#brian leveson

[angelholme]

Fuck a doodle do.

In a statement, Prince Harry said the ruling was "vindicating and affirming" and took aim at senior executives and editors including Piers Morgan - who was in charge at the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004.

Judge Mr Justice Fancourt found Morgan knew about phone hacking at the paper.

He said the Duke's phone was probably only hacked to a modest extent and was "carefully controlled by certain people" from the end of 2003 to April 2009.

Jesus -- this is.... unbelievable.

When asked what he thought the way forward was, he said to scrap the current press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, which he likened to a "poodle".

"You have to get independent regulation as Leveson called for, which we haven't got because, there's a self regulator poodle, not a watchdog," he said. 

"You also need to have the Leveson Inquiry restarted or completed... which the government cancelled at the request of those being investigated."

The Tory government should hang its head in shame. I mean -- it won't, but seriously -- this is appalling.

The government has failed to find the courage to hold the press accountable, a media lawyer has said.

Jonathan Coad said that despite Prince Harry's victory, only politicians can bring about real change.

However, it has never ensured the press regulated itself according to the principles set out in the Leveson Inquiry, he said.

"If you're going to be accountable, someone has got to have the courage to hold you accountable," he told Sky News. 

"Harry has fought the battle and said it needs to change, but it is only going to change if politicians have the courage to take on Fleet Street.

"At the moment, they have shown a complete lack of intention of doing so.

What was the Leveson Inquiry and why is it relevant?

In 2011, Judge Sir Brian Leveson led a public inquiry after it was revealed News Of The World journalists had hacked the phone of murdered school girl Milly Dowler.

Initially intended to be carried out in two sections, the first part of the inquiry looked at the culture, practices and ethics of the press. It involved celebrities including Hugh Grant, Sienna Miller, Steve Coogan and Charlotte Church.

Part two of the Leveson Inquiry was meant to investigate the relationship between journalists and the police, but never took place. There have since been calls to re-open it.

[ingek73]

After Harry’s phone hacking victory, is it last orders for tabloid top brass?

Some commentators now believe that the duke’s crusade against the popular press will finally bring about a reckoning

Inside the ballroom of the Hilton Bankside on Thursday evening, the mood among journalists was high. Prizes were being handed out, celebratory toasts were made and backs were slapped. Officiating at the annual press awards jamboree was a bow-tie-wearing Dominic Ponsford, the editor-in-chief of the industry journal behind the event, who even took a moment to joke about past clashes with Prince Harry, the fabled “ginger whinger”.

Seated at the tables around him were many of those newspaper editors and columnists who have been publicly warring with the King’s errant second child, including Piers Morgan, the former gossip journalist, talent show judge, ex-editor of the Daily Mirror and television presenter. At one point towards the end of the night the group of singers hired to jolly up the lengthy proceedings, burst into the chorus from the song The Final Countdown. Great fun.

But a day later and some in the room are facing their own ominous countdown, or at least a potential final reckoning. Could the landlord at that famous “last chance saloon”, the watering hole at which Home Office minister David Mellor once warned the “gentlemen” of the popular press they were drinking in, really be shouting out “Time, please” once again, twenty years on?

The ruling from Mr Justice Fancourt in the High Court on Friday, one which found the Duke had been subjected to damaging, illegal press activity between 2003 and 2009, has had some immediate effects. The Mirror Group of newspapers, in the frame during the legal proceedings, “apologised unreservedly” for “historical wrong-doing” later that day. But the impact of Fancourt’s 386-page judgement on the reputations of other British newspaper businesses may take a little longer to show.

“Thank goodness for Prince Harry. The police now need to look at this and promptly,” said Brian Cathcart, the media campaigner and Hacked Off founder. “There are many people involved who are still in prominent, opinion-forming positions on newspapers.”

Dr Evan Harris, a former director of Hacked Off who has spent the last few years carrying out legal analysis for the claimants in the hacking litigation, also believes the torch of justice has just been relit by the duke. “Since the contentious decision by the Crown Prosecution Service in 2015 that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any Mirror journalist or executive for phone hacking, tens of thousands of documents have been disclosed in this litigation, and as they were deployed in open court, many key documents are available to the police to see.”

There are also dozens of new witnesses and extensive judicial findings, Harris added. “The claimants stand ready to assist the police and CPS with identifying such material relevant to the original criminal conduct and to the new questions of perjury and perverting the course of justice,” he said.

Writing in Prospect magazine, its editor, Alan Rusbridger, who edited the Guardian when it broke the hacking story in 2009, argues that Fancourt’s words have cut through years of deceit. “We know that newspaper managements at two of our biggest media companies have consistently concealed and denied the truth about what went on,” he wrote. “They have issued dishonest statements and have lied to parliament, the stock exchange, to other journalists, to regulators and even the Leveson inquiry, set up to establish the truth. And now some have been caught telling porkies in court.”

Nick Davies, who first broke the hacking scandal while at the Guardian, was quick to express his more limited hopes for change on social media. “If the UK were just and democratic, Murdoch’s Talk TV would now have to consider suspending Piers Morgan and Richard Wallace, and the Met police would have to scope an investigation into Mirror Group crime. If,” he wrote.

