Extinction Rebellion protested today about UK’s press and politics being dominated by the politics and interests of 5 [ed: 4] non-dom tax evading billionaires. The political agenda is largely set by these sihts who often engage in criminal behaviour e.g. phone hacking, or facilitate criminal behaviour e.g. corruption of high elected politicians like Boris Johnson and Priti Patel. Surely it must be a crime for Priti Patel to be Rupert Murdoch’s PrivateSecretary instead of UK’s Home Secretary.
Extintion Rebellion deliver manure to press barons and call to cut the crap.
I am likely to revise this article but I want to get it out. It’s about the historical and continuing malign and corrosive influence of the Australian-American press baron Rupert Murdoch on UK politics. The article starts by looking at Murdoch’s influence over Tony Blair’s government before looking at how he still wields influence over Boris Johnson’s current government (and needs expanding there). I’m only searching the web so you can do this for yourselves.
Former Sun deputy editor Neil Wallis was in charge during the 1997 election campaign when then-Sun editor Stuart Higgins was on holiday.
The paper made shockwaves when it published a “Sun backs Blair” front page after declaring “it was the Sun wot won it” for the Conservatives in the previous election.
…
He said he asked for a first-person piece from Blair on his party’s “cut and dried position” on Europe but it was “a piece of PR flim-flam that actually said nothing”.
“I said ‘I’m not running this Alistair [Campbell, Blair’s spin doctor] because it’s just saying nothing’. But I said ‘for this to be coherent, for this to have an impact, this needs to say you will not go into the Euro without a referendum’.
“And I duly got the piece under Tony Blair’s name committing them to a referendum on the Euro if it was ever considered that they would go into it.”
Former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage directly linked this Sun column with the eventual vote to leave the European Union 19 years later.
He told the documentary: “The price of Rupert Murdoch’s support for Tony Blair was that Blair promised he would not take us into the European currency without first having a referendum, and if Rupert Murdoch had not done that we would have joined the Euro in 1999 and I doubt Brexit would have happened.
“So I think when we look at the long history of Britain’s relationship with the European project that led ultimately to the Brexit vote, I think that was a decisive intervention from Rupert Murdoch.”
TONY Blair spoke to media mogul Rupert Murdoch three times in the 10 days before the Iraq war – once on the eve of the invasion – it was disclosed yesterday.
Details were released by the Cabinet Office the day after Mr Blair stepped down as Prime Minister. …
So much falls into place with the revelation that Tony Blair became godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch’s two young daughters and attended their baptism on the banks of the river Jordan last year. True, it isn’t yet clear whether Blair had agreed to become a godparent while he was prime minister [see footnote], and the ceremony did take place after he had left office, but the important point is that the relationship underlines Murdoch’s deep entrenchment in British political life.
Murdoch’s third wife, Wendi Deng, who let slip the information in an interview with Vogue, described Blair as one of Rupert’s closest friends. Blair’s account of the relationship in his memoirs is somewhat different, portraying Murdoch as the big bad beast, who won his grudging respect. That is clearly disingenuous. As other memoirs and diaries from the Blair period are published, we see how close Murdoch was to the prime minister and the centre of power when really important decisions, such as the Iraq invasion, were being made.
Blair and Murdoch didn’t have to be bosom buddies for the relationship to be counter to the interests of a healthy national life and politics. As Lance Price, the former Blair spin doctor, has said, Murdoch was one of four people in Britain whose reaction was considered when any important decision was made during the Blair years.
Rupert Murdoch launched an “over-crude” campaign to force Tony Blair to speed up Britain’s entry into the Iraq war, according to the final volume of [total cnut] Alastair Campbell’s diaries.
Mr Blair’s former communications director accuses the media mogul of being part of a drive by American Republicans to drag Britain into the controversial war a week before the House of Commons even voted to approve the intervention in 2003.
The claim is explosive because it appears to contradict Mr Murdoch’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry. The News Corp chief told Lord Justice Leveson in April: “I’ve never asked a prime minister for anything.”
It is the second time that claim has been contested. Sir John Major, the former Prime Minister, told the inquiry this week that Mr Murdoch threatened to withdraw the support of his newspapers for his Government unless it took a tougher stance on Europe. …
Liverpool MP Andy Burnham has suggested that Tony Blair did not order a full enquiry into the Hillsborough disaster because he did not want to offend Rupert Murdoch.
Mr Burnham, a Labour leader hopeful said he was told not to pursue his demand for an official investigation when serving under Mr Blair.
