Dial M for Murdoch, C for corruption, but who ya gonna call?

July 22nd, 2011

I found this image at the Wooster Collective – a great piece of visual satire. But the question is “who are you going to call?” And it may well be that the Ghostbusters might be our best option, because as Seamus Milne wrote,

But the real frenzy isn’t the exposure of the scandal – it’s the scale of corruption, collusion and cover-up between News International, politicians and police that the scandal has revealed. As the cast of hacking victims, blaggers and blackmailers has lengthened, and the details of the incestuous payments and job-swapping between News International, government and Scotland Yard become more complex, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture that is now emerging.

If it were not for the uncovering of this cesspit, the Cameron government would be preparing to nod through the outright takeover of BSkyB by News International, taking its dominance of Britain’s media and political world into Silvio Berlusconi territory. But what has been exposed now goes well beyond the hacking of murder victims and dead soldiers’ families – or even the media itself. The scandal has lifted the lid on how power is really exercised in 21st-century Britain – in which the unreformed City and its bankers play a central part.

What concerns Milne is the moral lassitude that seems to pervade all parts of the systems that are supposed to be edifices of British Life. Read: Barclays Bank The Real Indoor Pirates, or The Problem with Murdoch’s Media.

Is it time to truly Reboot Britain, which is different to playing lip service to it? A far too many people and organisations have done and are doing. A people will only be free when they can control their own communications. And that fact has been drawn into sharp focus.

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