Sheaf Saint

Wow. you really have surpassed yourself this time dune. This statement is only true in your blinkered little world. Anyway, have a read back through all of the comments made so far relating to the Sun and NotW. The vast majority of people admit they only buy them due to their excellent sports coverage, and I can't deny that either. On the handful of occasions I have ever bought either papaer it was solely for this reason also. You don't genuinely believe that they are the UK's biggest selling newspapers because people agree with their political opinions do you? Take away the sports coverage and they wouldn't sell half as much copy as they do. In fact, they would lose pretty much all credibility as a serious read, much like the Mirror or the Daily Star

27. When buying a new home, you call in a mechanic instead of a surveyor to inspect it for you.

I'm only basing this on what Vince Cable said in a news interview about it the other day. Of course, it could be a load of horlicks and they are just using the age-old 'blame the previous government' trick to cover up their own shortcomings. It really is impossible to tell, but it is true that Labour were still in power when the contract was put out to tender, so there could be some truth in it.

Just saw a bit of House of Pain's set on BBC3. It just didn't seem right IMO - hip hop should never be performed live on stage by fat, middle-aged white blokes with grey beards. They still did Jump Around pretty well though.

But as I mentioned earlier, this is not the fault of the current government. The previous Labour administration initiated the procurement procedure for these trains and laid out the criteria for selecting the winning bid. I'm no fan of the ConDems, but if they had ridden roughshod over that and just picked the Bombardier tender because they are UK based, then it would only have resulted in long and costly legal proceedings brought by the other bidders.

It's not our last train building capability. Bombardier has a contract to provide some 1300 new trains and carriages for the London Underground.

Not quite sure what the right wingers on this board will have to feel proud about. The previous Labour government laid out the criteria for tender for this project before the Tories took over, and the government had no choice but to award the contract to Siemens based on that criteria.

You had to go and say that didn't you!

I wonder if our women's team is any better at penalty shoot-outs than the men....

I'm happy to say I'm a field voice telecomms engineer. Happy because I have rcently, finally managed to get back into this industry after I was made redundant from my last job in it in 2008.

Hmmm, a scary thought. It wouldn't surprise me. Destroy the evidence just on the off chance that an inquiriy is held and all hell breaks loose when the revelations are made. To an organisation and big and as powerful as NI, surely the redundancy of a few staff and a bit of short-term negative publicity is a small price to pay to prevent that happening. All allegedly, of course.

You're right, it would be a shame. But ask yourself this... Why aren't Labour making a hell of a lot more noise about this? Knowing what our two main parties are like in this country, they will normally jump on absolutely anything they can to try and attck and discredit the opposition. Cameron is determined to push ahead with a deal that will hand Murdoch control of over half of all broadcasting in the UK, despite no proper consultation and some serious public concerns about the integrity of the organisation and one former employee in particular: namely Cameron's former PR officer. Surely the opposition should be screaming from the rooftops about this situation, but instead they are strangely subdued. Why on earth is that? Murdoch cannot make reparation for this mess now. His first move today was very poor judgment IMO. You would think that he would want to improve his PR image at the moment; but closing the paper, laying off the workers and protecting the individual who was surely accountable for everything that transpired was a very poor way to go about that.

It wouldn't surprise me. It was reported yesterday in The Spectator that Cameron and Brooks live very close to each other and have been known to go riding together. He is obviously under the thumb of Murdoch as well. And you have to question the logic behind appointing the former editor of a gutter rag like the NoTW as his PR guru. Such close links to not one but three hugely influential members of the same organisation. Is it possible that News International have something on Cameron that would destroy him if it ever got out, and they are all closing ranks to protect each others' interests?

Agreed. They know the brand is now unrecoverably tarnished and the game is up, and this seems like a publicity stunt - one final attempt to wring as much cash out of the unsuspecting public as possible.

Isn't she still CEO of the News International group though?

I would say it is. They may technically be two separate compaines but the faces are the same and they both peddle the same kind of stories. It's difficult to believe that this practise was rife at the NoTW over several years but The sun is completely innocent.

Confirmed... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070733 I hope this doesn't mean that the investigation into what happened will suddenly just disappear as well. The people responsible still need to be brought in front of a judge and jury for their illegal and immoral actions.

A devastating summary from the Spectator here. Quite long-winded but well worth a read... http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/7075673/what-the-papers-wont-say.thtml If their conclusion is correct - that the opposition and the rest of the press are staying relatively silent on the matter because they are mostly complicit and will only be exposed if they bleat too much (and it's difficult to think of any other reason why they would choose to play down what is potentially the biggest government scandal of our generation) - then this has massive implications not only for the entire UK mainstream press but also for our whole political establishment. Scary stuff. It horrifies me the thought of just how deep this goes.

There was something about this on Watchdog recently and IIRC the two important points raised were that in order to comply with BPA regulations, the notice they put up in the car park must have a full postal address rather than a PO box, and they are not allowed to refer to a 'fine' or a 'penalty' as this is a private company and have no power to fine or penalise people.

I think that's a bit of a misleading comparison though Viking. Uncovering corrtuption at the highest level of such a powerful world organisation is surely a worthy reason for any journalist / news agency to dig a little deeper and perhaps cut a few corners, because it is very much in the public interest that these things should be exposed. Hacking the voicemail of the families of murder victims is not just illegal, it is also extremely unethical and very, very distasteful.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/murdoch_messages_2/ I recommend everyone signs up to this. The fact that the government is pushing ahead with this deal despite the recent revelations and major concerns over the validity of the consultation process is, to my mind anyway, possibly the most alarming thing about this whole episode.

So it is now confirmed that as CEO of News International, Rebecca Brooks will lead the investigation into this affair herself. Given that she was editor in charge of the NOTW at the time this allegedly took place, isn't that like asking Hitler to investigate Nazi war crimes?

It's quite sad but true that advertising is what makes the world go round these days. It was only because as couple of major sponsors raised concerns that Bernie Ecclestone caved in to public opinion and cancelled the Bahrain grand prix, otherwise I'm sure he would have pressed ahead with it.

Is anybody actually the least bit surprised by this?

My parents took me to one as a child while we were on holiday in Spain. I only have a vague recollection of it as I would have been very young at the time. I personally believe that to call it a bullfight is a bit of a misnomer really. It suggests that the bull actually has a remote chance of winning. Execution would be a more fitting description.