Licence revoked

It really has been extraordinary – the decision to close the News of the World (although Murdoch will not forsake the Sunday tabloid market – that is a certainty). It reminds of the film A View to a Kill in which mad, evil genius Max Zorin, as part of his masterplan, is about to destroy a crucial mine with his workers inside still. The mine foreman, learning of this, protests indignantly “Mr Zorin, these men are loyal to y…” He is unable to finish his sentence as he is coshed by a Zorin associate and fall unconscious into the quarry area. Zorin proceeds to blow up the mine and machine guns to death everyone who survives the explosions and floods, maniacally laughing all along. If you replace Zorin with Rupert Murdoch, his henchman as James Murdoch and the mine foreman as editor Colin Myler, it works. “Mr Murdoch, these people are loyal to y…” I haven’t mentioned Rebekah Brooks? Well, Zorin tries to bump off Mayday as well to preserve his own position. Frankly, the brand may have been toxic but she is beyond that – Brooks is radioactive.
You may think a comparison with Elliott Carver in The World Is Not Enough would be a better James Bond reference. But Jonathan Pryce’s character was strangely insipid. The brutality, ruthlessness and casual callousness of Christopher Walken’s portrayal is a more apt.
Okay, these current News of the World staff are no innocents abroad but they weren’t involved in any illegality. I am shedding no tears at the demise of the paper, but I feel sad for those whose livelihoods were sacrificed on the altar of Murdoch’s masterplan, the acquisition of al of BSkyB.