Giving UKIP a little bit of credit

Catching the eye yesterday was a Guardian piece telling readers that UKIP accepts that an EU exit could take several years.

Ukip will have to negotiate a withdrawal from the European Union over many years and the party still has to work out the details of how it would secure such an exit, a leading Ukip MEP candidate in May’s European elections has conceded.

Janice Atkinson, who is number two on the party’s candidate list in the South East England constituency, admitted it would be impossible just to walk away from the EU.

Naturally the Guardian takes advantage of the absence of hard policy to give UKIP something of a whack, but also underlines its EUphile stupidity by referring to ‘Article 51’ when reporting Atkinson’s explanation that our way out of the union is by invoking Article 50 of the EU treaty. It does not seem to be an error on Atkinson’s part as there is no (sic) included in the text to indicate the error was on the part of the person whose words were being reported.

It is something of a relief to see a high profile UKIP figure making such a comment.  Of course it doesn’t tell the whole story, because this does not fully borrow from some painstaking research to explain how Brexit could be achieved within the two year period following Article 50 being invoked and what needs to happen in the years that follow.

Nevertheless the direction of travel here is welcome to see.  It is certainly a substantial departure from the dangerous approach pushed by a hard core minority in the party that the UK can simply up and leave on a whim, after which everything will somehow right itself as the fallout settles, because the Germans will still want to sell us cars. That kind of politicial illiteracy destroys any credibility the EUsceptic side builds up.

While welcoming this small step, it is worth noting UKIP is still a long way behind the curve in bringing these issues to the fore on the platform it has.  The party has never replaced the depth of knowledge or expertise in understanding the processes of Brexit and the risks of exiting in the wrong way, that it had with Richard North on the team.

Lifting and using external work might seem like a simple way to address the party’s deficiency in dedicated and exclusive research and understanding it used to have, but there is far more to it all than that being copied off the web.   The often complex reasoning behind the approaches advanced is lost without party spokesmen being educated to speak with authority on the subject – thus being able to rebut accurately and defeat the FUD thrown by the EUphile side.

So while this is a step forward, it is only a very small one.

Following the ‘climatologist’ humiliation in Antarctica, the all too predictable and desperate alarmist response

It was only a matter of time.  With the MV Akademik Schokalskiy stuck fast in the Antarctic sea ice that was supposed to have melted in line with so many computer model predictions, the humiliated laughing stock that comprises the climate alarmist community has predictably rushed out a story to distract attention from the fiasco, in their default propaganda outlet:

Update: Katabasis, in the comments, points out that the source for the distraction effort story is Professor Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales.  As if by sheer coincidence, the ice locked expedition in Antarctica is being led by Professor Chris Turney… one of Sherwood’s team in the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.  Fancy that!

It seems all this warming will not come in time to prevent the spectacle of BBC and Guardian journalists, ‘climatologists’ and an assortment of non climate academics – who believe themselves able to walk on water, and thanks to the cold conditions in the south have been reduced to doing just that to pass the time – being airlifted from the vessel while a stalled rescue operation continues.

The desperation of the Guardian’s environment hacktivist, Damian Carrington, in rushing this scare story to the top of the Graun’s website while playing down the reality of colder than expected conditions in the southern seas and what this means for the alarmist predictions, is just too funny for words.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel with no sense of shame

After a weekend offline, savouring the rugby and the dubious delights of preparing the garden for autumn, a visit of the news sites reveals the Guardian’s War on Murdoch continues apace.

It is not a battle about media plurality, if it were then the Guardian’s broadcast arm, aka the BBC, would be in Rusbridger’s sights, so overwhelming is its news media presence on TV, radio and the internet.  No, this fight is about limiting the scope and reach of an alternative to the Guardian/BBC worldview and their nasty left wing agenda.

Having done the ‘phone hacking’ story to death, including a number of serious false claims and errors that were played down when corrected; and having managed to ensure the Guardian-connected Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer protected Rusbridger’s brother-in-law, David Leigh from arrest and prosecution – despite his self confessed illegal behaviour in listening to other people’s voicemails – today the Guardian changes tack and marks a new low even for that hateful low circulation rag. using a new proxy.

The employment of Chris Huhne, the disgraced convicted criminal and confessed serial liar, to attack Murdoch, is not just desperate, it is reprehensible.  The BBC shares the shame, kissing the Guardian’s loss-making behind and pushing the story with gusto on the radio this morning.  He still will not accept responsibility for his own actions without heavy caveats and excuses, but the Guardian is delighted to use him as a tool to service its own ends – just like the climate change businesses that are filling Huhne’s pockets with cash in return for advice on how best to corrupt and milk the system.

Inside the parallel universe in which Huhne resides, where inverted morality holds sway and people ascribe responsibility for their actions to someone else, who they then attack for it, it is held that Murdoch and his press are responsible for corroding public trust in politicians.  No, really.  Huhne tries to find an angle for his attack by suggesting the reason why the News of the World put what he tries to describe as so many resources, into proving his affair with Carina Trimmingham, was that he had called for the police to re-open the phone hacking investigation.

So the demise of the saintly Huhne, which began with the exposure of his extra-marital affair (one of many if his children are to be believed) only started because of his selfless desire to aid the Guardian’s noble campaign to nail News International’s impropriety and right some wrongs into the bargain (but not it seems any comeuppance for the Guardian’s David Leigh, naturally).  Then, wails Huhne, the Murdoch press ‘groomed’ his wife into spilling the beans about his criminal act of pressuring her into taking his speeding points to avoid a driving ban.  He bleats that:

The Crown Prosecution Service loves a celebrity trial. It was the end of my political career, and it locked up my ex-wife too. She was just another “burned contact” for the Murdoch press.

Burned contacts?  The Guardian knows all about burning contacts.  Remember how they used then turned on Julian Assange?  Where were they after coaxing a story out of Edward Snowden, then running for cover to avoid prosecution themselves?

As an exercise in self justification and an effort to sanitise oneself, Huhne’s outrageously manipulative piece is an absolute masterclass.  Oh the unfairness of it all.  Sure it was his fault, but…  For a pathological and selfish liar such as Huhne there always has to be someone else to blame.  He refuses to accept the reality that public trust in politicians is not because of media actions, but the behaviour of lying, corrupt and self serving parasites such as himself.  There has to be a conspiracy behind it.  Perhaps this piece may spark something of a reaction from James Murdoch when he reads the following passage:

The wider lesson is a liberal leitmotif: it is the duty of politicians to combat concentrations of power wherever they are, private or public, business or state. Time and again, Murdoch has used his media muscle to bulldoze a way for his business interests. In 2010 he wanted to buy all of Sky, and needed Vince Cable’s approval. His son James even came to lobby me. The implicit offer was: back us, and we will back you.

