back to article Hunt refers News Corp/BSkyB bid to Competition Commish

News Corp's planned bid to merge with BSkyB will be referred to the Competition Commission, the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed in the House of Commons this afternoon. Labour leader Ed Miliband said the government had been slow to respond to the public mood following the unfolding phone-tapping scandal that has …

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  1. louis walsh's toilet
    Devil

    dear australia...

    please take your withered, droopy jowled old cunt and stick him on ayers rock (or whatever it's new name is) and leave him in the baking sun (not the newspaper) for 3 months....we'll even let you win the ashes for the next 5 years......and while you're at it - take fucking old whinging twat germaine greer too......

    1. Term

      Not Australian?

      Didn't he renounce his Australian Citizenship to become a US citizen so he could buy US Papers?

      So please don't litter Ayres Rock, how about Death Valley instead?

      1. Petrea Mitchell
        Mushroom

        It was for Fox

        "Didn't he renounce his Australian Citizenship to become a US citizen so he could buy US Papers?"

        It was so he could start the Fox TV network, but yes, it was to get around US regulations.

        Death Valley may not be doable, but as the Guardian has noted, since News Corp is based in the US, he and the other executives may be jailable under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

    2. Combat Wombat
      Trollface

      Australia already has...

      too many insufferable prats.

      Actually, yes !

      We can send them all back to Australia, and turn the place back into the worlds biggest insufferable prat prison!

      As long as we can throw Warnie in the too.

      Luckily.. I am in Canada :D

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Ayres Rock, Death Valley?

      "Just roast him slowly on the embers of the pyre used earlier to burn the fucking witch."

      </Frankie Boyle>

    4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Angel

      The sad thing is...

      ...you cannot fault him for the public's rather dismaying taste in bilge.

      1. 7mark7
        Devil

        "...you cannot fault him for the public's rather dismaying taste in bilge."

        A segment of the public like that bilge, a segment he makes grow.

  2. Nickic

    Let's just face facts here

    This deal is eventually going to go through: everyone knows it. This is just some clever tactic from News Corp.

    Just give BSkyB to The Dirty Digger now. We all know it's going to go through eventually.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Let's just face facts here

      "This deal is eventually going to go through: everyone knows it. This is just some clever tactic from News Corp."

      It's possible. Just out of interest, who else is bidding?

    2. Hayden Clark Silver badge
      Devil

      Oh, yes, indeedy...

      .. since if the deal had been referred to OfCom, they could have used the "fit and proper" test - which News International would have failed.

      Now, the only grounds for denial is competition grounds, which can be argued by expensive lawyers any way you like.

      So the game plan is to have a nice long Competition Commission enquiry, then if nobody in NI is stupid enough to get convicted, and the sheeple have forgotten, the deal can go through.

      If convictions in NI (rather than the News Of the World, RIP) do happen, things might change, of course. However, that is not likely. Don't forget that NI have already been deleting emails, and you can bet your bippy that a bunch of ninja-IT types with DBAN disks are already in NotW offices "cleaning up for the liquidation sale". Oh, and chucking all those obsolete tapes in the shredder too, just to be on the safe side.

      The pols value their connections with the powerful mass media much more than our opinion - which they have already bought with said media.

  3. Bob Starling

    Well isn't that so cosy

    News Corp conveniently provides government with excuse to avoid making decisions on their grab for BSkyB for a couple of years. I wonder what they expect their quid pro quo to be?

    Just more cynical crisis management like keeping Rebekah Brooks in place in the short term to act as a bullet catcher.

  4. NomNomNom

    sad

    its shameful to see politicians falling over themselves to do the public's bidding. A bunch of fuss over a few phone hacks doesn't justify this "outcry". A little mentioned effect of News of the World closing is that there will be from now on more pedophiles in the UK. News of the World was instrumental in finding pedophiels and releasing their addresses to the public (and yes that might have involved hacking pedophile phones - so what?) but now they are gone. I hope those guardian and telegraph readers who bulled News of the World into closing are pleased with what they are done...well done guys thanks for getting rid of a british tradition

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Childcatcher

      wrong forum, the daily mail one is over there ->

      n/a

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      won't anyone think of the children?

      nomnomnom, you are either a massive troll or beyond stupid. or both.

      please fuck off to the daily star - it uses small words with big letters and it's got pictures of girls with their tits out and everything. oh and nobody there can spell paedophile either, so you'll feel right at home.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @AC 7:25

        Preeeeeetty sure he was being sarcastic there champ. Swing and a miss...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Headmaster

      Paediatricians etc.

