Elective Affinities

The shadow secretary for Cultchah, Jeremy Hunt, has denied the accusation by Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring that Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives have adoped New Labour policy and struck a deal with Rupert Murdoch. Of course, the very idea is "completely wrong and totally improper". Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives, according to Jeremy Hunt, are going to "allow media operators more flexibility to own businesses operating on both the same and different platforms", thus permitting the likes of Rupert Murdoch to extend their charming and civilising influence yet further into the British media. Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives, according to Jeremy Hunt, "will strip away the regulations in the same way that Big Bang [deregulation] revolutionised the City [in 1986] to make it the major financial centre of the world" and to provide some of the necessary conditions for that brilliant success of the banking industry which has made the British economy what it is today. One can only guess at how far from their minds was the desire to please Rupert Murdoch when Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives thought that one up. Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives, according to Jeremy Hunt, will emasculate Ofcom and give the BBC another kick in the balls at the first opportunity; hardly the kind of policies for which the consent of Rupert Murdoch needs to be sought by means of a formal contract. Indeed, Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives - aided no doubt by Daveybloke's Cuddly Coulson, whose connection with Rupert Murdoch is, for the moment at least, almost certainly non-contractual - have about as much need of a deal with Rupert Murdoch as a paedophile has need of a written blessing from the Pope. They are mutually complementary, and each sustains the other.