 the current situation is bad enough.
If there was a point to the Liberal Democrats entering the coalition other than self-aggrandisement, or "saving" the country from the prospect of a second election, then surely it was to temper the Tories' worst excesses while hopefully getting a few of their own policies enshrined in law. What exactly does Clegg have to show for the past two and a bit years other than a worthless "pupil premium", the hardly inspiring rise in the personal tax allowance, and a few praiseworthy steps in the right direction on civil liberties? It isn't, as he claims, that the left will always cry betrayal, it's that he and his party have been played for fools by the Conservatives at every turn. He was suckered into a "miserable little compromise" on electoral reform which failed as a result, followed the same path on the Lords, and has failed to stand up to the Tories on education, the NHS and the economy. From the beginning Clegg should have made clear that his party holds the key to power, and without it, Cameron would have to almost certainly go to the country. The coalition agreement was a disaster; rather than a document which locked the two sides into supporting policies both resent for different reasons, there should have been an "understanding" that could develop and change as the facts have. Everything that has happened since has been as consequence of that mistake.
The end result has been two unpopular parties that increasingly loathe each other, but are trapped together for fear of being dumped out of power ignominiously. The least Clegg could do in the circumstances is spare us is the faux concern that the government he signed up to might be protecting the rich at the expense of the poor. It's what it's been doing ever since the rose garden, and even if by some miracle Clegg does get his wealth tax, it won't alter that fact.
Stay classy, Matt Bendoris!
Call it fantasy, but my lack of recent posts on the standards of journalism at the Sun hasn't been down to not looking, rather that Dominic Mohan has turned out to be less sensationalist and overall far better editor than Rebekah Brooks ever was. Last week's antics over Prince Harry aside, that is, so let's not jinx it now.
STUNNING violinist Nicola Benedetti becomes as tightly strung as a Stradivarius when pop babe Rihanna’s name crops up.
I must have hit a bum note after asking why the sexy Scot doesn’t make more of her fabulous figure — when she suddenly flies off on one.
Ah yes, becoming tightly strung and flying off on one at the suggestion from a tabloid journalist that she sexs her act up a bit. Nothing in the slightest bit chauvinistic here, nope.
So I guess Nicola won’t be posing for the lads’ mags anytime soon. Pity, because she looks fit as a fiddle when we meet at Edinburgh’s plush Sheraton Hotel.
The classical musician is wearing skinny jeans which show off her long legs. She’s also busty with a washboard flat tummy, tottering around 5ft 10in in her Dune platform wedges.
But Nicola doesn’t always take the bonniest photo — she’s beaky in pics sometimes, which is weird because in the flesh she’s an absolute knock-out.
Class, pure class. One suspects that Matt didn't mention to Nicola at the time that he feared he had been sent to interrogate a pelican, so it's natural he let his relief out in the piece itself. And what relief!
Better get busy making sweet, sweet music, Leonard. Lucky boy...
With the cliche quotient duly filled, Matt no doubt made his excuses and left. Whether there was a mess to be cleared up once Matt had returned to base, perhaps the cleaners at the Scottish Sun's offices can be persuaded to get in touch.
I'm presuming this current juxtaposition on the front of CiF is deliberate. If not...
Yes, they were so in terror of Leveson, weren't they?
Ah yes, so it was fear of Leveson stopping the papers from publishing the pictures of Harry, wasn't it? Poor old Neil and Kelvin, it's always sad when it's your former employer that knocks your claims into a cocked hat. The Sun's editorial justifying their decision doesn't so much as mention Brian, for the reason this was all the doing of the PCC and royal aides.
Not that the Sun's reasoning is anything other than specious. The Sun, and Murdoch for that matter, have never cared a jot for press freedom, only for publicity and profit, the former of which this latest move has certainly brought. The Sun claims there was a need to publish the pictures in order "for the debate around them to be fully informed".  Anyone who wanted to see them had already done so, and anyone else has certainly read the descriptions of what they show. The Sun's public interest reasoning amounts to 23 words, or 2 whole sentences, that there are questions of his security and how his position in the army might be the affected. Soldiers have done far worse and kept their jobs, while we hardly needed to see the pictures to be able to talk about his security.
As for Harry having compromised his own privacy, can the Sun really have forgotten about Sienna Miller so quickly? By any yardstick, Miller's partying a few years back with a married man in full public view looked a far more open and shut case, and yet she still won a number of privacy actions. We already have reports that Harry's security detail asked his guests not to take photographs, more than suggesting that consent was not given. Lastly, the Sun claims that a previous ruling by the PCC makes their stance this time round a mockery. Back in 2010 they ruled that Loaded magazine had not invaded the privacy of "epic boobs" girl by reprinting images of her as they had been so widely disseminated online. The differences though are apparent: even though Loaded hadn't taken them from the young woman's Bebo page (she was 15 when they were posted), she had made them available herself. Moreover, there had been four years between the images being posted and Loaded republishing them, a period of time over which they had gone viral and become a meme. In this case we are talking about three days, not years.
All this said, this is hardly an issue worth getting out of your pram about, as some of the usual suspects have decided to. If Lord Leveson decides that it's further evidence of how certain sections of the press, despite everything, will continue to do whatever the hell they like, then the Sun has no one to blame but itself. And let's leave it at that.
It's the end of the free press as we know it!
Neil Wallis is, Kirsty Wark reminded us on Newsnight last night, still on bail after being arrested in connection with phone hacking. Rather than being humbled by this chastening experience (and Wallis is of course completely innocent of any involvement with what went on at the News of the World until proven otherwise), Wallis, alongside the ubiquitous Kelvin MacKenzie was everywhere yesterday claiming that the only reason that no newspaper had taken it upon themselves to republish the naked photographs of Prince Harry enjoying a game of strip pool in Las Vegas was terror of Lord Brian Leveson and what he might say should they do so. The end of a free press they warned! The triumph of the "unpopular" press over the popular! What delight for the BBC! The same BBC, it should be said, which invited both Wallis and Max Clifford (and Vanessa Feltz) on to discuss this latest journalistic crisis.
Instead, as we learned today, fear of Leveson played only the very slightest of roles, if one at all. As anyone could have guessed, it was St James's Palace that had the real chilling effect. Relying on the Press Complaints Commission's code of conduct, the same code which has remained unchanged on privacy since long before Leveson was convened, royal aides pointed out that the code prohibits the publication of photographs where individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy, especially when photographs have been taken without the person's consent. A hotel room is clearly a private place, and we simply don't know whether or not Harry consented to the taking of the photos; one suspects he may not have even known, as they look to have been taken without flash and are extremely blurry. The Daily Mail reports that a "minder" told one of those taking photographs not to, and they may well have even asked them to delete them, underlining the apparent lack of consent.
The rules on expectation of privacy are not new. The News of the World was reprimanded by the PCC way back in 1995 when it ran photographs of Charles Spencer's then wife walking in the grounds of a clinic, leading an embarrassed Rupert Murdoch to chastise then editor Piers Morgan. It's also hardly the first time that royal aides or their lawyers have stepped in to ask newspapers to moderate their behaviour, although this might be the first time they've issued a pre-emptive strike as it were. The media were asked to respect Kate Middleton's privacy when the paparazzi were making a habit of following her around every day, as they were more recently when the same treatment was being meted out to her sister, Pippa.
The real "villains" of this piece then are Harbottle and Lewis, as are the PCC, who passed on their view that publication of the photographs would be a breach of part 3