Hack hacked (2): Met Police challenged over News of the World phone-tapping scandal

Law firm Bindmans LLP will be issuing a Judicial Review on behalf of clients challenging the Metropolitan Police Service's decision not to release information to potential victims of the News of the World phone-tapping scandal.

Bindmans represents Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda, Brian Paddick, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and Brendan Montague, journalist and author.

They now understand they were potential targets of Glenn Mulcaire, but were not informed by the police at the time, in breach of the Metropolitan Police's legal obligations.

CoR Blimey! Coalition of Resistance declares war on coalition government

The coalition government will be struck by a "wave of protest" which may crack the Conservatives and Lib Dems apart as pensioners, trade unionists, and black rights groups unite, activists in London heard tonight.

The Coalition of Resistance activist meeting at Birkbeck University tonight is packed out with 200 people representing anti-cuts groups from across the country discussing how to resist the Government's attack on the welfare state.

The meeting was called ahead of the national convention on November 27 where more than 800 people are expected to attend and heard from speakers and contributions from national trade unions, Stop the War, the Green party, the Right to Work Campaign and regional groups.

The meeting was opened by Paul Mackney, former University and College Union joint general secretary. He said: "Were facing the biggest ever attack on the welfare state by a government of those who think they were born to rule along with those who are delighted to just tag along.

Hack hacked: New York Times investigates News of the World phone tapping

The New York Times dispatched Don Van Natta Jr, Jo Becker and Graham Bowley to London for six months to investigate the News of the World phone message hacking.

And the newspaper has concluded that Andy Coulson - then editor and current communications director for prime minister David Cameron - was briefed about the illegal tapping.

The journalists also claim that the Metropolitan Police failed to actively peruse the case because of it's relationship with Rupert Murdoch's biggest selling tabloid.

News International has paid millions in damages and out-of-court settlements. And all this from a story about Prince William having a knee injury, as the New York Times makes clear.

War zero: Tony Blair admits Iraq after coalition attack was 'bloody, destructive and chaotic'

Extracts from Tony Blair's autobiography A Journey show the former prime minister failed to "guess the nightmare that unfolded" despite repeated warnings from political veterans with close contacts to Iraq including Tony Benn.

The Labour leader turned peace envoy expresses his regrets to the families of the British soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed but once again justifies his decision to go to war based on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.

And he describes his political opponents - who repeatedly warned about the aftermath of an attack on Iraq - as being "hard" like "granite" because they will not forgive him.

Blair says, in extracts from the book to support its promotion: "I can’t regret the decision to go to war for the reason I will give. I can say that never did I guess the nightmare that unfolded, and that too is part of the responsibility. But the notion of ‘responsibility’ indicates not a burden discharged but a burden that continues.

He adds: "It is also, of all the decisions I took, the one that even closest friends disagreed with; indeed, not so much simply disagreed with, but found hard to comprehend. My oldest political friend Geoff Gallop used to say not that he took a different view from me, but: ‘Just can’t understand why you did that, Tony."
 

Fashion on Trial: "A form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

Early bird tickets for Fashion on Trial on Wednesday, September 29 are now on sale. Leading up to the event the host for the evening, Tansy Hoskins, is publishing a series of articles on Counterfire - the first is reproduced here with photographs from last night's Mutiny fancy dress organising meeting in Vintage Secret's stockroom.

Tansy at Mutiny with Vintage Secret by the-sauce.org

“A mild interest in the length of hem lines doesn’t necessarily disqualify you from reading Das Kapital and agreeing with every word.”

Dismiss fashion as trivial and you dismiss the issues of workers rights, globalisation, the environment, cultural representation, identity construction and body image to name but a few.

From anti-Bush t-shirts to £10,000 dresses, the bits of cloth we put on our bodies all have history and meaning. Wear a hijab or the niqab and you’ll be attacked by Jack Straw and outlawed by the French Government. Wear a miniskirt and some courts will say that you are to blame for being raped. Since polyester is made from oil, fashion has even taken us to war.

EXCLUSIVE - Sunset Times: Just 15,000 pay to read the Sunday Times online

Can rats stampede? That appears to be what's happening at the Sunday Times as journalists learn that just 15,000 people have subscribed to the weekly paper's website since News International introduced its paywall.

They're off like an Oakeshott...

The figure - revealed here for the first time - has turned the newsroom into "a sinking ship" with everyone "desperate to leave", according to a mole at Wapping. Political editor Jonathan Oliver is the latest to announce that he will leave the Sunday Times - turning his back on fleet street entirely for a handsomely paid job in public relations.

His deputy, the long suffering Isabel Oakeshott has been tipped as his likely successor by blogger Iain Dale, but has in fact been holding secret talks with foreign editor Sean Ryan to secure a foreign posting away from the sinking ship that is Wapping.

