History > 2006 > UK > Media

The Guardian journalist

who became central London

organiser for the BNP

Ian Cobain went undercover for seven months
to explore the clandestine world of the BNP:
how it operates, recruits and holds meetings

Thursday December 21, 2006
Guardian
Ian Cobain

Early one evening in October, outside an entrance to Liverpool Street station in London, a few dozen men and women are standing around in small groups, whispering into mobile telephones, shuffling their feet, smiling and nodding discreetly to one another.

It is unseasonably warm, and people are spilling onto the pavement from the Hamilton Hall, a pub a few yards away. It's also a Saturday, and throngs of noisy football supporters are weaving in and out of the station on their way home from matches around the capital.

The small groups of men and women become larger, gradually merge into one company. But they blend in beautifully with the people around them; nobody sees their congregation, nobody else notices that they are one.

These people are using what they call an RVP - a clandestine rendezvous point. And if it sounds like an extraordinarily secretive way to meet your friends on a Saturday evening, that's exactly what it is supposed to be.

But then, these are people who will use pseudonyms to conceal their true identities. Their emails are encrypted, with only the chosen few possessing the codes needed to decipher their messages. They are people who employ carefully-coded language to express their views, and who will, before speaking plainly, quite literally look over their shoulders.

This is the strange world of what may be the United Kingdom's fastest-growing political party: these people have proclaimed themselves to be the Torch-Bearers of British Culture, the guardians of our national identity.

Welcome to life inside the British National Party.

The first meeting

My first meeting with a BNP activist was in the Amato Cafe in Soho's Old Compton Street on September 7. His name was Steve Tyler, he was slightly scruffy, and he had a goatee beard and dyed hair. He must have been about 60. His companion was a young Brazilian woman. They were obviously close. As she left, and our meeting began, Steve muttered something about his friend wanting help bringing her sister into the country. That was my first surprise. The second came when Steve admitted that he is not British at all: he is Australian.

Despite this, Steve clearly regards immigration as the greatest problem facing his adopted home. "The whole world is pouring down on us," he said. "It's a huge problem, and it's going to get worse." Not that he is a racist, you understand - "I'm on the liberal wing of the party ... most of the people in the party are" - and he doesn't blame the immigrants themselves - "if I was a 19-year-old Kurd, I'd be trying to get into the country". It's just that there is such a deluge, he explains. And really, something must be done about it! "I don't want to be lying on my deathbed thinking that I could have done something about it, but didn't."

For generations people like Steve have struggled to capture more than a tiny percentage of the votes at local or general elections. That has begun to change following Nick Griffin's attempts to clean up the BNP's image since becoming chairman seven years ago. In last May's local elections the party won 229,000 votes and now has more than 50 council seats.

To put this in some context, around seven million votes were cast last May, and 364,000 people voted for the Green party. But support for the BNP is clearly growing. In some parts of the country - in areas of West Yorkshire and East Lancashire, in pockets of the Midlands and on the eastern outskirts of London - the extreme right has achieved the political legitimacy which has eluded it for generations. It is also recruiting new members hand over fist.

But what sort of people are now joining the party? What is its electoral strategy? Is it dedicated purely to the pursuit of democratic politics? And where is it obtaining its funds? In an attempt to answer these questions, and to take a glimpse behind Griffin's facade of normality, the Guardian decided that it would join the BNP.

I signed up under an assumed name last June, using a fake address in central London from which I could pick up BNP correspondence, a new email account and a dedicated mobile telephone. I was keen to become active, I said on my application form, but I wanted to remain behind the scenes.

In my first meetings with BNP activists I hinted heavily that I worked in the public sector, and could lose my job if my membership became known. Over the months that followed, there would be times when members would question me closely about my views and my background, and it would be unclear to me whether they were merely curious, or suspicious. Before most meetings I would feel some fear of exposure. But when asked about my work, I found I could reply, quite truthfully: "Trust me, if you knew what I did for a living, you would understand exactly why it is that I can't tell you."

Who is watching?

After talking about my "work for the government", Steve turned to the question of police surveillance. "The police will watch leading members, of course, but they can't watch everybody who joins. They're too busy watching Islamic terrorists these days. And it's no secret that most police officers probably support us. Certainly those working in central London know the problems we face ..."

The problems we face. I heard phrases like this uttered by BNP members many times and, after several months, came to understand their precise, nuanced meanings. "Nice areas" I quickly understood to signify predominantly white areas. "Quiet areas" are places where black and minority ethnic people live, but keep a low profile, and don't compete too hard for jobs, school places or sexual partners. "Troublesome areas" are places where black people do just the opposite. "No-go areas" are places where black and minority ethnic people are in a majority. "Ethnics" speaks for itself, as does "our people". And "the problems we face"? They are, quite simply, that there are black people living among us whites.

In my seven months as a party member I heard very few racist epithets, and no anti-semitic comments. Such language appears almost to be frowned upon in Griffin's post-makeover BNP. Perhaps it is a tribute to the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Public Order Act 1986, and to the gently shifting mores of British life, that racists rarely feel able to express themselves, even among like-minded people. But some of the fear and the hatred remains: it just emerges in code.

The Orange Tree pub

On the evening of Sunday September 24 I was sitting in the Orange Tree pub in Richmond, south-west London, opposite a man who had contacted me by email. He had told me that his name was Nick Russell, and that he was the London regional organiser for the BNP. One these statements was true; the other I knew to be a lie.

Nick is indeed a dedicated party activist. His real name, however, is Nick Eriksen. He is 47, a former civil servant, and he once served as a Tory councillor in Southwark, south London. An intense man, with bitten nails and a permanent frown, he appears forever to be on the brink of losing his temper. His complaints that night were endless: the sale of a local real-ale brewery, the iniquity of Britain's divorce laws, interference from Brussels and, of course, immigration. "Yes, I suppose if I was a half-starved Somali goat-herd, I would want to come to Britain ... the South Africans will never stage a proper World Cup, how could they? It's a black country. They've got the infrastructure the whites left them, but it's a mess now ... I hear there are a hundred thousand Bulgarians and Romanians waiting to get in ... I would have thought the number of people we had living in Britain in the 1930s or 40s was the optimum population." And so it goes on.

Nick, I discover in time, is an almost archetypal BNP member. I had joined a party which draws in people who are not only xenophobic, but harassed and malcontented, people who feel themselves to be unfairly put-upon, to be slightly under siege. It is a party of people for whom British society, as it is and as it is developing, has no appeal, and no room.

It was also a party which was about to appoint a Guardian journalist to one of its key positions.

Nick was looking for a central London organiser. He already had almost a dozen district organisers working under him, in different parts of the capital, but central London had been neglected for years. The party had decided to bring its members living in central London into one branch, and then get some of them active: distributing leaflets, writing to newspapers, contesting council byelections.

The party, Nick explained, is particularly keen to gain a foothold in the Greater London Assembly. The next elections to the assembly, in 2008, will be held under a proportional representation system, and the BNP will capture a seat if it wins just five per cent of the vote. "Around 7% or 8 % will give us two seats, which would be good, as it could be a bit lonely for just one person."

