... Had there not been so much else going on, the announcement might have prompted an outcry against this generous sum of taxpayers' money going to Mr Cameron's old school chum, who is now doubly in the line of fire after John Yates, the recently departed Assistant Commissioner of the Met police, revealed that Mr Llewellyn was the Downing Street official who asked him not to talk to Mr Cameron about phone hacking.

 

Watching the painfully choreographed, and highly policed, red-carpet arrival of Prince William and Kate Middleton at a recent Los Angeles polo match reminded me why intrusive journalistic tactics are often called upon. They exist to break down the barriers of access that keep social elites at a remove from ordinary people.

For a critique of this rubbish, please read more...

Behind the political scenery, and on the festering subject of Israel, relations between Riyadh and Washington had recently become unprecedentedly shaky. Crown Prince Abdullah had long fumed about America's apparent complacency over the plight of the Palestinians.

That spring he had pointedly declined an invitation to the White House. Three weeks before 9/11, enraged by television footage of an Israeli soldier putting his boot on the head of a Palestinian woman, he had snapped. Bandar, the crown prince's nephew, was told to deliver an uncompromising message to President Bush.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch proved himself to be "out of touch", banging his hand on the desk and being "monosyllabic" and "cantankerous", relying on his James who proved to be an expert in the art of vague PR.

That was the British pundits' damning assessment of the media mogul's performance during a grilling from British MPs at a parliamentary hearing into the phone hacking scandal engulfing Britain.

"The House of Lords has taken the unprecedented step of publishing a "cease and desist" letter on its website demanding that Lord Christopher Monckton, a prominent climate sceptic and the UK Independence party's head of research, should stop claiming to be a member of the upper house.

OKLAHOMA CITY — As temperatures climbed into the 90s Sunday in Steele, N.D., a small window air conditioner in Paul and Betty Smokov’s ranch home just couldn’t keep up.

When you were editor of the News of the World, were you aware that more than half of your news and feature reporters were paying Whittamore to use his network of blaggers to obtain confidential information?

Were you aware that your news editor, your features editor and your Scottish news editor were among those using this network? Do you remember using him yourself? The paperwork seized from his office by the ICO records you asking him to "convert" a mobile phone number into an owner's name and address.

Were you aware that Whittamore was submitting invoices to the NoW which explicitly requested payment for apparently illegal acts?

picture by Gus

There's dumb, there's dumber and then there are the House Republicans—nearly all of them—who voted this morning to set the U.S. back on energy efficiency. By a quick voice vote, the House approved an amendment that would prevent funds from a 2012 spending bill to be used to implement federal light bulb standards. The amendment came after a similar separate bill failed to garner a two-thirds supermajority earlier this week in the House—although it did win a simple majority and all but 10 Republicans in the House voted for it, along with five Democrats.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK7SRYp4sBc

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he does not believe there is any need for a wide-ranging inquiry into Australia's media in the wake of the News Corp phone-hacking scandal in Britain.

Greens leader Bob Brown, who has dubbed the Murdoch press the "hate media" and accused it of bias against the Greens and Labor, has called for an inquiry. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has characterised some media reporting on the carbon price as "complete crap".

But Mr Abbott said a politician complaining about the media was in the same position as "a footballer complaining about the umpire".