More than a billion pounds has already been paid out in costs and damages, Rusbridger emphasised, without any admissions of guilt implicating senior editors or owners. And key emails have been deleted and documents lost. Speaking to the Observer this weekend, he added: “The press managed to sidestep the second part of the Leveson inquiry, which was supposed to deal with past wrongdoing. So it’s now been left to individual litigants to drag the truth out into daylight. It’s not very satisfactory, and probably can’t be fully achieved until everyone involved in past misdeeds has moved on – or been moved on.”

One of the stories produced in evidence during the recent MGN phone hacking trial. Photograph: PA

The focus is now likely to switch to the Daily Mail, against which the Duke of Sussex still has many outstanding allegations. It could even be the beginning of what critics of British “tabloid culture” are heralding as an era of serious redress that, for them, would make up for the dropping of the planned second part of the Leveson inquiry, a decision taken against the judge’s wishes by former Tory culture secretary, Matt Hancock. Murdoch’s newspaper group, owner of the Sun, does look vulnerable. Many of those implicated in the judge’s ruling are working there. Former editor of the rightwing popular titles the Sun and the defunct News of the World, Rebekah Brooks, who once avoided disgrace, is now CEO of News UK. This weekend her rehabilitation looks wobbly.

Morgan, now a presenter on Murdoch’s Talk TV, gave an angry doorstep statement on Friday and still appears to be banking on dodging bullets. His carefully worded defence did not deny knowledge of the practice of phone hacking and so did not contradict the judgement, as the performer and campaigner Steve Coogan, who settled a claim in 2017 for a six-figure sum, wryly noted on Saturday morning. More optimistically, Coogan added that there now seems a chance that the protective “omertà” guarding the guilty editors has begun to weaken.

He told the Observer yesterday: “We now have a high court judge making clear that a judge-led public inquiry was misled by multiple witnesses , namely Sly Bailey, Paul Vickers, Lloyd Embley, Piers Morgan, Tina Weaver, Neil Wallis and Richard Wallace, and of course that public inquiry was cancelled halfway through, against the wishes of Sir Brian Leveson, by Matt Hancock at the behest of the newspapers – including Mirror Group – who were being investigated.”

Prince Harry has described his chief virtue as patience, but Coogan now calls him “brave” for breaking the “Faustian pact” he claims some royals have had with the press, drawn up for reasons of self-preservation.

Prince Harry’s attitude diverged from the family path well before the birth of his sonArchie in 2019, but he became much bolder after that. Later that year his wife, Meghan Markle, announced that she was suing the Mail on Sunday for printing parts of her letter to her estranged father and the duke also revealed he was taking action over alleged phone hacking.

Two years ago, the Prince won an apology from the Mail on Sunday over an article claiming he had turned his back on the military and the high court in London ruled that the same paper had breached Meghan’s privacy by publishing extracts from her letter. A year ago Harry started a libel claim against the Mail on Sunday over an article claiming he had tried to keep official protection for his family and then, in October last year, he joined the singer Elton John and others in suing the publisher of the Daily Mail, alleging phone tapping and other breaches of privacy.

The Duke’s unexpected, even historic, appearance at the high court at the beginning of his lawsuit against the Daily Mail’s publisher took place in March, and then, in early June, he arrived to give evidence at the Mirror Group phone hacking trial, arguing that about 140 articles published from 1996 to 2010 contained information obtained via unlawful methods.

There are accusations of vendettas on both sides, of course. It is a term the duke used on Friday when speaking of the vitriol he had detected, ever since he was first exposed by the tabloids as a teenager for smoking cannabis and then for rowing with his brother about whether or not to meet up with Paul Burrell.

Both of these gobbets of information reached the public through illicit means, according to the Fancourt verdict. Yet a former executive at Reach, the national news group that owns the Mirror, suspects the duke and his fellow campaigners are being disingenuous. He may not have gone as far as Morgan, who called the “California-tanned” Duke “greedy” yesterday, but he does believe the celebrity campaigners are out for revenge. “They are settling scores. We all know that, whatever they say in public about their motivation,” the former editor said.

Other more measured defenders of the press, such as Sir Alan Moses, a former chairman of the Independent Press Standards Association, are concerned about attempts to set up a phoney “licensed press” that would operate only within government restrictions. Speaking on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this weekend, he said the press should ideally be “unruly”, although subject to the law. There was, Moses argued, an exceptional case to be made for the industry to protect freedom of expression.

For the experienced Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee, the prize of a reformed press can now at least be glimpsed, although a fatal wound inflicted to an ailing newspaper title would not be a good thing: “I am delighted to see press standards called to account and I hope that the people behind this do now get called to account,” she said. “IPSO and press regulation are a disgrace for not investigating this themselves years ago. But it would be a tragedy if we lost the Mirror as a result, an all too rare non-Tory newspaper.”

