[Omah]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...g-2308182.html

Simon Carr

The Commons, incredibly, may have done something in a timely way to change the course of events. How can Jeremy Hunt wave through the BSkyB deal now? How can he face the Commons after that lot yesterday, and say he has no power to stop the Murdoch takeover?

Backbenchers rose to the occasion from all sides of the House. Between them they established a central, organising fact: Rupert Murdoch's News International – its directors, editors and contractors – are not, in Frank Dobson's phrase, "fit and proper persons to run a minicab company let alone the largest media organisation in Britain".

Tom Watson, in a magnificently understated J'accuse, listed the charges against the company and concluded that James Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia, be suspended for his plan to cover up, pay off and silence victims with a gagging contract.

From everything said, News International is in breach of all the 10 Commandments, Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Broadcasting Code and very possibly Newton's Laws of Motion. It and its management is, on its own evidence, guilty of lying, cheating, thieving, bribing, corrupting, suborning and going around with a hairstyle like a hat made of vipers.

The immediate quarry is the deal for News Corp to buy all of BSkyB. Nicholas Soames threw his weight into the scales by saying the evidence of "clear criminality" that had recently emerged surely meant "a pause" was in order. He also squashed Labour attempts to claim the moral high ground by pointing out that the rot had been around for years. So many of them on and around the front benches are in hock to News International with jobs, columns, consultancies, influence.

As for Murdoch? Who knows what the old crocodile feels, if "feels" is the right word.

mmmm ..... how long before Murdoch draws in the strings .....