News comes of an incident this week between two leading journalists at a book launch in London. The occasion was the launch of
Heather Brooke’s new book
The Revolution will be Digitised at the offices of publishers Simons Muirhead & Burton in trendy Soho.
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| Nick Davies guardian.co.uk |
One guest was the
Guardian journalist
Nick Davies who has been diligently plugging away in the back ground for years on the great hacking scandal that recently brought about the demise of Britain's best selling tabloid,
Rupert Murdoch's
News Of The World.
In 1996 Davies also worked at
The Age in Melbourne where he scored a major scoop by getting several doctors to say, off the record, that they had helped with assisted suicides and would do so again.It caused a political firestorm.
Enter another guest, Australian writer
Guy Rundle, popular correspondent for websites
crikey.com.au ,
Counterpunch and more.
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| Guy Rundle |
Rundle is a vocal defender of
Julian Assange and had written a piece that appeared on crikey and Counterpunch, dissecting what he says was a 'stitch-up' of the
Wikileaks founder Assange by
The Guardian.
Davies took Rundle to task in
this letter published in
The Monthly claiming Rundle got his facts wrong. On the 11th April
crikey ran
this correction following Rundle's story.
Apparently this wasn't enough for Davies and upon spotting the hapless Rundle at the book launch was finally able to deliver a coup de grâce
with a well aimed tumbler of excellent publisher's white hurled into the face of Rundle. While Davies did a victory dance around the room Rundle trundled off to change his contact lenses, doused by the wine.
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| Tom Albanese |
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Meanwhile not far from Soho at the
British Museum, the mining corp Rio Tinto are sponsoring an
Australian season with presentations on our fauna and flora, talks by writers
Malcolm Cox and
Phillip McLean along with an exhibition of
Sydney Nolan paintings and a lecture on that iconic Aussie family saloon the
FJ Holden.
A debate was underway about the environmental effects of European civilisation in Australia with Rio Tinto CEO
Tom Alabanese at the lectern when a blaring fire alarm resulted in 340 guest fleeing the lecture room. It was a false alarm.
The official explanation was that a fierce storm and wind outside had set off the alarm,. Not so according to
Stephen Hopper, the Australian director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He reckoned a slide of red-bellied black snake being used to illustrate a point by Albanese was the cause.
"
They have evil powers according to Aboriginals " says Hooper. "
they avoid them like the plague".
One of the madder tales doing the rounds and which is bound to be repeated ad infinitum is the rumour that billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch is dating the Texan model Jerry Hall. Jerry is pictured here with her former boyfriend Warwick Hemsley and with her daughter Georgia May Jagger during Sydney visits.
What could this newspaper obsessed mogul possibly have in common with fun loving Jerry?. Well according to Nick Davies in his best- seller Hack Attack about the recent hacking scandal, perhaps pillow talk could involve a discussion about how Rupert's tabloids hacked the phone of Bernard Doherty who was Mick Jagger's publicist when he was married to Jerry which provided a string of exclusive tales about the couple's divorce for the Murdoch newspapers.
