London Mayor Boris Johnson has raised dust with his statement that he “will not allow Kosovo-style social cleansing of Londonâ€.
Johnson reacted to government’s proposal to cut housing benefits.
Posts Tagged ‘Boris Johnson’
Becks, Jolie tattoos spark Latin craze amongst school kids
July 21st, 2010 |
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Latin, one of the most ancient languages, may be on the road to revival as celebrity tattoos spark a craze for the language amongst school goers. David Beckham sports a tattoo, for instance, that says ”Ut Amem Et Foveam” (meaning ”So that I love and cherish”) inscribed on his left forearm and ”Perfectio In Spiritu” [...]
Becks, Jolie tattoos spark Latin craze amongst school kids
July 21st, 2010 |
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Latin, one of the most ancient languages, may be on the road to revival as celebrity tattoos spark a craze for the language amongst school goers. David Beckham sports a tattoo, for instance, that says ”Ut Amem Et Foveam” (meaning ”So that I love and cherish”) inscribed on his left forearm and ”Perfectio In Spiritu” [...]
Harry Potter stars blast London mayor for US theme park complaint
June 18th, 2010 |
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The stars of the Harry Potter have criticised London mayor Boris Johnson for complaining that a new wizarding theme park should have been built in Britain, not America. Johnson, 45, had blasted bosses at film giant Warner Bros., telling them they were “utterly mad†to allow a Harry Potter park to be created in Florida [...]
Hacker’s fan club
August 4th, 2009 |
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By Caroline McClatchey
BBC News
British computer hacker Gary McKinnon’s fight against extradition to the US has drawn support from a large and diverse range of influential people. How did his case become such a cause celebre
It has to be one of the most unlikely partnerships in the history of popular music – one is a toned and tanned young boy band singer, the other a brooding and balding lead guitarist from one of the rock giants of the 1970s.
But it’s not music that has brought Boyzone’s Keith Duffy and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour together – it’s the case of computer hacker Gary McKinnon.
Mr McKinnon has become Britain’s best-known conspiracy theorist, or, as London Mayor Boris Johnson put it – he’s a "classic British nut job" who believes in "little green men".
The American authorities see it differently. The 43-year-old is a wanted man in the US, where he has been accused of "the biggest military computer hack of all time". For the past five years he has been fighting an extradition request from the American authorities which want to try him on US soil.
If convicted there he faces up to 60 years in prison.
Along the way he has amassed a legion of supporters, as diverse in their make up as they are distinguished in their own fields of achievement. They include novelist Nick Hornby, film critic Barry Norman, Emma Noble, the ex-glamour model and former daughter-in-law of John Major, Sting, his film producer wife Trudie Styler and actress Julie Christie.
Politicians of all hues have also leapt on Mr McKinnon’s case. And pop stars Chrissie Hynde and Sir Bob Geldof have teamed up with Gilmour to record a song of support.
In the past six weeks his cause has been further bolstered by a high-profile campaign in the Daily Mail newspaper.
But how did Mr McKinnon’s fight become such a rallying cause for this disparate group of supporters
Mr McKinnon does not deny he hacked into Pentagon systems, but claims he was searching for evidence of a UFO cover-up. His story started back in 2002 and the media have, periodically, followed the twists and turns of his legal battles (see graph, below).
There was also a spike in coverage when he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome – a form of autism – last year, but the campaign to stop his extradition has gathered pace, passion and people in the last six months.
While a PR agency has taken on much of the co-ordination, Mr McKinnon’s campaign has won support for a variety of reasons.
Author Nick Hornby and Keith Duffy are thought to have taken an interest because they have children with autism. For others, it raises serious questions about freedom and rights.
Question of justice
Former Beirut hostage Terry Waite learned of the campaign from friends.
"[Mr McKinnon's] a young man who’s vulnerable, who may well have breached the law but in this case, the law has to be exercised with common sense and compassion."
"Bell Yard will continue to draw attention to the absurdities of the Extradition Act 2003 [believing] the UK should not be subcontracting its criminal justice system to foreign jurisdictions for reasons of convenience or political expediency"
McKinnon’s PR agency Bell Page
Profile: Gary McKinnonHe is one of many supporters concerned about what he called the "inadequate and unfair" extradition treaty between the UK and the US.
As it stands, the UK requires the US to show only "reasonable suspicion" to secure the extradition of a British citizen. But the US asks for "probable cause" from the UK.
Mark Kelly, keyboard player with British rock group Marillion, became interested in the story a couple of years ago. He shares, with Mr McKinnon, a love of computers.
"It was one of those stories that caught my eye. I have always had a fascination with computers and I can see how he got caught up in looking for evidence of UFOs and with his Asperger’s, it probably became a bit of an obsession."
But when Kelly put a petition on the band’s website it irritated many American fans – an indication of how opinion about the case is divided.
While most of the celebrities seem to have come on board of their own accords, author Jilly Cooper admits to the BBC she supports the case "in principle" but knows little about it. She says she was contacted by a newspaper "early in the morning".
‘Soap opera’
There is no doubt the Mr McKinnon camp received a major boost when the Daily Mail made the campaign its own about six weeks ago.
The paper declared the case was an "affront to British justice" and "in the name of both sanity and compassion" urged Home Secretary Alan Johnson to "think again". Since then it has included updates almost every day..
Public relations consultant Mark Borkowski believes the Mail’s backing has been crucial, calling it the "oxygen" the campaign needed. And the timing was right, as the "modern day soap opera" reaches its finale.
"It changed from the geek in his bedroom to the great American military machine trying to remove this person from the bosom of his mother."
And while the story appeals to mothers in Middle England, the Mail’s readership base, it also reaches out to the future online audience, he says. But for Max Clifford, a fellow PR expert, the paper’s motivation has been chiefly political, another "stick for the Daily Mail to beat the government".
And it’s no surprise to discover there is some PR professionalism at the heart of the campaign. London-based PR agency Bell Yard is working "pro bono" (free) for the McKinnon campaign. It has experience in this field, having represented the "NatWest 3" – three British bankers who were eventually extradited to the US on fraud related charged. The agency was unavailable for comment for this story.
