The Dark Lord

Following on from my previous Leveson post, I just HAVE to write about the evidence of The Dark Lord Dacre whom I watched twice this week, he having been recalled to give further evidence.

I have considerable contempt for Associated Newspapers and all its works – The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday.

Why?

1. It's hypocritical – It pretends to be as serious as a broadsheet whilst actually slumming around in the tabloid ‘z-list celebrity hell’ gutter. At least the other tabloids don’t pretend to be anything other than they are.

2. It's so arrogant – It seems to have decided what and who are acceptable and anything or anyone not on its approved list is to be vilified, denigrated and trashed.

3. It cheapens our culture – It plays to the very worst of that horrible part of middle England: homophobic, racist, right-wing, reactionary and xenophobic, desperately pretending there was some halcyon era when everyone was lovely to each other, crime was non-existent and there were no ‘darkies in the village’.

And the evil genius at the top of this foul smell is The Dark Lord Dacre. His evidence, both written and oral, underlines everything which is foul about Associated Newspapers and the rest of our tabloids.

First - and get this - his evidence actually says: “Self-regulation has been a success story.”

Excuse me. Did I miss something? Seems Lord Justice Leveson should just pack up and go home, the Dark Lord says it’s all OK. It’s OK to trash people. It’s OK to harass them. It’s OK to print lies and then apologise on page 49. It’s OK to hack, bug, burgle and cheat. All OK. The system’s working awfully well. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Second, his malevolent self. He was THE most shifty of all the witnesses to date. Arrogant. Antagonistic. Bombastic. Sneering. Supercilious. Rude. Sarcastic. He was contemptuous and frankly contemptible. He behaved like one of those deposed dictators, finding himself in the International Court, in complete denial that he had done anything wrong and pretending not to recognise the authority of the court.

And this leads me to conclude that nothing can change in print media land - our society cannot rid itself of their filth - until he and his ilk are deposed.

Simply, he is not a fit and proper person to run or edit a newspaper. I am desperately hoping that the twists and turns of Hugh Grant's brave campaign against him finally brings him to his end.