Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, first published in 1988.

Presenting an analysis its authors call the "propaganda model", the book argues that since mass media news outlets are now run by large corporations, they are under the same competitive pressures as other corporations.

According to the book, the pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably distorts the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported ... [it] ... further points out issues with the dependency of mass media news outlets upon major sources of news, particularly the government.

If a particular outlet is in disfavor with a government, it can be subtly 'shut out', and other outlets given preferential treatment ...

Wikipedia      Noam Chomsky

In the past, the press has been called the fourth branch of government because its investigative reporting added to the checks and balances of the three branches of US government. But is much investigative journalism being done anymore? Let's take ten story types and divide them into two categories:

If you listen to, watch, or read the "normal" news outlets, you're surely getting a much larger dose of stories from Category A than Category B, even though the stories in Category B are much more important to our democracy and to our long-term personal health and prosperity.

It doesn't matter much whether it's national or local news you're looking at—these days, both types of news outlets are overwhelmingly controlled by corporate media conglomerates.

Grinning Planet

Rich and poor: deserving and undeserving

Lord Carey's attack upon his fellow bishops for resisting the government's welfare reform legislation breathes new life into that most unhelpful of distinctions.

According to Lord Carey, we now have a "bloated" welfare system that "rewards fecklessness and irresponsibility".

In contrast, the former archbishop offers his own story of how hard work and diligence led him from a Dagenham council estate to Lambeth Palace.

By so doing he reinforces the view that there are a whole category of people who are responsible – and thus to be blamed – for their own misfortune ...

Gdn  27 Jan 2012    IDS: Welfare Reform    Thatcherite Britain    Third Meltdown Log    Whither Britain? Log

Blog     The Myth of Full Employment    'Unsustainable Burdens'    

Carey 'call for the humane treatment of Pinochet'

Child Poverty Map

Deserving vs Undeserving

Former Archbishop Carey under fire over arms trade comments

Joseph Merrick

UK Foodbanks

Well, hallelujah!

Phone hacking: glimpsing the truth at last

The bigger truth - the mirror this affair holds up to Thatcherite Britain, with it's louche libertarian 'fuck you buddy' culture - is as yet unexplored, unremarked upon.

As is the manner in which very senior politicians - of all parties - fawned on Murdoch, treating him as some omniscient, god-like figure.

That the Murdoch papers still sell - and are still key opinion formers - is a massive indicator of the educational failure in Thatcherite Britain.

It will be for the police and Crown Prosecution Service to deal with the lies and the obstruction of those who were trying to get at the truth.

But the dramatic eve-of-court climbdown by News International gives an indication of the company's mindset and modus operandi.

Despite his public displays of contrition (the "humblest day" … "We are sorry") Rupert Murdoch remains a street fighter.

The aggression and denials continued right up to the courtroom door, and it took some bravery from a determined group of claimants – as well as some skilful lawyering – to force the most powerful media company in the world to back down and reluctantly tell part of the truth ...

Gdn  19 Jan 2012    Rupert Murdoch    Thatcherite Britain    Whither Britain? Log

Rupert Murdoch ... Corporate State    The 'Fuck You Buddy' Dystopia

We hacked emails too

Judge orders search of NoW computers

NoW publisher accused of cover-up

Leveson inquiry live

Phone Hacking

"Titillation and Diversion": The Role of the Corporate Media in Thatcherite Britain

Leveson Inquiry: tabloids are 'completely outdated', Max Mosley claims

Sir Philip Green will not be appearing before the Leveson Inquiry.

Representatives of Goldman Sachs and Vodafone will not be appearing.   [Ind]

Those responsible for the Southern Cross care homes fiasco have also been spared any investigation by the corporate media.

All have been safe from the 'dark arts'.

The corporate press only 'investigates' behaviours and lifestyles which come under the Murdoch heading of 'titillation and diversion'.

That's titillation as in investigations into the alleged quirky lifestyles of so-called celebrities, and 'diversion' as in we're not going to rock the corporate boat by informing the hoi polloi as to the extent of corporate tax dodging.

The wider issue is the massive educational failure which leaves pupils without the attitudes and abilities which go to make up crap detection: a habit of mind which would put 'news' papers like The Sun out of business.

Mr Mosley said that during the court case it had emerged that Neville Thurlbeck, the News of the World’s chief reporter, had told one of the prostitutes to try to film him doing a Nazi salute.

A test recording made by Mr Thurlbeck had been found, said Mr Mosley, and as he showed the woman how to use a pinhole camera: “Thurlbeck said ‘when you get him to do the Sieg Heil, get him to stand back about three metres so you get it all in shot’.”

He claimed Mr Thurlbeck had then tried to “blackmail” the woman by telling her that if she did not sign an interview backing up the suggestion of a Nazi theme, the newspaper would run pictures of her and reveal her identity and those of the other women.

He said: “One of them was a very serious scientist, another had a major position in healthcare, another ran an office and they were all terribly at risk and the thought of this being published in the News of the World was terrifying for them.”

He added: “The idea that it is the job of the tabloid journalist to pillory people whose tastes may be unusual is completely outdated. If that was the case we would still be persecuting homosexuals.

“I think it’s extraordinary that the tabloid press don’t recognise that.”

Tel  24 Nov 2011    Rupert Murdoch: Titillation and diversion    Thatcherite Britain    Third Face of Power

Crap Detection     Tax Dodgers     The 'Fuck You Buddy' Dystopia

Leveson inquiry: blogger summoned over leak

I used safe houses

Media vilified me ...

JK Rowling: 'I was driven out of my home'

Manufacturing Consent

28 NI staff linked to phone hacking

Lord Hunt: the greater challenge is with bloggers

The phone hacking inquiry must shackle corporate power

Newspapers warned not to target witnesses

Leveson Inquiry

Leveson Inquiry

Tax Research UK

Fears over curbs on witnesses at Leveson Inquiry

Lord Leveson last week rejected a request by police and the Crown Prosecution Service to vet evidence heard by the inquiry to ensure it does not prejudice future criminal trials.

However, he said the hearings would not be used by witnesses as a public platform to "pillory" others.

One lawyer representing several core participants told The Independent:

"There are serious matters which should be in the public domain and we should not have a situation where a witness is perhaps only allowed to partially air their concerns." ...

Ind  14 Nov 2011

Lynchpin of the Corporate State

Lord Hunt: the greater challenge is with bloggers

The phone hacking inquiry must shackle corporate power

Newspapers warned not to target witnesses

Leveson Inquiry

Leveson Inquiry

Circle Health – the 'social enterprise' run by the world's hardest hedge fund managers

John Lewis it is absolutely not

Circle Health – the company that last week became the first private healthcare operator to take over the running of an NHS district general hospital – has variously been described as a "John Lewis-style mutual", a "third-sector provider", and a "social enterprise majority owned by employees". It is none of these things ...

Obs  13 Nov 2011    Coalition Log    NHS 'Reform'    Outsourcing    Private Equity

Healthcare industry

Richard Desmond's Health Lottery under scrutiny by watchdog

The Health Lottery has attracted criticism from leading charity figures and the National Lottery operator, Camelot, since it launched last month.

Critics have complained that the lottery donates the bare minimum – 20.3p in every £1 – to good causes, and that its unconventional structure is potentially in breach of the Gambling Act 2005 ...

Critics have said that Desmond's Health Lottery sidesteps the spirit of the law by operating as a large umbrella group of 51 separate society lotteries, meaning it can circumvent strict caps on the turnover of individual lotteries.

The Gambling Act states that small society lotteries must operate and be branded individually and have a revenue cap of £10m.

The Health Lottery has been accused of effectively operating as an alternative national lottery, with a £510m turnover cap from its 51 individual lotteries.

Critics point out that each of the 51 Health Lottery companies has the same three directors, office address and branding ...

The culture secretary also signalled an end to opt-in self-regulation of the newspaper industry.

Hunt said that it was "unsatisfactory to say the least" of the Press Complaints Commission setup that Desmond was able to withdraw his titles from the body's remit in January this year.

Gdn  27 Oct 2011    Corporate Sociopathy Log

Steve Whittamore and the Daily Mail

Google Steve Whittamore and you will come acroos a guy who was very useful to "eight national dailies and ten national Sundays" according to Nick Davies, author of "Flat Earth News" ...

... this was not only the red-top tabloids, but also the Evening Standard, the Observer, the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail.

Indeed it was the Daily Mail was the most active single buyer - sixty three Mail journalists had made a total of 985 requests ...

... overwhelmingly, the requests which had been made of Wittamore involved breaking the law ...

In their attempts to persuade Whittamore to break the law for them Fleet Street journalists had handed over ... an estimated £164,537.50 ...
FEN   (page 260 pbk ed. 2009)

So, the man who had been "very useful" to the Daily Mail was also deeply involved in the hacking of Milly Dowler's voice messages, not very good for circulation figures should this become general knowledge.

Unsurprisingly, then, the Mail's Comment column - 15 July 2011 - read:

"Never mind phone hacking, what about the real issues facing Britain?"

Fortuitously, the phone hacking saga has focussed solely on the activities of News International.

It would - from the point of view of Associated Newspapers shareholders - be advantageous to keep it that way.

With Cameron in the mood to close down the Press Complaints Commission, and replace it with something that actually bites miscreants, it's a good time for the Mail to move things along to safer stories, like the possible collapse of the euro.

