Jewish people mentioned in this essay are coloured red.
Richard Desmond, CEO of Northern & Shell and Portland Investments, purchased Express Newpapers in November, 2000 for £125 million, from fellow Jew, and New Labour peer, Clive Hollick.
Express Newpapers comprises The Daily Express, The Sunday Express, The Daily Star and The Daily Star Sunday. The Express had an average daily circulation of almost 930,000, as of April 2002. The Sunday Express had an average circulation of over 842, 000 in the same period, The Daily Star more than 828, 000, and The Daily Star Sunday, 485,454.
Altogether Express Newpapers distributes an average 13 million newspapers in Britain every week week. Desmond also owns the celebrity magazines OK! and Heat.
Desmond made his personal fortune selling pornography. He still owns the porno magazines: 40-Plus, 50 and Over, All Girl Action, Amateur Video, Asian Babes, Best of Asian Babes, Best of Big and Black, Best of Big Ones, Big and Black, Big Ones, Best of Electric Blue, Bumper Video Pack, Contact Girls, For Women, For Men, Genuine Wives, Horny Housewives, Mothers-in-Law, New Talent, Only 18, Pantie Parade, X-Treme, Young and Old. Nude Readers' Wives, Readers' Wives, Real Wives, Red Hot Pack and Stuffed amongst others.
He also owns the porno satellite station Television X, which features such programmes as Sorority Sex Kittens, Spunk Sucking Sluts, and Jane's Big Jug Jamboree are featured, The Fantasy Channel and a variety of ‘sex’ sites on the internet.
Desmond says:
"Would it be better to be a former pornographer rather than a pornographer? I'm probably being more honest by keeping them. They serve a need." Desmond has donated £100,000 to New Labour by way of a ‘thank you’ for not opposing his bid for The Express. Blair invited him to Downing Street for a chat on the day the sale went through.
According to Jewish.co.uk of 8th April, 2002, Desmond was, at that time, 111th on the UK ‘Rich List’ with a personal fortune of £300 million. This is what Steve Boggan, writing in The Independent of the 11th June, 2002, had to say about the pornographer's donation to New Labour and Blair's consent to his buying a top British newspaper.
"During an embarrassing interview with Jeremy Paxman on the BBC's Newsnight last month, Mr Blair claimed that he did not know much about Mr Desmond's porn operation, despite having been shown a selection of the titles mentioned above by the late Tony Bevins, former political editor of The Daily Express, two years ago.
Instead, Mr Blair made much of the fact that the Department of Trade and Industry had ruled that Mr Desmond was a ‘fit and proper’ person to own The Express titles… the DTI has just admitted that it failed to investigate Mr Desmond's pornographic websites before making that decision…
Desmond's foul language and the presence on the news floor of what some staff described as ‘heavies’ only served to reduce his standing as a serious Fleet Street proprietor. Senior staff left in droves. Before she parted company with Desmond, The Express editor Rosie Boycott was in the habit of having her office swept for listening devices. One staff member once described hearing Boycott dictating a letter to Desmond in which every other word was ‘fucking’. She later explained: ‘It's the only language he understands’.
One journalist said:
‘It's a terribly intimidating atmosphere. Desmond marches down the office with his cigar – he always has a cigar in his mouth – and everybody looks down. When I first started, someone warned me to look busy and not catch his eye. Some of the people he surrounds himself with are, well, a bit frightening’.
Richard Desmond... left school at 14… in 1982… he won the rights to publish a British version of Penthouse. In the mid 1980s, after the Penthouse deal was rescinded, he began publishing his own magazines, set up hugely lucrative telephone sex lines and went on to bring the world Television X, on cable and satellite, in 1995…
In spite of its proliferation of titles, however, Portland Investments made just £299,000. This is a staggeringly low sum as a proportion of turnover. No figure is given in the accounts for 2000, but the year before it was stated as £21.7m. Mr Blair might, therefore, have some advice to give Mr Desmond on sound economic principles when they meet today.
