Wednesday 13 July 2011

Phone hacking

Unless you've been hiding in a cave for the past month or so, you'll have heard about the demise of the News of the World newspaper. Basically Rupert Murdoch quite happily sacked 200 or so staff to save one top executive Rebecka "the slapper" Brookes... she got the title "the slapper" from the publication Private Eye when she was accused of kicking seven bells out of her then husband TV hard man Ross Kemp...

You can imagine that she is a very driven person, competitive, cut throat and results driven... she could of course be the complete opposite of that...but that would be stretching the imagination a little far.

Once the rats had jumped the ship regarding the advertising it became an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction and damage limitation by News international... 

But I think the rot goes much deeper than this and isn't necessarily contained to one media organisation.... How many times have you read "from a trusted source" in news articles? There is currently lots of smoke but I think the fire is under the peat bog and it's raging away.... I think there are a lot of editors out there currently sweating... We've only really seen the tip of the iceberg at the moment and this kind of thing has been going on for years like a bad attack of dry rot, all of it fed by higher circulation and money changing hands.

I've never been a reader of the tabloids I find them very low brow and sensationalist journalism (I use the word loosely...tittle tattle is probably more accurate), but it seems a vast majority of the population do like that kind of thing, and where there is demand, there is supply.

Anyway enough of the serious stuff I'm sure the ones who are supposedly in charge of this country will thrash out a deal with News International and it will be buried for an unspecified sum of money or a suitable donation.... or will last long enough until something juicier comes along... 

Meanwhile in the real world our soldiers are still dying in Afghanistan for an unspecified reason and will continue to do so, fighting a completely unjust war with very little sign of an endgame. 

Anyway... We're off on our jollys soon, we are camping up in North Wales for a week then shooting off to Scotland for a bit (not camping I might add)... hopefully the weather will hold for the week, but even so I'm reliably informed that not only does the Llyn Peninsula have outstanding views but it also has a glut of pubs, of which I intend to visit some of the better ones... Chris my mate has promised to visit considering its just down the road from where he lives... but his reliability has proven somewhat dodgy in the past... so I won't be holding my breath or getting a pint in unless he actually turns up... I'm also hoping to do a bit of fishing up there... which reminds me I must check if they have a decent bait shop up there 

Anyway we are all ok both teenagers working decent hours down in Pendine and actually getting some money in their pockets.... Freya is the missing link in the Dinosaur fossil record in that she is living proof that the Stropasaurus evolved into a human female... although she does make us laugh with her constant singing and ridiculous statements like "nooooo you're Princess Kracka Lacken"

the only other bit of hilarity is Fomo boy's voice is on the verge of breaking, and his ridiculous warbling will only get worse as he gets older.... he doesn't really notice it but we do ...his voice box hasn't quite decided where it's going yet, but I'm sure it will pretty soon.... He's off to Andrea's Mum & Dad on Friday, So we'll probably notice his warbling more once we meet up with him and Hugo (Andrea's nephew) when we pick them up for  carry on camping.......

When will we learn ?

The only worrying thing is that we will leave two teenagers with free reign over the house for ten days.. but they will be under pain of death (and quite possibly eviction) if anything gets trashed....

We shall see