Ministers meet News Corp every three days

Piers Morgan: phone hacking 'was going on at almost every paper in Fleet Street'

Murdochs were given secret defence briefings

Hacking was endemic at the 'Mirror'

The dangers of ranging too widely

The dangers of ranging too widely

It is easy to see where David Cameron is going with this inquiry: the matter of 'losing focus' will be wholely intentional.

The real issues - media plurality and diversity of ownership - will not be touched upon.

The press must remain the tool of corporate interests, and the BBC must get another hammering.

The Leveson inquiry is already in danger of losing its focus.

David Cameron announced to Parliament yesterday that the remit of Lord Justice Leveson's investigation of the press will be extended to include the BBC and social media.

It is difficult to see what this expansion will accomplish, except to bog down the inquiry and to make its recommendations less focused than they would otherwise have been ...

Ind  22 July 2011    'Divi' Dave Log    Losing Democracy    

Why tabloid journalism matters

The Leveson Inquiry: A Last Chance?

Phone hacking inquiry panel

Lord Justice Leveson

How News International worked towards its own downfall

What's wrong with comparing Murdoch to Hitler? They both bought into social Darwinist theories. The one promoted physical and mental destruction on an unparalled scale; the other is promoting potential economic, social, and environmental destruction on an unparalled scale. 'Financial Terror'    Inequality, Consumerism & Biodiversity    Trashing Democracy, Society, Environment

What made Rupert so certain of Brooks's great talent and flair, when it remains imperceptible to everyone else?

Not, surely, her love of news-papers, a love that Rupert is supposed to share yet quite quickly resulted in the summary execution of a long-established title, and left three others wounded.

If one is to accept Brooks's own narrative, then she does not have a journalistic bone in her entire body.

Good journalists are curious about the world. They are curious, especially, about journalism.

Yet this woman claims to have edited a couple of national newspapers without ever considering how her team might have been getting the stories she was splashing with such enthusiasm.

How did Brooks impress Rupert, then? The only possible conclusion is that Brooks was "working towards the Führer".

The phrase is borrowed from the historian Ian Kershaw, who coined it to explain how Hitler motivated others to formulate policies without considering anything at all except how they would play with him.

(This is not, by the way, an invitation to extend a metaphor and compare Murdoch to Hitler. "Working towards the Führer" is just the most apposite way of describing a culture that places competitive second-guessing at its core, thereby risking a race to the bottom.) ...

Gdn  20 July 2011    Andy Coulson    Corporate State Log    Losing Democracy    Rupert Murdoch    Sociopathy

This scandal has exposed the scale of elite corruption

A promise by Murdoch is meaningless

The i reported - 01 July 2011 - that BSkyB 'held it's summer party last night at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office'.

The link between corporate capitalism and government hardly needs a more obvious demonstration than this misuse of government premises by an organ of News International, coming as it did only hours after the coalition's craven failure to refer it to the Monopolies Commission.

The people one should feel sorry for, in the shame of the Government genuflection to Rupert Murdoch – or maybe it should be simply contempt – are the independent directors appointed to preserve the separated Sky news from his interference.

We have been down this course so often before that it is hardly worth repeating just how meaningless any promises of independence by Murdoch are.

As far back as his takeover of the News of the World in 1969, he promised that the chairman, Sir William Carr, would stay on as chairman to ensure traditions were maintained. He was out within three months ...

Murdoch doesn't exercise interference by issuing memos; he exercises control by appointing people who will second-guess his will, and his prejudices ...

Ind  01 July 2011

Empire of the Sun

The Australian-born American citizen Rupert Murdoch commands just under 40% of the UK newspaper market, and just under 40% of the vast BSkyB.

Now, with Mr Hunt's help, he is set to increase that second figure to 100%, and to merge the two operations, creating unique opportunities for bundling up paper and TV advertising and sales.

Even in Berlusconi's Italy there are restrictions on broadcasters moving into print.

No well-functioning democracy should allow one man to frame its window on the world.

But then the institutions of British democracy have hardly been functioning well of late in relation to Mr Murdoch ...

Gdn  30 June 2011    Corporate State Log    Losing Democracy    Rupert Murdoch

Hunt ruling will be open to legal challenge after past Murdoch support

David Cameron's decision to hand responsibility for ruling on BSkyB's future from Vince Cable to Mr Hunt caused surprise and anger at Westminster ... critics claim that Mr Hunt is equally compromised – specifically by his remarks lauding Mr Murdoch for his contribution to British television and apparently backing Mr Murdoch's planned takeover ...

It also emerged that Mr Hunt held a private meeting with the tycoon's son, James, the chief executive of News Corp in Europe and Asia, shortly after the takeover bid was launched in June.

Meanwhile, BSkyB shares rose 2 per cent yesterday, up 14.5p to 743p, as investors judged that the chances of News Corp's takeover going ahead had soared with Mr Hunt's appointment.

Andrew Neil, the former Sunday Times editor, said News Corp had pulled a "very expensive ad campaign" to lobby support for its bid to acquire the 61 per cent of BSkyB shares that it does not own ...

truthseeker

Pick-up any one of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers (he owns 175 titles worldwide including The Sun, News of the World and The Times in the UK), or tune in to any one of his TV Channels (he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Sky/BskyB, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations, fast-growing Fox News and Fox Entertainment, and 19 regional sports channels) and you are likely to come across hysterical stories screaming of "benefit fraudsters and "dole scroungers".

This may make you not only believe the overwhelming scale of "benefit culture" and burden on the State but that Murdoch's media empire is firmly on the side of decent hard-working tax payers.

There is just one problem - Rupert Murdoch's media empire fails to pay it's tax!!!

Media tycoon Murdoch may run one of the most profitable businesses in the UK, but it appears that he has somehow managed to avoid running up a tax bill over the past two decades.

Mr Murdoch thinks it is acceptable for a Billionaire to shirk his tax bill whilst at the same time stigmatising the poor as "benefit cheats" and "dole scum".

According to a previous report in The Economist, Mr Murdoch in the 1990's saved at least £350m in tax - enough to pay for seven new hospitals, 50 secondary schools or 300 primary schools.

How he has done it remains a mystery - and News Corporation is certainly loath to give away any financial secrets.

But it appears that Mr Murdoch's tax accountants have surpassed themselves - making full use of tax loopholes to protect profits in offshore havens.

Mr Murdoch also has the luxury of shifting funds from country to country across his sprawling media empire to foil the taxman.

It is not just the Inland Revenue that has been left empty-handed by News Corporation's clever financial engineering.

Mr Murdoch "hands very little of his profits to governments" according to The Economist.

Overall, News Corporation paid just £146m ($238m) in corporate taxes on profits of more than £2bn.

In other words he is paying tax at a paltry rate of just 6%. That compares with normal company tax rates of 30% and upwards.

The financial secrecy that has characterised Mr Murdoch's empire could turn out to be a double-edged sword.

On the one hand he has managed to hold on to more money.

But News Corporation's complex structure, which includes 60 incorporated tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, has confused analysts and investors alike.

Independent  23 Dec 2010    Corporate State Britain    Rupert Murdoch    Tax dodger Murdoch

Jeremy Hunt's links with Rupert Murdoch empire under scrutiny

Just what does the Guardian think trade unions are for?

After the vigour and excitement of the student demonstrations against the cuts, today’s Guardian leader derides Unite’s new general secretary Len McCluskey as a ‘Bourbon’.

Why?

Because he proposes trade union action and strikes rather than defeatist acceptance of the government’s unjust and counter-productive deficit reduction plans. Has the Daily Mail leader writer been picked up on a free transfer? ...

openDemocracy  20 Dec 2010    

Ofcom confirms product placement on UK TV

The new rules come into force on 28 February and have been incorporated into the broadcasting code, a legal framework enforced by Ofcom.

The guidelines contain few surprises. Broadcasters will have to alert viewers when programmes containing product placement are aired by using an on-screen logo.

This logo will be unveiled by Ofcom in the new year and will have to appear for a minimum of three seconds at the start and end of programmes that contain product placement.

It will also appear after shows return from advertising breaks.

Certain categories of programmes and products are also excluded from the changes, which follow legislation passed by parliament earlier this year legalising product placement.

It will not be permitted in children's programming or news programmes. The practice will also be barred in current affairs shows produced in the UK and from religious programmes.

Four categories of content; films (which in this case includes dramas and documentaries), TV series including soap operas, entertainment shows and sports programmes will be free to use product placement.

Placement of alcohol and tobacco products is also barred and the same restrictions apply to gambling, medicines, baby milk and foods that are high in sugar or salt ...

Guardian  20 Dec 2010    Consumer Culture    Nudge

Mark Thompson: Britain needs a channel like Fox News

There's nothing ironical about it.

Thompson is a Zionist who's partiality prevented the Gaza appeal being shown on BBC.

BBC's director general says rules on impartiality on television are outdated in internet era and advocates opinionated journalism ...

[He] said:

"There was a logic in allowing impartial broadcasters to have a monopoly of the broadcasting space.

"But in the future, maybe there should be a broad range of choices? Why shouldn't the public be able to see and hear, as well as read, a range of opinionated journalism and then make up their own mind what they think about it?

"The BBC and Channel 4 have a history of clearly labelled polemical programmes. But why not entire polemical channels which have got stronger opinions? I find the argument persuasive." ...