In the know
Mr McKinnon’s mother, Janis Sharp, is also a key player in the campaign. She says her son’s case is another example of how the government is failing to protect its own. A musician and author, Ms Sharp is so well versed in the extradition laws she sounds like a lawyer
She has been plugging away for years – never turning down an interview, responding to all e-mails and now tweeting about her son’s dilemma on Twitter. And she hasn’t passed up on the benefits of old style networking – which helps explain how the pop star support got rolling.
Ms Sharp is friends with David Gilmour’s brother-in-law. She re-wrote the lyrics of folk classic Chicago, which Gilmour, Sir Bob Geldof and Chrissie Hynde put their voices to – it was the campaign’s first plea to US President Barack Obama.
Gilmour then spread the world to Sting and Styler.
Ms Sharp said the couple have been a huge support and she is constantly amazed by what people have done for the family.
"I am really shy and find it incredibly hard to deal with the media attention but I have to make sure Gary stays here.
"So many good things have happened but the worry is always there."
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
London marks 3-year countdown to 2012 Olympics
July 27th, 2009 |
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LONDON (AP) — The construction of venues is forging ahead, hundreds of millions in sponsorship money has been secured, and the project remains on time and on budget despite the recession.
With three years to go Monday until the opening ceremony, London organizers say they are firmly on track in preparations for the 2012 Olympics.
“If you [...]
Bristol adopts Paris-style bike scheme
July 21st, 2009 |
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On a rainy morning, few takers for country’s first citywide ride-and-go plan
It’s a miserable morning in the centre of Bristol. The rain is tipping down and only a halfwit would think of hiring a bike in this weather. So count me in.
Ride-and-go cycle schemes are a familiar part of the cityscape on mainland Europe. Barcelona, Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin all have well-established cycle networks, but somehow Britain has always rather lagged behind.
There are small local schemes in Southport, Cardiff, Hammersmith and Fulham, in London, and only yesterday Blackpool’s opened for business. But the closest we have to a whole-city scheme is in Bristol – Britain’s first designated Cycle City – where Hourbike operates with some support from the council.
The deal is straightforward. You register for a one-off fee of £10 and for that you get a code that lets you turn up to one of the cycle hubs and ride a bike. The first half-hour is free, any time over that works out at about £1 a hour (the idea is to undercut local car parking charges) and you can return the bike to any of the hubs dotted around the city.
Through the drizzle, I punch in the code, the electromagnetic lock is released and I have control of Daniel. The bikes all have names which are cuter than the cycles themselves because they are on the streets 24/7 and the idea is to make them solid and anonymous so that people don’t nick them.
So Daniel and I are ready but where to go for a test cycle? There are three other hubs in the centre and a couple more on the edge of the city near the University of the West of England, but I’ve no idea exactly where as there isn’t a map. Never mind. Andy, the street cleaner, should be able to help out. “There’s one outside the Royal Infirmary,” he says, “but I can’t say I’ve seen anyone using the bikes at either place.” Are you round this way often? “Every day”.
So I head off to hospital and soon discover another reason – apart from the weather – why no else is on a hire bike: it’s almost impossible to go anywhere in Bristol without going up a hill (I wonder if I’ll see any locals with colossal Tour de France-style muscled thighs). At the infirmary there’s a couple of bikes corralled at the hub, but still no sign of riders. Jim, a hospital technician, says he has never seen one.
There’s a bus stop next to the hub and no sign of a bus. Jo has been waiting for at least 10 minutes. Would she fancy a go on a bike? “It sounds like a good idea,” she says, “but I don’t think so.”
But it’s all downhill from here. “Maybe another time.”
I cycle round aimlessly for a while longer looking for another Hourbike but then reckon enough’s enough and tie Danny up for the day and head home.
It’s still early days. There are large parts of the city that still aren’t covered, though the bigger problem is winning punters’ hearts and minds. Tim Caswell, the managing director of Hourbike, which started the Bristol scheme earlier this year, refuses to be discouraged. “We’ve got about 300 people registered so far,” he says. “And with the help of the council we’re looking to increase the number of hubs and bikes so we’ve got most of the city covered. This is the way forward and we are committed to it.”
Getting it right is easier said than done. You can’t really pilot them by sticking a couple of bikes in the centre of town and hoping for the best, because people won’t see the point. It’s only when the full infrastructure is in place that it works. So you’ve got to be prepared to invest – and so far, especially with local government feeling the pinch, councils have tended to play safe by doing nothing.
“There’s a tendency to think there’s only one model,” said Phillip Darnton, who chairs Cycling England, an independent body set up by the government to promote pedal power. “Not everything has to be on the scale of the Paris Velib or TfL’s proposals for London. These are both large schemes aimed at significantly reducing commuter congestion: towns such as Southport, which has also just opened a cycle-hire scheme, are looking more to recreate the ambience of the seaside town, so they need something much less intensive.”
Even so, Britain does not have the best track record when it comes to promoting cycling. A bike hire scheme in Cheltenham has just closed and the London mayor, Boris Johnson, has managed to get on the wrong side of several councils with his plan to tear up several of their car parking bays to install cycle hubs and rob them of some revenue – so there’s still a lot of politicking to be done before London comes on stream.
So how come we’re so rubbish at cycle schemes and mainland Europe has been so successful? “It’s partly cultural,” said Marie, a Paris resident. “Cycling is seen as normal in France, whereas in Britain it’s often more about macho types in Lycra. But it’s also because people are less afraid of cycling in Paris because our drivers are so much better than yours.” Now there’s a thought.
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Mayor faces grilling over Clement expenses
July 15th, 2009 |
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Deputy mayor was forced to quit after discrepancies in claims came to light
Boris Johnson faces a grilling by the London assembly over his role in authorising the expenses of his former deputy, Ian Clement, who was forced to quit after discrepancies in his claims came to light.
The mayor of London will take questions at his monthly session with the full assembly, but has been criticised for refusing to face more detailed questioning by the panel, which scrutinises the business management and administration of the Greater London authority.
Johnson sent another deputy, Sir Simon Milton, to face the BMac committee last month to shed light on how Clement managed to pass through expenses in breach of the policy on the use of credit cards and expenses for months without a formal challenge.
