So Rupert Murdoch has admitted that News International covered up the phone hacking scandal. But poor old Rupert was deliberately kept in the dark by his evil minions at News of the World. They knew what was going on but they didn't tell him.

Poor Rupert. Staff aren't what they used to be

It would appear (based on the Leveson Inquiry) that any/all dubious activities by News International are restricted to the UK.

Nobody in the MSM is raising any questions about it's activities in the US and Australia. So.. it's business as usual.... cool...

In his Leveson evidence Rupert left his options open on Scottish independence itself. -It's a bargaining chip for him. If London can outbid Edinburgh in what it offers Murdoch to take their side, he will.

It's how he plays the game.

"They [the politicians] are seen to be shamelessly courting" the media mogul and doing his biding-- the Minister for Murdoch-- as they duck the need for increased media regulation, more competition, and less concentrated media ownership.

In 1987, the Hawke government allowed Murdoch's purchase of the Herald & Weekly Times and months later his papers backed Labor.

"They tacitly agree with Murdoch's reduction of democracy to different media in the deregulated market"

David Putnnam in the Observer says that Murdoch's actions have resulted in democracy – not just in the UK, but in the US, Australia and elsewhere – being consistently and wilfully undermined in pursuit not simply of profit but, far more corrosively, of power.

For the past 30 years, the Murdoch empire has sought to undermine and destabilise elected governments, and independent regulators, in pursuit of a political agenda that, while hiding behind a smokescreen of free market orthodoxy, is in the end nothing less than a sophisticated attempt to optimise the power and influence of News Corporation and its populist, rightwing agenda.
That's to say low (or better still, no) corporate taxes, minimal state regulation and the creation of an aura of "exceptionalism" sufficient to convince and recruit many of the most senior politicians in the western world to either turn a blind eye or actively help the company to achieve its commercial objectives.

The strategy is well-honed and, as Murdoch himself once admitted, brutally simple. "You tell the bloody politicians what they want to hear and once the deal is done don't worry about it."

With the Cameron government it was the scrapping of Ofcom, a review of the BBC licence fee and the relaxation of impartiality rules in broadcasting. That's News International's agenda in the UK.

democracy and free speech nearly always form Murdoch's alibi or cover for his trail of destruction.

Murdoch is the past. Full BSkyB ownership is beyond News Corp's grasp now. The back door to Downing Street is closed. The power of Murdoch in the UK is broken.

The underlings were all paid for their dastedly deads even if it was just to keep their jobs. Society and evil overlords do not corrupt people. People corrupt themselves by not saying no and walking away.