Friday, April 15, 2016 

Vectors.

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Thursday, April 14, 2016 

Still got the Whittingdale blues.

Just in case the whole Whittingdale thing wasn't silly enough, here comes Nichi Hodgson in the Graun denouncing the culture secretary for in her view throwing Olivia King to the wolves:
But being scared for your own reputation shouldn’t be reason enough for you to sully somebody else’s. By stating over and over again that he had not known his former lover was a sex worker, and that he had ended the relationship immediately upon finding out, Whittingdale has thrown her to the red-top wolves, making sure to thoroughly shame her in the process. Unfortunately, Whittingdale seems blind to the fact that it’s not only his former partner he’s distanced himself from, it’s his own spine as well.
 Except Whittingdale hasn't stated anything over and over again. The only comment he has made was the statement released on Tuesday night.  When doorstepped yesterday morning he referred the reporters to the statement and said he wouldn't be saying anything further.  Hodgson does at least accept that if Whittingdale, as he says, was unaware of his partner's work then he
might have felt a justifiable sense of betrayal. But the fact that Whittingdale was so quick to drop her when the tabloid press revealed her identity to him, and is now so keen to stress that immediacy in his defence, doesn’t come across as the reaction of a hurt yet honourable man.
I'm probably one of the least qualified people to pass judgement on relationships, but keeping something like the fact you're a sex worker from a prospective long-term partner (if again that's what Whittingdale was looking for; we're all making huge assumptions here) must surely be considered a deal breaker, especially if active deceit was involved.  We can all comment on prudishness, shaming and hypocrisy, only to come to very different conclusions when it involves us personally.  It's similar to pornography; we might have no problem with consuming it, regard it as the canary in the free speech mine, but plenty would at the same time not want friends or relatives to be playing a starring role in it.  Such are our hang-ups.

In any case, the genuinely guilty of prudery here are barely so much as mentioned by Hodgson.  Yes, Whittingdale could well of said yes, I dated a sex worker, who wants to fucking touch me, only he's no doubt embarrassed by the whole affair also.  No one has disputed his statement as yet, more than suggesting that he was in the dark and ended the relationship because he felt he had been lied to.

Should we be making judgements on this as a whole in any case?  Just as with the other privacy story of the week, it's disingenuous to claim it isn't about that but in fact this for the reason there would be no story whatsoever had the tabloids not decided politician dates dominatrix was worth investigating, even if they didn't end up publishing it.  The irony here is the people who have truly shamed King are those who otherwise claim to be against press intrusion, or normally critical when sex scandals are played out by those whose natural habitat is the gutter.  There is a case for asking why it wasn't published, but it's been hijacked by those whose cause as Ian Dunt has said has degenerated far from where it started off.

All in all, a thoroughly depressing week.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2016 

The Whittingdale blues.

Absolutely nothing about the John Whittingdale/dominatrix story seems to make sense.

Let's then take it one step at a time.  If we're to believe Whittingdale's statement from last night, he had no idea that Olivia King was an escort, let alone the proud keeper of a dungeon.  When he did become aware of that fact, he ended the relationship.  No one seems to be as yet disputing it or claiming Whittingdale to be telling lies, so presumably the culture secretary's claim that he met his girlfriend of a few months on Match.com is accurate.

Now, unless I was reading something into the original Byline piece that simply wasn't there, as my take from it was that Whittingdale knew she was an escort and presumably was paying for her to accompany him to events, this is even less of a story than it first appeared.  Even if Nick Mutch is not explicit in saying that was the case, he definitely does claim that "Whittingdale's relationships with prostitutes are said to be well known in the London underworld".  He also quotes an unnamed senior Labour MP as having seen Whittingdale in the Houses of Parliament with a prostitute, although he wasn't sure if she was King or not.

Next, we have the James Cusick piece from Sunday.  This has since been described by another writer on openDemocracy, where the piece has also been hosted, as offering "little to substantiate" a cover-up, while David Elstein points out a number of flaws in Cusick's reasoning.  All of the investigations Cusick details apart from the Independent's took place while the relationship was on-going, before Whittingdale became culture secretary, although he was chair of the influential media committee.  Cusick claims that the Mirror may have dropped its investigation because Whittingdale could have launched a new inquiry into phone-hacking at the newspaper group, although does so in a half-hearted manner.  Similarly, without detailing how, Cusick implies that a similar investigation at the Mail on Sunday was dropped because Whittingdale was "viewed as an asset" by the Mail group.  Finally, Cusick details how things went with the Independent's own belated investigation, attempting to widen out the justification for a rather basic salacious story to claims about expenses not being paid, then to possible hypocrisy charges over Whittingdale's membership of the Cornerstone group.  Again, it ended with the editor shutting it down without apparent explanation.

