Someone seems to be taking extra precautions while listening to Brian Cathcart speaking at a meeting of Hacked Off supporters, currently taking place in Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons. Despite denying they are a bunch of conspiracy theorists, supporters do sometimes come over as such:
Does tinfoil actually protect your brain from Murdoch’s Sky TV satellite signals?
Guido popped down to Hacked Off’s parliamentary rally this lunchtime to watch a panel discussion with well-known friends of the press John Cleese, Harriet Harman and Simon Hughes, hosted by “Dr” Evan Harris. Cleese had the audience laughing nervously when he compared journalists to murderers, claiming:
“Of course they want to regulate themselves, we’d all like to regulate ourselves wouldn’t we? Builders, accountants, murderers, they’d all like to regulate themselves. The murderers would make a very good case – they’d say we murdered a lot of people, we know people who have murdered people. We really are best qualified to regulate”
About 20 minutes later, Harris halted proceedings to inform the room that “a journalist is here tweeting”, naming and singling out WikiGuido and bizarrely referencing the Brooks Newmark story. Harris told the room that Guido had tweeted about Cleese’s ‘murderer’ comparison. The exchange below is not verbatim, but is backed up by multiple witnesses and video.
Well that was awkward. Room asks me to "stand, stand" to explain tweets. I do. Evan Harris: "sit down, we're not giving you a platform"
— Alex Wickham (@WikiGuido) February 25, 2015
WikiGuido: [From across the room] It was a direct quote.
Harris: You clearly don’t understand context.
WikiGuido: It was a direct quote.
[Audience members begin to heckle.]
Audience member: How do you sleep at night?
Another audience member: Let him speak!
[At this point most of the room began chanting “stand, stand, stand” at WikiGuido. He did.]
Harris: He’s Alex Wickham, who writes for Guido Fawkes website. And also did the work on the Brooks Newmark thing. I don’t think we want to give him a platform…
WikiGuido: Well the room wants me to speak. I thought you believed in freedom of speech? It was a direct quote.
[Several audience members shout “let him speak”]
Harris: We are not going to give you the dignity of a platform.
As the Press Association reports:
Hacked Off unhappy with a reporter's tweets about John Cleese during the rally and single him out in the committee room
— Sam Lister (@sam_lister_) February 25, 2015
Harris told the rally he was not going to give @WikiGuido the "dignity of a platform"
— Sam Lister (@sam_lister_) February 25, 2015
Video also via PA:
Dissent will not be tolerated…
Hugh Grant probably wishes he stayed in bed this morning, instead of bungling a Today programme outing in which he openly admitted to being a puppet for Evan Harris and his Hacked Off cronies. In an excruciating debate, Grant admitted he did not know the details after making a dopey allegation that the journalist who even the Guardian credit with triggering the entire RIPA/Met scandal, had nothing to do with the change in the law:
Hugh Grant: Tom Newton’s contribution was brief
BBC: Really, you’re saying it’s simply not the case that Tom Newton Dunn, who was one of the journalists concerned,
Hugh Grant: Yes.
BBC: …intimately involved. You’re saying he didn’t…
Grant: …that’s my understanding of it…
BBC: That’s quite an allegation to make, that basically the paper likes to be in a position where they feel like victims and are perfectly happy with the status quo, and their phone records to be gone through. Are you seriously saying that?
Hugh Grant: Well in the case of Tom Newton Dunn, I don’t know the exact details of how much he contributed to this particular campaign to get the law changed.
BBC: so you’re not accepting he contributed a lot?
Grant: that’s not what I’ve been told.
Grant’s blind, frothing hatred for anything or anyone linked to Murdoch has left him high and dry. TND tells Media Guido:
“It’s just not true to say editors and newspaper companies did nothing to fight the police abuse of RIPA. My own, The Sun, has invested considerable amounts in legal resources as we continue to pursue the Met through various channels, and newspapers from ours to the Mail, Telegraph and Guardian have all ran powerful leaders recently condemning the police in a very united stand. Not for the first time, Hugh Grant appears to be shoehorning myth to suit his own agenda.”
“That’s not what I’ve been told”? Pull yourself together, man.
