Five years

[davidn]

What in the blazes is happening to Britain? The news about the tabloid phone hacking didn't really come as much of a surprise to me on the scale of really low things that people in that business have done, then suddenly it all boiled over and the News of the World was shut down. I thought that that was just a rebranding in disguise to make sure that nobody responsible actually lost anything over it, but then the chief executive Rebekah Brooks resigned and was later arrested in an undeservedly polite fashion. And the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police resigned, too. Now someone who spoke out against the paper has been found dead in not-suspicious-at-all circumstances. And the worst part of it all is that none of the news panel shows are around to cover it just now - Merton and Hislop are away until much later in the year, and Dara O Briain just missed the chance by a week.

Today, it's five years since I was let into America. I'm not really sure I have much more to say about that, other than that I've gone from arriving with a suitcase full of clothes and two hard drives to owning a house and car (or at least, about five of the stairs and three quarters of a steering wheel, with the rest still the property of their respective banks) in a fairly reasonable amount of time. I wish I could say that either the country or my life have started to make any more sense to me since I arrived, but they really haven't.

Not that I could escape now even if I wanted to - I don't have a valid passport any more, it expired at the end of June. I'll need to get around to renewing it - given the state it's got itself into since I left, that country needs me.

Comments

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

Apparently this week's Private Eye is going to be amazing.

Even if there were panel based quiz shows around, they couldn't do this story justice.

Yesterday alone, another senior Met Officer resigned in the afternoon after saying that he wouldn't in the morning, the Murdochs ended up on a much wobblier footing at their company, Parliamentary recess was put back a day and somebody actually died.

I don't remember a news story actually moving so fast ever. And every single thing about it just gets worse and worse.

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

AND The Sun's front page was hacked to redirect you to a story about Rupert Murdoch committing pharmaceutical suicide.

Then the website hackers put the email addresses, logins and passwords of Sun top-brass on their twitter feed.

I hope to god that they don't fuck all of the legal stuff up.

[davidn]

I'd forgotten about Private Eye! They're really going to love this. Maybe I should order it specially - and frame it.

There seem to have been a whole lot of site hacks of various levels of seriousness over the last few months... the Internet can be a frightening force if it's concentrated enough in one direction.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

To me it is also exposing how public servants of the police and politicians are in the 'rich' world rather than serving society.

[davidn]

The amount of interconnectedness with these people is... quite surprising. I hadn't expected anywhere near this number of high-up people dropping like flies.

[kjorteo]

You know, when I linked you to that John Oliver bit, I figured that was just an isolated bit covering an isolated incident they did for humorous context ("you think things in America are messed up...") and they'd get back to America stuff as this News of the World thing promptly faded back into the background. I didn't realize that your country [sort of] had actually exploded.

(Fun fact: I typed that as "humourous" at first, then Firefox gave it the angry-red-underline-that's-not-a-word-you-idiot treatment, so I changed it.)

[davidn]

I thought it would just go away at that point as well as just another despicable tabloid thing - I couldn't have predicted this amount of upheaval. The whole country is on fire - that's what happens when you have such a closely interrelated group of politicians and news people and everything all packed into one space. Rupert Murdoch was actually summonsed so Parliament could neigh and moo at him today, which is the latest in a long line of unprecedented events.

And I was shocked when the summary headline said "Murdoch attacked at MP's hearing", then calmed down when I realized it probably just meant verbally, then jumped again when I read that a protester really had lunged at him, then was left in a sort of state of mystification when I read that their weapon of choice was a shaving foam pie, which struck me as a very British way to assault someone.

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

The weird thing is, it's not creating much of a ripple through wider society. Yeah, everyone was up in arms about the Milly Dowler part, but other than that, it's only really the people who were interested in politics before who are still paying any attention. But for those of us who do care, it's like reality tv squared; you meet up with someone who hasn't been online for a few hours, and you get the gleeful experience of telling them all the really juicy stuff they've just missed, and seeing their jaws hit the floor. I haven't had this much fun with a news story since the first time Tommy Sheridan was on trial.

[davidn]

What strikes me most here is that I never really considered myself someone who was interested in politics, and I don't know how that happened! The same thing was said to me a few years ago, when I happened to have the map of the 2008 American election open just to see which side was looking stronger - "I didn't know you were political". And I wouldn't give myself that label - just that somewhere, I started... caring about whether good things in the world happen or not. (Also, I've just realized that I now don't have a right to actually vote anywhere at all.)

[kjorteo]

"The session had been going for two hours when the protester reportedly shouted 'you naughty billionaire' as he approached Mr Murdoch [and then tried to hit him with a shaving foam pie]."

Did someone replace Great Britain with a Warner Bros. cartoon while we weren't paying attention?

[davidn]

"During Prime Minister's Questions today, Parliament concluded that Andy Coulson had also been a wascally wabbit."

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

I am actually furious at that spastard for making a mess of the proceedings.

A shaving foam pie in the face is much, much less damaging to Murdoch and News International than the grilling that he received in the Select Committee on Tuesday, where it came out that he didn't know a lot about what happened at his newspaper (neglect of corporate governance)

When MPs are giving Murdoch yards and yards of rope to hang himself, you take a step back and let them bloody get on with it.

[pookatimes.livejournal.com]

The Now Show's been doing a good job of it.

[davidn]

I haven't listened to that in ages, actually - that's certainly another one for the download list!

[kjorteo]

Now that it's clear that this is a ... real ongoing thing, and not just something that happened once and then fell back into the background, it might be worth adding the Daily Show to your list of coverages to keep up on! Here's this, for example. And apparently they had another bit on the next day's show, but that one I haven't seen yet....