Daily Blog 07/09/2011


  • News of the World political editor, David Wooding, claims the paper’s current newsteam came in “to clean the place up”. He defended the soon-to-be defunct tabloid at the heart of the “hackgate” scandal by declaring that current colleagues were “carrying the can for a previous regime” – insisting there had been wholesale changes to the NotW newsroom staff from five or six years ago.

    David Wooding’s defence of his paper and current “decent, hard-working, distinguished journalists” is symptomatic of the institutionalised delusion that has, and continues to afflict NotW and News International personnel.

    My own first-hand experience of some of these “decent, hard-working people” is very different to the quaintly, saintly picture of colleagues painted by the deluded Wooding.

    tags: journalism

  • After many years mixing and blending we have discovered what we believe to be the perfect toffee flavoured vodka.

    Our toffee vodka is strong (27.5%), it’s not too sweet, it’s not too sickly and it has a crystal clear golden colour. It’s TOFFOC.

    tags: vodka alcohol

  • For more than three decades the most powerful man in Britain has not been a politician; it has been the brilliant but ruthless US-based media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who burst on to the scene with the purchase of the News of the World in an audacious takeover bid in 1968. Within barely a decade he had built up a controlling interest in British newspapers.

    But he did not just control our media. He dominated British public life. Politicians – including prime ministers – treated him with deference and fear. Time and again the Murdoch press – using techniques of which we have only just become aware – destroyed political careers. Murdoch also claims to determine the results of general elections.

    tags: murdoch cameron

  • This week my colleague Alfredo Corchado wrote about an insidious scheme by the drug cartels, who have taken to planting drugs in unsuspecting peoples’ vehicles who then drive them across the border. Some are caught and wrongly imprisoned.

    tags: mexico drugsmuggling

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