That is quite some accusation and I’m sure Huhne has evidence by way of a witness or a record of the meeting’s discussion to back up his claim.   Or perhaps he expects the public to take him at his word…?

Huhne of course says nothing about the Guardian’s use of media muscle and its effective editorial control of the BBC and left wing MPs, a much bigger stick than anything Murdoch wields, to force the capitulation of Tiny Rowland after a smear campaign so it could buy the Observer. Then there’s the way they undermined the Conservative government by going after the idiot Neil Hamilton for cash for questions – something he still denies and for which there is a substantial amount of material that suggests that some of the Guardian’s evidence and witness statements were fabricated.

What this all goes to show is that as long as one is happy to preach the Guardian’s gospel by talking up left wing concerns, climate alarmism, attacks on the British entity and identity, or servicing the assault on Murdoch, no amount of criminal activity, viciousness or sickening mindset is enough to preclude anyone from a platform and copious column inches.  It’s a bit like the Guardian saying, that person is a pathetic scumbag, but he’s their kind of pathetic scumbag so he’s OK.

The whole attack on Murdoch, now rejoined by Huhne, is nakedly political and self serving.  It has nothing to do with public interest and everything to do with preserving a liberal dominance of the news media in the UK, where the Guardian (despite its tumbling sales), the BBC and the Press Association work together to push a slanted narrative or exclude stories unhelpful to the ‘progressives’ from the coverage they dominate.  This is the journalism of the gutter, shamelessly executed.

UPDATE:  A Mail hack has kindly done a piece that compares some of Huhne’s self-pitying cant with the reality his deluded mind has tried to airbrush from the record.  It reinforces what a lying, discredited, unreliable, untrustworthy, arrogant and conceited tosser Huhne is.  But the Guardian loves him.

More Guardian hypocrisy and another David Leigh link to the KGB

Hot on the heels of the implosion of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) for falsely asserting Conservative peer Lord McAlpine was a paedophile, the Guardian is leading with a story about ‘the existence of an extraordinary global network of sham company directors, most of them British’ citing yet another organisation of ‘investigative journalists’.  The Graun goes on to explain:

The UK government claims such abuses were stamped out long ago, but a worldwide joint investigation by the Guardian, the BBC’s Panorama and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has uncovered a booming offshore industry that leaves the way open for both tax avoidance and the concealment of assets.

Concealing assets if they are subject to taxation is tax evasion, therefore illegal.  Fair enough.  However once again we see an agenda at work to demonise the perfectly legal and responsible activity of tax avoidance.  This is the latest example of outrageous hypocrisy on the part of the Guardian, given that its parent company makes use of offshore arrangements in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying tax in the UK.  It even resulted in a protest by Guido co-conspirators outside the Graun’s plush offices in London.  Strangely, the piece doesn’t make any mention of Guardian Media Group’s behaviour, let alone criticise it.

So why is the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) focussing on this issue?  Could it be because it has a political agenda that ignores the sins of the left and focuses on eeevil capitalists?  Of course it could.  Here is a little bit of history of the ICIJ courtesy of Gerard Jackson…

The ICIJ is the offspring of the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIR) which in turn was founded by the notorious Institute for Policy Studies, a Marxist organisation which acted as a front for the KGB during the Cold War.

It’s unsurprising therefore that we see the Guardian’s David Leigh right in the thick of the ICIJ, listed as one of the consortium’s five UK based journalists.  He of course denied being part of the BIJ, despite having never corrected his Guardian colleague Roy Greenslade’s long standing claim that he was part of that group.  Perhaps Leigh, whose name is headlined as co-author of the Guardian piece, will be content to accept his membership of this particular group of self important hacks.  But if he does, it risks opening an old can of worms for Leigh.

Why so?  Here’s a name from the past.  Richard Gott.

Richard Gott was the Guardian’s literary editor but in December 1994 he resigned after Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky contradicted Gott’s denial that he was a paid agent of the KGB.  In the finest traditions of Guardian weasel words, Gott went on to say:

“I took red gold, even if it was only in the form of expenses for myself and my partner. That, in the circumstances, was culpable stupidity, though at the time it seemed more like an enjoyable joke.”

This seemingly left Leigh looking like an idiot as he had come bounding to Gott’s defence and ranting against the security service after the BBC’s attempt to hire Gott in 1981 was prevented because Gott failed to obtain security clearance.  Gordievsky’s subsequent story put that failure into context.  But when you consider Leigh is part of an organisation that was itself a front for the KGB, perhaps Leigh knew exactly what he was doing all along and just supporting a comrade in need.

There is something very wrong with the Guardian and the people it hires.  Rank hypocrisy, double standards, treachery, deceit, smear campaigns, acting as a mouthpiece for those who despise our country… all are synonymous with the bile-filled ‘progressive’ activists who infest the office in Kings Place.  No wonder the KGB loved the Guardian and considered it highly susceptible to penetration.  The only surprise is that Guardianista weren’t signing up in their droves to join the Soviet intelligence community.

Yet more ‘media plurality’ hypocrisy from the Guardian

The ever dwindling band of Guardian readers were subjected to one of editor Alan Rusbridger’s reality-warping, self indulgent rants of vested self interest on Sunday.

In his piece ‘The overwhelming case for plurality’, Rubbisher ludicrously says that his media plurality meme:

‘is not just about Rupert Murdoch – allowing media power to be concentrated in the hands of a few multibillionaires will impoverish society.’

So how do the Guardian’s lavishly paid mandarins, who continue to churn out excuse after excuse to set aside the BBC’s domination of the media landscape, walk their talk?  In a classic piece of ‘do as we say, not as we do’ the Guardian Media Group sold its GMG Radio enterprise, which includes the stations Smooth Radio and Real Radio, for around £70m to Global Radio.

The outcome is that Global Radio now controls over 50 per cent of the UK commercial radio market.  How very plural.

