Operation Elveden charges for Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson

These two think the police are barking up the wrong tree

The Metropolitan Police set up Operation Elveden as the investigation into corrupt payments over phone hacking and other associated matters. In the sights of the Scotland Yard sleuths came one redtop editor known as Rebekah Brooks. She was questioned, bailed, requestioned and generally exposed in the press (by other journalists) as someone who might know something. Likewise David Cameron's communications chief Andy Coulson also got investigated.

Now they are charged in connection with payments to police and public officials.This is deemed to be bribery and corruption by present day standards. However, seeing as goal posts move about these days like an intoxicated gazelle, it's hard to fathom how the long arm of the law, together with the fine minds of the CPS, can get a judge and jury to follow it all. After all, Ms Brooks is on record as saying it went on all over the place - that is, making payments to police and public officials.

I think there's a possibility of a Norman Scott moment at this forthcoming trial.The demise of Scott's dog Rinka did for the leader of the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe. Just like Scott got up in court to reveal things, maybe some unknown witness is going to blurt out some terrible stuff about this that and the other and it's all hell being let loose. Jeremy Thorpe was certainly ambushed back in the late 70's. I see they've transplanted cells from dogs' noses to aide spinal injury recovery in injured mutts. Miss Brooks and Mr Coulson might need some of those nasal cells to sniff out potential bother!

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Rebekah Brooks charged with perverting the course of justice

Not smirking now!

So just now we've heard that Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie are to be charged with the very serious matter of perverting the course of justice. If convicted, it's definitely jail time for them both. And you can reckon that David Cameron's texting days will be over as far as she is concerned. LOL!

She says the decision to prosecute is a case of “posturing” by the CPS. "We deplore this weak and unjust decision." Really? There have been an unprecedented number of officers detecting all the nuances of this scandal. No stones have been left unturned. Having been rapped over the knuckles for cosy relationships with press types in the past, the police will be quite desperate to see that they have a near perfect case. The CPS lawyers will have perused each page of the files with the heaviest magnifying glasses available. Ms Brooks may think it unjust but she should not have been so fickle with the law before. One rogue reporter, indeed!

News International has more skeletons in its cupboards and closets, of that I have no doubt. Rupert Murdoch was always disdainful of the political classes in Britain. Why the likes of Blair and Cameron ever thought his empire was worth courting, I do not know. I well remember Murdoch making an acidic remark about the British soon after he got his hands on The Times. He had no time for us then and has no time for us now. Ms Brooks was just doing his bidding. Will we ever see Murdoch and his amnesiac son in the dock with her? Could be, and that might be the culmination of it all. As someone has said of this, it is a story that keeps on running.

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Rebekah Brooks and husband arrested on phone hacking charge

Conspirators or what? Police arrest these two and detain them

One rogue reporter, eh? Not any more! It's a whole bevvy of sleazy News International operatives including the erstwhile editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks. She's now been arrested, along with hubby Charlie, on suspicion of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. That's a big time offence in the judicial minds. Judges might have seen phone hacking as a measly crime, but this is something else. Should she be charged with this and subsequently found guilty, she won't be flouncing out of court waving her locks at passing camera lenses. She will be incarcerated.

Now it appears that the police are taking all this more seriously. The whole edifice of the News International temple is beginning to crash. Every day we hear of money either being paid out or going to be paid out to wronged celebrities and people caught up in the cheap and cheerless gossip gathering enterprise that Rupert Murdoch was so keen to establish. It's a sort of pincer operation with more than one set of pincers being used. Leveson is inquiring, the police are probing, the courts are finding in favour of those who have been hacked and the rest of the press is delving deep. Murdoch must be wondering when and where it will all end. Probably in tears. But he has only himself to blame for that.

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Rebekah Brooks gave back police horse in poor health

I have just seen on the BBC News website that Rebekah Brooks, News International red top and former editor, did not treat the horse she was lent as well as she should. He was described as being in "poor condition". The animal died of natural causes after being returned to the police. Maybe one or two unnatural causes as well, such as prolonged inactivity due to inconsiderate horse borrower. That horse won't say anything now, but maybe Mystic Meg, the Sun's spirit world person, could muster up a seance to engage the presence of the horse from his duties in the Elysian Fields?

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Bob Diamond's Deal, No Deal as taxman delves deep

Bob Diamond keeps schtum!

