We want to make sure the businesses are aligned to group strategy and that there are clear performance expectations

“We want to make sure the businesses are aligned to group strategy and that there are clear performance expectations.”This week she presented the best operating results the company has seen since it was formed in 1999, through the merger of the Trinity regional newspapers with the Mirror Group of national tabloid titles.Ms Bailey has a leg still in plaster. We are not a holding company,” she says, referring to the previous regime at the company. Sly Bailey may be hobbling around on crutches, having broken her leg in three places, but that has not diminished her energy and determination to knock Trinity Mirror into shape.
A year after she took the chief executive job at Britain’s biggest newspaper group, the results are showing through. The perception is that you must know in advance that your office, your residence, your car, your phone is bugged.”.

“From the first day I entered my office, they said: ‘Beware; your office is bugged, your residence is bugged, and it is a tradition that the member states who have the technical capacity to bug will do it without any hesitation.’ That would involve members of the Security Council. “How did I know? Because those who did it would come to me and show me the recordings that they had made on others to help me do my job disarming Iraq.” He asked: “What if Kofi Annan had been bringing people together last February in a genuine attempt to prevent the invasion of Iraq, and the people bugging him did not want that to happen, what do you think they would do with that information?”Boutros Boutros-Ghali Former UN secretary generalHe said he was warned that he was likely to be bugged as soon as he started the job. No one was being paranoid, everyone had a black sense of humour about it. “I would take a walk with the person in the park and speak in a low voice and keep moving so we could avoid directional microphones and maybe just have a private conversation.”Mr Boutros-Ghali also described the vulnerability of the organisation to espionage.

“From the first day I entered my office they said, ‘Beware, your office is bugged, your residence is bugged, and it is a tradition that the member states who have the technical capacity to bug will do it without any hesitation.’ That would involve members of the Security Council,” he said. “The perception is that you must know in advance that your office, your residence, your car, your phone is bugged.”The targetsRichard Butler Former UN chief weapons inspector/p>He said he was “well aware” that he was being bugged at the UN. But the former UN chief inspector maintained that it was not only Britain which was spying. He said: “I was utterly confident that in my attempts to have private conversations, trying to solve the problem of disarmament of Iraq, I was being listened to by the Americans, British, the French and the Russians. They also had people on my staff reporting what I was trying to do privately Do you think that was paranoia? Absolutely not. There was abundant evidence that we were being constantly monitored.”Mr Butler said that he too had to hold sensitive conversations in the noisy cafeteria in the basement of the UN building in New York or in Central Park.”We were brought to a situation where it was plain silly to think we could have any serious conversation in our office. But I suspect there were other, more widespread interceptions.

There were plenty of attempts to undermine us.”Dr Blix’s predecessor, Mr Butler, now the governor of Tasmania, said he was shown transcripts of bugged conversations. “Those who did it would come to me and show me the recordings that they made on others. ‘To try to help me to do my job in disarming Iraq’, they would say ‘We’re just here to help you’,” Mr Butler said. “It is one of the ironies of life that back in New York we would sometimes take similar measures, discuss things we thought should be confidential, out of the office, in public places, sometimes the sidewalk. Ms Short also revives the controversy over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction by highlighting claims that “one of the reasons for the exaggeration of the threat from WMD in Iraq was to manufacture legal authority for war”.She insists that transcripts of Mr Annan’s telephone calls were regularly circulated. “The only saving grace is that neither Dr Blix or anyone else among us would speak about sensitive matters on mobile telephones, so they would not have heard anything earth-shattering just by that.