So now it is weirdly defensive about practically everything Margaret Hodge, now minister for children, led Islington Council in the years when Demetrious Panton, the man at the centre of Mr Stickler's story, tried to bring his case to public attention.In his Today reports, Mr Stickler said it was in the public interest to know whether Ms Hodge had been aware of Mr Panton's case. "News International need to acknowledge the nature of the problem and say how they dealt with it - and it ought to be Rupert Murdoch [the proprietor of The Sun] who deals with it."News International declined to comment.The BBC case has broader implications. It began with Angus Stickler's report on Radio 4's Today programme last Tuesday about a man who claims he was a victim of abuse while in a children's home in Islington, north London, in the late 1970s. But clearly there are questions about why the chief executive of a national newspaper group failed to reply to personal correspondence and instead passed it to one of his editors to take up the cudgels."I have no doubt they are handling this very badly," says Mr Soley. The MP Clive Soley named the editor, Stuart Higgins, while speaking in the House of Commons. He then went on to reveal he had received a reply to a letter sent to News International's chief executive, Les Hinton, not from Mr Hinton himself but further down the hierarchy, from The Sun's current editor, Rebekah Wade.The immediate row focused on whether Mr Soley was right to name Mr Higgins as the person at the centre of the allegations. Anyone wanting to complain about something in the media might think of writing to the boss of the organisation concerned. And there's a new commercial whose whole burden is that McDonald's has got a burger that's specially for the people of Britain. Americans can't have it.From a giant burger spaceship, a defiant Brit harangues bemused Americans in a variety of famous locations - Mount Rushmore, the Golden Gate Bridge, over the Empire State - from one of those Arne Jacobsen Egg chairs "People of America, behold, the New Big Tasty I'm up here loving it You're down there without it Sorry America, but this one's for us Brits". If the open-kitchen thing is called "transparency" (we've nothing to hide) then presumably this mystifying British Burger initiative is called a "glocal" strategy.So where does the beef come from, and have they got a French burger-spaceship up there too?Peter sru.co.uk.
For instance, there have been these full-page press ads inviting you to see how lovely and clean its kitchens are I never doubted it. Rule Britannia is playing full volume but the burger looks entirely unremarkable. As No 1 in hamburgers, that hurt McDonald's, however tight its controls.So now it is weirdly defensive about practically everything. And there was that extra detail about the hourly paid labour using the knife sterilisers to cook their lunches on. |
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