George Galloway sues over NoTW ‘phone hacking’

[luke]

probably, they've got some serious making up to do after the royal british legion ended their partnership today, and even the head of the armed forces has said 'I am appalled. I find it quite disgusting'

Royal British Legion Drops NOTW as Campaign Partner

The Royal British Legion has dropped News of the World as its campaigning partner, as the nation’s leading Armed Forces charity representing bereaved military families expressed revulsion at the latest phone hacking revelations.
The decision was taken following the disclosure that the bereaved relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan may have had their phones hacked by a private investigator working for News of the World. The Legion has suspended all relations with the newspaper pending a resolution of the allegations.

“We can’t with any conscience campaign alongside News of the World on behalf of Armed Forces families while it stands accused of preying on these same families in the lowest depths of their misery,” said a charity spokesman. “The hacking allegations have shocked us to the core.”

The charity also said its advertising budget with News International is under review. It takes advertising space in The Sun and on The Sun’s Forces Channel online to promote its welfare services offered to Armed Forces personnel past and present and their families.

Previously, the Legion had partnered with the News of the World in campaigning on Military Covenant issues, and was preparing to join forces in another campaign to save the Chief Coroner’s Office from being abolished.

“Clearly, it would make a mockery of that campaign to go hand-in-hand with News of the World,” the spokesman added. “We think we’ll do better without them.”

The Legion provides free legal advice to bereaved military families at inquest as well as offering them a wide range of support. Kevin Hart, one of the Legion’s lawyers working closely with bereaved military families, said he was “appalled that their private lives could have been invaded.”

He added: “The Royal British Legion does its utmost to provide assistance and comfort to these bereaved families, who deserve the nation’s utmost gratitude and respect. To think anyone would exploit their grief is frankly sick-making.”

Michele Price, another of the Legion’s lawyers working closely with bereaved Armed Forces families, added: “The Legion acts as their voice and their champion. I feel that my families would expect inhuman behaviour on a remote battlefield but not at the hands of Fleet Street.”

The Legion supports calls for a full judicial review into the matter with powers to call evidence and examine witnesses under oath.

http://legionlive.org.uk/2011/07/07/royal-british-legion-drops-notw-as-campaign-partner/

[cobweb]

....and News Corps newest new thing...the Sun on Sunday coming soon.

[luke]

its already done

its been going ages, and is nothing to do with murdoch. but they will just come up with some sunday version of the scum

[luke]

'BSkyB's market value has fallen by the curious figure of £666m this week, my colleague Graeme Wearden reports.'

666

[luke]

http://www.hasrebekahbrooksbeensackedyet.com/

[faceless]

Sub editors at The Sun walk out in protest of News of the World closure
Stephen Lepitak
Media / UK

Sub editors at The Sun have walked out in protest at the closure of sister Sunday title The News of the World, the NUJ has announced. The protest was made as staff at the News of the World, thought to number around 200, were being told of the closure of the title.

A 90-day consultation process has now begun, with some members of staff possibly remaining at News International as rumours persist that a Sunday version of The Sun will be launched instead. NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said: “This outrageous manipulation of the legal right to be consulted about redundancies shows the contempt that the Murdoch empire has for its loyal staff. True to form, he believes he can buy his way out of his obligations. This is an act of damage limitation to salvage Murdoch’s reputation and that of News International – both of which are now tarnished beyond repair.”

--------------------

it's not often you see rats standing up for other rats!

[luke]

they only walked out for half hour though!

[luke]

[piper99]

Good information Luke will keep that for my news radio show.... but i think the Sun gonna come unstuck too, they will try to distance themselves from NOTW but will be virtually impossible, as you can guarantee the same Private Dicks etc all been working for sun journalists as well as notw that perpetrated the phone hacking stuff... and also with Coulson arrested today, am sure he had a lot to do with The Sun also...

[luke]

the police have raided the daily stars offices as well ... which is funny, i was checking out all the front pages this morning, and all of them were covering the murdoch story - except the daily star, which led with something to do with harry potter!

murdoch can't even give away free advertising space for sunday;

Charities reject offer of free News of the World advertising

Several high-profile charities are not taking up the News of the World's offer of free advertising in its last edition on Sunday, as the Institute of Fundraising warns that doing so could potentially be a breach of the codes of fundraising practice.

