revised conclusion on why the Swansea office should close is quite revealing.

“.. in the light of a further review of the potential costs of vacating the existing sites in Swansea and Milford Haven, which has shown that there are no financial reasons to favour either location, that the coastguard centre at Milford Haven should be retained rather than the centre at Swansea.

This reflects the Department for Transport’s significant existing presence in Swansea with both the DVLA and its Shared Services Centre located there, and the Department’s decision to place the Shared Services Centre in the private sector, as one of only a small number of Shared Service centres for central Government, creating opportunities for expansion and growth in employment opportunities.”

So, the closure proposal is nothing to do with maritime safety or protecting the shores or even finance costs – just a straightforward business decision based on a peculiar assessment that Swansea is apparently receiving too much in the way of publicly-funded investment.

The man in the shadows

An overshadowed Nick Clegg found himself hosting what soon became a disinterested press conference this morning when he urged political colleagues to "resist any temptation to impose knee-jerk, short-sighted restrictions on the media". It was a concept which sat uneasily alongside his earlier expressed preference for ‘blaggers’, i.e. journalists and their familiars found guilty of obtaining personal details by deception, should all be jailed.

Such inconsistencies are no longer a surprise to the Westminster press pack who see a deputy PM feeling distinctly upstaged by practically everyone. The strain of re-establishing visibility was evident and the outcome was no more effective than his entertaining efforts of the other day when he sought to gain house points by claiming he had 'warned' the Cameron camp about the inherent dangers of Andy Coulson’s appointment.

Sadly for the Lib Dem leader, his attempts to get out of the shadows only served to put his shortcomings in the spotlight. Having allowed himself to be casually ambushed by a question about his different recollections to Gordon Brown on details of press intrusion he pretended not to hear a query as to why he had failed to give Vince Cable full backing when the Business Secretary had tried to see off the Murdoch threat to media plurality. 

Where's the meat?

It is not often that two keynote speeches by high-ranking politicians are delivered in the same place on the same day and both end up being considered so abysmal in content. Notwithstanding that both Carwyn Jones and David Cameron seem to lack a decent speechwriter between them, the substance of what they had to say in the Senedd yesterday was .. well .. insubstantial.

The complete lack of economic measures in Labour’s legislative programme not only exposed early weaknesses in their intention to evolve a Welsh Government mechanism that ‘delivers’ it also debunked previous suggestions that Iuean had been the unwelcome bottleneck in creating a recovery programme.

David Cameron’s address on how Wales's devolved administration should “follow the UK government's attempt to end a state monopoly over public services” amounted to little more than re-packaged dogma. It appeared at times that even he didn’t believe much of what he was saying and when he added that he would not interfere in decisions over devolved matters the implication was that he didn’t give much of a toss for Wales anyway.

But who can blame him? Legislative bills on organ donation, allotments and ear-piercings is hardly the stuff of secession. Maybe it is pragmatic soft-peddling by Labour but just because Wales is governed by a minority administration does that necessarily mean that those in charge have to think small?

Still pulling the strings

Whatever the prevalent view of the Murdoch media empire and the sinister beings who dwell therein, there are few allegations that it is controlled by timid dummies. Let’s face it, buying back undervalued shares in the midst of a parliamentary bile-fest displays the sort of cojones you wish that government ministers would demonstrate when dealing with the banks.

As mentioned before, News Corp (which includes News International in its massive holdings) is a seriously ambitious and capable global player. Markets have consistently underestimated Murdoch and he presently showing the same ability to wrong-foot opponents by agreeing to appear before the Media, Culture & Sport Select Committee. As one media industry contemporary is reported to have commented, "The bastard is up to something".

Let’s just hope that MPs don’t need to refer to testimony from Andy Hayman and Paul McMullan who are currently in joint top position on the “most unreliable witness” leader board.

Stuffed@Swansea

Swansea Council’s already laughable business-friendly credentials took another serious knock today with a point-blank refusal to listen to concerns of the city's traders.

Representatives want the Kingsway, a main arterial road in the city centre, to be restored as a two-way dual carriageway serving east-west traffic. But council officials have dissed the idea on the grounds of cost and disruption.

No comment on the matter from euro-jaunting council leader Chris Holley, despite the fact that a good chunk of his £32,418 special responsibility allowance (paid on top of his councillor’s salary) is for “promoting an overall strategy for the City Centre”. It was left instead to a faceless council spokesman to state that "re-introducing two-way traffic on the Kingsway would be unaffordable and disruptive” and that there is “no available funding for further work."

In other words, we spent millions of your money on screwing up the city centre and we really can't bothered on looking at how to put it right.