It emerged during the meeting that Milton was not in a position to answer most of the questions and that Johnson had been signing off the claims since March due to a change in the expenses policy.
It also emerged that Johnson had known since last August that Clement was one of seven people in the building to have a credit card because Johnson had ticked him off for using it for expensive upgrades for flights to Beijing at the time.
When allegations that Clement had misused his credit card first surfaced, Johnson’s office insisted that the mayor had not known his deputy possessed one. The deputy mayor was disciplined for using the card for personal items – later repaid – but Johnson refused to sack him.
Clement quit soon after, when further irregularities came to light. Some of the Tory colleagues cited on his expenses came forward to say they had not been present at the time.
Clement also entertained City Hall colleagues and charged the taxpayer, in contravention of GLA rules. The matter has since been referred to the police.
Johnson said before the weekend he would take questions on his oversight of Clement’s expenses at the full London assembly, where questions are time-limited on a range of issues over a two-and-a-half hour session, or the BMac committee, “but not both”.
This prompted claims that the Tory mayor, who promised openness and transparency in his mayoralty, is seeking to limit the amount of scrutiny at the hands of the London assembly.
In what is expected to a heated round of exchanges, Johnson will be asked what he knew and when, and whether he acted swiftly enough.
Today’s meeting will also be used to take a vote on more detailed and regular publication of expenses claimed by both assembly members and the mayor’s advisors.
All but one of the 25 assembly members voluntarily published their expenses following the last BMac meeting.
Brian Coleman, the Tory member for Barnet and Camden, flatly refused, stating in the London Evening Standard that his expenses were “none of the public’s business”.
But Coleman relented the following day following pressure from Johnson’s office.
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Boris’s £250,000 second salary is ‘chicken feed’
July 14th, 2009 |
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The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has dismissed the £250,000-a-year he earns from a controversial second job as “chicken feed”.
Johnson also insisted it was “wholly reasonable” for him to write newspaper columns on the side because he did them “very fast”.
The comments risk infuriating millions of Londoners struggling to make ends meet amid the economic downturn.
They are also unlikely to please David Cameron, who has ordered his shadow cabinet to give up extra work in the run-up to the general election to show their “commitment”.
Johnson, who is paid nearly £140,000 for his day job, was questioned over his lucrative contract with the Daily Telegraph during an interview for the BBC’s HARDTalk programme.
He responded “It’s chicken feed.”
Pressed on whether voters would agree with that description, the mayor said he was being “frivolous”.
But he went on: “I happen to write extremely fast. I don’t see why on a Sunday morning I shouldn’t knock off an article, if someone wants to pay me for that article then that’s their lookout and of course I make a substantial donation to charity.
“Maybe that money shouldn’t go to charity, maybe you’d rather I didn’t make those contributions to charity. It seems to me to be a wholly reasonable thing to do.”
Johnson said: “I think that frankly there’s absolutely no reason at all why I should not, on a Sunday morning before I do whatever else I need to do on a Sunday morning, should not knock off an article as a way of relaxation.”
Johnson decided to continue with his columns for the Telegraph after being elected last year, but donates £50,000 from his annual fee to charities.
Liberal Democrat frontbencher Norman Baker said: “There is nothing wrong with people writing newspaper columns but this is an enormous amount of money and for Boris Johnson to dismiss it as ‘chicken feed’ shows just how out of touch he and the Conservative party are from the reality of life for millions of Londoners struggling to make ends meet in the depths of a recession.”
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Boris’s £250,000 second salary is ‘chicken feed’
July 14th, 2009 |
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The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has dismissed the £250,000-a-year he earns from a controversial second job as “chicken feed”.
Johnson also insisted it was “wholly reasonable” for him to write newspaper columns on the side because he did them “very fast”.
The comments risk infuriating millions of Londoners struggling to make ends meet amid the economic downturn.
They are also unlikely to please David Cameron, who has ordered his shadow cabinet to give up extra work in the run-up to the general election to show their “commitment”.
Johnson, who is paid nearly £140,000 for his day job, was questioned over his lucrative contract with the Daily Telegraph during an interview for the BBC’s HARDTalk programme.
He responded “It’s chicken feed.”
Pressed on whether voters would agree with that description, the mayor said he was being “frivolous”.
But he went on: “I happen to write extremely fast. I don’t see why on a Sunday morning I shouldn’t knock off an article, if someone wants to pay me for that article then that’s their lookout and of course I make a substantial donation to charity.
“Maybe that money shouldn’t go to charity, maybe you’d rather I didn’t make those contributions to charity. It seems to me to be a wholly reasonable thing to do.”
Johnson said: “I think that frankly there’s absolutely no reason at all why I should not, on a Sunday morning before I do whatever else I need to do on a Sunday morning, should not knock off an article as a way of relaxation.”
Johnson decided to continue with his columns for the Telegraph after being elected last year, but donates £50,000 from his annual fee to charities.
Liberal Democrat frontbencher Norman Baker said: “There is nothing wrong with people writing newspaper columns but this is an enormous amount of money and for Boris Johnson to dismiss it as ‘chicken feed’ shows just how out of touch he and the Conservative party are from the reality of life for millions of Londoners struggling to make ends meet in the depths of a recession.”
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New claims of tabloid phone hacking
July 12th, 2009 |
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• Top BBC executive was affected, says newspaper
• Police have begun to contact alleged victims
A top BBC executive and the former Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair were targeted by the News of the World’s phone hacking operation, it was claimed today.
Blair was named in a report in the Sunday Times, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, which also owns the News of the World. However, tonight police sources denied his name was on the list.
The names emerged as the Met said it had begun to contact people who allegedly had been the subjects of hacking by the tabloid newspaper, but warned that the process could take some time to complete. “We are not discussing who we are contacting at all,” a spokeswoman said.
BBC sources said that the corporation did not know which of its executives had been affected by the scam at the paper, which led to Clive Goodman, then News of the World royal correspondent, and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, going to jail in 2007.
Andy Coulson, former editor of the tabloid and now director of communications for the Conservative party, subsequently resigned from the paper saying he did not know about the hacking.
