An awful lot of people seem to be getting very worked up about phone hacking, it is illegal and I have no doubt it is commonly used by many people not just newspapers to try and get information they are not entitled to. But let’s try and get some sense of perspective here, with one very sad exception (so far) the vast majority of the people alleged to have been hacked are celebrities. Now without exception celebrity is an industry that thrives on publicity, I have a nasty suspicion that “celebrities” who haven’t actually had their phones hacked will rush forward and claim they have just to get noticed. After all the quote goes something like what’s worse than being talked about? Not being talked about so draw your own conclusions.
It is, I understand, incredibly easy to retrieve voice mail, you simply dial the mobile number and enter the pin, if you haven’t changed the pin from 0000 or whatever your phone manufacturer has used then you have only yourself to blame. I’m going to set my phone not to accept messages if I can, most people drone on telling you stuff you don’t really want to know so a curt send a text is the way forward. Missed calls appear as well missed calls so you know who to call back, simples.
I also believe that there are far more important things to worry about than a few dozen celebs having their phones hacked. This farce has pushed far more serious news off the front page, remember Libya and Syria? I don’t think they are on hold while we’re distracted by all this. And what about Greece, it was mentioned in passing on the news today then back to endless analysis of how Rupert and James performed yesterday. I think some of the people slinging mud at the Murdochs and News Corp should remember that people who live in glass houses would do well not to throw stones. I seem to recall it’s not so long ago that MPs were being put through the wringer for expenses, a lot of this smacks of revenge. Where will it end? Murdoch will probably walk away from the UK press and there is a danger we could lose two very established and respected newspapers – The Times and The Sunday Times, both apparently losing money year on year. Whether they will pull out of Sky is anyone’s guess, I suspect not but I wouldn’t blame them if they did. It is important to remember that SkyNews is available not just on Sky it is also on Freeview and news is very very expensive to do half as well as Sky do it. Having worked in the BBC and ITV I can assure you Skynews is 99.9% of the time better than anything else we have at the moment.
It may also be against some sections of the media’s rules for a policeman to accept the offer of free accommodation at a spa while he recovers from an operation. It would appear this was listed in the register as a freebie and no more was said until a link was established between an ex NOW employee and the spa. It’s difficult to tell whether the baying pack are more incensed that he got it free and they didn’t or that someone worked for a company who did business with the spa. Madness, hysteria and just silly. What ever happened to proportion and common sense?
I ran a business with three employees, you would imagine it would be fairly easy to keep tabs on them, don’t you believe it. I was blissfully unaware that they shut up shop early on my day off and I only knew the half of what went on if a client brought it to my attention. It wasn’t that I was lax in my supervision it’s just that you have to trust your employees and that is quite simply what Mr Murdoch did. You hire people to do a job, not so you can spend every waking hour watching them.
So let’s get all this nonsense out of the way as quickly as possible, Ed Milliband can go back to being just a minor annoyance and Dave, Nick and co. can get on with trying to repair our broken society and mend the economy.
Murray Laidlaw 