During the debate it was suggested the Daily Mail newspaper should be free to set up its own opinionated news station if it so wished.

Ironically, Thompson's proposal makes him an ally of the Murdoch family.

The BBC director general told the audience that Rupert Murdoch had told him he would like Sky News to go down a polemical "Fox-style" route – but that the editors of the channel had brushed off his wishes.

Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of the Sun, also on the seminar panel, said he should be able to host a debate about immigration or Britain pulling out of Europe without having to present a countervailing point of view ...

Guardian  18 Dec 2010    Rupert Murdoch

Protest over BBC Gaza appeal veto

'Why is it so suprising that the police dragged me from my wheelchair?'

Kevin Bakhurst is emblematic of the BBC's biased response. Radio 5's phone in shows have been conducted in the same bullying manner towards anyone supporting the demonstrators.

Seven days ago, this 20-year-old political activist was at the student protests in London with his younger brother Finlay when police allegedly hit him with a baton, and pulled him from his wheelchair not once, but twice ...

Not long after the protests, footage emerged of the second incident which, while grainy, shows McIntyre out of his wheelchair, being pulled along the ground by police, as voices in the crowd shout "What the fuck are you doing?" and "You just tipped him over!"

It's difficult to watch without mounting horror, and the thought: has it come to this? The police dragging a man with cerebral palsy through our streets?

Not everyone had that reaction.

In the Daily Mail, columnist Richard Littlejohn ... (wrote) ...

"If [McIntyre's] looking for sympathy, he's come to the wrong place," wrote Littlejohn.

There also seemed a distinct lack of sympathy from the BBC, in an interview conducted by journalist Ben Brown on Monday night, that has attracted thousands of complaints.

The BBC News channel controller, Kevin Bakhurst, asked why people objected to it, and the answer seems to be this: in interviewing an apparent victim of police brutality, Brown's tone was highly accusatory.

He asked whether McIntyre might have been "rolling towards" the police in his wheelchair, whether he had thrown missiles at the police, and repeatedly questioned why he hadn't yet made a legal complaint about his treatment ...

Guardian  15 Dec 2010    A Moral Indifference Log    Higher education    Police State

Police 'to investigate their own actions'

IPCC to oversee investigation into wheelchair protester incident

Student protests video allegedly shows police pulling man out of wheelchair

What lies below the surface of the student protest?

As noted here on OurKingdom by Niki Seth Smith, the media can be relied upon to draw on the usual assortment of 'types', stereotypes that enable dismissal of the student movement and its arguments as ‘hippy’, anarchic, or childish.

Whilst the media play this game, student groups across the country are occupying their universities and carrying out teach-ins, seminars and workshops ...

To judge the legitimacy of the student protest simply by its image would be to ignore the motives of the protestors and the wider significance of their actions.

Firstly, they are protesting against the prospect of rising fees and decreasing funds in Higher Education.

This issue is specific to the student’s situation, and protesting against them could be seen, at least in part, as driven by self-interest.

Then there is criticism of the marketisation of the university system, which is seen as part of the coalition government’s ideological attack on public services.

However, there is also the question of political disaffection and economic injustice.

The student protest is in part a reaction to a longer process starting with Thatcher and passing through New Labour, the expenses scandal and the financial crisis.

Politicians are increasingly perceived as separate from citizens, as are the rich from the poor.

The protest is not simply against Nick Clegg’s promise-breaking or the Torys’ elitism, but the political system as a whole, and it is not limited to the students.

As noted by Anthony Barnett, the reaction of many has been: ‘At last somebody is protesting’ ...

So far, large sections of the media, the police force and the political classes have sought to de-legitimise and dismiss the students.

But as the protesters’ disaffections go beyond Higher Education reform, dismissal of them is tantamount to avoiding debate on a wider series of social and political issues ...

openDemocracy  04 Dec 2010        

A 'massive moral failure'

Education for the Good Society

Towards the Good Society

US proxy war in Yemen exposed by Wikileaks

Enter this headline into your search engine, and you will (probably) find only the Telegraph and the Guardian have covered this report.

Contrast with the (D)acres of space awarded to Prince Andrew's confirmation that he is out of the same right-wing, pub-bore, stable as his father: a non-story typical of the frequent presentation of entertainment as news.

The release of ‘secret’ US State Department documents has revealed that the US has been conducting a proxy war in Yemen with the agreement of the Yemeni authorities.

Until this time, the US has been very keen to distance itself from any accusation that it has been behind the programme of targeted assassinations in Yemen.

The revelations show that there has been a direct agreement between the two countries that the US army would be permitted to bomb suspected al-Qaeda targets and evidently will not be held to account.

Rather, as another revealed cable explicitly states, that the Yemen government will take responsibility for any bombing operations conducted by the US, the Yemeni president Abdullah Saleh explicitly stating, “We’ll continue saying they are our bombs, not yours.”

Once again the US is not officially bringing its activities within the purvey of the laws of armed conflict and is flouting international law in the process.

By failing to declare it is operationally involved in a conflict, the US has not fulfilled its obligation to abide by the required conduct of hostilities as required under the Geneva conventions.

More disturbingly, it has manipulated one of the poorest countries in the world into taking responsibility for a crime that it is itself responsible for: extrajudicial killings.

CagePrisoners  29 Nov 2010    A violent aggressive culture    War on Terror Log

Yemen offered US 'open door' to attack al-Qaida on its soil

Robert Fisk

Wikileaks shows up our media for their docility at the feet of authority

In the UK, free speech is regarded as a negotiable commodity.

A government's right to secrecy is seen as more important than the public's right to know.

The mainstream media in the UK are serial offenders.

Newspapers that have no compunction about invasions of privacy or about shrill comment devote precious little time or energy to challenging authority through rigorous investigative journalism.

Most political "scoops" are merely stories planted by politicians on pliant lobby hacks.

Editors and senior ... love being invited to the "D-notice" committee to discuss how they can all behave "responsibly".

It makes them feel important. Many suspend their critical faculties as a result.

Far from being "feral beasts", to use Tony Blair's phrase, the British media are overly respectful of authority.

Newspapers and broadcasters tend to be suspicious of those who do not play the game, people like Mr Assange who are awkward outsiders.

Some editors are quite happy to help the authorities in their denunciations of him, partly out of revenge for not being in his inner circle.

All governments have a legitimate right to protect national security. This should be a specific, and closely scrutinised, area of policy.

Most of our secrecy rules are designed merely to protect politicians and officials from embarrassment.

Documents are habitually over-classified for this purpose.

The previous government made desperate attempts to stop legal evidence of its collusion in torture from reaching the public.

Ministers argued, speciously, that this was to protect the "special intelligence relationship" with Washington ...

Independent  29 Nov 2010    Towards a new politics

'The Return of the Public'

According to Dan Hind’s new book, underlying our inability to tackle these crises is yet another crisis – a crisis of publicity.

In his view, the make up of the ‘public’ – "the informed autonomous body capable of initiating policy and driving legislative changes" – now excludes the vast majority of people.

Instead, the state bends itself to an elite public dominated by those who control (though not own) the vast capital flows of major corporations and the financial markets which connect them.

The key to the exclusion of most of us from the effective public is the atrophy of our means of understanding the world.

As citizens, our knowledge of issues which extend beyond our own experience is necessarily received through the mass media.

Yet the institutions which should be our eyes and ears instead act as our blinkers ...

... Hind draws on the history of the build-up to the Iraq war as an example of how the media can rule certain views in- and out-of-bounds.

While a succession of retired generals and spooks were given room to expound on the threat from Baghdad, those who believed, quite rightly, that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction were treated as extremists ...

Hind correctly identifies that the market for news has not delivered media which is genuinely accountable to its consumers.

But rather than attempting to change the way we control it, we must instead change the way we produce it.

New technology offers us the tools to become producers of our own information.

Now we must find ways to widen access to the skills and resources which will make that possible.

openDemocracy  25 Oct 2010    Third Face of Power    Towards a New Politics

Are our liberties threatened by the fear of real freedom?

Our liberties are threatened by (a) the corporate agenda pursued by the media (b) the diversionary tactics of corporate capital (c) the anaesthesia of consumerism (d) the educational failure (deliberate?) to inculcate crap detection, and finally the ennui of a cumulative infantilism

The liberal left is suffering from intellectual amnesia about the attack on liberty that happened under New Labour ...

Strong and controversial views on any topic, religion, ethics or politics remain unacceptable in the present cultural climate.

Even the “absolutist” position on free speech that AFAF holds is no more than that of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty but it is seen as extreme ...

The cultural climate that is the legacy of New Labour has created a new intellectual mood that requires that we hold moderate and uncontroversial views.

It is a new, therapeutic, intellectual elitism, a civic quietism in which holding strong views or engaging in heated debate is only appropriate in formal situations such as the many faux debates in “Youth Parliaments” and the like ...

Independent  07 Oct 2010

Education for the Good Society    Libertarianism    The Pursuit of Happiness?    The Third Face of Power

Is Coulson the most dangerous man in Britain?

A window into the corporate state

Andy Coulson, the No 10 communications chief, found himself in the direct line of fire in the News of the World phone hacking scandal tonight when a former colleague alleged that he issued direct orders to journalists to carry out the illegal practice ...

Cameron was grateful to appoint Andy Coulson, a former editor of the News of the World, as his head of communications in May 2007.

He had been searching for some months for someone to perform the job Campbell had performed for Tony Blair.

