David Montgomery imposes "urinal cake" on Bristol

The morgue that is David Montgomery has resurrected himself with some hideous-sounding company called Local World which has somehow got its bony claws on loads of UK regional newspapers and websites. Its plan is to replace hacks and subs with content managers or skimmers of online content (aka plagiarists on the cheap) - and today, Local World closed Bristol ents site Venue. As a parting shot, its writers wrote the following (I've copied it because the site was not permitted to attain heritage status but was terminated instead - if this a copyright breach, someone contact me at Madamearcati69@aol.com):

Dear Local World,

So, here we are then. Friday 29 November 2013. Venue’s last day on Earth. Hours from being swept away as part of what you so dreamily term “the development of the what’s on module.” Sometime in December, we learn, venue.co.uk will re-emerge, like butterfly become grub, as www.bristolpostwhatson.co.uk. Because, heck, nothing answers “Hey, where to find what’s happening in town tonight?” quite so snappily as www.bristolpostwhatson.co.uk. Given a firm push, a downhill gradient and a stiff following wind, it just rolls off the tongue.

It may surprise you to learn we don’t necessarily have a problem with you closing the Venue website. Don’t get us wrong, it is curious timing. As you know, the most recent figures for daily page hits are: August - 44,162; September - 48,544; October - 55,824. Nevertheless, the two remaining of our number, working part-time on alternate weeks, would be the first to admit that Venue is a husk of its former self. Frankly, they’ll be glad to be put out of their misery. Where once they were part of a vast team of journalists delivering informed, first-hand comment from every last facet of city life, today our hapless duo struggle to do much more than pass on received opinion and rehash press releases. Naturally, we don’t have to explain this process to you, Local World, but we’re keenly aware that newcomers to the site might look at recent content and wonder at our concern.

We’ll come to that shortly, but, this being an open letter, a brief history lesson for the uninitiated (we’re being tactful here, Local World - we’re all too aware you haven’t got a fucking clue yourselves). Venue magazine began life in 1982, covering Bristol and Bath and surrounds, but swiftly fter 18 proudly independent years it was sold to Bristol United Press, owned by your predecessor, the Northcliffe Newspaper Group. Last year, having suffered death by a thousand cuts and a colourful assortment of full-frontal stabbings, the magazine was closed down. Today, it’s fallen to you, Local World, to apply the coup-de-graceless and bring down the final curtain on 31 years of work.

And hand it all over to the Post.

The Post, which decreed all street art as vandalism for years, and yet today, having so very belatedly recognised which way the wind is blowing, reaches for Banksy with the same onanistic lust the Express reserves for Diana.

We’re not going to claim we ever “championed” Banksy. We never really went in for “championing”. We simply covered everything we considered of value. So we might not have “championed” street art, but we did report t. Always. Even before 1985, the year of Arnolfini’s seminal ‘Graffiti Art’ exhibition, featuring work from the UK’s first wave of can-wielders. One of them was called 3D, or Robert Del Naja. He went on to co-found Massive Attack. We put Massive Attack on the cover before they’d even released a single.

Do you see what we’re driving at here? Have you any idea the number of wonderful bands, and theatre groups, and artists, and voluntary organisations, and filmmakers, and minority groups who had no voice anywhere else, at all, ever, and poets, and DJs, and on, and on, who claim inspiration from something they read in Venue? We make no assertions for the influence of our opinion; we simply did our level best to place a mirror in every last corner of Bristol, no matter how hidden, and allow the city to reflect back on itself.

And you want to hand over that legacy to a paper whose management - not journalists - are the precise equivalent of those radio stations which promise “your better music mix” and then put the same few songs on repeat. Which claim “the best new music” and fail to add “once it has charted and proved its popularity.” You want to hand over that legacy because, to quote from a staff email you neglected to send us, “The existing Venue website has really good functionality with a real blend of music reviews, listings, restaurant reviews etc, etc. This is a fantastic opportunity to grow our digital audience and a great platform to sell advertising on.”

Do you have any idea how much that hurts, Local World? Of course you don’t. You who boast all the cultural hinterland of a freshly discarded wet wipe. (Though you do have history, of course: born earlier this year, the helplessly stumbling result of a merger between Iliffe Media and Northcliffe, with a profit forecast of approximately £30 million - that debt-free dowry from the Daily Mail General Trust was a lovely gift, no? And they absolved you of responsibility for the deficit on that pesky old final salary pension scheme. Ah, Local World! You are to localism what urinal cake is to mountain freshness.)

