Saturday, September 11, 2010

Andy Coulson "Stench of Corruption" Gets Stronger

________________________________________________________

How deep does this go in the Conservative party and now the coalition government, in a story that just refuses to go away?
Conservative Chancellor George Osborne
Has New Pair of "Jackboots"

Yesterday, Conservative chancellor George Osborne waded into this rapidly escalating controversy wearing his brand new "jackboots" and tried to kick the Coulson story off of the front pages, by laying into and picking on some of the most vulnerable people in Britain, in a vicious and highly vindictive nasty attack. Out of the blue Osborne promised to make an extra £4 Billion of cuts, apparently designed to save this lousy God forsaken coalition government.  Osborne's speech which no one knew was coming, cuts which no one knew were going to be announced, left some Liberal Democrats MPs incandescent with rage at Osborne and the Tories.

Mostly these attacks go unreported in the right wing press, in view of all the alleged phone hacking and phone tapping and dirty tricks employed by newspaper editors and their owners, should we now be seriously asking just who in the press is helping the Tories get away with this callous vindictive bullying of people unable to help themselves and in no position to fight back? Are the right wing press and James and Rupert Murdoch involved with Cameron, Osborne and Clegg in hiding the dirty tricks and the ferocious nastiness of Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties and the coalition government?

We should all be demanding to know just how entwined are the involvements of  Andy Coulson; James and Rupert Murdoch; Rebekah Brooks; Andy Hayman (former Met. Police Assistant Commissioner); David Cameron; George Osborne and now Nick Clegg? And how deep is the extent on any "involvement"?

Rebekah Brooks
Will the alleged "meetings" between James Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron and George Osbourne, on how they colluded to try and win the 2010 general election by making a series of highly untrue and personal attacks on Gordon Brown and how they purposefully undermined him with a drip, drip effect  starting slowly in the two years prior to the election, now be confirmed?  It appears that slowly the truth is now beginning to emerge about a campaign of dirty tricks against Gordon Brown that dogged him and his premiership, which mostly had no truth but were blown up into ridiculously overstated exposures in the Sun and and the Times and then rolled out repeatedly on Sky News and even Fox News. Gordon Brown did not stand a chance against this media onslaught of lies and innuendo. I ask; "was the shameless bullying Andy Coulson responsible for this"?

Andy Coulson the Bully!

Are Cameron and Osborne afraid of leaks coming out about them and the Tories and the extent of their involvement in the "anti-Brown" campaign? Could this be why Andy Coulson is still in his position? Could Cameron and Osborne be too scared to fire Coulson for fear he may talk? After all Andy Coulson is a known bully and this is not simply speculation.


"Bully"Andy Coulson Taxpayer Funded £140.000 Per Year

Coulson also has a history of "bullying". Not my view, or the view of Labour spinners, but the verdict of an east London employment tribunal in November 2009, which awarded close to £800,000 to the former NotW reporter Driscoll for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. The tribunal singled out the Prime Minister's chief propagandist: "The original source of the hostility towards the claimant [Driscoll] was Mr Coulson, the editor."

This is what Matt Driscoll told the New Statesman who has corroborated some of these claims;


"I didn't get involved in the so-called dark arts, as it was always handed over to specialist people working for the news and features desks," says the former NotW sports reporter Matt Driscoll
He tells me that he was given access to private phone and medical records on "six or seven different occasions" - on one occasion, he was handed a copy of the footballer Rio Ferdinand's mobile phone record by an editor. Another former NotW reporter says: "There were so many NotW stories [based on phone-hacking] that I wouldn't be able to count them."
The Tories have dismissed the claims as part of a politically motivated campaign by the Labour Party.  David Cameron has stated that he backs Coulson 100% and says "everyone deserves a second chance" odd choice of words, especially as Coulson denies knowing anything about the phone hackings, so why did Cameron say he deserved a second chance?
The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has said: "It is for the Metropolitan Police, on an operational matter, to decide what the right course of action is." But the Met has been castigated for its decision to "ring-fence" the evidence in the original phone-hacking investigation in 2006.
“The key issue is that the police didn't tell the Crown Prosecution Service how much evidence they actually had," a former senior Met official tells me. "You now have to have a judicial inquiry or you have to get the inspectorate of constabulary to come in [and investigate].
I ask another former Met commander if the New York Times allegations of a "long-term" relationship between News International and Scotland Yard are true. "I couldn't possibly comment," he tells me with a chuckle, adding: "But feel free to draw an inference from my silence." The former senior Met official draws my attention to how the former assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, who led the original police investigation into the phone-hacking allegations, is now a columnist on the News International-owned Times. "It's not necessarily improper but it doesn't help, does it?" says the retired officer.

"Coulson, whose £140,000 taxpayer-funded salary is notably higher than that of every cabinet member except the Prime Minister, is a man "who, at best, was responsible for a newspaper that was out of control and, at worst, was personally implicated in criminal activity . . . The exact parallel is surely with Damian McBride."
That was the view of Cameron's cabinet colleague Chris Huhne - now the Energy Secretary - speaking in the pre-coalition days of July 2009."

