h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I wonder how much the Bugle actually costs....

And in answer to the question, did she jump or was she pushed - I think they cut the rope.

B

Night of the long knives...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/15/les-hinton-rupert-murdoch

"Hinton, who has worked for Murdoch for over 50 years, told staff at the Wall Street Journal he had no option but to resign"

Are you considering buying the Bugle for h2g2?

'Hellloooooo Hootooers!'

Is Will Shakespeare somewhere up there, really pulling all the strings?

I thought Thatcher, Major, Blair, Cameron ... all had special
arrangements with our Rupert - O' how they all turn ...

Jump, pushed does it really matter? Let's look into the arrangements
Rupert Bear had with the Poly Ticians. You know it was the Sun that
won it for Major.

Well yes he's been the King maker for 30 years.

(Funny thing I heard earlier. He jogs around London with his fitness trainer, dressed like Jimmy Saville..but without the cigar (snork)

Is the general mood that:

a) Murdoch and the politicians were all in it together. The latter were happy enough to cosy up to him and are now being damned hypocrites?

OR

b) They had no chance but to lick his bottom: they knew he could break them like twigs?

Im veering slightly towards b). So, for example, much has been made of Browns continued friendship with Brooks after his sons medical story had been printed, and of his ~Ill destroy you!~ statement only after Murdoch had withdrawn support.

What must it be like knowing you have to make nice with b------s? After all, its no good being angry and out of office.

They had no chance but to lick -> They had no choice but to lick

So that's a choice between hypocrites and sycophants. I hear some
Polys bemoaning the degradation of British institutions and whereas I
was thinking they had sold them off to the highest bidders.

NtM comes closest to expressingone idea I have runnign around in my head. I could believe that Brown hated having to do what he did. Perhaps Murdoch (or one of his subordinates) said "Let us into the funeral or we will barracade it with paparazzi". I have heard it said that this ultimatum is the status quo for the Beckhams. Speaking out against it is political suicide, but OF COURSE you will let out all of your pent up frustration when it seems like the Damoclean thumb is not over you. Thus, it seems like you are faking angernow, when actually you were faking compliance before.

Yeah I'm more to (b) and have big respect for Brown in always keeping his family protected and in the background. So this particular nasty point would have been big for him.

Stuff about his handling of the economy is something else.

But I reckon it was M who decided it was Blair and not Brown at the outset. If you remember Blair and Brown had made a pact to decide together. Blair's face fitted better with his image and family. The poison of New Labour started at that point I reckon. All the PR stuff that Blair was so good at.

I heard it suggested that it was M who sorted out Thatcher's image for her. She'd been floundering before that. I remember even stuff like her tone of voice suddenly changing...and turning into super housewife.

And we see how Cameron has used his 'family'. Murdoch knows all about 'family' in the public eye..be it his own or the Royals.

These are all speculations though. But its kind of fun.

I doubt the Sun will be saying 'Gotcha' about Murdoch, like they did about the sinking of the Belgrano in the Falklands war.

I bought the last issue of NoTW thinking it would be a historical
item. However I've only just looked inside and it's complete trash,
reducing complexity to utter mindless stupidity and base emotion,
promoting only mid-brain/brain stem activity.

The next general election in the UK was always going to be interesting, watching the manoeuvring of the parties to the coalition as they try to dump on their erstwhile partners without being TOO obvious about it.

Now it's going to be doubly interesting, because for most of my life (four decades) success in UK general elections has depended almost entirely on who has successfully cosied up to Murdoch. Next time success could very well depend on who can put the most space between them and the Dirty Digger and all his works.

Of course, that's all a long, long way in the future. But truly, we live in interesting times.

It'll be the soddin' Greens next time...

>>Stuff about his handling of the economy is something else.

And actually...the IMF seem to have been reasonably impressed by his capabilities.

Well, he did say he'd put and end to boom and bust...and his was correct there...erm....

At the point he said that he should have been turfed out of office and sent to the back-benches...you can;t end boom and bust...

Well, indeed. Any Marxist can tell you that Capitalism lurches from crisis to crisis.

My modest proposal is simply that he wasnt quite the economic incompetent that is popularly supposed. Few countries are surviving The Crisis untouched. His main mistake was not salting away a reserve in times of plenty, preferring instead to continue servicing a deficit economy - which is perfectly legitimate strategy when things are going well (as it seemed to be), That and selling gold reserves at just the wrong time - but who knew what was going to happen to gold?

Dont entirely mistake me for a cheerleader, btw. I have *plenty* of criticisms from the Left. My only point is that its become the Received Wisdom to demonise well beyond his due.

>>Well, he did say he'd put and end to boom and bust...and his was correct there...erm....<<

I thought he was referring to Labour

... and when everything was collapsing around him he said he was only
ever a bit player in a global "free" market system out of his and
everyone else's control.

The recent doco, 'All watched over by machines of loving grace' pointed out that it was the US economist, Alan Greenspan who heavily influenced politicians that the markets could be controlled by computers. This turned out to be disastrously wrong. Brown fell for this idea - hence no more boom and bust. Okay I'm oversimplifying probably, but I think its good to look for some of the reasons behind these things.

<>

What do you think will happen when you flood the market with a commodity? Isn't that basic economics? But oh yeah, Brown wasn't an economist. His degree and PHD were about the history of the Labour Party.

He sold 400 tons of the stuff, over half of the UK reserves.

He's no economics guru. Even Blair has admitted "we got lucky" with a healthy economy handed over from the Tories and a period of growth in the world economy. It's increasingly likely that history will see Brown's "light touch" of city regulation as a contributing factor in the British banking crisis.