Just one day into the Leveson Show Trials and it’s already up to thirty “rogue reporters” at News International. And there’s a few more years to go yet...

Surprise surprise, it didn’t take very long for the obvious to filter through: Glenn Mulcaire hacked on behalf of the Mirror…

The new chairman of the PCC, Lord Hunt, has been in touch to clarify his reported remarks in his Guardian interview with Roy Greenslade where he is quoted as responding to Roy’s suggestion that major problems occur because of the tabloids:

“No, I think the greater challenge is with the bloggers, whether it’s Guido Fawkes or whoever.”

His office says his comments

“…were a passing remark which has been amplified. He was not discussing standards in blogs, but rather the structural issue that they represent an area of free speech, which government may want to regulate, or may end up regulating. The point he was making was that work needs to be done to stave off statutory regulation for everyone, including blogs like yours. That is the challenge.”

The blog is publishing this Press Complaints Commisssion chairman’s statement, but we’re not going to make a habit of it…

In Guido’s view the first thing he should do is get rid of the Sunday Mirror editor Tina Weaver from the Commission. She has personally asked journalists to hack phones, illegally blag personal records and the evidence from the Operation Motorman investigation alone should be enough to establish that she is not a fit and proper person to sit on a self regulatory body. If he is serious about cleaning up the press, that would be a sign that the cuckoos are not welcome in the nest.

See Sunday Mirror’s Tina Weaver Isn’t “Fit and Proper” for the PCC

Last year the Guardian Media Group lost over £54 million, but that didn’t stop the Editor at Large Alan Rusbridger taking home a cheeky £605,000. Revenue was down from £221 million to £198.2 millon across the group. The Guardian and The Observer’s lost £38.3 million. As a result Christmas has been cancelled. Last year all the hacks were asked for a £20 contribution to the Christmas lunch, but things have got so bad that this year there is no Christmas lunch. Not even a Winterval drink…

UPDATE:

If more people buy the Guardian then the newsroom can have Christmas lunch—
riazat butt (@riazat_butt) November 10, 2011

Three hours after anyone first noticed the howler in the Indy’s leader this morning, it still hasn’t been changed in the online version:

“Leading article: Miliband hits right note on inequality
Monday, 07 November 2011

It is always refreshing when party leaders seem to really listen to voices coming from outside their own camp. That is why David Miliband should be commended for the warm words he has given in today’s interview with this newspaper concerning the protest outside St Paul’s.”

Over a year into his leadership, and on a day he has a full interview in the same paper, and still Red Ed can’t escape from the shadow…

Guido has come to the conclusion that Hugh Grant, proselytiser for high standards in public life and privacy laws, is a bastard.

Exhibit A: fathers child. Exhibit B: breaks up with mother during pregnancy. Exhibit C: immediately after the birth goes golfing.

What do you think?

Even Labour are beginning to address the problems of absentee fathers… Is this really a good example for this high profile voice of publc morality and virtue to be setting?

The Indy and the Standard have begun a slow merger. Despite talk of “separate identities” the Lebedev’s pet Pravda projects have merged their sports and business desks. Guido got thinking, why has no newspaperever tried to go national in the evenings? Only a few more years left to give it a go…

On the day the German Finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble declared war on the City of London by announcing the EU will take “a global lead in introducing a financial transaction tax to curb speculative trading”, maybe the left will finally have something to get angry about in regard to the EU’s stranglehold over the UK’s sovereignty…

Emily Nomates, formerly of this parish, has got hold of Treasury documents over at CityAM that show “UK authorities are currently locked in fractious negotiations with Brussels” over the whether the plans set out in the Vickers Review are legal under new EU capital rules. The whole story is here but essentially the Treasury suggest their plans to reform the banking sector are being blocked from above.

Maybe the occupiers should target Brussels for letting the bankers off…

A classic snippet from Kevin Maguire’s column that Guido thought deserved more than New Statesman’s niche, and still declining, audience:

“Boris Johnson’s pledge to take the last of London’s bendy buses off the road by Christmas could prove costly for Zoe Williams, the Mayor of London’s foe-in-chief at the Guardian.Williams, I discovered, is a self-confessed fare dodger. Your columnist’s eye was directed to a hitherto overlooked admission in the pages of her rag. “I actually had a lot of affection for bendy buses, mainly because evading your fare was so easy that to pay was almost missing the point,” wrote Williams in May. “We used to call it ‘freebussing’. I said that to the photographer and she said: ‘But they only came in a few years ago. You weren’t 12 . . . You weren’t even a student. You were . . .’ I was 31. Can I be arrested for saying this? Ach, I will just pretend it was a joke.”

Do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do from a Guardian hack? Well, well. Perhaps Rusbridger can use the same “it was just a joke” line when it comes to their investment and tax affairs…

Back in July, Trinity Mirror Group brought in City lawyers Herbert Smith “to help it in its dealings with the judge-led inquiry”. Guido has to wonder what this “help” really means and whether we will see some Harbottle & Lewis/ News International style “dealings”. Whether we will get a whitewash remains to be seen, but Mirror Group’s actions thus far don’t exactly inspire confidence. Either way their work load must be on the increase, especially given that the Mirror Group have already had the finger pointed at them…

After a bidding war across the mainstream media blogs, Dan Hodges has signed up to the Telegraph, which is sure to put a few noses out of joint.

“On Thursday morning I got a call from Throatdeep. There had been “an editorial meeting”. This, I knew, was bad. No good ever came from editorial meetings.

The party “incident” had been discussed. Ed’s team were apparently unhappy. Their people had been talking to our people. Three issues had been identified: me and Ralph Nader; the fact that week’s interview between Ed Miliband and Mehdi Hasan hadn’t been featured prominently on the front of the magazine”

He’s blown open the truth about why he left the New Statesman, leaving Ed’s office and the Staggers with red faces:

“And that was it. I shook hands with Throatdeep, in that awkward way men do when they know their paths are diverging. I should give it until Friday, he said. That was fine, I responded. Unless he heard from me, he should take it I’d resigned.

And resign I did. In that dignified and time-honoured manner so beloved of Westminster insiders: the story was leaked to Guido Fawkes.

Did I jump? Was I pushed? Did I flounce? The answer to all three is yes.”

Ed Miliband’s press office tweeted a public denial of any pressure from them:

For the record–nobody in EdM team asked Statesman to get rid of Dan Hodges. We may disagree with people. We don't get them sacked.—
  (@EdMPress) October 10, 2011

Hodges has left some parts of the story in code. So Guido thought he would decrypt them for you:

• “One long-serving staff member” – Mehdi Hasan
• ThroatDeep – Obviously Jon Bernstein
• Ms. Orange – Total Politics political editor Amber Elliott.

Guido won’t hold his breath for an apology after the New Statesman trashed his story at the beginning of the week. He’ll let you be the judge…