Nick explained that the lists of local members and former members would be sent to me in encrypted emails. He slid a brown envelope across the table: inside was a CD which held the software which would enable me to decode them. He also asked me to write down the elaborate password I must use with the software: "the KING was born on 31 FEBRUARY."

It will also be my job to organise social events four times a year: "We'll tell you which venues you should use." And one last matter: Nick thinks that perhaps I should use a pseudonym, just to be on the safe side. "Why not? It's not against the law. It's a free country." I could even use it when meeting other BNP members. Nobody need ever know my real name. Nick suggests I call myself Ian Taylor.

A couple of months later, when Nick eventually tells me his real name, he explains that he adopted his pseudonym because he is an English teacher. (An inordinate number of members claim to be teachers, or retired teachers, or married to teachers - I'm never sure whether they are telling the truth.)

"It's ludicrous that you could lose your job for being a member of the party," he says. "But there's nothing wrong with using another name. We have a long tradition in this country of using different names. George Orwell wasn't really George Orwell. Cliff Richard isn't Cliff Richard."

Before I leave the Orange Tree, we are joined by Chris Forster, who stood as a BNP candidate in Richmond at the last council elections. A rather raffish-looking Cockney in his 60s, Chris explains that he was a National Front supporter in the 1970s. He talks about a number of murders and child sex attacks which he hears are happening in West Yorkshire, which are being ignored by the media, and which - we are expected to understand - have been committed by Asians.

Nick and Chris agree that the news from such areas is unremittingly depressing. "And that's not to mention Lambeth." From time to time they become so despondent about "the problems we face" that they fall silent and just shake their heads. Nevertheless, they insist that it is a great time to be joining the BNP. The party is completely skint, it seems, but they assure me that more and more people are joining every day. Up to 100 new members a week. An electoral breakthrough must be just over the horizon. It must be!

Tomorrow, it seems, belongs to us.

Central London organiser

Shortly after this, Sadie Graham, the BNP's Group Development Officer, writes from Nottingham to thank me for becoming the central London organiser and to offer advice. This includes the suggestion that I contact my "regional security officer" before holding any meetings.

From York, the party's Group Support Officer, Ian Dawson, telephones to give me details of my dedicated email account - londoncentral@bnp.org.uk - which sits on the BNP server. He then sends me my password for the account: 27sortcode87.

The following week I receive an email with an encrypted attachment. Using the software from Nick, I open up the attachment to find it is an Excel spreadsheet listing 192 current and lapsed members living in the three central London boroughs, plus the north London boroughs of Camden and Islington. I am also sent a second list of people who have joined in the previous few months, or expressed an interest in joining. Someone has made notes against a handful of applicants' and members' names, observing that they appear to be of "Italian origin" or "Greek origin".

While some of the members of my new flock are from the BNP's traditional constituency - the white working class - there are also some scattered around some of the wealthiest areas of the capital, living in Chelsea townhouses, Belgravia mansions and apartments in Knightsbridge. They include dozens of company directors, computing entrepreneurs, bankers and estate agents, and a handful of teachers. One member is a former Miss England, another is the American chief executive of a City investment corporation, while one is a servant of the Queen, living at Buckingham Palace.

Among my members, I discover, is Simone Clarke, principal dancer with the English National Ballet. During a subsequent conversation, Ms Clarke says that she believes immigration "has really got out of hand", despite her partner, both on and off-stage, being a Cuban dancer of Chinese extraction. She adds: "If everyone who thinks like I do joined, it would really make a difference."

Another is Richard Highton, administrator of the Optical Consumer Complaints Service, which handles complaints about opticians. "Everyone you speak to is fed up and thinks the same," he says. "I would have thought central London is a breeding ground for discontent at what we have at the moment."

Then there is Peter Bradbury, a leading practitioner of complementary medicine and board member of the General Naturopathic Council, which works in partnership with a charity established by Prince Charles. He explains that he first joined the party many years ago, and was a friend of its late founder, John Tyndall.

Gregory Lauder-Frost, former political secretary of the Conservative Monday Club, the rightwing pressure group, emails to say he is unable to be an active member, as he spends most of his time at his home in the country.

And Annabel Geddes, the entrepreneur who created the London Dungeon and who became director of the London Tourist Board when she sold the business, apologises for having lapsed and promises to send a cheque to renew her membership. Annabel volunteers the opinion that Asian immigrants are a "bloody bore" while black people are "ghastly". "I'm a racist," she declares proudly. "We've got to keep little UK basically Anglo-Saxon."

She pauses, and asks whether I agree. "Well madam," I reply, "I am the central London organiser of the British National party ..." .

The Guardian journalist who became central London organiser for the BNP,
G,
21.12.2006,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/dec/21/
thefarright.politics 

11am update

Goodman pleads guilty

Wednesday November 29, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk
Jemima Kiss

Clive Goodman, the royal editor of the News of the World, has pleaded guilty and could face jail for plotting to intercept private phone messages involving the royal family.

Goodman, 48, from Putney, south-west London, was arrested on August 8 after a police investigation into allegations of phone tapping at Clarence House. Members of the Prince of Wales's household claimed there had been security breaches in its telephone network.

In the dock at the Old Bailey with Goodman was former AFC Wimbledon footballer Glenn Mulcaire, 35, also from south-west London, who admitted the same charge.

Mr Mulcaire further admitted five charges of unlawfully intercepting voicemail messages left by a number of people, including publicist Max Clifford and Elle Macpherson.

The charges, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, date to interceptions between February 16 2006 and June 16.

The conspiracy charge, under the Criminal Law Act, relates to conspiring to intercept voicemail messages between November 1 2005 and August 9 2006.

Mr Justice Gross told the pair: "All options are open. It is an extremely serious matter."

They will be sentenced on a date some time after January 12.

During the hearing at the Old Bailey this morning, Goodman's defence lawyer John Kelsey-Fry QC said that Goodman wanted to apologise publicly and unreservedly to those affected by his actions, Prince William, Prince Harry and the Prince of Wales.

Mr Kelsey-Fry said: "Now that Mr Goodman has entered his plea of guilty, he wishes, through me, to take the first opportunity to apologise to those affected by his actions.

"The prosecution case refers to a gross invasion of privacy and Mr Goodman accepts that characterisation of his acts. He apologises to the three royal members of staff concerned and to the principals, Prince William, Prince Harry and the Prince of Wales."

Dressed in a dark wool suit, Goodman spoke only to confirm his name and to confirm his guilty plea.

Mr Mulcaire issued a similar apology to Goodman, including to those named in the charges he admitted.

Simon Hughes MP, Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, and Andrew Skylet, agent for England defender Sol Campbell, also were identified as people who had messages intercepted by Mr Mulcaire.

Staff at the Prince of Wales' residence became suspicious after two of Goodman's stories in the Sunday tabloid in 2005 detailed extracts of private staff phone messages concerning princes William and Harry.

Anti-terror police investigated the allegations and searched Goodman's home as well as properties in Chelsea, Sutton and the offices of the News of the World.

Goodman has been suspended by the News of the World since his arrest by officers from the Royal Protection Unit, and now faces the end of his career.