To some, that four separate newspaper groups all failed to bring the story to print is indicative of a cover-up.  It's also certainly true that equally lacking stories about the private lives of politicians have been printed of late, including Brooks Newmark flopping the old johnson out of his pyjamas for an undercover hack, and the unforgettable Lord Sewel, in red bra, snorting cocaine off the breast of the sex worker who stitched him up.  A far more prosaic explanation is that even by the standards of those two stories, Whittingdale's adventures in online dating were much less exciting.  He's divorced, he didn't know King was a dominatrix in her spare time, and the only evidence they had were some very unrevealing photographs.  Why would the papers other than Independent drop the story on the basis Whittingdale could be useful to them in the future when they couldn't be certain of his career trajectory?  The Mirror phone hacking explanation also doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

This isn't to take the claims of former and current hacks at first sightAs Francis Wheen quoted by Anorak has it, both the bizarre arguments being put forward by Hacked Off representatives that this was someone whose privacy should have been invaded, and the claims from the Thurlbecks and Wallises of this world are unbelievable.  Clearly the story was of interest to the tabloids, and the Independent; they just in the end decided it couldn't stand up.  I don't think Leveson is of any relevance here at all; the decision was simply made that MP unwittingly dates sex worker is a bit sad rather than scandalous.  You can see this in the way the Indie flailed around desperately for any justification long after the fact, as I described is always the way yesterday.  First you get the story, then you make something up to claim it's in the public interest.  Like Flying Rodent, I think this story would have been more in the public interest than the case the tabloids are up in arms about, but that's barely.  The reason why there's such a disparity is obvious, also: pop star up to shameless sexual antics sells papers; MP gets todger out on Twitter wins awards, if that.

Likewise, the cries from Labour that Whittingdale should stand aside from his role in directing legislation concerning regulation of the press due to his conflict of interest don't now really apply when, err, any conflict is out in the open.  The sword of damocles Chris Bryant lyrically brought up, even if we accept it was a thing despite there being no evidence, is now gone thanks to the exposing of the story.  As Roy Greenslade and others have argued, there does seem to be a lot of overstating of Whittingdale's role.  Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act shouldn't be imposed for the reason that it is grossly unfair, nor has there ever been a realistic suggestion it was going to be brought in; similarly, there is no appetite whatsoever among the Tories as a whole for staging the second part of the Leveson inquiry.  It's hardly just Whittingdale.  The same goes for bias against the BBC: the Tories don't like Auntie, simple as.  Whoever ends up being culture secretary you can guarantee will be just as critical as Whittingdale has been.

I can then understand why people think something stinks, agree this will certainly be something to bring up the next time a politician is caught with their pants down by a newspaper justifying their expose as in the public interest, and still think that on this occasion at least some are looking just that little bit too hard.  Which includes the BBC, Private Eye, et al, who now the story is out there are justified to ask the questions they have.  I also agree with Anna Raccoon when she writes on how Olivia King has every right to be thoroughly cheesed off with the press a whole.

Is that OK with everyone?

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Tuesday, April 12, 2016 

Orwell, as ever, had it right.

We all know the famous Orwell line, don't we?  "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people who is banging whom".  Good ol' Eric Blair was thinking of the scandal involving the 3rd Duke of Massingberd, who was discovered in flagrante with a scullery maid called Bill, a dog called God and the young MP for Buckingham, Doris Bonkers.  Massingberd had succeeded in cowing most of the press through a combination of legal threats and blackmail, involving a recruited squad of bootblacks offering complimentary happy endings, only for an irrepressible young upstart from Australia called Wurzel to expose all concerned in his short-lived penny sheet the Fucks of the World.  Wurzel was sent to the Scrubs for 2 years for breaching the Obscene Publications Act, but Fleet Street was never the same again.

It's the humbuggery of it all that gets you more than anything.  The case of PJS and YMA has allowed the press to reprise their previous howls of rage from a few years ago over the brief super-injunction craze, despite the vast majority of such orders not being super injunctions as super injunctions prevented even the fact the order was in place from being reported.  It is after all remarkably easy to pose as a free speech martyr when your version of freedom of expression extends only as far as shag 'n tell and every so often running a borderline racist comment piece.  Say what you like about Charlie Hebdo, but no one is ever going to shoot up the offices of the Sun.

