Press Self Regulation Fails Time to Disband the PPC

Earlier today Mark Thompson wrote what is the point of the Press Complaints Commission in light of their ruling on Jan Moir and her Stephen Gately piece which lack cajones? Well now his view and mine are both being backed up by Peter Tatchell he says:

"The Press Complaints Commission should be disbanded. By failing to uphold its own standards and enforce its own Code of Practice, the PCC has demonstrated that it is unwilling, unable and unfit to regulate newspapers. We need a new press regulator with principles and teeth.

"Jan Moir's commentary on the death of Stephen Gately was factually inaccurate on two points. His death was not unnatural or lonely, yet the PCC has rejected a complaint concerning this inaccuracy by Stephen's civil partner, Andrew Cowles."

As I argued earlier the case for homophobia was the hardest of the three main clauses that the PCC may have had to judge on. Surely the timing of the article showed a lack of sensitivity to those close to the singer, the PPC merely said that the timing was "in questionable taste". But surely the factual accuracy should have been upheld more than anything else.

The PCC acknowledged that Jan Moir mentioned the coroners reports, that right the one that said he died of natural causes, to be precise Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome (SADS). The whole push of her article was to use unfounded, homophobic stereotypes to prove that is was "not natural".

Of course as Millennium Elephant points out the PCC is paid from by the people it regulates. Why? We have independent bodies to regulate almost everything else. This decision to even ignore the blatant things like accuracy in the face of opinion writing shows what a failure the self regulation of the press, by the press is. It really only serves to help the press.

As Dave Page wrote on today's Lib Dem Voice:

"Had Moir’s comments been made in the average workplace to a colleague who had complained, would she have been let off the hook?"

I think we all know what we hope the answer to that question would be. So in one workplace where such comments only affect a few to another where it clearly affects 25,000 who bothered to speak up, yet no action is taken.

As the PCC clearly have no cajones, there is nothing to really cut off apart from their ability to pass judgement on their own. Let's set up an independent body, with some clear standards (the current ones work for starters but could do with strengthening and broadening in some areas). Today they failed, show them the door and get somebody in that will actually do the job that is required.

READ ALSO: Of course not all Grauniad opinion is of hte abolish variety. Jonathan Heawood poses the opposite stand point. Of course I still say freedom of speech is one thing but being allowed to propagate deliberate falsehood, even in an opinion piece, is quite another.

To Lose One Key Adviser is Unfortunate; But Two!

For Gordon Brown to have have lost Sir James Crosby as a key adviser and deputy chair of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) because of the sacking of the HBoS whittle blower was unfortunate. In the space of a few days to find that Glen Moreno, who heads UK Financial Investments (UKFI) which overseas the public £37bn investment UK banks, may also go as a result of his former bank was linked with tax evasion, is disastrous.

With bankers falling over themselves in the orchestrated dance of the sorrowful during the week. While bonuses are still being flaunted around in a year of disastrous returns for the bank. Then ignoring sage advise and taking part in illegal practices, just where is the rule book for bankers and is it time for it to be dusted off from whatever dusty corner it is languishing in.

These are two of the men that are advising Gordon Brown on our economy. Now I'm not saying that Gordon didn't chose well respected bankers. It would appear that he did. However, even these well respected bankers appear to have been more complacent in bending rules, ignoring sound advice and generally building up this fine mess than had previously been recognised.

It would appear that our bankers have lost sight of the job in hand. Providing a sound financial footing to allow us all individual customers, business and government bodies to be able to function. They have had their judgement muddled by greed, which when you see the size of the bonuses for success, and seemingly (from what is said) the cast iron seal protected those bonuses no matter what.

No matter how Gordon has tried to shift the blame to the American situation, what is now emerging is that the UK did nothing to cover themselves in case of failure. They followed glibly into the problems of over extension to find themselves heavily exposed when the bottom fell out of the markets and all confidence was lost.

Time for a major rethink and massive overhaul of the banking sector and its regulations and regulatory bodies.

Sit Down Shut Up

Scottish Tory Boy and myself have been carrying on the terrace humour we enjoyed experienced on Tuesday night's match over at Jeff's blog. So I guess his latest post (especially the title) regarding Nick Clegg's call is in essence some sort of continuation on the theme. (At least it was when I read the title hence mine to accentuate STB's point)

Of course everything he says is highly factual regarding the decision by the Information Commissioner's Office. To continue the football analogy I'm ashamed as a call centre employee that having had a football club board who seemed to know little about football but could run a call centre, I appear to have a party management who know nothing about call regulations. Maybe Chris Rennard and Pearse Flynn should compare notes.

I had qualms from when this was first muted, apart from the fact haven't seen the Scottish reaction to Salmond's I don't feel it is a effective way of communication of any sort of message. But as I didn't have the full facts I limited my response to speculation on a number of points. However, when I heard they hadn't pre-screened the script with the IOC alarm bells rang. The IVR (Interactive Voice Response) that we have to use for each inbound call and option is very carefully vetted for all manner of reasons legal and otherwise. One inclusion is always the DPQ (Data Protection Question) for UK calls and other countries with similar legislation which is when the customer confirms or denies certain uses of the information they will be giving during the call.

Now the party has been reprimanded and I think it is high time that we used the knowledge and resources within the party for the best effect. I know there are a number of communication employees with ties to the party. I'm not sure who, if any of them were contacted in relation to this call. One of the things that attracted me to Ros Scott's campaign for president of our party was that she wants to carry out a skills audit of the membership to be able to put in best practise for key elements of our party. This would have been one example where such an audit would have come in handy as it appears that a little knowledge was used in a foolish way.