One can’t help but wonder what the Guardian’s reaction would be if Rupert Murdoch controlled over 50% of UK commercial radio.  Clearly plurality remains the hollow excuse for the assault on News Corp and the left wing media’s continuing efforts to neuter BSkyB as a rival to the BBC while chipping away at News International’s newspaper business.

Daily Mail or the Hypocrisy Herald?

There are few things as darkly amusing as rank hypocrisy in the media.  It shouldn’t be amusing, it should be cause for annoyance and disdain.  But it’s hard not to laugh with incredulity when one media organisation tries to assume moral superiority over another for behaviour it is also guilty of.

Climbing on its high horse is the Daily Mail, which is attempting to lord it over Sky News because the channel removed a story about a deal between Bernie Ecclestone, F1’s chief executive, Red Bull and Ferrari.  The headline is unambiguous.

As the saying goes, those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

If there were sound effects accompanying the Daily Mail piece it would be the cacophany of window panes smashing to pieces under a barrage of rocks, for this blog recently caught the Daily Mail removing a significant story from its website without explanation.  What started out as a piece about Guardian journo David Leigh engaging in phone hacking (screenshot below)…

silently and quickly became this and remains such to this day…

The difference with the Sky News case is that the Mail has not explained from where the pressure came to spike the David Leigh story they removed.  One rule for friends and one for competitors?

Perhaps the Sky News website should reciprocate with a story titled, ‘How Dacre’s empire works: Unnamed Daily Mail editor orders David Leigh phone hacking story to be removed from Daily Mail website after upsetting Guardian journaist pal.’

Guardian takes hypocrisy to stratospheric new heights

When giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry in December the former Information Commissioner of the UK, Richard Thomas, said that offences committed under Section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (In the UK Section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 concerns the unlawful obtaining of personal data – it is an offence for people, such as hackers and impersonators, outside of an organisation to obtain unauthorised access to someone’s personal data – an act otherwise known as ‘blagging’.) were:

[…] often at least as serious as phone hacking, and may be even more serious.

Mr Thomas went on to add that:

Interception of a telephone call or message is widely, and rightly, seen as highly intrusive, but a great deal more information can usually be obtained about individuals by stealing their electronic or written records – such as financial, health, tax or criminal records – than from a conversation or message.

Now think back to the Guardian’s obsessive pursuit of News International about the interception of telephone calls or messages – phone hacking – and its saturation coverage and condemnation that has demonised News Corp journalists and the Murdochs. Surely the Guardian, which has taken the high ground and occupied it so doggedly over such illegal behaviour can be relied upon to be consistent and condemn equally vigorously any instance of illegal activity, such as an individual impersonating another person to obtain unauthorised access to personal data?

Think again.

The Guardian is perfectly happy to go to war with competitors and ideological opponents, and grandstand in the most sanctimonious manner as it has over phone hacking. After all it is in its commercial and strategic interests and those of its friends, such as the BBC.

But when a climate change alarmist scientist, someone who says the things the Guardian says and like to hear and shares the same leftist worldview, admits he impersonated another person to obtain confidential documents and release them – a criminal act in the UK – the Guardian unbelievably describes it as a ‘leak’. That is how the Guardian is portraying the theft of documents from the Heartland Institute and their release, along with a fake document designed to misrepresent the organisation and stir up animosity to it.

This isn’t just cognitive dissonance, it is a staggering escalation of the Guardian’s rank hypocrisy.  It is a deliberate and calculated distortion used and the dishonesty is approved by the senior editorial staff for ideological reasons.  Guardian journalists such as Suzanne Goldenberg, endorsed by the like of Leo Hickman, are engaging in a corruption of language in support of a political agenda.  They are showing themselves up as propagandists for thieves and climate change alarmists.

This is the measure of the Guardian, a reflection of its true nature, and the reason why it is wholly untrustworthy and unreliable. It is an insipid little rag.

Starmer to give his friend Leigh a keep out of jail card?

Regular readers may remember this post back in December, when we examined the evidence given to the Leveson Inquiry by the Guardian’s self confessed phone hacker, David Leigh.  This blog posed a rhetorical question… is it possible that the Guardian frames the law in this country?

The post argued that at the very least, senior editorial staff at the Guardian appear to be using their close relationships with people in the highest echelons of the legal establishment to subvert the course of justice for their own ends.  Perhaps it is less a case of subversion and more a case of wielding undue influence.  A Daily Mail story today that Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, will introduce an interim policy in a ‘matter of weeks’ to set out ‘in one place’ the factors to be taken into account when considering whether to charge a journalist with a crime.

The story explains how Starmer has outlined six factors which would be looked at when weighing up prosecutions against journalists, although others also exist. These include:

• The relative gravity of any potential offence committed and/or harm caused compared with the public interest;
• Whether there was any element of corruption in the commission of the offence;
• Whether the conduct included the use of threats or intimidation;
• The impact of the conduct on any course of justice, e.g. whether it put criminal proceedings in jeopardy;
• Whether the public interest in question could have been served by lawful means;
• The impact on the victim or victims of the conduct in question.

Currently there is no public interest defence for a journalist intercepting the voicemails of someone’s mobile phone.  So quite why David Leigh has not been arrested and prosecuted for his actions, when a raft of staff from News International have been arrested ‘on suspicion of unlawfully intercepting mobile phone voicemail messages’ by the Metropolitan Police, defies logic and reason.

However, it appears that Starmer’s ‘factors’ give rise to the possibility that Leigh’s ‘defence’ of public interest, when deliberately accessing the voicemails of someone he was investigating for a story, might be accepted as reasonable and therefore ensure he doesn’t face prosecution for the criminal act he has openly confirmed he committed.

Is this yet more circumstantial evidence that the DPP is working in the interests of his friends and former co-writers at the Guardian, placing them above the law that is being applied to others?  We need to watch for the interim policy to see if its contents contain a get-out clause for Leigh that ensure charges are not brought against him.

And in the meantime questions must continue to be asked about why David Leigh has not been arrested as part of the phone hacking investigation.  The only conclusion that can be drawn is that his fellow left wing activist and friend occupying the office of the DPP has got his back, rigging the deck to ensure Leigh holds a keep out of jail free card.  This rank injustice is a scandal that the mainstream media continues to turn a blind eye to, to its enduring shame.  Their silence is deafening.

