Talking Head: The Travails of the Ambitious Media Whore

Time after time Iain Dale makes full disclosure on the minutiae of his media whoring diary. A giddy rise and tragic fall a la Fanny Hill beckons perhaps? Last night he revealed that he had had to choose between honouring a date with Lady Bellingham and the Sky News papers review or locking horny horns with John Prescott on BBC Newsnight. What is a poor media whore to do? Above, an artist's impression of Mr Dale (right) coming down hard on Mr Prescott's ass.

I'm not sure how they managed it but some of Iain's sycophantic sock puppets managed to deduce from this news that someone somewhere was "frit". Prescott? BBC Newsnight? The only person that might be called "frit" here was Dale. "Frit" of losing the momentum of his Sky News talking head career.

Actually Iain has probably done the right thing here, though at 8pm on a Thursday, three and a half hours before the review was due to air, it seems odd that there was not a ready substitute who could have stepped in for the more routine gig. Are Sky News not professionals, able to be flexible when something comes up?

Where Iain is absolutely wrong I'd say is to imply that BBC Newsnight will not now consider inviting him the next time they want a Tory blogger talking head. Before he typed that he was dead wrong ... but now he has displayed this gratuitous illusion of grandeur he might be right.

On the substance of Coulson-gate. Is Deputy Yates actually a Tory? Or just an idiot taking instructions from spinning Tories? Or actually using weasel words to deflect and distract while cases are compiled? Or even simply clearing the decks for all kinds of civil actions to take centre stage?

As Brian Paddick pointed out Yates' announcement was specific to the determined case which ended with a scribbler and a hacker going to prison. It was not a pardon for the other 304 journos identified as conspirers with hackers, blaggers and bin divers by the Information Commissioner. The CPS could very easily tell him to go back to any one of those potential cases and investigate?

That evidence was sequestered and may remain so while there are live police enquiries. But how long will that lock up actually last?

If there is no criminal action then literally hundreds of celebs may choose to take civil actions. They will sub poena those papers. They should be out on a moderately short timetable.

Coulson will surely have to go if there are ANY other cases involving NOTW journalists and payments to "consultants". As Andrew Neil has said over and over again it beggars belief that any editor - competent or indeed incompetent I'd add - would not have an idea that more than two dozen of their feral scribblers were walking on the wild side with bumptious blaggers, filthy bin divers and digital hackers.

Just a thought ... how are the BBC now getting critted by Iain's sock muppets for extending an invitation that you were unable to accept? Presumably some Tory apologist or other did find themselves available? I didn't see the programme. How does this make anyone "frit"?

And could it be that Iain's friend the Newsnight editor, getting it in the neck from Iain and others for his Politics Pen line up (see Footnote) is too kind to reveal that his line up was not his first choice? But that a series of Tory types were too busy sucking up to Murdoch's Sky TV to take part?

If that is there are any Tory types, outside of parliament, of sufficient profile that also understand economic policy? Even inside parliament there is a dearth of Tories that do policy or do economics, and of course even George Osborne himself has outed his poor wife Frances for contriving his mortgages and so on.

Was this because (a) it was beyond poor George's wit? or (b) to provide a scape goat should his rather ridiculous mortgages from pater, flipping from mansion to mansion, and avoidance of CGT ever becomes the story.

BREAKING NEWS, from Robert Peston of all people, way outside his usual news beat: Rebecca Wade herself was on the hacking list but declined to press charges.

Stephen Newton: As Super Hero "PR Consultant Man"

You may know Stephen Newton for his Chorlton diaries or for Buffing Paul Dacre's Banana (the top sleaze in the Mail, extracted and prettied up), but he has once again slipped into a phone box and transformed to PR Consultant Man only to reveal: "More than 300 journalists named in unlawful trade in private data". In essence:

And yet this is terribly old news: in May 2006 the Information Commissioners’ Office claimed to have the names of 305 journalists who unlawfully traded in personal information. That claim was made in a report to parliament, What price privacy? (see paragraph 1.8 and elsewhere), but made no impact on our media establishment.

