I am angry at the way Rupert Murdoch’s empire is exploiting the grief of a bereaved mother to further its campaign against the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. I am also angry that The Sun newspaper is undermining this country’s difficult military strategy in Afghanistan.
Remember that Rupert Murdoch is only interested in building his empire and making money. He doesn’t care about the future of this country, the feelings of the mother, Jaqui Janes, or the lives of our soldiers in the conflict. News International wants to make money – full stop. It seems to me that if it means undermining a government, exploiting grief or putting military lives at risk that’s all part of the money making plan. By publishing a surreptitiously recorded phone call between the PM and Mrs Janes, The Sun has clearly gone against Press Complaints Commission’s code of conduct to grab another headline and extend the story by another day.
I am also unhappy that the BBC made such a big deal of the story – adding fuel to the fire and exciting the frenzy. Have the other papers gone big on this story today? No, because they recognise it for what it is. They have their own profits to make and thankfully for some of them, their own standards below which they won’t allow themselves to fall.
I’ve heard no end of commentators this morning saying how Gordon Brown must be feeling, but when I heard him speak and answer their questions at his press conference, he sounded perfectly composed and in control. Do they believe that if they tell us he’s losing it often enough it will somehow come true?
So I suggest that if you care; if this has also bothered you; that you stop buying the things that put money in Rupert Murdoch’s pocket – The Sun, The Times, films from 20th Century Fox and Sky TV, and lets starve his empire until he comes to his senses. Or do we want the future of our country to be determined by media barons instead of the ballot box. So Don’t Buy The Sun. OK
This might not look like the average Mothers’ Union meeting as we know them in Britain, but in terms of peacefulness, good works, child-centredness and Christian goodness, the Mothers’ Union branch in Harare is no different from its UK counterparts. Having known more hardship, its members are probably even more good than the unsung English stalwarts who keep the churches here upright in every sense. There can be no true explanation then for why, shortly after this photograph was taken, this meeting was broken up by Zimbabwe riot police.