His latest foot in mouth attacks thousands of Public Sector workers and will offend most of them. His comments that Public Sector strikers should be taken out and executed in front of their families would be offensive when talking about evil and dispicable people but when said about decent people who are simply exercising a democratic right to protest and strike over the terms and conditions they are employed under, it is an outrageous thing to say.

Jeremy Clarkson makes a living from doing what many would pay to do if they had the opportunity. He may consider it hard work and he may work hard to develop the character he presents himself as, however he should learn that there are boundaries to what he thinks are funny comments.

He went on to say “ I mean, how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living. “

I would love to see how he would feel if he did a real job of work. If he was a hospital cleaner, a nurse, a teacher or street cleaner would he think he was well paid with a wonderful pension? I doubt it. I have no doubt that if he were a public sector worker he would be stating his strong view that public sector workers were being unfairly treated by a Government who seem to think that earning millions in the City is a good thing but earning thousands in the public sector is bad.

Jeremy Clarkson needs to grow up and open his eyes to the real world rather than ignoring it, while he plays around in fast cars and get paid excessively for the privilege. He referred to people in the private sector having to work for a living. He is right that they do but few would consider what he does anything like having a real job and he should think about that before criticising others who do work very hard for wages that would not cover his yearly petrol bill.

When people are threatened with jail for joking about blowing up Robin Hood Airport or suggesting we should all go out and have a riot it would seem outrageous, and perhaps be linked to having friends in high places,  if Jeremy Clarkson avoids a visit from the local police. It seems that you only have to speak to a policeman these days to get arrested so I would expect he would then be arrested pending enquiries. This is after all what we have come to expect to happen in the United Kingdom of today.

It would have been so much simpler if he had just kept his big mouth shut but I assume he was on the One Show promoting his latest book or TV show or some other way of making easy money. What a shame the public sector workers do not have the easy opportunities to make money that he, in his privileged position, has.

A report has been released from the High Pay Commission which was set up to look at executive pay and to consider if high executive pay is a good thing or a bad thing. The results seem pretty conclusive and the report states that.

“There’s a crisis at the top of British business and it is deeply corrosive to our economy. When pay for senior executives is set behind closed doors, does not reflect company success and is fuelling massive inequality it represents a deep malaise at the very top of our society…”

Executive pay levels have risen around 3,000% since the 1980s while average earnings have risen around 300% over the same period.

Nobody could claim this was fair but many respond by saying that you need to pay the best people to attract them to these top jobs. The alternative is that they would go elsewhere in the world to earn the high salaries available in other countries.

We can look to recent history to confirm that this argument is rubbish. Some, of these ‘Best People” were behind the banking crisis, earning huge salaries and bonuses as they burned the system down. The supposedly brightest and most knowledgeable. The ones on enormous salaries as payment for their ‘exceptional talents’ destroyed everything.

You will surely remember them because these were the same people who were unable to add up simple numbers. They were the people who thought it was possible to walk on water and conjure vast profits out of thin air so they could take home huge bonuses. The only thing they were right about was the fact they could take huge bonuses and get away with it. The mismanagement, lack of an understanding of basic arithmetic and stupidity was breathtaking and has damaged the lives of countless millions of people.

Another argument used to defend high rates of pay for executives is that they get paid for success in making their companies bigger, stronger and more profitable. The reality is often very different.

High salaries and bonuses often encourage the executives who benefit to make takeovers of other companies that appear to offer short term gains but often lead to long term problems. The cost of takeovers and expansion often leads to companies that are over extended financially, have few reserves and are thus unable to survive or prosper when circumstances move against them.

Examples that come to mind, based purely on reading what is in the public domain are:-

Northern Rock enjoyed a rapid expansion based on a risky business plan that required everything to remain as it was with little room for error. This expansion was seen as a wonderful thing by those deciding the salaries of the executives but left the bank open to collapse when the plan fell apart when the money supply became more difficult. Ultimately the UK government had to take over the bank to prevent its collapse. The chief Executive who masterminded its rapid expansion and ultimate demise walked away with an annual pension larger than many people would earn in their lifetime.

