Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Nick Davies - Hack Attack at Big Green Bookshop
Another top night at the BGB.
The Guardian investigative journo Nick Davies kept an audience of 50 more than entertained for an hour and a half with his story of how he spent 6 years scratching away at the festering boil which is the Murdoch press.
His book details the lies, intrusion, bullying and hypocrisy of the key players who run the Murdoch empire, which, to be fair we were more that receptive to from the off.
His admission that the fact that the process had failed to find Ms Brooks, the News International chief exec guilty , was a sign that it was fair and just was an interesting one.
I probably won't race thru' the 450 pages, but what I've read already shows his trademark signs of being thorough, well-paced and always interesting.
I would also recommend an earlier work, "Dark Heart," which tackles areas of UK society which we'd prefer not to know too much about, child exploitation and abuse, drug gangs and the goings on in our forgotten estates.
All too topical at the moment.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Zena and I were also there with some friends. We too found the talk absorbing. Nick Davies has an astonishing story to tell. Buy the book! It's out in paperback. (The hardback on sale last night wasn't much more; and we got to meet the author.) Please consider buying it via the Big Green Green bookshop. It costs more than Amazon. But if want these great local events then the local community needs to support the BGB.
Ideas, anecdotes, and analysis tumble out of Nick Davies. And I expect some of these will be in the book. But one point in particular got me thinking.
This was his description of the overwhelming hubris of the Murdoch empire. As we now know, they had not just the ear, but the full fawning attention of the most powerful politicians in our society. And they thought they were unassailable. Again - from what we've read and seen in the media - they used their power and influence to bully and damage people.
As Nick Davies took us through the sequence of events, this power and arrogance proved a weakness. When the phone hacking was revealed it provoked widespread public disgust.
But more importantly for Nick Davies' investigation it included disgust among some people within the Murdoch empire. Which led to these insiders becoming secret whistle-blowers and passing Nick Davies information essential to confirm the allegations.
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Jonny, could you say more about what you see as the shortcomings of Owen Jones' book.
David Runciman's review tempted me to get it. While at the same time discouraging me because Runciman thought it lacked what interests me most. Which is not just describing and understanding our current political disease, but how we cure it. (Locally of course; my ambitions are very modest.)
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Thanks.
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Jonny, I assumed you gave your strong, initial impressions of Owen Jones' book - and this can often be helpful. And you made it clear you hadn't finished it.
Meanwhile, to pick up one comment you wrote, not everyone looking for political change 1970s style is or was a "Tony Benn type".
Did you see the piece on Friday about the Scottish Referendum by Fintan O'Toole? He suggests the Scots are energised because they're engaged in a debate we should all want. Not about kilts and poonds, but about democracy.
"The Scottish referendum", O'Toole writes "... is a symptom of a much broader loss of faith in the ability of existing institutions of governance to protect people against unaccountable power".
That seems to be a theme shared by Nick Davies and Owen Jones. It's certainly my feeling about London Government and our own local council. Both of which appear to have enthusiastically taken sides with unaccountable power and against ordinary people.
Fintan O'Toole describes his: "pleasure of witnessing ... democracy in action" in Scotland. Asking: Why is it not like this all the time?
"It is not, as the Scots have proved, because people are apathetic. It is because they don’t have, in day-to-day politics, a sense that they can control things. What really matters now is whether after the referendum, Scots return, like the rest of us, to a state of frustrated powerlessness, or can sustain the democratic energy that has been unleashed".
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In case you haven't seen it, Fintan O'Toole had another piece about Scotland - in the Irish Times here.
And if anyone's thinking; "What's that doing on a local website?" I suggest reading it with words like "[borough]" or "[local'] substituted for "country".
"What has to be broken free of is not just the big bad Them. It is also the warm, fuzzy Us of the nationalist [localism?] imagination — the Us that is nicer, holier, more caring."
"... having the self-confidence to tell the truth about yourself. Nationalism [local pride based on idealised identity?] is a form of myth-making; independence [strong local self government?) demands a lot of myth-breaking. It has to replace the distorting mirror of fantasy with the sharp reflection of a real self."
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