News of the World Scandal: How did that Glen Mulcaire character get away with tapping people's phones so easily? Is it his close ties with the police that helped? What would happen to Rebekah Brooks if she was found guilty of collusion? What is going to happen to the Murdoch empire now?
Glenn Mulcaire didn’t really get away with tapping people’s mobile phones, he was imprisoned in 2007 for 6 months for this nefarious business and he will no doubt face more problems with the current phone-hacking scandal. It is not likely he has close ties with the police personally, although other people involved in the scandal will have. It was quite simple for him to hack phones; he could ring someone’s phone and then use the default pin code to access voicemail (as people rarely change this pin code).
If Rebekah Brooks was found guilty of collusion she would have to resign as her current position would become untenable. News Corporation would no doubt face a colossal fine and Brooks would find herself confronting a lot of lawsuits. The Murdoch empire has already started suffering: Rupert’s desire to completely control BSkyB has been scuppered; the brand has been gravely tarnished and News Corporation’s shares have dropped on the NASDAQ from .5400 on 5 Jul 2011 to .9900 by 14 Jul 2011. For a company with revenue of over billion in 2010 that is a lot of money going down the drain. To put it plainly, Rupert Murdoch’s cherished company has lost about 4.3 billion quid so far. All from something that started with a dodgy royal editor and crooked private investigator listening to voicemails from Camilla telling Prince Charles to “stop bloody talking to your chrysanthemums and get home before the cottage pie gets burnt” or something like that.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
What are the most important things to remember to be good at boxing?
The most important thing to remember to be good at boxing is not to get punched. It might sound facetious, but in the 2011 Haye v Klitschko fight Haye managed to land 72 punches compared to Klitschko’s 134, and Klitschko won. So to be good at boxing, learn to dodge and weave and make sure your punches are on target. Missing punches simply saps energy.
Other useful qualities include great stamina, an iron chin, dedication, determination, to be able to use both hands skilfully and fancy footwork. As Muhammad Ali famously said, “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” or as Rocky Balboa famously said, “Addrriiiaannn”.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
What has been the best invention of the past 20 years?
Conveniently celebrating its China anniversary (20th) in 2011 is the WWW, the World Wide Web. The internet itself has been around for years, being developed in the 1960s by various civilian and military sponsored computer science agencies. Fortunately for frustrated horny teenagers and bored office workers worldwide, British boffin Sir Tim Berners-Lee decided to use the internet to publish pages of information accessible to anyone with a connected computer, thus launching the WWW in 1991.
With over 2 billion web users worldwide and well over 100 million websites to look at, it is safe to say the WWW is the best invention of the last 20 years. Well, that and the battery powered battery charger.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
What has happened to Greece? Why are they so skint?
To put it simply, the Greek governments of the last 10 years have spent way too much money and also borrowed too much money. Mix that situation with some deep-rooted economic corruption and some fiddling of the books and this will give you an economic meltdown, exacerbated by the sorry state of other European economies.
Greece enjoyed an influx of foreign investment in the 1980s and 1990s and the people in power invested in many things, such as increasing defence spending (because of the perceived threat from Turkey), investing in public sector jobs and improving welfare conditions. The problem is, these governments spent too much money and then borrowed heavily, cooking the books in the meantime so that the Greek economy looked stronger that it really was. In 2010, the Greek government finally had to come clean; such was the spiralling crisis of their debt. With Spain and Italy looking financially wobbly lately it looks like things are looking grim for the Eurozone. It must be comforting for the Swiss that they decided to maintain their economic neutrality and huge Toblerone surplus.
[Answers provided by 63336. Text any question to 63336 for £1.50 or ask one for free at http://63336.com]
MORE BLOGS
Bookmark this post with: