Gringo

Back on the rogue bad apple defence, rupert owns 49% of NDS an israeli computer security firm. Private Eye have often reported on their shenanigans including this old case of hacking

NDS Group"]In 2002, Canal Plus accused News Corp. of extracting the UserROM code from the MediaGuard cards and leaking it onto the internet.[3] According to The Guardian, News Corp. had been working on breaking the SECA-produced MediaGuard smartcards used by Canal+, ITV Digital and other non-Murdoch-owned TV companies throughout Europe. Canal Plus brought a lawsuit against News Corp. but later dropped the action. News Corporation agreed to buy Canal Plus's struggling Italian operation Telepiu. [4][5]

In 2008, News Corp. was cleared of other charges, and paid one thousand five hundred dollars in damages.[6]

ITV Digital failed in a main part because no one paid for it - everyone had a hacked box or engineer codes.

I blame Thatcher.

Yes, I'm reliably informed that it was she who persuaded Herod to kill all first born children too.

I agree with Trent on the aspect of what more can come out that is worse than this? We've had murdered children, victims of terrorism and the families of dead soldiers all violated by these scumbags.

What else have they done, financed revolutions?

In an unguarded moment at Davos three years ago, he replied to a question about shaping the agenda on the Iraq war: "We basically supported the Bush policy." And so he did. In the nine days before the invasion, freedom of information requests reveal that he had three conversations with Tony Blair.

There will be a lot of people out there with twitchy arses wondering and waiting from a knock on the door early in the morning, unless of course they're in the right lodge.

I don't feel sorry for the journalists getting the sack. They can easily claim £300,000 in benefits. You only have to check NOTW back issues to see this is true

Yep, and they'd be right.

More fool those who allow it to be so.

This is why targetting notw advertisers instead of newscorp advertisers fails. It allows them to remove the damaged appendage.

If cadbury were exposed for pumping sewage into dairy milk bars you would hope that people would boycott cadbury as a whole and not just the one brand.

But rupert will get off with losing a brand and and the cost of an organisation restructure.

WOW so NOTW have decided to fall on their sword.

I would say it's more like the people in the sinking balloon throwing one of their number over the side to gain height.

Supposedly the staff were unimpressed by their sacking, whilst Mrs Brooks stayed....

John Gaunt on Question Time tonight.

Yep, and they'd be right.

Probably sell the title to sullivan or dirty desmond.

Rupert survives untouched.

A high proportion of the shite thrown at rupert will stick to dave. Thus it is in the interst of dave's supporters to stop that shite, question the timing of the allegations etc, demean the importance of the issue. A bit like the MPs saying how expenses fiddles were unimportant and that the furore was damaging democracy.

The story did seem to be coincidentally released at an opportune time though.

Does anyone think there will be any long term damage to Rupert or NOTW over this or will it be business as usual in a couple of months time and everyone has moved on to the next big story?

There needs to be at least two judicial inquiries - one of the influence newscorp have over the politicos and the second the influence newscorp have over the police. And they need to start now.

These will be derailed by 1)the red tories askign for some limp inquiry into press standards - something too wide and non-specific that will produce a report saying all newspapers are naughty sometimes and sweet fa will happen as a result; and 2) the blue tories not allowing any inquiry until the police investigation has completed. FFS the police are implicated - they should be nowhere near this process.

So unless labour actually show some balls, unless there is maintained pressure upon advertisers and unless the people actually express a preference for honesty in public life instead of the 'oh they're all bad so what's the point' attitude often displayed - then rupert will contiue to control the govt and the police and shamocracy continues unreined.

Personally I think labour will use the noise to damage call me dave, score some points that will be washed away by the sun's headlines at the next election.

For years and years and years the private dicks have employed people who work in the call centres at vodafone, o2 et al. This gave them access to a list of numbers that called you or you called - and if on the same network, the name and address of these correspondents. So you speak to the dowler family and get their mobile, check out their favourite numbers. Bingo.

At least two of the major networks used to store the pin code for your voicemail in free text as well - don't know if they've remedied that yet.

And by giving people a default pincode, ie 0000 or last 4 digits of your phone number, and when most people access their voicemail direct from their mobile, bypassing the pin code - a lot of people are unaware it is still set at it's default.

The mobile companies have been criminally negligent in the protection of people's data and should be hammered by the information commissioner. But that doesn't let rupert off the hook - news corps crimes go way past negligence.

get a room

Pulling their ads from NotW is pointless whilst they keep pumping money into the times, the sun and sky.

We should all start opening myspace accounts (he sold it last week for a $500m loss) and fill them with anti-murdoch rhetoric

No, but they are cash cows for the man who is.

how do you explain the fact that Houllier got mostly negative results during his spell at the club?

Because he is shite???

I raised opposition to this line of thought earlier in the thread

Lazy repeat of excerpts from last year's gruaniad article

Evil Murdoch is Evil

Murdoch has become one of the political issues of our time, as menacing in his own special way to democracy and conduct of politics as many other threats our society faces, only we do not see it, because his power is used behind the scenes to extend his commercial influence and so his grip on the flow of so much of the information in Britain. He and his equally unappealing son, James, (probable salary £1.3m) may bellyache about the BBC, but when you set the advertising spend and income of BSkyB alongside those of ITV and the BBC and add his newspapers and websites into the equation, you realise that Murdoch is by far the greatest force.

