Wednesday 20th March

At last a degree of common sense has broken out; a form of words has been devised to save face.  Cameron’s face of course, because he was heading for defeat on press regulation.  And now his old friends in the press are crying ‘Traitor’, ‘Betrayal’ and the ‘Death of Free Speech’, which is all nonsense of course.  Free Speech will still be allowed, but not maligning and persecuting and telling lies about people who have no means of redress.  This is also a more fundamental argument about who runs the country.  For far too long political leaders of both parties cosied up to the press and more or less only got elected with press support.  That may still happen to some degree, as the power of the press, somewhat diminished by the internet and the fact that fewer and fewer people are buying newspapers, is still quite strong.

And now we have not only rumblings of discontent but several publications have said that they will not comply with the Royal Charter and will not recognize the new regulator to be set up in the near future.  They would rather be fined for not ‘joining’ the scheme than obey the law of the land.  This was the whole point of the argument in the first place.  Is the press outside the scope of the Law?   Well, for a while it was undoubtedly.  Now there has been a change of heart and more and more of the guilty will be brought, somewhat belatedly to Justice.  But on this fundamental question I am confused.  Personally I do not like some laws that have been passed, but I cannot remember having the right to opt out, to not join in with this law, to sit outside its jurisdiction and cock a snook at Parliament.

But of course that is exactly what Rupert and the Daily Mail and the Express and the Telegraph and the Star and the Mirror have been doing for years.  They just don’t like being in any fashion made to behave in a way that the overwhelming majority of people in this country want them to.  They can still do investigative journalism, they can still report on anything they consider of public interest.  They will simply not be able to tell outright lies, to humiliate and invade the private lives of ordinary people, to in some cases drive people to suicide by their inane desire to kick a person when they are down.  Common humanity is all we are asking for.  And if the press don’t like it, hard luck.  Blame Rupert – he got you all into this mess.