The Guardian’s decline continues

The fall of the Rusbridger Empire draws closer, as evidenced by the news that the insipid Guardian is to scrap its film and music supplement and reduce its sport supplement to just two days per week, while also reducing the number of pages in the paper itself.

The Barclay Brother Beano also reports that with the Guardian making losses of over £40 million per annum, an attempt to coax a number of its hacks into voluntary redundancy has failed and compulsory job losses are now on the way. Small wonder the Guardian Media Group (GMG) uses hedge funds to make money while railing against them in print, and employs tax avoidance measures in its own interest while lambasting others for doing the same.

Last week the Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for national newspapers for November was reported in the Press Gazette. It shows that newspapers continue their decline as readers turn away from them in increasing numbers.

The average drop in year on year average circulation figures across the dailies was 10.7% although the Independent’s huge drop is largely offset by transferring bulk circulation to its ‘i’ paper.  When that is taken into consideration one can see the biggest loser in the circulation war is the Guardian.  It comes as little surprise that GMG has even considered scrapping the print version of the paper and going exclusively online.

If public sector job advertising was taken away from the Guardian and moved to a dedicated online facility the taxpayer would not only save money, Rusbridger’s beast would cease to be fed.  Then even its online future would be in doubt.  We can but hope, but we will not hold our breath.

While we are on the subject, again it is worth reminding ourselves of the disproportionate influence the Guardian wields at the BBC.  Day in, day out, when a BBC programme wants media analysis or opinion on any given topic it turns to the hacks from Rusbridger Towers to hold forth from their left leaning, internationalist standpoint more than from any other outlet.  This despite the Guardian having a circulation smaller that the Daily Star and even the Daily Record.

The greater the number of readers turning away from the Guardian, the greater the number of BBC appearances as talking heads.  The incestuous links spawned from shared ideology are there for all to see.

David Leigh: Comment is Free but you can’t comment on what I say

One must possess a particular kind of arrogance to use the Comment is Free section of a newspaper, of which he is the investigations executive editor, to deliver one of his trademark hatchet jobs of an op-ed… but to then shield himself from any reply or challenge from commenters by hiding behind the excuse:

• For legal reasons this article will not be open to comments

David Leigh is not only a pathological liar, he is a coward too.  For how much longer will he cower behind Alan Rusbridger’s apron strings and perform escape and evasion tactics of which an SAS trooper would be proud?

There is no depth the Guardian’s ideologues will not plumb in pursuit of their politicised agenda.  It’s nice to see more and more people seeing that bile filled rag for what it really is.

After its false allegations about Milly Dowler voicemails, what other falsehoods has the Guardian published?

You won’t find this update, about the Guardian’s allegations about Milly Dowler’s voicemails being deleted by people working for the News of the World, on the BBC News website.  The BBC, as the broadcast arm of the Guardian, has an editorial culture of omitting stories that paint the Guardian in a negative light and thus will act as if the story does not exist.

So rather than rely on the world’s largest news gathering organisation, with the unique way it is funded, we cross the globe to Australia’s Telegraph to learn that:

T Mobile, the company that bought the One-2-One network that Milly’s Nokia phone was registered to, yesterday confirmed that any voicemail messages left on her phone would have been automatically deleted after 72 hours whether they were listened to or not.

The Guardian, for all its lofty and self regarding cant about high standard and media ethics, went to print with allegations that were at best single sourced.  Its award winning investigations team, being fed information from police insiders, either made no effort to check if there was a technical reason for the voicemail deletions, or did check but omitted it from the story despite knowing their claims could be untrue.  This is not just shoddy, it is downright irresponsible.

But why did it happen?

Sitting in his comfortable ivory tower, the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, saw within the story Nick Davies had drafted the vehicle with which he could escalate his petty, vindictive and politically motivated assault on Rupert Murdoch and News International.  The phone hacking story had been relentlessly pursued – not out of journalistic desire to expose unacceptable behaviour but to service an agenda to ruin Murdoch.  A nakedly political agenda of the centre left, big government, authoritarian establishment, dressed up as exposing abuse by a ‘power elite’:

Via a single campaign the Guardian could undermine Murdoch‘s desire to regain control of BSkyB – thus preserving the BBC’s monopoly of news broadcasting in the UK with its centre left editorial slant.  Sure, many people would be appalled at the behaviour of the News of the World, but it would take something more emotive to provoke the kind of outrage that could result in serious and permanent damage.

The news that people working for the News of the World hacked the voicemails of a missing schoolgirl would be bad enough.  But the claim that NotW journalists or investigators deleted voicemails to make room for more emotional messages they could eavesdrop was the dynamite to hole the NotW below the waterline.  No matter what other evidence there was of NotW voicemail hacking, it was that claim that was intended to play to the famously sentimental British public and spark a kneejerk backlash that would benefit the Guardian.

Don’t be surprised.  The Guardian is well versed in underhand methods to suit its own agenda and interests.  It is already trying to wriggle out of its responsibility for repeatedly reporting so vehemently its claim about the deletion of voicemails.  Years ago the Guardian ran a vicious and hypocritical campaign to undermine the then owners of the Observer, Lonrho, its proprietor, Tiny Rowland and a number of Observer journalists so it could seize control of the Observer as a ready made Sunday stablemate.  Shamelessly using and manipulating the Dowler family and their lawyer, Mark Lewis, the Guardian machine swung into action – this time against the NotW – again to suit its own self serving interests.  This time Rusbridger and Co have been caught red handed and did what they could to bury the correction to their frequently used claim about voicemail deletions.

I’ve sometimes felt like I was wasting my time over the months trying to get people to see and understand the Guardian’s agenda, methods, and the dishonesty and hypocrisy of some of its prominent journalists.  Most people wanted to focus on other things that seemed more interesting.  But now it seems a lot of those who ignored the story being set out on this blog (including other newspapers and media), because the Guardian supposedly has prestige and this is, well, just a blog, are starting to see the Guardian for what it  is.  The number of hits in recent days shows this story is starting to pique people’s interest.

Where now from here?  This is almost certainly not the first time the Guardian has acted this way.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  So, the question people must now ask themselves is what other falsehoods has the Guardian retailed to an unwitting public in support of a self serving agenda?  It is time to look at the Guardian’s editorial history with fresh eyes.

And David Leigh still tries to con the public

My, even ‘Johnny on the spot’ Guido Fawkes has caught up with the changing story about the Milly Dowler phone hacking story.