He admitted conspiracy to intercept communications to get royal scoops for the News of the World.

Glenn "Trigger" Mulcaire was a player and assistant manager with AFC Wimbledon in 2002.

He runs Nine Consultancy, a Chelsea-based firm described as a "crisis management consultancy".

Both men remain on unconditional bail. The probation service is to prepare reports on them before sentencing.

Goodman pleads guilty, G, 29.11.2006,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1959754,00.html

Man jailed for Britain's

first "web-rage" attack

Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:26 AM ET
Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - A British man convicted of what has been described as the country's first "web-rage" attack, was jailed for 2-1/2 years on Friday for assaulting a man he had exchanged insults with over the Internet.

Paul Gibbons, 47, from south London, admitted he had attacked John Jones in December 2005 after months of exchanging abuse with him via an Internet chatroom dedicated to discussing Islam.

The Old Bailey heard that Gibbons had "taken exception" to Jones, 43, after he had made the claim that Gibbons had been "interfering with children".

After several more verbal and written exchanges -- with Jones threatening to track him down and give him a severe beating -- Gibbons and a friend went to his victim's house in Essex, armed with a pickaxe and machete.

Jones himself was armed with a knife but Gibbons took it off him, held it to his throat and "scratched" him across the neck.

Gibbons, who the court heard had previous convictions for violence, admitted unlawful wounding on the first day of his trial last month.

Other charges of attempted murder and issuing online threats to kill four other chatroom users were not pursued but could be reactivated in future if he reoffends.

Media reports said it was the country's first case of "web-rage" and Judge Richard Hawkins described the circumstances as "unusual".

"This case highlights the dangers of Internet chat rooms, particularly with regards to giving personal details that will allow other users to discover home addresses," said Detective Sergeant Jean-Marc Bazzoni of Essex Police.

Man jailed for Britain's first "web-rage" attack, R, 17.11.2006,
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-11-17T152625Z_01_L17720855_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-WEBRAGE.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-technologyNews-3

October ABCs

Sun records lowest sale in 30 years


Friday November 10, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk
Jemima Kiss

The Sun's circulation has dropped to its lowest level since January 1974, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Though still the most widely read UK daily newspaper, selling around 750,000 more copies than the Daily Mail, the Sun's circulation fell to just over 3.1m in October. The paper has seen a year-on-year decrease of 3.63%, down from 3.2m in October 2005.

A Certificate 18 DVD collection promotion at the end of October failed to stem the newspaper's 3.4% circulation drop from September.

The Daily Mirror's exclusive interview with Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond failed to slow its long-term drop in circulation, which fell 2.04 % from September to October 2006, to 1.6m copies. The Mirror's circulation has dropped by around 5% since October 2005.

For the Daily Star, the ABC figures are worse, with circulation dropping 6% from October 2005, to 770,000. The Daily Record's circulation fell by 34,000 from this time last year, a decline of 7.53 %, to 420,054.

The UK's mid-market daily newspapers faired slightly better, with the Daily Express dropping by 2.73% from October 2005, to 788,719.

The Daily Mail's circulation fell by 2.49 % from September to October to 2.35 million, though its year-on-year average was the only positive in today's daily tabloid results - a slight rise of 0.18%.

Sun records lowest sale in 30 years, G, 10.11.2006, http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1945062,00.html

Google's UK ad take

is predicted to surpass Channel 4's

this year

· Search engine expects to make £900m in UK
· Time Warner reports 46% rise in online sales at AOL

Thursday November 2, 2006
Guardian
Chris Tryhorn

Google's ad revenues in the UK will outstrip those of Channel 4 this year, the broadcaster's chief executive Andy Duncan said yesterday, marking another milestone in the relentless rise of internet advertising.

He said the US web group would make £900m from advertising in the UK in 2006, ahead of an estimated £800m for Channel 4. Although Google declined to confirm whether the revenue forecast was accurate, analysts vouched for Mr Duncan's arithmetic. His projection, extrapolated from Google's first-half revenue figures, came as Time Warner reported a 46% rise in online ad sales at AOL, the US media giant's internet division.

According to figures from Google's filings in the US, the consolidated UK revenues - the majority of which come from search advertising - have risen rapidly in recent years. The company made $859m (£450m) in the UK last year, up from $415m the year before and $147m in 2003. Last year the UK accounted for 14% of Google's revenues.

Hitting £900m in 2006 would mean that Google had doubled its revenues. If its remarkable ascent were to continue into next year, it would soon have the ailing ITV in its sights: the flagship ITV1 channel's ad revenues are expected to slip to around £1.4bn this year, according to analysts, and to fall below £1.3bn in 2007.

As a household name with global reach, Google dominates the internet advertising market in the UK. Between them, Google, Yahoo and MSN are thought to make up 75% of spending on internet ad campaigns, with Google accounting for the lion's share. The firm makes its money from two main products: Ad Words, which sells advertising slots and links on Google pages, and Ad Sense, which syndicates advertising on third party sites.

A report published by media buying agency GroupM earlier in the year said that online advertising would account for a 13.3% share of a £12.2bn market in 2006. Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising group WPP, which owns GroupM, told the Guardian last week that the internet's rise was contributing to the relatively low growth rate of the UK traditional ad market. He also predicted that advertising would continue to migrate to the web to reflect the amount of time people were spending online.

However, some in the online world feel broadcasting companies have exaggerated the threat from internet advertising to distract attention from structural problems within network television. They claim that search advertising has been "additive" to the overall market, and has not played a decisive role in problems at companies such as ITV, which are struggling against greater competition from multichannel rivals. Meanwhile, broadcasters feel advertisers have moved too much spending to the internet.

Mr Duncan said the problems afflicting traditional media companies were not just part of a cyclical trend. "There is deep structural change taking place," he said. "If we want to protect the fantastic legacy of UK broadcasting, we need to wake up to this sooner rather than later."

Channel 4 is lobbying the media regulator Ofcom and the government for help to bridge a £100m gap as the UK switches from analogue to digital TV by 2012.

Time Warner's internet revenues helped it to almost treble profits in the third quarter to $2.3bn and to increase revenues by 7% to $10.9bn. The company, which owns the Warner Brothers film studio and the CNN cable network, said its results were boosted by buying cable operator Adelphia Communications, and a 44% revenue rise at its cable division.

Google's UK ad take is predicted to surpass Channel 4's this year,
G, 2.11.2006,
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/search/story/0,,1937130,00.html

Goodbye, cruel world ...

Tired of real life? Don't worry, millions of us are finding refuge online at the extraordinarily successful Second Life - a virtual world where you can chat, flirt, fight, make love or buy a nice wooden cabin by the sea. Our writer spent a week wandering this strange 'metaverse' to discover whether you can really find a new life - or if you just take your old one with you

Sunday October 29, 2006
The Observer
Tim Adams

Day one

In the beginning, there is a blank screen and a sense of expectation. I am free to pursue that most potent of contemporary desires: I can reinvent myself. I can look how I want, make new friends, live by the beach, make a fortune. All for $9.95 a month.