[saintmeghanmarkle]

Can someone explain this to me? Harry does not want to abide by the judges ruling in his case against the papers. Now his lawyer wants to "write to the minister". by u/GreatGossip

Can someone explain this to me? Harry does not want to abide by the judge´s ruling in his case against the papers. Now his lawyer wants to "write to the minister". Recently, Harry and the others claimed victory as they were allowed to continue with their suit against the papers. There is a snag, though - the judge ruled that the claiment were not allowed to use any leaked documents from the Leveson inquiry. Much of their claims hangs on such leaked documents, as far as I understand it.Now Sherborne wants to write to a minister to amend this:" Adrian Beltrami KC, for the publisher, said in written arguments that 'much, if not all' of the cases brought by the duke and others 'may be unsustainable when shorn of information illegitimately drawn from the ledgers'.If they want to use the 'Leveson Ledgers' – financial records supplied in strictest confidence by Associated to help Sir Brian with his 2011/2012 statutory inquiry into Press standards – Harry and his fellow claimants can seek permission from a 'relevant minister' to vary the Leveson order. "How is this possible? Courts are supposed to be independent from political interference. If a minister in my country said anything at all about a case in the judical system there would be an uproar. https://ift.tt/QTcu1jF https://ift.tt/R2U6oHv post link: https://ift.tt/Mx1tA2j author: GreatGossip submitted: November 22, 2023 at 09:49AM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

[killerscartv]

Time After Time (Full TV Series) 1993 - 1995

Kenny is a criminal trying to go straight but with all of his friends and family trying to drag him back to his old life, will he prove the doubters wrong and impress his new probation officer gillian or be stuck in his old life with his girlfriend donna, best friend jake and his criminal family in this great british comedy.

Starring Brian Conley, Samantha Beckinsale, Kate Williams (from Love Thy Neighbor), Richard Graham, Georgia Allen, Neil McCaul, Deddie Davies, David Shane. Writers - Paul Minett and Brian Leveson. Director & Producer - John Kaye Cooper.

[kwebtv]

Appropriate Adult  -  ITV / STV / UTV - September 4-11, 2011

Drama / True Crime (2 episodes)

Running Time:  90 minutes

Stars:

Dominic West as Fred West

Emily Watson as Janet Leach

Monica Dolan as Rose West

Robert Glenister as D.S.I. John Bennett

Sylvestra Le Touzel as D.C. Hazel Savage

Samuel Roukin as D.C. Darren Law

Anthony Flanagan as Mike

Stanley Townsend as Syd Young

Gerard Horan as Howard Ogden

Seline Hizli as Mae West

James McArdle as Stephen West

Rupert Simonian as Josh Leach

Jasper Jacob as Brian Leveson QC

Jack Fortune as Richard Ferguson QC

Vincent Brimble as Mr Justice Mantell

Robert Whitelock as D.C. Carl Kempinsky

[opticien2-0]

Boohoo unveils new factory as ‘proof of commitment to ethical British manufacturing’

Image courtesy of Boohoo Group

Boohoo Group is starting production at a new UK factory that it says is "proof of its commitment to the city of Leicester and ethical British manufacturing”. 

  The pureplay says the new 23,000 sq ft factory gives it the capacity to make tens of thousands of garments for its 13 brands. It will operate two shifts, giving it the potential to create up to 180 new jobs. 

  The site will be used to train product teams on all of its 13 brands – which include Oasis, Warehouse, Karen Millen and Coast as well as Boohoo.com and PrettyLittleThing. The site will also be used to provide guidance for suppliers, as Boohoo works with them to improve operational and production efficiencies and to make their businesses more sustainable. 

  An initial group of staff have now been through two weeks of paid training, while a second shift will start to be hired in February. Staff are guaranteed 40 hour contracts, while benefits include pay rates set above the National Minimum Wage, 33 days paid holidays, medical care, shares, and a 40% employee discount on Boohoo’s brands.

  John Lyttle, chief executive of Boohoo Group, says: “The Thurmaston Lane site reinforces our commitment to UK manufacturing and our long-standing partnership with Leicester.  It is more than just a factory, it’s a hub of learning and collaboration, as it gives our own teams the chance to work onsite and an opportunity to see a working factory first-hand. We welcome the opportunity to share that knowledge with the amazing education institutions in the city and strengthen our collaborative working relationships with our approved suppliers. It’s an exciting new chapter for the Boohoo Group.”

  Boohoo Group has been working to create an ethical supply chain since allegations of poor factory working conditions and pay below minimum wage levels emerged during the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. Since then it has followed an agenda for change, appointing Sir Brian Leveson and KPMG  to oversee its progress, published its UK manufacturing list, is committed to doing the same for its global supplier list in September, and developed a new sustainability strategy.

[perfectirishgifts]

Can Boohoo Make Investors Smile After Supply Chain Scandals And That 11-Cent Dress?

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/can-boohoo-make-investors-smile-after-supply-chain-scandals-and-that-11-cent-dress/

Can Boohoo Make Investors Smile After Supply Chain Scandals And That 11-Cent Dress?

Founder Mahmud Kamani is racing to introduce governance to match Boohoo’s soaring fast fashion … [] sales. (Photo by Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for boohoo)

The tale of Mahmud Kamani’s rags-to-riches rise as one of the U.K.’s biggest fashion successes should be the story of how Boohoo, an upstart brand from Manchester, became a global phenomenon and hoovered up a raft of high street apparel favorites along the way.

Instead, the company finds itself nearing the end of 2020 with its share price still around a quarter down on summer peaks – after almost halving at one point – and still busy trying to repair its reputation following worker exploitation and financial scandal revelations within its extended supply chain.