      And they made sure all those evil pseudopodia got sent back to amoeba or wherever they came from...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Meh

      Following The Tradition 'Don't Let Facts Ruin a Good Yarn'.

      NomNomNom, sad to say you are following the good old tradition so faithfully,' never let facts get in the way of a good (make believe) story'. (Please check the spelling of paedophiles).

      The great hucksters closed the News of the World because miss management had run the thing into the sand. Do not worry News International will be back on a Sunday, just as soon as they can bring something 'Oh So New And Clean Looking' back.I doubt that it will feature anything about phone hacking!

      It is no damned good trying to claim the moral high ground when the hysteria and crocodile tears resulted in such breakthroughs as paediatricians being hunted down in the place of real villains or victims being victimised by your darling paper using illegal activities paid for by ???.

      Oh and while we are at it what about the latest allegations about the work going on the The Times. A certain Mr Brown might have a word or two to say about that issue later. What do we have institutional illegality?

      We all should take a little care over the legal aspects, at the very least the management are going to struggle to show that they are fit and proper to run anything larger than a one person (must not be sexist) market barrow. I have considerable sympathy for those who bought into the 'We did Good chasing out the naughty people' and worked for those who appear to have failed in their management responsibilities, they are now jobless due to someone above them having a callous and cavalier belief they were above the law.The News of the World was killed by a direct action of 'the clan' who owned and operated it and drove off the advertisers.

      How many thousands of illegal phone hacks are required before such as you are able to see that the law was being broken on an industrial and almost continuous scale.

      Miliboy grandstanding over what to do is almost as sickening. If you are going to stop something bad happening, at least try to go through the motions of having your legal ducks in the right alignment.

      Remember the time someone was sacked by ministerial order it has come back to haunt the tax payers with a probably large bill.

      A question, How many paedophiles went underground after they were outed?

      1. NomNomNom

        If your argument is so good

        how come you are chosing to remain anonymous?

        the whole pedotricians argument is a fallacy. Apart from one or two isolated incidents most of the people hunted down and hounded by the News of the World were actual pedophiles. Some of those pedophiles might have even been pedotricians (who knows? not us anymore now that the News of the World has gone they can't report on it anymore)

        It's funny that everyone is always banging on about Sarah's Law all the time but when push comes to shove and a paper actually implements an anti-pedo system that will work, the public scupper it just because of a bunch of phone calls.

        "A question, How many paedophiles went underground after they were outed?"

        Exactly. And now that News of the World is gone a flood of pedophiles are going to come out of the woodwork. Yet have you heard any government warnings to parents to be vigilant in coming days? I haven't. Like the banking crisis it will go ignored until its too late.

        1. Martin
          Facepalm

          NomNomNom, you're either a troll or an idiot...

          ...so I'm not sure why I'm responding to you.

          But let's give it a try.

          If paedophiles are driven underground, this is not a good thing.

          The whole point of paedophiles going underground is that once they are underground, the police no longer know where they are, and can't keep an eye on them

          If there is a paedophile in my town, I'd like to be sure the police know where he is. And if he leaves the town, it's a good thing that they know where he's gone.

          If paedophiles are driven underground, so that the police no longer know where they are, the world is actually a more DANGEROUS place for kids....

          But you're clearly too stupid to understand this.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Perhaps irony...

      ...isn't *always* the right tool for the job on these pages?

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      There will also be more paediatricians

      @NomNomNom - there will also be more paediatricians too - safe from 'outing' by rabid, illiterate, bile ridden ex-NoTW readers like you.

    7. Jim Carter
      Mushroom

      Oh, the responses to this are going to be good.

      *Sits back with popcorn*

      *Munch*

    8. Kane
      Trollface

      @NomNomNom

      1/10 - must troll harder.

  5. BillyIdol
    Pint

    @dear Australia

    He is now an Aussie-American as he had to become a US citizen to own TV channels there.