Has Coulson any morals? Last week in the weekly televised Prime Minister's Questions, when he thought he could gain the political advantage, Coulson had obviously briefed Cameron and Clegg the details of a private phone call the then prime minister Gordon Brown had apparently made to Coulson, when he (Coulson) was forced to resign as editor from the Rupert Murdoch's News of the World Sunday newspaper. As David Cameron had to attend family emergency in France when his father died suddenly, it fell to the hapless and now tarnished and compromised Nick Clegg the deputy prime minister to reveal that when Coulson resigned, Gordon Brown telephoned him to commiserate in what was obviously a friendly phone call of support. A personal and private phone call which was obviously never meant for publication but nonetheless, stored and no doubt recorded for future use which was then ruthlessly taken and used by the Andy Coulson in an effort to score cheap and nasty political points and to divert attention away from himself and this lousy sleaze ridden coalition government. However, the irony seems to have escaped Cameron, Coulson, Osborne and Clegg as well as the right wing press, Coulson already under heavy fire for knowing about phone hacking and tapping into people's private voicemails etc, apparently thought nothing of betraying yet another confidence, by revealing the details of a private and personal phone call, in an attempt to belittle a man who was not even present at the time! Obviously Andy Coulosn fears hacking enough to keep a record of his personal conversation with the then prime minister! It appears that the bully in Andy Coulson has not gone away, but worse his bullying mates Cameron, Osborne and Clegg have once again joined in the kicking.

Now the Prime Minister's director of communications, Andy Coulson, is once again being buffeted by a political and media storm over allegations of phone-hacking during his period as editor of the News of the World (NotW), from 2003 to 2007.
In April 2009, at the height of the row over the Downing Street aide Damian McBride's email slurs against leading Conservative politicians, David Cameron berated the then prime minister thus: "I do not know what Gordon Brown knew and when he knew it but what I do know is that he hired these people, he sets the culture, he is the leader and we need change in order to change the culture."
Choice words indeed from David Cameron, who is now giving a bullying ex tabloid editor a phone tapping, hacking alleged liar his 100% support and backing and forcing the taxpayer to fund his salary to the tune of £140.000 per year!
Everything that David Cameron says and does either turns out to be an eggageration, false, or just double meaning half baked pledges and contradictions. Cameron leads a sleaze ridden government of sham, cast adrift in a sea of broken promises and patronising condescention,  full of lies and total hypocrisy, and it is barely 4 months old!
Some Puzzling Facts
  • Rupert Murdoch's News International owns the News of the World, the Sun and the Times, he also owns Sky News and Fox News
  • Two reporters are jailed for their part in the News of the World phone hacking scandal
  • Then editor Andy Coulson says he knew nothing but resigns anyway
  • Coulson quit as editor in January 2007 on the day Clive Goodman, the paper's former royal editor, was jailed for four months for illegal phone tapping
  • Barely 3 months after he resigned from the NotW,  Andy Coulson became the Conservative Party's director of communications, in May 2007, as David Cameron's right hand man.
  • Andy Hayman the controversial Assistant Commissioner who oversaw the original investigation into the NotW phone hacking, left his post and joined to write for Murdoch's Times, just three months later!
  • Rupert Murdoch's News Group News­papers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.
  • Murdoch's News International who own the Sun and the Times, switch from supporting New Labour to the Tories
  • Rupert Murdoch's son James who is reported to have had to persuade his father to switch support stormed into the offices of the Independent Newspaper with Rebekah Brook demanding they desisted from running a set of advertisements claiming "Rupert Murdoch Won't Decide This Election, You Will!"
  • Throughout the years when Coulson went from the NotW to David Cameron's director of communications, there were a series of leaks concerning the Labour government, how much of this involved phone hacking?
  • Damian Green Conservative frontbench spokesamn on immigration was arrested for obtaining leaked information leaking from the Home Office. How did Green come by this information? Had Andy Coulson a hand in getting it?
  • Hacking into medical records
  • Rebekah Brooks was called to to the Commons to answer questions about "hacking allegations" but repeatedly refused to attend.
  • Conservative member of the committee, who I know was in direct contact with executives at News International, that if we went for her, called her back, subpoenaed her, they would go for us.
  • A senior member of the Conservative party and member of the committee Conservative member of the committee, who was in direct contact with executives at News International, said they decided to fall short of forcing her, four members of the committee had considered asking the Sergeant at arms to issue a warrant forcing Brooks to attend. That if we went for her, called her back, subpoenaed her, they would go for us.
  • So what have the Tories got to hide that they chose NOT to pursue Ms Brooks?
Questions that need to be asked! Was Murdoch's repeated involvement  in the hacking affair to be kept secret by the Tories, if the Sun, the Times, and Sky switched support from Labour to the Tories? Was this some kind of settlement?  It is well known that Rupert Murdoch describes Gordon Brown as a "friend", strange way to treat a friend!  Has Murdoch any involvement in the now coalition government threats to carve up and sell off parts of the BBC?  Is there any collusion between Andy Coulson, The Conservative Party, David Cameron and George Osborne, Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brook and Andy Hayman the former Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner?
How much of this phone hacking involved obtaining private information abut Gordon Brown? Who gave BBC journalist Andrew Marr the information  that Gordon Brown was taking medication, alleged to be anti-depressants (later vehemently denied)?

