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• It was a week to forget for everyone’s favourite real-life Bond villain, Tory-supporting media magnate Rupert Murdoch. Sexist Sky Sports journalists , the ramping up of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and a new spat with Ofcom ensured a busy in-tray for the head of News Corp as he arrived in London this week – having cancelled his planned trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
According to his cronies, Murdoch is said to be “deeply depressed”, with Andrew Neil telling tonight’s Standard :
“He is very angry with his lieutenants in London. He thinks these rows have got out of hand, particularly the News of the World which should have been dealt with years ago. Although the phone-hacking and sexism rows are not directly linked to the BSkyB takeover, Rupert thinks they have poisoned the atmosphere with politicians and with Jeremy Hunt.”
A point made by Joy Johnson on LFF yesterday:
“Murdoch senior is locked in Wapping instead of the rarefied atmosphere of Davos; he must be furious, not only at the Ofcom decision, but phone hacking by his journalists, in pursuit of personality driven gossip, and exclusives to fill the pages of the News of the World.”
Though things could have been a lot worse for Murdoch, as:
“…Instead of referring the bid straight away to the Competition Commission Jeremy Hunt rolled over and gave Murdoch snr. and jnr. more time to make their case. As a senior shadow minister told me: ‘If Murdoch gets hold of yet more of the British media then heaven help those of us who believe in pluralist democracy.’”
Interesting, extraordianary, and changing times indeed.
• The main economic news was the poor growth figures, with the UK economy contracting again. GDP fell 0.5 per cent in the last quarter of 2010, following growth of 0.7 per cent in the previous quarter. The Chancellor sought to blame the snow for the fall, insisting the government “will not be blown off course”. His excuses, however, cut little ice , with opposition politicians, commentators and economists unconvinced.
“Today’s dire GDP numbers show that the government’s reckless gamble with the economy risks plummeting the UK back in to recession… The government’s claims that the numbers are just because of snow is a complacent response that doesn’t do justice to the risk being taken with jobs and growth. For months Labour have argued that the government need a Plan B, that cuts while the recovery is so weak are reckless and that the VAT increase will make matters worse. Today has shown the gamble is not paying off…
“If there is to be a spring thaw in the economic numbers, then we need government to quickly get to grips with the economic realities, not stubbornly refusing to recognise the risks that austerity poses even when the data is put before their eyes. It will be up to Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to hold them to account and to put forward an alternative for jobs and growth.”
“The coalition’s pretty tale is beginning to appear decidedly vapid. What’s seriously lacking is exactly as outgoing CBI director Richard Lambert said . The government has ‘yet to set out its vision of what a successfully growing economy would look like’ - it’s done little more than indicate a ‘few vague ideas’.
“A fairy-story does not provide a sense of direction. A lack of direction stokes uncertainty. Uncertainty cripples firms’ and households’ spending. Lambert wants firmer commitments to infrastructure like new airports and motorways. He has the right thought. But locking the UK into high-carbon spending is not going to reduce future uncertainty. A strategy for the economy needs to include policies to sustain decent, green jobs and deliver social justice. Managing without any strategy is a recipe for disaster.
“The economy isn’t sticking to the script. Will the coalition be forced to do a rewrite?”
• The week’s nternational news has been dominated by the breaking developments in Egypt and across the Middle East. Protests intestified this afternoon, with a ‘day of rage’ seeing ordinary Egyptians take to the streets, demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. In Suez, a protester was killed in clashes with the police. Seven people have died since the protests began on Tuesday, and up to 1,000 have been arrested.
“There’s now a full-scale confrontation going on in the centre of Suez between riot police and several thousand protestors who’ve gathered again on the streets in the middle of the city. The Egyptian government has done everything it can to try to stop these protests from taking place again today.
“There’s no internet today in Egypt, the mobile phones here in Suez has been completely cut off, and in the state-run mosques here, the state imams told their congregations at Friday prayers not to go out into the streets again, but it hasn’t worked.”
While on LFF yesterday, Luke Bozier wrote:
“Protests started in earnest in Egypt, and they don’t appear to be calming down. Quite the opposite actually - the last two days has seen extensive and angry protests in Cairo , with Hosni Mubarak’s government reacting by temporarily shutting down access in the country to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. The internet is being used widely in Egypt to organise protests, as it was in Tunisia. On Tuesday the Twitter ‘hashtag’ #jan25 went viral, thousands of Tweets coming from the Cairo protest itself as well as observers around the world.
“It appears then, that history is repeating itself; the movement which led to Ben Ali’s downfall in Tunisia has inspired the frustrated masses in Egypt to take to the streets. Oppressed people in all Arab countries have started to shake off the fear - thanks to the Tunisian example - of their regimes. Whilst that pattern might be being repeated, so are the patterns in Western media and diplomatic circles; there’s been light coverage of the Egypt protests, despite once again lethal force being used against them by the Egyptian authorities. Again the Foreign Office ministers are quiet, too afraid to be seen as interfering perhaps, or afraid of what might arise in Egypt in Mubarak’s place.”
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