He sounded out several journalists, and offered the job to at least three of them.

Then William Hague, whose judgement Cameron trusted, suggested Coulson might be just the man.

He was tough, understood the rougher end of the press and available ...

And for three years, Coulson offered Cameron exactly what he wanted: guidance as to what would "play" with the press, a feel for what "real" people (ie, those outside Cameron's narrow, gilded set) wanted, and access to the nation's most powerful media baron.

As Gordon Brown stumbled and fell out of favour, the Murdoch empire rebalanced, as modern jargon has it, towards the Tories.

Rebekah Brooks, Coulson's close confidante and predecessor at the helm of the News of the World and now chief executive of News International, came to appreciate the Cameron magic.

James Murdoch, her boss, was also won over, with the grudging and uncertain endorsement of his father, Rupert.

The new Camelot that was going to run Britain had been born, and Coulson was a crucial part.

Not bad for a man some thought should have gone to prison a couple of years earlier ...

Independent  05 Sept 2010    Corporate Public Services    Corporate State Britain

Phone hacking was rife at News of the World, claims new witness

Phone-hacking inquiry was abandoned to avoid upsetting police

MPs seek fresh investigation into NoW phone hacking

Coulson taints Cameron

Mandelson targeted in phone-hacking scandal

Andy Coulson 'lied' over NoW phone-hacking

Andy Coulson, the No 10 communications chief, found himself in the direct line of fire in the News of the World phone hacking scandal tonight when a former colleague alleged that he issued direct orders to journalists to carry out the illegal practice ...

The hacking scandal blew up again this week after the New York Times published a lengthy article including the claim that Coulson freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques during his time as editor of the tabloid ...

Sean Hoare told BBC Radio 4's PM:

"There is an expression called the culture of dark arts. You were given a remit: just get the story. Phone tapping hadn't just existed on the News of the World ... I have gone on the record in the New York Times and said I have stood by Andy and been requested to tap phones, OK, or hack into them. He was well aware the practice existed. To deny it is simply a lie."

The government last night commented on Hoare's admission that he was sacked from the title at a time when he was struggling with problems with drugs and alcohol.

Alan Duncan, the international development minister, told Radio 4's Any Questions:

"What they are seizing on today are the words of someone who had an alcohol and drug problem who was sacked by the paper." ...

LiuShaoqi
4 September 2010 12:51AM

One of the most powerful people in the country is linked to illegal activity, that should lead to jail time, in one of the worlds leading newspapers.

The Met Police are accused of with holding evidence from the CPS so Coulson and others are not implicated.

Then the Police Officer, Andy Hayman, who led the investigation resigns his post for a job with the company he was investigating.

And lots of people are asking what's the fuss about.

This has nothing to do with partisanship or playing party politics, we're talking about a man who if found guilty of this will do time, who is now occupying high government office.

This case is back in the spotlight not because the Guardian or Labour has brought it but because of a long and carefully researched investigation by the New York Times.

The writing team on the article includes Don Van Natta Jr. who has 2 pulitzer prizes, this is one of his winning articles  NYT

Jo Becker who won a pulitzer for her work on Dick Cheney, this is part of her pulitzer winning series  WP

These are no fly by night journalists and you can rest assured that any sources they have are watertight.

Guardian  03 Sept 2010    

Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond

Alan Johnson wants new Met Police

Ex-UK Deputy PM Wants Answers on Tabloid Scandal

Phone-hacking row returns to haunt Cameron's chief spin doctor

What are the links between shame and poverty?

Are shame and poverty closely linked? And, if so, why is it important? An international research project aims to find out ...

What struck [Robert Walker, professor of social policy at Oxford University], even in the mid 1970s, was the effort that mothers, in particular, made to try to protect their children from feeling shame – to the extent that they would skip meals to buy clothes and toys for them.

"Children as young as seven and eight soon learn strategies to persuade parents to buy them what they think they need," says Walker.

That process accelerated during the 1980s, he points out.

"People at the bottom are influenced by what they see in the media as much as anybody else. And expectations were rising at a time when inequalities increased substantially and child poverty tripled. We've never got on top of that, despite 13 years of New Labour," he says.

Walker is now a member of the Department for Work and Pensions' social security advisory committee, which will respond to proposals to overhaul the benefits system by the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith.

Walker himself contests Duncan Smith's perception that there is a widespread culture of worklessness and dependency as a consequence of the benefits system ...

Guardian  24 Aug 2010    'Reserve Army'

'No such thing as society'

28BN TAXPAYER BILL FOR WORKSHY SCROUNGERS

You don't want to claim benefits; if you do you could appear on our front page!

MORE than half a million people have falsely claimed sickness benefits for the last 10 years – at a cost to taxpayers of a massive £28billion.

Two-thirds of Incapacity Benefits claimants unemployed for the whole decade were in fact fit to work, new official figures reveal.

Ministers claimed the figures show that a huge number of people have been allowed to abuse the state payouts system under Labour ...

Fiona McEvoy, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“These figures are astonishing. It really goes to show how the welfare system has been failing both taxpayers and the benefit claimants who have been marooned on state hand-outs for a decade.

“The Government’s review of Incapacity Benefit is long overdue. It is vital for the economy that these people are helped back into employment.”

The figures show almost 900,000 people have spent a decade living on sickness benefits at a total cost of £42billion ... two-thirds of the 889,000 should have been engaged in some kind of employment, according to new Government tests to root out those fit to work ...

Daily Express  16 Aug 2010    Atos Origin    Crackdown on Welfare

Dozen it just make you sick

Work Capability Assessment

Work capability assessment: is it working?

SHOCKING figures reveal almost one third of children in Blackpool are growing up in a house where no-one works.

Whether this is because jobs are not available, or people are happy to live off the welfare state, is not set out in the report compiled by the Princes Trust.

But the charity is warning this cycle of unmemployment is leaving young people without role models to inspire them to take up a more fulfilling and useful role in life.

Community leader Maureen Horn says the key is early intervention in order to raise the aspirations of youngsters and break the cycle of gloom.

But when benefits are so easily available, for many it is all to easy to turn to the state instead of trying to stand on your own two feet.

Blackpool Gazette 11 August 2010

The Blackpool Gazette comes from the stable as the Daily Mail, so the nasty - and ill-informed - final sentence is typical.

The current ONS stats state that unemployment is 2.46m, but vacancies - as of the end of July - are only 481,000.

Unless the coalition is to undertake an astonishing u-turn and start a job creation scheme - in defiance of articles 2, 7 & 8 of the Washington Consensus - then pillorying people on benefits seems a bit pointless.

However, it is fully in accord with the current trend to divert attention away from the real causes of the current recession onto the poorest and weakest.

Bonuses are up – so the economy must be doing well, right?       Coalition Crackdown on Welfare

BBC licence fee could be cut, government says

'It's reward time, Mr Murdoch'

Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, attacks 'extraordinary and outrageous' waste and predicts tough settlement ...

Jeremy Hunt accused the corporation of "extraordinary and outrageous" waste in recent years and warned he could "absolutely" see viewers paying less than the current £145.50 a year after next year's licence fee negotiations with the government.

"The BBC should not interpret the fact that we haven't said anything about the way licence fee funds are used as an indication that we are happy about it.

We will be having very tough discussions," he told the Daily Telegraph.

Hunt said the BBC should recognise the "very constrained financial situation" the country was in and it would need to change "huge numbers" of things that it does ...

Guardian  17 July 2010    

Murdoch's malign influence demeans British politics

Tenth suspected suicide in a year throws spotlight on labour practices at China iPhone factory

When corporate ITN News and the Daily Dacre report suicides in a Chinese factory we're entitled to ask the question: what's the real agenda?

Normally these two management-friendly organs are less than sympathetic to labours' problems, and, it emerges, have shown no interest in the massive strike at Honda's Foshan factory in southeast China, with its indication that labour unrest over income inequality might one day threaten cheapo Western imports.

An employee of iPhone-maker Foxconn has jumped to his death - the tenth suspected suicide this year at the high-tech company's production base in southern China.

Three Taiwan TV stations reported that another person, a young woman, had also jumped yesterday but had survived with serious injuries.

If the reports are confirmed it would bring the total number of deaths of employees to 13, with three survivors.

Daily Mail  27 May 2010

Strike in China Highlights Gap in Workers’ Pay

Worker Suicides Have Electronics Maker Uneasy in China

Get Clegg

Since the first leaders' debate, The Dacre has been in overdrive in its war on the Lib-Dem leader, joined, predictably, by the rest of the Tory press, suddenly in panic mode at the prospect of 'Droopy' Dave coming second or third.

Clegg, to his credit, has started to announciate policy positions that attack the complex of sacred cows surrounding the fiction that Britain is still a great power, and it's still July 1914.

The support of four former senior military commanders - Times - suggests that not everyone is living in the same fantasy world as the odious Nicholas Soames.

Nick Clegg under pressure to explain private account donations

“A boy called Adrian started it,” Mr Clegg wrote. “He shouted from the back of the coach, 'We own your country, we won the war’.”

The future Lib Dem leader said this was an example of what he described as a “warped” British obsession with Germans and the Second World War.

“It is easy enough to explain the mixture of arrogance and insecurity that fuels this peculiar British obsession,” he wrote.

“Watching Germany rise from its knees after the war and become a vastly more prosperous nation has not been easy on the febrile British psyche.”

