Leveson: how long, O Lord, how long?

The local scene is as dull as the weather. The Murdoch Inquiry is interminable. M’ learned friends representing the various interests must be opening off-shore bank accounts. I reckon leading Counsel must be on at least £5,000 a day. Cameron has yet to appear. Let’s see how he slithers out of this.

The next stage will be the criminal court hearings against Rebecca Big-hair, who is being lined up to take the rap on behalf of all the villains. Talk about the law of unexpected consequences. The whole thing was set up to screw Murdoch, but with one bound the Dirty Digger was free! It’s the politicians and the Old Bill feeling the heat instead. And why not?

The sorry saga of the Culture Minister lumbers on. In another era when there was a certain amount of integrity in politics Hunt would have resigned instantly without letting this farce draw on. But he is reputed to be as useless as the Pope’s wobbly bits and obviously quite unprincipled like many in the Cameron clique, and his political advisor got the early bath instead.

‘And what became of it at last’ quoth little Peterkin. Why, that I cannot tell’ said he, but…...

The only certainty is that things in the meeja will never be the same again.

It’s a heaven-sent opportunity to restrict press freedom. Since our only guardians against the elective dictatorship of the Commons are the media and the House of Lords, and both are about to be emasculated, the prospects for freedom are dire.

Hacking won’t stop, but hacks won’t do it themselves. They will simply buy the stuff from freelancers. Only the Daily Star, owned by Dirty Desmond, the King of the Top Shelf, will stay a largely unchanged because it publishes no news at all – only tits ‘n bums (38 at the last count).

The Red Tops will be more circumspect, and I reckon that we shall see some terminal casualties in the print media. The Gruaniad and Observer are in the cross-hairs because they are losing shed-loads of money without the sort of resources that enables Murdoch to fund the loss-making Times, which goes in the books as a tax-loss to News International in its Delaware lair, so the net cost to the Dirty Digger is zilch. The Independent is owned by a Russian money-bags, so should be OK until he tires of it. The Daily Mirror is in deep poo. The Torygraph seems sound, so perhaps the policy of dumbing-down is working – but on diminishing returns, I’d say.