MFI was a successful retailer with stores around the country. It was successful until a management buyout, at a price that amazed many, all funded with borrowed money. It was a recipe for disaster if ever the company suffered from a downturn is sales caused by a recession. Sure enough it did and it closed its doors.

In both these examples it was not the employees being lazy or lacking commitment that led to the collapse. It was the way the company was managed and run by the people at the top.

There will be plenty of critics who will claim that this report and the frustration of the public over high executive pay is simply envy. i.e. If I can’t have high pay then why should you. There will be plenty of people who do think that but I suspect most people do not object to those who achieve great things being rewarded for their work. This applies as much to the office cleaner and the administrative staff as it does to the chief executive.

Many people in lower paid positions work just as hard and are eager to do whatever they can to make the company successful. Many lower paid staff are more loyal than those at the top. It is common for top executives to move on to a new company after a few years while the lower paid employees put their heart and soul into the company and gamble their future life on the success of the company.

Every member of a company contributes to its success. It can be said that the executive management chooses the direction of travel but it is the administrators, the salesmen and women and the guys and gals in the warehouse delivering the goods that makes the company work. Much like the Army where the generals make the plans and the poor bloody infantry put their lives on the line a company can only be successful when the workforce take those grand plans and somehow make them work.

Nobody is going to suggest that everyone should earn the same but it is a false argument to claim that the only way to get good people to run a company is by paying them 30 times as much as the average employee. Not everyone can run a company, just as not everyone can be a great footballer, but there is a wealth of talent available throughout the country and many would, given the opportunity, do a better job and be very content on a half or even a quarter of what many top earners get paid.

Executive pay is often spoken of as risk and reward. Executives take risks and get rewarded when they are successful. The sad fact is they are often rewarded for failure too and in the process they destroy the lives of those employees who were loyally working for the company for many years. If they want to earn high salaries based on a true risk and reward then they should lose everything when things go wrong just as their ex-employees do and they can benefit when things go well, just as their employees should.

Fairness in pay and conditions of executives and employees alike would help rebuild the divisions in society and encourage us all to feel as though we are in this together. At the moment it is very clear that is not the case.

There is something in nearly all human beings that makes us relish power over others. Very few of us have the power of life and death over others but many of us enjoy the feeling of power enjoyed by being the boss or a manager in a company. There is something in our psyche that relishes power.

How we choose to use that power can decide both how successful we are and how long we can enjoy the power and authority we have earned or been given. Gaddafi lasted over four decades but he made few friends along the way, apart from those who made enormous fortunes through corruption and abuse of power. How much is their wealth worth to them now though? I would not want to be in their shoes now with the man who protected them from the public, gone.

The lesson must be that no matter how much power you have you must keep the people under you on your side. They may not love you and they may at times resent you but you need to keep them on your side to a degree even when times are hard and life is difficult.

The collapse in the banking system in 2008 led to the banks being bailed out which has in turn led to nations struggling to find the money to fund all those things they were previously able to pay for. Ultimately the people are being asked to pay the price and as this has dawned on people they have begun to rebel at the way this has been done and the people who have benefitted from a biased system.

There are protests all over the world at the way rich bankers have been enjoying high salaries and huge bonuses while ordinary people have to cut back on the essentials of life and go without help and assistance from government because the bankers want all the money for themselves.

The people are beginning to wonder why they should suffer when we see so many wealthy people continuing to enjoy a life that most of us can only dream of. Most of us support the idea of rewards for being successful but judging success in simple monetary terms is no longer enough.

It is all too easy to look back to previous times through rose tinted glasses. Business and politics have always been tainted by dubious and corrupt practices, They always have benefitted some more than others but there was a trickle down effect that produced jobs and benefits for the whole of society. What seems to have changed since the 1980s and the widespread freeing up of markets and financial dealings is that money has become the most important thing in the world. Profit always was the ultimate motivation but now people and jobs have become a far less important consideration.

The banks care only about money. The financial markets care only about money. Even governments seem more focussed on money than people these days and the people are beginning to sense they have been forgotten.