And now you presume to inherit our work. We were writers, Local World, photographers, not “content providers”. We were bound together not only by our city, but by a love of language, of striking image. Our editors consistently backed our individual judgement and allowed us complete freedom of expression. As a result, Venue inspired a loyalty out of all proportion with the pittance it paid. Local World, we put our very heart and soul into our catalogue of work. And if you think you can now simply walk in and trample on its remains, then you can, with the very greatest lack of respect, fuck the fuck off.

Because we, the undersigned, do hereby assert our full rights under copyright law. It really would be for the best if you were take a moment to visit [page is no longer - MA] on the Venue website. Sit down, take a deep breath, and pause and reflect on this: “This website and its content is the copyright of the individual authors credited.” Please be assured we did not pull this phrase out of our collective arses, but out of legal statute. And if we perceive so much as a single full-stop, a solitary pixel of our work when your shameless hijacking is unveiled, then you in turn can expect to perceive a court summons. We are, to put it in terms you regularly use but cannot hope to understand, passionate about defending our legacy.

Sincerely,

Robin Askew
Lesley Barnes
Tony Benjamin
Melissa Blease
Anna Britten
Darryl Bullock
Charlotte Butterfield
Jay Chakravorty
Hannah Chapman
Matt Collins
Marc Crewe (deceased)*
Stephen Dalton
Ellen Doherty (deceased)*
Carl Dolan
Rebecca Ewing
Kristen Grayewski
Elfyn Griffith
Tom Hackett
Mike Harley
Steve Henwood
Gareth Jones
Nic Matthews
Tamar Newton
Huw Oliver
Julian Owen
Emma Parkinson
Kid Pensioner
Tom Phillips
Leah Pritchard
Pat Reid
Jo Renshaw
Andrew Rilstone
Stuart Roberts
Anna Rutherford
Mark Simmons
Delia Sparrow
Joe Spurgeon
John Stevens
Campbell Stevenson
Nick Talbot
Lou Trimby
Tom Wainwright
Cris Warren
Ben Welch
Kirsten Williams
Kate Withers
John Christopher Wood
Adam Workman
Steve D Wright
Nicola Yeeles

*Because if there is an afterlife, and we don’t add these enduringly lamented names to our treatise, we’ll never hear the end of it.

Give Lara DF a listen (even if I can't abide her bio dad)

I have written brutal things about Mecom's David Montgomery (ex of Mirror Group), one of the reviled and detested figures of European journalism - nicknamed the "locust" by some. Now Madame Arcati is happy to set all this bile aside as a new generation blossoms forth and old hatreds turn to anecdotal humus. One of his kids is Lara DF, a gifted but unsigned high register singer songwriter. Listen to Vision especially, a good movie theme sound in my opinion. Her mum is the journalist Sharon Feinstein. I wish Lara well.

£800,000 for journalist bullied by Andy Coulson - now the Tories' top spin doctor

The News of the World reporter who was bullied by former editor Andy Coulson and his staff side-kicks has been awarded nearly £800,000 for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination by an east London employment tribunal.

Matt Driscoll will pick up a record £792,736 from Murdoch's News International which with legal costs stands to lose over a £1 million on this case alone.

The tribunal found that Driscoll had been subject to "a consistent pattern of bullying behaviour". "The original source of the hostility towards the claimant [Driscoll] was Mr Coulson ... ". The Guardian reports, "The judgment singled out Coulson for making 'bullying' remarks in an email to Driscoll after the first formal warning, letting him know that he thought he should have been sacked."

Madame Arcati has long campaigned to raise the profile of this case, long after other media went silent. Coulson is the Conservative Party's top spin doctor. Despite Tory pledges to fight bullying in all its forms, Cameron has clung onto Coulson - and no doubt an absence of a media clamour for Coulson's removal will be a comfort. Bullying is the common coin of newspapers. The culture of newspapers promotes bullying. The attributes of the bully are required for editorial preferment.

Ironically, last Sunday, the News of the World went big on its own anti-bullying campaign (schools only, natch) - how hollow that looks now. The Screws these days is an archaic spectacle - a tawdry palace of hypocrites and liars, sad middleclass hacks at a chav masquerade as they clamber and shit all over each other in their prefab open-plan coop. I can't think of a more disgusting publication.

As for Coulson - go! The People needs you! More at Bullying UK.