For those of you still confined in RL (real life), I should explain. A brave-ish new world has recently been created. You can access it on your PC with a password and your credit card. And as soon as you arrive in it you can easily convince yourself that you are seeing the future - or at least one future - of entertainment and interaction and business.

Second Life is a vast shared online simulation that allows you to create a lifelike version of yourself - an avatar - live in a community, buy property with currency that has a dollar exchange rate, travel, shop, work, watch films and music, have sex, fall in love, maybe get rich, without once leaving your desk. Created in 2003 by a company called Linden Lab, the population of Second Life when I arrived a week or so ago was 876,572. Seven days later we numbered more than a million.

Like me, all these residents arrive in Second Life naked and hopeful. My first decision is what to call my digitalised self. Linden Lab being a San Francisco-based company, the choice of suggested surnames features a number of alternative heroes: Baudelaire and Kerouac and Zukofsky. I decide, for this trip, to be Ken Kesey. (This partly in homage to perhaps the strangest day I ever spent, when I went to interview Kesey, godfather of psychedelia, and ended up at the ageing Merry Pranksters' 4th of July party, weighing the merits of inhaling various inert gases from unmarked pressurised canisters, before Kesey took me on a magic bus tour of a salmon spawning ground at dusk and I eventually ended up in the early hours driving halfway across Oregon wearing one contact lens to catch a plane.) Unfortunately, however, on Second Life, someone has got to the name first. Ken has gone, so I end up as Kenny, which I fear somehow does not have quite the same countercultural clout. Anyhow, Kenny, now wearing jeans, comes to life and is standing at what looks like the entrance to a national park, or Eden. Using the arrows on my computer, I make him wander inside.

Kenny can walk and fly, in theory, though to start with he struggles with both. On the ground he spends a lot of time stumbling through undergrowth. Airborne, he tends to fall suddenly into the ocean. Still, after half an hour or so Kenny emerges from a herbaceous border to see other signs of life.

Cathal McCoochnie, in a bikini, appears standing next to him wringing her hands; she is, it turns out, typing, 'Hi'. 'Do you come here often?' Kenny wonders, smoothly. 'Just yesterday,' Cathal says. Before Kenny can reply I hit a wrong key and he leaps three feet in the air and lands squarely on his new friend. Che Rimbaud intervenes: 'Is there a problem?' Kenny, flustered, hurtles off towards the bushes.

Later, he's walking backwards through a canyon. Gheorgi Smirnov up ahead is shouting, 'Get me out of this madhouse!' Shug Marseille runs past and Kenny gives futile chase. He stands alone behind a tree. In an effort to cheer him up I edit his appearance. Do I want his eyes 'beady' or 'bugged'? His skin '20 per cent creased' or 25 per cent? Some avatars have the heads of centaurs, or dogs, but most residents seem to have created a slim-hipped, bright-eyed version of their real selves. I give Kenny a rose-tinted photofit, no jowls, no body fat. And he hacks his way through the foliage for the afternoon, in search of company.

Day two

In his forthcoming book From Counter-Culture to Cyberculture, Fred Turner, a communications professor at Stanford, traces the ways that the Californian nonconformism of the Sixties helped to create the revolution of the personal computer. The West Coast digital generation that followed hippy culture borrowed a lot of its mores. It wanted to be 'playful, self-sufficient, psychologically whole - and it would gather into collaborative networks of independent peers'. Even the individual self, trapped in the human body, 'would finally be free to step outside its fleshy confines, explore its authentic interests, and find others with whom it might achieve communion.' In this reading computers - 'decentralised, egalitarian, harmonious, and free' - took over where LSD left off.

Second Life threatens to be the apotheosis of that revolution. It is, like the internet, almost entirely the imaginative creation of its users. Its pioneers, mostly hackers and slackers, have organised themselves into special interest groups. But like all Sixties utopias, this one has quickly acquired a powerful twist of designer corporate capitalism (Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, is one of Linden Lab's principal investors). It will succeed on a huge scale, I imagine, because it is aspirational, solipsistic, a perfect fantasy for the virtual middle classes.

After a day's practice Kenny can get around his new world like a native. The nomadic existence of undergrowth and ocean-dwelling is not for him: he needs a home. Each new paying resident of Second Life is offered a plot of land. Kenny chooses one on Blacktail Ridge. It is, I have to say, a disappointment: a dark and icy wasteland with a few scattered shacks. I'm reminded of my grandfather who emigrated to Australia in the Twenties on the promise of a parcel of verdant farmland in Victoria, and got there to discover he had been given some acres of waterlogged bog. He stayed for a decade. Kenny returns promptly to the beach.

Good land has become so rare in Second Life that people are prepared to pay hundreds of real dollars for it. You can buy a private island for $1,250, plus a monthly charge of $195 in land fees. There are several takers. Anshe Chung, Second Life's richest avatar, owns a property empire on the site worth $250,000 (£137,000) and employs 17 real-life people. Kenny tries to rent a glassy condo near the beach, before I discover it will cost $20 a week for a year - a tricky expense claim. Eventually, after nearly a day of looking, he takes out a short lease on a modest wooden bungalow on the sand for some of the few hundred lindens - the local currency - he had been granted on arrival.

He sits down, exhausted, in the free reclining chair he has picked up on his travels, and wonders how to make it stop facing the wall.

Day three

Second Life, or something like it, was first imagined by the science-fiction author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book Snow Crash. His prophecy was uncanny. 'Hiro's avatar is now on the Street, too,' he wrote, 'and if the couples coming off the monorail look over in his direction, they can see him, just as he's seeing them. They could strike up a conversation: Hiro in the U-Stor-It in LA and the four teenagers probably on a couch in a suburb of Chicago, each with their own laptop. But they probably won't talk to each other, any more than they would in Reality ....'

As Stephenson realised, it is profoundly odd how readily you identify with your recently created envoy in the 'metaverse'. Absurdly, the more hours I spend with Kenny, the more I'm concerned about him. I'm interested to discover if his avatar acquaintances can seem like real friends. Korvel Noh, who co-owns the house Kenny rents, comes round to welcome him. He talks with some real enthusiasm about a 'big party we threw on Sunday night' and 'plans for an events centre, a hot tub and honeymoon suites nearby'.

In real life Korvel lives in Harrisburg in Pennsylvania. He owns a web-design firm that he is relocating to Second Life. 'It really is the Wild West in here...' he says, excited. 'A huge land rush where anything goes.'

Kenny wonders how much Second Life has changed in the year he has been here.

'The place hasn't changed much,' Korvel says, 'but I certainly have. You need to be an extrovert to thrive in here. In RL I'm the opposite. I have a wife and family, but I spend a lot of time not really interacting with the outside world.'

Here, he has made lots of friends, though he still feels the need to get away on his own sometimes. 'I have a small concrete bunker on my first land,' he says. 'I still go there to write computer code in private.'

Kenny goes out into the New World with fresh purpose. Unfortunately, since he has rented his place he has the word 'tenant' prefacing his name, which I can't work out how to delete. A couple snigger as he walks by. He reaches the shore where women lounge on large inflatable chairs cleverly fluttering their eyes and crossing their legs to show their expensively purchased underwear. Kenny tries to strike up conversation.