Perhaps this is the ultimate fate of capitalism. Perhaps it becomes so incestuous that the original purpose of money as a tool to simplify trade has been forgotten. When money is the only motivation and dealing in money can be a very profitable enterprise it is all too easy to forget the people who are the only reason the system can work. When those ordinary folk at the bottom of the food chain have no work and no prospects the system begins to break down and the people beging to turn against the system.

The death of Gadaffi is proof that no matter how much power and control you have, the system depends on keeping the people behind you. The worlds financial system is so far removed from people that few can possibly understand how it works. All we know is that it isn’t working for us.

The banks have become such an integral part of the system that governments felt they had no alternative but to support them but the effects have been devestating for millions of people around the world. Whatever the worlds leaders decide to do next they need to remember the lessons of Gaddafi. They may not face being found in a sewer and shot through the head but they do face the wrath of the people if they forget who they are supposed to represent

When Alessio Rastani went on the BBC News Channel for a live interview and said that, “For most traders, we don’t really care that much how they’re going to fix the economy, how they’re going to fix the whole situation – our job is to make money from it.” a lot of feathers were ruffled. He went on to say, “Personally I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years. I have a confession, which is I go to bed every night, I dream of another recession.”

In a democratic country that is supposed to be managed by its government to improve the lives of everybody this selfish attitude raises uncomfortable questions about what motivates some of the most powerful wheeler dealers in the country. The City and many of the financial institutions based there are not there for our benefit. They are there to make money for themselves. They carry a lot of weight and authority within government circles and we are constantly told how important the City is for the future prospects of the nation.

Mr Rastani then went on to say that, “The governments don’t rule the world.  Goldman Sachs rules the world. Goldman Sachs does not care about this rescue package, neither does the big funds.”

I think we already knew that but nobody ever dares to admit to such things. The power of companies such as Goldman Sachs is scary and their motivation is always profits and greed rather than improvement of the lives of the population at large. They are a business and their whole purpose in life is to do the best for the company and their shareholders. The effects of their actions on the lives of ordinary people problem never get any consideration whatsoever.

These financial companies have their purpose in life and they do, what they do, very well. What we should question is whether this is a good thing and if such businesses have a place in a democratic society that is supposed to be working for the benefit of all. We should also ask why they have so much power over governments and economies and what can and should be done about it.

The evidence of what is going on in Europe and particularly Greece should be warning enough that we have a system that is failing. It wasn’t the ordinary people of Greece who got their country into so much debt they cannot afford the bill yet they are the ones who are suffering. Fellow European nations are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the financiers who lent Greece so much money should be repaid and enjoy the luxuries their profits will bring while the Greek population is expected to go without some of the most basic services and lose their jobs left, right and centre.

Many people stepped forward to rubbish the comments of Mr Rastani and it was even suggested he was an impostor and not the financial trader he claimed to be. The BBC insist they have checked his credentials and they seem quite sure he is who he claims to be. We can hardly be surprised that they would say that as he exposed the truth that is not normally spoken. The money men do not care what the effects of their actions are. They only want to make money regardless of the consequences.

The only real surprise is that Mr Rastani told it like it is. We have become so used to politicians and businessmen giving us their pre-prepared and polished public displays that hide the truth and support their own point of view that we are shocked when honesty rears its head.
The previously unspoken truth that the world of money is all about making money and cares little if you starve so long as they can afford their yachts should come as little surprise to anyone. It is the honesty we saw that is so surprising.

The speculators and the financial wheeler dealers make a lot of money, and sometimes lose a lot too, but win or lose, the final cost is always borne by the consumer. We all pay the extra ‘tax’ of speculation and profits made from the raft of middlemen between the mineral or seed in the ground and the final product we buy in the shops.

It has always been this way but the age of computers and instant communication has allowed there to be a lot more trades made at every stage of development and production of goods and services. Every trade made adds to the profits of the dealers and adds to the cost for the consumer. This is the way business works and whatever its faults it does, sort of, work. Products get made and the goods get to consumers.

