The JFK way

In recent months I have had cause to travel to the USA a number of times. While I have commented before about the new-approach immigration staff at the airport – they even smile at times – sadly the organisation and attitude of other staff is as appalling as those employed at Heathrow by BAA.

When will the corporations running airports realise that people might spend more and give their employees less grief if in return passengers were treated like human beings and not juvenile delinquents. Bottom of the pile are the humourless driods who scan luggage was you leave the country. They do all they can to belittle punters, barking surly and unhelpful commands while not lifting a finger to help.

They are a disgrace. The USA is a great place to visit. Why does it always finish on such a low?

Tiger Woods and UK libel

The news that Tiger Woods has successfully obtained injunctions preventing the UK media from publishing information widely available in the USA is another blow for freedom of speech.

While the lurid details of the Woods saga are not really too savoury – although it is impossible to sympathise with someone who has earned hundreds of millions from selling a wholesome image – the issue is that again the UK’s draconian libel laws have been used to silence opinion.

What is the bigger issue is that wonderful firms such as Carter Ruck (see <I>Private Eye</I> most weeks)  earn huge sums from using the UK system to silence crictism of some of the world’s most odious regimes.  Woods is about one man’s fall. But when the law is used so often to silence valid debate and examination then the government has to step in.

If things continue to slide at the rate they are then issues such as the MP’s expenses scandals would never see the light of day.

The crazy thing is that the law means the papers cannot even hint at what they cannot report or report that the injunction has been granted.

Speculation is that it concerns the alleged UK affair. And yet a surf shows the following in Australia: “British media yesterday named TV presenter and former pin-up Kirsty Gallacher, a household name there, as a friend of Tiger’s.
She is now married and pregnant. But in an interview several years ago when she was single, she described him as “wonderful, kind and talented – not to mention incredibly handsome”.”

Meanwhile, such an injunction has limited value in this day and age. Surf the web and find out what the authorities don’t want you to know.  And stick a cyber two fingers up at the lawyers and judiciary.  And then there’s always good old Fox News, available on most satellite channels 24 hours a day!

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LONDON, Dec. 11 (UPI) — A law firm representing Tiger Woods said a British court issued an injunction that forbids the publication of nude photos of the professional golfer.

The Schillings law firm said the injunction granted Thursday by the High Court in London would block the release of any nude photos of the U.S. golfer should such images exist, CNN reported Friday.

“For the avoidance of doubt, this order is not to be taken as an admission that any such photographs exist, and in the event that these photographs do exist, and it is not admitted, any such images may have been fabricated, altered, manipulated and or changed to create the false appearance and impression that they are nude photographs of our client,” Schillings said in a letter to publications in Britain.

The court’s ruling comes in the wake of allegations that Woods, 33, had extramarital affairs.

The married golfer, a father of two, who was involved in a single-car accident in Florida last month, has admitted to unspecified “transgressions,” CNN reported.

One rule for Marr, one for the rest

I wondered for some time while reading what the injunction obtained by Andrew Marr against anyone revealing what he’d been up to was all about. Even <I>Private Eye</I> were gagged into silence. And then it all become mcuh clearer …

Find out what Marr, Alice Miles and Jacky Ashley all have in common … and why a story that would be all over the <I>News of the World</I> were it involving footballers or sop stars remains secret(ish).

Remember, this is the same Marr who questioned Gordon Brown about his health, claiming it was fair game as it was in the public interest.  The same Marr who describes himself as a libertarian.

Abercrombie & Fitch – what a con

Subtle as a brick

Why do so many gullible idiots shop at Abercrombie & Fitch, a firm which sells the same overpriced sweat-shop produced items as many others and yet as acquired a large following. What a triumph of marketing over substance.

In New York this week I watched as queues snaked round their Fifth Avenue store in freezing rain. The sight of the queue seemed to attract more to join, perhaps convinced by it that there had to be some unique things inside they simply could not do without. But there weren’t. Inside, the shop was less packed than most others on a frantic shopping weekend.

Clearly the order to staff (aside to be surly to those outside when they had the temerity to ask what time the store was supposed to open – nothing shown on the door or even the company’s website) was to ensure there was always a queue even if it was completely unnecessary.

Hopefully the public will see the shop for what it is and move on to the next big thing – year on year sales are down 17% so there is hope. Until then Abercrombie & Fitch (well, the shareholders) will continue to laugh at its clients all the way to the bank.

Xenophobia and Foxy Knoxy

It was interesting following the outcome of the Amanda Knox trial from the USA where the general view seemed to be that she could received anything but a fair trial.  The ever repugnant Fox News (watch and learn in the UK and remember what it is all about whenever a Murdoch slams the BBC) went further than most and slammed the decision as being anti-American and a travesty of justice.  This, remember, is the land where OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson both bought their way out of prison. Few bothered to spare a moment for the murdered girl.

