At the suggestion of a Birmingham Press reader who wrote…
In light of today’s revelations re. ‘phone hacking by News International, how about re-running Richard Lutz’s brilliant piece from April 9th. I’m sure there’ll be many who never saw it the first time or who would enjoy seeing it again.
we are re-presenting this….
From Richard Lutz.
I would never let a criminal into my house. I would call the police in case he robbed me, hurt my family or stole my property or my mind.
Yet every Sunday, including this one in early April, millions will hear the News of the World plop like a dog’s turd through the letterbox. Or worse, actually pick up their sad sorry arses and go out and scrape some coins out of a pocket and buy this tacky piece of crap.
But now a creepy little apology after years of lying to the government, the police (who they were paying off) and to their readers which the paper has for years treated as congenital idiots.
Ooops, s-o-r-r-eeee. Whoops, we are criminals after all. We bugged phones.
So, today and for successive Sundays until this planet erodes to dust, as its owners agree to pay out millions to the victims whose phone were tapped for the sake of tittle tattle, the readers are giving away money to the criminal newspaper and its employees each time its pages plops into households.
The News of the World should not be shunned. It should be shut.
It abused that most precious of freedoms, the unfettered press, to rob people’s privacy. It is power without responsibility. It is a three year old with a loaded machine gun. It is a cackling white collar thug in an overpaid job enacting crimes for a byline. It is the scum that peeked into people’s lives anbd they need to be hunted down, charged and sent to jail and their employer banned from owning anything more than a dog kennel.
Did News International and its boss Rupert Murdoch know about the illegal acts? Former editor Andy Coulson probably did. If they did know, did they care or was the byword: ‘Don’t get caught.’?
I have to admit, in my younger days, I was a freelance for the tabloids. There were good reporters and professionals on all those papers. Good people too. And some bad ones, like the weirdos that listened in to private calls. We all worked for an insidious corrupt cultural phenomenon: the UK gutter press. Get what you can and don’t get caught. Or pay whomever you have to and never admit it.
Rebekah Brookes (nee Wade) the former NoW editor admitted she and her cohorts paid off greedy London cops. She proudly told this to a Parliamentary select committee. To her it was a badge of honour, of sheer ‘Whatchagonnadoabout it’ bravado. And as John Prescott said, no one, not the police nor politicians, ever thought of formally interviewing her with caution to see who she paid, how much and what for.
It was simply accepted the Screws is corrupt and that is how the British public gets its rocks off every Sunday.
Murdoch and his sleezo henchmen must be stopped now. He threw £20m or so at a problem and hopes it goes away so he can buy up more of what you read and what you watch. He wants to own what you think and he’s a common criminal, allowing the jerks who run his newspapers to carry out crimes.
Ban the News of the World. And stop Murdoch in his tracks and let’s get some decency and honestly into our press.
Because of we don’t, our free press will be owned by a bullying sneering gang of criminals. And every morning they’ll be creeping into your homes through your letterbox like the vermin they are.
You can read Richard Lutz’s follow up to this article here