The true cost is difficult to appreciate or understand. Everything is financed by debt and everything works quite well until the levels of debt are challenged in some way. That was the problem in 2008 and that is the problem now in Greece and several other countries. There is not enough money to pay all the debt that exists in the world so if the music stops everyone wants to grab their share back before everyone else can get their share. It is a dog eat dog world and the dog with the biggest teeth is likely to win.

We should all appreciate the honesty shown by the financial trader on the TV interview. It is a shame more public figures feel unable to be as open and honest about their motivations and intentions. Perhaps we should try to persuade Mr Rastani to stand for Parliament. A bit more honesty in both government and business might be uncomfortable but it would be a breathe of fresh air that would probably be good for us all in the long run.

You can watch the interview and read some views about what was said on this page at the BBC Website.

No doubt if you were to ask consumers if they would be pleased to see offers that save them money they will say yes. If you ask them if they want to get piles of junk mail they will almost always say no. How you word the question is the deciding factor on answering the question of whether consumers like getting junk mail or not.

The problem doesn’t end when you put it in the bin, or the paper recycling box. Your local council has to deal with all that waste. We are paying the cost of disposal and we are also paying the cost in damage all this wasteful use of the planets resources causes.

Stop Junk Mail

It is not easy to avoid all this junk mail. You can register on several lists to say you do not wish to receive all this rubbish but that will only prevent some of the mailshots. There is a very interesting and useful website about the subject of junkmail at www.stopjunkmail.org.uk where you can find out where to register on some of the stop spam mail lists as well as sign a petition to make opting in to receive marketing material a requirement rather than having to opt-out as at present.

The marketing men don’t want us to stop receiving their rubbish because they find it does work and some people do respond to the offers received. It is a shame that they do as without those buyers we would soon see the trade stop overnight.

I have wondered if there is not a case for invoicing the marketing people who send their waste through my letterbox. It should be considered illegal dumping but so far no one seems to have pursued that line of thought.

You could try marking the envelope as ‘JUNK MAIL – RETURN TO SENDER’ and popping it back in a post box. I have no idea what the position is there for the post office. Whether they feel required to return it to the sender and maybe charge them for returning the mail I have no idea. Neither would I be surprised to discover that doing such a thing might be illegal as it always seems that the law is against the individual consumer and in favour of businesses who wish to take advantage of our ignorance and gullibility but it seems to me to be worth a try.

Are We Doomed To Receive Junk Mail Forever?

So we can winge all we like but for now it seems junk mail can fill up our mailboxes as well as the recycling plants. There seems to be little we can do about it. I do recommend the website mentioned above if you want to find out more about the problems of junk mail and what you can do to try to reduce the quantity you receive but there seems little sign of anything changing much soon. Maybe putting the junk mail of your open fire or log burner is the only way to gain some benefit from all the rubbish we get thanks to the efforts of the spam merchants, sorry, I meant direct marketers, of course.

It would be easy to blame events on a disaffected youth who have poor education and job prospects. They probably do feel deprived and disappointed with the prospects for their lives in the future but that is no excuse for looting and burning your way across town.

My father went into politics as a young man because he was shocked at the deprivation and poverty. He told me of kids going to school with no shoes to wear. He told me of children dying of scarlet fever, an illness we would not worry too much about today because we have decent healthcare available to all.

The kids that are starting riots on the street of London are not deprived in anything like the same way as people of a generation or two ago. They are not looting food to feed their starving kids they are looting TV’s, electronic goods and sportswear. They are not demonstrating about a lack of basic essentials like food or basic clothing, they are having a bit of fun and grabbing the goods they feel entitled too because the opportunity to overwhelm the police suddenly appeared. They somehow have the idea that it is OK to smash their way into a shop to get a smart new LCD TV, or the latest fashionable training shoes.

These are not starving and desperate kids. They may be disappointed with their lives but looting and burning will change nothing. It may even lead to smaller funding cuts to the police and greater cuts to welfare and local development group support to make up for it. It is good for no-one and bad for all.

The start of the riots following the death of a man who police were trying to arrest may have brought people onto the streets to air their grievances and even protest but that was done in an ordered and civilised way which enabled them to express their feelings in an acceptable manner. The current wave of violence and rioting has nothing to do with any legitimate protest. It is simple violence for violence sake.