'Can't you see I'm reading?' Scarlett Pixel says.

'What's the book?'

'Dan Brown, tenant ...'

Later, at home, Kenny seems pleased to discover that Korvel has installed waves in the sea outside for him.

Day four

The simple genius of Second Life is that it combines elements of Big Brother culture with the spirit of eBay. It plays to the contemporary urge to project ourselves into every story, to write our own emotions larger than anyone else's, to perform rather than to listen, to blog rather than read. And it also offers unlimited opportunities to shop.

The more time Kenny spends in his new world, teleporting between the live bands at the Hummingbird Café and Old Salt's Pub, checking out the beaches and the casinos, the more he appears to feel the need to be accepted by his new community. At one point he chances upon a beach where 30 brilliantly customised avatars are dancing in unison on revolving rainbow stages. Kenny walks into the middle and yells Stooppp! No one misses a beat.

He seems increasingly isolated. He is wearing a sort of velveteen catsuit, acquired by accident, which he seems unable to take off. He needs a new outfit. Forty per cent of the real money spent on Second Life goes on designer clothes. American Apparel is one of several chain stores that now has an outlet, but Kenny discovers that it is, bizarrely, closed. At another place he gets some jeans, and goes in search of a T-shirt. He ends up, still in his velveteen body stocking, being propositioned by a tall transvestite flogging a line in fishnet. Kenny swiftly teleports home, trying to wrestle a cardboard box containing his new jeans off his arm.

Day five

Phone sex lines and chatrooms give users the illusion of intimacy with none of the risk; Second Life provides an exaggerated version of that relationship. Firefly Nerd is standing on the terrace of the bar he runs. He's been coming here for two or three hours almost every night for more than a year. He runs the bar with his wife. The rest of the time he fixes computers in Washington DC. He gives Kenny the facts of Second Life.

'People are people,' Nerd, a balding avatar in a Monty Python T-shirt, says. 'Relationships in SL aren't that different from relationships in RL to me ... It's all about honesty. Romances happen very quickly and intensely on SL as in RL and then burn out a little quicker.'

Nerd does a lot of flirting, he says. His wife is in a long-term relationship. 'People ask me whether I think that is infidelity, but I'm aware and I give my permission.'

They flew to a Second Life convention in San Francisco recently, hooking up with their virtual friends for real. There were lectures, talks about SL commerce, ('and an awful lot of "muah"', Nerd's friend Sweetdoll, go-go dancing nearby, adds.) Do avatars have sex? Kenny wonders.

'Boy, do they!' Firefly Nerd says.

He suggests Kenny goes to a shop called Bits and Bobs to find out how. Kenny seems to have a slight Action Man sense about his own manhood. There is romance in the air in Second Life, or at least the whiff of lust. All of the most visited places are pole-dancing clubs. Kenny wanders into Studio 54 and stands by the bar, while I try to download his salsa moves.

Later he pitches up, as Nerd Firefly suggested, at Bits and Bobs. On the walls are pictures from the Kama Sutra, which, if purchased, can be moves incorporated into your avatar. Approached by a salesgirl in leather, Kenny makes his excuses. Back at home he sits in his free relaxation chair, still facing the wall, and logs off.

Day six

I wake Kenny up early. One of the things he has noticed about Second Life is how busy everyone seems. Residents spend a quarter of the time they're on the site - a total of more than 30,000 man hours a day - creating objects that become part of the world, available to everyone else. I give Kenny a vague idea that he will get a job hiring out canoes from the beach, but the mechanics of raising the capital to buy the canoes, and the means of getting them to float, are beyond him. His free lindens are dwindling; he's stuck, desperate. Perhaps, Kenny resolves, he'll become a journalist.

He arranges to see Adam Pasick who works at the Reuters agency. Adam is the first full-time real-world hack in Second Life. In the lobby of the high-tech Reuters office Kenny runs into a Canadian TV crew working on a story about the story.

Adam comes down to meet Kenny and then invites him up to the roof garden, where it's quieter. He's been here two months now, he says, and he is starting to dream in RL about Second Life, which is alarming him. Since he is on all day he feels he should get his wife an avatar. He's been madly busy, he says, breaking the story of US tax investigation into SL businesses.

Kenny wonders if there have been any wars to report on.

Adam has heard rumours of a dalek war out in the desert, but mostly it's business stuff, multinational relocations. He doesn't have time to go to the pub, at least not in Second Life.

Kenny wonders awkwardly if he has any jobs going for an aspiring feature writer.

He promises to keep Kenny posted.

I'm struck, not for the first time, by the insane seriousness of this place. It's clearly much more than a game. One of the things that characterises the texture of Western lives is the breakdown of barriers between work and leisure. One increasingly looks like the other. Second Life exploits that fact perfectly. Dave Surface, who owns the land Kenny lives on, and who, as a full-time virtual reality designer has 'had great hopes for this space for many years', suggests, 'I don't think SL is the end game... by next year there will be several firms like this and the masses will move in and out of them looking for opportunities.'

He is surprised by the lack of political activity on Second Life. 'There are too many efforts here that simply aim at duplicating RL ...' he says. 'We need more innovation that leverages our own environment...' Kenny instant messages Katt Kongo at the Metaverse Messenger, wondering about the possibility of a job, but she does not respond. I may be projecting, of course, but I swear he seems to be fretting about his finances.

Day seven

Next morning, somewhat cruelly, I resolve to put Kenny out of his misery. There are, I've heard, areas of Second Life dedicated to fighting. Dave Surface explained to him how he was attacked recently in a place modelled as a ghetto. 'I walked past a group and a guy with a shotgun told me to keep walking. I turned around and said, "Gee, friendly place" and he shot me and blood went everywhere. It was actually kind of scary.' Dave survived. Kenny may not be so lucky.

I let him sleep in his reclining chair, facing the wall, while I try to locate a likely Unsafe Area. I then read the small print. 'If your health meter health reaches zero during combat you are dead,' the information reads. 'Happily, however in Second Life death merely results in you being repawned back to your home location, with no lasting effects whatsoever.'

My heart sinks; Kenny is immortal. I am stuck with him, it seems. And he is stuck with me. He reclines in his chair, waiting. On the seventh day, I decide to let him rest.

Virtual goldmine: Second Life facts

· Second Life has an estimated GDP of $64m. Last month alone, $6.6m was spent in user-user transactions - 40 per cent of it on designer clothes.

· More than 3,000 residents earn an average of $20,000 in annual revenues from the game.

· Musicians who have played virtual gigs in Second Life include Duran Duran and Suzanne Vega.

· Possible 2008 presidential candidate Mark Warner was interviewed by a virtual journalist in a Second Life town hall.

· 20th Century Fox held a premiere for the third X-Men movie in Second Life and BBC Radio 1 recreated its Big Weekend festival on a virtual island.

· $1bn was spent last year on multiplayer games such as Second Life.

Other multiplayer games include:

· Habbo Hotel - a Finnish game favoured by children and centring around the exchange of furniture.

