Bad week for Blow Jobs

Well potentially, anyway.  Maybe a good week for short-term, let by the hour hotels, though!

Seems that most of the UK press have decided that they can do without the draconian and anti-free speech Leveson laws and won't participate or have anything to do with the so called Royal Charter establishments.

The Guardian and The Independent both accepted the gagging of free speech, that is inherent in this bad law.  Since they are losing readers (and money) faster than @Old_Holborn is losing followers in Liverpool, one needn't be too concerned about their kow-towing.

At the same time, it has been reported that the 'No to Page Three' has received a very poor response to it's campaign to ban photographs of topless women appearing on Page 3 of the top selling The Sun newspaper.

Maybe there is a connection?

Maybe people see such campaigns as a foretaste of what the Royal Charter will bring?  Minority interests pedaling and imposing their views on the majority and stifling any view that doesn't fit with their narrow perspective on life or current pet hate.

I am sure that the overwhelming majority of decent people, will have shared the revulsion felt by publisher/owner, Rupert Murdoch, at the allegations that his own The Sun or The News of the World, hacked the phone of the schoolgirl, Milly Dowler.   Sympathy for the parents of this young girl, who was brutally murdered, would naturally, and rightly, be high.  That the subsequent police investigation doesn't seem to have found evidence that this 'journalistic activity' was criminal, doesn't excuse it.

It is a hell of a leap from there to allowing criminal activity to go unreported, just because the criminal is a 'celebrity'.  When a famous actor is caught 'in flagrante' getting a blow job, from a known and previously convicted prostitute, in a public place, this has to be a reportable incident and within the public domain.

Equally, when a Daily Mail columnist (Jan Moir) questions the lifestyle of a 'celebrity' homosexual who dies at a very young age, and the death seems to be very much linked to such a hedonsitic way of life, why should such comment be stifled (it would be under the Royal Charter).  Again, with the Daily Mail, that paper's questioning surrounding the disappearance of Madeline McCann are legitimate areas for investigation.

Of course some journalists will step over the line and report erroneously or gather their information in an illegal way but there are laws already in place that can be applied.  New ones are not required.

So bravo for the majority of the press, national and local, who had the courage to oppose this bad legislation and to decide to have no part of it.  Now we will see if the enemies of a free press - the Labour Party, the Lib-Dems and their socialist and control-freak allies - will push for regulation rather than the so=called voluntary element that was included in this compromise law.  Just as importantly, we will see the true colour of David Cameron's Conservative party - libertarian and upholders of a free press or totalitarian and socialist by another name?

Oh! and the Hughs of the world?  While you now know that indulging in fellatio in a car, with a prostitute is very risky, consider that maybe those 'rent by the hour' hotel rooms might have CCTV installed.  Enjoy!
 

Votes and Leveson

Another week and more messages from the public for the main party leaders.

For David Cameron, the recurring theme is UKIP.  The easiest solution (and yes this really is easy) is for Cameron to state,  unequivocally, unambiguously or any other way that clearly demonstrates that, within 90 days of the next election, a Conservative led government would hold a referendum on the UK's continued membership of the EU.  A simple In or Out poll.

For Ed Miliband the message may, at first sight be a good one - three resounding victories out of three - but consider.  These are stronghold seats for Labour and yet in these so called times of austerity with an allegedly 'Tory toffs' led government, the Labour voters could barely be bothered to vote and register their 'disgust' at the government's policies.  Voter turnout at Rotherham was just under 34%  and Midllesborough and Croydon, just 26%.  So hardly a ringing endorsement of Miliband's leadership or policies.  If Labour can't get them off of their couches now, when can they?

So take the messages a stage further and consider the results of the Leveson enquiry.  While you do so, consider that if this judge has his way, there will come  time, in the no too distant future, when blogs like this and comments on Twitter, will also be subject to control (or as he puts it regulation).

Labour have instinctively jumped in and demanded that Leveson's recommendations be implemented in full.  Those who accuse them of rank hypocrisy, given their earlier very close ties to the media, miss the point.  Labour is all about winning and like all 'left' parties down the years, see control of the free press as an ideal way to make sure that the right' message is the only one that people get.  Also, a free press is a danger to all politicians and those that rule us because it can ,and sometimes does,  shine a light into the dark areas where these people steal from us.  I cannot believe, for one minute, that the MPs expenses scandal would have been exposed under Leveson.

I think that the Conservatives have almost got it right, in taking a more considered view and opposing a statutory regulator approach.

My own view has hardened around there not being any need for more legislation.  Remember what sparked this?  Phone hacking.  Particularly when it was alleged that the phone of murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, was hacked.

Leave aside, for a moment the morality of such a thing and just know that this was a violation of the law.  How would a press regulator be any more able to enforce the law than the lack of enforcement that already existed?  That surely is the fundamental question.  We don't need more laws, especially one that puts power over the press in the hands of politicians, we do need enforcement of the laws we have.

Rightly or wrongly, I would suggest that most people put the victims of hacking into two categories.  The first is what I would call 'true victims'.  The Dowler family for example.  The hacking that is said to have occurred was a gross violation of decency and should be punished to the full extent of the law.  The second category are what I would call 'celebrities'  People in the public eye and those who want to remain in the public eye.  These people use the print media to promote themselves and their personal agendas but then don't like it when their own craving for public adulation leads them into areas which they then wouldn't like to see publicized.

I have much sympathy for the people like the Dowlers.  The intrusion that they endured was and is, unspeakable.

I have no sympathy for the celebrities that seek to control what it is they show and don't show.  Now they are rushing forward to jump on the 'shackle the free press' bandwagon and so to push their ' we know best because we are famous' routine.  What makes a book writer more qualified to be widely quoted as supporting restrictive laws than other members of the public?  Has the UK really come to the state that we will be lectured on morality by people that get caught in flagrante paying for  and having oral sex performed by a prostitute or those who think that the drug laws don't apply to them?

And what of the BBC?  They have pushed and pushed the Leveson story.  Think though, under Leveson, does anyone think that we would now be talking about Jimmy Saville and his odious crimes?  

Leveson should not be implemented, just pulped.  The laws that we have should be enforced.

Labour mud slinging

Labour MP Jim Sheridan has criticized the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, because he had a chance, passing encounter, with Rupert Murdoch at a London Olympics venue.

He went on to wonder 'what would Milly Dowler's family think of this'?

I seem to recall that Surrey Police were very clear that there was no evidence that anyone at Murdoch's News International's now defunct News of the World newspaper, ever hacked the phone of the abducted and subsequently murdered schoolgirl.

So why fling the mud? 

Apart from such being a familiar tactic regularly employed by the 'holier than thou' hypocrites from  Labour, this is yet another attempt to obscure and distance themselves from News International and particularly the exceedingly close relations that they enjoyed with that organization.  Indeed, much of the phone hacking that has been alleged to have taken place, occurred when those guardians of morality, AKA the Labour Party, were actually in power.  Maybe it just didn't suit their ends to question the media organs that were so supportive?

Labour Party doesn't sling mud?  Think Damian McBride, Think Dr David Kelly. 

Heavens, when Brown was fuming on the sidelines, as Chancellor (and in the process ruining the UK economy) his cohorts - Charlie Whelan and the afore-mentioned McBride were vigorously leaking and plotting against Blair and his team.  Blair and Co were no angels either - remember 'pyschologically flawed'?


Sometimes a chance meeting is just that.  The reports indicate that this was so, so why, other than for cheap political points, make a fuss about it.

It says more about Sheridan's flawed judgement than Hunt's.