Iain Dale blog announces its murder: Old Etonians held as suspects

As expected, the Iain Dale blog has announced its demise. A nano-second's silence, please. The right-wing Mr D denies he's shutting up shop because the Tories are in power; and attributes his disenchantment with blogging to its damaging effect on his business and whatnot. This may be partly true, but actually the obvious and crassest main reason should not be blithely discounted.

He lost his mojo because the Tories are in power.

While Blair lied through his teeth and Brown impotently sulked and raged, Dale had a cause. The alternative to New Labour had to be preferred at the very least, and Dale was tenacious in the fight. He was an excellent Tory propagandist blogger in opposition. His raison d'etre: to get the Tories into power. And now that the smooth, suave, patronising Old Etonian plutocracy holds sway... oh, dear. Even Dale must see the calamity ahead.

An eroded NHS, a hostile disillusioned student population, local services ravaged, mass redundancies, a war on the poor, sick and incapable, quid pro quo plural privatisations of social services for Tory donors - well, you know all this and the rest. Even rickets is making a comeback.

Could you imagine the Dale blog thriving on a diet of friendly Tory tales amid the government's crazy slash and burn realities? A successful political blog will by its nature ply against power or else just be a fan site - BBC blogs excluded. Dale doesn't strike me as the power fan site type. So off he goes to his LBC radio show and his publishing company to consolidate his ker-ching thing. Wise.

He ran out of a blogging script for the party he will continue to support from the sidelines. Not for him reader withering scorn as he attempted to defend the trustafarian Old Etonians lecturing the rest of us that getting something for nothing is not open to all. In style terms, I'm sure he sensed the vulgarity of his Westminster pals.

A nano-second's pause, please, for a hollow laugh. Meanwhile, will Guido be next?

£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

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.