Free and Diverse

Jeremy Corbyn's scheme to break up media conglomerates has the "What would you have instead, state media, eh, eh?" lot in full cry.

The British media, you see, as so free and diverse as they are.

Murdoch had to change his very nationality in order to conform to the media laws in Chairman Mao's America. It is Britain's free-for-all that is completely aberrant.

We have had a publicly owned television network ever since the noted Stalinist commissar, Margaret Thatcher, set it up. Does it confirm these people's fears?

In 18 months' time, though, Maggie TV will be owned by a foreign, probably a Continental European, state. "No! No! No!", say I. But to exactly as much effect as she ever did.

I am waiting for Channel 4 to go the way of so many other things that we, as a nation, used to own, but which are now owned by foreign states instead. It'll happen.

Although at least anyone would buy it. That is more than can be said for a lot of other things.

The Sun has been given away round here for several months. No one is even expected to be asked if they wanted to pay for the damn thing.

The Hillsborough Report is coming, and that will be the end of it. It will be gone before the next General Election. A thing out of time, it has fought its last battle.

The Times is currently in profit, but that is altogether exceptional. It has no longterm future without Sun Bingo, which is doomed. 

The Barclays have been desperately hawking the Telegraph titles around Russia, China, India and the Gulf for months, but no one wants to know.

One of London's leading media lawyers recently told me that his firm would act for absolutely anyone apart from the Daily Mail. It had offered them all the money in the world, pretty much, but the answer was still no.

Still, the Mail is certainly not on the brink of going bust.

Ban anyone from owning more than one national daily newspaper and more than one national weekly newspaper. If that. Why not only one national newspaper each?

And ban anyone from owning both print and broadcast media interests. The BBC makes do without a newspaper. For that matter the Daily Mail makes do without a television station.