This just in - a statement from Rupert Murdoch
Just in - a statement from Rupert Murdoch: "Recent allegations of phone hacking and making payments to police with respect to the News of the World are deplorable and unacceptable. I have made clear that our company must fully and proactively cooperate with the police in all investigations and that is exactly what News International has been doing and will continue to do under Rebekah Brooks' leadership. We are committed to addressing these issues fully and have taken a number of important steps to prevent them from happening again."
Channel 4 News probes the News Of The World hacking
This is a follow-up to yesterday's blog post, as well as a convenient reminder of my blog entry that embedded Peter Oborne's documentary last year on News International's routine use of phone hacking. These are clips of Channel 4 News incisive probing of all the issues that have cropped up in the last 48 hours over the phone hacking revelations.
The right-wing press is evil
In 2008, the BBC held an enlightening quick-fire five minute interview with former Conservative MP Michael Portillo. "I do think the right-wing press is evil", answered Portillo to one question, after a ponderous pause. I remember sitting up bolt upright and cocking an ear in surprise at that. Unlike a lot of people, the word "evil" is not something I like to hear bandied about. It's used with alarming regularity about people and organisations. Often the word "evil" can be safely substiituted with a word that has less value-laden connotations. "Crass", "sadistic", "maladaptive", "misunderstood", "vengeful" and "ignorant" are a few words that are often a better description for many of the things that people in life are quick to label "evil". However, after this piece of news broke today on Milly Dowler's mobile phone being hacked (in the ongoing investigation into the News International Hackgate scandal), Portillo's words on the right-wing press now seem weirdly measured.
The Hackgate story has only really been covered with any detail in a small pocket of publications. Leaving aside the BBC, who appear to only reluctantly cover the story, the main organisations that appear to be devoting any coverage to the investigation are The Guardian, the New Statesman and Private Eye. A frequent criticism from other sections of the Wapping press is that it's only of interest to media wonks. The same critics also point that it's celebrities or public figures that are being hacked and that they gave up their right to privacy. This is obfuscation, as Peter Oborne's "Dispatches" documentary from 2010 was quick to point out, since many ordinary members of the public have had their phones hacked too (normally as collateral damage in another "public figure" story). The Milly Dowler phone hack is the nadir of the phone hacking investigation, if true. Did no-one in the News Of The World offices (from the private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who initiated the hacking, right up to the editors who ordered the hacking) pause to think "This might be wrong?". It's alleged that the distressed parents' messages were listened to and that there was also a deletion of messages, so that the voicemail service didn't run out of space. If this is true, then David Allen Green is right to point out that this is a straightforward perversion of justice, since evidence in an ongoing murder investigation was effectively being removed.
I guess it's an aggregate of those behaviours that makes me stop to think. It's the complete absence of morality. It's the premeditated nature of deleting the messages. It's the two-faced complicit nature of NoTW journalists talking to the Dowler family. It's the obvious belief that they are above the law. It's all those factors that make me think the NoTW organisation, out of all news outlets, could be rightly labelled "evil". If the Milly Dowler allegations are true, Michael Portillo's hyperbole was shockingly correct.
After Atos Gets a Cease-And-Desist
After Atos is a website that attempts to help disabled people, after
they've received an erroneous work capability assessment. They've just
received this letter, however, which is a cease-and-desist order. As a
result, the After Atos website has had to shut down (hopefully
temporarily). This is the reason I haven't provided a link, but the
work that After Atos do is a brilliant service to vulnerable people.
Hopefully they'll be back. In the meantime, here's the letter in PDF
form.
Twitter Joke Trial Comedy Gig
The first thing to note about the Twitter Joke Trial comedy gig was that it was almost the background music to the mother of all "tweet-ups", which had occurred beforehand at the Northumberland Arms pub. This is exactly as it should've been. Up and down the country, people organise these on a regular basis and meet up in pubs and restaurants, to literally find likeminded new friends that they never knew were around the corner if it hadn't been for Twitter. This "tweet-up" was probably bigger than the usual "tweet-up", for two reasons. Firstly, the focus was on the service itself, that many use as a form of free expression which helps them find similar souls in similar tweets. Secondly, Paul Chambers and his girlfriend, Sarah (am I allowed to say her name, it feels like I should keep calling her @crazycolours?) were both to be present. They could drink with their virtual friends and supporters in real life. Paul Chambers, of course, is the man that paid the price of free expression on Twitter, when the police arrested him for his humorous tweet about Robin Hood airport. It was for him, in the first instance, that the comedy gig had been organised. After this pub foray, the crowd moved to the Bloomsbury Theatre, for the comedy gig itself.