After the leaders first televised debate where Clegg 'apparently' bettered Cameron during the 2010 general election campaign. On the following Monday 19th April, the then shadow Conservative chancellor George Osbourne met with political editors of the right wing press, following that meeting, no fewer than four newspapers promptly ran different front page attacks on Clegg on the eve of the next televised debate, including claims that he was funnelling money from businessmen into his private bank account and that he had committed a "Nazi slur" against the British people. Where did these editors obtain their information? is there any truth in these allegations?


What of the PCC? (Press Complaints Commission)

Mr Coulson admitted to taking "ultimate responsibility" for the hacking scandal, but a Press Complaints Commission investigation found no evidence that he or anyone else at the paper had been aware of Goodman's activities. Yet now there are at least 6 journalists on record as saying that phone hacking was so widespread at the paper that people did not even think it was wrong and Coulson himself stating that he regretted them happening on his watch, while denying knowledge of widespread hacking on "his watch"?!
Press Association
 Despite the sustained bullying incidents by Coulson on Matt Driscoll and Mr Driscoll being the highest payout of its kind on record, the newspapers and, in particular, the Murdoch-owned press - largely chose to ignore this story!
 Yet when the Press Association (PA) reported last year on the bullying verdict, Coulson himself rang PA to issue a warning: "Do you want to piss off the bloke who runs the next government?"

That "bloke" David Cameron has said nothing about his aide's "bullying".  Driscoll is amazed. "It's not surprising behaviour for a tabloid newspaper editor but I wouldn't have thought such behaviour was in keeping with the director of communications for the Conservative Party and then the Prime Minister." (The New Statesman - Link Below)

Andy Hayman: Former Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner

Andy Hayman when he was leading this investigation did not inform anyone that their phones had been hacked, apparently this could run into many hundreds, among them  the then labour MP John Prescott, now Lord Prescott, who has vowed to take out a private prosecution to force the Metropolitan police to hand over information it has about him on file, if the Met continues to deny requests for this information. Andy Hayman, a controversial figure, is now facing claims that the investigation was not thorough enough and ignored great swathes of evidence of telephone hacking.

Telephone Companies:

Someone from within bt is obviously selling 'Personal Identification Numbers' (PINs), yet there has not been any attempt to discover who did this or how they did it. These numbers enabled the private investigaors hire by the News of the World to hack into people's personal comunications ie voicemails and gain access to highly classified, personal and private information, from celebrities, to sports personalities to politicians.  This is very much in the public interest to know what is happening, especially as it would seem that our present government is involved, if only because the prime minister refuses to sack the person alleged to be at the center of this telephone scandal from his taxpapyers funded government position. How do we know they are not using Coulson's methods to spy on all of us? After all David Cameron has already vowed to hire credit Reference Agencies to spy on all of us and check us all out! is this another of Andy Coulson's ideas?
Sources:


George Osborne and his "jackboots" have failed to knock this story out of the news and out of the papers, has now wheeled out Frank Field, even though Field's 30 pieces of silver report is not completed, seems they are getting a tad desperate down at Tory party HQ, well they should, for David Cameron to say he backs Coulson 100% is almost akin to political suicide. No one in No 10 seems to have a clue about what they are doing, either managing the press or running the country, this government is proving dangerous mayhem for the UK and this is the party and the chancellor that is has never had a proper job and is now ignorantly and arrogantly ignoring virtually every think tank and leading economist and ploughing ahead with austerity measures that could ultimately ruin the country and cause people's homes to be repossessed, jobs and businesses lost, force many into crime and ruin or children's futures. Seems conservtaive David Davis was right when he said the country is being run by a "Brokeback Coalition"!

David Cameron - Liar, Cheat & Hypocrite

Since Cameron "hired" Coulson, is this the "change of culture" he promised? Is this Cameron's "new politics"? I thought Cameron promised to sack anyone embroiled in scandal? Once again the judgement (or lack of it) of David Cameron is being brought into question. However can we expect more for Cameron who has never had a proper job before becoming prime minister? His one and only position as a "spin doctor" for Carlton TV!



The Guardian:            James Murdoch & Rebekah Brooks Storm The Independent's Offices

The New Statesman:  Coulson and Cameron

The Guardian:           Rupert Murdoch Paid Out £1 Million To Hide Dirty Tricks

The Guardian:           Why Wasn't Rebekah Brooks Subpoenaed?

1 comment:

Peter Robson said...

And now Murdockracy wants to sponsor a London Academy. Is this so the kids can keep his staff up to date with the latest way to hack into new tech communication devices and keep any results at arms length for a packet of crisps. The price of Murdocks support is becoming increasingly obvious.http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/12/rupert-murdoch-academy-schools