· Entropia Universe - half a million have registered with this online community, in which real money is also used, since it was established in 1995.

· World of Warcraft - this fantasy multiplayer has almost seven million active subscribers.

Goodbye, cruel world ..., O, 2.11.2006, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1933933,00.html

ITN reporter

was shot by US soldiers,

inquest told

Saturday October 7, 2006
The Guardian
Leigh Holmwood

ITN reporter Terry Lloyd was shot in the head by American troops as he was being driven to hospital, the inquest into his death was told yesterday.

An account by an Iraqi witness claimed Lloyd was still alive after the original attack on his car but was killed by US troops as he was driven from the scene.

The unnamed driver's account, which was read out by the deputy assistant coroner for Oxfordshire, Andrew Walker, at the inquest in Oxford, gave new details of the last moments of Mr Lloyd's life.

It also came to light that British forces witnessed the events of March 22 2003 in which Lloyd and his interpreter, Hussein Osman, died and his French cameraman, Fred Nerac, went missing near Basra in southern Iraq.

The Iraqi witness's account was described as "very credible" by ITN's Nicholas Walshe, who led the broadcaster's investigation into the journalist's death. "Terry was shot in the shoulder and had been lying in the sand," the Iraqi said. "He managed to walk to the car but was too weak to get in without help."

Mr Walker said the witness also said he had seen Lloyd's press pass and described a white Kuwaiti pass clipped on a yellow short-sleeved shirt. "This witness said Mr Lloyd was then shot by US shots. The witness said Mr Lloyd was shot by US troops in the head while the vehicle was leaving the scene. Two Ba'ath party members were also shot. Three pieces of wood that had Mr Lloyd's blood on were also present. Mr Lloyd lay on the pieces of wood while the minibus took him to hospital."

A British soldier who was at the scene later told the inquest he saw a 30-second barrage of gunfire.

The unnamed soldier, who gave evidence from behind a screen, said he had not seen the attack on Mr Lloyd's car directly but his attention had been drawn to the incident when gunfire started.

The soldier, known as Soldier B, said the incident took place between the Iraqi and American front lines. He said he could not say for sure whether US or Iraqi forces had engaged first but there was gunfire that lasted for a maximum of 30 seconds.

He said there was a lot of civilian traffic on the road at the time of the incident, which stopped when the gunfire began.

The soldier said he had seen two people leave what is thought to have been Mr Lloyd's vehicle when the firing began.

"During the engagement two people got out of the rear vehicle, one from the passenger side and one from the driver's side. They dashed about 20 metres and took cover.

"There was an exchange of fire between the tank and the second vehicle. It was only a few seconds, 30 seconds maximum, before the vehicle set on fire."

After the firefight, Soldier B said civilian vehicles moved in to help. The soldier said he had not seen Mr Lloyd's two-vehicle convoy before the incident.

    ITN reporter was shot by US soldiers, inquest told, G, 7.10.2006, http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1889798,00.html

Yahoo! launches 'social search' in Britain

with multimillion-pound ad campaign

· User collaboration is key to new web advice service
· Marketing outlay is largest since dotcom boom days

Monday September 4, 2006
Guardian
Richard Wray, communications editor

Yahoo! will launch a service today that allows users to ask other people's advice, when looking for anything from a good hotel or bar to an apple pie recipe, rather than rely solely upon electronically generated search results. The search and online portal operator will promote Yahoo! Answers with its largest advertising campaign in Britain since the dotcom boom.

Yahoo! Answers is the latest example of social search, a new trend in online applications that allows people to collaborate and share information online - as epitomised by sites such as Wikipedia, Digg and YouTube.

Launched in the US at the start of the year and available in test form in Britain since April, Yahoo! Answers is available in 18 countries and has already amassed about 50 million users, who have provided 75 million answers.

Today Yahoo! will launch a nationwide multimillion-pound print, radio and poster campaign to try to attract British internet users to the service. A different celebrity will pose Yahoo! Answers users a question each week for the next eight weeks.

"This is the biggest campaign that Yahoo! have mounted for five or six years," said Stephen Taylor, head of search and search marketing at Yahoo! Europe. "It's a measure of the confidence we have in Yahoo! Answers."

It is also another attempt to widen the scope of the information available on the internet. The first wave of online searching, now dominated by Google, relies heavily upon complex mathematical algorithms to match search terms with information contained in web pages. While useful when hunting out companies, people, products or services, a more nuanced request such as "where is the best restaurant for romance in west London?" requires more than an answer derived from maths.

Yahoo! Answers allows people to pose a question that anyone registered to the site can answer, rather like the Guardian's Notes & Queries section.

Yesterday, questions on Yahoo! Answers ranged from "how do I get black ink from a Biro out of coloured clothes?" and "what documents do you need to enter China?" to "does anyone else think Heathcliff is Earnshaw's son by a black mistress?" and the inevitable "any ladies want to show me their boobs?"

"We see Yahoo! Answers as a way of tapping into the knowledge that is in people's heads," Mr Taylor said.

Questioners impressed with an answer can rate that person as an expert in a particular field. If other people also obtain good answers from this individual, it creates a league table of the best "answerers" in categories such as food and drink, or beauty and style. Some Yahoo! Answers users in the US have already gained a reputation as providers of trustworthy responses, rather like PowerSellers on the eBay auction site.

The whole enterprise, however, relies upon creating a large pool of people who regularly check back to pose and answer questions. Yahoo! is hoping that over time it will be able to amass answers to questions that its search engine has struggled to provide.

The endgame could be to include data from Yahoo! Answers in search results generated by the company's main search engine. While Mr Taylor would not comment on whether this was the ultimate development of the service, he said: "We do see our core internet search and social search getting closer and closer together. Essentially, what you are building is a global knowledge database."

Google has already widened the information available to its search engine through its Google Books project.

While scanning books in university libraries has annoyed some in the industry, who see it as a violation of copyright, information held in out-of-copyright texts is increasingly accessible through its core search engine.

Backstory

Social search is not new. Sites that relied on users rather than machines to map the internet appeared in the mid-1990s. But the advent of broadband has seen an explosion in sites that rely on "folksonomy".

Unlike taxonomy, this relies on users generating their own labelling system. An example is the bookmarking site del.icio.us, which is now part of Yahoo!.

Allowing users to flag up interesting content to a wider community is also central to the news site Digg and the hobbies portal Fanpop, while local information portals such as Yelp and iBegin in North America also rely on users.

    Yahoo! launches 'social search' in Britain with multimillion-pound ad campaign, G, 4.9.2006, http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1864024,00.html

Battle of the London freesheets

could launch newspaper revolution

across UK

Thursday August 31, 2006
The Guardian
Owen Gibson, media correspondent

The woman thrusting free newspapers into the hands of London commuters did not look as though she was on the frontline of a media revolution and a bitter battle between rival newspaper moguls. But yesterday's launch of London Lite, a new free evening paper for the capital, threatens to have repercussions across the country, where venerable evening titles are battling falling sales as younger readers turn to the internet and free papers.

