Pavel Konnolsky · @Konnolsky
24th Jan 2011 from Twitlonger
Hello friends. NEW POST! #Coulson Here in Smolensk Butcher’s shop Volga News Weekly reveal real reason for Andy Coulson resignation. Translation from English language edition.
VOLGA NEWS WEEKLY: COULSON – THE TRUTH
Andy Coulson’s departure from Downing Street on Friday was the climax of an extraordinary week in British politics (which also saw Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson resign and be replaced by Ed Balls). But contrary to coverage in the UK media, suggesting Prime Minister David Cameron accepted Coulson’s departure regretfully, Volga News Weekly can exclusively reveal that Cameron, in a message left on Ed Miliband’s cell phone, demanded Coulson’s resignation.
Critics of the Coalition suggest the affair has called into question the Prime Minister’s judgement. Cameron harboured and protected a man not only comfortable with the expression “one hundred and ten percent” but also guilty, in connection with phone hacking during his editorship of The News of the World, of either perjury or incompetence. But the Coalition’s “embedded” BBC reporter Nick Robinson rejected this leftist narrative. Rather, he focused on the political fallout of the sudden departure from a public school dominated administration of an Essex man with the “common touch”. Volga News Weekly obtained what we believe to be a tape of a Number 10 briefing which reveals the insightfulness the Coalition now lacks. (We apologise for phonetic transcription. Some vocabulary is obscure.)
NC: So from now on offender rehabilitation has to be at the centre of our penal policy.
DC: But we mustn’t be seen as too soft on crime.
AC: Too farkin right, you slaaag! Bang em up, that’s what your “phwaor look at the cheap uneven MRSA risking implants on that, been everywhere she has, mind you I would, filth though, innit, like a night out on the curry of Old England me, with Del and Dal and Gal and Sal and Mal and Shel and Mel salt of the farking earth, we are” swing voter wants. Or tells us to fire criminals into outer space like what happens to proper Bow Bells Cockney Terrence (Tegs, Tel) Stamp in Superman, and that big bastard, dumber than farkin Shapps he was, well, close fing, and the bird, what was she called, fancied her at school, now I think she’s well rough, into leather gear then you see, quite a few shandies à main as posh people say, yeah, plenty of that happening, not like you lot, seeing who yoghurts it first in the dorm over Oscar bleedin Wilde’s “The Importance of Bummin Earnest”. Yeah, fire the farkin lot of em into space, that’s what we want. So tell me Nick, Ken Clarke, good man Ken, all fags and booze and man of the people, apart from the twitching which makes him look a right kan, and being a jazz-jizz which makes him into a total kaaaan, and liking Europeans, the STUPID FAAAARKING KAAAAAAN! Tell me how’s Ken gonna make this policy look tough to ordinary farkin kans like moi?
NC: Well I think it’s important to remember the centrality of civil liberties to British demo –
AC: Kan!
NC: And the ineffectiveness of the previous administration’s sentencing –
AC: Kaaaan!
DC: Look, we’ve got to keep our liberal friends on board –
AC: KAAAAAANNN!
But though Cameron will miss this sharp analysis, Volga News Weekly understands he forced Coulson out in the wake of the Communications Director’s broken promises about the bloated news cycle.
Last week, Britain’s news agenda was so full a Migration Watch spokesperson joked that no other stories should be allowed into the country. (He apparently got his way. There were no reports of laughter.) Aided by emergency supplies of cocoa, DVDs of the Best of “Countdown”, and the Lord Speaker’s decision to secrete commodes within the red benches, insurgents in the House of Lords forced all night debates. Their bewildered colleagues, struggling with the alleged disenfranchising implications of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, sent flunkies in search of dictionaries to look up the word “voting”. Education Access Tsar Simon Hughes, whose previous agonising abstention on motions led doctors to diagnose chronic constipation, secured a major victory. He successfully failed to vote for a Labour proposal to reinstate Education Maintenance Allowance, instead promising to look for ways to replace it with something similar “at some sensibly determined future date, almost certainly before the Rapture”. Tony Blair appeared before the Chilcott Enquiry, where despite repeated questioning, he refused to apologise for sexing up his autobiography. Youth unemployment reached record levels. In some towns and cities, street corners, bus shelters and shopping centre arcades are now so overcrowded with gangs of youths that police must clear them daily with threats of water cannon or a Simon Hughes ‘Meet the Kids’ walkabout. High street retailers announced that last Christmas’s toy sales were even lower than when Herod the Great took drastic demand-side anti-inflationary measures. And in a display of reckless Bolshevism, the Monetary Policy Committee defied the anticipated Osborne/King thesis, that the best way to get rid of an economic crisis is to get rid of the economy, by failing to raise interest rates.
