Rupert made me do it.

The Irish, Portuguese and Greeks are now officially Junk. They shouldn't take it too badly though as this has been announced by the exact same rating agencies that greatly assisted in the creation of the Global Financial Crisis in the first place - and they didn't say the same thing about themselves. I advise immediate default and a good scandal to divert the public attention away from all-pervading poverty.

The Brits certainly have managed to dig one up that blames more or less everyone in a position of, obviously exceedingly misplaced, "trust" for more or less everything that has gone wrong over the last 40 years. A national "Mea Culpa" with all fingers pointed at Rupert - "he made me do it" - Murdoch. Without much doubt, even leaving Murdoch and kiddie-fiddling priests out of it, there are assuredly grounds for, at least, one of these scandals in Ireland too - the sooner the better.

Rupert has an ocean of misery ahead - protecting his US empire from a disgruntled, Fox News despising, Democratic Party majority in the Senate now clamouring for an investigation into the behaviour of his news outlets in the USA. All they'll need is for one of Murdoch's Aussie or Brit implanted editors to have engaged in, the now apparently usual, illegal tabloid behaviour and he's toast. As will be anyone called Murdoch in News Corp or indeed the whole of News Corpse itself. It can be assumed, under the US legislation, that if one of Murdoch's UK titles - beneficially owned by the US based News Corp - hacked a single US phone then there is no escaping a public execution. Let the timbrels roll.... Cue the FBI.

In reality it is actually bigger than Ben Hur with Politicians, Media and Police all in cahoots with Finance and Corporations to protect one another from scrutiny by avoiding the law. In the same way that Tax avoidance is legal while Tax evasion isn't this distinction was also applied to the business activities of the, so-called, Elites who could avoid adherence to the law through influence providing the assurance that the law wouldn't be applied in the first place or, if necessary, would be changed if it got in the way - before an attempt to evade the consequences of illegal behaviour might arise. Resulting in the belief that they were "above the law". 

Sadly, for the Elites, some of the less well-benefited politicians, media and police got fed-up paying the price of this cosy arrangement and, when the great unwashed populous showed signs of being fed-up with the same consequences - austerity, unemployment, eviscerated public services - saw an opportunity to kick the shit out of it in revenge. This has led to an unseemly rush straight to the back of the Queue of the Innocent by those, previously energetic participants, now fearing collateral damage from a scandal of their own making. If this means selling out a few erstwhile mates who happen to be amoral media proprietors, bent plods, sleazy journos or overly-ambitious pollies then so be it - anything to survive. They'll be eating their young next.

Which brings us to: What did they know? When did they know it? The two Watergate questions, that led to the convictions, soon to be asked of the British PM, the Metropolitan Police, Murdoch and his senior management. Once they can get past Murdoch's lawyers that is and put their hands on him - I assume that his corporate "domestiques" (to use a cycling term of art) will be fed into the grinder first. Not to leave out the shenanigans of assorted other newspapers and broadcasters - follow the money.

What is missing here is - where are the Bankers in this reinvigorated quest to punish illegality?

Since Journalism went from measuring news value to counting monetary value (or the lack of it) most other, especially moral and ethical, values went out of it too. This isn't limited solely to journalism - banking and corporate (including legal and accounting) practice and governance also abandoned morals and ethics in the pursuit of money. No surprise then that journalism reflected these, amoral, immoral, if not actually illegal, tendencies. Owned by participating oligopolies self-regulating journalism supported them - in fact celebrated and dispensed them - in pursuit of influence and wealth.

A very cosy and long-lived, self-serving, inter-relationship - Politics, Money, Media -  is now exposed and broken apart in Britain by the News International phone-hacking imbroglio.  Politicians can no longer be seen to approve of or accept support from a disgraced media, that peddles illegally gained influence, allowing some politicians to break free or, alternatively, into energetic denial - this is a bigger pivotal moment than we yet understand. 

Now how about applying the same extrapolation exercise to the influence that the financial industries flex to avoid the rule of law.

What we need is a continuing backlash that will see the same attention and outrage being shown to Finance and Banking. A closer look and possibly some charges, arrests and convictions might then stem from the behaviour of the financial institutions that, so far, have bought their way out of criminal charges with, tax-payer funded, bail-out money.

If politicians, the media and police are going to drop their shorts for an anal inspection of their machinations then so should the banks, hedge funds, traders, wheelers and dealers and their supposed regulators.

I'd also like to see the PR industry suitably reamed in this process - given that there are more of them dispensing information than journalists.