The British Spring

[poliphilo]

 "You're really enjoying this," says Ailz- or words to that effect. My first reaction is "No, I can't be, because this is all about other people's pain and enjoying it would be wrong," but of course, she's right. I'm glued to the news media, waiting for the next revelation, the next resignation. So what's with the computer that was found in a bin in an underground car park and Charlie Brooks says it's his- no really, he'd lent it to a friend and he'd told the friend to drop it off in the car park and he'd pick it up...."? 

I don't hate Murdoch or Brooks or any of them. I don't particularly want to see them punished. It's quite enough that their power has been taken away. They pull a lever and the gears no longer answer. That'll do. That hurts them enough. 

Mainly I'm in love with history. And I particularly love those moments in the continuum when change speeds up and can be seen to be happening. This is one of them.  There are no crowds on the streets, no blood is being split, but it's not an exaggeration to talk about a "British Spring". Ever since Mrs Thatcher handed Murdoch his power every top politician has danced attendance on him and bent their ideals and policies into line with the business interests of News Corps. Murdoch has made the weather in Britain for 30 years. And suddenly his power has been broken. Just like that. And all because a minion in a far-off corner of his empire did something that made people feel sick.

People will look back on these events and wonder about them. How could such a person- not even a British citizen- have become so powerful? How come he maintained that power for so long? And they'll marvel at the suddenness of the fall. 

It's a tremendous story. 

An epoch in British history has come to an end. The landscape is changing as we watch. A great newspaper has disappeared, two police chiefs have resigned,  a government reels.

Comments

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

"A great newspaper has disappeared" - I almost gagged on my food when i read that. You got to be joking. It was a scummy rag not worth calling a newspaper!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It had a long, eventful history and a huge number of readers. These things make it "great". It was also a scummy rag. :)

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Here's hoping that the same thing happens to the Boston Herald, another conservative nasty rag with too much sympathy for anything anti-Obama. Are they biased? They do not think so.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Is the Herald a Murdoch paper?

[zoe-1418.livejournal.com]

I really hope that the landscape that is changing is as wide as we hope (so that, for instance, similar-but-different landscape over here changes as radically)!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

News Corps is unlikely to go away, but I think it will be prised away from the Murdochs. This story is going to run and run- unless of course the world economy tanks (as it may do) and we have more pressing things to think about.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I saw it compared over here to Watergate. I think the analogy is fairly good.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's the biggest scandal to sweep the British establishment since the Profumo scandal in the early 1960s. And it's still early dats.

[petercampbell.livejournal.com]

And there's still the revelations to come that Rebekah Brooks spoke about to the NOTW staff when the paper was closed down. Though they've gone mysteriously silent on that topic. This one's going to run and run...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed. We ain't heard nuthin yet.