Where is Kelvin MacKenzie? Who is Kelvin MacKenzie ?

The paper review on BBC News this morning was interesting as it highlighted the complete absence of Kelvin McKenzie from any newspapers despite his claims yesterday that he was 90% certain to stand against David Davis if Labour fail to put up a candidate in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election.

It seems, even the Murdoch press, have gone cold on the idea of kelvin McKenzie standing in the by-election. But then again, when you read just a few facts about kelvin McKenzie you can understand why his support might collapse when put under public scrutiny.

A quick check on Wikipedia brings up a massive list of reasons why I believe any reasonable person wouldn't want to support him.

Let's take this quote for starters.

“Look I am not here to be helpful. I am here to help myself, right, so I have no regrets how I treated some people.”

Yes, I can see the headlines. - "Vote for me, I am here to help myself !" Not exactly "Working all year round" is it ?.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Mr MacKenzie. There is a long list of lies that emanated from the Sun when he was the editor. These range from accusing Liverpool fans of stealing from dead bodies at the Hillsborough disaster to accusing Elton John on several occasions of doing things he hadn't done. I guess we can draw our own conclusions as to why Elton John was a specific target when you read what Mr MacKenzie thought of his readership at The Sun.

"You just don't understand the readers, do you, eh? He's the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he's afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn't want to hear about that stuff (serious news)"

Every single sentence you read about Mr MacKenzie shows exactly why he is unsuitable for any sort of public office.

If he cares so much for this country or its security, why would The Sun, under his control at the time, choose to invent a story about a ward hero ? The most notable example is when an entirely fabricated interview with the disfigured Falklands war hero Simon Weston was published, which was criticised for "inviting readers to feel revulsion at his disfigurement".

Again, Wikipedia highlight some other notable controversies that occurred under MacKenzie. These include

"a headline describing Australian Aborigines as "The Abo's: Brutal and Treacherous" (which was condemned as "inaccurate" and "unacceptably racist" by the Press Council) and MacKenzie's sending of photographers to break into a psychiatric hospital to ask actor Jeremy Brett, who was a patient in the hospital at the time and who was suffering from manic depression and dying of cardiomyopathy, whether he was "dying of AIDS". The newspaper apparently suspected Brett of being a homosexual and that his mystery illness might be AIDS, which it wasn't.

These incidents caused The Sun to become a laughing stock in some quarters and to be heavily condemned in others, but the newspaper's profile increased dramatically during MacKenzie's time as editor although sales figures dipped On the subject of the sensationalist and sometimes inaccurate reporting which appeared in The Sun during his time as editor, MacKenzie has said:

“When I published those stories, they were not lies. They were great stories that later turned out to be untrue — and that is different. What am I supposed to feel ashamed about?”

MacKenzie's denial that he ever knowingly published lies or fabrications would appear to be false bearing in mind the aforementioned Simon Weston and Tony Benn stories, which were both proven to be based on fabricated interviews invented by The Sun themselves, as well as the allegations by Sun staff that MacKenzie printed deliberate misinformation about Scargill and the miners."

During his reign at The Sun, his newspaper lied, made things up, pandered to racism, to homophobia, made up lies about war heroes, harassed people who were dying and lied about the conduct or people during disaster.

Would you vote for someone like this ?