Obsession

The public exposure of the cosy links between News International, the police and politicians is very important and we must hope that when the present furore subsides laws will be passed to place a maximum on the amount of the British media owned by one institution, to ensure that owners pay their appropriate taxes in Britain and that meetings between influential persons at a high level are open and properly logged. The first two are easy, the third admittedly a bit tricky, but if they are tackled our democracy will emerge much the healthier.

And that's it. Do we really need all the current fuss, day after day on the pages of our newspapers, dotting every "i" and crossing every "t", and hour after our on radio and television? It's something we've all known about for years, it's good that the issues have come out into the open and that the boil can be lanced, and a little bit of dancing on the News International corps is perhaps understandable, but we must retain a sense of proportion. How many have died as a result of it, compared with the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and are dying at this moment in Somalia? Is it really more important for our Prime Minister to return from Africa to deal with this "little local difficulty" rather than to support our aid efforts in that sad continent?

The great danger is that our chattering classes, when the drama fades and the circus moves on, will kick the issues into the long grass and nothing much will change. I firmly hope that the apparent alliance between Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and the rehabilitated St Vincent de Cable will stick this one out to a successful conclusion.

However, we must remember that even if we achieve what we've learned to call "media plurality" that doesn't mean we shall have a balanced press. The Daily Mail and Express will continue to pour out their anti-immigrant, anti-Europe, anti-feminine anti- welfare, anti most things decent poisons and people will continue to buy them. This is one area where consumers still call the tunes.

The parties themselves need to abandon feeding the media with confrontational sound-bites and concentrate on patiently expounding their alternative policies. That's an essential part of the "new politics" we were promised.

Vince Vindicated

No one can have watched yesterday's TV pictures of David Cameron and Ed Miliband lambasting into Rupert Murdoch without a high degree of cynicism, since they and their parties have kowtowed to Murdoch in order to curry his favour over such a long period. Vince Cable,the one politician who is on record of having got it right from the beginning (and been downgraded for his pains) received no mention at all in the bulletins I watched. Alas in politics there are few rewards for being right, but if Vince is experiencing a smug glow of self-satisfaction at the moment it is well deserved, and I hope the public will eventually come to appreciate this.

It could be argued that had the Murdoch media ever taken much notice of us we would have kowtowed too, but James Pericval's post on LibDem Voice details a long period of Liberal Democrat attempts to curb his undue influence, so the party too can pat itself on the back.

I suspect that this whole episode has been of more interest to the chattering classes than the general public, who seemed quite happy about phone hacking and dubious practices as long as they were restricted to celebraties and politicians, and only became roused when "ordinary" parents of murdered children and soldiers killed in action became targets. The danger now is that the circus will "move on" and the current indignation will fade without effective action being taken.

We now need laws which firmly restrict the ownership of any British media to a minority percentage, say 20%, and that ownership should be restricted to those who pay taxes in Britain.

Osama Bin Laden

In 1969 two Americans were landed on the moon and there are still people, the head of science at the last school at which I taught is one of them, who believe it was all faked. How long will it be before the capture and death of Bin Laden attracts similar conspiracy theories? By "burying" the body at sea on the pretext of avoiding the creation of a shrine the Americans have destroyed their best evidence. They may soon find this last error to be worse than the first.