I was going to collate some reaction to the Daily – Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad “newspaper” – but Matthew Dyas beat me to it with this splendid piece.

It is worth remembering, as we sit in front of screens and watch Egypt tumble towards civil war, that this string of events can be traced back to one thing: Wikileaks. We cannot charge Julian Assange with causing a revolution, the causes have been latent for years, but we can say he triggered it. Remember how it went? Wikileaks releases evidence of what Tunisians have been whispering for years, one man immolates himself, there follows a popular uprising, that then spreads, like a virulent computer virus, to Egypt and possibly beyond. I can’t help think, as I piece these events together, that Wikileaks is just some huge hack of the diplomatic system, with Assange – a former hacker – at the nexus of it all.

Egypt on the brink. Who you gonna call? Robert Fisk of course. Today’s Independent carried a fine piece of reportage that shows the veteran war reporter has lost none of his sharpness.

The fighting around me in the square called Tahrir was so terrible that we could smell the blood. The men and women who are demanding the end of Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship – and I saw young women in scarves and long skirts on their knees, breaking up the paving stones as rocks fell around them – fought back with an immense courage which later turned into a kind of terrible cruelty.

Some dragged Mubarak’s security men across the square, beating them until blood broke from their heads and splashed down their clothes. The Egyptian Third Army, famous in legend and song for crossing the Suez Canal in 1973, couldn’t – or wouldn’t – even cross Tahrir Square to help the wounded.

The actors in The Wire: where are they now?

That was the strangest PMQ I’ve ever seen. More like a game of chess than a fight.

Butterfly, butterfly, oh how you flutter by … he magical, magical realism of Paul Villinski

Lionel Barber, editor of the FT: on phone hacking, Wikileaks and the downfall of Vince Cable

Lionel Barber, the cerebral editor of the FT (his brain is so big that it casts a shadow right across the Thames) has given the annual Hugh Cudlipp lecture at the London College of Communication (full text here). It’s a very good speech, not least because it provides the opinion of a well respected editor on three of the most controversial stories of recent months:

On the Vince Cable story

“The Daily Telegraph’s decision to dispatch two journalists posing as constituents to interview the business secretary Vince Cable … was nothing more than entrapment journalism”.

On phone hacking

“Failure to clean house at all news organisations would leave the mainstream media in Britain at risk of retribution in the form of statutory regulation. Many MPs are itching to retaliate for the humiliation of the expenses scandal, but statutory regulation would be a grave step in the wrong direction.

Press freedom is woven into the fabric of our nation. We do not want to go down the same road as countries such as Argentina, Hungary and South Africa which have adopted or are about to adopt new laws curbing press freedom. Democracy, it should be remembered, is not just about holding elections.”

On Wikileaks

“So while official reprisals may still follow, I am inclined to side with my FT colleague Gideon Rachman who wrote, half tongue in cheek, that the Obama administration should pin a medal on Mr Assange. By and large, the cables revealed that what the US government reported in private was exactly what the US government said in public.”

A brilliant example of TV journalism on last night’s Newsnight (YouTube links below). The feature included an item on how big corporations avoid – perfectly legally – paying billions in tax. There was also a splendid piece of documentary that looked into the work of UK Uncut, a group of latter day situationist activists, targeting Vodafone, who it is said owe the exchequer the kingly sum of six billion.

Later in the piece I was particularly impressed with Tony Smith of UK Uncut who withstood a rhetorical broadside from Jeremy Paxman with such a cool, considered articulation of his argument – the corporations are behaving in a way that is morally wrong – that you felt that he’d been sat there for years. Such high-mindedness from one so young is a quite charming thing to behold.

Incidentally, if you listen carefully you also get to hear Paxman “do a Naughtie”.

YouTube (part one) (part two).

Great to hear Andy Kershaw back on the wireless

Splendid essay on the London cycle-hire scheme by Iain Sinclair in the latest London Review of Books

Like everything else in the Alice in Wonderland world of pre-Olympic London, cycling has become the plaything of bankers and politicians. We have been persuaded to undergo an online process, like applying for a mortgage, or a loan we don’t need, in order to become a mobile advertisement for the benevolence of a financial institution. And by this application, we are registered, tagged, our movements logged and our conversations recorded.

Two media stories of note in the old G today

Thought Charlie Brooker was particularly apropos in his piece about the end of privacy:

We’ve entered an era in which private conversation is impossible. Ever since Gordon Brown was caught calling Gillian Duffy a bigot, the tape’s been left running. Paranoia is at an all-time high. MPs can no longer talk to their own constituents without suspecting they may be undercover reporters. Celebrities can’t listen to their voicemails without wondering if they have been transcribed and passed to the newsdesk. Football commentators can no longer yap like oafs in their downtime. Everyone has become a reality show contestant nervously awaiting their own Shilpa Shetty moment.

While elsewhere in the paper Adam Sherwin interviews Paul Staines, the blogger behind Guido Fawkes. I’m not fond of Staines – can’t stand him actually – but the article does place his achievements into context.

Since Guido’s Order-Order blog went live in 2004, it has exposed MPs’ petty expenses fraud, forced Peter Hain to resign from his cabinet post over undeclared campaign donations and, most spectacularly, brought down Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s political enforcer, in the Smeargate affair.

Apparently Cameron has just said that the idea that taxpayers paying or university is “for the birds”. That’s the trouble with that man – too flippant by half.

Lately I have been enjoying the Daily Torygraph (more here)

I am admittedly partisan when it comes to politics, but my observation on the current state of the economy is thus: when Labour last came to power it managed 44 quarters of economic growth. When the coalition came to power it managed just one.

Soheni Nishino and his ace diorama maps

Regular visitors to this site, apparently there are a couple, will know that I’m a sucker for a good photomontage. I’ve even attempted a couple myself. So quite naturally I am going to adore the work of Sohei Nishino and his diorama map series, which are currently on display at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in Chelsea.

Nishino takes pictures, lots, of cities and then pastes them together. The results are a combination of a landscape and a map that reminds me of the work of Stephen Walter

Love Will Tear Us Apart: A History Of The Haçienda Granada Television documentary from 1999. I think it had something to do with the death of Rob Gretton – presented in five YouTube parts (sorry but can’t embed it here)