The Daily Mirror was today fined £50,000 and The Sun £18,000 for contempt of court over publication of articles following the arrest of a suspect by police investigating the killing of landscape architect Joanna Yeates ...

Attorney General Dominic Grieve ... said the two newspapers "lost the plot" ...

"They just went on this extraordinary frolic - vilifying Mr Jefferies in a way that was, frankly, outrageous.

"By doing this they made any possibility of a successful prosecution very much more difficult.

"I have rarely seen a level of vilification to an individual of this type."     [Ind]

In the last few days the following reports have confirmed the width and depth of the malpractice in the press:

• The detective in charge of the investigation into the killing of Sarah Payne 'now believes' his phone was hacked;     [Ind]



• Sara Payne has been told by Scotland Yard that her phone was hacked; [BBC]



• Glenn Mulcaire claims he acted 'on the instructions of others';    [Gdn]



• Baroness Buscombe, chair of the Press Compaints Commission, is to 'step down' in January 2012.    [Gdn]



• The non-Murdoch tabloid press - which has so far had a free ride in the hacking affair - is now said to be targetting Louise Mensch MP with 'relevant' questions such as "Can you confirm you are pregnant?"
  [NS]

The Media Standards Trust told The Guardian:

As we have previously argued, the fundamental problems of the PCC are structural – in terms of its lack of independence from the industry, the opacity of its funding arrangements, and its lack of adequate formal powers.    [Gdn]

In other words, it's a figleaf for an industry where "dark arts" are the norm and a moral compass is something that points the way to the local Press Club.     [FEN]

The question that needs addressing, however, is not simply the fact that the bulk of the press/media in Britain is in the grip of corporate self-interest, it is the fact that critical thinking - crap detection - appears to be in such poor shape. The two things are, of course, interconnected.    [CMMC]

A.C. Grayling's seminal article - 'The Importance of Knowing How' - claims that the study of critical thinking ("theory of knowledge") is only required by the International Baccalaureate.   [NS]

I have done a less-than-in-depth trawl of the net to find out to what extent critical thinking is embedded in Michael Gove's English Baccalaureate, but could only find specific mentions on the sites of specific schools, mostly in the private sector.

I would - and this maybe prejudice on my part - find any interest in critical thinking on the part of an education minister in the last thirty years highly improbable.

From time-to-time criticism of an over-emphasis on 'facts' get reported - Gdn and Gdn - but probably the best instance of the way education is now viewed came when the-then Higher Education Minister - Bill Rammell - told BBC News that ...

"What you might describe as subjects which students see as being really non-vocational, like fine art, philosophy, classical studies, have seen big reductions.

"An initial reading of figures suggests to me that there is some evidence that students are choosing subjects they think are more vocationally beneficial.

"If that's what they are doing I don't see that as necessarily being a bad thing," he said.

Asked if there was any merit in students' taking courses in history and philosophy, Mr Rammell said:

"Of course there is and if people want to do that I am not going to stop them.

"But if students are making a calculation about which degree is going to get them the best job and the best opportunity in life, I see that as being no bad thing."    [BBC]

The reality is that a neoliberal education is manifestly not about contesting the new world order, which is fine by the corporate media.

The provision of varieties of, er, 'entertainment', fill the gaps. And if that involves prying into the private lives of people who might contest the lack of contest, then prurience takes precedence.

John Yates faces champagne quiz

John Yates, Andy Hayman, Peter Clarke should all be incarcerated in one of Her Majesty's hostelries. Instead they turn up to the Leveson Inquiry - Yates by video link from Bahrain where he has an 'advisory' post to one of the regions' uglier regimes - and render a passable immitation of old lags in the local nick telling plod they're innocent.

A News of the World journalist was told to “call in all those bottles of champagne” to get inside information about a terrorist plot from a senior policeman, the Leveson Inquiry heard today.

John Yates, Scotland Yard's former head of counter-terrorism, admitted he "may well" have drunk champagne with crime reporter Lucy Panton, but denied he did her any favours in return ...

Ind  01 Mar 2012

John Yates, Andy Hayman, Peter Clarke appear

Is Rupert Murdoch a fit and proper person to run a company?

Bahrain doctors jailed for treating injured protesters

Rick Santorum and the Politics of Theology

More than any major candidate in recent times, Mr. Santorum has derogated the federal government on religious grounds.

On issue after issue ... he has not only disagreed with decades of federal policy, but has accused those who implement it of a conscious and deliberate effort to destroy the foundations of faith ...

Because Mr. Obama cares about public health, like most presidents and governors and mayors and lawmakers, he builds his public policy on the recommendations of scientists and medical experts.

That infuriates those, like Mr. Santorum, who say that divine law should come first ...

NYT  20 Feb 2012

Rick Santorum hits Barack Obama on energy and climate

Speaking on Monday at a campaign stop in Ohio, Mr Santorum hit out at the concept of global warming, and said that as president he would support the coal industry.

"I refer to global warming as not climate science, but political science," he said.

Two days earlier, Mr Santorum told voters that Mr Obama's agenda was based on "some phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible" ...

Mr Obama recently refused permission for a Canadian firm to build a major pipeline, called Keystone XL, from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico.

Environmental concerns shaped his eventual decision, drawing criticism from those backing the pipeline and calling for greater US energy independence.

Mr Santorum said on Monday that he would approve the pipeline if elected ...

BBC NEWS  20 Feb 2012

Janet Daley's Feudalist Neoliberalism

The best use of £50bn QE?

Bypass the banks and go direct to green projects

tonyp1
10 February 2012 7:55PM

Someone is having a post-modern laugh at everyone else's expense. What used to be devaluation is now called "quantitative easing". What is actually the privatisation of everything is called "The Big Society". What used to be referred to as the working class are now "the squeezed middle".

This type of vacuous, euphemistic nonsense is designed simply to fool us. Why does it work so well? Because we're finding it harder and harder to think for ourselves. And why is that? Because we are increasingly encouraged to rely on others to do it for us. This is the real dependency we are suffering from.

Modern politics is a confection, and so is it's lexis. Once we start to speak their language, we lose grip of reality. We live instead in a comfortable bubble of illusion where the soft repetition of oxymoronic terms like "responsible capitalsm" lull us into a false sense of security.

The capitalist economy is dead, no matter how much money they print or borrow. We are all just acting like King Lear, sitting there thinking we can detect a faint breathe emanating from the corpse of the our oh-so-beloved gift of a consumer society.  [Gdn]

Government as Displacement Activity