A Scattershot Posting #5

I've been interviewed over at Christopher Bunn's excellent Scribbles & Tunes site - a wide-ranging interview that was actually done in what I pretentiously call my 'Feed The Enemy' period, although I mainly seem to end up talking about Nottingham, Robin Hood, and if in the future the afterlife will consist of having our consciousness downloaded onto Amazon and have those that survive us grade us with their star-rating system.

I've been thinking about Feed The Enemy a bit again these last few days - given it's a story at least in part about the relationship between the press and politicians, how could I not? Although no one on the outside could claim to have fully predicted the News Of The World shit-storm of the last week, the fact that the British tabloid press is in up to its neck in corruption and filth is hardly a surprise to a lot of us. The surprise is that people have finally woken up and cared. And all it took was the exposure of behaviour barely more moral than grave-robbing. Sigh.

I've another story about the press and it's odious little ways, this one more in keeping with my more usual weird horror-ish fiction. It's called 'Public Interest Story' (well it is at the moment - it's another title of mine I don't much care for) and at some point I hope you'll be able to read it. I also hope that it's not a period-piece by then, and that the story is still relevant. Who knows, maybe our scaremongering, warmongering, biased, homophobic, immigrant bashing, scapegoat creating, corrupt, and lying press will have been reformed out of all recognition by a new breed of politicians not afraid to take them on.

**** checks The Daily Mail website ****

Actually, I think I'll be all right for a few years at least.

**** feverishly clears internet history over and over again in a futile attempt to wash out the stink of even seeing the Daily Mail's 'news' ****

Cutting Off One Head From The Hydra

No it's got nothing to do with books.

Yes I'm almost certainly preaching to the converted.

And no it doesn't win the war, or even the battle really.

And yes the key figures are still in jobs and no one has been brought to justice.

And no it's not great that it took all that happened in the last few days for the 'great British public' to turn against even one small segment of the scummy tabloid press we have in this country.

And yes the bastards will probably still be in charge at the end of it all.

And no this blog posting isn't a particularly eloquent, intelligent, or even adult response to what has happened.

And yes it's probably just going to rise again in a different form, like a Terminator from the flames but with less humanity. But fuck it, sometimes you're allowed to feel good.

Meanwhile, At Nowhere...

For a few days I've been meaning to post some links to Iain Rowan's excellent blog More News From Nowhere, but he's been adding new, interesting stuff almost daily for awhile and I've only just had chance to catch up. Here's a Nowhere-News summary:

One. Iain's got a new book out - Ice Age is a collection of his short horror/weird/dark fiction. It includes Lilies which I've mentioned on here before, a cracker of a story that was featured in a Mammoth Best New Horror anthology. I haven't read Ice Age yet, but I'd suspect it would be something readers of The Other Room would also like (Ice Age at Amazon US | UK)

Two. Iain's interviewed Alan Ryker, another author I've mentioned on here. This is all getting a bit incestuous isn't it? But Alan is always interesting when talking about the horror genre, so I do advise you to check it out. Warning, may contain me. I told you it was incestuous.

Three. And finally, Iain's done a great post on the scumbags over at The News Of The World hacking into a dead teenager's mobile. I know some of the readers of this blog are not from the UK, but the behaviour of any part of the worldwide Murdoch empire should be of concern to us all, particularly when it's so unpardonable as this is. To sum up for those who don't know:

Fact 1. The News of The World is already embroiled in multiple phone hacking scandals, to date involving celebrities and politicians.

Fact 2. Now it emerges The News of The World also hacked into missing teenager Milly Dowler, in order to listen to messages from her panic stricken parents and relatives.

Fact 3. The News of The World found that her message box was full up and started deleting the old messages so they could hear new ones. Heartbreakingly, this gave the Dowler family false hope that their daughter was still alive. It also meant they basically deleted evidence from a murder enquiry.

Fact 4. The sub-editor and editor at The News Of The World at the time of this and other phone hacking scandals are friends of the Tory party in general, and David Cameron in particular. In fact Cameron thought one of them was such a great guy he hired him as communication officer.

Fact 5. Despite all this, the current Tory-led government believes that Murdoch and his cronies deserve more control over our press and television, and are falling over themselves to approve mergers and takeovers to facilitate this.

Fact 6. The News Of The World and The Sun and The Times all supported the Tory party at the last election, and undoubtably will at the next one.

Fact 7. It's starting to come to light that The News Of The World may have hacked into even more missing teenagers mobile phones...

If this appals you as much as it does me then see some suggestions of what can be done here.