PRONOUNCEMENT

On Tuesday, the Culture, Media and Sports Parliamentary Committee produced a damning report regarding the phone hacking scandal, which lead to the closure of The News of the World.

Unfortunately, they incorporated the statement that Murdoch was not a ‘fit and proper’ person to run a major international communications company, thereby splitting the committee along party lines and diverting attention from their main findings.  The ‘fit and proper’ designation is the remit of Ofcom, ladies and gentlemen, and should have been left to them, rather than being used to settle personal vendettas.

The result of all this?  News Corporation’s board has given Murdoch their full backing, Ofcom says it will take its own time to decide the ‘fit and proper’ question and The Sun, Murdoch’s flagship paper in the UK, demonstating that it intends to maintain its current high journalistic standards, produced  a front page headline, mocking the speech impediment of Roy Hodgson, the new England football manager. Outwageous!

A SACRIFICE WORTH MAKING

As we watch the Murdochs suffering acute amnesia under questioning, whilst their employees go to the wall, and Jeremy Hunt cling to his cabinet post, as his special advisor, Adam Smith, resigns, it makes one realise how fortunate we are to have  leaders who are willing to make such sacrifices.  It does however remind us rather of Harold Macmillan and “the night of the long knives”.  Macmillan sacked seven members of his cabinet in an attempt to save his own skin, provoking, from Jeremy Thorpe, the line………." greater love hath no man than this, that he should lay down his friends for his life."