Late on Friday the police confirmed they had started to contact people after the Guardian revealed last week that News International had paid £1m to settle privacy actions brought by Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, and two others who took action after Mulcaire hacked into their mobile phone messages.
“The process of contacting people is under way and we expect this to take some time to complete,” the police said.
The Met today refused to divulge how many people it was contacting.
The Sunday Times reported that the police investigation into Goodman and Mulcaire uncovered a list of “fewer than 20 people”; it included Boris Johnson, now the London mayor, and a senior executive at the BBC, whose phones were illegally accessed.
This list includes those named in the 2006 court action against Goodman and Mulcaire – besides Taylor, the model Elle Macpherson, the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, the publicist Max Clifford, and football agent Sky Andrew.
Macpherson’s publicist said in a statement: “Elle is obviously very concerned that her private telephone conversations and those of other people may have been intruded upon by reputable newspapers. She is aware that the director of public prosecutions (DPP) and the information commissioner have files on the issue. “Miss Macpherson is confident in the ability and the determination of the DPP, the police and information commissioner to ensure that appropriate and proportionate action is taken to prevent any further abuse.”
The DPP is reviewing police evidence and could recommend further charges.
A second, larger, list of about 50 people, contained the names Mulcaire had obtained mobile phone details for, but which police had no evidence had been successfully hacked. The Sunday Times reported that Blair and the former culture minister Tessa Jowell were on this list.
The third list, according to the Sunday Times, reportedly included the former deputy prime minister John Prescott and held between 400 and 500 names that Mulcaire wanted to target but for which he had no numbers.
This week the culture, media and sport committee, which has reopened its 2007 phone hacking inquiry in the light of the Guardian’s revelations, will hear evidence from the Guardian.
The following week, the News International lawyer Tom Crone, and News of the World editor Colin Myler (appointed after Coulson’s resignation), will go before the MPs. The committee hopes to hear evidence from the former executive chairman of News International Les Hinton, who at the original inquiry said Goodman had been acting alone without the knowledge of News of the World executives. Hinton has yet to confirm his attendance.
Public figures and celebrities who fear they were the subjects of the phone hacking have been contacting lawyers. The Bethnal Green and Bow MP George Galloway said he was seeing if any action could be taken. The politician had clashed with the paper in 2006 when its investigations editor, Mahzer Mahmood, attempted to “sting” him at a hotel and implicate him in illegal political funding.
Rod Christie-Miller, partner at the specialist media law firm Schillings, said: “Clients are going to want to see what comes out. Sooner or later there is going to be more concrete evidence about who has been targeted.”
Christie-Miller said his firm was already suspicious that phone hacking could have been used against high-profile clients before the story broke.
“It is something we were concerned may have been happening,” he added. “We have advised clients to change settings on phones and turn off bluetooth.”
One lawyer told mediaguardian.co.uk he had advised clients to “hold their horses” to see what details emerged over the coming days but added that legal claims were “imminent”.
The report in the Sunday Times, sister paper of the News of the World, shed further light on the Gordon Taylor case.
The paper stated: “Taylor’s claim was settled when new evidence emerged out of the police files that another News of the World reporter knew how Mulcaire was obtaining some of his information,
“That reporter has since left the paper and there is no evidence he committed any offence. News International executives are not aware of any other evidence in the police files that show any other News of the World journalist was involved in commissioning Mulcaire to hack phones.”
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New claims of tabloid phone hacking
July 12th, 2009 |
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• Top BBC executive was affected, says newspaper
• Police have begun to contact alleged victims
A top BBC executive and the former Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair were targeted by the News of the World’s phone hacking operation, it was claimed today.
Blair was named in a report in the Sunday Times, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, which also owns the News of the World. However, tonight police sources denied his name was on the list.
The names emerged as the Met said it had begun to contact people who allegedly had been the subjects of hacking by the tabloid newspaper, but warned that the process could take some time to complete. “We are not discussing who we are contacting at all,” a spokeswoman said.
BBC sources said that the corporation did not know which of its executives had been affected by the scam at the paper, which led to Clive Goodman, then News of the World royal correspondent, and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, going to jail in 2007.
Andy Coulson, former editor of the tabloid and now director of communications for the Conservative party, subsequently resigned from the paper saying he did not know about the hacking.
Late on Friday the police confirmed they had started to contact people after the Guardian revealed last week that News International had paid £1m to settle privacy actions brought by Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, and two others who took action after Mulcaire hacked into their mobile phone messages.
“The process of contacting people is under way and we expect this to take some time to complete,” the police said.
The Met today refused to divulge how many people it was contacting.
The Sunday Times reported that the police investigation into Goodman and Mulcaire uncovered a list of “fewer than 20 people”; it included Boris Johnson, now the London mayor, and a senior executive at the BBC, whose phones were illegally accessed.
This list includes those named in the 2006 court action against Goodman and Mulcaire – besides Taylor, the model Elle Macpherson, the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, the publicist Max Clifford, and football agent Sky Andrew.
Macpherson’s publicist said in a statement: “Elle is obviously very concerned that her private telephone conversations and those of other people may have been intruded upon by reputable newspapers. She is aware that the director of public prosecutions (DPP) and the information commissioner have files on the issue. “Miss Macpherson is confident in the ability and the determination of the DPP, the police and information commissioner to ensure that appropriate and proportionate action is taken to prevent any further abuse.”
The DPP is reviewing police evidence and could recommend further charges.
A second, larger, list of about 50 people, contained the names Mulcaire had obtained mobile phone details for, but which police had no evidence had been successfully hacked. The Sunday Times reported that Blair and the former culture minister Tessa Jowell were on this list.
The third list, according to the Sunday Times, reportedly included the former deputy prime minister John Prescott and held between 400 and 500 names that Mulcaire wanted to target but for which he had no numbers.
This week the culture, media and sport committee, which has reopened its 2007 phone hacking inquiry in the light of the Guardian’s revelations, will hear evidence from the Guardian.
The following week, the News International lawyer Tom Crone, and News of the World editor Colin Myler (appointed after Coulson’s resignation), will go before the MPs. The committee hopes to hear evidence from the former executive chairman of News International Les Hinton, who at the original inquiry said Goodman had been acting alone without the knowledge of News of the World executives. Hinton has yet to confirm his attendance.