Barclays Bank just announced that they have done very well in the profits department. Bob Diamond, chief executive and counting house boss, got a hefty bonus. Smiles all round. Now the government has just announced that a bank (it was Barclays - they admitted it) has done very well in the tax avoidance department. Smile wiped off Bob's face as money is demanded back by HMRC. Of course, Barclays say they didn't do anything wrong. Well, not criminal, that is. But banks today are little more that clever casino operators. What they do may not be a felony but it isn't always morally right.

Saving £500,000 in tax by using a tax avoidance scheme. Not exactly the corporate citizenship that Barclays aspires to. Corporate sleaze needs watching.

And this bank is joined in the murky waters of corporate land by that huge bottom feeder that is News International. One rogue reporter, eh? More like a whole school of rogues. Rebekah Wade/Brooks, the erstwhile editor of one of the red top rags, got a horse from the police. On loan, so we are told. That horse must know a bit. Corruption all round, dodgy dealings and well-feathered nests.

I have a horrible sense that the British people are not really bothered. These corporate types have hides of rhinoceroses. Nothing much pricks them. Yet enterprising businesses, the self-employed and the general workforce have to struggle along as the economy falters and fits. If we were all in this together, this nonsense at the top level of business would stop. But we aren't and I don't think it will.

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Why is Cameron so raptured with Coulson?

Rebekah and Andy - Making it up as they go along!

David Cameron can't be a very good judge of character. He's still saying that Andy Coulson never gave him a moment's doubt. Yet most of the country thinks Coulson is a slippery character unworthy to have been so close to the inner sanctums of Downing Street. I can't fathom why Cameron is so besotted with this spin doctor and disingenous tabloid hack. It's not as if he can't spin things himself. He does that quite ably.

Now we hear that Rebekah Brooks and Coulson knew all along about phone hacking. That it was routine. Both Wade and Coulson come across as people who have their morals set in a parallel universe. I'm glad that we have this Leveson Inquiry. No stone to be left unturned. When I was a child I used to like turning over stones in the garden. All sorts would creep out after years of doing things their way in private. These tabloid journalists are no different. Perhaps Lord Justice Leveson might swat a few as restorative justice of a kind?

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I did not have an inappropriate conversation with that woman!

Tight-lipped and no pyjamas in sight!

I've pondered overnight about David Cameron and his understanding of the word inappropriate. I've wondered about his understanding of the word transparency. Was he any good at English at Eton? Maybe he has studied Lewis Carroll? Carroll's great character of Humpty Dumpty is as relevant today as it was when the reverend scribe thought him up. Making words mean what you want them to mean.

I don't take Cameron to be a fool. He's not naive either. But he's making his cabinet look like fools. Jon Snow interviewed the hapless Hammond last night and inappropriate was inappropriately explained away. Does David Cameron take us all for fools? We know he had a conversations with News Corporation and Rebekah Brooks was there for a lot of the meetings. So if the discussions were not inappropriate they must have been appropriate. But this tells us nothing. The country now thinks Cameron is a shifty schmoozer and it's all his own doing. He goes on about transparency but can't tell us if he talked about BSkyB. So what do we all think?

HE SPOKE ABOUT BSkyB!!

Newspapers from the Daily Telegraph to the Guardian think he did. The BBC thinks he did. ITV, Channel 4, Sky News, Five News all think he did. Who in the country does not think he spoke about BSkyB? It's all a complete mess.

This is just like Bill Clinton saying he never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. It is all Humpty Dumpty stuff. I wonder what Cameron thinks just as he nods off for the night. Does he praise himself that his mastery of words got him out of a jam or does he really confront himself with his own transparency? I think the latter. He does not need a dream to come to him in the night, like Ebenezer Scrooge. He needs a mirror like the one that showed Snow White to the Wicked Queen.

It's just a moral outrage that we can be so abused as a nation as to think this is the high ground of politics. I'm still waiting for transparency. Maybe that judge can peer through the mist and fog of it all.

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Rebekah Brooks quits News International

Rebekah Brooks resigns

The news that Rebekah Brooks is leaving her post as chief bottlewasher at News International has helped me clear my cold and let my head think more brightly. I've been sneezing and sniffing. Not good to view a computer through watery eyes. So she's gone. Thrown in the towel. Can't say I'm surprised. If she was still in post when she sat before John Whittingdale and his cultured colleagues next week, all we would have got is "Why are you still there?". Well now she's not. But the rumblings still rumble on.