National newspapers' conspiracy of silence over this payout, click here

Christian Bale: Dickhead's rant turned to dance classic

Screaming Christian Bale's bullying rant at someone on the set of Terminator: Salvation has been turned into a great dance track (with a Barbra Streisand cameo) by RevoLucian.

Oh dear. Guido Fawkes approves of bullying!

I asked Guido Fawkes the other day whether he had any comment to make on Andy Coulson, the Tory's spin doctor, who last week was found by an employment tribunal to have bullied a sports hack as editor of the News of the World. Fawkes' response to me? ...

"Happy Xmas. I hate employment laws. Takes all the fun out of the office."

Jokes aside, that sums up the problem of bullying in the work place.

Andy Coulson: Does David Cameron now condone bullying?

The dickhead who is now the Conservative party director of communications is a bully - and that's official.

The former editor of the News of the World Andy Coulson presided over a culture of bullying, an employment tribunal found yesterday. Former sports writer Matt Driscoll won his case for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination at the Stratford Employment Tribunal.

"We find the behaviour to have been a consistent pattern of bullying behaviour... with the intention to remove him (Driscoll) from their employment, whether through negotiating a settlement package or through a staged process of warnings leading to dismissal," the tribunal's judgment stated.

"The original source of the hostility towards the claimant [Driscoll] was Mr Coulson, the then editor of the News of the World; although other senior managers either took their lead from Mr Coulson and continued with his motivation after Mr Coulson's departure; or shared his views themselves. Mr Coulson did not attend the tribunal to explain why he wanted the claimant dismissed."

Why is Coulson still working for the Tories? Why hasn't he been fired? Would Tory leader David Cameron have tolerated it if Coulson had been convicted of criminal offences? What's the difference in essence? Does Cameron condone bullying in the work place? Don't imagine that silence will be accepted as an answer. Disgusting people like Coulson should be forced into psychiatric analysis for his and others' good. He is now working for a Conservative victory at the next election.

For more, click here.

Christmas email cards: But where's the soulful saliva?

The next cunt to send me a Christmas email card is so going on my Curse List - quite long this year.

What precisely can you do with a cunting email Christmas card? - print it out, spray starch on it and stick it on the mantelpiece? I don't think so. The Scrooges who resort to this cheapo, soulless, miserly gesture are not thinking straight.

The whole idea of cards is to put them someplace for all to see so that others can say: "My, how many friends you've got! Bitch!" Hard copy cards are heralds of tangible good wishes, cheery sentinels of desk and home surfaces, as opposed to impersonal email cards which simply stuff your inbox with unwelcome megabytes and probably can't be played in any case because you need Adobe cunting Flash or whatever the latest piece of crap from Silicon Hell is called.

There is something sensuous about the thought of saliva on the hard copy card envelope: someone has gone to the trouble of licking your prezzie. Isn't that faintly erotic and personal? There's no saliva to be found on an email Christmas card, just the thought of norovirus-enriched fingerprints on a keyboard. Not the same is it?

If Dickens were alive today he would not have written A Christmas Carol. He would have penned A Christmas Cunting Email Card, featuring an office misery who works out how much money he or she can save by sending out the company festive card. The ghosts of Christmas past, present and future would be the souls of all those forgotten, locked up or deleted email cards wailing for attention. They'd tell of what might-have-been had they been incarnated as Clinton hard copy cards, of friendships strengthened, of marriages saved and of kids returning, if only a hard copy Christmas card had been posted (you know, with a paid-for stamp, licked).

Don't you feel the loss?

David Montgomery - another flop on his CV

"FORMER Mirror Group boss David Montgomery has agreed to relinquish some control over his struggling European newspaper empire, Mecom," reports The Times today. What did I say sometime back? Find my posting on the fated pathway of the hopeless, bullying slag, Montgomery. My curse is irrevocable.

David Montgomery and his Cycle of Doom

Reading the Guardian's entertaining report on David Montgomery and his empire building across Europe in the van of the alien-sounding Mecom – buying up hundreds of regional newspapers – reminds me to remind you of the usual Monty cycle as witnessed at News International and Mirror Group:

1. The surprise move as he emerges from nowhere to take control (he's a Scorpio, see. Secretive).

2. Lots of promises not to sack anyone ie “Everyone is in place …”

3. A brilliant start – cuts impress the suits, he talks the talk to the City types, paints his visionary future. Some useful purchases made.

4. Cuts start as promises are shredded, the troops start to revolt, editor heads roll, lots of vile coverage in the media. He is described as "thin man" and his nickname Rommel revived.

