Verbal

One important point worth bearing in mind: to make large payments - and they WERE large - to police and other informants for legally protected personal information, NoW journalists would have had to have sought approval from above to make such payments. No journalist, no matter how seedy, walks around with tens of thousands of pounds he or she can dispense as they see fit. So this inevitably goes to the top - and that means Brooks and, quite likely, executives then above her.

Phil, I simply don't believe that it is a 'sad reflection of the state of UK society.' Frankly, with this and your altering of RS's post, you come across as the classic gin-soaked, moaning ex-pat. The reaction to the revelations is surely a reflection of what is good about this country - the widespread determination not to put up with this crap, and a belief that it offends not just the law but common and shared notions of decency.

There are 11,000 pages of this stuff, and the police are going to be keen not to release all of it until cases come to court. So we can be sure that this scandal will run for months and possibly years yet. So as bad as things look now, they can only get worse. This will have a profound effect on British journalism. Can we expect it to be 'professionalised' along the American model - but also subject to compulsory regulation, as it already is with broadcast journalism?

The News of the World is now accused by Scotland Yard of spying on behalf of murder suspects - during Brooks' stewardship of the paper. New depths indeed. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/06/news-of-the-world-rebekah-brooks

So that happened, did it? Your mate got tickets for a police officer in return for illegal favours? If you know this and haven't reported it, I think you could well find it's YOU who's committed an offence. The point relevant to the thread, though, is that there IS a clear line between investigative reporting which searches for evidence by accepted and legal means, and that which depends on corruption, threats, inducements and a breach of privacy laws (and ethics) that is frankly staggering.

Given Alastair Campbell's past history, this post had better not come to his attention (He's not a Saints supporter - Burnley I think). If it does, you could be landing yourself and baj with an interesting libel suit. Curious to see how that one goes. And no, I doubt there are no more than a handful of journalists who pay police for information. Aside from anything else, corruption is illegal, as is almost certainly the release of information being paid for. So if it's exposed, it's jail time.

Heavens above, Viking - as an example of faulty logic this really takes the biscuit. To report on corruption does not mean you've used corrupt means to gain evidence of it. Are you really saying that all investigative reporting is by definition corrupt? By that measure, Woodward and Bernstein are the most corrupt journalists on the planet because their investigation brought down a President. As for the BBC or anyone else being 'whiter than white', you're clearly imagining something I said. However, it would be a useful starting point, surely, to start with some specific allegation, rather than some swivel-eyed finger-pointing based on the square root of FA. Leaks, by the way, take many forms. Many come from the highest sources. Others from whistleblowers trying to expose - to take one example - a hospital that has a habit of killing virtually every baby it operates on when doing heart surgery. Are you really saying that because the information came from a whistleblower (who incidentally are supposed to be PROTECTED by law, not acting outside it), a newspaper or broadcaster, having checked its reliability, should just sit on it and imagine nothing happened? What the NoW did was of a totally different order, and spreading the accusation so wide as to be meaningless actually lets the criminal, corrupt NoW off the hook. Is that what you intend?

In what way exactly have the BBC behaved like NoW, except in your conspiracy-addled opinion? Let's not defuse this into a hopeless delldays-ish moan about 'oh god, the media - but ho hum...' There is evidence here of serial law-breaking, corruption, interference with several criminal investigations, threats, inducements and intimidation.

This is the Metropolitan Police we're talking about - the least supervised of all the police forces in the country, where corruption and extra-legal violence seem to have become ingrained. There's no question in my mind that the investigation should be handed to an outside police force - with the appointment of a special prosecutor to drive it through without the interference, corruption and influence-peddling that have seriously derailed the investigation so far.

It is worrying that the Tories are behaving like this. Some of it is down to the fact that going against any part of the Murdoch empire is like going again the Scientologists - they'll target you and attempt to discredit you with a relentless determination. But some of it, unfortunately, is that many in the Tory hierarchy are fatally committed to doing the Murdoch empire favours in return for political support (witness Jeremy Hunt's decision to rubber stamp the BSkyB takeover - in no one's interest except Murdoch's).

Don't worry. Rebekah Brooks is leading an investigation into herself. The truth will come out.

If you want to register your opposition to Murdoch's takeover of BSkyB, you can add your signature here and it will be forwarded to Jeremy Hunt at the DCMS. Public consultation on his decision only runs until this Friday. http://www.avaaz.org/en/murdoch_messages_2/96.php

Or a submarine.

It's bad enough that you bankers hoodwinked yourselves and everyone else, and caused the credit crunch in the first place with your absurd derivatives-driven property bubble. But to then blame it on a bunch of politicians - who, no matter how awful they may be, are completely irrelevant to international bankers - is pretty staggering. None of which has any bearing on this thread. Rebekah Wade should go. It didn't just happen 'on her watch' - she was responsible for the culture at NoW that created this mess.

I can make some of your dream come true. I'll sell you a box. Aside from that, I don't need the money. £155m is chicken feed.

Who exactly has said both?

More like 'will be' a deficit, because many pensions funds are, in cash terms, in surplus. But of course it makes sense to calculate future liabilities as precisely as possible - otherwise you run the risk of running what is in effect a pyramid scheme, paying present pensions out of present contributions until, like Madoff, you simply run out of cash. These deficits are the result of actuarial calculations, rather than looking at the balance in the bank account, and the rules have been considerably amended in recent years to take into account, among other things, greater longevity. But they pay less attention, it seems, of evolving government policy on retirement age, so many think they're overly pessimistic. But as you say, it's good that it's open to debate. Finally Saintweb can make its mark on national policy.

Oh. You're back.

BA have long had 'form' with thuggery and underhand tactics, and are an industrial relations nightmare. Don't know how you managed to put up with it for so long, Duncan.

So the state provides but should not interfere? You sound like a caricature benefits scrounger, Sergei: 'I demand you give me tax-money but don't even think of asking what it's for.'

If you're talking about USS you're wrong, grandad.

Pretty accurate, this - except that the menu is like all the repeats you see in an ITV schedule. Nothing seems to change much, and all looks fairly bland. Then you enter the twilight zone of a thread full, apparently, of 'mongs', 'princesses', ***ts', etc, etc, ad nauseum. I'm all for insults, but can't they be a bit more imaginative and entertaining than this?

It's a similar story with USS, the university lecturers' pension scheme. From The Guardian: USS is the second biggest occupational pension scheme in the UK and according to its website is 'one of the largest and most stable pension schemes in the UK'. In the 12 months to March 2010, USS grew by £4.5bn despite a significant economic downturn in what was described as a 'good investment performance' by the fund's managers.

I've had the misfortune to work with one of those. For once, you're right.

turkdellhypobajii. (plus that bloke who's named himself after the leader of the BNP and suffers from premature enumeration.)