Public figures and celebrities who fear they were the subjects of the phone hacking have been contacting lawyers. The Bethnal Green and Bow MP George Galloway said he was seeing if any action could be taken. The politician had clashed with the paper in 2006 when its investigations editor, Mahzer Mahmood, attempted to “sting” him at a hotel and implicate him in illegal political funding.
Rod Christie-Miller, partner at the specialist media law firm Schillings, said: “Clients are going to want to see what comes out. Sooner or later there is going to be more concrete evidence about who has been targeted.”
Christie-Miller said his firm was already suspicious that phone hacking could have been used against high-profile clients before the story broke.
“It is something we were concerned may have been happening,” he added. “We have advised clients to change settings on phones and turn off bluetooth.”
One lawyer told mediaguardian.co.uk he had advised clients to “hold their horses” to see what details emerged over the coming days but added that legal claims were “imminent”.
The report in the Sunday Times, sister paper of the News of the World, shed further light on the Gordon Taylor case.
The paper stated: “Taylor’s claim was settled when new evidence emerged out of the police files that another News of the World reporter knew how Mulcaire was obtaining some of his information,
“That reporter has since left the paper and there is no evidence he committed any offence. News International executives are not aware of any other evidence in the police files that show any other News of the World journalist was involved in commissioning Mulcaire to hack phones.”
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Met pressed to investigate hacking
July 9th, 2009 |
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• John Prescott says allegations reflect badly on police
• David Cameron resists calls to sack communications chief
• News International is not above the law, says Charles Clarke
The Metropolitan police was coming under mounting pressure today to launch a new investigation into Guardian allegations that the News of the World and other newspapers used criminal methods to get stories by hacking the phones of numerous public figures.
The former deputy prime minister John Prescott, one of the alleged targets of illegal phone-hacking, said he wanted answers from the police. “I find it staggering that there could be a list known to the police of people who had their phone tapped.
“I’m named as one of them. For such a criminal act not to be reported to me, and for action not to be taken against the people who have done it, reflects very badly on the police, and I want to know their answer.”
Prescott called on the Conservative party leader, David Cameron, to dismiss his director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was the deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when journalists were using illegal methods. Coulson said yesterday: “This story relates to an alleged payment made after I left the News of the World two and half years ago. I took full responsibility at the time for what happened on my watch but without my knowledge and resigned.”
But Prescott said: “I think that David Cameron has to sack Andy Coulson because his denial is very narrow in the extreme. I think David Cameron himself has to be much clearer about the situation.”
This morning Cameron resisted calls to remove Coulson, telling reporters outisde his home in London: “It’s wrong for newspapers to breach people’s privacy with no justification. That is why Andy Coulson resigned as editor of the News of the World two and a half years ago.
“Of course I knew about that resignation before offering him the job. But I believe in giving people a second chance. As director of communications for the Conservatives he does an excellent job in a proper, upright way at all times.”
Earlier, the PR agent Max Clifford, who is also one those whose phones was allegedly hacked into, asked: “Why has this just come out? According to the Guardian, it’s come from police sources. If the police had this information, why didn’t they act on it?”
Speaking to the BBC, he said: “There are lots of questions that need to be answered, serious questions.”
Responding to the claims, the Metropolitan police service (MPS) pointed out that its original investigation led to the conviction of the News of the World reporter Clive Goodman in 2007. “The MPS carried out an investigation into the alleged unlawful interception of telephone calls. Officers liaised closely with the Crown Prosecution Service. Two people were charged and subsequently convicted and jailed. We are not prepared to comment further.”
The London mayor, Boris Johnson, who was one of the figures allegedly targeted and is chairman of Metropolitan Police Authority, was challenged on the issue on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme. “As chairman of the MPA it would not be right to interfere in an operational decision they [the Met] might make.” He added that he was “confident” that if the police had a duty to investigate they would.
He said there was no need for him to contact the police over the matter. “It sounds like there is a full account in the Guardian,” he said.
John Whittingdale, the chairman of the Commons culture committee, said he wanted to summon newspaper editors to answer “serious” questions about the allegations.
“There are a number of questions I would like to put to News International on the basis of what the Guardian has reported,” he said.
His committee would examine the issue “as a matter of urgency” at a scheduled meeting later today, he said. “It may well be that we decide we wish to have somebody from News International to appear before us.”
He said he had seen no “direct evidence” that assurances previously given to the committee by the publisher on the matter had been untrue.
But he added: “If that is the case it does beg the question why News International have apparently paid huge sums of money in settlement of actions in the courts. That is a question I would wish to put to News International.”
The former Cabinet minister Geoff Hoon said: “It is hard to see how in these circumstances Andy Coulson can continue as David Cameron’s communications chief while such a cloud hangs over his reputation. David Cameron must make clear what action he intends to take on this matter.”
The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, said: “At the very least Andy Coulson was responsible for a newspaper that was out of control and at worst he was personally implicated.
“Either way, a future prime minister cannot have someone who is involved in these sort of underhand tactics. The exact parallel is with Damian McBride.
“If it is more than a thousand [phone taps] it seems most unlikely to me to have been just one journalist. There needs to be a full investigation.”
The former home secretary Charles Clarke said: “The home secretary should be asking the chief inspector of constabulary about police behavior in this whole incident. Serious questions need to be answered.”
He questioned why the police did not launch a wider investigation after the discovery that Goodman had been tapping phones for stories.
He told the Today programme: “News International needs to publish a full list of all those who it has bugged. The suggestion that News International is above the law is simply not acceptable … I think Murdoch is such a powerful figure that people don’t want to take him on gratuitously.”
He also called for Coulson to be sacked from his Conservative party role.
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Gormley’s great unwashed
July 8th, 2009 |
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Gormley’s ‘picture’ of Britain
July 7th, 2009 |
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Antony Gormley says that his 100-day project One and Other – in which members of the public can spend an hour on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square – will end up creating a “composite picture” of Britain. After the first few hours yesterday, the self-portrait appeared to show a mosaic of polite rule-breakers, exhibitionists with a social conscience and slightly inept publicans.