The backlash has started with calls for boycotting of Italian goods and holidays.   It plays into the “all foreigners are hicks” approach to the world peddled by Fox News.  Knox may well not be guilty, but their kind don’t care.  Knox is American and therefore inncoent as far as they are concerned.  Europeans are backward.

You have to wonder if the reaction would have been nearly as manic had Knox been a 22-stone ugly woman. Or black. Or trailer trash.

The disgrace that is David Wilshire

The shaming of David Wilshire

Lest anyone doubt David Wilshire’s true colours, his reaction to being rumbled with his snout in the trough of Westminster has not been remotely contrite.

Forced to stand down at the next election in shame by his party leader, Wilshire had almost no supporters left in his Spelthorne constituency after issuing a remarkable email to voters in which he compared the treatment of MPs with that of the Jews under the Nazis.

“Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler’s gas chambers,” wrote the self-important Wilshire. “The witchhunt against MPs in general will undermine democracy. It will weaken Parliament – handing yet more power to governments.”

So the shredded prestige of MPs is not down to the likes of Wilshire who have abused the system for years until they were finally caught, it’s the fault people who demanded those in the wrong be treated like ordinary voters.

If he had a shred of decency he would quit now and not wait for the general election. But he won’t because then he would miss out on a massive pay-off from parliament as an MP retiring and not resigning. And the likes of Wilshire would hate to miss out on a last snuffle in the muck.

Murdoch’s losing his grasp of media reality

Rupert Murdoch has dominated the media in the UK and elsewhere for several decades and has shown a sound grasp of the way things operate. But you can’t help but feel the old sod might be losing his grasp on reality (or what he likes to call dominance).

By muttering that he might ban Google from carrying his stories, he seems to have missed the fundamental way the web works. If he pushes through his idea to put all News International content behind registration and cuts off Google, you have to wonder who he expects to look at the stuff online.

Any online business will tell you they need Google and other search engines and news aggregators to increase page views. Search Engine Optimisation companies earn large sums to tell businesses just like News International how best to exploit them to the maximum advantage.

Murdoch’s challenge is to find a way to make the websites pay, something which threatens the vast majority of online providers in the years ahead.

In the meantime, his ideas make as much sense as him banning televisions and wondering why nobody is watching Sky anymore.

The man who can do no right

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Gordon Brown’s letter of apology, what it does raise is another concern there is nobody inside No. 10 who is willing to stand up to the man. For all his attempts to quash suggestions he is a vile-tempered control freak, how else can you explain the fact that nobody was there to look at the letter and politely point out to the PM it was strewn with mistakes that would shame a GCSE candidate.

And then he compounded the situation by telephoning Jacqui Janes to try to smooth things over. But against a lady so understandably angered, it was never going to be an easy ride. And why oh why did it not occur to one of No.10’s highly-paid advisors that someone who went to the Sun with the original letter might just tape the telephone call and do the same again?

He meant well, no doubt, but it turned into another avoidable PR disaster. Like the dying days of the Major government, no matter what the PM does seems destined to end up a shambles.
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Rupert Murdoch’s chilling news agenda

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch’s latest attack on the BBC has a tired feeling to it. In an interview/advertisement with the oh-so-hostile Sky in Australia – I bet that was probing – he said it was a scandal that everyone in Britain with a television was compelled to pay a licence fee. As opposed to paying between £18 and £60 a month for Sky.

Murdoch’s real battle is against BBC news. He wants to dominate TV news and his increasingly sensationalist Sky News has failed to break into the mainstream news market. Hence attacks by him and various members of his family against the corporation.

Murdoch has a virtual monopoly on independent radio news in the UK. He would like nothing better than to see off ITN completely, and if he could then do the same to the BBC, or at least manacle it financially and politically, he would be unchallenged.

Why is that so bad? Aside from his news often being geared towards serving his master’s voice – see the fawning coverage of China where Murdoch wants a slice of a potentially massive pie – you only have to look at the disgustingly xenophobic and ultra right-wing Fox News in the USA to see what awaits if it’s left to him.

Zimbabwe and Mugabe – one year on and nothing’s changed

At the start of the year the papers around the world were full of horror stories from Zimbabwe. A flick through them now would show nothing, leading a reasonable man to think all was well. Nothing could be further to the truth.

The fragile coalition between Mugabe and prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai has increasingly looked to be a means of allowing Mugabe to keep control with a veneer of credibility. In recent months old problems have resurfaced, and behind the scenes much of the suffering continues.

Tsvangirai, for a long time seen as the best hope for change, increasingly looks like a busted flush. On a visit to Britain earlier this year he was, to his bewilderment, heckled and accused of selling out by Zimbabwean dissidents. A brave man, there is a feeling he appears to have lost much of his fight, understandable since the death of his wife.

The Mugabe regime has resumed pumping out the same propaganda and his henchmen are back in the business of doing what they enjoy doing best. And there are again signs that the courts are being ignored and the police used as Zanu-PF weapons.

The world’s had a break. Zimbabwe is about to resume being headline news.