He accused politicians, including Gordon Brown, of encouraging “condescension towards Germany and the rest of the EU”.

“All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism,” Mr Clegg wrote.

“But the British cross is more insidious still. A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off.”

Nicholas Soames, a Tory MP and grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, said Mr Clegg’s comments showed he was “unfit to lead a national party, let alone the country”.

Telegraph  22 Apr 2010

Mandelson defends Nick Clegg against Tory ‘smears’

Dirty tricks of the REAL nasty party

Nick Clegg's Crazy Immigration Policy

Nick Clegg under pressure to explain private account donations

Lib Dem leader donor

Bananas*!

Might of the multinational fails to stop campaigning film-maker

Here's one film which won't be on distribution to corporate cinema chains.

When international food company Dole brought a lawsuit against a small-budget documentary featuring Nicaraguan banana plantation workers who alleged they had been left infertile by a banned pesticide, it appeared as if the film-maker would be beaten ...

The company's efforts to silence [Swedish director, Fredrik] Gertten first began when the film was selected to take part in the Los Angeles Film Festival in May last year. Dole sent out warning letters both to film-makers and sponsors of the film festival who subsequently withdrew the documentary from the competition, although it was still screened – to a full house ...

Mr Gertten has been focusing on getting the film shown around the world.

It was met by acclaim when it was screened at the Berlin Film Festival this year, and now it has reached London.

Yesterday, the director said: "It is a huge victory to screen at the ICA since there was a moment when we didn't know if the film ever would be seen. Dole was never my target. I wanted to make a film on the big back-story of 100 years of banana shipping from the South to the North. I had worked in Nicaragua for 35 years and I knew all about the banana marches." ...

Independent  17 Apr 2010    Corporate Sociopathy

Bananas! The Shocking Film Dole Doesn't Want You To See

Chiquitas Children

Corporate Death Squads Come Back to Haunt U.S. Companies

PeaceWork

PCC response to phone hacking controversy 'weakened its credibility'

Press Complaints Commission's actions also 'revealed major failings in its ways of operating', claims independent report ...

lorenzo1
1 Mar 2010, 7:06PM

it is "in need of urgent reform to enhance the reputation of British journalism"

I think that is generous in the extreme. The PCC has time and again showed that it is incapable of doing the job and is "not fit for purpose". Reform would be merely rearranging the furniture without addressing the fundamental issues as to why it and the notion of self-regulation fail.

The sheer scale of entrenched bias among those informing the body mean it is under intense pressure to sweep most complaints away as an annoyance. The papers want it as a fig-leaf for increasingly piss-poor practice, shoddy journalism and a bet that any high court costs are worth the risk against potential sales and ad revenues.

And so what if it finds against you? There are no teeth to the rulings, no financial penalty, no three-strikes rule just an annoying apology for a story that could dominate days or weeks fed only by speculation and imagination.

The papers cry foul about any attempt to regulate but in the last few years of supposed harder more critical self-regulation appear keen to inflict as much self-damage as possible, spurred by the very pointlessness of any PCC complaint, investigation or adjudication.

Let's put it and the media out of their misery. Stop the pretence of self-regulation and have a body capable of imposing serious financial penalties, suspension of printing for days or a week; referral to criminal courts; an end to stupid and piss-poor practices (including making up quotes) and a like-for-like apology in size and position.

The board should be completely independent and separate from any vested media interest but staffed by those who know so know more of that pathetic and shameful "can't remember act" favoured by Andy Coulson and crew.

A more robust independent body with actual power to penalise would strengthen journalism, make editors think twice about the poor and dodgy practices and also for a withering of the current gossip as news agenda.

In addition it might help strengthen the select committees who oversee media issues by allowing a truly independent body to advice on relevant questioning and insight into poor practice that allowed the likes of the News of the World to lie to all and sundry under their collective amnesia under the inept gaze of many who populate these committees.

Put simply. Reform is not needed, required nor desirable. Total change is what is needed.

Guardian  01 March 2010    Towards a New Politics

Andy Coulson under fresh attack

New claims of phone hacking put pressure on Andy Coulson

The IFJ: Phone hacking and the PCC

Andy Coulson

News of the World phone-hacking scandal

MPs' verdict on News of the World phone-hacking scandal: Amnesia, obfuscation and hush money

The 167-page report by a cross-party select committee is withering about the conduct of the News of the World, with one MP saying its crimes "went to the heart of the British establishment, in which police, military royals and government ministers were hacked on a near industrial scale".

MPs condemned the "collective amnesia" and "deliberate obfuscation" by NoW executives who gave evidence to them, and said it was inconceivable that only a few people at the paper knew about the practice.

The culture, media and sport select committee was also damning of the police, saying Scotland Yard should have broadened its original investigation in 2006, and not just focused on Clive Goodman, the NoW's royal reporter ...

Payoffs buried scandal at heart of the establishment

An email of 35 transcripts of phone messages sent by reporter Ross Hall to Mulcaire and marked "transcripts for Neville", implied the message was for Neville Thurlbeck, the paper's chief reporter. The report said it was unlikely that Hall did not know the source of the material "and was not acting on instruction from superiors. We cannot believe that the newspaper's newsroom was so out of control".

A contract sent to Mulcaire by a news executive, Greg Miskiw, promised him £7,000 if he delivered a story on Taylor. And the MPs' own inquiry revealed the payoffs to Goodman and Mulcaire, "and that they tapped the phones of [princes William and Harry] as well". This was not in the public domain, said the report.

Criticising the Metropolitan police, MPs said detectives had known of the "Neville" emails and the Miskiw contract while investigating Goodman, but they did not investigate further, "based on available resources" and the fact that it would be difficult to prove criminal activity – a decision endorsed by the CPS.

A Labour committee member, Paul Farrelly, said MPs were disappointed that the police seemed to be more "forthcoming" when replying to a subsequent Freedom of Information request by the Guardian, which revealed they had uncovered 91 pin numbers relating to hacking – information not offered to the committee by the Met's assistant commissioner, John Yates, when he appeared before it.

Guardian  24 Feb 2010

The MPs reject testimony by assistant commissioner John Yates that there had only been "a handful" of hacking victims of the News of the World.

Former minister Tom Watson, a member of the committee, said at the press conference at the Commons:

"Scotland Yard are sitting on a whole bank of information and data about very senior people in public life who were hacked, that the public don't know about."

He called for the information commissioner to access all the police files and see if any legal breaches had occurred.

The other body which failed in its task was the Press Complaints Commission, the committee report says.

The PCC had rushed out a report purporting to exonerate the News of the World that took the paper's claims of innocence at face value.

"We find the conclusions in the PCC's November report simplistic and surprising. It has certainly not fully, or forensically, considered all the evidence." ...

Guardian  24 Feb 2010        Media_Democracy    Third Face of Power

News of the World phone-hacking scandal: the verdicts

Overhaul British laws to stop 'libel tourism' report says

MPs' attack provokes the wrath of Murdoch

Today is a good day for free expression

Unanimous backing for real freedom of the press

James Purnell's departure from parliament will be a blow for politics

This editorial in praise of Purnell confirms the incestuous relationship between press and politicians.

James Purnell's decision to leave parliament at the next election is a blow for politics, a blow for Labour and a blow for his friend David Miliband's chances of ever leading his party.

It suggests a sagging of hope and ambition inside a political movement that, whatever happens on polling day, will need people with ideas after it.

Mr Purnell was one of those people; a popular culture secretary, a reforming welfare secretary and a clear thinker on the backbenches.

Many Labour members will have disagreed with him – the prime minister and the schools secretary certainly did – but diversity of thought matters to political parties. Labour is becoming narrower and less interesting ...

Forthestate 20 Feb 2010, 4:52AM

James Purnell's departure from parliament will be a blow for politics

No it won't. Given the condition of politics, I cannot think of a single politician, whether I admire them or not, whose departure from it would be significant enough to be described as a blow, let alone one whose voting record places him at the heart of the problem.

Those I admire are nowhere near power, and the idea that our best hope for the patient's revival comes from those at the centre of power who smothered it in the first place is, I believe, deluded; it's their prescription that's killing it.

The rhetoric of the article's title, "a blow to politics", seems old fashioned and out of touch; it's the rhetoric of the media endorsing the system, trying to convince us that it still has credibility, that politics today still has something to offer, that the departure of someone as mediocre as James Purnell can be described as a blow to it.

What a lot of us want to see is a written constitution, serious electoral reform, some real democracy, and I think I can live with the departure of a loyal member of a government that has done more to reverse its progress than any before it.

The friends of James Purnell might feel they've lost an asset, but I doubt you'll see the nation going into mourning.

Thinklikethewolf
20 Feb 2010, 8:17AM The Guardian really needs to stop grieving for someone who very clearly cares little about his primary duty - that of representing his constituants.

Not for him the monotony of listning to those boring dullards with their petty problems. No, he is a visionary made for better things.

As a previous poster has said, maybe he should have got some experience prior to entering politics rather than the seemingly usual labour route these days - fee paying school, oxbridge, media/law, islington council, safe seat.

This creation of a political class is disturbing and for a labour movement very very wrong. I appeal to those who select his replacement, don't give in to the central office stasi who will try to foist another smooth talking robot onto a constituancy which deserves better .

Go for someone with a bit of life experience, a bit of local knowledge and maybe even someone who really only wants to be an MP to represent those amongst whom he or she lives.

