Hacked Off!

"The journalist's 'lack of convictions', the prostitution of his experiences and beliefs is comprehensible only as the apogee of capitalist reification." - Georg Lukács

The love affair between Rupert Murdoch and the Establishment may have finally come to an end, or at least it has been derailed by the people of this country and not it's owners. Rupert Murdoch walked away from his bid to takeover BSkyB just before it faced a vote in Parliament which would have no doubt opposed News International. Though it would have been interesting to see who exactly stands by Murdoch after all of this. It has been quite a journey, just last week Rupert Murdoch was standing by Rebekah Brooks and he has just nudged her off of the cliff. The difference is that The News of the World is now gone after 168 years, 43 of which have been spent in the claws of Murdoch - at least until it is relaunched as The Sun on Sunday. As I'd like to see burning mountains of The Times and The Sun in the streets of London I have to admit that this is a damn good day. It is even possible that the damage done to News International is enough for yet more closures, this could be the beginning of the end for Murdoch's "animal spirit".

It was clear that the Murdoch press has been out of control for quite some time. The public was disgusted when it turned out that the paper had hacked the phones of a murdered teenage girl, to the extent of actually deleting voice mails in order to receive even more voice mails. This functioned to give the illusion that the girl might be alive to her family. Then it turned out that these journalists also hacked the phones of war widows and the victims of 7/7. Now there is even word of hacking the phones of 9/11 victims. The criminal conspiracy went as far as bribing police officers and even enveloped the Conservative Party as Andy Coulson made the jump from tabloid fuck-monkey to public relations fuck-monkey. But this is not an entirely new dimension to the drama of Murdoch-Tory relations. Let's not forget what happened in Wapping back in 1986 when the collusion between the Conservative government and the Metropolitan police with Rupert Murdoch left the print unions smashed. It was also The Sun that led the media campaign against the Miners in '84 to '85.

In 1988 The News of the World was one of the tabloids that hounded the gay chat-show host Russell Harty and upped the ante as Harty lay dying in a hospital bed from hepatitis. Journalists from all of the tabloids even posed as junior doctors to get a hold of Harty's medical notes and photographers rented a flat just opposite Harty's hotel room. Alan Bennett later said, at Harty's funeral, that "The gutter press finished him." There was an immediate reaction from Murdoch's attack dogs, specifically in The Sun, "Stress did not kill Russell Harty. The truth is that he died from a sexually transmitted disease. the press didn't give it to him. He caught it from his own choice. And by paying young rent boys he broke the law. Some - like ageing bachelor Mr Bennett - can see no harm in that. He has no family. But what if it had been YOUR son Harty had bedded?" It was that same red-top that claimed in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster that fans robbed the dead and pissed on "brave cops". Murdoch made Kelvin MacKenzie apologise through his teeth for that one.

This is just the tip of the ice-berg. In the US the Mephistopheles found Roger Ailes to run Fox News as the propaganda wing of the Republican Party. It was Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater who designed the campaign ads for George HW Bush in 1988, the basic message of which was "Vote for George HW Bush or a Black man might rape your girlfriend." So we should not be surprised to find a disgusting band of reactionaries at Fox News, where Glenn Beck was taken off the air because of the huge losses in advertising revenue and a fall in ratings. Now Mr Ailes is bracing himself in case the FBI discovers News Corp has hacked the phones of 9/11 victims and then it will be game over for Fox News. Why the hell did it take the phone-hacking of a dead girl to make us angry about Rupert Murdoch? The man controls around 40% of British media and we only cared once he crossed a clear ethical line. The BBC and the Labour Party are as much at fault here as the Conservative Party. The party-line is still that the system is sound in spite of a few excessive elements, e.g. The News of the World.

Now we can read The Sun and it's reaction to the words of Gordon Brown, if we could tear our eyes away from the delicious news that Rupert Murdoch backed out of the takeover bid to avoid the humiliation of a landslide vote against him in Parliament. It's important to remember that if the scandal had never erupted you could guarantee that the Conservatives and the Labour Party would currently be singing "Hey big spender!" to Rupert Murdoch. No doubt David Cameron and Ed Miliband would have danced around in suspenders and basques for the old dog. Whenever we see Tony Benn today we forget about the media campaign against him led by the Murdoch red-tops to label him as a "loon", going as far as actually putting words in the mouth of a prominent American psychiatrist to try and make out that Benn was mentally unstable. The press went through Benn's rubbish and he was aware that his phone was being tapped, by who we do not know specifically. Murdoch played the exact same tune with Neil Kinnock, who was well to the Right of Tony Benn.

As Conrad Black has pointed out, Rupert Murdoch has no loyalty except to his company and he has betrayed every political leader who ever helped him. The only exceptions to the only is Ronald Reagan and possibly Tony Blair. As Murdoch seeks to rid the world of dignity and respectable institutions out of a so-called "anti-elitism" he kisses the arses of the Chinese Communists. All the while News International runs on a reactionary populist platform in Britain and on a commonsensical conservatism in America. The way he sees public entertainment and civic values is similar to the depiction of both in The Simpsons: all politicians are crooks while the masses are an ignorant lumpenproletariat. The irony being that this man climbed in bed with the police and the political class, whilst railing against them and supposedly 'supporting' the working-classes against the corrupt elite. The liberal commentariat has turned the narrative around and now we find it is those noble journalists who are speaking truth to power once more.