The trouble with large corporations is that they think they are above the flotsam and jetsam of daily life. Banks, oil companies, utilities, airlines, newspapers...they have all been ducking and diving, with integrity getting the blows. I think they live in a parallel universe. The banks are getting stress tested today. Is fractional reserve banking going to be tested to the stress limits? I doubt it. Keep pushing the buttons guys!

Matthew Wright of the Wright Stuff fame on Five TV thinks Rebekah Brooks is OK. She's a decent person he says. Well, if she is let her just tell the truth and shame the devil. We can't have this going on for years, with one titbit following another. The FBI are now digging around for nuggets. Somebody has suggested the phones of 9/11 victims were hacked. If they were, then Rupert Murdoch might as well go and hide in the outback of Australia. This could be like a political Mount St.Helens. At the moment, American TV is treading carefully as is their wont. But if the FBI get a bite on something, the game plan changes immediately.

Far better to own up now, tell it all and say SORRY! Otherwise if something nasty is revealed, it's News Corp in the trash bin.

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Rupert Murdoch finds the temperature rising

It's tough at the top and that's no laughing matter

Rupert Murdoch had not long been back in Britain when he saw the thermometer rising and the sun shining in London. Yes, today is a nice summer's day. The heat is on. And as far as Murdoch is concerned, he's got his hands on some hot irons he's trying to cool down. All around him people are speculating. Speculators are speculating. Will the BSkyB deal go through? Not likely! Let's take our money and run. Renault has run from Murdoch. So has the Church of England, although rather like David Cameron they are giving him a second chance if he mends his ways. He did get a pastoral bashing, though.

So what happens now. Murdoch is the story, along with his protegee Rebekah Brooks. She must have presented her case well to him. Selective memory loss is a corporate stock in trade. The trouble is that one has few friends in corporate wonderland when things go wrong. Look at Southern Cross. Today it has been crossed off the business map and is no longer a viable enterprise. Most knew that long ago. What we don't know is whether the skimmers will have to account for their fat bank balances.

Murdoch's personal bank balance isn't too bad I'll bet. But his corporation looks like it is in trouble. He needs advertisers and he needs investors. Both look like they see his "brand" as being toxic. Britain has never taken well to Rupert Murdoch coming into Britain and monopolising the media. However, he has saved much of what he took over from oblivion and that is to his credit. What is not to his credit is the corporate sleaze that now seems to be unfolding from the files and folders of his business empire's records. Honour and integrity should be at the heart of business. Far too much of it though is permeated by wrongdoing and a high-handed attitude to customers and suppliers.

Well now they are biting back. Investors should sit up and wonder if they are actually close to criminality. Suppliers should ask themselves if supping with devils (as many corporations have become) is a good thing. And customers should test whether they should buy from companies that have been found to be doing iffy things.

David Cameron says the buck stops with him. If it does, then the clean-up of British business starts with his government. Out with the pan and brush, Prime Minister!

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Andy Coulson in custody - arrested today by police

Andy Coulson has been arrested at a South London police station, has had his DNA taken along with fingerprints and a mugshot, and is now looking forward to lunch on a tray in a cell. Banged up I think it's called. No wonder David Cameron put on his press conference this morning. His old publicity guru on his way to the interview room so the Downing Street machine went into overdrive.

Unless one is drunk or mentally unstable, a period in police cells must be quite sobering. What is going through his head right now, I wonder? Evil thoughts about Murdoch? What's the betting that by the end of today, Rebekah Woods has been put in the frame and other juicy bits fed to the detectives. There can be no point in him telling them he knows nowt. They will just laugh at him. Best to make a clean breast of it all and get it over quickly.

I hope Her Majesty has room in her various properties for Her Pleasure to be extended.


How they process prisoners in Welsh police cells -

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Andy Coulson will take down Rebekah Brooks and others too

Who hacked this phone?

Andy Coulson has nothing to lose now. If he is arrested in the next few hours and he helps the police with their enquiries, he will sing like a canary. If the allegations against him are proved correct he faces a lengthy time in jail. Why do porridge on your todd when you can be joined by the whole gang?

As one source linked to the police investigation has said, 'If Andy Coulson goes down, he could take some very senior people with him. He must know where the bodies are buried at News International.' Of course he must. The lying has got to stop and the investigations, as David Cameron wants, should dig deep and dig fast. Shredding machines might be in short supply.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012540/Andy-Coulson-facing-arrest-Ex-Downing-St-aide-expected-police-station-today-quiz-hacking-police-bribery.html#ixzz1RVUyusKY

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