By Michael Collins

"George Osborne insisted that the government would stick unwaveringly to its austerity plans, despite admitting that the long-term damage caused to the economy by the credit crunch was forcing him to revise down estimates for growth that were already weak." The Guardian, September 6

A former Madame and dominatrix, Natalie Rowe, made high profile news yesterday in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Ms. Rowe said that her phone was hacked in 2005 just before the Daily Mirror did a story about her use of cocaine and other vice activities with Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. The drug use and girls-for-hire action occurred, it is claimed, during and shortly after the time Osborne was a student at Oxford University and involved members of the elite Bullingdon drinking club.

Shut down in shame in July, Rupert Murdoch's News of the World (NoW) got the intel on the Mirror story through a phone hack on Rowe's phone. That resulted in what the Financial Times called a spoiler story. As the Mirror story broke, NoW's campaign to discredit Rowe was in full swing.

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Michael Collins

"I genuinely believe it is the national interest, in the interest of everybody in Great Britain, first to use this opportunity to usher in a new politics after the discredited politics of the past." Speaking to rally for proportional representation: Nick Clegg, May 8

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion...

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