Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail "hacked by News of the World"

National security re-enters stage left.

Juicy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/01/met-arrests-32-year-old-woman

Not that it is an argument that they have ever advanced, and I apologise for repeating myself from earlier in the thread, but it is perhaps the case that the Met looked at the scale of this, realised what would be involved in terms of taking it on properly (as we are seeing now, its more than a hundred experienced officers working on a lengthy and complex enquiry), noted who they would be going up against - Murdoch, the various members of the political class (none of whom had any reason in 2004-6 to actually oppose Rupert), most of the rest of the media who were to a greater or lesser extent up to much the same thing as the NI papers - and the lawyers that all of those would take on, and remembered how little the previous trials into press malpractice (Motorman and the trial in Devon) had managed to achieve, and decided that it was not worth all the bother when the likely outcome (at least then) was to attract a considerable amount of grief for no likely reward.

Oh come one - Murdoch and the met were in each other pockets right up to the highest level.

I think it was the Guardian piece that says the police were obstructed by photographers. I was under the impression that photographing police officers is a terrorism offence nowadays, no? They'll arrest foreign tourists and minors for it, but not a bunch of papparazzi..?

No.

Only when there's nobody looking.

Perhaps - certainly the apparent inaction when two of their own officers were being stalked by the paper suggests something was deeply wrong - but it is surely too simplistic to suggest that they did nothing.

No it is NOT an offence to photograph police officers although some of them would like to persuade amateur photographers that this is the case. Please don't spread this impression around because it helps them to be bully boys.

If they had rolled up newspapers, why weren't they shot by firearms officers?

I mean, double standards or what?

The inquiry needs to see the minutes of that meeting.

This actually does make sense as one potential reason for not doing anything.

On the other hand, it's pretty clear that there also was a clique of very senior officers and managers (or whatever you'd call Fedorico in polite company) who were right up the arse of the Murdoch press, received all kinds of considerations like cushy jobs after leaving the force, and who may well have had anything from deep criminal involvement in, to guilty awareness of, a substratum of actually corrupt officers colluding with Murdoch scum and turning a blind eye to routine criminality by Murdoch stooges.

Was it not reported (heh) a while back that there were 47 ex-plod working for notw?

If that is so (if it is so, I think it is so) .. we can reasonably worry from what has happened that this could actually be nigh on systemic.

Hayman and Yate's testimony was (deliberately) boring and entirely unreliable imo. One wonderful bit that doesn't seem to have been picked up.

Fuck off.

Really?

That mail link is excellent. So is the beeb one.

However I haven't heard of it reported on radio/tv so I still contend the point has not been picked up, so far, as being as striking as it appears to me.

(eta everything)

Slice of twitter gold from Prescott on Wednesday...

John Prescott ‏ @johnprescott

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.@rupertmurdoch. Will the last Murdoch to leave Wapping please turn out the lights #itsthesonwotlostit

Private Eye had it as Sun on Sunday headline: Will the last Sun journalist escorted off the premises by the police please turn out the lights?

David Cameron: I did ride ex-police horse lent to Rebekah Brooks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/mar/02/david-cameron-police-horse-rebekah-brooks

Another point and laugh moment.

It can only be a matter of time before he has to fuck a pig on live TV.

Veering from the deadly serious to the sublimely ridiculous every day

Tom Watson on the Daniel Morgan case:
http://www.publications.parliament....20229/halltext/120229h0002.htm#12022953000004

Fucking hell How come people don't know more about this - police involvement in murdering someone about to blow the whistle on corruption, Murdoch journalists spying on the detective leading a murder inquiry? Same guy mysteriously getting info on the Soham murders and publishing it ahead of any trial?

David Pearce's Red Riding but nastier?

Look at who it concerns - that's how

reality beats fiction for weird nasty shit every day

I wonder where the polices 6 months bugging of rees has gone? Have they managed to lose it yet?

Remeber rees = coulson=cameron

I was just wondering whether there is a liklehood of Cameron getting dragged back into this.

I'm waiting for someone to reveal that the Met supplied the cocaine for ruling-class parties (possibly even beast-orgies given known proclivities) in Chipping Norton.

Any of these people who are giving evidence next week likely to say anything interesting?

Roger Baker (HM Inspectorate of Constabulary)
Elizabeth Filkin
Sir Paul Stephenson (former MPS)
Lord Condon (former MPS)
Chief Constable Lynne Owens (Surrey Police and former MPS)
Lord Stevens (former MPS)
Lord Blair (former MPS)
Tim Godwin (former MPS)
Bob Quick (former MPS)