From Monday, London Lite, published by the Evening Standard and Daily Mail owner Associated Newspapers, goes head to head with the London Paper, a free rival from Rupert Murdoch's News International, publisher of the Sun and the Times. Both will distribute 400,000 copies, compared with the Standard's daily paid-for sale of just over 300,000.

Behind this scramble for readers is a battle that might spell the end for the British tradition of paid-for evening papers, their appeal eroded by the 24-hour news culture and the internet.

The new model is based on Associated's profitable free morning title Metro, which has been a hit among younger readers wanting an unchallenging 20-minute read on the way to work and who use the internet during the day. It allows advertisers to reach the elusive 16-34 demographic that is no longer reading a daily or tuning in to mass market TV programmes.

The new 48-page title has a special ink that does not rub off on hands or clothing. Like Metro, it is light on politics and comment and heavy on gadgets, entertainment, gossip, listings and sport.

Din Manuelpillia, a 22-year-old trainee business adviser, is typical of the target audience of"young urbanites". He used to read the Times on his daily commute, he said, but found it too time consuming and gave it up for a free morning version of his local paper, the Brighton Argus. He reads the internet during the day.

Steve Auckland, head of Associated's free newspapers division, said these readers did not want "long, turgid articles". He said the "lively, breezy format" of his new paper would attract advertisers and young Londoners.

The high stakes battle has already led to the two sides trading verbal blows amid claims of industrial espionage. Ian Clark, general manager of News International's free newspapers division, promised his new paper would be "genuinely different" in look and tone, and described his rival's attempts to appeal to a young, internet-savvy audience as "a bit like watching your embarrassing uncle dancing at a wedding in his comedy socks".

London Lite will also compete with its paid-for sibling, which this week raised its cover price to 50p. Edward Bliss, a 55-year-old solicitor, said he would ditch the Standard for its free alternative: "I'll probably give it a try for a week. I'll stop buying the Standard, I think 20% is a swingeing rise."

The capital will now have four free titles a day from Monday, including business paper City AM, with the potential for yet another when London Transport auctions the right to distribute an afternoon title from its stations later this year.

Other cities, which already have their own versions of Metro, are sure to follow. Evening papers have tried various circulation-boosting tactics, including morning editions, while the Manchester Evening News, owned by Guardian Media Group, is now distributed free in the city centre but sold in the suburbs.

Paid-for evening papers will survive for those who still wanted in-depth news and comment, according to Mr Auckland, but he added that they would need "an appropriate cost base".

Battle of the London freesheets could launch newspaper revolution across UK, G, 31.8.2006,
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1861642,00.html

Tabloid phone-tapping net widens

· Reporter faces nine charges of hacking
· Politicians may have had messages intercepted

Thursday August 10, 2006
The Guardian
Ian Cobain and Stephen Bates

The News of the World's royal correspondent was last night charged with hacking into the royal family's mobile phone messages as Scotland Yard continued its investigation into alleged illegal activities of tabloid newspapers.

Clive Goodman, 48, was jointly charged with Glenn Mulcaire, 35, of Sutton, Surrey, with nine counts of intercepting or plotting to intercept voicemail messages between January and May this year.

Both have been released on police bail to appear at Horseferry Road magistrates' court next Wednesday.

Police also said last night they were broadening the investigation after suggestions that David Blunkett, the former home secretary, other politicians and Victoria Beckham may also have been targeted. Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, is understood to have been potentially targeted.

Two of Goodman's stories last November appear to have alerted palace staff that messages may have been intercepted. The first concerned a knee injury to Prince William which, it was said, would lead to the postponement of a mountain rescue course he was to attend. The second, a week later, suggested that he had been lent some broadcasting equipment by ITN's then royal correspondent, Tom Bradby, to enable him to edit gap year videos and DVDs into "one very posh home movie".

Police were said to be analysing a list of phone numbers to discover who they belonged to and whether they had been intercepted or their messages - though not apparently live conversations - hacked, as part of an investigation that has already lasted several months. They were said to be liaising with mobile phone companies and the Crown Prosecution Service. The investigation is being conducted by the anti-terrorist squad because of the security implications.

A number of tabloid scoops in recent years appear explicable only if messages were accessed, or confirmed by them. Tabloid journalists are known to have accessed the phone records of Kimberly Fortier, the publisher of the Spectator, after the revelation of her affair with Mr Blunkett.

Although royal officials were privately suggesting that the Prince of Wales and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, had not been victims, it is likely that Prince William has been targeted. Media interest in his love life, particularly his relationship with his former fellow student Kate Middleton, has been intense.

Mobile phone and wire-tapping experts said it was easy to access private messages. Simply dialling an unobtainable mobile and being put through to voicemail allows the potential tapper to use default factory four-digit Pin codes to access their target's messages entered when the recorded greeting begins.

Breaking the code is relatively straightforward with defaults for service providers ranging from 4444, 1234 to even the last four digits of the target phone. Even if users have changed their Pin it is often to something little more imaginative than their date of birth.

Intelligence specialist Duncan Campbell said: "It is not hugely difficult. We are dealing with the royal family - these are not the sort of people who instinctively understand this sort of thing, unlike the average 17-year-old. There have recently been similar scandals in Greece, where the prime minister's phone was tapped, and in Italy where they tried to do the same thing. It would be straightforward to compromise personal Pin codes."

Bradby, now ITV's political editor, said yesterday that details of a meeting he had arranged with Prince William appeared in the News of the World before it had taken place."I was due to have a private meeting with William and I was pretty surprised to find that not only details of the meeting but what we were going to discuss pitched up in the News of the World the Sunday before ... We both looked at each other and said, 'Well, how on earth did that get out?' and we worked out that only he and I and two people incredibly close to him had actually known about it.

"Then we started discussing one or two other things that had happened recently. There had been a meeting he had had with a knee surgeon, and that again only he and his personal secretary and the surgeon had known about ...

"Basically the answer we came up with was that it must be something like breaking into mobile answering machine messages. His chief of staff is a former SAS officer and his attitude was that, 'if this is potentially happening to us, who on earth else could it be happening to?'. He passed his concerns on to the police, the police had a small investigation on to begin with into the localised incident at Clarence House. What they discovered then alarmed them enough to hand it to the anti-terrorist police who looked at it much more broadly."

Sir Christopher Meyer, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday: "One hears stories and rumours all the time that this may be going on; nobody has come to me with hard evidence of this. The Press Complaints Commission sets out in clause 10 of its code of practice that the press must not intercept private or mobile telephone calls, messages or emails and a whole bunch of other things ...

"You have to have a very high bar of public interest to justify this, and so that's enshrined in our constitution."

Careful, they might hear you

Tabloid journalists have been hoovering up other people's mobile phone messages for many years in their search for scoops. The following are some of the public figures who are now known to have been targeted:

David Blunkett

After details of the then home secretary's affair with Kimberly Fortier were uncovered by the News of the World in August 2004, journalists from a tabloid newspaper began to listen to her voicemail. They heard a series of messages from Mr Blunkett imploring her to call him and even, on one occasion, singing a song.