    As for the ConDems, like Thatcher and Tony Blair before them, we all know who the real pupper master is...

    Rebeka-ka-ka-ka-ka-kah must have some good dirt on them, or perhaps they made an error of judgement and really didn't mean to cause all these problems

    Beer, because there's no Glenda Slagg icon.

  6. Mark Dowling
    Thumb Up

    Vince Cable - right all along?

    If he's not enjoying a nice dram / whatever he's having himself, he should be

  7. johnnymotel
    Coat

    the ultimate sentence?

    send the murdoch's back to OZ and force them to watch Cell Block H 24/7

    1. Peter Murphy
      Stop

      No thank you.

      Barring a few half-witted journalists and editors, Australia doesn't want Murdoch back at all.

      Since he threw away his Australian passport to obtain an American one, throw him to the Yanks instead.

      1. johnnymotel

        that's OK

        just syndicate CBH to the Fox Network, right up their gutter.

  8. NoSh*tSherlock!
    Mushroom

    Gordon Brown's bank account?

    Well at least that is in the public interest - and fair too as he hacked into mine and removed large chunks for the last ten years and then left us all in debt.

  9. cocknee
    WTF?

    sympathy with the NoTW workers.

    like all good unionists I deplore the capitalist mistreatment and exploitation of workers rights. How they're being made redundant At a moments notice, whilst the fat cats make their huge profits At their expense.

    Oh hang on a minute, the NoTW always championed workers rights. Was a plWeform of the oppressed and downtrodden... Did they hell!!!

    You can all Fuck off down to the Job Centre and eat my s***

    Well until like all dodgy companies it re-forms under another name and causes the same misery as before!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Shit sticks

    And its nice to see a bit of this is finally, and deservedly, leaking out to attach itself to Murdoch's other outwardly respectable properties. The NotW on its own is just not enough for me, it just happens to be the more obviously gutter end of things.

    I sincerely hope the competition commission, in considering "plurality" will extend its musings to the details of the actual coverage given by the Murdoch stable to what, like it or not, is a major news story. As far as the Sun's concerned, it may as well not happened at all, at least in the prominent bits of the paper, and what there is is soft pedalled across all NI outlets. I can't be arsed soiling myself by looking, but across the pond I sincerely doubt it's distracting Fox from the important business of publicly eviscerating anyone who isn't a foaming right wing nutter.

    Its not good enough to say " X owns this and Y owns that, so there's choice" - it should be a reasonable expectation that all outlets provide a broad coverage (if a little skewed) of major current events, without entirely omitting those that have the temerity to annoy the owner's cock-eyed view of the world. I'm pretty sure "free press" is supposed to about "free to cover the difficult stories that put noses out of joint" rather than "free to ignore whatever the boss don't like".

    If the press as a whole put a little more backbone into reporting genuine public interest stories rather than tittle-tattle about where some trivial celebrity penis is currently embedded, or spoon-fed PR froth, we might actually live in a better country where the top layer is a little less full of preening, overpaid self-serving wankers.

  11. Jemma
    FAIL

    To misquote (Gene) Hunt...

    "You're surrounded by armed MP's...."

    Can the group of idiots we have for a government do one thing right and stop screwing around with "can they/cant they" about BSB and just shut the whole lot down and put Murdoch and co where they belong.

    So many Hunt-isms come to mind about Murdoch, but I think the most apt would be the one about the leper at the cookery course... and at least the leper had a fundamental honesty of purpose.

    Its now come out that these bottom-feeders were hacking 9/11 victims... I'd hate to be them if Americans are involved...

  12. Andy Enderby 1
    FAIL

    @NomNomNom

    Have looked back at your previous posts in other discussions and at your comments on this subject in particular. You can be only a troll or Andy Coulsons best buddy........ By the way..... the paediatrician, and related controversy was not restricted to phone calls. There were if I remember coverage at the time riots, property destruction and assaults. How about the poor bastard that had the misfortune to have some degree of resemblance to one of NoTW's publicised paedophiles ? It was rabble rousing almost a la Damian Day in order to sell papers.

    Be honest chap...... which of Murdochs organs do you work for ?

    1. NomNomNom

      ill send you a voice mail

      nt

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