At least the Sun is entitled to feel pissed off its exclusive has been given out free to everyone.  What really grinds the gears is the "oh, we couldn't care less about all the sordid details, who did what to whom, but this is far more important than that" crowd.  No it isn't.   If you really couldn't care less about the sex lives of consenting adults, regardless of status, then you wouldn't be touching this "story" whatsoever.  No one involved prior to AB and CD going to the Sun was unhappy with what went on; they suddenly decided for whatever reason to get some cash out of it.  Only then are the angles on hypocrisy looked for, justifications however lacking or laughable clutched at.

At very best, there is the possibility the argument that persuaded the appeal court judges to grant the injunction, that the effect the revelation would have on the young children of PJS and YMA would be unfair on them, could be used by far greater scoundrels in the future to prevent disclosure of their wrongdoing.  That's all it is though, a possibility.  All the previous caterwauling over injunctions a few years back due to the danger to free speech failed to materialise.  Judges stopped granting them; celebrities stopped seeking them.  Why would anyone seek a gagging order that had the opposite effect?

So it is now with PJS and YMA, fairly or not.  They had an open relationship while supposedly giving the impression of being a committed, monogamous couple.  That turns out to have been enough for their slightly unorthodox sex life to be exposed, as it has been, if not by the English and Welsh press.  To regard this as some great crime against the right of the tabloids to make money you have to either be unbearably pompous, or part of an industry that defines the public's right to know on exactly such a pecuniary basis.

It would be easier to take also if say the rest of the media had rallied round when the Guardian was being threatened by the government with prior restraint over the Snowden leaks.  Instead the likes of the Mail took the side of the government and the securocrats.  GCHQ coming round and smashing the hard drive with the documents on is obviously one thing, while the danger posed by "unelected" judges deciding what YOU can and can't know about the disgusting proclivities of those who can afford to project an image is quite another.

Which leaves pretty much only the "absurdity" that it's just newspapers and England and Wales based media that can't name those involved.  Not that this stops them from running otherwise non-stories about them, say, or dropping the broadest of hints, or telling everyone precisely which sites are naming them.  When tabloids start playing the victim, the game ought to be up.  Rather sad when it's left to err, Holly Willoughby, to cut through the bullshit.

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Monday, April 11, 2016 

There's a word for what our democracy has become: oligarchy.

It's not often I disagree with Chris over at Stumbling and Mumbling.  You can chortle all you like at Charles Moore declaring David Cameron to have been caught in the wealth trap, but it's a useful phrase, he writes.  And of course to a degree he's right, you can be trapped by any number of circumstances of your birth, although it's a hell of a lot easier to dispose of the wealth you inherit than it is to escape being born into poverty.

While Moore may be pleading for understanding of Cameron's position, his not as bright colleagues elsewhere in the media and within the Tories are instead asking for sympathy.  Both the Mail and the Telegraph today ran leaders denouncing the iniquities of inheritance tax, the tax which as Moore himself points out was paid by only 17,917 people who died in 2012-13, out of the 500,000+ whom passed on.  Their real beef was that Cameron had received further criticism for having been given a £200,000 gift from his mother, another of those perfectly legal tax planning moves, described as an "equalisation" by Downing Street.  Joylon Maugham might have declared this to be tax avoidance, but practically no one else in the industry dedicated to just such planning does.  Funny that.

Here, finally, is what a week of coverage of the Panana Papers has been leading up to.  Most of the Tory press was happy to see Dave taking a beating at first as they believe it will damage him vis-a-vis the EU referendum campaign, where Dave effectively is the remain campaign.  Once it gets into the realm of all politicians having to publish their tax returns, which in turn leads to demands that those sneering from the sidelines also get their self assessments out for the lads, it's clear this cannot be allowed to continue.  When the questions move on to lump sums gifted in the expectation of income tax not needing to be paid, then the squealing really starts to begin.  Then we hear the cries about the politics of envy, about the enemies of wealth creation, that this is really about how "they hate anyone who has got a hint of wealth in them", and that if we're not careful, we'll have a parliament full of "low achievers".

Poor little rich people.  All they want is to look after their families.  What could be more natural than that?  Why should both they and their children be punished when bequeathing vast sums, property and all the rest when they go to meet their maker?  Isn't this income being taxed twice over?  Isn't opposing this in fact opposing aspiration?  Don't we all want to make good by our kids?  Why in short, does the left and Labour hate our freedoms?

