are you sick of the corruption in Britain?

[magpienchips]

last year the newspapers had a field day exposing the outrageous mp's expenses system
now the papers themselves are being turned against by the very people they exposed as cheats and crooks and now so called 'celebrities' are all coming out and adding to the bitter diatribe against the press.
I don't know about you but when I watched Gordon Brown stand up in the houses of parliament last week and added his bit to the attack against Murdoch
I could not switch channels quick enough.
now of course GB is human like the rest of us and I guess he deserves a fair hearing if he has something to say but it's kind of hard to forget that this is the man was was chancellor and was called the prime minister for a while and if my memory serves me well he did not do a good job in either post.
also if he is so socially conscious now he is no longer chancellor and no longer pretends to be prime minister, why did he make such a mess while he was in office?
also if Murdoch is such a baddie now are we to believe he was a goody two shoes before the brown stuff changed the color of his skin and expensive suit?
fact is I don't buy Brown's argument against Murdoch...after all remember this is the man who considers an elderly pensioner who dared to voice her concerns about immigration in her own country to be a 'bigot' and then when he was questioned about it while being interviewed live on air he did a 'Murdoch' and covered his face with his hands which of course is the body language of a person who is foolish enough to speak his mind while on a campaign to win support, but then vainly tries to hide when he is called to account for what he had said.
in short there is something hypocritical about someone who shouts very loud about the 'crimes' of another man and how he showed little respect for other people etc...and yet that man showed little or no respect for Gillian Duffy when she had the courage to voice her concerns to the man who no doubt wanted to win her support to get him into number 10.
fact is Gordon Brown showed himself to be in need of heart just as Murdoch has.
anyway please share your Thoughts.
Thanks.

But the NI business is actual crime isn't it? Calling someone whose views you disagree with a bigot isn't. Not is it as bad as deleting the phone messages of a missing child. Not by any stretch of the most fevered imagination...

Op - read Peter Hitchens in today's Mail. Says it all.

Brown is a distraction....Murdoch has created an empire based on bullying and ruthless reporting often made up news. People have committed suicide as a result. Frankly he has profited big time.

I think criminality pervades the organisation and it is very scary.

I think Gordon Brown's poor image is partly because of the information fed to the public by this sector of the press. I have a friend with press connections (can't say too much on that for obvious reasons) who tells me the editors are very selective with the stories that are published e.g. Politician A has an affair, so does Politician B but only one of those stories will be published according to their "agendas" at the time. Do you think they'd have made the Gillian Duffy thing public if the press weren't determined to get GB out? How many people have never come out of a difficult meeting or social situation and said something indiscreet? I still think leaving a mike on somebody is an unlikely thing for professionals to do, I suspect it was not accidental at all but a calculated attempt to catch the man out. Eavesdropping on a private conversation in the OMs car to me seems as good as bugging it.

I am very cynical, I suspect this corruption has always gone on and always will but if we, the public, do not stamp on it whenever we get the chance we will be as bad as they are.

Interesting post, Timidviper.

Yes, I hate corruption in high places. However, it is interesting to watch the media turning on itself like that dreadful disease where your own body starts digesting itself. (Or was that a sci-fi film?)

Compared to other countrys we have very little corruption in our political system

I don't think you could describe this as corruption as such.

I think Gordon Brown is a fairly honourable man. Totally unsuited for chancellor, let alone Prime Minister but overall as decent as politician's get.

The problem I think is that it's obvious that in the modern world, the press are the one's who can make/break government's. And overall they've done a pretty good job at exposing real corruption, real public concerns like the expenses scandal. They've been in effect the watchers of our masters.

But what's happened is that a single person has been allowed to own far too much of the world's press. And that's dangerous because who watches the watcher?

For some time now NI has been able to influence who's in power by simply getting their journalists to rake up muck on politicians or just threaten it. I mean everyone has skeletons to hide if you dig deep enough. Politician's are no different.

The problem is though that they've been allowed to not only cross the line but they actually define themselves where the sodding line is!

For once in my life I find myself agreeing with Ed Miliband. It's time to break up News International if we can (it's multinational). A series of smaller companies can compete and self-police far better than one large corporation where one man can effectively play king maker.

Wot niceguy2 said

and verax as well. As unpleasant as this is, in terms of corruption, the UK is in the minor leagues. It has nothing on places like the Russian Federation, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, even Italy. Thank goodness Murdoch isn't the Prime Minister