Peer pressure

The unsubtle intervention by Lord Carlile QC of Berriew in forcibly stating that Welsh Lib Dems should have gone to court over disqualification of its candidates must be as welcome as a badger in a cattle market in some quarters this morning.

There is known to be little mutual regard or respect between his lordship, a former party leader, and current incumbent Kirsty Williams. However, his undisguised attack over a lack of moral fibre on her part by not putting up more of a fight is all the more damning in the inference that the reason for cutting John Dixon adrift was purely financal.



Lord Carlile told the BBC, ".. I'm very disappointed that my party and his, the Liberal Democrats, appeared not to have the resources to take up the cudgels to fight John Dixon's case all the way."

Asked if his party was broke, and did not have the money to fight the case, Lord Carlile added: "I'm not sure the party's broke, but taking up the case would have involved the potential expenditure of a few tens of thousands of pounds.

"In my view, it would have been right for that money to be spent to save the political career of a fine candidate, who would have made a good assembly member."

Following on from the insights provided by National Left yesterday, whilst the likes of Peter Black would dearly like to move on, there are others in the party who are apparently a lost less inclined to see this inconvenient blemish on their leader’s record airbrushed out for the sake of expediency. This spot of peer pressure represents a far more meaningful postcript than the diversionary twattle offered elsewhere.

Turning a crisis into an opportunity

Among the more distasteful aspects of the government’s damage limitation efforts over fallout from the phone-hacking saga have been the attempts by Nick Clegg’s aides to put him centre stage. The inference being that distancing him from the Murdoch-enthralled tories is yet again a favoured pick-and-mix coalition tactic.

Yesterday’s Independent carried the story that the Lib Dem leader was demanding the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, as if anyone really cared – although the popular opinion from the smirking classes is that it was impotent piece of reckoning for past snubs delivered at the hands of the former NoW editor who preferred to move in much more influential (and interesting) circles.

First thing today, the BBC news website advised that “relatives of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler would be meeting Nick Clegg” following an announcement issued by his office last night. Cameron’s press aides rapidly intervened this morning to ensure that the story was updated to read “David Cameron and Nick Clegg” and the venue upgraded to Downing Street.

It also transpires that the meetings are actually the result of sustained pressure by the Hacked Off campaign, organised by the Media Standards Trust charity, and who have been consistently arguing for a public inquiry into phone-hacking by journalists.

It just goes to prove the adage that you take the politician out of PR but .....

Dancing queen

Despite repeatedly questioning by Adrian Masters the other night as to whether she accepted personal responsibility for not passing on key info on changes to candidate eligibility, Welsh Lib Dem leader Kirsty Williams could only unconvincingly respond with something along the lines that “lessons had been learned”.

Unlike David Cameron who faced up to shortcomings in judgement this week, Ms Williams has patently decided that it is OK for her to keep hopping long after the music has stopped.

The confirmation that two more of their candidates would have been disqualified if elected suggests that party organisational skills would be challenged by a combination of piss-ups & breweries. It compounds what has been an embarrassingly clumsy performane by their business manager to firstly attempting to downplay matters as a 'technicality' and then grasping at straws which included a claimed anti-Welsh language conspiracy by the Electoral Commission.

Welsh Lib Dems were not wiped off the electoral map as many had predicted, but the events of the past few weeks more or amount to the same thing for a party that has a very hard climb ahead of it.

Injustice is alive and well at Wapping

Statement made by James Murdoch to News of the World staff today:

"I have important things to say about the News of the World and the steps we are taking to address the very serious problems that have occurred.

It is only right that you as colleagues at News International are first to hear what I have to say and that you hear it directly from me. So thank you very much for coming here and listening.

You do not need to be told that The News of the World is 168 years old. That it is read by more people than any other English language newspaper. That it has enjoyed support from Britain's largest advertisers. And that it has a proud history of fighting crime, exposing wrong-doing and regularly setting the news agenda for the nation.

When I tell people why I am proud to be part of News Corporation, I say that our commitment to journalism and a free press is one of the things that sets us apart. Your work is a credit to this.

The good things the News of the World does, however, have been sullied by behaviour that was wrong. Indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our Company.

The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself.

In 2006, the police focused their investigations on two men. Both went to jail. But the News of the World and News International failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose.

Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued.

As a result, the News of the World and News International wrongly maintained that these issues were confined to one reporter. We now have voluntarily given evidence to the police that I believe will prove that this was untrue and those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences.

This was not the only fault.

The paper made statements to Parliament without being in the full possession of the facts. This was wrong.

Currently, there are two major and ongoing police investigations. We are cooperating fully and actively with both. You know that it was News International who voluntarily brought evidence that led to opening Operation Weeting and Operation Elveden. This full cooperation will continue until the Police's work is done.

