Hindsight is a wonderful thing…

“Just a matter of weeks we had one of their senior ‘talent’ caught in photographs in the grips of a young woman with his hands down her trousers in a public place and gets away with it with nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders and a silly excuse. Is the culture really changing? Has it really changed?”

Ouch…

Prime Minister Cameron on the threat…

“Iran is not just a threat to Israel. It is a threat to the world.”

George Entwistle will go in front the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee next week. The Director General of the BBC will be grilled on the whole Savile issue, but most dangerously for him will be the questions about the then Director of Vision’s involvement in pulling the now infamous Newsnight report in 2011. With Mensch jetting off and Tom Watson quitting  as well as Therese Coffey and Damian Collins getting promoted, the CMS is sparsely populated right now. Bradshaw has replaced Watson and only Conor Burns has expressed an interest so far for the Tories. Popcorn time…

UPDATE:

@MrHarryCole Believe Coffey and Collins will still grill DG as not been replaced yet. Tom replaced by Ben Bradshaw.—
lucy manning (@lucymanning) October 15, 2012

Hear Angie Bray is also running for CMS. Sources close to her pointing out her long career in the media.—
Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) October 15, 2012

He lives. In the literal sense at least…

UPDATE: Labour are having some fun tomorrow. The Telegraph reports:

“Labour will tomorrow table a motion calling for his salary to be docked by £1,000, a sum similar to the amount he could have been fined had the police arrested him for breach of the peace – which at one stage in the altercation they threatened to do. Under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, anyone convicted of a public order offence can be fined between 50 per cent and 125 per cent of their weekly income by magistrates. Mr Mitchell earns £79,000 as Chief Whip on top of his MPs’ wage of £65,738. The unusual move by Labour puts Mr Mitchell in the unfortunate position of having to decide whether or not to order his party’s MPs to oppose the motion in a formal vote in the House of Commons.”

Perhaps the Home Office might finally get behind the Reform Section 5 campaign now…

Parliament have done it before and they can do it again. Naysayers in the Civil Service and the Palace say that it is not possible to strip a dead man of his title but that’s not quite true. Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was executed in 1521 for treason but he did not forfeit his titles until 1523, two years after his death. All this “attainder by process” required was an Act of Parliament. Problem solved…

First reported in Daily Star Sunday

Last week’s caption contest winner was, for once, actually quite witty. “Denis McShane’s Shed” suggested:

“Heckler and C**k.”

Get in touch for your two tickets to the Battle of the Chancellors Spectator debate on 29 October. 

Via PA.

Guido has been chatting to Miles Goslett, the former Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday hack, who is now freelance, broke the story about Newsnight dropping the Savile report:

“Before Christmas, when I offered several newspapers the story about Newsnight shelving its Jimmy Savile investigation, Savile hadn’t been dead that long. I was told by several of the papers that taste was a factor in their decision but in at least one case the Leveson Inquiry, which was then at its height, was mentioned as being a problem as well. It’s common knowledge that at that time no paper wanted to take on what could turn out to be a controversial story, so they didn’t.”

As Guido reported in February, no paper touched it and the story ended up coming out in The Oldie magazine. Fast forward eight months and the BBC Director General is preparing to give evidence to an independent inquiry about the cover up. Well done Brian.

This week’s twitter media bitch fight sees Mehdi Hasan take on the world.

Read all about it on MediaGuido…