'Phone Hacking: Think Laterally

At each stage in the 'phone hacking avalanche of the past month, people have asked: what's next ? If that's happening, what else ? The 'authorities' are now musing that perhaps computer hacking should be brought into the frame.

And the rest ! Given that newspaper men (and women) are in frequent and personal contact with all manner of other furtive fellows, and that they doubtless compare notes on methods etc, here's a couple of other suggestions for expanding the scope of enquiries.

- what do we imagine certain unscrupulous former journalists that were in the employ of Blair and Brown in government, used to get up to when the full resources of MI5 were at their disposal ?

- ditto the respective Whips offices

As for the police ... let's simply note that everyone's worst fears about the impossibility of ID card data being kept secure have been realised in full.

There is so much more to come tumbling out of the closet on this issue - it may even distract us from the forthcoming meltdown of the financial system !

ND

News of the World to close

Wow. What a move by the Murdoch Empire, putting a bullet into one of their main UK title's - a 168 year old paper nonethless.

However, this is a great example of not wasting a good crisis. Given the understandable outrage generated by the paper its brand was very damaged. No doubt News Corp recalled the Sun boycott in Liverpool after Hillsborough.

So that meant drastic action was needed. However, newspapers are highly unionised entities and not easy to change or close down - given their staff prediliction and ability to complain in public. News of the World was loss-making and many people can see the newspaper business model is under severe challenge from the internet. So this is a great opportunity to do the right thing and also manage to exit a business which was struggling in any event - and how can the Unions complain?

Clever move and personally I shan't miss the News of the Screws in any event.