Once the right was just as indignant about unearned wealth as the left.  Alan Clark might have judged another Tory sneering at Michael Heseltine as the type who had to buy his own furniture as cutting but snobby, yet there was also concern about what the passing on of vast sums and houses encouraged.  Not more hard work, but indolence, idleness.  Now David Cameron declares that there is nothing more natural than wanting to pass on your home to your children.  This only applies obviously to those who own their home, while everyone renting or even more shockingly, in what remains of social housing, should expect at any minute to be turfed out.  Earning more than you once did?  You're going to have to pay to stay.  Have a spare bedroom?  We'll deduct that from your benefits if you don't downsize, even if there isn't anywhere to downsize to.  Want to live near to where your family and friends are?  Tough luck if that'll breach the benefits cap; you'll have to move somewhere cheaper.  Unable to so much as put down a deposit thanks to the paradox of astronomical rents?  I feel your pain, says the prime minister renting out the Kensington home bought with the help of dad and a previous inheritance from an aunt for over 90 grand a year.

Over £90,000 a year just in rent.  Alan Duncan ought to be careful about who he describes as "low achievers", as Dave by many yardsticks would fall into the category.  About only one proper job, and that as PR for Carlton.  Remember that by the standards of Dave's set, he and Osborne are relative paups, George made to describe himself as a "despicable cunt" for having gone to St Paul's rather than Eton.  To most people this a world beyond imagination, where some will be lucky to earn in a decade what Dave pulled in from rent in a year.  This is the world that the Mail, Torygraph and Dave want to defend at all costs, where "aspiration", something the middle classes do, is pulled out to defend the ultra rich forever living in the style to which they have become accustomed.  The inheritance tax threshold might be rising to a million, to the point where practically no one will pay it, yet still at the smallest hint that gifts might come under suspicion the cry goes up.

Without using the word, what Adyita Chakraborty so accurately described in his Graun piece this morning is oligarchy.  Sure, we hear fine words every so often about social mobility, and of course a few of the best and brightest rise to the top while some squander their inheritance, falling down the pecking order, but otherwise when it comes to wealth the Tory party could not be more dedicated to conservatism in its truest sense.  Almost every move on the tax and welfare fronts since the Tories came to power in 2010 has been to screw the poorest, throw the odd bone or two to the middle to give the impression they're on their side, and ensure the top stay at the top.  


In this if nothing else the right-wing media is completely on side.  They too claim to be standing up for the middle while working, literally, for the top.  It was instructive whom the prime minister chose to mention in his statement today in a dig at the media.  It wasn't the weirdo Barclay twins hidden away at their flat pack castle on Brecqhou he dropped, or Jonathan Harmsworth, aka Viscount Rothermere, the non-dom head honco at the Mail.  No, it was the BBC, the Graun and Islington council who were brought up for investing in offshore funds.

The impression this is meant to send is clear.  Everyone's at it.  Nothing to see here.  Except we're not all at it.  Most of us do though dream of having enough spare cash lying around to be able to squirrel it away hidden from HMRC, so for plenty that will be enough.  The belief is those still not sated can be dismissed as simply jealous, envious, as so twisted in their politics that they would rather do right by the state than by their family.  Perhaps it will hold for a while.
 

Yet a crunch is coming.  A point is going to be reached when it becomes clear just how loaded the system currently is.  It might take another crash, but it's going to come, such are the frustrations that are without question building and every so often find expression in outbreaks of anger like the one seen over the past week.  And when it does, no amount of pleading, appeals to authority or media attempts to push back against it are going to quell the demands for fundamental economic recalibration.  A smarter political class would see what's on the horizon, and act now.  This for the most part is not a smart political class.

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Friday, April 08, 2016 

Venom.

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Thursday, April 07, 2016 

Scream and scream and scream. (With added Dodgy Dave bonus!)

A long time ago before Channel 4 turned into the same wasteland as all the other main terrestrial channels it made an effort to put on some slightly alternative programming late at nightOne such show was Pets, a forerunner of BBC3's Mongrels, meant to be a sort of parody of Friends only not really at all.  I bring this up only because the entire Brexit campaign seems based around the line spoken by Hamish, after he, Trevor and the parrot are turned into living mummies by a curse.  "I think we have two options.  Option one: we continue to stay calm and think logically until we work out how to free ourselves.  Or we scream and scream and scream like girls until someone rescues us".

