Sunday, July 17, 2011
A damp squib
If truth be told, today's lead story from the Independent on Sunday is disappointingly pedestrian. Despite all the hype the best the newspaper can come up with is that the the Conservative chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport committee is facebook friends with Elisabeth Murdoch and Les Hinton and that he has met some key figures in the scandal at social occasions.
To be fair, if the Chair of the Culture Committee was not meeting major figures in the media, then he would not be doing his job properly. What he does need to do is to remain impartial and have no interests that would impinge on his neutrality. It is obvious from the published evidence that in that regard Mr. Whittingdale is in the clear.
I can see no reason at all why he should not continue as Chair nor why he would not conduct a very robust interrogation of the witnesses on Tuesday.
To be fair, if the Chair of the Culture Committee was not meeting major figures in the media, then he would not be doing his job properly. What he does need to do is to remain impartial and have no interests that would impinge on his neutrality. It is obvious from the published evidence that in that regard Mr. Whittingdale is in the clear.
I can see no reason at all why he should not continue as Chair nor why he would not conduct a very robust interrogation of the witnesses on Tuesday.