Whether or not the Labour Party has slashed off all remnants of the impact Murdoch has had on the Party is another matter. Ed Miliband has led the way on the motion to ask the Mephistopheles to reconsider the bid, a motion not so hardline as it would seem and just a week ago Miliband was calling for Rebekah Brooks to think about quitting. I bet that one had the Murdoch empire trembling in it's wake. Now that the 'evil ginger' has finally resigned we should keep in mind it was Murdoch who gave her the boot and not Miliband. The same goes for Les Hinton, who has worked with Murdoch for 52years and used to lead the British wing of News Corp before Rebekah Brooks succeeded him. These are "professional" not "personal" moves on the part of Rupert Murdoch to insulate himself and News Corp from the scandal. The basic complaint of the government is that the red-top went too far and that there is a need for discipline and responsibility to be instilled. A radical change in the mainstream media is unimaginable, we just want The News of the World without the phone-hacking of dead children and in that sense we want the sleaze of the tabloids without the sleaze.

We find ourselves embedded in ideology when Miliband calls this a great victory for "people up and down the country", a platitude if there ever was one, we should reject this liberal reduction of the situation to the glorious struggle of the little guy and the investigative journalist against a corrupt media corporation. The adversarial self-image which the BBC holds so dearly to whilst fawning to power and all opposition is conveniently absent from the discussion. There is no alternative to cuts and we can tell because the BBC refuses to air the alternatives! Except when the alternatives can be easily dismissed as 'lunacy'. We should have no illusions, the disgusting 'aberrations' of News International are being rooted out by the system as a form of corruption and no one in their right mind would defend the phone-hacking of dead people. This will not change the fact that the political system is broken, it has been reduced to a form of management in which the 'rabble' of special individuals consent to passivity in the midst of mindless chatter from the middle-class liberals at the BBC.

Immigrants, the Easy Target.

In the midst of the phone-hacking scandal and the Eurozone debt crisis, the disgraceful changes made to the law regarding migrant domestic workers which have the potential to enable a rise in human trafficking and effective slavery. Damian Green has moved to repeal some of the safeguards which are supposed to protect domestic migrant workers from exploitation of this depraved kind. The reforms will have little impact on net migration, though it does have the potential to make render workers "illegal" and may even increase the threat of violence to domestic workers from overseas. It is possible for migrant domestic workers to work, move on to new jobs, support themselves, remain visible in the United Kingdom and pay into the pot through taxes. So where is the outrage when the rights of such people are undermined? There isn't a word about this in the press, certainly not in the right-wing press where the usual line is spewed regularly.

Damian Green is looking to abolish the route for overseas domestic workers in private households, perhaps imposing a restriction of leave to 6 months as a 'visitor' only and 12 months where accompanying a Tier 1 or Tier 2 migrant. Of course there will be no possibility of extension, no right to change employer, no ability to sponsor or find work for dependents and no right to settlement under such proposals. Note that these protections are vital for migrant workers, as well as insufficient as the right to change employer has yet to be extended to servants employed by foreign diplomats (which is where a great deal of abuse is committed with immunity). If the government can't do away with the route then it will seek to strengthen the pre-entry requirements in order to "minimise the possibility of abusive or exploitative employer/employee relationships". The government wants to stop granting settlement to servants in diplomatic households, keep in mind that the servants abused in such households are particularly difficult to protect as it is.


There has been talk of a 6-12 month non-renewable visa, though the proposal was ultimately rejected because of the implications for the safety of domestic workers. The proposed visa would have enabled forced labour as it would have transferred greater power to employers, including the most unscrupulous, over isolated and dependent workers. The power to denounce the worker to the immigration authorities deprives such workers of bargaining power. Of course, if the workers flee there is always homelessness and no doubt the status of 'illegal' to fall into. Should it be that a person who wants better conditions at work is criminalised in this way? It is hardly the case that people who escape trafficking or exploitation will be able to go through the courts for justice or even just compensation. There are already huge problems with the protections in place for the victims of trafficking, the emphasis is on immigration status and criminal justice in many cases.

No doubt the hairs on the back of your white neck will have stood up as you've read about these proposals, perhaps you're thinking that we can't just let everyone in our country will be swamped! The UK Border Agency will come out with statistics to tell you that the grants of settlement to migrant domestic workers have risen by 34% from 2009 to 2010, the fact that is just 795 people in 2009 is conveniently left out. Instead the number 15,000 visas issued to domestic workers in 2010 is wheeled out, even though 94% of domestic workers will return home again with their employer and do not stay to renew their visa. The effect on net migration of domestic workers is actually miniscule as in 2009 domestic workers accounted for about 0.5% of the total grants of settlement. There is no chance that these proposals will guarantee work for British and EU workers. The reliance on flawed protections is only costly to the tax-payer and potentially harmful to the people who have to survive under them.

