The Sun - Parody or Just a Sick Joke?

This Says It All!
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Today the prime minister "blinked first" on  press regulation when a deal was reached between the the three main political parties on regulating the press in England and Wales after the phone hacking scandal.

An independent regulator will be set up by royal charter, but views vary over whether it would be underpinned by law. Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and the Hacked Off campaign group all seem to be under the impression that it will be, however, David Cameron in his "infinite wisdom" is refusing to concede this because if he does he knows he will be in trouble with the right wing press.

The Culture Secretary, Maria Miller has taken to the TV and radio studios all day telling blatant lies, (like a female Cameron). Among the lies she said that the government had held meetings with the Hacked Off campaign, this is an outright lie, the Hacked Off group had repeatedly requested meetings with Maria Miller and David Cameron but were totally ignored, however there were plenty of meetings between Hacked off and Miliband and Clegg. Miller also kept repeating throughout each interview that the Tories had forced Labour to "row back from their extreme version of regulation", again this is untrue hysterical nonsense.

The latest news is that the press are asking for more time to consider this and bizarrely they are complaining they were not involved in last night's meeting when the deal was thrashed out, their complaint may have carried more impetus if they had allowed members of the Hacked Off campaign and Miliband and Clegg into their secret talks which were held between the press, the prime minister and the culture secretary, they can't have it both ways and why the secrecy?

The "deal" is voluntary regulation and the press do not have to sign up to it but they are now letting it be known they may go it alone and set up their own independent regulatory body! Proof (if it was ever needed) that the press in this country think they can do and say what they like when they like and they are going to resist to the death anything that says they can no longer behave in this a way. Monday's Sun headline was so far beyond parody that I thought it was some kind of sick joke! It depicted a huge Winston Churchill with the caption D-Day in extra large print and the words;

"A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; It is the most dangerous foe of tyranny. Where men have the habit of liberty, the press will continue to be the vigilant guardian of the rights of the ordinary citizen"

Talk about nauseating sanctimonious claptrap and rank and blatant hypocrisy! Has the person that invoked Churchill's quote got any kind of grasp on reality? It was mainly because of the antics of editors, former editors and journalists of  papers like the Sun, Times and defunct News of the World acting like tyrants that this press regulation is needed at all! Vigilant guardian of the people? Really? Has the current editor of the Sun conveniently forgotten that it was News Corp papers journalists who hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler cruelly giving her parents and sister false hope that she was still alive? For this paper to get on its moral high horse and feign indignation over being forced to obey press regulations is a complete mockery of the hundreds of peoples lives this group of newspapers have blighted and in some cases ruined! The Sun hasn't learned anything from Leveson and the hacking scandal, just a few weeks ago they splashed glamour photographs of murdered Reeva Steencamp all over the front of their newspaper just 24 hours after she was killed, with absolutely no regard for the feelings of that poor girl's family and if they are not stopped, they will do it again and again to other people.That wasn't news it was cheap and nasty voyeurism! Have the Sun forgotten that they have former editors and prime minister's friends Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson up in court to answer serious charges among them perverting the course of justice?

Once again the press want to be left alone to regulate themselves and "mark their own homework", it is totally ridiculous, they are not above the law in this country, even if they think they are!

The Prime Minister should now take a strong stand (and not run away like he did last week) and tell the press, they either sign up to the new regulation or he will pass legislation in parliament and it will become statutory that they abide by the new laws and if they don't like it - tough.

Just who the bloody hell do the press think they are, they may think that unelected newspaper tycoons can make the laws in this country, but the people think otherwise. (Those self same people they claim to champion the rights of).

In a further twist the press are now complaining that David Cameron misled them last week, no really? Join the club the PM has been lying to and deliberately misleading the public ever since he assumed position of prime minister. I have never seen these papers go to great pains to inform the public that their prime minister appears to be a compulsive liar and splash that across the front of their pages, in fact they aid and abet Cameron in his lies to the public, so why did they think they were immune to Cameron's lies? He lies about everything and everyone else, why should the press be treated any different? Lying is what Cameron does and now they know what it feels like!

Whatever the outcome of this and be under no illusion the gutter press will fight to the death for the right to intrude on private grief, destroy lives, lie, misrepresent and attack the poor, the unemployed, the disabled, the vulnerable, immigrants and anyone else they take a dislike to and run vicious hate campaigns against people if they think it will get them what they want (BSkyB), but whatever, Cameron should not be resting easy in his bed tonight, now he turned against the press and reneged on any "deals" he offered them behind closed doors. Something tells me it will be Cameron they start going after next.

The press should also learn this lesson, they have personally attacked and tried to ridicule Ed Miliband at every twist and turn, they tried to ridicule his looks, that didn't work, they ridiculed anything he said, that didn't work, they tried to bully him, humiliate him and misrepresent him etc etc and none of it worked. They overplayed their hand, Labour realise that these papers are never going to support them and this was cathartic, it set them free and this new press regulation is a fruit of that, after all why worry about papers that will not support you and give you a fair shot anyway? There's absolutely no point!

The press should also learn, that the days they could print their garbage and get away with it unchecked are long gone, we have the internet and we can answer back and discover the truth, we do not need the gutter press and their condescending moralising and faux concerns. The Sun can print as many rabid banner headlines as it wishes but they shouldn't forget, it is not just the politicians that want this press regulation, but the majority of the public want it too, we are sick to death of sanctimonious patronising hypocrisy that dribbles out from papers like the Sun every day. The public think the press is allowed to get away with far too much and it's time it was stopped!

That time is now!