These young people are taking an opportunity to get out there and, lets face it, have a bit of fun. Who wouldn’t enjoy smashing things up and setting fire to buildings. We all enjoy a bit of destruction but the difference is that most of us would not dream of actually doing it.

There has always been an acceptance that no matter how upset you are about things, violence is not the proper way to deal with it. When my father grew up and went to school with children who had no shoes, where families had to live on very little food and live in incredibly cramped accommodation with a family living in one small room, people did not go out rioting and looting to get shoes. They may have been suffering terrible depravation and they had a real grievence but they knew it was wrong to behave in that sort of way.

Our society has changed. The more we are given the more we expect and when we don’t have a big TV or the latest trainers our young people are feeling deprived and disaffected. The consumer culture which has been encouraged because it is so good for business has in it’s wake created a pent up demand from those who cannot afford the lifestyle advertising encourages us to aspire to.

We have a celebrity culture where everyone wants and expects the best of everything and the feelings of entitlement mean that a significant proportion of people feel that if they can’t get what they want legitimately then it is OK to just take it anyway they can.

There is no excuse for the behavior we have seen on the streets of London. This is not an Arab spring or a fight for democracy. This is plain vandalism and criminality. There are legitimate concerns that should be addressed. We do need to do more to help young people have a decent future but we also need to look at why people feel a big screen TV is so important they will loot a store to get one.

Our society has become so focused on possessions while it almost ignores our need for genuine personal contentment and satisfaction with being a decent person. We have seen the Bankers ripping off the nation so they can have their mansions and fast cars. We have seen MP’s taking advantage of a very loose system of expenses and ripping off the public. We have recently discovered how some newspapers have lost all sense of reason and ignored any moral argument in favour of making money and every time we hear of yet another rip off by those in powerful positions we also hear that it is the ordinary man in the street who has to pay the price for these other people’s greed.

If you are a young person in Tottenham, Croydon or Hackney, you have no opportunity to gamble millions of other peoples money to make a fast buck, like the bankers. You can’t rip off the expenses system because there you don’t have one. You can’t make millions by tapping into peoples phones and selling lots of newspapers on the gossip you discover because you are just an ordinary person on the street. You work, or want to work but your opportunities are restricted if there are any at all.  The only thing you do have is the power of numbers against a stretched police force.

There is no excuse for the rioting we have seen taking place in our streets. We do, however, have every right to expect that the outrageous excesses of those in power should cease and that fairness should rule in our society. A democratic society should be fair to all, not just the rich and powerful.

We must use the power of the law to prevent further acts of vandalism and punish those who were in many cases, I am imagine just started having a bit of fun until it all got out of hand when they got carried away with their newly discovered power. In a way they are no worse than the bankers, except they used violent means rather than pressing keys on a keyboard, but our society needs to look at itself and find out where we went so wrong and what we can do to improve it in the future.

We all depend on a basic belief in the rule of law. When significant numbers think otherwise we will all lose as society falls apart. There is something very rotten in our modern society. It is driven by greed and self interest and it is not good for society or democracy. We need to make fairness and justice our prime motivation rather than profit but those young people who start riots on the streets of London must realise this is not acceptable in any way and it will not help us reach the just and fair society we all want.

Perhaps this time as we are in the build up to the 2012 Olympic Games is a good time to consider where sport is and where it is headed in the future. It seems to be going the way of every other business where profit is more important than the customers or the sport itself. The fans, as customers, are only useful as financial sheep to be fleeced by the money men and the idea of sport for the pleasure of the sport is limited to Sunday leagues and joggers.

The latest example of money talking in sport is the remarkable changes in the TV coverage of F1 in the UK. The BBC had an exclusive contract until 2013. Suddenly and out of the blue, it seems, they have changed all that and come to an arrangement whereby SKY get the rights to show the whole of every F1 race in the calendar for 2012 onwards while the BBC will show half the races live and then highlights of the other 50% of races later in the day.

Money can surely be the only reason this has happened. A shortage of money at the BBC which is struggling to make cutbacks and a surplus of money available from SKY who seem to want to buy up the rights to every sport under the sun in order to force people to spend money to watch what many consider part of our culture.