Richard Kay

The Daily Mail journalist is understood to have been targeted by one of his fellow royal correspondents several years ago, at a time when he was said to have formed a friendship with Diana, Princess of Wales. This journalist is said to have told colleagues that his first telephone call every morning would be to Kay's mobile, "just to see if Di had called".

Heather Mills

One story that was hawked around Fleet Street's tabloids recently was based upon a message which her estranged husband, Sir Paul McCartney, left on her mobile, apparently apologising to her.

Victoria Beckham

According to well-placed Fleet Street sources, Posh Spice became so infuriated at the way in which messages on her mobile would be turned into gossip column fodder that she changed her outgoing voicemail message, requesting, in the clearest terms, that whoever was doing it would go away.

    Tabloid phone-tapping net widens, G, 10.8.2006, http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1840971,00.html

Fake sheikh accused

after terror plot acquittals

· Three men cleared in 'red mercury' bomb case
· Tabloid investigator attacked over sting

Wednesday July 26, 2006
Guardian
Jeevan Vasagar

The investigative methods of the News of the World and its collaborations with Scotland Yard were denounced yesterday after a jury cleared three men of plotting to buy radioactive material for a terrorist "dirty bomb".

The three were arrested after a joint sting operation involving Mazher Mahmood, known as the "fake sheikh" for his most famous disguise, and the Metropolitan police's anti-terrorist branch. City banker Dominic Martins, 45, businessman Abdurahman Kanyare, 53, and Roque Fernandes, 44, a security guard at Coutts, spent two years on remand after the paper alleged they were trying to buy a kilogram of "red mercury".

The three were cleared at the Old Bailey yesterday of conspiring to fund terrorism and conspiring to possess an article for terrorist purposes.

The prosecution claimed the three men became involved in the alleged plot to make money. Mr Mahmood was introduced to the men as a prospective seller of red mercury. He was later joined by undercover officers, who met Mr Kanyare, a businessman who was said to have a contact in the Gulf who wanted to buy the substance. Mr Martins, who worked at Deutsche Bank, and Mr Fernandes were implicated as middlemen.

Before the trial began, defence lawyers urged the judge to throw the case out, arguing that the men had been trapped by an agent provocateur, an associate of the men referred to in court as Mr B who contacted Mr Mahmood after he was disappointed with the police's initial reaction to his claims. Mr Mahmood taped meetings with Mr B and then with the three alleged plotters in August and September 2004. The court heard that the journalist became an authorised covert source for the anti-terrorist squad during his dealings with the gang.

Stephen Solley, QC, defending Mr Martins, accused Mr Mahmood of misleading the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the courts. He said there was a "huge danger of accepting Mr Mahmood's word in respect of any matter".

In a pre-trial hearing for the red mercury case, Mr Solley said Mr B had deliberately misled the three men into agreeing a deal which they would not have concluded if they had known the truth.

"B created, through his activities with Mr Mahmood - who himself knew it was entirely a sham - a pincer movement so both their respective motives could be satisfied." These motives were "money on the one hand and selling newspapers on the other. We submit that justice went out of the window".

The three-month trial is estimated to have cost over £1m.

In a joint statement, defence solicitors said: "This is a great tribute to the jury system and English justice and a dark day for the News of the World."

The News of the World yesterday defended its reporter, whose previous exposes have embarrassed Sven-Goran Eriksson, Princess Michael of Kent and the Countess of Wessex. The paper said Mr Mahmood's stories had resulted in over 200 convictions.

In a statement, the paper said: "The News of the World involvement in this investigation and subsequent trial was conducted under the direction of senior anti-terrorist police officers. We are entirely satisfied that the methods used in the investigation were not only wholly proper, but were both authorised and, from an early stage, continued in close liaison with the police."

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said police had launched an investigation after being tipped off by the newspaper. "The fact that the defendants have been acquitted does not mean the case was not properly brought to court. The Crown Prosecution Service considered the evidence and decided there was a case to answer, and that decision was later confirmed by the trial judge."

Under anti-terrorism laws, the attorney general also had to sign off the prosecution. Scotland Yard said it would not rule out working with the paper again. Sue Hemming, the CPS's head of counter terrorism, said: "It was right to bring this case. We regarded the evidence as credible and the trial ran its full course."

Red mercury was described by the News of the World as "a deadly substance developed by cold war Russian scientists for making briefcase nuclear bombs". In fact it was invented by Soviet intelligence for cold war sting operations.

All three men were held in custody until yesterday. Mr Kanyare's solicitor, Paul Harris, said his client was still being held "at the behest of the immigration services, despite the order of the judge that he should be released".

Mr Martins' solicitor said: "Mr Martins now wishes to go back to his family from which he has been parted for two years."

Mahmood's set-ups: Hits and misses

The hits

March 1998 Newcastle United FC chairman Freddie Shepherd and deputy chairman Doug Hall resign after Mahmood's "Toongate tapes", recorded in a Spanish brothel, reveal them mocking fans and describing Geordie women as "dogs".

May 1999 London's Burning actor John Alford jailed for nine months for supplying cocaine and cannabis after being set up by Mahmood, posing as an Arabian prince. Alford claims entrapment but loses appeals to high court and European court of human rights.

April 2001 Sophie, Countess of Wessex resigns as chair of PR firm after a Mahmood sting suggests she was exploiting royal connections. Sophie is recorded calling the prime minister "President Blair", describing Cherie Blair as "horrid, horrid, horrid", and William Hague as "deformed".

September 2001 Mahmood, wearing traditional Muslim clothes, infiltrates a Taliban recruiting meeting in Afghanistan.

September 2005 Taking on the guise of a wealthy Arab prince, Mahmood fools Princess Michael of Kent into revealing her views on the royal family. He claims she described Diana, Princess of Wales, as "nasty", "bitter" and "strange".

January 2006 Posing as an Arab businessman, Mahmood lures England head coach Sven-Göran Eriksson to Dubai to discuss a bogus managerial deal. Eriksson reveals when he will leave England. He also suggests Michael Owen only joined Newcastle United for the huge salary, and describes Rio Ferdinand as "lazy sometimes".

The misses

September 1999

Mahmood is criticised in court for "ensnaring" the Earl of Hardwicke, who was convicted of supplying cocaine during a sting in 1998. Mahmood spends three days in the witness box defending his methods.

October 1999 Rhodri Giggs, brother of footballer Ryan, is arrested after being accused of supplying cocaine to Mahmood. He loses his job, but is later found not guilty after the prosecution says it cannot rely on taped conversations between him and Mahmood.

November 2002 Mahmood exposes a "plot" to kidnap David and Victoria Beckham's children. Five men are charged but the case is thrown out after it is ruled that the paper's informant was an unreliable witness.

January 2003 Mahmood "resigns" after a report is cut to a few paragraphs. He reportedly walks out after dumping an AK-47 on an assistant editor's desk.

March 2006 George Galloway says Mahmood tried unsuccessfully to goad him into making anti-semitic remarks and accepting improper political financing. The MP gets his revenge by publishing photos of Mahmood on the internet after a court battle with the News of the World.

Linda MacDonald

Fake sheikh accused after terror plot acquittals, G, 26.7.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1830215,00.html