The Guardian’s David Leigh, not for the first time in his career, is under pressure about his part in the ‘nothing to do with us’ piece in Saturday’s Graun.  This is what the self regarding snake had to say on Twitter in response to disquiet at this reversal of narrative, which of course formed the central plank in the assault on the News of the World…

Good journalism?

Let’s see.  Curiously, the story Leigh co-authored at the weekend maintained the NotW probably did delete Milly Dowler’s voicemails.  However, even more curiously, Leigh’s ‘good journalism’ failed to mention anything about the fact the police had accessed Milly’s voicemail inbox as part of their investigation – before the NotW even had her number – and may have been responsible for deleting all her messages.

Perhaps a sign of good journalism at the Guardian is telling people half the story in order to perpetuate, by innuendo, the myth that they retailed repeatedly over months as part of their effort to bring down the Murdochs.

Guardian duo cover backs on Milly Dowler hacking story

In the reader comments on our previous post about the incestuous relationship between the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, his close friend and mentor and Guardian contributor, Geoffrey Robertson, and the Guardian’s David Leigh, ‘DB’ brings our attention to a story in today’s Guardian concerning the Milly Dowler phone hacking story.

It is accepted that messages left on the mobile phone voicemail belonging to Milly Dowler were listened to by private investigators or journalists working for the News of the World.

However the claim that sparked more anger and revulsion than any other in the whole phone hacking saga, and which swept around the world in news reports, was that News of the World reporters deleted some of Milly Dowler’s voicemails after listening to them in order to free up space for more messages to be left by her distraught family and friends, so they could listen in to those as well.

Milly Dowler’s mother has been widely reported explaining how messages being deleted from Milly’s voicemail gave her family hope that Milly was alive and listening to them.  No one could have been failed to be moved by such emotive comments, and feel contempt for those NotW staff who were responsible for those actions.

Only, it has now emerged that police have concluded that the NotW were not responsible for the particular deletion which caused her family to have false hope that she was alive.

This has forced the Guardian to race into print with what ‘DB’ rightly describes as a nothing-to-do-with-us article by Nick Davies and David Leigh.  Before revealing in the article that…

Evidence retrieved from Surrey police logs shows that this “false hope” moment occurred on the evening of Sunday 24 March 2002. It is not clear what caused this deletion. Phone company logs show that Milly last accessed her voicemail on Wednesday 20 March, so the deletion on Sunday cannot have been the knock-on effect of Milly listening to her messages. Furthermore, the deletion removed every single message from her phone. But police believe it cannot have been caused by the News of the World, which had not yet instructed private detective Glenn Mulcaire to hack Milly’s phone. Police are continuing to try to solve the mystery.

… Davies and Leigh try to maintain the ‘NotW did it’ meme in the third paragraph, which reads:

It is understood that while News of the World reporters probably were responsible for deleting some of the missing girl’s messages, police have concluded that they were not responsible for the particular deletion which caused her family to have false hope that she was alive.

It is a spiteful and desperate effort to cling to the most damaging claim despite the reality that, as things stand, there is absolutely no evidence for this claim.

It is possible that NotW journalists inadvertently caused the deletion of messages as evidence has now revealed that Milly’s phone would automatically delete messages 72 hours after being listened to.  But nothing revealed by the sources shows that the original police claim that journalists had deliberately deleted some messages because Milly’s voicemail box had filled up, and they wanted to be able to listen to more.

Now all we have is the Guardian’s slopey shouldered duo of Davies and Leigh retailing speculation in the absence of evidence. These chuckle brothers are cyncially using the Dowler family lawyer as cover for their face saving actions, as shown by the inclusion of this in their article:

The Dowlers’ lawyer, Mark Lewis, said last night that although Mulcaire had not been instructed by email at the time of Sally Dowler’s “false hope” moment, it remained possible that the voicemails had been deleted by a News of the World journalist, or that Mulcaire had been instructed earlier by phone.

‘Probably…’ ‘possibly…’ it’s all a far cry from the certainty with which Davies leaped upon what now amounts to ill informed claims by police who seem to have kept the latest revelations under wraps for some time. Even now they cannot let the facts get in the way of their narrative.

So what are we left with? The Guardian’s bestselling author of Flat Earth News, a book about falsehood and distortion in the media, engaged in maintaining a smear against rival journalists despite the lack of any evidence – aided and abetted by the Guardian’s investigations executive editor, a self confessed phone hacker and ‘blagger’ of information who without any sense of shame or irony puts his name to this piece which includes a tut-tut reference to a NotW journalist blagging confidential phone records.

No doubt they will be expecting another media industry award from their fellow dissembling hacks.

Director of Public Prosecutions perverting the course of justice?

Is it possible that the Guardian frames the law in this country?  Many people would rightly laugh at such a question.

But it appears, from the weight of circumstantial evidence that exists, that the Guardian’s journalists are capable – or at the very least have an expectation – of using their close relationships with people in the highest echelons of the legal establishment to subvert the course of justice for their own ends.

A case in point is kindly provided by the Guardian’s David Leigh, who with typical arrogance, argued before the Leveson Inquiry that the law regarding ‘phone hacking’ should not apply to him for his admitted instance of criminal activity because he believes it was in the public interest. The look on his face as he spoke suggested a confidence that other people opening admitting a crime in public just do not have. As the Daily Mail reported, Leigh argued:

I like to think that if the incident I have described came to the attentions of the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions], and I was asked about it, the DPP would conclude that there was no public interest in seeking to prosecute me or another person for doing something like that. That is a backstop that the law has to stop it making an ass of itself.

Ordinarily this would seem a quite staggering assertion to make. Particularly as there is no public interest immunity from prosecution for that criminal offence.  But Leigh’s circumstances are anything but ordinary. Leigh appears to feel in a strong enough position to effectively challenge the DPP to prosecute him. And that is because of his close ties to the man this blog has previously identified as the Guardian’s Angel, the DPP himself, Keir Starmer.

Unlike the vast majority of the population, there is more than a hint that Leigh enjoys protection and preferential treatment reserved for good friends and colleagues who inhabit the same ideological, activist plane on the distant left of the political spectrum.

