Month: July 2011

At around 15:30 UTC today, James Murdoch, Chairman of News International and son of the wrinkly media mogul Rupert, announced that the troubled News of the World newspaper will close.  The final edition will roll off the presses on Sunday 2011-07-10. Seems that mounting pubic anger, coupled with many big advertisers including Ford and Orange withdrawing their advertising, meant that the 168 year old newspaper had to go.

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/
  8623589/News-of-the-World-to-close-on-Sunday-says-James-Murdoch.html
• http://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070733

Thus 250 people, many of whom were not even employed by the paper when the hacking took place, get the sack. Meanwhile, Rebekah Brooks, the woman who was in charge at the time keeps her job as News International’s Chief Executive.

So why does the person in charge keep her job, when hundreds of innocent workers lose theirs? Why is Rebekah saved, while Andy Coulson, another Screws editor who permitted rampant phone hacking on his watch, gets thrown to the wolves? Or, as Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Daily Mirror put it earlier today, “…astonishing that 168 years of history had been wiped out but that Rebekah Brooks is still there.”

One can only conclude, as I did in my last post, that the “Slapper” knows where all the proverbial bodies are buried.

Also, was closing Britain’s oldest newspaper paper really such a sacrifice for the Dirty Digger? Well no. As with anything involving Murdoch, there is another agenda at play here that may not be immediately obvious.  Seems that Murdoch wanted to rationalise things at Fortress Wapping (the newspaper plant) anyway. Moreover, there were already plans in place to run a 7 day week for his daily gutter rag, The Sun. In fact The Guardian covered that development, over a week ago:-

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/
  2011/jun/28/newsinternational-rebekahwade

Further proof of Murdoch’s intention may be found by undertaking a simple lookup on the new domain. For those of you with access to a Unix terminal, type:-

whois thesunonsunday.com

Seems this domain was registered 2011-07-05,  two days before the closure was announced. The domain’s owner is anonymised.

Good ol’ Rupe certainly knows how to make a virtue out of necessity, doesn’t he?

Honk Honk! 😉

PS. If you fancy a good roll in the gutter, then you’ll probably find The Slapper ‘s Wikipedia entry rather entertaining :-

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebekah_Brooks

I’d like share a few goosy thoughts on the News of the Screws World phone hacking scandal, that seems to have gripped our green and pleasant land.

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/05/phone-hacking-police-review-child-murders
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8617707/News-of-the-World-phone-hacking-live.html

Former Screws editor Rebekah Brooks is an ambitious, clever and thoroughly ruthless woman. As many commentators have already observed, it is highly unlikely that anything of any significance occurred on her watch without her knowledge. So why doesn’t Murdoch simply throw the lovely Ms Brooks to the wolves? We’re led to believe that it is because the lack of unity would mess up his BSkyB deal.

However, recent allegations regarding the activities of the the wrinkly media mogul’s offspring, James Murdoch, suggest to me that there may be another reason. What if the Murdoch family itself has a far greater involvement this catalogue of evil than we have been led believe?

Put bluntly, if Rupert dumps Rebekah, then she would squeal like a stuck pig. Remember, she’s smart, spiteful and has absolutely no morals at all. Also bear in mind that she was a competent tabloid journalist. Therefore, she probably has enough dirt on both Murdochs Jr and Sr to have the pair thrown in the slammer, if they were foolish enough to upset her.

Hell hath no fury and all that. Honk! Honk!