Profit & power

A grey and breezy morning, and a brisk 25 minute run along the loch-side. 

People are falling like skittles as a result of the News of the World affair, but it’s probably too much to hope that our travelling salesman Prime Minister will resign, despite his appalling lack of good judgement, and his apparent complicity in the media power games. Betting shops are offering odds of 16 to 1 that he'll be out of office by the weekend though.

My wife who remembers everything has reminded me that phone hacking isn’t a new phenomenon for newspapers. Twenty years ago His Royal Magnificence, Charles, Prince of Wales. Duke of Rothesay, had his phone hacked. At that time the news media in Australia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, USA, & finally UK, were able to overcome their normally impeccable scruples and publish transcripts of his private conversations with the woman who was to become his second wife. 

The hacking by the News of the World is part of a continuum. Whether hacking the phones of celebrities and royal hypocrites or hacking the phones of bereaved families, it’s simply another step along the well trodden path of invading people’s privacy for the sake of selling “news”. In other words, ruthless and cynical marketising of people's lives for profit, and just as immoral as the underlying collusion between politicians, media barons & police.