Guy Fawkes
I’m reading Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies. It’s a relentless switchback of the apparently power-obsessed Mr Murdoch and his empire’s standards. It is at the same time gripping and depressing, two words that came to mind about Alastair Campbell’s memoirs of Blair’s government and Damian McBride’s of Brown’s (which left me feeling sorry for Gordon).
Chris Denning, a former BBC DJ, admits charges of child molestation. Rolf Harris is found guilty of similar charges. Jimmy Savile is condemned posthumously. Cyril Smith is accused, Danczuk’s book being another sad read. There are rumours, easy to find on the internet, that allegations could be made of other public figures, and that super-injunctions have kept them quiet so far.
We all have our problems. I don’t comment on the urges—addictions really—of all these people: we’re all in recovery from something, whether we recognize it or not. But I draw attention to one thing and it is this: the police knew something but did nothing until they were forced to. In Hack Attack we are told that the police hid evidence, or revealed it only very reluctantly, or repeatedly made light of it.
Is this conspiracy or cock-up?
Are we looking at secret societies of the rich and famous, or merely at rectal problems (‘can’t be a**ed’) in the law enforcers? SWMBO says that she has never seen anything more chilling than A Very British Coup by ex MP Chris Mullin (watch it free on 4OD) for a nasty combination of secrecy and malice used to cling to power.
In Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, Rudge wonderfully described history as ‘just one f**king thing after another’. That same sense of relentlessness accompanies these revelations. ‘A blow upon a bruise’, time after time.
As the rich and powerful become richer and more powerful, it doesn’t bode well. Is this really Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free?
Rambling Rector Retired 
..ah yes, “Great Britishness.” Representing the Nation:
It’s good to know my grandfather + millions of other ‘Tommies’, fought & died in WW1 so ‘Katie & Wills’ (+ later on, Camilla at Westminster Abbey) could be duly snapped close-up a century later, laying a bouquet of flowers on a British war grave at Mons, amongst a sea of clicking Nikons & Canons.
No doubt the next day’s (British) papers would be FULL with this latest opportunity. But cue the REALLY important messages of today: “What designer-dress was Katie wearing? “Did we outdo Johnny Foreigner in the fashion stakes?” and…(zzzz) “Is she pregnant – I think I spotted a slight bump?!”
Obviously, little to do with a ‘Fanfare for the Common Man.’ More, (as one commenter later stated), “show-biz time..”
You might well think that. Martin; I couldn’t possibly comment. I am rather sick of the ‘Great Britishness’ we have endured over the last few days. I think the only thing we can do is point things out. I see lots of church people getting their knickers in a twist about corruption in other places, completely oblivious it seems to what goes on under their noses.
Of course it isn’t Stanley.
It’s one law for some – and another law for the proles.
Look at the bankers. Look also at ‘several prominent people’ implicated in the Murdoch empire press scandal, who have escaped justice, thanks to hiring the very best of lawyers. And today, Bernie Ecclestone “volunteers”, is it $100 million? – and duly walks..
But – if you or I did anything approaching this, PC Plod will be awaiting to feel our collar.