Stephen Fry began proceedings in a reflective manner. It set the rest of the night up, because he was keen to point out that it was in everyone's interest to support this campaign for allowing freedom of speech in the digital medium. He got several cheers, particularly when he made his (now widely reported) statement about going to jail for it. This bitterly humourous, languid and sombre start threw Al Murray's entrance into even sharper relief, as he was not just the next act, but the compere for the entire night. It's difficult not to hand Al Murray the entire night on a plate, but as well as his Barman being the blustering engine underneath the entire night and being the connecting force between each act, his own comedy routine was rousing and got a real feeling of audience participation going. This was perhaps the most important thing. Being as Twitter's main appeal is all about everyone being in the mix and anyone getting a chance to shine in the light, Al Murray ended up being an important anchor to the whole show. Al Murray introduced Susan Calman, who kicked off the event in context by mentioning her own legal training. Her icily Glaswegian demeanour foreshadowed David Allen Green’s speech; namely, that lawyers and the legal profession just don’t know what they’re talking about sometimes and get it dreadfully wrong.
For the rest of the night, we then got punched several times in the laughter bones, with no letting up. I make no secret of the fact I was retching with laughter at times. My own personal King of the night was easily Gary Delaney. He went about delivering a series of one-liner puns, laced with cyanide, like a dark Tim Vine or a hyperactive Steve Wright. Jack Whitehall came across at his best in this environment too. By that, I mean he came across as the sullen posh kid who discovered he’s funny and decided to leave the public school dormitory and entertain a wider audience with ascerbic and uncensored observations. Stephen Grant, like his colourful shirt and bright white suit, projected his sunny demeanour into the Bloomsbury Theatre and elevated life into a hazily amusing and warm memory. In sharp contrast, Katy Brand practically assaulted the stage, as she emerged from the audience in army camouflage fatigues and with bomb sirens whirring around her. She then played the role of a genuinely unsettling army soldier who harangued the audience and unwittingly showed what would’ve happened if Lynndie England had branched out into comedy (and had been funny).
With more playful japes to go, Rufus Hound provided one of the first genuine highlights of the night. A slightly bogged-down routine about men liking their cocks sucked was kick-started into hyperdrive as he played his radio show rant at Edwina Currie. Hound's audio clip boiled down the arguments of cynical Twitter Joke Trial campaign commentators, by pointing out the inaccuracies, ignorances and misperceptions of observers like Currie. It was also howlingly hilarious to hear Rufus Hound repeatedly (and correctly) telling her that she was wrong. Most people who are aware of Currie's contributions to discussion shows knows she talks frequently in a misinformed and rude manner anyway.
Robert Popper popped up (sorry, he's probably had that before) and his gentle comic musings were another way of reminding us that free expression involves funny stuff beyond the stage and traditional media outlets. He played a video clip of a phone-in show, where his alter ego Robin Cooper called up and bizarrely complimented a man's singing, before attempting to sing his own self-written ridiculous melody and lyrics. I wasn't certain how the audience were going to react to Popper's routine, as I knew it'd be 'oddball' compared to the more traditional stand-up that had occurred. However, the laughter was loud, particularly at the reactions of the hosts of the radio show (i.e. totally baffled and non-plussed). David Schneider's performance disgraced all of us who have hit a certain age by being disgustingly full of energy and left us with two highlights of the evening. Firstly, he gave his demonstration of premature ejaculation with an audience member (@krunchie_frog, who also very nearly upstaged him). Secondly, he followed this up with his multiple-dance-routines-morphed-into-one. It really needed to be seen to be believed, but it astounded and amused the crowd in equal measures.
