Recent Articles

Media hysteria

by Steven Baxter     July 29, 2011 at 11:59 am

When two teenagers died suddenly on March 17, 2010, there was no doubt in the minds of certain sections of the press as to what had killed them. ‘MEOW MEOW KILLS 2 TEENS – BAN DRUG NOW’ said The Sun, with typical restraint, while the free Metro also said ‘MEOW MEOW KILLS TWO FRIENDS’.

The calls for a ban were listened to by politicians – there was an election approaching, and all governments or potential governments are keen to look tough on crime, as it pleases the tabloids. But in this instance, they were wrong.

On May 28, the toxicology tests finally came back; the two dead men had not taken meow meow.
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Guardian ‘closely’ watching NYT’s paywall

by Sunny Hundal     July 29, 2011 at 11:15 am

It seems the Guardian newspaper’s stance on implementing a pay-wall on its highly popular website has indeed softened.

Last year, in reaction to a story they were looking at ‘exclusive clubs’ to generate new revenue, its executive Emily Bell told me:

No – we are not contemplating a pay wall, nor as far as I’m concerned would we ever….they are a stupid idea in that they restrict audiences for largely replicable content.

But that experiment doesn’t seem to have been pursued vigorously, and Emily Bell has since left the paper.

Yesterday I emailed the Guardian gain to ask what they thought of the NYT’s success.

Editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger replied with this:

We’ve never been ideologically opposed to charging for content.

So far we haven’t seen a paywall model that wouldn’t impede the kind of open, collaborative journalism we are committed to doing – just look at how the Times paywall has effectively disconnected the paper from the web.

We’ve looked at the numbers for a New York Times style paywall and they don’t seem to work for us either. We haven’t seen any evidence that the commercial benefits from charging would outweigh the loss of audience and advertising revenue.

But the NYT experiment is thoughtful and sophisticated and of course we’ll be watching it closely to see how it works both journalistically and commercially.

(emphasis mine) I think its safe to say this stance is more open to paywalls than Emily Bell was.

The Times (News Int’l) paywall is indeed awful. But the New York Times paywall hasn’t suffered the same problems. In fact, its visitor numbers have held up well at around 33 million a month.

Responding on Twitter, Emily Bell said she was still vehemently opposed.

For the record, I think the Guardian should experiment with a porous paywall. It’s time to monetise that barrage of exclusive stories.

Update: To explain myself, I think the situation now is a reversal from earlier. Fair enough, you might say that still doesn’t mean the Guardian is looking for a paywall model.

But it is looking for a paywall model – it hasn’t found the right one yet. That still means, to my mind, it is looking for the right paywall model.

Update 2: @rj_gallagher points out that Alan Rusbridger never held the absolutist position that Emily Bell did. Fair enough, I’m happy to accept I thought the internal position had changed.

Update 3: I’ve amended the headline. Lots of you (rightly) felt it was egging the pudding too much. Fair enough.

James Purnell should leave pensioners’ bus passes alone

by Don Paskini     July 29, 2011 at 9:05 am

James Purnell has received plenty of coverage for ippr’s new welfare policy, which is that people who lose their jobs should be able to get interest free loans for up to six months to top up their Jobseekers’ Allowance, paid back when they return to work.

This is meant to be part of “a new centre-left agenda for welfare”. He says it would “give priority to universal services, rather than universal benefits”, and aim to provide “fewer but clearer and more substantive offers that really mean something to people – rather than lots of little things that often don’t”.

But they are deeply misguided on some ideas.
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It’s official: Cameron has broken his NHS election promise

by Richard Blogger     July 29, 2011 at 8:45 am

It was inevitable, but now the figures are out: Cameron has cut the NHS.

The Financial Times reported yesterday:

David Cameron has been accused of breaking his most significant pre-election promise, after it emerged spending on the NHS, after inflation, fell last year.

Treasury figures show the NHS spent £102bn from April 2010-April 2011, almost all of which took place when the coalition took power. This marked a £750m real-term fall from the previous year, something Mr Cameron repeatedly promised would not happen.

The coalition agreement promises: “We will guarantee that health spending increases in real terms in each year of the parliament.”

John Healey, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said: “David Cameron has broken his NHS pledge. He put up posters pledging to cut the deficit, not the NHS, but we see now that the Tory-led government has already cut spending on the NHS in its first year.”

On the other hand the Conservative government is borrowing even more than the previous Labour government:

“A fall in tax receipts got the new fiscal year off to a disappointing start with public sector net borrowing hitting £7.7bn compared with £5.3bn in April last year.”

Remember that poster: I’ll cut the deficit not the NHS.

Well he got it the wrong way round, in practice he cut the NHS and raised the deficit.

Watch: Biographer says Murdochs out soon

by Newswire     July 29, 2011 at 8:25 am

Rupert Murdoch’s biographer Michael Wolff told Reuters yesterday that that Murdoch and his family must leave the company.

“I don’t think this company can go forward–both News International and News Corporation–with the Murdochs running it.”

He added that its likely there will be major management change within 60 days.

“Rupert is too old and James is too young and inexperienced–and we’re seeing the results.”