In our Guardian’s Angel post we showed how Keir Starmer’s career had been nurtured by his close friend and mentor, the activist left wing lawyer Geoffrey Robertson.  We reminded readers of Robertson’s direct involvement as contributor to the Guardian and its legal counsel in court actions.  We also established the clear conflict of interest Starmer has personally as a former contributor to the Guardian and also its legal counsel in court actions.  What we did not show was the professional links between Robertson/Starmer axis and Leigh.

Many people do not realise that David Leigh (then at the Observer) actually worked as an aide to Geoffrey Robertson during the Neil Hamilton sleaze action.  This was explained in Leigh’s co-authored book ‘Sleaze’ shown in extract below:

Then of course there Robertson’s fawning adoration of Leigh in his book ‘The Justice Game’ shown in extract below:

Taken in the round it can be of little surprise that this very cosy network of friends and allies working in a mutally supportive manner to further their aims.

Interestingly, in media reports from the Leveson Inquiry, there was no mention of Leigh’s involvement in other criminal activities concerning the infamous Benji ‘the binman’ Pell, which show the same contempt for the law exhibited in his phone hacking and ‘blagging’ behaviour.

The focus now turns once again to Director of Public Prosecutions Starmer.  Arrests are being made as journalists suspected of being involved in the commissioning of phone hacking are pursued by the Met Police’s Operation Weeting investigation team.  Here, in the shape of David Leigh, the Weeting investigation has a journalist who has openly admitted personally hacking the messages on a mobile phone.  It’s an open and shut case.

So where is the arrest and where is the Crown Prosecution Service action?  As the police and CPS are aware there is no public interest defence for the action Leigh has confessed to.  So what is holding them back?

Could it be that with these evident conflicts of interest and biases, Leigh’s former colleague and ideological soulmate who currently occupies the office with DPP on the door, has got Leigh’s back?  Could it be that to protect a former colleague and ally Keir Starmer is perverting the course of justice?

David Leigh evidence at the Leveson Inquiry

Later today we will be taking  a careful look at this story, after the Guardian’s self confessed phone hacker incriminated himself once again, this time before Lord Justice Leveson.  Posting this evening…

Has the Guardian published fauxtography?

Sometimes reality is revealed in unintended ways.  Has it been again?  Here’s Rubbisher of the Graun praising the Guardian’s favourite snapper, Murdo Macleod…

Murdo Macleod’s pictures verge on the ridiculous. They seldom fall over the edge, but they often teeter on the brink. Murdo is the gentlest of men, with a soothing, Hebridean lilt that he evidently uses to beguile his sitters to most audacious effect. He charms them into improbable poses or amuses them for long enough to lower their guard. His use of lighting is extraordinary, as is his use of props. You must always expect the unexpected. There is sometimes an element of magic, sometimes a tinge of Dalí.

And as Anthony Watts of the blog Watts Up With That? has discovered, possibly an unhealthy application of Photoshop too.

Did Rubbisher unintentionally hit on something significant when he said Macleod’s pictures verge on the ridiculous, and that there is a Beckett-like sense of absurdity lurking in most of what he photographs?  As focus turns to the Climategate 2.0 emails and people scrutinise the honesty of a number of scientists and journalists, some people are examining everything that has been said and what has been published by the media.

A number of photographs used in climate change and environmental stories seem somewhat odd and have some people asking questions like; have you ever seen black steam coming from a cooling tower?  People should know if image by Murdo Macleod is an example of him falling over the edge from visual representation to gross distortion, in support of a pre-determined editorial line.  The question is this, is it what we are seeing photography or fauxtography?

This image of Eggborough power station (above) by Murdo Macleod appears to have been used exclusively by the Guardian. On WUWT, Anthony Watts shows the output from running the published image through the PSKiller.com application to see whether it has been Photoshopped.

This output leads to a suspicion that the Guardian may have commissioned/used an altered image in order to convey a false impression of power station emissions.

AM has written to Mr Macleod to ask if he will be willing to provide the raw, unaltered image for comparison purposes, and to detail what changes were made from the original to arrive at the image above.  Macleod has also been offered a right of reply that is so often denied to subjects by journalists in the mainstream media.

It would be improper to taint the long standing reputation of a man with such a high profile in his profession if he has done nothing wrong.  This is not about getting one over the Guardian, but a simple search for the truth.  There are questions to be answered here and those answers could have far reaching implications, so we await Macleod’s response with interest.

Update: Murdo Macleod has replied to my email.  The email exchange is reproduced in full below:

Dear Mr Macleod,

I write with regard to this photograph you took for the Guardian newspaper.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2010/3/10/1268222690808/Eggborough-power-station-001.jpg

There is currently speculation that the photograph has been enhanced or altered in some way to achieve a darkening of the cloud emitted from the cooling towers, as Photoshop quantization tables have been found in the image using http://www.pskiller.com. Before I write about this I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond, as the implications of this could be far reaching.

Would you like to comment about what changes were made to the image? Would you be willing to supply the original raw, unadjusted image for comparison purposes?

Yours sincerely,

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

——-

Dear xxxxxxx

Perhaps this makes it clearer for you.

Best wishes

Murdo

——-

Dear Murdo,

While you have kindly sent me a photograph to act as an illustration (which has been manipulated – resized only?), it is not the same one that was published and does not explain what changes were made using Photoshop (or similar) to the original image.

People driving past the Eggborough power station say they have only ever seen white steam coming from the cooling towers. This would sound logical as only water vapour comes from cooling towers. However, your images show darkened emissions. So I am trying to get to the bottom of this.

For the sake of clarity, is this as a result of shadow as the sunlight is coming from the left? Or have you used a particular filter, adjusted the contrast, or otherwise altered the image? Or are the emissions that colour when seen from all angles?

Many thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. It is appreciated.

Best wishes,

xxxxxxx

——-

Dear xxxxxxx

As you can see there is a shadow falling across the steam from the left towers. As you may be aware the Guardian has guidelines on photographs and their various aspects. I comply with those. There is a procedure for any readers who have any concerns about any images published. Nearly all photographs are processed in photoshop and a variety of adjustments are made for aesthetic and technical reasons. This photograph will have been adjusted within those conventions and regulations.

Best wishes

Murdo

————————————————————————————

So, Murdo Macleod is clear, the darker area is shadow being cast across the steam.  It is not black smoke.  But as others are saying, his comments are interesting for what he doesn‘t say.