The Guardian and Newsnight etc have broken ranks. Bloggers too are rampant. Apart from Coulson's sock puppets who pretend there's nothing to see.

Will the festering sewer of inky sleazers finally get their comeuppance and a good flushing down the pan?

Christie Hospital: Gordon Brown to Damn Political Footballer?

Unusual. The South Manchester Reporter's website usually trails up to 24 hours behind the inky edition but today they've pre-empted themselves with a story about Gordon Brown's visit to Manchester Withington last Friday.

The reported visit was the Christie Hospital, subject of a disgusting hoax from Lib Dem John Leech MP. This pretender claimed that the hospital was under threat of closure and mocked up a "Save Our Hospital" campaign.

His people, inhumane and stop-at-nothing as they were, even placed screaming closure hoax leaflets in waiting areas for vulnerable patients and their friends and families. Confidence, optimism and maintaining relaxation appear to be crucially important in maintaining reasonable health and prospects in the face of cancer.

What a kick in the teeth it would be to attend for your lifeline radiotherapy or chemotherapy only to be confronted with a cynical message that that lifeline was perhaps threatened with closure? How can John Leech MP sleep at night? What a complete bastard he proved to be.

Far from clearing Leech as Cllr Mark Clayton disingenuously claimed in a recent letter to the SMR Freedom of Information requests proved that, cynically, he was just making things up.

It turned out that NO DOCTORS had signed any PETITION - Leech claimed 60 had signed the thing. It turned out that it was a DRAFT form letter which NOT ONE DOCTOR returned. And it turned out that even this rather unhelpful and unused document DID NOT SUGGEST CLOSURE was a threat. Actually seems like some of the news archive has been doctored to remove embarrassingly unchecked and inaccurate stories.

John Leech and his Lib Dem chums made that idea up. A complete fantasy. And they were warned off by health experts and officials that their claims had absolutely no substance and scolded for using cancer services and cancer patients as political footballs.

The real debate about Christie was over the plan for satellite centres - which John Leech's informants vehemently opposed, saying this would detract from the hub - and it must be considered deeply paradoxical that Leech's fellow Lib Dem, the complete banana boy sleazer and old speckled hen beer aficionado Mr Paul Rowen MP actually stood up in parliament to big up plans for one such satellite.

Clearly cancer patients, cancer services and Christie Hospital must not be used as a political football even now. The Christie is safe as it always was. Thanks to a cross party and broad popular campaign, supported by Manchester Evening News, Gordon Brown felt he could make the tough decision to replace charity funds deposited in Iceland with our NHS money.

The real question now is the integrity and judgement and scarey ruthlessness of John Leech MP. If nothing else he would deserve to be tipped out of parliament on the basis of his shameful Christie lies and their distribution to vulnerable patients. He is a scheming chancer.

Speccie Coffee House: Spinning Web of Deceit For Cameron

James Forsyth at the Speccie Coffee House blog piles up dodgy argument upon iffy foundation to predict that Andy Coulson will not only survive this week and next, but also the firm term of a Tory government. Here you go. In a nutshell, and this is nuts, he gives three reasons:

1. Important enough to Cam project that they'll expend political capital to protect him. Albeit nausing hard-bitten back backbenchers;

2. Newspapers won’t follow this story for fear of blowback; few papers have entirely clean hands after all;

3. Most political journalists won’t burn bridges with the sleazer Coulson or the Murdoch empire. Not even Gordon Brown wants to upset Murdoch.

Labour of Love pondered this trite tosh for ages, almost ten seconds:

You think Coulson will survive? And not because he is innocent? But because he is good at his job i.e. sleazer in chief? So he will me in charge of making the case for the Tories being clean and bright, honest and changed, not sleazers? Is that it? I'd have to disagree.

