Mediaboss Marketing

By Stephen Glover

PUBLISHED: 18:21 EST, 28 May 2012 | UPDATED: 18:21 EST, 28 May 2012

A stranger to our shores watching Tony Blair at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday would have got the impression of a reasonable and decent man who had unaccountably been abused and mistreated by a his word feral Press.

If I had not lived through the Blair years, and seen the way in which newspapers were manipulated and sometimes lied to by his formidable Press machine, I might have been persuaded by this suave and confident performance.

Much as I admire Lord Justice Leveson and the sardonic Robert Jay, QC, who asks most of the questions, I am afraid that either as a result of ignorance or excessive indulgence, their interrogation of the former prime minister was terribly lame. He was not put on the spot over many issues where he certainly has a case to answer.

Suave: Tony Blair was a confident witness at the Leveson Inquiry, and unlike other witnesses received very soft interrogation

For example, he was not examined as to why he and his turbulent spin doctor Alastair Campbell who has inexplicably been treated with the softest of kid gloves by this inquiry aided and abetted the bid for the Daily Express by the pornographer Richard Desmond in 2000. At that time, the Express was a New Labour-supporting paper, and Mr Blair believed Mr Desmonds assurances hed keep it so.

No questions were put about why he had permitted Mr Campbell to oversee the crucial September 2002 dossier about Iraq, which convinced many people that Saddam Hussein constituted a danger to this country. Equally, he was not required to justify his Press Secretarys fraudulent second dossier partly based unattributably on a long-out-of-date university doctoral thesis published in February 2003.

He was not asked why, in an unprecedented move, he had allowed his spin doctor to give orders to senior civil servants, and was not made to explain why Mr Campbell had connived in the politicisation of the civil service by installing Labour placemen as departmental press officers answerable to him.

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Kid gloves and the damning questions Tony Blair wasn¿t asked at the Leveson Inquiry

27-05-2012 14:01 Terry and Frankie break down what the smart grid means for us under the new world order. The Truth About The Smart Grid (previous report):

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NWO Survellience - The Smart Grid - Video

Entertainment One, the film and TV distribution company behind childrens favourite Peppa Pig, more than doubled its profits last year after a licensing deal with Amazons digital movie service, LoveFilm, bolstered revenues.

However, its strong performance was overshadowed by concerns that it could over-stretch itself or dilute its shares in order to buy Alliance Films, a rival film distributor in Canada.

Entertainment Ones sales grew 7pc to 502.7m during the 12 months to April, as the rapid growth of licensing deals to digital movie services helped to offset a slowdown in the money it makes from distributing films to cinemas. Pre-tax profits jumped from 11.4m to 23m.

The company, which is headquartered in Canada and listed on the London Stock Exchange, launched 152 films in the cinema last year including the fourth instalment of the Twilight Saga vampire films, Breaking Dawn, helping to grow film revenues 17pc to 272m.

However, the real lift came from its digital business, which doubled revenues to 66m. Of that, a significant portion came from a five-year deal to license films to LoveFilm, which competes with the likes of Netflix (NasdaqGS: NFLX - news) in allowing users to rent films on-demand over the internet. Digital (Milan: DIB.MI - news) revenues now account for 13pc of Entertainment Ones total income.

The international expansion of Peppa Pig also fuelled growth at Entertainment (LSE: ETO.L - news) One. The cartoon character originally created by British animation firm Astley Baker Davies launched in the US during the period and will make its debuts in the Far East and Latin America later this year.

However, analysts and investors expressed concern about Entertainment Ones potential bid for Alliance Films, after it confirmed that they were in talks.

Alliance, whose properties include What To Expect When Youre Expecting and Piranha 3DD is valued at around $300m, more than Entertainment Ones debt facility which stood at $244m at the end of March, raising the likelihood that the Peppa Pig owner will have to raise more debt and increase its share offering to fund any deal.

Shares in Entertainment One have slumped from around 155p to below 130p amid rumours of the potential bid, although rose 2.4 to 137.9p in afternoon trading.

Darren Throop, chief executive, said Entertainment Ones current share price was kind of ridiculous and had effectively stymied its ability to buy Alliance.

Continued here:
Amazon deal boosts profits at Entertainment One but bid plans weigh on shares

SAN ANTONIO (AP) It's a catchphrase likely coming soon to fan T-shirts, Internet memes and the lexicon of the NBA playoffs for the foreseeable future.

''I want some nasty!''

Gregg Popovich didn't just coin it. He snarled it, and the way his San Antonio Spurs obliged has the Western Conference finals off to a thrilling start.

Manu Ginobili scored 26 points and the Spurs won their 19th in a row - tying the NBA record for longest winning streak kept alive in the playoffs - by rallying in the fourth quarter on the orders of their furious coach to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 101-98 in Game 1 on Sunday night.

It was a tantalizing near-upset for the young Thunder, who came as close as anybody to beating the Spurs for the first time in 46 days. But a nine-point lead didn't last after the famously mercurial 63-year-old Popovich - the NBA's Coach of the Year - huddled his lagging team together in the fourth and told them to ''get nasty.''

''I said that?'' Popovich said afterward.

A nationally television audience heard it.

''The heat of the game, stuff comes up,'' Popovich said. ''So I talked to them about they've got to get a little bit uglier, get a little more nasty, play with more fiber and take it to these guys. Meaning you have to drive it, you have to shoot it.''

And when they did, the Thunder couldn't keep up.

Kevin Durant led the Thunder with 27 points. Russell Westbrook had 17, and insisted he was OK after taking a spill that was nasty in its own right - face first, bracing his fall with his hands and sitting under the basket for more than a minute while the entire Thunder bench walked across the court to check on their All-Star point guard.

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'Nasty' Spurs strike first against Thunder

Because it's a wonderful day. It's Tax Freedom Day, according to the Adam Smith Institute.

Tax Freedom Day is special for the free-marketeers. It marks the point in the calendar when Britons supposedly stop working for the Treasury and begin to earn for themselves.

In the words of institute director Dr Eamonn Butler, the 149 days at the start of the year "is the time the average person must labour for the tax collectors."

Now before all of you start filling in your application forms for a job in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, we should point out that Dr Butler is being less than exact here.

This is, of course, much to the disappointment of all the hardworking civil servants who, on reading the good doctor's words, have already started packing their buckets and spades.

Sorry chaps, that's not it at all.

What he really meant is that 149/365ths of the average income goes on tax.

So all of you with visions of sun-drenched tropical islands packed with filthy rich tax officials in aloha shirts and casual sandals enjoying a long vacation at our expense will have to think again.

The overstretched officials at HMRC will have to resign themselves to continuing to pin down obscenely rich tax-dodgers despite being 3,300 short of staff thanks to the Tory cuts.

Free-marketeers from the Tory Party right will have to look elsewhere for something to justify their vindictive hatred of public officials in general and tax inspectors in particular.

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Shove off into a corner