And while it works hard to put strong governance in place, the company was on the wrong end of a social media backlash on Black Friday when its youth brand Pretty Little Thing offered a string of deals of up to 99% off full-price, including high-heeled shoes on sale for 34 cents and dresses for 11 cents.

Boohoo, which owns Pretty Little Thing alongside brands including Nasty Gal and Karen Millen, also offered up to 80% off its products, with skirts for as little as $2.20.

It seemed an extraordinarily tone-deaf move given that Boohoo has been rocked this year by a scandal over working conditions and financial practices among its British supply chain.

Share Price Crashes After Factory Investigation

The nosediving share price at Boohoo was sparked by a Sunday Times investigation published July 5 which found that some workers in factories supplying some Boohoo brands in Leicester, one of the U.K.s textile centers, were being paid as little as $4.75-an-hour, compared with a U.K. minimum wage of $11.15. Working conditions at the sites were also exposed as inadequate, sparking a political storm and an intervention by the Home Secretary, Priti Patel.

Patel told Boohoo CEO John Lyttle that the company must “step up and take responsibility” and added: “Let this be a warning to those who are exploiting people in sweatshops like these for their own commercial gain. This is just the start. What you are doing is illegal, it will not be tolerated and we are coming after you.”

Shares in the AIM-listed company almost halved overnight from a peak of $5.63 to a low of $2.85 as major investors scrambled to disassociate themselves from the company and even now the price has only recovered around half its loss.

Boohoo faced a Black Friday backlash after brands like Pretty Little Thing sold apparel for just a … [] few cents. (Photo by Don Arnold/WireImage)

Not surprisingly, ever since Boohoo has been in overdrive to repair its reputation, especially after a second revelation in October when a probe by the BBC found a network of Leicester-based companies were involved in V.A.T. fraud and money laundering. Rose Fashions was dumped as a supplier after the BBC found one of the Leicester-based firm’s directors was part of a money-laundering network.

Founder Mahmud Kamani recently admitted: “If we are guilty of anything, then it’s failing to realise we needed to put in more oversight and governance when dealing with suppliers. We didn’t put in enough checks, we didn’t put them in fast enough and things slipped along the way. It’s my job now to make sure we fix them.”

As part of its bid to alleviate concerns about boardroom governance by recruiting more independent directors, Boohoo recently announced that former Amazon AMZN and ASOS executive, Shaun McCabe, would join to chair its audit committee. McCabe – the chief financial officer of rail ticketing app Trainline – joined Boohoo as a non-executive director.

Boohoo asked Alison Levitt, a leading QC, to investigate the supply chain issues, and her report – published September – concluded that the company knew of the problems and did “too little, too late” but that Boohoo had not intentionally profited from the failings and that its board has “already made a significant start on putting things right”.

More recently, Brian Leveson – best-known for chairing the U.K. press inquiry in the wake of a phone–hacking scandal – arrived to provide independent oversight, while KPMG has been appointed to work with the group’s responsible sourcing and compliance team, plus existing supply chain auditors Bureau Veritas and Verisio.

Sales Soar Amid Boohoo’s Spending Spree

In financial terms, Boohoo has been one of the British fashion industry’s stand-out success stories of the last 15 years.

Founded in Manchester in 2006 by Mahmud Kamani, Boohoo now has a market value of $5.3 billion, making it one of the country’s biggest fashion retailers. In total, it boasts 17 million active customers globally and has attempted to replicate its devoted following among fashion-conscious young women with a move into menswear. The company also moved to take full control of Pretty Little Thing – which was founded by Kamani’s son – in a $353 million deal earlier this year.

Boohoo has also been a prolific acquirer of distressed fashion brands, snapping up the Karen Millen and Coast labels last year. In June, it added the Warehouse and Oasis brands, which had fallen into administration during the pandemic.

Yet Black Friday brought fresh concerns that the company had learned little about taking environmental issues seriously and alongside the social media backlash, experts also expressed concerns about the hidden environmental costs.

“The perpetuating cycle of over-production and consumption relies on the use of natural resources that contributes substantially to environmental degradation,” said Kerry Bannigan, founder of the Conscious Fashion Campaign. “Is an unfathomable cheaply priced garment truly worth the depletion of our water, soil and air?”

From Retail in Perfectirishgifts

[ingek73]

Meghan: A Target of Press Abuse and Harassment Strikes Back - COMMENT

February 11, 2021 Byline Investigates

BY BRIAN CATHCART

THE BIG British newspapers, and especially the papers of the Mail group, want control. They want to make people behave in ways of which they approve and they will stop at nothing to ensure they do.

If necessary, they are prepared to destroy lives, to vilify and hound their targets into abject misery by publishing a relentless torrent of articles that are not just hostile but very often dishonest. They seek to punish these targets by making the public hate them.

That is what happened to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. The Mail papers (and others in the rightwing press) did not like her and she would not obey their orders, so they went for her.

Week after week and month after month they attacked. They said she snubbed and mistreated her own mother, They said her private secretary quit because she (the Duchess) was ‘difficult’. They said she spent extravagantly on luxury fittings for her Windsor home, including ‘splashing out’ £5,000 on a copper bath. All denied.