This packed news schedule was the root of Coulson downfall. One Coalition Special Adviser said, “We were worried this volume of coverage might actually get people interested in politics. That’s the last thing we need.”
It appears Coulson’s Downing Street role was two-fold. First, he ensured media hacks presented the government’s story with the exemplary slavishness and vacuity (known in Downing Street as “Burleyism”) they had exhibited since last May. Secondly, if a news item looked like becoming controversial or risked provoking the British public’s inquisitiveness, Coulson provided distractions.
“We learnt so much from the Campbell spin machine,” the Special Adviser continued. “But we’ve gone beyond it. When the PM said there were no dodgy dossiers any more, that’s because we don’t need them. Instead, we’ve got dodgy discourse. It’s essential for our programme that every harsh cut we make looks progressive, every reactionary social reform liberal, and every backward-looking value we hold modern. Well, it’s one thing getting the gin-soaked timeservers of Fleet Street to believe this. But it’s always possible someone – say the mother of a disabled kid – might spot that protecting local authority grants to carers, while removing their ring fencing and drastically cutting council budgets as a whole, is just the same as cutting the grant. So, Andy often hit the button marked ‘Cowell’.”
The codeword ‘Cowell’ referred to Coulson’s collusion with media bosses to create trivia logjams in the news cycle, crowding out politics. A BBC source said, “Andy’s just brilliant at it. Amazing. You have no idea how much planning goes into getting a ministerial statement on housing benefit changes bumped by news of the merger of Ant and Dec, rumours Frankie Boyle plans to sing ‘All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm’ at the Brixton Baptist Church or Boris getting lost for six days in his local Waitrose.” The source added that Downing Street was “relaxed, within reason” about Coulson’s own legal entanglements dominating the news, provided the broadcasters honoured their agreement to run “that weird footage of him playing with an invisible straw in the corner of his mouth” instead of Cameron and Clegg’s pre-election statements on VAT.
But Coulson seems to have been brought down by a rare planning failure. One minister said when aides predicted last week’s media pile up as early as the New Year, Coulson was astonishingly relaxed. “He kept saying ‘Don’t worry’ and seemed certain something would turn up.” Volga News Weekly can exclusively reveal what Coulson was waiting for. Snow.
Leaked Number 10 documents show that just over three weeks ago, Coulson secured a long range forecast from his Met Office contacts indicating substantial London snowfall in the period 17-22 January. “We had seen what happened late last year,” said a Coulson aide. “When the snow hit London and the South East, Andy thought it was Christmas. The media, which ignores blizzards in Scotland and the North, went mad. We calculated that Huw Edwards used the word snow 126384 times in the same day. December’s terrible youth unemployment figures were hidden under blankets of snow news. Andy was sure it would happen again. He was wrong.”
The “Snow News is No News” technique is unknown anywhere outside the UK. Even in Irkutsk, Siberia, where sometimes there are 18m snow drifts in the news studios themselves, the weather barely receives a mention. “But Coulson started to rely on it,” said his aide. “So when the snow didn’t come and so many political stories made the news, Andy had to go. The Met Office will pay too.” The aide indicated this didn’t necessarily mean privatisation. “Look, I’m not saying much more, but if I was McElwee, I’d be staying out of Andy’s way.”
David Cameron is said to be relaxed about appointing Coulson’s successor. Rumour has it that the first real impact of the Coalition’s spending cuts will be covered by a mountainous “Cowell” whose implications Coulson may or may not have grasped. Katie Price’s breasts, which have been under separate and distinct management since the former glamour model outsourced them to two different firms to fund her acrimonious break up with Peter Andre, are locked in legal dispute. Lawyers for one believe Price should be subject to a court order requiring her to stop marrying and divorcing unsuitable men. This, they argue, is damaging their client’s image. The other breast’s legal team believe Ms Price’s behaviour is great for business. Downing Street expects the case of Price FF(R) vs Price FF(L), which promises to be the most bitter fighting over Jordan since the Six Day War, will overshadow the first wave of public sector redundancies in the spring, bouncing Dave Prentis off the news, until interest sags by the summer recess.