The rule-breaking began five minutes before the official inauguration of the project. Boris Johnson, the London mayor, was poised to welcome the latest temporary artwork on to the plinth in the north-west corner of the square when a white-haired middle-aged fellow, too quick for all four of the hefty security guards nearby, sprinted along the top of the balustrade that runs the width of the square.
Using its height to jump from, he grabbed hold of the safety netting strung beneath the plinth and hauled himself aloft, for a moment dangling dangerously upside down. Then he was up there, to stage a very singular protest, unfurling a poster saying: “Ban tobacco and actors smoking. One billion deaths this century!”
With admirable sang-froid, mayor and artist ploughed on, punctuating their speeches with polite requests for the interloper to remove himself.
After Johnson’s succession of awful puns (“we may have lost the people’s princess, but we have the people’s plinth”; “one day, your plinth may come”), Gormley appealed thus: “I hope you’ll have the grace to give up your place to Rachel, the real first person on the plinth. You are the warm-up act, the pre-plinth act.”
The protester – Stuart Holmes – shouted: “Give me a mike.” Gormley yelled back: “You should have brought your own! That’s the rules!”
Johnson was heard to mutter:”It really is quite important that he comes down now,” and Holmes did, descending on the cherry-picker that had lifted Rachel Wardell, a 35-year-old housewife from Lincolnshire, to the plinth.
After all the drama, Wardell’s official hour – holding before her large green sign promoting the charity Childline – seemed rather tame. After she had been welcomed down by her husband, Brian, and children Harrison, five, and Archie, two, she said she had eschewed an elaborate performance because she felt she simply wanted to say: “This is me, and this is the thing that I care about.”
Meanwhile Holmes – who said his occupation was “anti-smoking protester” – was keen to press his point home. “Actors smoking in films is enticing children to the holocaust of smoking,” he said on his descent.
“We will be keeping,” said Gormley, “a weather eye on the north-east corner of the plinth from now on.”
The next participant, Jason Clark, a 41-year-old nurse from Brighton, surprised onlookers by doing nothing, really, at all. “I thought it enough to be there and represent my region,” he said good-naturedly afterwards. By contrast Jill Gatcum, 51, who ascended just as the heavens opened, was a one woman hive of activity: she was releasing 49 helium balloons, one for each of the people who had supported her by donating to a charity of their choice.
By lunchtime there was a town crier – not passing on the news of the day, alas, but promoting two-for-one cocktails in his London pubs in bad rhyme. “Come to our bar, it’s the best bar by far”, bawled Scott Illman, his voice largely lost to the wind, traffic and fountains.
The succession of plinthians will go on until October – applications are still open and participants are chosen by computerto represent each region.
Gazing up at the curious phenomenon he had unleashed, Gormley said: “Look how fragile, small and vulnerable they are.” A Russian woman handing out stickers carrying the slogan “I don’t need a plinth to be art”, said: “It shows how much you British respect your citizens – and trust them not to take a gun up there.”
Well, yes. But, one suspects, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
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Gormley unfazed by plinth intruder
July 6th, 2009 |
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A protester rushed Antony Gormley’s fourth plinth project, but his intervention only confirmed the artwork’s message – according to Boris Johnson
• Help us document the fourth plinth project
At 8.55am there’s a crowd gathered round the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. Speeches by artist Antony Gormley and the London mayor, Boris Johnson, are about to begin, for the first day of One and Other, the much talked-about project dreamed up by Gormley in which members of the public can apply to stand on the plinth, every hour, every day for 100 days.
Security appears tight. But it is not that effective, it appears. Suddenly a man in blue T-shirt and trousers sprints along the balustrade that runs across the north of the square, uses its height to grab at the safety netting that has been strung at the base of the plinth, and hauls himself up with some skill. This is not the plan. Once atop the plinth he unfurls a poster – “Save the children,” it reads. “Ban tobacco and actors smoking. One billion deaths this century.”
When later asked what he does for a living, Stuart Holmes says that he is an anti-smoking campaigner. The speeches go on politely as he stands there. Johnson thanks Gormley, and the man who has intervened in the artwork in “this brilliantly impromptu way … it is proof that glory and renown will become democratic”. In vintage Johnson style, he references Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, in which the poet meditates on the talent that lies unremarked in the surrounding sod – no fear of that fate now that Gormley’s project is on the go, he implies.
The speeches continue, and, on time, a cherry-picker approaches with the “real” first participant in the event – 35-year-old housewife Rachel Wardell from Lincolnshire. Gormley is still speechifying. “I hope you’ll have the grace to give up your place to Rachel,” he says, addressing the gatecrasher. At the end of Gormley’s address, Johnson can be heard saying, sotto voce, “It really is quite important that he comes down now,” and he does, of his own free will, allowing Wardell, who carries a sign publicising her favoured charity of Childline, to take his place.
After that it is all quite tame. Wardell has no stunts or tricks to perform, but chooses to stand quietly taking in the view. After her hour, she says, “I don’t know if exposed is quite the right word – I felt part of the square and what was going on, but with a great view. It was peaceful and quite nice.” The point for her, she said, was to say: “This is me and this is the thing that I care about.”
What is the point of this event, which will be a feature of the square day and night until October? According to Gormley, “We are celebrating the living, and not the dead, the living who make up Britain in all its magnificence. We are creating a picture of Britain, and we don’t yet know what that picture in composite will be. There are pictures in that great building, the National Gallery, behind me, which is a treasury of masterpieces. But out here it’s real life. We will see how people will survive at 4am when it is pissing down. This is a test – of what kind of art we make and what sort of people we are.”
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Brown to take £22m from London budget
July 3rd, 2009 |
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Raid on mayor of London’s funds intended to pay for government housing programmes
Gordon Brown was today accused of using Boris Johnson’s economic development budget for London as a “piggy bank” for pet national projects as it emerged the government plans to raid £22m from the London Development Agency budget to help fund a national housing programme announced earlier this week.
The capital’s Conservative mayor branded the move “completely unacceptable” and said it will “severely disrupt” the LDA’s ability to deliver on his priorities for London’s economic development.
