Notting Hill 2 (og, Grant) - Wapping 0

Did anyone see Hugh Grant on Question Time last night? What a fella! He's certainly gone up in my estimation, and is anything but the wet liberal wine quaffing proto-toff he comes across as in his films. Within seconds of the program starting he was off, rightly describing News International's decision to axe NotW as "A cynical managerial manoeuvre which has put several hundred...(innocent) not editorial staff out of work...(while keeping) the editor while Milly Dowler was hacked in a job". Mrs Brooks'  position is looking increasingly untenable and by the time I publish this she may well have gone, and good riddance.

Moving on to Cameron's stooge on the panel Chris Grayling's refusal to say how the enquiry into the sordid goings on at NotW would be set up, Hugh said that he "smells a rat" in that "Cameron is still thinking "do I stay in bed with Murdoch or do I cut him loose...and finally become my own man"...he's squirming" And for balance he also laid into Labour's Douglas Alexander, agreeing with him that the whole thing is obscene, etc, etc "but is not a fact that you (Alexander) were at Rupert Murdoch's party (full of Westminster politicos by all accounts) a few weeks ago?" He later interrupted a spat between Grayling and Alexander with "..you're  quarreling over who was the most in bed with Murdoch, I would say it seems a pretty even match to me".

Commenting on the fear in which Murdoch is held by UK politicians, Grant made a link between the then Mrs Ross Kemp's confessional gaffe before a Select Committee of MPs re paying bribes to police, and the MP who asked the question (Chris Bryant) being outed as gay in The Sun some weeks later, and MPs getting the message that if they were to be too inquisitive their personal lives would be destroyed  Powerful stuff indeed.

Grant projected more gravitas in his pinky than the two indistinguishable grey politicians put together. Oh, Shirley Williams was there too dispensing her usual common sense, and  former Sun journalist Jon Gaunt, who was a little too fond of the sound of his own strident and whiny voice for my liking. Gaunt rather shot himself in the foot by asking Grant "who are you to tell us who we should or shouldn't watch" in response to Grant's fear of Fox News rearing its ugly head on a fully Murdoch controlled BSkyB. Grant's instant and obvious response, which got a big round of applause was "and who is Murdoch to tell us who we should or shouldn't vote for". Marvellous!

The NotW issue took up nearly all the program, but there was time for a last question on the frankly idiotic decision to award the Thames Link train contract to a German company forcing the only UK train maker to lay off most of its workforce. Jon Gaunt redeemed himself answering the audience member's question of how the Germans and the French can still manage to build all their rolling stock in their own countries thus apparently circumventing the same EU legislation that the Tories would have you believe was responsible for the UK contract going abroad. David Dimbleby asked Gaunt how the Germans and the French "get away with it" and in the best traditions of tabloid journalism, Gaunt said they got away with it because "they stick two fingers up to the stupid legislation". Sad, but essentially true. Regardless of the macro economic reasons for sending the contract across the channel, which ultimately saves jobs over here (another debate that one, but Shirley Williams nailed it), as Hugh Grant said it is a morally depressing state of affairs that we are no longer competitive on the manufacturing front. In all too predictable fashion, Grayling and Alexander then proceeded to blame each other. Sad but inevitable.

QT can sometimes be very dull, and it is a long time since I've watched the entire show, but last night's edition was a gem.

Murdoch's clumsy ploy in crushing NotW out of existence is so obviously a ruse to sweeten the way to him taking full control of BSkyB, which I'd be amazed if it is not approved, if not now, at some later date. One can only hope the Government have the balls to tell this horrible embodiment of everything that's wrong with global capitalism to go do one, but I do not hold out much hope while politicians of all colours are afraid of Murdoch's power and influence. If Murdoch is "a fit and proper person" Then I am Tamsin Egerton's bikini line waxer. Further developments tonight indicate that Ofcom will put a big obstacle in the way of Murdoch's takeover ambitions by launching a "fit & proper" enquiry after the police have concluded their investigations, leading to a big fall in BSkyB's share price, so hopefully my inital view is wrong!

Back to the furore surrounding the hacking scandal - we should all be very careful what we wish for. Remember that countless scandals, lies, and tales of corruption in high places have been exposed by the press over the years, doubtless more than once involving legally dubious methods. Whilst surely no-one can argue, that for example, uncovering the obvious endemic corruption encompassing football mandarins using whatever method comes to hand is to be applauded, hacking into the phones of murder victims is plainly wrong. What the press in general and News International in particular is in need of is not legal censure but a moral compass. Quite how this is done is another debate, but placing restrictions on the ability of the press to uncover wrongdoing by the not-so-great and the not-so-good is the start of a slippery slope to a world where the amoral rich and powerful get away with their questionable practices with even more ease than they do at present.