Nothing was too trivial or too dark to be exploited. One story was headlined: ‘How Meghan’s favourite avocado snack – beloved of all millennials – is fuelling human rights abuses, drought and murder’. Another, steeped in racist overtones, declared: ‘Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton: Gang-scarred home of her mother revealed…’

They dish this stuff out – monstering, it is called – because they can. They have no meaningful regulation to stop them and while the laws of libel and privacy may look fine on paper only the rich can count on being able to uphold their rights. Better still, from the papers’ point of view, members of the royal family don’t sue, so the Duchess was – or so it appeared – a defenceless target.

Not any more.

In fact in the space of a fortnight she and her husband, Prince Harry have both won resounding victories over the Mail papers. On 1 February a London court heard that the Mail on Sunday had admitted publishing a ‘baseless, false and defamatory’ article alleging that Prince Harry had neglected his duties towards the Royal Marines.

And now we have the Duchess’s resounding victory. She took action only when the paper did something utterly outrageous, publishing long extracts from a very private letter she wrote to her father. And that action has been comprehensively vindicated. Without even having to go to trail she has secured an unequivocal verdict that the Mail on Sunday is guilty of unlawfully breaching her privacy.

If we lived in a halfway honourable world, the Mail on Sunday’s editor, Ted Verity, would have resigned by now. Twice in two weeks his decision-making has been faulted before the law. But the Mail is not like that. He and his employers at Associated Newspapers were vindictive, mean-spirited, vain people before this case began and they remain so now it is over.

They must be wondering, however, what to do next, so comprehensive is their defeat. The judge not only found for the Duchess on privacy but he effectively gave her the victory in her second claim, on breach of copyright. There was one minor, technical aspect of that issue on which he found himself unable to provide a ‘summary judgment’ – whether the Duchess shared copyright ownership with anyone else – but that is not a matter that Associated can exploit.

Will Associated seek leave to appeal? If they possibly can, they surely will – that is their standard operating procedure – but legal experts say that in this sort of case, after this sort of judgment, their options will be limited.

So the Sussexes have bitten back, and they have drawn blood. They have successfully defied the controllers and the destroyers. What difference will it make?

The most important is that it reminds the world what the Mail papers really are. They are exposed as cruel, intrusive and reckless with the lives of others – and they break the law. Next time you scroll down the MailOnline ‘sidebar of shame’ remember what is the kind of journalism underpins it.

The Duchess’s victory will also temper the behaviour of papers towards her, though it will not alter their hostility. These papers don’t care about paying damages – English courts award victims relatively paltry sums – but they prefer not to be exposed as lawbreakers. They will be more careful, and they will concentrate on kinds of abuse that are not actionable.

This is also an important moment for the women who are so often the targets of press monstering in Britain. A year ago the television presenter Caroline Flack took her own life after enduring months of hostile treatment from papers fully aware that her mental health was fragile.

The actor Sienna Miller and the singer Charlotte Church told the Leveson Inquiry of their experiences at the hands of newspapers that were determined to incite hatred towards them.

Another actor, Caroline Quentin, recently described how she has still not fully recovered from the effects of newspaper harassment and intrusion 20 years after the event. It damaged her relationships with her father, her mother and a sister, she said. ‘And it’s vile, actually. It’s vile to know that some shitty little man in a dirty raincoat knows all your medical history, your private stuff, whether or not you are going to have a baby or miscarry a baby.’

It is extremely rare for a woman target to hold her attackers to account, not least because very few can afford to. By defeating the Mail papers the Duchess of Sussex may not have opened a path towards wider justice, but she has at least altered the terms of the debate.

[newszada]

Boohoo appoints former decide Sir Brian Leveson to probe firm's ethicshttps://www.newszada.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Boohoo-appoints-former-judge-Sir-Brian-Leveson-to-probe-companys.jpgIts group chairman, Mahmud Kamani, state...https://www.newszada.com/boohoo-appoints-former-decide-sir-brian-leveson-to-probe-firms-ethics/?feed_id=707668&_unique_id=5fc205af2fa75

[freenewstoday]

New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2020/11/26/boohoo-appoints-former-judge-sir-brian-leveson-to-probe-companys-ethics/

Boohoo appoints former judge Sir Brian Leveson to probe company's ethics

Its group chairman, Mahmud Kamani, said the appointment of Sir Brian, along with auditors KPMG, would bring “independent oversight, additional expertise and further transparency to a programme that will help us on our journey to lead the fashion e-commerce market globally in a transparent manner”.

