hacked off

My brief musings on the phone hacking scandal (I trust readers will be able to search the Internet on the back ground on what this is about ) :

• State-imposed censorship is wrong, but so are the actions of the NOW, who have clearly been sticking two fingers up to the law for some time and have brought not just themselves into the gutter but also all the good journalists, who do act with integrity.

• Brookes should go because as Truman once said "the buck stops here". There is no excuse to claim that she was on holiday when apparently the hacking of some of the people happened and therefore attempt to get off by placing the blame of all these serious allegations,on minions (who could presumably do what they  allegedly wanted?).

• The takeover of BskyB must now be halted as at present I cannot see that News International are "fit and proper" to run a flower stall, let along a listed corporation. The culture secretary is hiding behind rules and regulations, but if they really wanted to stop this, then I am sure that they would find a legal way to do so (just as Labour, flouting competition rules, found a way to merge Lloyds and Halifax to a mega bank in 2008).

• The police also have a lot of questions to answer and this will lead to the same drop in reputation as journalists, although it is worse for the police because they are supposed to be the authority of the law. For every honest copper has now been tarnished by the actions of the greedy and corrupt.

• Finally, Cameron must be wondering what made him hire Andy Coulson as his spin doctor and then director of the Downing Street spin machine (before he was pushed out). How many more errors of judgement has our prime minister made (that we don't yet know about) that will come back to haunt him and the conservative party?