Guardian  20 Feb 2010

Former work and pensions secretary to train to be a community organiser

Good Riddance

TheyWorkForYou

Purnell's place in history

SpinProfiles

Purnell's progress

Living in a world of make-believe:
the mythmakers of the globalising age

Since ... (1976) ... a much more powerful, partisan and explicitly ideological account of the world has come to the fore in politics and in our mainstream analysis of the world.

It focuses on the merits of globalisation, competition, deregulation and free market economics. Despite the global crash and crisis of this paradigm, most of the mainstream media with honourable exceptions ... have become even more narrow and dogmatic in their commitment to a world economic and political order which is in profound crisis.

A telling example of the power of this dominant view of the world was provided on Newsnight on Tuesday night (05 Jan 2010) by Paul Mason with an item on his forecasts for 2010.

This six minute film cited four experts, all of whom were from the City, two from HSBC, one from CitiGroup and one from GLC Hedge Fund.

All offered partisan, deeply controversial views as if they were uncontested wisdom with no scrutiny, criticism or context offered ...

openDemocracy  07 Jan 2010

... the media act as intellectual filters, reinforcing the consensus view and ignoring or attacking challenges to it.

If it turns out that parliament is in thrall to elite interests offering a Tweedledum/Twiddledee no-choice, then the media will promote, rather than expose, this empty shell of a democracy. And this, of course, is exactly the situation we are in: politics and media work together to insulate power from rational thought and public interference.

The corporate media got away with its role in this closed-loop oppression for so long by simple virtue of its monopoly power to suppress dissent. But the world has changed. The internet allows non-corporate journalists and commentators to bypass the corporate gatekeepers and communicate to a global audience, instantly, at almost zero cost. These analysts generally do not charge for their work - almost all radical material is freely available on the internet.

And here is the rub for the mainstream: this non-corporate journalism is unconstrained by the distorting influence of wealthy owners and parent companies with busy fingers in any number of economic and political pies.

It is unconstrained by the reliance of corporate journalists on corporate advertising, with all that that implies. It is uncompromised by the insidious dependence on government and other official sources for cheap news; by thoughts of career progression in the revolving door between journalism, public relations and government.

The result is really beyond argument: dissident reporting and commentary is rational, honest and, therefore, interesting, in a way that corporate journalism can never be ...

Media Lens  23 July 2009

The Times ... thinks there should not be an inquiry at all. In a first leader last week the paper grumbled that there had already been two of them, and it doubted that a third could tell us anything we don’t already know.

I disagree. There are many aspects of this affair that remain unexamined. One of them is the attitude of some newspapers, in particular the Murdoch-owned Times and Sun, in uncritically promoting the Government’s flawed case for war, and defending, or even omitting to report, its mistakes ...

The BBC’s Andrew Gilligan was almost entirely right about the “sexed up” 2002 dossier. During the row between the Government and the BBC in July 2003, both papers took the Government’s side. After No 10 had revealed the identity of the weapons inspector Dr David Kelly, subsequently found dead near his home, they attacked the Corporation.

The Times’s Tom Baldwin, a friend of Alastair Campbell, shamelessly wrote that, “some BBC journalists seemed to have abandoned objectivity”.

The Sun was even more aerated, suggesting that, “this is the time for root-and-branch reorganisation of the news department at the BBC.” This from a newspaper which in February 2004 did not even report Tony Blair’s amazing confession that when Britain went to war he did not know that so-called WMD ( had they existed) were considered by the western military to be battlefield weapons which could only be fired a relatively short distance.

The Times complains that every aspect of the Iraq war has already been discussed. No. Rupert Murdoch’s role as chief cheerleader for the war has hardly even been considered ...

The Independent 22 June 2009

Reporting of both piracy in Somalia, and kidnappings in Nigeria, turn huge 'Category B' stories into branches of the 'war on terror': simplistic reporting of selected aspects of the stories, skewed to avoid revealing the behaviours of Western government and corporations in third world countries.

Nigeria's Kidnappings

HRW - Nigeria

M.E.N.D.

Somalia's Two Piracies

Life in the world’s largest refugee settlement

HRW - Somalia

The Somali Pirates and the European Union

Shipping and Fishing Piracy

Somalia’s Real Pirates Are Foreign Fishing Ships

On February 29 last year the BBC's website reported deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatening a 'holocaust' on Gaza. Headlined "Israel warns of Gaza 'holocaust'" the story would undergo nine revisions in the next twelve hours.

Before the day was over, the headline would read "Gaza militants 'risking disaster'".

(The story has since been revised again with an exculpatory note added soft-pedalling Vilnai's comments). An Israeli threatening 'holocaust' may be unpalatable to those who routinely invoke its spectre to deflect criticism from the Jewish state's criminal behaviour.

With the 'holocaust' reference redacted, the new headline shifts culpability neatly into the hands of 'Gaza militants' instead.

One could argue that the BBC's radical alteration of the story reflects its susceptibility to the kind of inordinate pressure for which the Israel Lobby's well-oiled flak machine is notorious.

But, as will be demonstrated in subsequent examples, this story is exceptional only insofar as it reported accurately in the first place something that could bear negatively on Israel's image.

The norm is reflexive self-censorship ...

Spinwatch 07 January 2009

HM Revenue and Customs should more "robustly" pursue companies that avoid paying tax on their profits, a committee of MPs has urged.

The Commons public accounts select committee found that more than 25% of Britain's 700 largest businesses paid no corporation tax to HMRC in 2005-6.

BBC NEWS 21 October 2008

The news that "25 per cent of Britain's 700 largest businesses" are tax dodgers should come as no surprise as, under the terms of "Standorkonkurrenz", any "crackdown" would see them threatening to move to Ireland or some UK controlled tax haven.

Nor should it surprise us that the MPs findings have been reported in only three mainstream media organs: The BBC, The Independent, and - a day late - The Guardian.

Here's a classic Category A story of the sort which is meat-and-drink to the mainstream media.

We are invited to be both terrified and horrified, but we are not invited to look below the surface into the Category B implications: namely that the mentally ill are off the radar, and there will no procession of celebs appearing on GMTV to argue that "they" should spend more money on care and treatment.

In fact we are invited to treat the mentally ill as criminals who should simply be under lock and key.

Some of them should, of course. Including Darren Harkin.

Of equal concern is the question of what particular theory lies behind the idea that his, er, treatment should include the very media liable to worsen his condition.

It's more likely, of course, that constraints on funding - for whatever reason - imply that this is not treatment in any sense of the term, its purpose is simply to pass the time, to contain.

England's director of mental health care today called for tougher standards for secure hospitals after it emerged that at least 116 mentally ill criminals escaped last year, more than 20 times the rate of escapes by offenders held in prison.

The information, which was only brought to light after a Freedom of Information request, has cast doubts over whether security is adequate at psychiatric units housing offenders who may pose a risk to the public.

Yesterday, mentally ill childkiller Darren Harkin was sentenced to be detained indefinitely at Broadmoor Hospital after he escaped from a secure private hospital near Bristol and raped a 14-year-old girl at knifepoint. The judge who sentenced him criticised the regime at Hayes Hospital, which had failed to pick up on the 21-year-old's increasingly disturbed behaviour. ...

Professor Louis Appleby, England's national director for mental health, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that in the wake of the Harkin case it was time for the government to consider intervening to set national standards for medium and low secure units. ...

After his escape, Harkin burgled a nearby house before crossing the Severn Bridge on foot and abducting a 14-year-old schoolgirl at knifepoint in Chepstow high street. He threatened to kill the girl before raping her twice. After his arrest it emerged that Gwent Police had not been alerted about his escape.

Leighton Hughes, for the prosecution, told the hearing at Reading Crown Court that Harkin's behaviour had got worse in the time before his escape and that he was supposed to be on 24-hour watch. ...

Mr Hughes said: “After that incident, the hospital management ordered that no one should be left alone with Harkin. On the run-up to his escape, Harkin had attacked staff members and smashed things.”

He added: “Staff observed he had a large collection of DVDs with porno films and horror movies. Some members of staff fuelled his interest in horror films by taking him to see them at a local cinema. It simply beggars belief.” ...

Sir David Ramsbotham, the former chief inspector of prisons, said that the high level of escapes were a wake-up call to the government to make sure that mentally ill offenders were more securely held.

"It is a horrifying figure of course, but not one that surprises me because the medium and low secure units in the NHS do not have same degree of security a prison does," he told Today.

The Times 09 September 2009

... last Monday, David Cameron made a surprise speech about quangos. His team asked the rightwing thinktank Reform to set up the event at just a few days' notice. It looked like the standard speech made by all oppositions promising cuts in "the quango state".

But one astonishing new commitment stuck out, even though it was barely noticed in most reports: "Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist. Its remit will be restricted to narrow technical and enforcement roles. It will no longer play a role in making policy." It would be knocked back to "regulating lightly". Had there been a great popular outcry calling for the demolition of Ofcom? Hardly, since this is obscure, techie stuff. So what was this all about?

Within hours of Cameron's speech, leading market analysts UBS Investment Research assessed the potential impact: "This bodes well for Sky … We believe that a lighter-touch approach would result in a far better and fairer outcome for Sky, the consumer and the pay market. This could result in a valuation of over 750p versus circa 650p under Ofcom's current proposals."