Source

[ingek73]

EXCLUSIVE: Piers Morgan’s Disputed Evidence to Leveson Inquiry to Face Full Courtroom Test - Judge Rules

13 Oct. 2020

EXCLUSIVE: Piers Morgan’s Disputed Evidence to Leveson Inquiry to Face Full Courtroom Test - Judge Rules

PIERS MORGAN’S SWORN PUBLIC DENIALS OF INVOLVEMENT IN ‘PHONE HACKING’ AND OTHER ILLEGAL INFORMATION GATHERING AT MIRROR GROUP NEWSPAPERS (MGN) ARE TO GET A FORENSIC COURTROOM EXAMINATION, A TOP JUDGE HAS RULED

THE CONTROVERSIAL FORMER DAILY MIRROR EDITOR - TODAY ONE OF BRITAIN’S MOST RECOGNISABLE PUBLIC FIGURES - WILL NOW BECOME A FOCAL POINT OF A BIG MIRROR PHONE HACKING TRIAL SET FOR NEXT JANUARY

PRINCE HARRY IS AMONG 68 PEOPLE CURRENTLY SUING MGN FOR HARASSMENT AND MISUSE OF PRIVATE INFORMATION; OTHERS THAT MAY GO TO TRIAL INCLUDE ACTORS RAY WINSTONE, MARTINE MCCUTCHEON, AND ANTONY COTTON, AND THE ENTERTAINER DAVID WALLIAMS

AMONG THE ALLEGATIONS MGN FACES IS THAT MORGAN, OTHER SENIOR EXECUTIVES, THE NEWSPAPERS’ LAWYERS AND BOARD DIRECTORS COLLUDED TO COVER UP NEWS-FLOOR CRIMES, AND MISLED THE LONDON STOCK-EXCHANGE AS THE PLC RAKED IN MILLIONS IN PROFITS

MGN - A SUBSIDIARY OF TRINITY MIRROR GROUP (NOW CALLED REACH PLC) - IS DENYING A TOP-LEVEL ‘EXECUTIVE’ COVER UP - ALTHOUGH ADMITS ITS NEWSROOMS RAN EXTENSIVE CRIMINAL NETWORKS TO CREATE STORIES, AS;

FIVE MORE OF ITS FORMER NATIONAL NEWSPAPER EDITORS WITH CLOSE BOARDROOM CONNECTIONS ARE IMPLICATED IN WRONGDOING - WHILE THE COMPANY SPENT MORE THAN £5M ON ILLEGAL OR ALLEGEDLY ILLEGAL PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

Allegations: Piers Morgan (l) will be a main focus at the Mirror Group hacking trial. Prince Harry (r) is among 68 people currently suing Morgan’s former employer (c) PA

PIERS MORGAN’S allegedly extensive knowledge and encouragement of criminal news-gathering at the Daily Mirror while he was editor and his connections to a claimed boardroom cover-up conspiracy will face a full courtroom examination, a High Court judge has ruled.

Lawyers acting for Mirror Group Newspapers last week fought but failed to keep the outspoken 55-year-old journalist and broadcaster out of a case alleging the publisher’s board and top lawyers turned a blind eye to years of criminal activity at its three British national tabloids.

Significantly, it means the evidence that ITV Good Morning Britain host and star Mail columnist Morgan gave to the Leveson Public Inquiry into Press abuse in 2011 - in which he denied knowing of newsroom criminality - will for the first time be tested against detailed allegations to the contrary in a civil court of law where a High Court judge will make findings.

And a legal source told Byline Investigates: “If the Claimants prove their case at the trial, there would no doubt be calls to investigate Piers’ evidence to the inquiry, which would then be called into question. If the evidence was anything less than the truth, it could have very serious ramifications for him.”

Wheels of Justice: The Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, London, (inset) The Rolls Building (c) PA

It is specifically a criminal offence in England and Wales under the Inquiries Act 2005 to knowingly give wrong or distorted evidence to a public inquiry, punishable by up to 51 weeks’ jail, a £1,000 fine, or both.

Lord Justice Leveson himself described Morgan's denials of knowledge of phone hacking at the public inquiry as "utterly unpersuasive”.

Leveson was not at the time of his 2012 report after Part 1 of his Inquiry - conducting the sort of exercise that would allow him to make findings of culpability or to enable him to find that phone hacking went on at MGN titles.

However, the company was forced to admit in 2015 - in the teeth of compelling whistle-blower evidence and an ongoing police probe - that it was a common practice at the Sunday Mirror (at a time when Morgan was its de facto ‘Editor in Chief’).

Inquiry findings : Sir Brian Leveson (C) PA

The latest Morgan development, decided in rulings made last week by Mr Justice Mann, one of Britain’s most senior media judges, form part of an extraordinary case, argued by 68 Claimants currently suing the UK’s biggest newspaper publisher, that its legal department and certain board members colluded to conceal the widespread use of illegal news-gathering that drove millions of pounds of the plc’s profits for at least 12 years.

As first revealed by Byline Investigates in 2019, Prince Harry is among the latest tranche of alleged victims of MGN’s ‘historic’ lawbreaking to be taking legal action for harassment and misuse of private information. Actors Ray Winstone, Martine McCutcheon, and Antony Cotton, and the entertainer David Walliams, are among a sub-group of 18 of those 68, selected as eligible to go to trial in January.

Morgan, the Claimants say, is key because of his closeness to MGN board members, and because in his powerful role as editor of the Daily Mirror he was involved in a number of alleged incidents that showed his knowledge and encouragement of unlawful news-gathering.

INCIDENTS

The incidents include one in which Morgan, according to the eminent British journalist Jeremy Paxman, allegedly openly discussed the hacking of TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson’s phone, at a lunch hosted by the then company chairman Sir Victor Blank, and even teased her about the content of her private phone messages.

But, despite Paxman’s evidence being that Morgan’s behaviour toward Jonsson bordered on “bullying”, both Morgan and Blank claim to have no “recollection of this taking place”.