In a test of strength over his elected role as mayor of London, Johnson wrote in a letter to business secretary Lord Mandelson that the government was “ignoring” the fact that he was elected to run the capital and he argued that London’s “unique governance arrangement” meant that it should be exempt from the cut.
“I do not have difficulty with the government’s right to review national priorities and, for example, decide that money previously assigned and announced for economic development should now fund housing. But such reviews cannot ignore the capital’s unique governance arrangements and the whole point of the devolution settlement for London,” he wrote.
“Quite simply, a decision to make a further cut in the funding of the LDA would undermine the agency’s ability to deliver on mayoral priorities for London’s economic development. The mooted cut in the LDA’s budget is therefore completely unacceptable.”
The government is planning to take money out of the country’s nine regional development agencies to help fund the housing programmes announced in Building Britain’s Future on Monday.
This includes between £4-5m from the LDA in the current financial year, and £17m in 2010-11, according to Johnson.
In his letter, the Conservative mayor sought assurance that “the mooted cut will not take place” and requested an end to raids on budgets after they had been agreed.
Johnson’s policy director, Anthony Browne, said Johnson was kicking up a fuss because this was the fifth time the government had sought to cut the LDA budget in the past 18 months.
“The LDA is supposed to be the mayor’s development agency, answerable to the mayor who signs off the budget. The government is treating it like its own piggy bank for its favourite national projects. It undermines the mayor’s elected mandate.”
The LDA is already under financial pressure after identifying a black hole of between £60-100m in its finances, which is expected to affect future commitments planned by the mayoralty.
In a sternly worded letter, Johnson said the latest proposed cut of £21m, on top of the £70m previously taken out of the LDA budgets, brought the total to £90m.
“None of these cuts was ever discussed in advance with me – or, in the case of the first cut, with my predecessor [Ken Livingstone]. They were simply imposed. The LDA’s budget for 2009-10 and 2010-11 is now fully committed and further cuts, on top of the previous four cuts and the reprioritisation that the LDA has had to undertake in relation to Olympic budgets, would severely disrupt the agency’s ability to deliver its contribution to my priorities. It would almost certainly mean the LDA having to go back on funding commitments.”
Johnson added that while money invested by the LDA would have a direct benefit to London, there was “no certainty” over what share of the national housing programme would come to the capital.
Mandelson’s Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) has been contacted for comment.
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Cameron pulls out of Gay Pride appearance
June 30th, 2009 |
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• Conservative leader decides to stay in his constituency
• Boris Johnson comes under fire for performance at Gay Pride reception
David Cameron has pulled out of attending Saturday’s Gay Pride festival in London, saying he needs to attend an event in his Oxfordshire constituency.
Two months ago, the Daily Mail reported that Cameron was going to be the first Tory party leader to appear on an openly gay platform by attending the annual street festival celebrating London’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
Cameron, who has been keen to promote the Conservatives as an inclusive party, was set to follow in the footsteps of Boris Johnson, who turned up for Pride last year, just weeks after being elected mayor of London. He was persuaded to wear a pink stetson for the occasion.
The Tory press office confirmed Cameron would not now be attending due to a constituency event, but stressed he would be attending a private event marking Gay Pride this evening.
While the Tory leader will be a no-show, Johnson has lauded the fact that Sarah Brown, the wife of the prime minister, will attend. However, Johnson will not be present this year because the event clashes with his son’s birthday.
Johnson today faced criticism for leaving high-profile gay activist Peter Tatchell off the guest list for a Pride reception which took place at City Hall last night.
There was also criticism of Johnson’s speech, which some attendees felt lacked the necessary gravitas.
The Homovision site complained that a “bumbling speech by a clown-like politician” was not what the gay community needed at a time when hate crimes were becoming increasingly violent.
“The fact that some of Britain’s leading gay activists were prevented from attending the event, while Boris got away with making a half-hearted attempt at a speech – punctuated with broken Latin and Greek quotes that no one in the room had a clue what it meant – is a warning sign to all of us.”
Johnson, wearing a checked shirt and light grey suit, joked that he looked as if he was about to hotfoot it to a gay disco in the 1970s. He said he didn’t want to use the word tolerance, but wanted to stress the importance of the lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender community. The jovial mayor joked to his audience that he had cut the number of deputy mayors by half as part of his drive to make economies of scale, a reference to Ian Clement, the deputy mayor who quit Johnson’s mayoral administration last week after irregularities in his expenses surfaced.
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The city of Boris can do it
June 30th, 2009 |
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A jamboree of London history is a great idea, but Londoners need to know about it. Big cities deserve big debates
The end of June marks the end of Boris Johnson’s Story of London festival, as Londoners may, or regrettably may not, know. Described by City Hall as a “truly pan-London” and “glorious” celebration of the capital’s “past, present and future” including “hundreds of events”, it was only patchily promoted and sometimes very tricky to locate.
My search for SoL began at the start of the month when its website listed an exhibition in Whitechapel that turned out to be closed and another, in Canary Wharf, that was either non-existent or so difficult to find it might as well have been. It ended on Saturday when my plan to partake of SoL’s Lives of Buildings weekend by visiting an exhibition foundered on an encounter with a security guard in Clerkenwell. “It’s only open on weekdays,” he explained.
I’ve not been alone in such woes. A woman from Hounslow called Helen who reads my Guardian blog about London has been in frequent contact with stories of boroughs that couldn’t contribute to Mayor Boris’s history jamboree because they were told about it too late, and of Tourist Information offices, including Heathrow’s, that hadn’t been told about it at all.
All this is such a shame, because when I’ve found a SoL component, it’s been good. At King’s Place, I saw a predictably excellent talk on London’s rail travel history by the writer Christian Wolmar, followed by an instructively Tory account of the capital’s blitz experience by the historian Andrew Roberts. Stepping out of my cultural comfort zone, I watched a choir perform Orlando Gibbons’s Cries of London on the street at Spitalfields. The Big Smoke, a BFI compilation of documentary clips from the late 19th century to VE Day, found its way to my neighbourhood St John Ambulance hall, in Hackney.
Another correspondent went with his family to one of the festival’s setpiece specials, a Tudor joust at Eltham Palace. “Not bad, if you like jousting,” he said. But his account also compounded the inescapable sense that the SoL has been cobbled together on the cheap – and suffered as a result.
