Quotes of the Week: From Caitlin Moran on welfare to Grey Cardigan becomes a PR consultant

Caitlin Moran in The Times [£]: "My father raised eight children on welfare benefits, and didn’t kill any of us. I feel I should say that this week. I feel I need to firmly point to a large family raised on public handouts who were normal, and gentle, and never set fire to their house during a personal vendetta against a former lover."

Neil Wallis ‏@neilwallis1 on Twitter: "Fascinating The Sun has splashed the Rolf Harris arrest - a story all Fleet St & twitter knew but which the Leveson chill has kept secret."

Guido Fawkes on his blog: "Three months after Guido first reported that the star had been questioned and three weeks after this blog reported his arrest, the old media have finally run the Rolf Harris story. There was never any court order or injunction preventing publication, the delay was the decision of the editors alone. Harbottle and Lewis can put pressure on the papers to keep stories quiet, but it merely hands the scoop to the free press on the unregulated internet."
 

The Daily Mail in a leader: "Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry has cast such a shadow over free expression that a Hampshire police sergeant feels emboldened to challenge the editorial policy of a local newspaper. What sort of a country is it in which a citizen may be arrested and tried in secret – and a state-licensed newspaper punished for revealing the facts? With Press freedom threatened from every side, the tragic answer to that question may be Britain, 2013."

Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman, in the Guardian: "Unlike a newspaper, we are not encumbered by the weight of a vast, highly specialised staff. We are a nimble, compact team who are at ease writing, editing, podcasting, broadcasting and speaking at public events. It's a paradox that the staff of a venerable political and cultural weekly – one of the most traditional forms of media – are more attuned to the skills needed for modern journalism than many of their counterparts on newer rivals."

Peter Singfield, of Foot Anstey, on HoldTheFrontPage: "As we debate how to regulate the established press, and government seeks to implement a scheme for a regulator in almost indecent haste, there are apparently no plans to do anything about the ability of those outside the established press to publish anything they want, including the most hateful things, behind a veil of anonymity on the internet."

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail: "The anti-Thatcher demonstrations, such as the Stop The Cuts marches, are simply football hooliganism for Guardian readers. A convenient excuse to get stoned, show off in public and taunt the police." 

Index on Censorship: "Index is highly concerned at the rapid, sweeping and ill-considered move to regulate a major part of the internet — including in that news outlets located in other countries but focused onto the UK market (however defined). As concern has spread over the potential inclusion of even 'small scale' blogs, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport has started to look at ways to widen exempted categories. Even defining 'small-scale' is problematic in an age when individual blog posts can go 'viral' and gain thousands of readers in a short period. Meanwhile, the role and practices of traditional publishers and blogs are converging rapidly, making it entirely likely that the proposed system will be mired in confusion from the very beginning."

Harriet Harman, quoted by the Daily Mail: "I’m just saying what Leveson said, that he was putting forward a system that was a framework within which there would be independent self-regulation but that if that didn’t transpire there would have to be full-on statutory regulation." 

Jack of Kent on his blog: "Valuable potential protections against corporate libel claimants were thrown away this week, just because the Liberal Democrats nodded along with a weak concession and voted against their own explicit manifesto promise."

Peter Barron ‏@EchoPeterBarron on Twitter: "Yorkshire Post front page headline: 'A funeral fit for a titan.' The miners' alternative might have been: 'A funeral fit for a tight 'un'."

The Grey Cardigan, now on TheSpinAlley website, reveals he's no longer editor of the Daily Beast: "I’ve been replaced by a child in a suit. I leave with a framed front page, a valedictory drink at The Shivering Whippet, a small pay-off and my head held high. Now I’m in the dangerous waters of the unemployed or, as my previously departed colleagues called it, pursuing a new career as an editorial and PR consultant."

[£]= paywall