Steven Swinford, a tireless and tenacious reporter, has handed in his notice to join the Daily Telegraph in a more senior and better paid post - following a path beaten by Robert Winnett and his sidekick Holly Watt (who together broke most of the MP expenses stories).

Even staffer Christopher Gourlay is coming close to the end of his three month notice period before jetting off around the world. Indeed, reporters at the Sunday Times have now lost count of the number of hacks who have made their excuses and left the paper following the appointment of Nicholas Hellen as news editor.

Craft Work: Matthew Herbert talks One Club, craft and capitalism

Electronic pioneer Matthew Herbert conducts the night club audience as though we are his human orchestra. Dressed entirely in black with a decibel counter under his watchful eyes, he is master of ceremony at the Avant-garde Robert Johnson night club in Offenbach, Germany.

The producer and conceptual artist is orchestrating a strange focus group to sample sounds for his latest musical project, One Club. The album is an attempt at democratising electronic music, to give his most avid fans the chance to participate in the creation of each bleep and beat. We have been warned microphones are all around us - on the ceiling, in the toilets and on the lapels of a fellow clubber.

The audience is asked to kiss the person next to them, to jangle their keys, to stamp their feet, to dance, to laugh: to club. We are told to rattle the change in our pockets once for each of the £10,000 in our pay packet, to whistle in different ways to denote our sexual orientation, to shout out the name of the political party we voted for. The album will be played for the first time at the Robert Johnson on Thursday, 8 July. Herbert will also perform at in Britain at the Big Chill and Green Man Festival in August.

“One club is designed to be both a functioning body of dance music in its own right, but at the same time a celebration of the temporary communities that come together weekly around the world in clubs. Since the record is made entirely from sounds recorded in one night at a German night club, the audience is implicated directly in the outcome of the music and hopefully stronger links are made between the DJ, the music itself and the act of dancing," Herbert says.

Fashion victims: Mutiny puts the fashion industry on trial

Fashion faces trial by the kangaroo court which is Mutiny as the revolutionary collective examines how the rag trade makes its riches.

Josie Long at The Media on Trial (c) the-sauce.org

Fashion on Trial is a fancy dress event and will open at 6pm on Wednesday, September 29 at the avant garde Resistance Gallery in east London's Bethnal Green with speed debating followed by discussion, entertainment and general mayhem.

The fancy dress is being held after London Fashion Week and promises to cross examine the impact the industry has on our lives, from the pressure on young women to conform to impossible Size Zero images to the exploitation sweatshop labour.

Comedian Josie Long, feminist academic Susie Orbach and the campaign organisation War on Want have already been invited to take part in the pub-table style discussion which will be at the heart of the Fashion on Trial event.

Mutiny: The Media On Trial, Session 1 from Adrian Cousins on Vimeo.

Early bird tickets have today gone on sale at £3, representing a 40 percent discount on the full waged price, and are available online at PayPal. Organisers are asking supporters and regulars to book up now to avoid disappointment.

CoR Blimey (3): Comedian Mark Thomas says stand up against the cuts

Comedian and campaigner Mark Thomas has become the latest stand up to join the growing Coalition of Resistance against cuts to public services and privatisations being driven through by the Conservatives and Lib Dems.

Mark Steel, who launched his career performing during the miners' strike, and grumpy old man Arthur Smith have already signed the statement defying the cuts authored by Tony Benn and published in the Guardian.

Scottish writer and stand up A L Kennedy has joined the campaign while the comic actor Roger Lloyd Pack, of The Old Guys and a national treasure because of his performance of Trigger in Only Fools and Horses, will also add a few wry smiles to the campaign.

The comedians have signed as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is in full swing and hints at a new era of caustic political humour which has ebbed since the heyday of anti-Thatcher sentiment captured by Spitting Image, the Young Ones and other mainstream television favourites.

A source said: "There will be plenty of reasons to cry when the coalition government start forcing people into redundancy. Hopefully our growing band of comedians will employ informed satire and ridicule to give people the confidence to fight back."

Stop Press: The Sauce launches daily newspaper - from Twitter feed...

Technology now demands constant innovation. A free to use website now publishes a daily newspaper online with content from your Twitter feed and those of the people you are following. The-sauce.org has today launched its own daily.

Before the ink is even dry on a traditional printed newspaper, the publication will already be out of date. With the independent paper.il site you can effortlessly generate a professional website with videos, photographs and copy about (in the case of the-sauce.org) politics, education and the arts.

The only skill involved is following the people generating the most interesting and informative stories and linking to the best material on the web. I've just completed an excessive purge of my twitter feed so will be looking for people to follow now. Email tips to news@the-sauce.org.

Update: And a micro-newspaper about the coalition #cuts... (someone shoot me now, before this gets out of hand).