We have also admitted liability in civil cases. Already, we have settled a number of prominent cases and set up a Compensation Scheme, with cases to be adjudicated by former High Court judge Sir Charles Gray. Apologising and making amends is the right thing to do.

Inside the Company, we set up a Management and Standards Committee that is working on these issues and that has hired Olswang to examine past failings and recommend systems and practices that over time should become standards for the industry. We have committed to publishing Olswang's terms of reference and eventual recommendations in a way that is open and transparent.

We have welcomed broad public inquiries into press standards and police practices and will cooperate with them fully.

So, just as I acknowledge we have made mistakes, I hope you and everyone inside and outside the Company will acknowledge that we are doing our utmost to fix them, atone for them, and make sure they never happen again.

Having consulted senior colleagues, I have decided that we must take further decisive action with respect to the paper.

This Sunday will be the last issue of the News of the World.

Colin Myler will edit the final edition of the paper.

In addition, I have decided that all of the News of the World's revenue this weekend will go to good causes.

While we may never be able to make up for distress that has been caused, the right thing to do is for every penny of the circulation revenue we receive this weekend to go to organisations - many of whom are long-term friends and partners - that improve life in Britain and are devoted to treating others with dignity.

We will run no commercial advertisements this weekend. Any advertising space in this last edition will be donated to causes and charities that wish to expose their good works to our millions of readers.

These are strong measures. They are made humbly and out of respect. I am convinced they are the right thing to do.

Many of you, if not the vast majority of you, are either new to the Company or have had no connection to the News of the World during the years when egregious behaviour occurred.

I can understand how unfair these decisions may feel. Particularly, for colleagues who will leave the Company. Of course, we will communicate next steps in detail and begin appropriate consultations.

You may see these changes as a price loyal staff at the News of the World are paying for the transgressions of others. So please hear me when I say that your good work is a credit to journalism. I do not want the legitimacy of what you do to be compromised by acts of others. I want all journalism at News International to be beyond reproach. I insist that this organisation lives up to the standard of behaviour we expect of others. And, finally, I want you all to know that it is critical that the integrity of every journalist who has played fairly is restored.

Thank you for listening."

And then there were five

The obvious inference to be drawn from the Electoral Commission’s post-vote intervention last night is that the “legitimacy” of the Lib Dem AM involved remains slightly dodgy. But does it matter?

Welsh Lib Dems will continue to insist on portraying themselves as the salvation the nation is seeking (if only they opened their eyes) and if question marks persist over the inept role that Kirsty Williams played in the matter then it is not as if she is surrounded by leadership contenders.

What we should be looking for now are signs of whether their more or less stable situation will embolden the Welsh Lib Dem group to enter into those long-rumoured coalition talks.

Bad news is good news is bad news

Whilst the angst continues at the News of the World, the rest of the UK media – and especially the Daily Mail – exults over how News Corporation shares opened nearly 3% down at $18 in New York whilst BSkyB interests plummeted by 19.5p at 825.5p in London.  Potential investors fear that a succession of phone hacking accusations will scupper Murdoch’s attempts to acquire satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

The twin track unashamedly pursued by Labour this afternoon in PMQs and in the emergency Commons debate that followed was to have Rebekah Brooks’ head on a platter and for the deal to be kicked into the long grass the Competition Commission. Strangely enough, the ConDem side of the House seemed fairly sanguine about both prospects. Some of them even said as much although the cabinet line is more circumspect. It was also noticeable that great pains had been taken to ensure that Vince Cable was busy doing something else today.

Nick Robinson described the consensual move towards retribution against the media an inquiry as "the day that everything changed", at least in Parliament – although former Speaker Martin might question that particular historical assertion. Robinson writes, “For the past two decades no politician with a prospect of power dared attack the Murdoch empire. Indeed, politicians of both major parties and their spin doctors fought with each other to woo, to charm and to convert the executives of News International. Today all that changed.”

A pity that things didn’t change in 2006 when the Information Commissioner published a report “What price privacy now?” which revealed the extent of “transactions” for private information by newspapers and magazines. You may be interested to learn that it is the Daily Mail who take top spot in the blaggers league.

Politicos suddenly growing a spine however is the least of Murdoch’s problems. The change that really matters is happening in the US markets where News Corp has paid way too much for unprofitable big banner titles. As brand name advertisers steadily desert the News of the World, one financial correspondent considers it to be the inevitable price for making up your own rules when it comes to corporate governance.

Analysts agree that the establishment of Fox in the US as a new network television force, along with BSkyB in the UK, has been masterful. But what they also now see is a serious lack of judgement bordering on outright arrogance in the handling of the phone tapping scandal. The thing about markets is that they don’t forgive that kind of serious lapse any more than politicians.