Tory Sleazer Andy Coulson Gate: Dale is All Amuddle

Further to the breaking news on Conservative senior executive Andy Coulson's apparent sleazy past behavior it is interesting to observe the usual suspects.

Iain Dale, a seasoned smearer and libellist who is yet to out his little chipmunk? source of course and serial economics idiot who yesterday deliberately and diametrically misrepresented the Wall Street Journal on his popular but essentially nonsense blog, rushed out a response of sorts to the Guardian/Newsnight Coulson Ate My Hamster story.

Iain's headline - as with the Wall Street Journal one - turns the story round and seeks to paint the Guardian as predators:

Guardian Targets Coulson in Bugging Story

And of course the rest of the post is just confused nonsense. A remarkable muddle.

"Andy Coulson has already pointed out that he wasn't even editor of the paper when some of this happened."

Points out Iain. Some of the disciplinary activity happened AFTER Coulson left is true. Though not the actual sleazery and alleged criminality that had been discovered and which precipitated his sharp exit.

"None of this has happened during his employment by the Conservative Party"

Well make your mind up! It didn't happen while he was at the NOTW. Well it did actually. Apart from the fall out. It did not happen during his employment as Tory sleazer in chief? Well actually much of the fall out and the apparent cover up did happen while Coulson was in Cameron's pay.

Arguably Coulson left the NOTW so he wouldn't need to answer to Press Complaints; so that the enquiry, minus a key figure, could not really proceed; so that Murdoch was off the hook; so that in the region of thirty other journalists who had been habitually commissioning private investigations and phone hacking and blagging involving some 3,000 celebs and polis would get away scot free.

Clearly but clearly a newsroom does not have contracts out on 3,000 celebs and pols and their 'phones hacked without a professional and successful editor knowing. Clearly every hard-hitting story that rolls in needs to be quizzed.

"How did you get this?", "Can we prove that?", "Are you sure about this detail?", "You have a tape of the phone call?", "You dived the bins like I told you?". And so on and so forth.

Many years ago I was one of three editors of a hard hitting local news and what's on magazine. And we checked our stories and how they were stacked up. Are we expected to believe that Andy Coulson did not do this?

If he can deny knowing about all this sleaze on his watch will that make everything his little muppets are up to in Tory briefings deniable too?

Have the Tories EVER but ever employed any private investigators? Before Coulson? After Coulson? Have the Tories EVER but ever paid "tip fees" for any material? And so on and so forth?

Being more specific: Who was/is behind the patently ludicrous attempts to paint Lansley as a man smeared (or suicide bombed by a Labour candidate's little woman, thanks Donal) rather than a blabbermouth loon?

Nice to see the old "I don't know Andy Coulson well" line from Iain Dale as soon as 12:07 AM. Brilliant! And as his first comment points out, if Cameron did his "due diligence" as Dale claims, then Cameron is a clown and clearly not fit to be PM.

He either knew just how dodgy Coulson's crews condoned practices had been and still gave him the gig. Licking his lips perhaps? Or he really didn't check properly. I'd speculate that it is the former. Including the lip licking. He's probably amazed that Coulson has not had to be ditched before now.

George Osborne - with that strange facial expression of his - is a worthy accomplice for Coulson in our picture. It was The Daily Telegraph's Benedict Brogan that outed GOO as the Tory McBride equivalent. As we covered HERE and HERE TOO.

Here's an extract from the first link, the bold type is Benedict, with Balls providing a bit of a template for Dale's denials of knowing Coulson, the rest is LOL:

The most fascinating revelation of this perhaps being GOO cast as the nearest thing the Tories have to McBride! The post is no longer readily available where it was originally posted. Is that a contractual matter I wonder? Benny Brogan is Back Blogging at his new home. And this was from his very first post there:

I've returned amazed at how I managed to miss such a joy of stories, and why there's so much excitement about a hirsute Scot on YouTube (but enough about Alistair Darling). To my holiday-addled brain, the most significant development of the week is the outing of Ed Balls and his shadow spin operation. Did he really say of "Mr" Damian McBride: "I haven't been involved in his political work"? Eh? The opening post of a new blog should set the tone by avoiding sensation. It should be scrupulously fair-minded. At all cost it should avoid unedifying name-calling. So I shall merely say, in the gentlest way possible: "liar liar, pants on fire".

