The Guardian-BBC nexus in defence of the Warren Report

[Paul Rigby]

How the United States keeps British journalists "on-side", method the first:

http://www.colorado.edu/cwa/news/2011Hoggart.html

Simon Hoggart has been a familiar face at the CWA for over 20 years. As the political sketch-writer for The Guardian, Hoggart’s insights into the British Parliament and fluid mix of humor and politics have been a valued addition to the annual Conference.

This past fall, Hoggart released his memoir, A Long Lunch. He devotes a section of the book to his travels across North America, including his yearly trek to Boulder. The book has received rave reviews by the British media, including the Spectator, Sunday Telegraph and he Times. The New Statesman called it, “…the best journalistic memoir since the late Alan Watkins A Short Walk Down Fleet Street of a decade ago.”

Hoggart's fascination with Boulder and the CWA has not waned since first coming here in 1988. He says, "The joy of the conference is that you meet people in fields you would never encounter anywhere else." And as for Boulder, "I doubt if there is more beautiful scenery on earth."

Not quite a bung, you understand, more a case of flying the lucky recipient, all expenses paid, to a bucolic jamboree, and there flattering the journo's self-importance. Mr. Hoggart is, it almost goes without remarking, a world-renowned expert on patriotism:

Conference on World Affairs

University of Colorado, Boulder

2701 Patriotism: Fashion or Fear

3:30pm-5:00pm on Tuesday April 9, 2002

UMC Center Ballroom

Panelists:

Jay Harris

Simon Hoggart

Ellen McGirt

[Paul Rigby]

The Aspen Flier - and legendary legover merchant - remains ever-vigilant in the face of that enormous threat to Western civilization otherwise known as, yes, the conspiracy theorist.

Still in America, the conspiracy theorists are back at work. They have found that the official social security death index, which lists all US deaths and is used as a precaution against identity theft, lists Adam Lanza has having died on 13 December last year, the day before he went into Sandy Hook school on a shooting spree that killed almost two dozen people. You and I might think this is a simple inputting mistake. Not if we were conspiracy theorists. Clearly the massacre was organised by the Obama administration to win support for stricter gun laws. Lanza was the fall guy and was killed before someone pretending to be him went the next day to the school … You can guess the rest. Just as George Bush arranged 9/11.

From this week's serving of any-old rope entitled: "Is the age of the billboard MP upon us?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2013/jun/14/simon-hoggart-age-billboard-mp

Quite possibly, but then it's also the age of the straw-man mainstream journo.