His overriding concern is that the government remains covertly in step with his plans for expansion and that the flow of profits to News Corp remains uninterrupted. It is as though we had handed over a huge chunk of British agricultural land or given up our food distribution networks to a relentless foreign corporation.

Anyway, the good in his enterprises must surely be set against the detriment to British society, laid bare in the phone-hacking scandal. These are as follows. First, he has been responsible for a distortion of politics in the last four decades. In an unguarded moment at Davos three years ago, he replied to a question about shaping the agenda on the Iraq war: "We basically supported the Bush policy." And so he did. In the nine days before the invasion, freedom of information requests reveal that he had three conversations with Tony Blair.

No British political party has succeeded at an election in the last 30 years without Murdoch's blessing and the drumbeat of his papers can make life extremely difficult for a government when he withdraws his support, as he did from Labour last year.

Second, News International regards itself as above the law of the land. As well as paying out large sums to several victims of the phone hacking, who might otherwise have brought cases against NI in open court, it is suspected of subverting the police.

The Metropolitan Police's investigations by Andy Hayman into Glenn Mulcaire's operation to tap phones on behalf of the News of the World is thought by MPs such as Paul Farrelly to be inadequate. Mr Hayman is now employed by the Times as a columnist. Further, Rebekah Brooks admitted to a House of Commons committee, then denied it, that as editor she authorised payments to the police for stories.

Unseen political influence, paying the police for stories and the hobbling of due process are the standard procedures followed by crime families and though I do not say that Murdoch is a criminal, there is a case for placing the influence of the media magnate, his clannish associates and family on the spectrum of undesirable behaviour in a democracy.

Three days into the coalition government's life, Rupert Murdoch was seen leaving Number 10 by a back door. Nobody knows the substance of his conversation with the prime minister. However, it would be astonishing if during the course of the unminuted exchanges he did not foreshadow the view of Chase Carey, Sky's chief operating officer, in a telephone call with City analysts later in June, that News International's bid for the some 60% of the shares it does not own in BskyB should not warrant a "plurality review". Rupert Murdoch wants as little opposition as possible to this tipping point for News International – its desire to have 100% ownership of BSkyB. Not to have raised this with the new prime minister would have been a dereliction of duty.

The review is the last line of defence in preventing News International (NI) from controlling half of Britain's television revenues – and half its newspaper revenues – by the middle of the next decade. The company would then represent the single largest concentration of media power in any large democracy, a practice outlawed in Australia and the US, with huge implications not just for British politics and culture, but also for the structure of the media and the information industry.

Everybody from BT to the Daily Mail group, along with individual citizens, should be profoundly concerned. It is obvious that the conclusion of any worthwhile plurality review is almost foregone, one of the reasons NI is so adamantly opposed to the referral.

NI made its bid on 15 June and Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell bid for Channel 5 – which raises exactly the same issues – followed. The same argument applies and if Vince Cable refers the NI bid for a plurality review he could hardly fail to do the same for Northern & Shell.

The plurality review has only happened once before – when NI took a 17.9% stake in ITV. OfCom registered its concern, but the Competition Commission set it to one side, believing the size of the stake and NI's editorial record did not warrant the acquisition being blocked. It could hardly take the same stance over the current bids, in particular NI's.

Evil Murdoch teaches Evil

Rupert Murdoch's News International (NI) is drawing up plans to sponsor an academy school in a move that is likely to trigger anxiety about the media mogul's influence.

The Observer understands that executives at NI, which owns the Times, the Sun, the Sunday Times and the News of the World (NoW), are actively discussing sponsoring a school in east London, close to the company's headquarters in Wapping.

The idea, which is being spearheaded by Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the Sun, who is now chief executive of NI, has been under discussion for several months but is still at an early stage, according to sources.

The plan will alarm Murdoch's critics who claim the tycoon's media empire, which spans broadcasting, publishing and internet interests around the world, already wields formidable influence over the UK's political system and society.

internet bandwagons are well and good but can't people be outraged enough for themselves without having to be coerced into joining something ..it's shades of Stephen Fry or Jon Woss all over again and everything that is wrong with twitter (and to a small degree society today , )

and if you really must do it , well I'd rather this much effort and energy was going into twitters around the Uk to stop the killing in Syria to be honest ....

Breaking News: As part of the austerity program, the Greek government are suspending production of houmous and tzatziki.

Analysts fear a double dip recession

as the title is Murdoch Scum , could someone point me to the link for the evidence that Murdoch gave the order for this vile act or even had any awareness that it was going on ...

Maybe at the time he did not but he has stood by Brooks throughout this affair and it has been going for several years now.

Ignorance is no defence now. His Chief Executive has been accused of criminal acts. A simple investigation or audit of communications would quickly get to the bottom of whether she was likely to have taken part or had knowledge of these illegal acts.

He knows and has stood by her. Scum. Both of them.

The bloke who lied, the NoTW editor for scotland, is still free; and the bloke convicted, despite those lies to court suppressing potentially important information, is still in prison.

Funny ol game greavsie.

Murdoch creates the environment in which scum can thrive. He is scum. There is no allegedly about it.

Nah american date format (soz)- that's the 6th of March - Iain was running weekly polls.

Gringo, it would be interesting to see a graph all of the polls done during the MON era, and also during the Houiller reign. just to see the ups & downs during a managerial reign.

is it possible?

or even just the figures in a list would be good.

DOL

MON

GH (apolgies for the axis, excel being ghey with it's graphing and it's ghey american dates)