The night closed with Graham Linehan, the man who can be credited with organising a fair chunk of the evening. He guides us through a pile of rubbish. By that, I mean his routine is literally about rubbish. It's about the delightful detritus, debris and random odds-and-sods that litter the web. It's the comedy and stream-of-consciousness funniness that can't fit into a television sitcom, sketch show or stand-up comedy and it's no poorer for being the oddball in the room. The D.I.Y. approach of these little internet demigods also underlines what Graham was excited about, namely that the comedy is generated from people sitting at home and they are not necessarily from the pens of professional comedy writers like him (one of my favourites was the "ugly furniture" advert, that someone threw together by gleefully re-editing a real commercial). It was a fitting end and tribute to what the gig was all about, which is the creative freedom to mix, match and marvel within the magnificent digital revolution that social networking is all about.
Graham's act perfectly bookended the night with Stephen Fry's at the beginning. It also acted as a balancing act with the core of seriousness provided by Paul Chambers' lawyer, David Allen Green. David is best known for his "Jack Of Kent" blog, where he disseminates British law in a rigorous and skeptical fashion. The blog has attracted a big following and it's easy to see why, as David spoke to the Twitter Joke Trial audience. His softly-spoken delivery had the crowd entranced, as he gave the reasons for Paul Chambers predicament and why he disagreed with them vehemently. His quote that the Twitter Joke Trial "does not make me proud to be an officer of the court" spoke volumes. If David Allen Green hadn't left the stage so quickly, the standing ovation that had started rippling out throughout the audience (that had eluded all the other talented comedians) would've been allowed to have hit a deserving crescendo. It is to him and Paul Chambers that this gig was ultimately for. The gig, and its attending "tweet up", was a glorious occasion.
Photographs by @gingernuts at his Flicker stream. Please visit it here.
Gary Busey needs more cats
Why I Love "Limmy's Show!"
Well, this is one reason, just for starters. Embedded clip courtesy of the BBC. Check out the making of the show.
WONGA!
One small incident occurred today. It confirmed a suspicion that I've had about the glorious world of television advertising. In the grand scheme of things, it's not likely to impact on anyone's life that seriously. To me, it's just another sign that it'll be crassness and stupidity that will cause the end of the world, rather than a natural disaster. It's one of the reasons I wrote my last blog post about giving up on anyone over the age of about 40 and now look to the smart thinkers in their teens and twenties for inspiration. You can almost bet it was someone above the age of 40 that came up with my current upset.
Anyway, back to the small incident that I'm talking about. It's this bloke.
It was really easy to find a picture of him on Google. All I needed to write was "wonga bloke". In fact, I didn't even have to write that. I started typing "wonga" and "wonga bloke" was one of the first autocomplete suggestions. Why did I need a picture of him to illustrate this? Well, about eight months ago, I made the following observation on social networking. "Is it possible to hate someone on the basis of him saying 'WONGA' on a television advert?". It was one of those throwaway status updates or tweets that I didn't think much about. I was then greeted with a chorus of approval/disapproval/amusement from a lot of my friends. This was clearly something that a lot of other people had thought about. This unfortunately led me to my next thought.
If such a one-second clip can cause so much reflection (mostly of annoyance), what's the betting that this "wonga bloke" isn't made centrepiece of the advertising campaign in future? After all, a one-second clip of a man with a really irritating cockney accent had successfully upstaged the rest of the advertisement cast members. Sure enough, I found out today that "wonga bloke" has been made the mascot of the company, with "WONGA!" being the catchphrase.
We live in a world where much of advertising has given up trying to be creative and attractive. The days of British Telecom's technological sophistication and irreverant humour from last century or the marvellous Boddingtons ads of the late 1990s are no longer with us. Instead, we have the GoCompare, webuyanycar and the Halifax Radio ads. That last one has attracted the most derision, perhaps because it's symbolic of the way that finance company men are so utterly disconnected from the general populous, they don't even understand how humour works. However, after the hatred aimed at the original commercial launches, something interesting has occurred. Rather than just ditch the theme, companies like GoCompare, webuyanycar and Halifax Radio have realised they're reprehensible and have decided to pursue the irritating aspects of the original marketing campaign. If they can't make them attractively memorable, they figure, they can make them irritatingly memorable. It sometimes works. For example, the recent ads from webuyanycar are wilfully shite now, so they're now quite amusing. But Halifax Radio is still an abomination to me.