Morgan also allegedly admitted being well aware of the widespread use of phone hacking at its height in the early 2000s in a 2007 interview published in Q magazine and in a Desert Island Discs interview on BBC Radio 4 in 2009.

Allegation: But Morgan and Blank claim not to recall the Paxman incident

Morgan’s controversial nine-year editorship ended in disgrace in 2004 after he published phoney photos of British troops ‘abusing’ Iraqi prisoners. Now it is being alleged he also oversaw the extended use of private investigators (PIs), allegedly connected to corrupt police, to steal the bank account details of Prince Michael of Kent, among many other targets.

Southern Investigations - the PI firm to which Morgan is being particularly linked - is just one among many operating in the shadowy world of non-governmental surveillance used wholesale by MGN to look into the subjects of stories, from all walks of life, including even senior members of the judiciary.

“The Claimants will refer, in this regard, to the fact that Southern Investigations were used by MGN to obtain financial information for use in MGN’s stories, and that the Editor at the time Piers Morgan and the Legal Department were well aware of this,” reads part of the case concerning Morgan and his board.

‘NO SURPRISES’ RULE

Southern Investigations and its principal owner Jonathan Rees, were the focus of Murder in the Car Park, an acclaimed Channel 4 documentary aired in June, which revisited the UK’s most-investigated unsolved murder - that of Daniel Morgan, a partner in the business killed by axe to the head in a pub car park in 1987 in a cold-blooded crime, to which Rees denies any connection.

Further, it is alleged, another board-member contemporary of Morgan’s - MGN’s former legal manager Paul Vickers - operated an open ‘no surprises’ rule with the newsroom lawyers who, the Claimants say, were well aware their journalists were sourcing and confirming stories using illegal methods.

Notwithstanding Vickers’ alleged knowledge, the Claimants argue it is “inconceivable” MGN’s board was ignorant to the use and functions of the many private investigators the company employed because it is alleged to have spent more than £5 million on them over a 12-year period, at a time the company was also trying to cut costs.

DESTROYED

Trinity Mirror’s former Chief Executive Sly Bailey is among those said to have “misled” the Leveson Inquiry, under oath, while the company put out a“false” impression of firm denial of newsroom criminality in public statements to the London Stock Exchange, although in its Defence the company denies it did any such thing “deliberately”.

The plc is also denying wrongdoing over accusations it destroyed, lost or “spoliated” masses of evidence relevant to its allegedly illegal activities, including phone records pre-2002, email archives relating to Morgan and top company lawyer Marcus Partington, microfiches of PI invoices, and backup hard-drives of the company’s servers.

Acquitted: Editor of The People in 2002 Neil Wallis, whose paper is accused of targeting the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler with private investigators. In 2015, Wallis was found ‘not guilty’ at the Old Bailey in London on phone hacking charges relating to his time at the News of the World . (c) PA

Indeed, the Claimants say there is evidence to show the highest newsroom echelon generically were well aware of the illegal nature of much of the PI work MGN commissioned.

For example, they argue, Mirror Group Editorial Manager John Honeywell sent an email to Managing Editor Pat Pilton on February 9, 1999, about the cost of “searches” undertaken by the Sunday People - then under the editorship of Neil Wallis, who denied, and was acquitted of, phone hacking charges covering his time at the News of the World a few years later, at the Old Bailey - in which Honeywell recognised much of the money had been spent on “illicit” checks.

On the Claimants’ case, informed as it is by some eight years’ worth of documents that MGN has been ordered by the Court to disclose, including internal emails, phone logs, expenses details, and payment trails including tens of thousands of invoices to private investigators, no fewer than five other editors of MGN’s national newspapers are said to be implicated, including Neil Wallis, Tina Weaver, Mark Thomas, Richard Wallace and James Scott.

Litigation: Former Mirror editor Richard Wallace (l), former Sunday Mirror editor Tina Weaver (c) are implicated, while actor Ray Winstone (r) is among the Claimants suing MGN (c) PA

MGN CLAIMS FORMER EMPLOYEE PIERS MORGAN ‘FOUND CULPABLE ALREADY’

IN A dramatic turn of events, when opposing the inclusion of Morgan in the case, his former employers argued he’s already been found culpable for covering up phone-hacking.

Resisting the amendments to the so-called Particulars of Common Facts and Issues (POCFI) in which the case against the Trinity Mirror plc board (now Reach plc) and the MGN legal department is set out across 49 pages, the publisher’s lawyers claimed the inclusion of Morgan was unnecessary, as - the company wrongly said - Morgan had already been found in a 2015 judgment of Mr Justice Mann to have covered-up phone hacking and given wrong information to the Leveson Inquiry.

However, the judge rejected this stating he had made no findings against Morgan personally.

The earlier judgment (Gulati & others vs MGN) did make strong criticisms of Richard Wallace (who succeeded Morgan at the Mirror) and Tina Weaver (Morgan’s former Mirror Deputy whom he endorsed to become Sunday Mirror Editor, and whose long service covered the phone-hacking period), and their evidence to the Inquiry.

While the Claimants have permission from the Judge to rely on these points, he has not made any findings on the allegations, which he will be doing at the end of January’s trial. An updated version of MGN’s defence to the new allegations is due to be served at the end of October 2020, and the current 84-page Defence can be found here.