We are not talking about pennies here either. If you currently do not have SKY TV you will have to fork out around £500 to watch the whole season of live F1 races. If you want to watch it in HD it will cost another couple of hundred pounds or so. This is a serious cost to supporters who have been fans for many years. Only some of those diehard fans will be able to afford it or justify such a high additional expense.

The BBC appear to have tried to make the best of a difficult situation where they just could not justify the cost of continuing an arrangement where they had the exclusive transmission rights. The BBC has to make some severe cost reductions over future years and they have decided that the full cost of TV rights for live showing of F1 racing was too much to pay.

This seems to be the way all sport is going. The profits available from Pay TV allows SKY to outbid everybody else and the money is just too appealing for sports bodies to see the difference between what is good for sport or making money. They see the pound notes in front of their eyes and cannot resist the lure of it even though that may be damaging to the sport.

It seems highly unlikely F1 is going to gain a single viewer through this deal since anyone who had SKY TV could previously watch the F1 races live on the BBC. It seems highly likely that F1 will lose significant numbers of viewers through this deal. F1 is an exciting sport for fans but not once the race has taken place and you have heard the results. Once the result is known there is not much point to watching how it happened and in these days of 24hr news and information on the Internet it is hard to avoid hearing the results.

I think this is a sad event for F1 and a sign of the times that sport is now a just another business selling a product. No longer is it about fans enjoying sport. It is all about the money. F1 is a hugely expensive sport but its success depends on the enthusiasm of its fans to support it, watch it and make it worthwhile for sponsors to spend the large amounts of money needed by the sport. Without the fans it is nothing so when the fans feel cheated and betrayed it must be damaging for the sport.

Even the Olympics is now tainted with the smell of money in everything it does. Sponsors decide what can and cannot be used to purchase tickets, what drinks should be available and even what T-shirts you are allowed to wear, if they get really picky.

As sports fans we have two choices. We either succumb to the power of the accountants and the money men or we walk away and ignore the sports that previously enthralled us but now want us only for our money. I have been a fan of F1 for over twenty years and have hardly missed a race. Suddenly I feel that journey is coming to an end. Do I really care who wins? I did but now it seems less important. I will no doubt watch the occasional race but I will not care as much and I certainly won’t be choosing to pay extra for the privilege of being a fan of a sport.

None of that justifies or excuses the embarrassing custard pie incident the other day during the select committee hearings into the hacking scandal. It was a shocking lapse in security at what surely should be one of the most secure places in the country. How on earth anyone could get a cream pie or a can of shaving foam through security is a puzzle that will no doubt be carefully looked at.

The investigation of the incident will take it’s course and charges may be brought but the behaviour of the authorities in excluding the pie incident cameraman who brought us those important pictures is a sign that the authorities are more concerned with their own embarrassment than they are with informing the public.

Paul Lambert (known as Gobby) is a producer/fixer for the BBC who succeeded in bringing us those memorable pictures as the pie incident cameraman and he should be applauded for that. The response of the authorities has been to ban him from the Parliament premises.

Filming in and around Parliament is restricted for obvious reasons and there are strict rules on what should and should not be shown but when an extremely unusual incident such as this occurs we should be glad the cameras are there to record it.

Banning someone for doing what is in the public interest is surely a sign that the embarrassed authorities are more concerned with covering their own backs than they are in being transparent with the public they are there to serve.

We are supposed to be a democracy. The government and all the supporting institutions are ultimately there to serve us, the public. The pie incident was embarrassing for the country but that doesn’t mean it should not have been shown.

We should be thankful that the people supplying us with the images of what occurred did so and those in power who have revoked Paul Lamberts permission to have access to Parliament buildings should be ashamed of themselves. He did us a greater public service than they did and he should be reinstated immediately with a proper apology for their hasty and misjudged actions in banning him.

When Andy Coulson resigned his position as the Prime Minsters spin doctor he said that the spin doctor could no longer perform his job when he became the news story himself and he was certainly right about that.He claimed to be innocent of the various accusations made against him and News International certainly didn’t come out and say he was wrong to make those denials.

