How to lose votes and alienate people

According to the Guardian, not only did Gordon Brown call Rupert Murdoch after the Sun attacked him over the allegedly misspelt letter,

"...he has the most enormous personal regard for Rupert Murdoch," the prime minister's official spokesman said.

Stelzer nailed

In his media diary in the Indy, Matthew Norman has a well deserved pop at Irwin Stelzer:

That bristly moustache is almost a fixture on comment pages of The Times and The Daily Telegraph and all over telly – and so it should be when you consider his track record as an economic and political analyst. The triumph of the neo-con movement, of which Irwin is a sprat in America but a whale this side of the pond, speaks for itself. As for his stout opposition to regulating financial markets this is triumphantly vindicated. So no wonder that media outlets adore a seer of seers whose gravitas devolves entirely from his track record, and not one iota from any closeness to his friend, former next-door neighbour and overlord beyond the seas Rupert Murdoch.

Same old Times

No-one should ever be surprised by the extent to which the Times is prepared to parrot Rupert Murdoch's anti-union agenda. The only surprising thing is that Murdoch is prepared to pay journalists so much to preach to the (mainly) converted. Today Rachel Sylvester has a rant:

After a long period of irrelevance, the trade unions are back - and that could mean trouble for the centre Left

By "centre Left" Sylvester means Blair, Milliband, Parnell or any other stooge Murdoch can engineer into the leadership of the Labour party.

Super sceptics

In the Observer, Will Hutton writes about the superclass, who are more powerfull - certainly collectively - than individual governments. He indirectly shows why Rupert Murdoch's papers are anti-EU:

Euroscepticism is the superclass's best friend, as is undermining all forms of multilateral collaboration.

Murdoch accused of interfering

Well, there's a suprise:

Four months after buying the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch has been accused by a special independent committee of breaking "the letter and the spirit" of an agreement to protect editorial integrity.

Not letting them off the hook

Bloggerheads has a very entertaining Goodbye Tony Blair video, and "pardons" for some old enemies to celebrate. I'm pleased to see that Jack Straw is not let off the hook and indeed, the "pardon" for Gordon Brown is conditional on Straw not being in his cabinet, which of course is going to happen. Bloggerheads' Tim Ireland cites Straw's denial of torture and denial of extraordinary rendition (kidnapping and torture). I'm more concerned with Straw's role in promoting the war in Iraq and the September 2002 dossier.

Someone else who is not getting a "pardon" is Rupert Murdoch. Indeed, Ireland is trailing a forthcoming Murdoch Watch site with the rationale that:

Nobody voted for Rupert bloody Murdoch, but that doesn't stop him from interfering with our lives on a daily basis

It's also worth mentioning Daily Mail Watch, which has to be done.