Richard Spearman QC - representing MGN, which is defending the claims - vigorously resisted the inclusion of Morgan in the case against the board, insisting: “Mr Morgan’s purported knowledge as to the extensive use of unlawful information-gathering activities is irrelevant.”

But Justice Mann said: “It seems to be important to the Claimants' case that they should seek to establish Mr Morgan's knowledge, and they will make a case that he was closer to the Board than other editors.

“I do not know how they will make it or seek to make it, but it seems to me to be a potentially relevant matter, and I shall therefore allow the pleading in on that basis as well. This amendment may be made.”

Morgan is also said to have known about the hacking of former England manager Sven Goran Eriksson’s phone - “Mr Morgan knew it (the story) was unlawfully obtained”, said the Claimants’ barrister David Sherborne - as well as making a string of public admissions to the fact that he was well aware of the practice of voicemail interception during his watch as MGN’s most senior journalist.

Piers Morgan is someone who is happy to turn up anywhere and everywhere to give his opinion on things, if Mirror Group wanted to they could easily get in touch with him and ask him to give evidence

— legal source

Justice Mann went on: “Mr Spearman makes the point that it is already established that editors knew of unlawful activities and that adding, as Mr Spearman put it, one more editor does not really add anything.

“One more editor may to a degree strengthen Mr Sherborne's generic case... so far as he needs to establish widespread activities known to senior members.

“The more editors that knew about it, potentially the greater the likelihood that people above and beyond editors knew about the activities as well.”

David Sherborne for the Claimants went on: “They were well aware of what Southern Investigations were doing and the payments being made, and that these were unlawful.”

Despite the seriousness of the allegations against him, Morgan is not expected to defend himself from the witness box in the latest unfolding chapter in the MGN phone hacking saga. He may offer to give evidence for the Mirror Group, but MGN may not want him to face what would be a withering cross-examination by the Claimants’ counsel.

However, his expected absence from proceedings would be consistent with MGN’s strategy of not calling journalists as witnesses to defend either the stories they wrote, or their former employers.

The legal source said: “Piers Morgan is someone who is happy to turn up anywhere and everywhere to give his opinion on things. It is plain and obvious that if Mirror Group wanted to they could easily get in touch with him and ask him to give evidence to what he says the facts are, under oath, and explain the apparent discrepancies in the documents and other information which appear to contradict, on the Claimants’ case, what he said to Leveson.

“If MGN choose not to call him as a witness the judge will be entitled to draw whatever inferences he will from that.

“It ought to be easy to get a journalist to come along and say ‘no no it was nothing to do with hacking’ then the judge is entitled to make of it what he will.

“He has done this already in the first four original claims (Gulati); on his judgment he said it is notable that the other side has not got any journalists to confirm that a source is not hacking.”

* The case continues...

[channelhour]

Sir Brian Leveson warns crimes are not being prosecuted

Sir Brian Leveson, who is retiring, says the justice system could collapse without investment. from BBC News - Home https://bbc.in/2Fn7PLM from Blogger http://bit.ly/2XpFVJe

[beccasafan]

Im not tryin to be shady, or stir the honey pot, but way way back when didn't the bears have a phone and wasn't there some talk about how it would all end with a fake hack?

Sure, hacks/leaks seemed relevant a few times. Here’s one such example, and you could check the cell phone page for other concerts.

Also appearing in a picture frame is Ken Dodd. In 1989, Ken was tried for tax evasion, led by Brian Leveson. Brian Leveson is more recently known for presiding over the British press phone-hacking scandal. This is interesting because Louis just told a fan that he lost his phone when doing fan service at a truck stop after their last concert. One more little detail about Ken’s trial for tax evasion? It was because he was using children in his show and not paying them. Can anyone think of any parallels we might be able to get from that? Anybody? Anyone? This is also now the second concert in a row that has references to legal battles.

Possibly connecting with that, the phone that RBB has is a Sony Ericsson phone. The boys and their connection to Sony is plain enough. Fan speculation is that these connecting details indicate there might be photos leaked from Louis’ lost phone. Quite convenient! As a lighter, more overall symbol, it could be putting emphasis on something the bears do in general - they’re sending us a message, and want us to receive it.

http://beccasafan.github.io/rbb//concerts/2015/09/buffalo/

[davidhencke]

Phone Hacking: The Guardian should hang its head in shame over its stance on a second Leveson inquiry

Phone Hacking: The Guardian should hang its head in shame over its stance on a second Leveson inquiry

Lord Justice Leveson: Pic courtesy of Leveson inquiry website Not chairing any new inquiry now

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

The Guardian is my old employer. It has a long and honourable tradition of fearless investigations which do not follow the rest of the pack. That included holding the media industry to account.

The decision this week to join the rest of the press pack and welcome the demise of…

[newbeltane]

Tweeted

BREAKING: Sir Brian Leveson 'fundamentally disagrees' with the government's decision to abandon part 2 of his inquiry. Judge's letter now published. @tom_watson @hackinginquiry @zelo_street @CommonsCMS https://t.co/QJTsXtuKPD

— Brian Cathcart (@BrianCathcart) March 1, 2018