How Sez Sees It

I was going to do this blog about the committees meeting today, but I think that things have changed somewhat and so I am going to do things a little differently now. I want to start by getting the events of the pie/shaving foam attack out of the way.  I am hardly Rupert Murdoch's biggest fan, but the man was there to answer questions to a serious parliamentary commission and on top of that is a man in his 80s.  He does not deserve to be hit in the face with shaving foam or whatever it was, by some dick who thinks it is big and clever.  In fact this could have been detrimental.  As US citizen's Rupert and James Murdoch did not have to even be there and could have refused to come back after the interval.  On top of that people will have some sort of respect for both of the Murdochs for coming back.  I want to state that no matter what I say today in this blog I could never condone the behaviour of the man that did that act. Ok, on to the other stuff. ...

Twitter seems to have named the events Hackgate and it seems like a good name to me so I will borrow it when talking about the events in future. Not only was Rebekah Brooks arrested as part of a pre-arranged arrest yesterday but Sir Paul Stephenson stepped down as head of the Met Police.  If the Met thought that the arrest of Brooks would take the focus off of Sir Paul then they are mistaken.  Wherever you look today the newspapers and television shows are full of the news of his resignation and connections with Neil Wallis at NOTW.  Of course this is also a test for Cameron.  He is stuck between losing the loyalty of his friends as he is forced to cut ties with them and finding himself in the first situation he has been in where he has no real power and has to watch events play out.  Not only this but Ed Miliband has come out of this looking better than him and Cameron has to hope that Miliband doesn't know what to do with his new power. Whateve...

Today Rebekah Brooks has been arrested.  This is a good thing as if it is proved that she was responsible for allowing and enabling the hacking by News International papers then she does need to be held to account. There is one issue that is not really an issue though.  Thoughts being bandied around at the moment suggest that she was pre-warned by the police that she was going to be arrested and this gave her a chance to resign.  I am not so sure about that.  It was a pre-arranged arrest so it is hard to tell what she knew. As far as I can see the only problem is that over the next week she is due to stand before the select committee and this may effect two things.  The first is that she may not be able to appear now as she has to give information to the police over the committee.  If she does appear then the second problem is that she may be restricted over what she can say to the committee because anything she says could go for or against her in the p...

It is with regret that Rebekah Brooks has tendered her resignation as head of News International.  Let me get this straight though.  Last Sunday the News of the World closed down and made around 500 members of staff unemployed and yet there was no apology from Brooks.  Then she resigns herself now and there is still no apology. The ghastly thing is that Brooks and the Murdochs keep denying any wrong doing.  It just feels like Brooks was in the firing line as the public face of the scandal and so she had to be seen to go.  The Murdochs appear to be hiding behind this woman.  When are we likely to hear that James Murdoch is to go as well?  I doubt very much that we will see that happen. If the Murdochs think that by sacrificing Brooks the baying for blood will quell they are much mistaken.  It transpires that today the FBI are looking to investigate the possibility that families of victims who died 11/09/2001 were hacked by News Corporation owne...