Watch

Chris Huhne complaint thrown out

by Tim Fenton     July 28, 2011 at 8:52 pm

With all the noise and space taken up by the continuation of Phonehackgate, the latest numbers on the economy, and the aftermath of the grim news from Norway, one news item has managed to sneak out almost unnoticed.

Moreover, it’s been massaged to make it look other than what it is.

As the heading of this post suggests, the news event follows from the actions of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer Henry Cole, who made a complaint against Chris Huhne.

This was the second attempt by Staines and Cole to pin an election expense irregularity on the Lib Dem MP for Eastleigh, the first having been thrown out at the end of May.

Second time round, though, the Fawkes bloggers were sure of their ground, with Cole hectoring Mark Pack “Why are you putting your neck on the line for a politician who in all likelihood will be out the door any minute?”.

Staines added “my tanks are real and we have him firmly in our sights. He won’t survive”, demonstrating an inflated sense of self-worth, and the belief that politicians can be removed merely by throwing dirt at them on his blog.

So, accompanied by the assertion that he and Cole had “been looking into Huhne’s election returns for nearly a year”, this looked a dead cert.

And so it came to pass that the Electoral Commission gave their judgment on the complaint. The Fawkes blog reported the event as an exclusive (it wasn’t), telling “Commisson Order LibDem Expenses Review”.

This was spin on a scale that would shame Malcolm Tucker and Alastair Campbell both. Because what the Electoral Commission had said was that, barring a ten quid under-reporting of website costs and a reminder to Huhne on letter imprints, they had found no fault, concluding that “the Commission do not believe that further action is required”.

The Sunlight Centre complaint had been thrown out.

And thus another glorious failure was chalked up by Staines and Cole. Just how much more of this success can they manage? And how much had they bet and lost this time?

The worrying rise in part-time employment

by Éoin Clarke     July 28, 2011 at 2:48 pm

Part Time Jobs are not always a bad thing. When they are job share posts for parents juggling childcare responsibilities, or for elderly people who wish to slow down in later years but not completely rest, they are to be wholly welcomed.

But we should fear recent rapid and disproportionate growth of the part time job. Many mothers wish to take on full time roles but a lack of affordable childcare prevents it.

But even worse the Tescoization of our workforce means that big business would rather employ youngsters on the minimum wage on a part time basis than employ a mature adult on a full time basis.
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Piers Morgan on Macca: case doesn’t stand up

by Tim Fenton     July 28, 2011 at 2:33 pm

Another day, and still the appalling Piers Morgan is there at CNN in his 9pm ET weekday slot, despite the attempts of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer Henry Cole, the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere, at the Guido Fawkes blog.

The latest episode of Staines’ attack on Morgan has included the mirth inducing claim that a dossier is about to be passed to the Metropolitan Police.

This follows the Fawkes blog exhuming a piece in the Daily Mail – one of the papers with which Staines has a nice little earner – from 2006, in which Morgan says he was played a tape of a message left by Paul McCartney on Heather Mills’ mobile.

This has caused Staines to become particularly excited, so much so that he then claimed Morgan “”played the recording … to the newsroom for fun.”

Sadly, Staines’ perusal of the Mail does not include Alison Boshoff’s article, where she tells – in 2006 – that “by last year, even before their daughter Beatrice had reached her second birthday, the problems in the marriage were too profound to be ignored.”

So it was known that the relationship was in trouble in 2005.

This is consistent with the Guardian’s assertion that Mills was considering taking action against the Screws – not, notice once again, the Mirror – after being given information seized from Glenn Mulcaire “which cover his activities in 2005 and 2006″.

Article continues: “It is understood that Mills’ name and mobile phone number are listed in Mulcaire’s notes.”

And it is consistent with the Screws – in this archived article – telling of an argument McCartney and Mills had over the phone, which suggests that more than voicemail interception may have been at work.

But let’s cut to the obvious flaw in the Staines attack: the evidence of Mills having her phone hacked points to it happening in 2005.

Piers Morgan was sacked from his post as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004.

And thus Paul Staines was once again undone by a little research.

So when Staines blusters that “we’re taking our dossier to the Metropolitan Police”, I urge him to follow through and do it. After all the recent bad publicity and the resignations of Paul Stephenson and John Yates, they could do with a good laugh.

Sometimes, even cancer is not taken seriously enough

by Guest     July 28, 2011 at 11:30 am

contribution by Nathaniel Mathews

Annie holds a letter from a NHS doctor telling her that she has cancer of the thyroid gland. If you place your hand on your throat you can feel it, just about. It’s where your thumb is.

She waited over a year for proper medical help and did not find it from the NHS, who failed to make a follow up appointment for 13 months. Then she went native (as it were) and went back to her homeland of Lithuania.

The Lithuanian health authorities removed her thyroid gland toot sweet.
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Was Anders Breivik a ‘fascist’ or something else?

by Septicisle     July 28, 2011 at 8:59 am

I think the main problem with accurately labelling Breivik is that as yet we haven’t come up with a convincing catch-all term for the new far right, which on the surface eschews racism but which underneath is just as virulent in its hatred of those with brown skin as the fascists and neo-Nazis we’re all familiar with.

Unity has written an excellent post on Breivik and fascism – a lesson from George Orwell – and this is partly my reply.

Scratch beneath Breivik’s anti-racist façade and you find the same old tropes.
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