In plain English, if the Conservatives come to power and abolish Ofcom, expect a £1 share price rise for Sky – worth some £1.7bn ...

Cameron's office says there was "no contact with News International" about Ofcom but history should not be ignored.

The Murdoch press has a long record of winning pay-back from the political leaders it backs – and it has recently swung behind Cameron.

In fact, it is so ordinary that too few political commentators bother to keep remarking on the malign influence this man has had on our politics for the past 30 years ...

Guardian 11 July 2009

The BBC Trust today published its report into the talent costs of British television, which it ordered a year ago in the wake of public concerns about licence fee money paid to stars such as Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton.

However, the report concluded that there was no evidence that the BBC was paying more than the market price for leading talent compared with its commercial rivals.

Also, there was no evidence that the BBC was "systematically" pushing up talent prices, according to the trust.

The report, compiled by consultants Oliver and Ohlbaum at a cost of £165,000, did not name any stars or list individual salaries - a move defended by the BBC Trust, which said the information was commercially sensitive.

O&O's report did reveal that the total spend for on-screen and on-air talent across all BBC outputs had increased by around 6% a year over the past three years, with total spending on the top 50 talent growing faster than this.

The BBC spent around £242m on on-screen and on-air talent in the 12 months to the end of March 2007, representing around 5.6% of its total licence fee expenditure.

On BBC radio, the report said the corporation had until recently been increasing talent fee rates on average while commercial radio was slashing them.

"The report shows the BBC is not negatively distorting the UK's market for talent on television and that overall it is achieving deals which represent value for money," Lyons said.

"We will keep the pressure up to ensure the best deals are reached for licence fee payers and will review progress in 12 months' time."

The report pointed to increasing competition for talent among commercial television broadcasters as the main factor in pushing up talent costs, but Lyons said the BBC had a duty to develop new talent so it was not overly reliant on big established names.

"The BBC has to be prepared to walk away from deals that do not offer good value to the audience and to equip itself to do this by continually bringing on new talent and through good succession planning," he added.

The trust said the BBC could do more to achieve value for money by improving some of its processes, in particular by bringing a "more consistent and systematic approach" to gathering independent data and "subjecting deals to more rigorous challenge".

"I do understand that many people will continue to question the salaries paid to some BBC performers," Lyons said.

"These high payments can be particularly difficult to accept when wages elsewhere, including in other parts of the BBC, are under pressure.

"I hope that, because the trust has had a good look at this I can at least give licence fee payers some assurance that the BBC is working hard to meet its obligations both to deliver quality and to keep the cost of its talent under control."

Ross is on a reported £18m over three years; while Norton is said to have secured a £5m deal over two years.

BBC Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles earns £630,000 a year and Jeremy Paxman gets £1m, according to reports. ...

Guardian 02 June 2008

It's 06 May 2008 and The Independent does it again. The main leader is headed:

A competitive edge that Britain needs to preserve

Sir Martin Sorrell's ... threat to move the headquarters of WPP, the world's second-largest advertising company, out of the United Kingdom for tax reasons needs to be taken seriously.

For Sir Martin is not alone in talking about relocation.

In recent weeks, similar noises have been made by other major companies. And two of them – the pharmaceuticals giant Shire, and the publisher United Business Media – have already announced moves to Ireland. There they will pay a rate of 12.5 per cent, compared with 28 per cent in the UK, which is, by any standards, a substantial difference. Shire – which stands to cut its tax bill by more than half – is the first FTSE-100 company to be leaving the UK purely for tax reasons. ...

It is in response to the concerns of company chief executives that Gordon Brown has set up a tax review – a delaying tactic if ever there was one. But difficult decisions may lie ahead – at a time when the overall economic climate makes it particularly difficult to make them. Britain's international competitiveness has been the reason why, the Government insists, we have nothing to fear from globalisation. If, however, it turns out that big corporations are not crying wolf and Britain really is lagging behind, then our corporate tax regime may need another look. That would be far preferable to a retreat into protectionism. Then indeed that trickle of threatened departures could become a flood.

The Independent 06 May 2008

This is all impeccable neoliberal thinking - "Standortkonkurrenz" - under globalisation governments must do what it takes to make sure footloose corporations employ their workforce, and not someone else's. By this logic UK corporation tax should match that of Ireland. End of. But The Independent has a parallel agenda: climate change, and this is where the third leader enters the debate:

With the honourable exception of Norwich, where they now lead the opposition, the Greens did not cover themselves in glory in last week's elections. In London, where the contest was dominated by the Johnson-Livingstone duel, Sian Berry made a creditable showing. Across the country, though, the Greens generally fell back in those seats they also contested last year.

We offer two tentative explanations: one positive, the other less so. The positive one is that many "green" policies have gone mainstream – cutting carbon emissions, promoting reusable energy and building eco-friendly housing are now official government and opposition policy. The Greens thus have to be more imaginative if they are to make their mark.

The other is that, at a time of economic belt-tightening, some green measures might seem an expensive luxury. There is no reason why this should be so. Environmental responsibility need not cost any more, and should cost a lot less in the long term than profligate consumerism. But the Greens may have to adapt their message to the new austerity. In the meantime, they can console themselves on the way their influence has permeated the mainstream ...

the Independent 06 May 2008

To laugh or to cry?

Sian Berry's "creditable showing" amounted to 3.15% of the first choice votes, and 13.5% of second choice votes. [MR]

As AV is not available in any other electoral venue in England, we cannot know whether or not similar results would have been repeated elsewhere. Certainly, under first-part-the-post, 3.15% is not a figure that supports the Indie's optimism.

However, the suggestion that "their influence has permeated the mainstream", comes only four days after the paper published a report under the heading:

Britons 'will not foot bill to save planet'

More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll. The survey also reveals that most Britons believe "green" taxes on 4x4s, plastic bags and other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our behaviour, while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes. ...

Independent

I had a pretty surreal experience in TV land on Monday.

I had the privilege of appearing on the Fox Business channel, to talk about why oil prices are so high and what the future holds for oil.

In typical TV interview format, I was set up in opposition to another energy analyst who is well known for his cornucopian views. Him on one side of the "panel," me on the other, and the moderator.

You probably know what happened next: I sat there trying to stare at a barely visible camera in a small studio in San Francisco with only an ear bud and no video, thanks to the 5-second delay from New York, while the moderator gave the vast majority of our two short segments to the cornucopian, who called me a "peak freak." ... he carried on about how technology will save the day, achieving vast increases in oil extraction, and about the 12 trillion barrels of oil left to exploit worldwide, I could barely stifle myself.

Unfortunately, they afforded me no opportunity to respond to any of those points. They only seemed to want my opposing view—that oil would stay more or less permanently over $100 a barrel—to make the segment "fair and balanced."

I tried to explain the importance of flow rates, the concept of a plateau at the top of Hubbert's Peak, the limits of enhanced oil recovery, and the time it takes to bring new solutions to market, but my words seemed to fall on deaf ears.

As any student of peak oil investing knows, this stuff is complex. It's hard to talk about in TV sound bites. Especially when you have to explain the gulf between the 12 trillion barrels of original oil in place that my opponent was talking about, and the 1 trillion barrels of remaining recoverable oil that I was talking about.

Presumably, Fox Business thought it best to leave it to the viewer to figure that one out. ...

Energy and Capital 30 April 2008

The grievance of the Grangemouth workers is that the plant's owner, Ineos, intends to scrap the final salary pension scheme for new entrants and to reduce the provision for existing members.

Discussions broke up last week without agreement. It is possible to have some sympathy with the Grangemouth workers, especially given the considerable profits being generated by Ineos. But at the same time, it should be noted that these workers are hardly alone in seeing their final salary scheme dismantled. This has happened across the private sector in recent years. Less than 20 per cent of final salary schemes are still open to new members, and those that remain are demanding increasingly large contributions.

In the broader context, this crisis must be seen as part of the global energy squeeze. It has been clear for some time that global demand for oil has been outstripping supply. ...

The Independent 28 April 2008

Others have drawn attention to The Independent's ecological campaigning co-existing alongside pages of corporate-consumerist advertising, a charge also levelled at New Scientist.

The latter have pointed out that there is a "Chinese Wall" between their content and their advertising. The Independent, however, frequently extols vehicles which one might have thought clashed with their campaign against CO2 emisions, and does so in a manner which leans towards the Jeremy Clarkson school of climate change:

If a high-revving hot hatch is your thing, look no further. David Wilkins and our panel try out a rather uncivilised Civic

SPECIFICATIONS

Model: Honda Civic Type R

Price: £18,000

Engine: 2.0-litre petrol

Power: 198bhp at 7,800rpm

Torque: 142lb/ft at 5,600rpm

Performance: 146mph, 0-60mph in 6.6 seconds, 31.0mpg; CO2: 215g/km

Worth considering: Ford Focus ST, Vauxhall Astra VXR, Volkswagen Golf GTI

If you've already read anything at all about Honda's latest Type R, one thing will probably have stuck in your mind about it – while it has generally been well received, the consensus is that this, the sportiest version of the Civic, isn't quite as hard-edged a machine as its predecessor.

This view seems to have become so firmly established that I don't suppose that anything that I our any of our panel of readers say is going to change it. But it's still worth trying to put things into some sort of perspective, because by any standard other than that set by its forerunner, the latest R is still pretty zingy.