And by god, can the Leavers scream.  And whine.  And moan.  And complain.  Everything is a betrayal.  Every argument that points out there will be huge uncertainty and years of negotiations if the referendum results in a victory for the leave side, which is not a subjective conclusion but an objective reality is dismissed as scaremongering, Project Fear 2.0.  However dodgy some of the statistics and claims presented by the remain side are, it is absurd that more than a few on the leave side continue to pretend as the Yes campaign did in the Scottish referendum that everything will be swiftly sorted out amicably and business-like once a leave vote happens.

The latest outrage is, of course, the government's decision to send out leaflets to every household on why it believes we should stay in.  This will cost £9m in total, much to the faux disgust of Michael Gove, who exclaims on how at a "time of austerity" spending such a sum on "pro-EU propaganda" cannot be justified.  Others predictably are complaining about how the government seemingly promised not to put out such a document, although those promises covered only the main period of campaigning once the period of purdah has begun.  More whinging still focuses on how the money spent on this one mailshot is more in total than the official campaigns will be allowed to spend during the main campaign, and how this obviously gives the remainers an unfair advantage.

Then there's the outright paranoid tendency, that somehow the publishing of the leaflet has been timed to distract from David Cameron's Blairmore Holdings travails.  While it's certainly not beyond imagination that Lynton Crosby could have come up with a dead cat to help Dave, dead cat this is not.  The whole idea of the dead cat is to change the subject, not to add to the problems the prime minister faces, which this most certainly has.  This was planned well in advance to come not too early to be completely forgotten about, while not near enough to the date itself to outright break the aforementioned pledge.  (Indeed, if anything it can now be argued Cameron has produced his own dead cat to knock the controversy over this down the agenda, for which see below.)

Humbuggery doesn't begin to cover it.  Apart from Vote Leave sending out leaflets without branding claiming to separate fact from fiction, we've had the lovely spectacle of Nigel Farage cutting up rough over the prospect of Barack Obama making an intervention on his upcoming visit.  This naturally didn't stop him from sticking his oar into the Netherlands referendum on the EU deal with Ukraine, nor has it prevented the wider leave campaign from inviting those behind the referendum to the UK.

The irony of the leave side and newspapers alike complaining about the government attempting to redress the balance doesn't seem to occur, or rather does, they just cast it to the back of their minds.  That 80% of the press has not just spent the past few months but the last couple of decades spreading myths about the EU, with the result that the public, who aren't interested at the best of times haven't got an idea who is and isn't telling the truth is of no importance.  How can a government possibly justify such propaganda (not that it is propaganda as it seems for the most part to be somewhat objective), never mind the unfairness?

Not to say that there aren't unintentional hilarities over the mail out: the same government that has long disdained councils producing their own propaganda sheets suddenly feels very differently.  That hardly anyone reads such leaflets, and few will likely read this one, let alone make their decision to vote on the basis of it also doesn't matter.  It's the principle of the thing.  The principles of always having an excuse ready, accepting the will of the people except not, and forever holding out the prospect that a vote tomorrow under "fairer "circumstances will bring a different result.  The leave side have stolen all their lines from the SNP.  They'll probably lose the vote, but are without doubt hoping to win the argument in the same way.

---

4 days on, and after first describing it all as a private matter, Dave finally comes clean and admits he made £31,500 out of Blairmore after selling his "units" in 2010.  The whole interview was set-up and designed to make it look as if this was perfectly reasonable: Robert Peston all but made a defence of the PM in a Facebook post this morning, setting out how those who invested in Blairmore did have to pay tax when they sold their shares, while ignoring the obvious point that Blairmore itself was based in Panama so it didn't have to pay tax in the UK.  Peston then just so happens to be the chosen hack Dave decides to talk to about it.

To describe the entire thing as being very Shifty McGifty doesn't really do it justice.  Why if this was all above board, as it seems to be at least from Cameron's end, did it have to be dragged out of him?  Each successive answer has just raised more and more questions.  Has he really only ever profited by £31,500?  If so, did any of the £300,000 his father left him come from Blairmore?  Does his mother still have an interest in Blairmore, as the Graun asks?  If he thought it best to be "transparent" in 2010 by selling his units in Blairmore, shouldn't the same apply to the donors to the party he leads?  And hasn't this sorry spectacle demonstrated that while those lucky enough to get the start in life that Dave had shouldn't have it held against them, it has made very clear just how stacked the odds have been and remain in their favour?

If Cameron means what he says, he has the power and influence to level that playing field.  He won't obviously.  But the thought's there.

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