No holds barred from Toynbee as she attacks Dacre

It wasn't totally unexpected to discover that Polly Toynbee has devoted her Guardian column today to attacking Paul Dacre's comments on privacy.

Dacre, the nation's bully-in-chief is, like all bullies, a coward: he refused to go on the Today programme yesterday to argue his case. He never dares face his critics, happy to fry alive all and sundry, never apologising, never explaining. There is a good reason for this: the stance his paper takes on just about everything is so internally contradictory and inconsistent that he could never survive even minimal scrutiny. The Mail's mishmash of lurid scandal, bitching about women and random moralising zigzags all over the place, dishing out pain and praise often according to who it has succeeded in buying with its limitless chequebook, or who has infuriated it by selling their wares to another bidder.

Tell it how it is Polly

Dacre on the offensive-again!!!!!

Paul Dacre is doing his determined best to get himself in the news this morning as he addressed the Society of Newspaper editors.

Not content with his assault on the judiciary claiming that one judge was out to create his own privacy laws

the greatest scandal is that while London boasts scores of eminent judges, one man is given a virtual monopoly of all cases against the media, enabling him to bring in a privacy law by the back door. The freedom of the press is far too important to be left to the somewhat desiccated values of a single judge who clearly has an animus against the popular press and the right of people to freedom of expression. I, personally, would rather have never heard of Mosley and the squalid purgatory he inhabits. It is the others I care about: the crooks, the liars, the cheats, the rich and the corrupt sheltering behind a law of privacy being created by an unaccountable judge.

he is now ripping into amongst others the Liberal Press and the Daily Express.

On the latter he claims that his middle market rival is

owned by a pornographer, who is contemptuous of journalists and journalism, who's just curtailed the paper's pension scheme and who's now doing away with sub-editors,"

and that

considerable sections of Britain's media conspire to undermine mass-circulation newspapers.

Dacre-Has he given up on Gordon Brown?

Conservative Home asks whether Mail editor Paul Dacre,seen as the most influential newspaper editor in the Guardian's 100 earlier this week has given up on Gordon Brown.

Take a look at the paper's leading article this morning for more proof

From the very beginning, this paper has supported David Cameron. We are the first to concede, however, that we've had more than the occasional doubt about his substance and conviction.
That is why we feel an obligation to record what a remarkably good few weeks he has had.

Certainly this time last year,as with many of the electorate,the paper was rather sympatheic to the Prime Minister combined with some anxiety over David Cameron.

Its leaders over the last three days,firstly rounding on the Home Secretary,then on the Cahncellor and finally today's looks like the paper has noe firmly planted its flag at the door of the Old Etonian.Who next Murdoch or maybe even Rushbridger?

Mail and News International putting Brown under pressure

The government has been put under pressure to drop certain clauses from Criminal Justice & Immigration Bill relating to the buying of personal data


Iain Dale follows up a story in this morning's Guardian which suggests that the might of Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch are putting pressure on Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown has demanded the scrapping of longstanding plans for a clampdown on newspapers that illegally buy personal data, such as health, bank and telephone records, the Guardian has learned. This has provoked criticism that he has bowed to pressure from the media.

Iain points out that

About eighteen months ago it was revealed how many times different national newspapers had effectively stolen people's personal data, using middle men to do it. Three hundred journalists had used agencies to uncover details illegally, most of them from the Mail Group and News International.

and claims

News International, owned by Rupert Murdoch, and the Mail Group have been lobbying the government hard to remove Clause 76 from the Bill.

But according to Iain tomorrow the Information commissioner will

issue a stark call to politicians to resist attempts to water down new penalties for deliberate breaches of people’s health, financial and other personal details.

Dacre on the way out

Just picked this up from Guido's blog

Rumours are flying around that the dark days of the Dacre regime may be coming to an end at the Daily Mail. The colony of ex-Mail hacks at the Telegraph is speculating feverishly that an announcement could be made as early as next week. Dacre would they believe be moved upstairs, keeping all perks, as is the tradition since Sir David English

Mail gets closer and closer

So more eveidence of the Mail's cosying up to Gordon Brown.

Paul Dacre has been appointed to oversea the review of the thirty year secrecy bill.

Guido makes the comment

Dacre's other public services; warning the public about gypsies, immigrants, alco-pops and such-like are deemed not good enough to earn him the ermine. Guido thinks editors should sup with politicians with a long spoon, getting in their tent and having a cozy breakfast in the morning with them is unwise

Straws in the wind

Guido is reporing that Paul Dacre had breakfast with Gordon Brown on Thursday morning and points out the coincidence that the Mail’s leader praised Alistair Darling’s tax and spending plans.

despite the magpie taunts, it would be utterly wrong to deny that some of Alistair Darling's measures deserve support. Yes, he stole the inheritance tax plans from the Tories and his scheme is nowhere near as generous as he would like us to believe.
But it will free countless Britons from a pernicious tax on aspiration, and marks a Rubicon moment for Labour, which has accepted the right of hard-working people to pass on wealth (on which they have already paid tax) to their children.

Meanwhile in this morning’s Guardian Polly Toynbee turns against Gordon Brown,the straw that broke the camels back being the party’s move on inheritence tax.

This was more than a horrible humiliation for the prime minister. This was the week that social democracy ebbed away in England. Those words had already slipped from Labour's lexicon, never spoken by its leaders in public, rarely spoken outside the privacy of Fabian meetings and Celtic parliaments.
And she continues
To give the children of the well-off a £1.4bn inheritance bonus while the children of the poor only got another 48p a week in tax credits is symbolically far worse than that notorious 75p for pensioners. The halfway mark to abolish child poverty by 2010 will be missed by miles. Holding down public sector pay rises to 2% for three years, only half next year's expected private sector increase, will increase inequality. To cut capital gains tax on buy-to-let property, antiques, paintings and jewellery is as shameless as it is dysfunctional.