To which BB might possibly add: "mea culpa, mea maxima culpa", which I think would be Mister GuF's point? Though, back to that earlier paean we'd add that BB is essentially saying "It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it" which might well provide a challenge for Cameron and his bin-diving, phone-tapping head McBridivist Coulson, should the worst happen.

Tory Sleazer in Chief: How Soon Will Dave C Sack Andy?

Seems to me that both Iain Dale and Tim Montgomery have a failure of both humour and perspective in getting way too serious about Newsnight's "The Politics Pen", a less than hilarious homage to the entrepreneur snaring "Dragon's Den", for example HERE, from Timbo.

Four panelists consider ideas from viewers on how to save money and address the national debt. Whatever their allegiances or otherwise, and it is possible that none of them are currently card-carrying members of any party, they are pretty reasonable. One is an ex-Labour adviser, one is an independent pollster who has had some good gigs off Labour, one is a former Labour donor but gone over to the dark side as a Tory advisor, via the Lib Dems, and the fourth is a clearly Tory-orientated capitalist.

But whatever, it's just a bit of fun. More valid, by far, than Iain Dale's own Political Blog Ranking. That being horribly biased and extraordinarily weak in methodology.

Anyway's Newsnight have come back with something rather better than a fisk of Peter Rippon's "grow up Tory boys" riposte to their whinery. That is coverage of the Guardian scoop on an apparently absolutely endemic rule-breaking, privacy-busting, sleazy and very likely criminal regime of 'phone tapping and "blagging" at the News of the World under Andy Coulson.

Here's a reasonably sensible Conservative Home response that leans on non- advice from Alistair Campbell.

Coulson of course resigned from his job as Editor at the News of the World, claiming ignorance, avoiding PCC and other investigations of a Royal 'Phone Tapping Scandal which saw a couple of investigators imprisoned, and then bobbed up smartish at CCHQ as Dave Cameron's Conservatives' impression manager in chief.

On an annual salary that is even more than the Capital Gain's Tax avoided by George Osborne through contrived "first home" elections.

Well, it seems many of Coulson's staff were at it. And that this was very well known. And that they may not even have been the worst in the business.

How much did Coulson know? How much did Cameron know?
Will Coulson leave before he is pushed?
Will Cameron take responsibility for this sleazer and all his sleazy works?
Will DC be quicker to act than GB was with McBride?

Dr Donal Blaney: What An Unpleasant Loony Hoon He Is

That uber-Tory and total tweet Dr Donal Blaney (right) appears to be suggesting that only those with HIV/AIDS are dying of H1N1A. Not sure if he means in general or just in the United Kingdom or just in the small sample known to his mole:

A mole at a London hospital has told me something interesting about swine flu.
First, after a recent outbreak at a mosque, elders insisted that worshipers were told they had H1-N1 (bird flu) and not swine flu (I kid you not).
Secondly, and this surely merits further investigation, the form of words used whenever anyone dies of swine flu - namely that the victim had "underlying health problems" - is apparently a euphemism for HIV/AIDS.
If this really is the case - and I have put in a Freedom of Information request to those hospitals where the victims tragically died of swine flu to get to the truth - then for the public to be lied to as to the risks of swine flu for the sake of political correctness really is one of the great scandals of our time.

That's two things Donal, not "something". First, the gratuitous little gag about muslims not eating or associating with the P-I-G. Hee hee hee. Second, the idea that "underlying health problems", used of the variety of fatalities from H1N1A, always means AIDS.