Civilsociety.co.uk has learned that the RNLI, RSPCA, The Brooke, Care International, Thames Reach, ActionAid, WaterAid, Salvation Army, VSO, RSPCA, Oxfam and Barnardo’s have all decided not to advertise in the final edition, which would typically go out to 2.66 million readers. No charities have come forward to say that they will be advertising.

http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/fundraising/news/content/10019/charities_reject_offer_of_free_news_of_the_world_advertising

and renault have widened their boycott to all of murdoch's papers;

Renault extends ad boycott to all News International titles

Renault has become the first advertiser to publicly extend its advertising boycott to cover all News International newspapers despite the publisher's decision to close the News of the World.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1079229/renault-extends-ad-boycott-news-international-titles/

[luke]

James Murdoch could face criminal charges on both sides of the Atlantic
As phone hacking scandal leaves News Corp open to prosecution, James Murdoch looks less likely to inherit empire

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/08/james-murdoch-criminal-charges-phone-hacking

Phone hacking: Police probe suspected deletion of emails by NI executive
• 'Massive quantities' of archive allegedly deleted
• Emails believed to be between News of the World editors

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/08/phone-hacking-emails-news-international

• News International's embattled chief executive Rebekah Brooks has hinted to staff of more damaging revelations to come

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/jul/09/phone-hacking-newsoftheworld

makes you wonder, what more could there possibly be to come?

[faceless]

For 40 years Murdoch has waged war on the people of this country.. it can't go on
George Galloway
July 9th 2011
dailyrecord.co.uk

For me the seminal moment was the sight of a sepulchral Rupert Murdoch - Berlusconi without the laughs - on the front of the Financial Times. He was being hounded by a ratpack of journos to whom, face twisted in pain, he could only offer "No Comment". For all the world he looked like an ageing, fading mafia don who'd hoped relocating to Miami beach would take him out of harm's way. And now knew different.

I declare an interest. Twenty five years ago today, I would have been about to head to Wapping to join the sacked print workers and journalists on the Saturday night picket of Murdoch's fortress. In Parliament, I railed against him. I unmasked one of his most notorious deceivers, the so-called "Fake Sheikh" Mazher Mahmood. I sued Murdoch's men for hacking my telephone and have refused to settle out of court. I warned New Labour leaders 15 years ago that their Faustian pact with the devil could only end one way - in betrayal and rancour.

But they still got in to bed with him. I recall a huge row with the now apostate Alastair Campbell over his clear preference of the Sun over the Mirror in placing juicy government stories. "Some reward for being a Labour paper," I said. "Murdoch is where it's at," Campbell replied.

And now? Well, we all know where we are - or do we? Murdoch and the rich and powerful, whose interests he promotes, are desperate to cap this volcano of public outrage. For all the righteous indignation and talk of inquiries, powerful interests way beyond Murdoch don't want us to examine the fundamental questions.

Here is the flagship paper of an overweening media empire which helped hurl this country into war after war - then hacked the phones of relatives grieving at the loss of the very soldiers it had done so much to put in harm's way. And then, with a straight face, "campaigned" for the armed forces' covenant.

Here is a rag which took genuine public grief at horrific crimes against children, manipulated it into dangerous and cynical campaigns to sell more papers, and all the while spied on the parents of the very murdered child in whose name it said it was acting. Who hacked into the telephone of a missing girl - a murdered girl - listened to her family's griefstricken messages to her and then deleted them to make way for more - causing her family to believe she must still be alive.

Here is a sewer which gushes forth filthy smears that disabled people and single parents are scroungers who refuse to take responsibility, while its gilded executives - the son placed in the top job by daddy - sack others to save their own skins. No-one should be surprised. Because this is an outfit that vilifies migrants and Muslims, while remaining in the grip of a foreign billionaire who scarcely pays tax here.

This is the inconvenient truth which is lapping at the door of David Cameron and his snooty friends who dug the Dirty Digger. The News of the World was a pillar of the establishment. It and Murdoch have fuelled the furnace in which bigotry, nastiness and narrow-mindedness were boiled up and poured like an acid on to everything good in this society.

Worse for Cameron, he - as Blair before him - is bound by 1000 golden threads to Murdoch. He went horse riding regularly with Rebekah Brooks, and shared last Christmas dinner with her. Ed Miliband and Labour have astutely focused on Brooks and Andy Coulson. Everyone knows Cameron is next in the crosshairs.

He it was who hired the disgraced former editor of the News of the World to be his press supremo. Now Coulson is interviewed under caution, arrested and his testimony at Tommy Sheridan's perjury trial being reexamined for... possible perjury. The police themselves have a case to answer. The original investigation was perfunctory in the extreme.

We had been told brazenly by Brooks at a parliamentary committee that her paper often paid police for information. Think about that. It was eight years ago. It was largely passed over - by press, Parliament and police. It was an admission of a serious crime - suborning public officials, police officers no less. Now we know that the sums involved were rather large. Then a senior police officer, Andy Hayman, who was involved in the first fiasco investigation, got a job with Murdoch.