While the Guardian has guidelines concerning photographs that are submitted, it seems they are happy for people to take the impression that dirty, sooty smoke is being emitted from cooling towers, when the reality is the image shows only steam with part of it in shadow.  That is the power of imagery.  Is the Guardian being sly and disingenuous in the use of the photograph?  You decide.

Phone hacking, the Met Police, corrupt sources and the Guardian’s DPP angel

Think back to September when the media went into full screech mode because the Metropolitan Police threatened to use the Official Secrets Act to force the Guardian’s Amelia Hill to reveal the police source leaking stories to her about the phone hacking investigation, Operation Weeting.

At the Guardian there was outrage.  Editor Alan Rusbridger started the wagon circling, declaring: “We shall resist this extraordinary demand to the utmost”.  His brother-in-law and the Guardian’s own self confessed exponent of phone hacking, David Leigh, also leapt into print to rail against the “unprecedented legal attack on journalists’ sources,” while carefully trying to distract people from the fact the source was a police officer whose actions broke the law.

As always when the Guardianista comrades find themselves in the legal mire, their celebrated barrister and proxy in the assault on the Murdochs, Geoffrey Robertson QC, waded in to bemoan that it was an “attempt to get at the Guardian’s sources is not only a blatant breach of the Human Rights Act and article 10 of the convention, but it appears to involve a misapplication of the Official Secrets Act”.

The Met Police backed down shortly after.  A ‘victory for press freedom’ was the way the media reported the Met’s sudden climbdown.  Of course, if any of them uncovered a police officer breaking the law by leaking information from an enquiry on which he was working, they would report it gleefully as an example of disgraceful police behaviour that risked perverting the course of justice.  But it seems as long as the copper’s actions are benefiting a hack, he is treated as an untouchable source to be protected at all costs.

Writing in the Daily Mail, cor blimey merchant Richard Littlejohn explained:

I’m told the Yard only backed down after the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, had a serious word in their shell-like and made it plain they would receive no backing from the CPS.

The intervention of Keir Starmer and its timing is something the media, in its own vested interest, warmly welcomed as it breathed a collective sigh of relief.  Had the media not been so self serving it might have chosen to look into Starmer’s links to the Guardian, and examine if his intervention was truly impartial, or influenced by something other than a legal standpoint.

Starmer had a history of left wing political and legal activism prior to becoming Director of Public Prosecutions.  When he was younger he was the editor of a magazine called Socialist Alternatives.  Almost a year after becoming DPP he defended himself against this history and the wider charge of being political when interviewed by the BBC’s Martha Kearney, declaring:

These are things of 25, 30 years ago now. They’re not relevant to the work I do now. I hope that since I’ve been in office I’ve made it absolutely clear that every single decision is made absolutely independently.

So just how independent is he?  This post will show Starmer was being very economical with the truth about his political activity and as such cannot be trusted to be independent.  His intervention on behalf of the Guardian against the Met Police needs to be put into proper context, and the media’s bias by omission exposed.

Starmer was not only a member, but Secretary, of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers which supports a variety of hard left causes and actively opposes anything considered right of centre.  That is in no way a thing of 25, 30 years ago.  Starmer’s left wing activism is long standing and has never gone away.  His first interview as DPP was given to, surprise surprise, the Guardian.  In it Stephen Moss explained of Starmer that: “[H]he has generally been seen as a Labour supporter and doesn’t demur when I mention that perception.”  Starmer was also kind enough to tell Moss that:

My background is not typical of a lawyer or a DPP.  My dad was a toolmaker before he retired, so he worked in a factory all his life. My mum was a nurse, and she’s been physically disabled for years. We didn’t have much money, and they were Guardian-reading, Labour-leaning parents. That inevitably created an atmosphere where my thinking developed.

How very cosy.  That same interview even saw Starmer reveal the fawning, high esteem in which he holds the Guardian, ironically on the subject of the phone hacking investigation:

Starmer also decided not to reopen the News of the World phone-tapping case following allegations made in this paper that its illegal surveillance operations went beyond its disgraced royal editor Clive Goodman, who was jailed in 2007 for plotting to intercept phone messages from members of the royal family. “I did get a review off the ground,” he says. “We looked at it and we formed the view that what was done at the time was the appropriate thing, and that it wouldn’t now be the right course to prosecute anybody.” But he does not rule out a case being brought at some point. “I keep an open mind. It might move on and develop if Guardian journalists or anybody else show us other stuff. What I don’t want to do is say, ‘We looked at that, we’re not going to look at it again.'”

Earlier in his career as a barrister, Keir Starmer had joined Doughty Street Chambers, founded and headed by one Geoffrey Robertson QC – the same chap who has doggedly pursued the Murdochs through his pieces in the Guardian, acted as counsel for the Guardian in the Neil Hamilton/Ian Greer libel case, and howled in protest against the Met’s proposed legal action to get the name of Amelia Hill’s police source.  Over time Robertson promoted Starmer to be joint head of chambers at Doughty Street.

Robertson as the boss had influence over Starmer and helped to advance his career.  Robertson as the joint head of chambers with Starmer arguably had an even closer bond with him.

Within days of Robertson popping up to defend the Guardian within its pages, imagine our surprise that Starmer stepped in to put an end to the Met’s idea of using the Official Secrets Act to use Hill’s notes to root out the law breaking police officer.  Was this a case of Starmer listening to his former boss, mentor and colleague and following his demands to the letter, rather than letting the police test the law in court in an effort to nail a bad apple?  If so it justifies the Guardian’s adoration of comrade Keir.

That would be enough to convince some people Starmer has too close an association with the Guardian to be an honest broker.  But looking back there’s more.  Not many people realise that in 2002 Starmer was himself paid counsel for the Guardian alongside Robertson.  Starmer even wrote for the Guardian, cementing his link with the paper.  If this was a couple of Bullingdon Club boys rather than Guardianista, you can imagine the howls of outrage that would have been flowing from Alan Rusbridger’s office.  As the Guardian will no doubt privately attest, the socialist strategy of getting fellow travellers into the top echelons of the state is paying off.

Alan Rusbridger, speaking after the Met Police dropped its action, described their attempt to confirm Hill’s source as “sinister”.  What is really sinister though is how one newspaper possibly enjoys special protection under the law as one of their favourite sons holds the senior criminal prosecutorial role in the land – and that the media turns a blind eye to a potentially serious conflict of interest, because it suits their own.