5. Eccentric editorial initiatives, bizarre appointments, more sackings, horrible or scandalous diary items about his love life. But he loves opera and is a delight on the piano.

6. Media Rumours of unease among the suits – concern about editorial hostility to Monty and the feasibility of some of his ideas. Is Monty a one-man band?

7. It's not that Monty's wrong on everything, it's just he cannot get over his basic contempt for journalists. This warps everything he touches. Doubts are raised about his understanding of readers and everything's done on the cheap. People tap their temples when they speak of him in hushed tones.

8. He’s fired and scuttles off several millions of euros wealthier.

Bullying: Jungle laws re-invoked by a fool

Interesting piece in the Observer (for a change), about bullying. Someone called Tim Gill, a former government adviser who led a major review into children's play, has written a book, No Fear: Growing up in a Risk-Averse Society, in which he argues that playground bullying is exaggerated and that kids should be encouraged to sort out conflict with their peers and not be mollycoddled by teachers and parents.

But Liz Carnell, director of the charity Bullying UK, counters: "What may seem like minor name-calling to an adult could be devastating to the child. Bullying can start with one incident, and if you nip it in the bud straight away, it will not grow into a problem."

Carnell's view strikes me as the more sensible. At core, bullying - which can be verbal harassment or physical assault with always an intimidatory intent and usually a sustained element - is an unsocial behaviour. The failure of schools and parents to deal appropriately with bullies may account for the high incidence of workplace bullying: to many it is a behaviour that appears to be countenanced or excused and ultimately rewarded in adulthood. Successful bullies in high status jobs are even granted a certain cachet because of their "toughness" or "ruthlessness". Teachers maybe reluctant to tackle bullying because they themselves were indoctrinated as kids to tacitly side with the bully, not the victim, for fear of seeming weak. The source problem lies not in the victim but in the bully: the Gills and his ilk fail to recognise this simple truth.

Ultimately this is a question about the kind of world we wish to live in. It certainly won't be altered by invoking the old brutalising law of the jungle crap - which is just another excuse to leave things as they are.

Tim Gill - "government adviser". How depressing.

Observer: Bullying is Exaggerated
Bullying UK

Ten VERY SUCCESSFUL and FAMOUS glamour role model bullies (from UK perspective):

Rupert Murdoch
Anna Wintour
David Montgomery
Kelvin MacKenzie
Jeremy Kyle
Anne Robinson
Alastair Campbell
Naomi Campbell
Sharon Osbourne
Gordon Ramsay

Platell - a victim of bullying

In the Mail today Amanda Platell turns her attention glitter ball to Helen Green, the company secretary awarded £800,000 by the High Court as compensation for a four-year campaign of bullying by four female colleagues at Deutsche Bank. Amanda is appalled that such a victim should have recourse to law - "Hers [Green's] is a hideously distorted world where self-styled victims reign supreme..." blah blah bah.
Apparently, Amanda can't see what the fuss is about: she is unable to find one incident of bullying in this case that most of us would not have "shrugged off as petty offfice politics". So what if colleagues blow mocking raspberries at you or tell you to your face that you smell - welcome to the world of work, children!
Actually, this pile of nonsense - supported by an approving adjacent editorial - is only explicable in context. For Amanda herself is a victim of bullying. Victims sometimes fall for their persecutors, we know the phenomenon: Amanda's is a classic case.
We have to return to the mid-'90s for the full story. She was made editor of the Sunday Mirror but under the terrible and dysfunctional aegis of the sad and mad managing director Bridget Rowe - a woman Amanda would come to describe as a member of the tribe of she-men.
The two women were at odds from the start. Bridget subjected Amanda to a grotesque reign of terror - on one occasion a row on the car phone with her boss grew so violent that Amanda had to tell her driver to stop so she could spew in the gutter. Fortunately for her, the Asbo had yet to be unleashed on anti-social behaviour.
Sometime after she left Canary Wharf, Amanda was traumatised or angry enough to write a readable pulp fiction about some bitch newspaper editor which hopefully was cathartic. Whether it earned her £800,000 is not known.
Yet what psychic injury may this experience have done to Amanda? Nurtured by the arch-bully of them all David Montgomery, then herself a victim while her erstwhile mentor stood by doing nothing to help her, she doubtless came to the painful realisation that behaving like a total shit is the only way to get by in the antediluvian world of national popular journalism.
What a sad but well remunerated world Amanda inhabits.