And for those who chose to see, the corruption was plain. I spoke about it in Parliament and in the courts. They dismissed it as whining of the left, yesterday's men - the dinosaurs who were felled at Wapping. Now the situation has changed, changed utterly.

Miliband, at last on the front foot and finding his voice, hit a vital seam when he said this week that it was people power that had done for Murdoch's rancid title. That's true, though it required the courage of the likes of Tom Watson MP to have kept this issue on a slow-burn until it caught fire. And that is what should be unleashed now.

The Murdoch game-plan is clear - use the crisis to push through a long-standing move to rationalise his print operation (a seven days a week Sun) while battening down the hatches and getting his mitts on BSkyB. Cameron's aim is to kick this into the long grass. This MUST be rejected. It can't be left to that. This ought to be a tipping-point. The people who can make it so are the people, not the Parliament.

It is plain it was the prospect of an advert-free News of the World being burnt publicly across the country tomorrow that forced Murdoch to pull the title. In the age of Twitter and Facebook, calls for consumer or public action could spread in hours. Now the public campaign needs to be sustained.

Brooks represents the sordid link with the Murdoch empire, 10 Downing Street, the police and MPs who were for so long too cowed to do anything about it. That entire corrupted set of relationships must be dragged into the light of day. At the centre is Murdoch, a mogul who has made no secret of his desire to bend politics and politicians to serve his interests. Like Silvio Berlusconi - but operating across continents like the serial patriot he is.

For 40 years Murdoch has played a central role in the war against everything the Labour movement achieved here, against unions, against working people and their interests, and for a capitalism red in tooth and claw. His papers savaged the Labour Party until the Blairite coterie took over and began extirpating all that was labour. Even as Ed Miliband rose to land some punches on David Cameron, half the Labour front bench were still ruminating on the banquet they had enjoyed at one of Murdoch's parties a couple of weeks earlier.

This is a moment when the basic line of division in the society stands exposed. Something very big is happening. It comes after the MPs' expenses scandal and then the outrage at the bankers' bonuses and recklessness. A third establishment pillar is now cracking under public pressure and large numbers of people are beginning to glimpse the truth behind the facade.

I chose my opening words carefully when I talked about the mafia don and his capos. For that's what this is all about, when all is said and done. A mafia at the top of our society - suborning, running protection rackets, making offers you can't refuse and occasionally rubbing out those who fall out of line.

I was one of those they tried to rub out. But I'm still standing up to them. So should all decent people. Don't buy the Murdoch press. Don't sell it. Don't advertise in it. Treat it with the contempt it oh so richly deserves.

[cobweb]

Jesus wept.....is there anything or anyone not corrupt and rancid in the upper echelons of NI?

Brooks now must surely be arrested and charged with bribery the same as Coulson and Goodman (see below) For everyone's info on here I work in the banking sector (stop booing - I'm not important enough to get bonuses) and there are new Anti-Bribery laws in place...not sure if these will apply in these situation.

I have always bought the Mirror and was praying that they would go with a headline of "Get it right up ye" but they were somewhat more restrained.

[luke]

the notw have posted a pic of their last day ... some of the comments are quite amusing;





and the guardian has this;

The Shropshire Star has an interesting rebuttal of the News of the World political editor, David Wooding, claims that the paper's current regime had cleaned up the dodgy practices of their predecessors.

PR consultant Jools Payne shares her experience of dealing with what Wooding's refers to as his "decent, hard-working" colleagues when her son's girlfriend, Frankie McFall, was murdered by her father, along with her mother, Susan.

She describes how she was rung on her mobile phone by someone claiming to be a PR consultant on the morning after the murders to arrange an interbiew with her son, Max, for the News of the World.

Following repeated calls from different journalists at the News of the World, and at least two further calls from the original PR consultant, she issued a photograph of Max to a news agency with a warning that further inquiries would prompt a complaint to the PCC.

Her son was then targeted by a daily torrent of "friend" requests on Facebook, which she has no doubt were from News of the World and other tabloid journalists. Payne writes:

"It grated with me that they were still trying to wheedle their way in to my son's life and trauma at an extraordinarily difficult time for him.

These exchanges plagued me. How had the press got my mobile number? How had they found Max's address so quickly? Why had that woman purported to be a PR consultant?

Frankie's headmaster told me he had NotW (and doubtless other newspaper) hacks skulking in bushes in the school grounds and brazenly marching straight into his office demanding comments and answers with impunity.

I would remind David Wooding that the ethically questionable subterfuge, and harassment my own family endured at the hands of NotW journalists – or their appointed agents – was a mere 15 months ago . . . under the watch of an editor he calls "decent".

full article http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2011/07/08/my-encounter-with-the-news-of-the-world/#ixzz1RcFeO4WS

[faceless]