A Golf GTI, to take one rival as an example, is a bit more expensive than the Type R, but has an engine that's about the same size and delivers an almost identical power output. The two cars, though, are completely different in character; the GTI provides far more maximum torque, and this is available over a wide range, starting at just 1,800rpm compared with the 5,600rpm required in the Type R. Maximum power is delivered at 5,100rpm in the GTI, but at a giddy 7,800rpm in the Type R.

The reason for this is that the GTI uses a turbocharger to get these results, while the Type R's engine relies on clever valve-gear and, above all, revs; its red line is at 8,000rpm and it gets to about 8,300rpm before the rev limiter kicks in – numbers almost no other affordable car on sale today can match.

This means that the Type R, when you are in the right sort of mood on the right sort of road, can be exhilarating; when those conditions don't apply, the need to work it hard in order to make progress can become a little bit wearing. Still, Honda is to be warmly commended for giving us something different, a comment that applies not just to the engine, but to the car as a whole, which is packed with unusual detailing, from its brightly lit instrument panel, which wouldn't look out of place on the Starship Enterprise, to the funky triangular cut-outs in the rear for the exhaust tail-pipes.

The Independent 19 April 2008

(*) On 7th February 2007 the European Commission published its key draft proposal (COM 2007 0019) EC legislation to limit average CO2 emissions from the European fleet of cars to 120g CO2/km.

European emission standards

2020 car targets

MEPs have called for car makers to be set long-term targets for CO2 emissions now and not in a later round of consultations.

In its first debate on the Commission’s proposals to set a binding average of 130 g/km by 2012, the European Parliament’s environment committee said targets set now should run until at least 2020 – this differs from the Commission’s decision not to set a target beyond 2012.

MEPs suggested in a resolution last October that the target for 2020 should be 95 g/km and 70 g/km by 2025.

T&E believes the targets can be even stricter.

European Federation for Transport and Environment 16 April 2008

We are able to stick to our public spending plans for the next three years because Britain has lower levels of government debt than most of our competitors. The government can borrow more for the next few years without threatening our economic stability.

So our plan for how Britain deals with the global crisis is in place: Low inflation to keep interest rates down and new measures to ensure those lower interest rates are passed on to mortgage holders; sticking to our public spending plans; new support for business investment; cleaning up banks' balance sheets and boosting global trade.

For 11 years we have kept the economy growing even when there have been recessions elsewhere. And we will continue to guide Britain's economy by making the right long-term decisions.

NOTW 13 April 2008

Hours of time and acres of space have been devoted to this 10-year saga.

The evening of 07 April saw even the BBC's 'flagship' current affairs programme spend time interviewing a spokesperson for Mr Mohommed al Fayed as to whether or not the verdict would bring to an end his accusations against the Royal Family.

On the same night the Al Jazeera news channel's immediate concerns were riots in Egypt provoked by low wages and rising food prices, and the impact of rising rice prices on countries like Haiti and the Philipines.

These did not figure on Newsnight.   [Anorak]

Such concerns did not touch the Evening Standard's story last August concerning the climate protest at Heathrow Airport.

This has all the elements of propaganda, lies, smear, and innuendo, which are directed by the corporate press at anyone who actually believes what the scientific community is telling us.

In short, it exemplifies climate-denial in action, it turns an attempt to raise the biggest Category B story of the century into a Category A story about ...

... a typical bunch of students, mature students and perennially unemployed ...

... who are presented as would-be terrorists out to cause mayhem within the airport, and who, in any case, are probably benefit scroungers.

Our writer joins the climate camp outside Heathrow airport, where 2,000 protesters are expected to congregate this week.

Around the camp was a heavy police cordon. The advance party of activists, mostly in their twenties or thirties - a typical bunch of students, mature students and perennially unemployed - were joined by several veterans in their fifties and sixties. They were well organised and well supplied. New arrivals were asked to donate £30 a day towards the £40,000 cost of running the week-long camp. The money would also pay for communally cooked food. I stumped up the money, hoping I would blend in and not wishing to stand out. ...

Rashid Razaq, Evening Standard 14 August 2007

Reading the full article there is not the slightest attempt to offer any balance, or any depth: why the protesters are there, the contribution of aviation to climate change, the role played by the neoliberal addiction to growth, the problem posed by peak oil.

These issues are off the agenda with Associated Newspapers, which hardly comes as a surprise.

Their job is to turn every story into a Category A job. Read it, blow a valve about the state of the country, and move on to the sports page, avoiding at all costs the business pages on the way through!

Two of the Daily Mail's columnists - Melanie Philips, and Tom Utley - are arch climate deniers.

Mr Utley's attempt to deny that the melting of the polar ice caps would raise sea levels involved an 'experiment' with his gin and tonic and an ice cube.

Presumably Mr Utley has never had a burst pipe at the end of a big-freeze? Well, we don't get many of those, these days, Tom: it's called global warming.

Why am I sceptical about global warming?

Writing in The Guardian, George Monbiot challenges Rashid Razaq's factual reporting:

How did Razaq see protesters "checking out the security fences"? The camp was at least a kilometre from the airport fence - he could not have seen anyone from there.

When challenged by the campers, the Evening Standard claimed that "Mr Razaq had left the camp to go to a nearby petrol station to buy food when he was returning to the camp with a colleague, Sebastian Meyer.

Their route back took them close to the perimeter fence of the airport, where he saw two men whom he recognised from the camp. One was trying to climb the fence while another kept watch."

The Evening Standard contends that "it was a sufficiently light night to recognise faces".

There are several problems with this story. As photos and maps produced by the campers show, neither the petrol station nor any part of the route to the camp is close enough to the fence to recognise faces.

Meyer is a professional photographer. If, somehow, they had seen people at the fence, and managed to recognise them as protesters, why did they not take photographs?

I put this question to the Evening Standard's managing editor, Doug Wills. "He didn't take any photos of it because it was pitch black."

But the Standard had already claimed that "it was a sufficiently light night to recognise faces". I asked Wills for a map reference for the section of fence. He has not been able to provide one.

And why, if one of the protesters was trying to climb the fence - a more serious matter than merely "checking it out" - did Razaq not report this? ...

[GDN]

HERE'S a startling statistic. By the time the average US schoolchild leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed more than 8000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on television. If the child also has access to violent computer games or films, or cable TV, these figures will be far, far higher. Anyone who claims that art reflects society might want to take a good hard look at their neighbourhood.

Yet every time a study claims to have found a link between aggression, violence, educational or behavioural problems and TV programmes or computer games, there are cries of incredulity, even (ironically) anger. People seem to doubt that such a link exists, or think the evidence is generally weak.

That view is not shared by the vast majority of researchers who study the subject. They see a clear link between media consumption and aggression, and also mounting evidence for an increased risk of attentional, behavioural and educational problems with extended exposure to TV and computer games. They have been in little doubt for around half a century (see "Mind-altering media"), and over that time scientific confidence in the detrimental effects of media violence has only increased. Why, then, the disconnect with public perception?

Any criticism of a multibillion-dollar business is bound to provoke a sharp rebuttal. Scientists involved in the violence debate regularly draw parallels between the tactics of the film industry and those of tobacco companies, which continued to deny a link between smoking and lung cancer long after the scientific case was firmly established. The film industry has funded books, legal defences and interpretations of research that routinely deny any ill effects of on-screen violence. ...

Just as in the climate change debate, public confidence in a scientific conclusion backed by overwhelming evidence is being undermined by naysayers who point out minor errors and inconsistencies. ...

Here's one way to weigh up the evidence. Meta-analysis shows that the statistical correlation between exposure to media violence and aggression is not quite as strong as that linking smoking to an increased risk of lung cancer. It is, however, double the strength of the correlation between passive smoking and lung cancer, twice as strong as the link between condom use and reduction in risk of catching HIV, about three times the strength of the idea that calcium increases bone strength, and more than three times as strong as the correlation between time spent doing homework and academic achievement. ...

The film and gaming industries are not about to go away, and indeed, in a free society, why should they? But we can all make choices as individuals and parents. Each time you bawl out a stranger over the phone, or lose it with another driver from the safety of your car, consider that these too are aggressive acts which studies have shown are more likely after repeated exposure to on-screen violence; the impact is not limited to assault and murder. It seems inappropriate to keep calling this harmless entertainment.

New Scientist 21 April 2007

There can be no disguising the fact that the open skies aviation issue poses some rather uncomfortable questions for a newspaper like The Independent, which is serious about protecting the environment and yet also supports the free market.   [My italics - Tom]

Few would defend the existing restrictions on transatlantic air traffic.

There is no reason why a handful of British and American airlines should be the only carriers that can operate freely on this route.

The European Union was right to get rid of this piece of shameless protectionism. Doing so will boost competition and should result in a superior service for passengers. ...

... this reform will also, by bringing down airfares, eventually increase the volume of transatlantic air traffic ...

But before we conclude that the two principles held by this newspaper are incompatible, it is worth looking more closely at the issue of aviation.

While the monopoly on transatlantic flights is manifestly wrong, that is not to say that the feebleness of the international community in curbing the number of flights being taken is right.

In other words, handing a handful of airlines a lucrative monopoly is a very unsatisfactory way of keeping down air traffic volumes.

There is a far more effective and honest way. Measures such as a hefty tax on flights, tax on aviation fuel and restrictions on airport expansion are required ...

The Independent 23 March 2007

You can see The Independent's problem: it wants more flying, but less.