Leveson Draws to a Close.

Today (24/7/12) the public hearings phase of Britain's infamous Leveson Inquiry into press standards has ended just in time for the start of the Olympics. However in order to keep the issue in the news during the games 8 people are be to charged with 19 criminal offences relating to phone hacking. These include Rebekah Brooks and Andy Caulson the Prime Minister's former director of communications. For Ms Brooks these new charges will be added to the charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice that she is already facing. Meanwhile the dress rehearsal for the Olympic opening ceremony was held last night causing a large campaign encouraging people not to reveal the details. This included the use of the Twitter hashtag #don'tspoilthesurprise.

Combined the idea of these two stories is to make visiting athletes along with their political attaches, minders and visiting Olympic VIP's paranoid about what they discuss on electronic communications like telephone calls and emails. Although at this point a little bit of paranoia is a good thing the idea is to make the visitors panic and expose their depth of technical knowledge in counter-surveillance techniques.

In other news Adam Barker the son of famous and really funny British comedian Ronnie Barker of "The Two Ronnies" and "Porridge" has be remanded in custody over charges of making, possessing and distributing child pornography. This is obviously another attempt to bring up the issue of paedophilia both as it relates to my case history and as the more global debate over sexual age of consent laws. I have to say though arresting a suspected paedophile is a much better way of raising the issue then Britain's usual tactic of sending a paedophile to go and kidnap and murder a couple of children.

Elsewhere Basildon council have served eviction papers on legal part of the Dale Farm gypsy/travellers site in Essex on the grounds of over-crowding. This of course re-raises the questions about the October-2011 eviction that was justified by Basildon council's refusal to grant the site planning permission despite the suspicion that the refusal was due to race of the applicants rather then the law.

Also there's been an outbreak of Legionnaires disease in Stoke-on-Trent that I'll need to look at in more detail and a landslide in Dorset which just seems to be a case of a cliff-edge collapsing as they are prone to do.

Obligatory time and date stamp: 15:50 on 24/7/12.