What happened with the horse? Did she mistreat it?
No, she commissioned a human interest piece on Catherine the Great…
Apparently David Cameron used to go riding with Charlie but didn’t ride that horse. Except that he did, but not since the election. Or whatever his story this week is.
It was a retired police horse that was loaned to her and her husband Charlie to look after. I’ve no quibble with this, as it is hard to rehome these horses, and her husband is a leading racehorse trainer.
But this is the story that keeps on giving. Guess who went out riding on the poor nag - our Prime Minister David Cameron!
There have been a few reports that the horse was returned to the police in poor condition, and it died shortly afterwards, but it was an old horse, so who knows.
Right. My understanding is that that Cameron arranged the loan of the horse and went riding with the Brooks indicates the cozy relationship between the PM and press officials.
I understand that a fallout of this incident is the Times’s ejection of the Bugle podcast by John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman. Unfortunately, I missed several of those podcasts last fall and now they seem to be unavailable on Itunes.
All of the Times-era Bugles are mirrored here. Andy linked to this site from the Bugle twitter feed, so it appears to be tacitly approved.
Huh. How does that follow?
They kept making fun of News International and the Murdochs. They said that The News of the World would not be missed. Then The New York Times ran an article pointing out how heavily the Bugle was going after News Corp. and the word is they finally noticed what Oliver and Zaltzman were doing.
Which just goes to show that no matter how small you are, keep gnawing on the hand that feeds you and eventually it’ll notice it’s getting bitten.
A particularly pertinent question following the arrests of Brooks et al is whether those arrested, if charged, can possibly hope to get a fair trial. The Leveson Enquiry has had a number of points where, as a lay person, I read it thinking - isn’t this enormously prejudicial to a possible criminal trial?
Up thread, I think I remember saying that they should just get on with the enquiry. Turns out I might have been wrong and that it would have been better to let the criminal investigation finish before the Enquiry (but then you run into the problem of collusion between the police and NI - which might have meant that the criminal investigation was not done properly without the Enquiry taking place and revealing some of these links). I, for one, am quite confused about what I should be thinking about this - and part of me suspects that the government, knowing that an Enquiry prior to the conclusion of the criminal proceedings could be prejudicial, set things up this way precisely so they could get their mates off via this means.
Do we have any UK legal experts for this sort of thing knocking around on the Dope?
I have also been a bit puzzled about this story. There is a longstanding scheme to loan retired police horses out to foster homes. AFAIK the fosterers are responsible for feeding and stabling and the police pick up the tab for vetinary care. However I don’t think the people they usually foster to are millionaire race horse owners, more horse lovers who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford a riding horse or who are looking for a companion horse (for their own riding horse).
Now we find that the recently leaked report on the Hillsborough disaster seem to mirror the stories that were lied about in the Sun.
Give that these reports were completely false, and were intended only to absolve the police of any responsibility for their incompetence in the crowd control on that day, isn’t it surprising that such secret documents seem to have been reproduced in the media? Only a couple of hours after the tragic events.
The police and the media have been working hand in glove for donkeys years to promote a convenient propaganda, and there has always been a price to pay for that “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”
Now who was the owner of the SUN newspaper at the time?
The Times’ lawyers telling lies to a high court judge:-
*The Times newspaper failed to tell a High Court judge that one of its journalists had obtained information illegally because of fears that he would be prosecuted if he told the truth, the Leveson Inquiry heard yesterday.
*
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9147165/Leveson-Times-failed-to-tell-judge-about-NightJack-hacking.html
And there’s even more hacking now. Not phones this time though.
A website called “The House of Ill Compute” distributed stolen codes for ITV Digital’s set-top boxes in the late 90s-early noughties. This was the straw that broke the back of the company and ITV Digital, SKY TV’s main rival, went out of business in the early noughties.
According to the owner of THoIC, he received funding from a company called NDS, a smartcard manufacturer. NDS also gave him ITV Digital’s codes.
Who was a non-exec director of NDS at the time of the hacking, who also had a strong interest in NewsCorp’s SKY TV?
James Murdoch.
To be fair, ITV Digital piled most of the rest of the straw on that particular camel. But still, not surprised to hear another example of J. Murdoch’s scumitude.
But at least we got Monkey from them, and the world (and PG Tips) is richer for him.
And now it appears News Corp may been have doing the same thing in Australia:
Nothing exciting yet, but James Murdoch is back for more at the Leveson Inquiry. Rupert will be back in the chair tomorrow and Thursday.
It just rolls on and on…
Heh, you spoke too soon…
Cabinet Minister Jeremy Hunt is now doomed it looks like.
tl,dr version: Hunt is to decide on the News Corp takeover of BSkyB in an impartial, quasi-judicial fashion. He (or his office, same difference) have extensive clandestine discussions with News Corp, indicating Hunt’s agreement with the News Corp position, and providing a flow of information to News Corp, some of which is market sensitive. I think - it’s a lot to digest.
Still going! Rebekah Brooks charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
I liked this bit, from her husband (also charged):
This is the former editor of the Sun and the NotW we’re talking about. That’s irony right there.