You will have heard that we have had "uncontrolled mass immigration" into Britain for at least a decade, some claim that we have had an uninterrupted influx of foreigners into this country since 1948. Actually the tradition of the British Empire was to allow all people loyal to the British monarchy into the country and it was only when Clement Attlee introduced the Nationality act that this practice became formal. There were constant attempts to restrict immigration throughout the 1950s, all of which were opposed by Enoch Powell who went on to give the infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968. Before that there was the Commonwealth Immigrants act of 1962, which restricted immigration to people who had been allocated work vouchers. The Conservatives beat Labour in 1970 and Ted Heath took over from Harold Wilson as Prime Minister. In 1971 Ted Heath passed the Immigration act that brought immigration almost to a complete halt for a number of years. 


There no mention of the facts, that we have controlled spurts of immigration and have done for a very long time. It is often complained that there should not be anyone in this country who doesn't speak English, even David Cameron made this point in a speech on immigration as he slashed spending on English lessons. There is also little room in the debate to even acknowledge the deaths of people like Jimmy Mubenga, who was "restrained" to death on an airplane as he was being deported back to Angola. There is a general ignorance of the way asylum seekers are detained and can be deported, the dominant misconception is that the foreigners are pampered. There is little coverage of G4S, which rakes in over £600 million from the government for running four prisons, three immigration removal centres as well as 675 court and police cells, but the good people who work for G4S still find time to "restrain" people to death.

It is not often admitted that there were and has been a constant wave of anti-immigrant fervour against any attempts to open up the country to immigration for decades. The result is a spurt of immigration there and a backlash here which closes up the system once more, until it has to be opened up again in order to solve problems with the supply of labour and the impending pensions crisis. In general the tone of debate over immigration in Britain is always at the brink of the hysterical outbursts about the contradictions of multicultural tolerance and the "madness" of political correctness. We find ourselves split between the racists who aren't happy with any immigration at all and the liberal do-gooders who have doomed our country. The important facts are lost whilst the media wheels out numbers to rile up the fears of people who have been disenfranchised and have legitimate grievances. Clearly something has to give in order for us to even discuss these issues, let alone do anything about them.

Martin Lewis on Student Debt.

This is a talk given by Martin Lewis on the increase of tuition fees to £9,000, the changes to the student loan system and what he sees as the popular "misunderstandings" in the debate over student debt and the fee rise. The expert on personal debts is keen to point out that the individual will pay back a greater debt at a lower rate over a longer period of time, so it would not impact on the ability of the individual to take out a mortgage. The function of the greater debt instills passivity, at best, as people who will be paying-off a debt over a long period of time are unlikely to go on strike or demonstrate. If you're in debt you've got to get a job to pay it off, you can put aside your dreams as any job will do and serious political change is not necessarily in your interest. So a bigger student loan adds to the pressure of the debt accrued in the form of a mortgage, credit cards etc.

It is not that the debt incurred by a student loan is the same as a credit card or a mortgage, but it contributes to the amount of debt which one may accrue over the years and spend one's life paying-off. The additional £30,000+ debt will contribute to the overall debt of someone who takes out a mortgage, credit cards etc. As a great number of people do in this debt-driven economy. It might not make that much difference every month, but it's something that's going to be hanging over you (along with your mortgage, credit cards etc) for most of your life. According to the kind of argument Martin Lewis puts forward a person could have a £500,000 student debt and it not affect the way they live, because "rationally" they pay less a month and no one will ever repossess their property. To suggest that the amount of student debt does not in any sense "burden" an individual, even if it just a psychological burden, is ludicrous.


It is important to keep in mind that government debt amounts to around 70% of GDP whilst the public funding for higher education is 0.7% of GDP. So even if universities were completely privatised and tuition fees were adjusted to cover all the costs, the most it would achieve is lower government debt by 0.7%. The implication being the Coalition's claim of 'necessity' is spurious, as a rise in tuition fees and cuts to funding for universities would have little impact on the debt. Though it will contribute to the debt per household, which is estimated to rise by £245 billion as a result of the cuts. If there is no reason for tuition fees to be raised, then there is no reason that the loan at £3k could not be adjusted to include the benefits which the "saving money" expert described. I think we may have to re-assess our faith in experts who have 'real issues' with the interest rates and the early redemption penalties.

The points Martin Lewis made are largely irrelevant as the presupposition of the talk is that the Coalition has a legitimate case to raise tuition fees and cut funding for higher education. The only reason there was even a space for such a discussion is because the points being made are within these safe conventions. The fact that there is no real justification for higher tuition fees will not be raised and has been completely submerged in the media coverage around the cuts. Instead Lewis informs the "mistaken" rabble that they are wrong about the tuition fees and that the rational option is to support the reforms for there positive attributes. If the government wants to alter student loans so that we pay less each month over a longer period of time there is no reason why it can't be done with less debt or even the same amount that we'll have. Though there weren't even any economic reasons for tuition fees to begin with.