Simon Hoggart's week: The Murdoch empire is falling with pleasing speed

22.07.11 - antique toasters

✒ We do expect things to happen quickly these days. I remember a News Quiz story about people risking pneumoconiosis from the metallic dust on scratchcards. I said some men spent a lifetime down the pit before they got that disease and Linda Smith sighed: "I know, but it's all instant gratification these days."

In the same way, the downfall of the Murdoch empire is happening with pleasing speed. It's as if we were all in Shelley's antique land watching the statue of Ozymandias collapse before our eyes. Who does "the shattered visage" with its frown, its wrinkled lip and its sneer of cold command, remind you of? Crash, and that's an arm gone. Turn your back and miss the thump of torso upon sand. Instant gratification!

✒ A hectic weekend which started with our son's graduation from York. We were waiting in the queue to get into the hall when a voice called: "What on earth are you doing here?" It was my colleague Nick Davies, the man whose years of dogged work broke the phone-hacking story. We had no idea that his daughter was in the same batch of graduates as our son. Reviled and sneered at (with cold command) by Murdoch's satraps and myrmidons, Nick is now a shoo-in for every journalism award going. I said he must feel like the theoretical butterfly that flaps its wings in Malaysia and causes a chain of events ending with the destruction of the eastern United States. Except that he did a hell of a lot more than flap.

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