As a result a “major injustice” was allowed to remain in place for more than a decade, he said.
Mr Burnham was the driving force behind Gordon Brown’s decision to set up the Hillsborough Independent Panel into the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans. … The Sun caused lasting outrage after publishing a report following the 1989 tragedy accusing “drunken” Liverpool fans of attacking rescue workers. …
Former Prime Minister Tony has always adamantly denied allegations he had an affair with Wendi, who was married to the News UK magnate from 1999 to 2013. However, the new BBC show spoke about Wendi’s affection towards him, including an unearthed diary entry in which she spoke about his ‘good body and legs’ before adding: ‘And what else and what else and what else…’.
…
But it was a series of emails, allegedly from Wendi about Blair, that effectively caused their divorce. ‘She made a bad mistake,’ journalist Ken Auletta explained. ‘She was sending emails on Newscorp email, so it’s easy for one of Murdoch’s minions, or lawyers, to extract those emails and see what they said – and they did. …
dizzy: At Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall’s wedding in March 2016 Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Priti Patel were invited – three prominent members of the current UK government. David Cameron and George Osborne – anti-Brexiteers – were not invited. Tony Blair was not invited – he’s been dropped by Murdoch after not having an affair with Wendi Deng.
Extinction Rebellion blockaded three Murdoch newspaper printing centres in UK overnight Friday / Saturday morning. While XR disrupted Murdoch’s newspapers for one day, UK politicians have mostly responded in a ridiculously exaggerated way since they are keen to get Murdoch’s endorsement to progress their careers. It is Rupert Murdoch who has traditionally decided who will be UK’s prime minister. He appoints them and they serve him. [He seems to have been appointing some fairly stupid world leaders lately. It’s probably his management style that he doesn’t want too much (any?) independent thought.]
The Government is now considering a range of possible new laws to give the police more powers to stop similar future protests. … One option being considered is updating the list of critical infrastructure which cannot legally be shut down by direct action – such as military bases and police stations – to include media production sites. Another is a new rule specifically protecting institutions seen as central to democracy, such as newspapers, courts and Parliament.
It’s ridiculous isn’t it? Crap newspapers are not critical infrastructure like military bases and police stations. They are instead crap newspapers that have been disrupted for one day. Crap newspapers are hardly central to democracy. It’s not a threat to democracy to disrupt crap newspapers for one day.
Boris Johnson’s thumbs up from Rupert Murdoch
Boris Johnson said: “It is completely unacceptable to seek to limit the public’s access to news in this way.” Keir Starmer added: “The free press is the cornerstone of democracy and we must do all we can to protect it.” The Labour leader said the protest “does nothing to tackle climate change”.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said “We must defend ourselves against this attack on capitalism, our way of life and ultimately our freedoms.” She wants Murdoch’s endorsement too. One days disruption of crap newspapers is hardly a credible threat to Capitalism, is it?
After staging overnight blockades of newspaper printing and delivery operations owned by right-wing magnate Rupert Murdoch and others for perpetuating the global climate crisis, members of Extinction Rebellion UK on Saturday defended the provocative direct actions by pointing out the life-threatening role these media giants play by willfully misinforming the public about the emergency now facing humanity.
… In the last several months, the editorial policies of almost all his English-language news organizations have hewn very closely to Mr. Murdoch’s own stridently hawkish political views, making his voice among the loudest in the Anglophone world in the international debate over the American-led war with Iraq.
Mr. Murdoch, however, plays down his personal role in the unanimous views of his papers, explaining that he no longer has the time to dispense day-to-day instructions to his editors or producers. ”I think that all our papers are certainly supportive of the armed forces,” Mr. Murdoch said in an interview last week, ”But that is not me calling the editors.”
Still, he has made no secret of his opinions. ”We can’t back down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam,” Mr. Murdoch told the Bulletin, an Australian magazine, in February. ”Bush is acting very morally, very correctly,” he said. ”The greatest thing to come of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That’s bigger than any tax cut in any country.” …
… [Boris ‘Alien’ Johnson] called The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and The Sun on Sunday, “the four constituent parts of the oldest and most successful union in the history of Fleet Street”. The Tory Mayor went on to praise News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch as a “wise, benevolent, and far-sighted monarchical figure”...
Boris Johnson saw Rupert Murdoch for a “social meeting” on the day he signalled his intention to seek a general election last year, according to new transparency disclosures.