I tend to channel surf away from commercial breaks anyway, or just mute the sound, so I'm guessing that these adverts aren't supposed to appeal to me anyway. I'm assuming they're aimed at people who are too drunk or too lazy to run away from them, even though it's just a light touch to their remote control that will save them. Plus, I guess the irritating adverts aren't as bad as ones that are plain offensive (e.g. take a look at Tracy King's take on the Pepsi Max "rapey" adverts on the Skepchick website). I guess I also have more respect for the irritating adverts over the bland palatial commercials, such as every single car commercial you can think of. In fact, the only car adverts that stick in my head are the Renault Clio "Papa, Nicole" ones and that's only because they fall into the firm irritant camp again.
Modern day advertising is copying the very worst excesses of cheap throwaway pop music. I remember walking around an HMV on Edinburgh's Princes Street in the mid-1990s. One of the staff had a preview copy of something called "Barbie Girl" by a little-known group called Aqua and they proceeded to put it on the store stereo player. What came out of the loudspeakers was simultaneously the most annoying thing I'd ever heard, as well as the largest earworm in existence. It immediately squirmed itself inside my cerebellum. Maybe it was the helium hamster vocals, or the deep-throated sexual predator speech, but "Barbie Girl" savagely knocked aside the rather pleasant Travis song that had been resident in my brain at that point. It didn't stop me from leaving the store, but "Barbie Girl" never left me after that day. I made a bet that once it was officially released, "Barbie Girl" would race straight to the top of the charts, like an angry screaming baby booting the other toddlers out of the way. I was not wrong.
That's exactly what the "wonga bloke" is. It's marketing companies giving up on accessing the sophisticated frontal lobes, because that would involve proper research and work. Never mind trying to use surveys and careful methodical research to access peoples' multifacetted personalities. We're reaching the primeval aspects of someone's brain, the "fight or flight" parts of infantile development. "Wonga bloke" is the angry screaming baby we tried to run away from when we were in the cot. We were severely annoyed by the irritant, but we never forgot them.
Update 01/09/2011: Staggeringly, the advertisers are doing it again. This time, they've actually gone further and stopped me from buying a product that I used to buy on a fairly semi-regular basis. The Haribo commercial has succeeded in out-arseholing the Wonga advert and putting the GoCompare, webuyanycar and Halifax Radio adverts in the shade. Here's the Drum's take on the Haribo commercial.
The Generation Game
This is a Christmas post. It's all about hope and faith for the future, then. It's about all that soppy stuff, in other words. But, as per usual, there's a bit of polemic chucked in by me, because it's me.
I've been close to abandoning the conservative and liberal values of the baby boomer generation. They go around in circles and ultimately end up just talking about the importance of their house prices anyway and how best to maintain their property. It's reached a point where anyone over the age of 45 has all the rights and privileges unfairly top-ended in their direction. So, I've abandoned looking up to them and am quite happy to throw my weight in with the next generation, rather than constantly demonising them as the 'yoof of today' or "the X Factor generation' or "Lady Gaga louts" or whatever shite the dead-tree press have cooked up this week.
Besides, this lovely lot have influenced me.
Sophie Burge, a 17-year-old student, condemning the Coalition government in betraying a generation with tuition fee rises on Channel 4 News, where she totally wrongfoots Norman Baker MP.
An unnamed 15-year-old school pupil gives an impassioned speech at the Coalition Of Resistance National Conference this year.
Courageous teen Graeme Taylor defending Jay McDowell's teaching career at Howell Public school's board meeting on the 11th August 2010. If you support Graeme Taylor, please join the "We support Graeme Taylor" Facebook page. If you support Jay McDowell, please join the "Support Jay McDowell" Facebook page.
Last, but not least, there's Rhys Morgan. I was completely humbled to see him accept the grassrooms skepticism award at TAM London in October this year. This was due to his rigourous investigation of the bogus Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), as well as his wider campaign against assorted quackery. Please read about Rhys Morgan's achievements, as they are awesome.
Anyway, after a year where the older generation in government and mass media are seeking to bring us back to the Dark Ages, I guess it's far more fitting to look to a potentially sparkly future of serious thinkers in the young. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Decade.