Gilad Shalit, Hamas and the BBC-Guardian axis of bias

I intended to write a detailed blog post about the release of Gilad Shalit and the consequences of the prisoner swap in return for this kidnapped Israeli soldier.  But again the bias of elements of the British media dictate a change of focus.

That said it is wonderful that this young man is free again after being held hostage for so long and denied visits from the Red Cross.  But that said, Israel has just turned free a battalion of hardened terrorists who will resume waging death and destruction as soon as they can.

One wonders if those people who constantly accuse Israel of of human rights violations and mistreatment of Palestinians stopped for one moment today to compare and contrast the sight of the malnourished Gilad Shalit who has been violently kidnapped, with the fit and healthy Palestinian terrorists and criminals who has been arrested and put on trial before being sentenced.  One measure of a people is how it treats those in its prisons, and the Palestinians prisoners have clearly been well looked after.

The scene underlined the sheer inhumanity of Hamas. Yet here in the UK, the BBC and the Guardian, both of which publish so many stories that portray Israel in a negative manner while turning a blind eye to the viciousness and violence of Hamas, this was ignored.

Meanwhile, as Gilad Shalit was explaining how he hoped this exchange would help to bring about peace, the people responsible for snatching him from inside Israel and mistreating him for the last five years led the crowds in Gaza and the West Bank in chanting:

“The people want a new Gilad!”

And less than a week ago Khaled Mashal, Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, told the media:

“Those released will return to armed struggle.  It is a great national achievement.”

You will not find either quote anywhere on the BBC or in the Guardian.  They don’t want to show the true nature of Hamas, for whom they act as cheerleaders and propagandists.

Peace was what Gilad Shalit and many Israelis continue to hope and pray for.  But violence, terror and death is all Hamas are interested in as they pursue their aim of destroying the nation of Israel and driving the Jews out of the Middle East again.

Peace seems as far away as ever, and the BBC and Guardian will do their best to ignore the evidence in front of them to lay the blame for that at the door of Israel.  It is hard to feel anything other than utter disgust.

Why the Met Police is right to uncover the Guardian’s ‘phone hacking’ news source

The insipid David Leigh used space in Friday’s Guardian to moan and bluster about what he is portraying as an ‘unprecedented move’ by the police to force the paper to reveal its sources in the so called phone hacking affair. He told readers:

“The Metropolitan police are seeking a court order under the Official Secrets Act to make Guardian reporters disclose their confidential sources about the phone-hacking scandal.

“In an unprecedented legal attack on journalists’ sources, Scotland Yard officers claim the act, which has special powers usually aimed at espionage, could have been breached in July when reporters Amelia Hill and Nick Davies revealed the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone. They are demanding source information be handed over.”

Leigh is deliberately appealing to the vested interests of journalists everywhere to rally to the Guardian’s aid and whip up public disquiet about the Met’s actions.  But you have to get to paragraph 12 of Leigh’s piece before you get a clue that this is not an assault on the press and their desire to keep their sources confidential.  For it is there that Leigh explains:

The application, authorised by Detective-Superintendent Mark Mitchell of Scotland Yard’s professional standards unit, claims that the published article could have disclosed information in breach of the 1989 Official Secrets Act.

What has the Met’s Professional Standards Unit got to do with journalism?  Nothing at all.  This is not about an attack on the Guardian, it about a tightly focused police investigation trying to uncover evidence that at least one police officer – and possibly one or more employees of the Crown Prosecution Service – who corrupted their office and committed misconduct in public office by leaking confidential investigation details to the newspaper.  Not just any information, but details that still have the potential to undermine subsequent prosecutions over the very hacking for which the Guardian wanted people held to account.

The Guardian’s nose has been put out of joint since its police mole / one of its police moles was arrested, putting an end to their scoops about arrests that were yet to be announced or had even yet to be made, and details of material in police possession that was used to undermine a rival newspaper – the News of the World.  Leigh’s piece is the manifestation of the indignation its editorial team are feeling about that.

In no way is this about the Guardian challenging an injustice to protect the public interest.  The public interest element was concluded when the police re-opened its hacking inquiry after the initial scoop.  This is about the Guardian trying to protect a source(s) who knowingly broke the law to provide details about the investigation that were not in the public interest.  For example, what was the public interest in announcing the impending arrest of Andy Coulson a day before it happened?  There was not only no justification, the story could have prejudiced the investigation and may yet undermine a prosecution.  This was all about ego and wanting to be first with the scoop. Nothing more.

While this blog opposes police over reaching their powers and laws that infringe civil liberties and privacy, the Metropolitan Police’s action is entirely appropriate.  This blog highlighted the Guardian’s mole(s) inside the Met and called for action to investigate them.  That is what the Met is doing.  The Met Police action could actually go beyond the hacking investigation to include the unrelated matter referenced in the linked piece, concerning the Guardian’s ‘outing’ of an American blogger, ‘Jeff Id’ .

While it does not fall within the scope of the Official Secrets Act, the possibility that a police source used material in police possession to identify the true identity of an anonymous blogger and give that information to a Guardian journalist – David Leigh himself – is a clear breach of ethics and illegal act.  Draining the Guardian’s swamp of sources who break the law to leak information is something that is long overdue.  It is both necessary and appropriate.

Liar Leigh digging himself into another hole

One of the downsides for liars, as The Guardian’s David Leigh is increasingly finding, is that their lies get found out and their contrived stories fall apart under scrutiny.

It is nice to see more people calling out Leigh.  In Counterpunch magazine in February this year Leigh was given the sort of treatment he likes to dole out to others in a piece about ‘The Guardian’s Sleazeball Hacks and Plagiarists’ focusing on the Guardian’s relationship with Julian Assange.

But of equal fun is the good hiding Leigh is currently getting at the hands of The Economist and its readers in the comments thread in an article about Wikileaks.  Leigh is being put through the wringer for including a password to a key Wikileaks file in an opportunist book – rushed out by the Guardian to capitalise financially from the fall out of the scandal leigh engineered – which allowed it to be opened revealing yet more information.

Leigh’s indignation at being the focus of criticism for publishing a Wikileaks password in a book, without any justification, is laid bare for all to see.  Seen through the prism of his own self regard, Leigh views himself as a crusading hero.  Being exposed for the deceitful, unreliable and untruthful hack he really is appears to have got the vicious little parasite a tad upset.  What a shame.

(With thanks to Katabasis for the spot)