Now that the NoW has become the big story it could hardly continue gloating at finding finding fleas on other people when it was a maggot farm itself. It had to do something drastic to change its image. As it turns out they were not given the opportunity to try to make ammends. So now the News Of The World is no more.

It is a sad day when a newspaper that has existed for 168 years is closed. Not for lack of interest or sales of the paper but closed in a vain attempt to staunch the bleeding body of  News International and Rupert Murdochs empire.

The NoW has always seemed to be a newspaper more interested in title tattle and finding a vicar who was sleeping with a parishoner than it was in educating the nation about the state of the world but it had its place in the market and a lot of people liked it enough to buy it every Sunday.

I found it annoying that it could be so hypocritical as to have a story about someone sleeping with someone elses wife on one page and the next page was semi naked women and a story that suggested we should all be out having more affairs but it was a very popular newspaper. People liked it and it continued to sell millions of copies each week. Perhaps it was all those Vicars wondering if they had made the paper that Sunday?

In a stroke 168 years of history has been killed off. Was it the newspaper that was evil? No. Did the building have evil spirits within it that corrupted the journalists who worked there? I think not.

It has been suggested that there was intrinsic corruption throughout the staff during the period of the phone hacking cases. We are expected to assume that every journalist that was employed at that time had a secret agenda and they wanted to perfom their evil acts. I don’t buy that line at all.

I do not believe for one moment that it is the journalists who run a national newspaper. Especially a newspaper in the Murdoch empire. I do not believe for a moment those journalists who were involved with phone hacking did so off their own back without any pressure or encouragement from management. I do believe it was a pressured environment where they were expected to get results and that pressure may well have turned decent people towards the darkside.

I have no doubt that all newspapers sail a little close to the wind when it comes to legality and obtaining stories. Sometimes they may overstep the mark and break the letter of the law to get a story and if that can be shown to be in the public good then I would say well done to them for taking the risk because we need people prepared to go out on a limb to challenge authority. So long as there is a justifiable and legitimate story to be told.

The NoW went way beyond anything anybody with any sense of decency or honesty would have considered acceptable and they did it under the editorship of Rebekah Brooks, the woman who is now Chief Executive of News International. How come she wasn’t sacked when the news of this debacle first came to light? How can she be defended while all the decent and honest workers who are now at the NoW face the prospect of unemployment?

It is so remarkable that it makes the mind wander and speculate what it is that makes her so special as to be armour plated. I have little doubt that if it had been anybody else she would have been long gone and she would now be busking for her supper.

This is a story that has some way to go.  The Guardian is reporting that Andy Coulson is to be arrested tomorrow over phone hacking which is sure to spoil his nights sleep. It seems that the Murdoch empire has thrown him to the wolves and destroyed the NoW with its 168 years of history in a damage limitation exercise intended to stop the rot from spreading ever upwards. It remains to be seen if it can succeed.

It is dramatic news and will bring a sense of relief to many while it will presumably be very bad news for a lot of decent and honest people who work for the newspaper both as journalists and production staff. It is certainly a bold move.

Something significant did need to be done to stem the flow of pus seeping from the boil that was the news of the world. It had the potential of spreading the damage to the other papers in the group as people have talked of having nothing to do with News International following the leaks of dreadful goings on.

There is a worry that this is an attempt to stem the flow of bad news to take the pressure off and hope that this will remove this story from the front pages. Even worse would be if it were to reduce pressure to have a full inquiry into the activities of the press in this country.

Whilst the wicked goings on happened at just one newspaper, apparently, we must not let the closure of that newspaper reduce the anger and disbelief at what they had been doing to the point that it gets forgotten and nothing changes.

We need a big overhaul of the press and a huge improvement in their ethical standards regardless of what happens to the NoW.

Well done to Rupert Murdoch for taking action and closing the newspaper but I would rather have seen a complete overhaul that turned the News Of The World into a true newspaper that anyone could be proud to read. It looks like that will never happen now.

RIP News Of The World

BBC News – News of the World to close amid hacking scandal.