Should Boris hold his hand up? He promoted the festival with two high-profile press conferences, one at Hampton Court (with a man dressed as Henry VIII) and another at the Tower (with Beefeaters) – but his budget didn’t stretch to many posters around town, a special brochure in Time Out, or, it would seem, sufficient human resources to ensure correct website information.
The mayor has talked up the recession-beating properties of the capital’s “cultural offer”, but his paring of GLA spending suggests underinvestment in the SoL’s contribution. Attendance at those King’s Place talks was in the low 20s: not many, even on a Sunday morning. At Spitalfields, punters were outnumbered by choristers. “There wasn’t any publicity,” one said.
Many who voted for Johnson would think frugality apt, and Munira Mirza, his director of culture, may find partner institutions a more fruitful source of additional funding next year. An approving view of the SoL might see it as exemplifying both Johnsonian parsimony and a determination to restore a traditionalist and universalist approach to British history that, in his view, has been sacrificed to multiculturalism for too long. Mirza denies the claims of harsher critics that the SoL has been staid, elitist, in some instances too expensive or largely an ineffective exercise in re-marketing attractions that existed anyway. For me, though, the full potential of a good idea has simply yet to be fulfilled.
Big cities can thrive on big debates about themselves, and future SoLs should strive to promote one. New Yorkers have a powerful sense of their home town’s past and character, one that embraces newcomers and those to the Big Apple born. Groovy Barcelona self-describes with art and monuments. Paris fusses over its appearance constantly. Rome just stands there being Roman. London tells its own story drawing in its way on all these techniques, but its internationalism – nearly half its inhabitants of working age were born abroad – its government’s complex federalism and the sheer vastness of the place make it especially difficult to capture in coherent narrative.
It would go against the grain with Boris to increase the mayoral subsidy or take a more top-down or didactic approach to the SoL, but perhaps he should re-think. His love of history is deep and his populist gifts considerable. Leading a big conversation about the capital’s sense of itself is fully consistent with the job of mayor, which is often more about talking loud and persuading than exercising the post’s limited powers. With the Olympics approaching and the world looking our way, there is no better time for Boris to think bigger, be bossier and make more boldly his case for how the Story of London should be understood and told. I’d probably disagree with most of it, but that’s OK. What is history if not a political background?
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Smack on the funny bone
Politicians under fire from satirists should never rub their bruises. The smart move is to laugh along
David Cameron has made clear that he will look around the world for new political ideas and must be tempted by an initiative being trialled in Pakistan. If President Zardari’s attempt to ban the dissemination of jokes about him – through a new cyber crimes act, targeting blog comedy, text jests and email facetiousness – were to be introduced in the UK, Channel 4 could be prevented from screening a film, revealed this week, that will recreate the events leading up to a notorious photo of Bullingdon Club members including Cameron and Boris Johnson.
This film continues a recent British tradition of attacking politicians early in their careers. Once, a leader would have had to form at least one administration before meriting a feature-length TV demolition. But Blair and Brown were picked off as aspirants and even Michael Howard, although he never became prime minister, was subjected to a peak-time comedy about a draconian home secretary aiming higher.
Although being spread through new technology, the kind of jokes that Zardari objects to have an older history: one of them – that the great leader has asked for his face to go on a stamp but citizens aren’t sure which side to spit on – was applied, for example, to Richard Nixon. Curiously, the British figure most vulnerable to the gag – Elizabeth II – has avoided it, even among republicans.
That particular line of attack has a limited shelf-life – not because of a rise in political competence but the spread of self-adhesive stamps – but the leader of Pakistan is surely doomed in his attempt to introduce a gagging order on gags and, anyway, he has perhaps over-estimated their power.
Objectively, it is difficult to argue that political satire has had much direct effect on history. Richard Nixon, though seared by comedians throughout his career, was brought down by journalism rather than jokes. And three of the most violently caricatured politicians of modern times – Thatcher, Blair, George Bush – also served the longest terms.
All political satirists must eventually reflect on this strike rate: Ian Hislop has argued persuasively that political humour is not useless simply because it fails to achieve immediate regime-change: he believes that there is a moral imperative at least to have tried. And there is also, clearly, a greatly cheering and cathartic effect for those members of the population who didn’t vote for the leader in question. A recent book anthologising jokes told in eastern Europe during the cold war touchingly showed the way in which humour can be a democratic immune system, keeping the dissident spirit alive.
Also – as the president of Pakistan’s leaden intervention has proved – there is considerable comfort in knowing that the jokes have hit home. The satirists of Nixon could do nothing about his fat mandates but they could be cheered by his visibly thin skin.
One reason that Margaret Thatcher was a more effective premier than John Major was that she showed no sign of knowing the jokes about her – and would deliver speech-written gags that she didn’t understand – whereas he liked to challenge journalists and cartoonists on whether their slights were fair. Like batsmen hit by bouncers, politicians should never rub their bruises.
The most revealing aspect of Zardari’s crackdown is that it targets the newer media. This reflects a feeling among politicians that, for the present generation of leaders, the tactics of character assassination have escalated. In fact, the gags are simply more visible: what was once spoken on street corners now leaves a cyber-trail, which Zardari has foolishly chased. But new technologies will usually defeat censorship.
In this sense, at a very small level, there is a link between Channel 4′s Cameron film and Zardari’s ban. The Conservative leader has imposed his own limits on wit by securing the withdrawal of the Bullingdon picture from public use. Opponents have got round this by recreating the photo in various ways – the TV comedy is another example.
What’s really funny about what happened in Pakistan, though, is that politicians in other countries are going to have to be tremendously good-humoured about any attacks on them because of the risk that they will be compared to Zardari.
By taking offence at jests, President Zardari has made himself a laughing stock. A man who tried to weaken political humour has demonstrated its strength. As the touchy John Major said, in a different context, if it’s hurting, it’s working. Skilled politicians know that the smart move is to join in the jokes, no matter how much they sting. Team Cameron, if it is sensible, will already be working on some wry, self-deprecating quip for their reluctant film star on the night of the Bullingdon transmission.