The Prime Minister might also like to consider the way in which the people – the ‘models’ – used in Desmond's magazines, television programmes and videos are treated…
‘A lot depends on whether it's open-leg work or closed-leg work, and then there's solo, girl-girl, boy-girl, group," says ‘Michelle’, whose south-London agency, Adoration Models, has supplied hundreds of women to photographers and videographers whose work is bought by Fantasy Publications and Television X.
‘For open-leg work, you're looking at a minimum of £150 a day, probably £200. For video work, it's about £180 if you're solo, £200 girl/girl and up to £500 for real sex, boy/girl’…
Even though Desmond's television station and magazines don't show hardcore sex, edited versions of films and photographs produced from encounters between these models and photographers/videographers do appear in his programmes and titles…
Tony Savage, whose company Savage Secrets produces hardcore videos, says of Desmond…
This industry is divided into two types: those who consider it an art form and apply themselves to it, and those who churn out overpriced rubbish. Desmond is the latter’.
It is easy to see why the industry has such a low opinion of Mr Blair's friend.
On his website, under ‘ethnic’, one girl, Shaheeda, is pictured naked in a variety of poses. The accompanying text reads:
‘It's hard to believe that we found Shaheeda in the slums of Bombay. She was begging in the streets so we gave her $100 to strip for us’. Text such as this is often made up. But even if it is, it may be regarded as an insight into the minds of the people who wrote it.
Mr Blair would do well to see some of this. He may also wish to pay a £9.99-a-month subscription to Desmond's website. For that sum, he can use the company's webcam and see ‘young girls, housewives, mature wives, old ladies, fat girls and girls with huge tits’ stripping off and performing sexual acts in a flat rented by the company near the Northern & Shell offices… the description above is from a two-page spread on the webcam in May's Pantie Parade…
Viewers are invited to send requests to the flat's occupants. Working in shifts, they will perform the acts the viewers request.
‘It's a wank a minute, and don't forget that the girls are talking to you and doing what you ask them to do’, the text reads…
Some of the girls, the piece says, will even send viewers their panties…
Something, then, for the Prime Minister to fall back on come the next general election. If asked nicely, these girls might even vote Labour".
Even the ubiquitous Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Ugandan Asian critic of just about everything British, had this to say about the Rich and Tony show in The Independent of the 3rd of June, 2002:
"These are the people we are now asked to worship. We know that it was made alarmingly easily for him to take over The Express titles and that Mr Desmond has enjoyed tea with our Prime Minister, upholder of family life and Christian values.
Apart from the hypocrisy and the obvious facts about the trillion-pound, world-wide porn business, what shocks me is that New Labour can be bought so cheaply. A hundred thousand pounds? Three friends and I could beg and borrow that much in a week. If we handed it over to 10 Downing Street, could we please have tea with the PM and maybe one or two of those appealing jobs as political advisers?…
It has been revolting, thus far, to watch some of the antics of their male colleagues, the likes of John Reid, who got in a right twist justifying the inexcusable:
‘We have acted with complete propriety. We have acted with complete integrity,’ he said. ‘If you are asking if we are going to sit in moral judgement on those who wish to contribute to the Labour party, then the answer is no’.
You see, even words can be transformed under the power of New Labour. Acting with ‘integrity’ and ‘propriety’ now means whatever is good for our cause, our lust to stay ruling over you forever.
Actually, I am less bothered about the porn mags than many… I am not all that whipped up, either, about the idea of undue influence for personal or business gain that rich donors exert. All this sleaze over so many years has dulled outrage and ideals. So if there was some strange forgetfulness about money or regulatory practices or passports on the part of ministers, that's just life as we live it today…
What Mr Desmond says in his papers is influencing public policy. Margaret Thatcher and some editors were in similar cahoots when they demonised the miners. |
