Hat-tip to Mary for pointing me in the right direction.

For those of us who experienced a surge of naive hope that News International have been referred to Ofcom for a ruling on the “Fit and Proper Persons” test, here is a bucket of cold water. Rather than being disinterested public servants, the Board of Ofcom represent the political and financial establishments which are so irreversibly penetrated by the spores of News International. Many of them hold directorships of companies – like banks and insurance companies – which have a direct interest in seeing no further plunge in News Corp/News International share price. They are also beneficiaries of the policies Murdoch has championed – private equity firms and privatised utilities, for example.

Bluntly, there is no chance that a body of which the Chairman, Colette Bowe, is a Director of Morgan Stanley and of Electra Private Equity is going to pull the rug on News Corp.

Here is but a selection of some of the Directorships held by Ofcom board members:

Morgan Stanley
Electra Private Equity
Thames Water
Axa
Betfair Group
JJB Sports
Pace Plc – supplier of set top boxes to Murdoch’s Sky
Nujira Ltd – defence contractors to US military
Standard Life

That is just a selection. In addition, the Chairman is a director of the Wincott Foundation, a “charity” whose purpose is to spread the far right economic doctrines of Milton Friedman in Eastern Europe – to the benefit, ultimate if incidental, of Morgan Stanley and Electra Private Equity, in which she also holds directorships.

She is most unlikely to find the Murdoch influence pernicious, wouldn’t you say?

How on earth did we come to have a regulatory body for the communications industry composed of these kind of parasites? Why is it so overpacked with businessmen and so devoid of intellectuals? Again, to put that simply, why the Chairman of JJB Sports and no Eric Hobsbawm?

Our entire fabric of government is a sick fucking joke.