Therefore, suggests Donal, we should all be told that as those dying are careless gayers, needle-sharing intravenous druggies, receivers of infected blood products, whores, refugees and philanderers, the rest of us needn't worry.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Donal Blaney and his mole are either Islamophobic or Homophobic. But there are two problems. This "information" is uncorroborated and seems a bit unlikely to be the full story. And Donal's post seems to be just dripping hidden agendas and nudge nudgery.

The rest of us needn't be particularly worried anyway. Not at this time. This is a pretty mild infection and apparently less harmful than bog-standard seasonal flu.

Iain Dale: Idiot NOT Liar in Misrepresenting Wall Street Journal?

Reading Iain Dale's headline Wall Street Journal Says Brown's Bailout Measures Have Failed and then following his advice and reading the WSJ article in full is instructive.

But please do not rush to dub the Labour Party's Favourite Tory Boy Blogger "LIAR", rather it's a case of "IDIOT", again.

When it comes to economics and finance Iain is just not equipped to comment with any authority. We know that. But it also seems he is too pissed off with BT* to even read the piece, written by Sara Schaefer Munoz with a once over from Alistair MacDonald, with any care. I'm not that sure of the piece's authority. SSM has the odd byline on banking and economy stories but her general oeuvre has been as a juggling and de-cluttering diary blogger, and a general featurist. MacDonald - who is a dyed in the wool suited and booted city type - has perhaps got a by-line here for a "rescue" effort?

It's horses for courses. And it looks like Iain is a faller at the first.

If Iain had read carefully he'd have found that - rather than having failure at its heart, and under the headline "Some Find U.K. Bailout Too Onerous" - the WSJ includes the word "successful" not once but twice, and the word "fail" not at all.

Some of the non-central little bits round the edges of the world-beating Brown-Darling rescue have been judged by still greedy bankers to be insufficiently generous. Which is NOT necessarily bad news, now is it?

Here are the three paragraphs (verbatim ... including that ellipsis) that immediately follow the five that city slicker (not) Iain Dale has quoted:

"On the whole, the measures have been successful in stabilizing the system," said Julian Franks, a professor of finance at London Business School. But "they may not have got the pricing right....The government is obviously worried about selling these guarantees too cheaply."

The troubles in the U.K. are similar to those in the U.S., where several programs struggled at first. One, the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to get toxic assets off bank balance sheets, will likely be much smaller than originally planned.

To be sure, the major programs the U.K. government has put in place to combat the financial crises are widely seen as successful. That includes the government's flagship move: its £37 billion ($60 billion) infusion of cash directly into three of the country's largest banks last October. A £250 billion debt guarantee for banks has also been widely used and credited with helping stem the confidence crisis last fall.

FOOTNOTES: Iain's also still moaning as if Digby Jones and Greg Dyke are Labourites. What does he know about? * If anyone from BT would like to get in touch and show us how Iain's organisation rather than themselves messed up, as readers of Iain Dale's Porkies probably suspect, that would be illuminating.

MIF09 Procession: Not Smoking May Damage Your GSOH

Off to see Procession.

From Turner Prize winning Jezzer Deller.

Previewed by LOL right here.

Inevitably the Corporation, or perhaps strictly speaking the NHS Smoke Free GM in the shape of Minister for Fun Cllr Pat Karney (right, "cross"-dressed as an undertaker) didn't seem to get it.

But there has been a compromise with the "Unrepentent Smokers" element of the march to get a topical second banner: Smirking About Smoking May Damage Your Grant. Or something like that.

Governor Sarah Palin: Jumped or Pushed? Who Cares?

Either way it's an end to Insania from Wasilla. Or is it? New York Times, reported by Alternet, think this means she's gonna be running for Pres:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Thursday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, allowing her to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

Others that she may be running away before some of that old Alaska mud pie sticks.