Vince Cable has declared war on Rupert Murdoch who is trying to gain full control of Sky. The revelations were made in secret recordings of Mr Cable taken by journalists when he believed he was talking to constituents.
In order to gauge public opinion, we carried out a survey.
We asked what people thought of the recordings. Several respondents said they thought it was in the public interest that this kind of information should be released. However one man, a Mr Colin Card, said he thought it was interesting that two journalists had recorded Cable, when only one recording could be made using Sky.
When asked if it was sensible for one man to be in control of so many media outlets, Mr Card said that it was OK, provided you got one of those multi-room systems so your remote would work everywhere. "Cable's fine when there're two sources of power," he said, "And one of those needs to be D.C."
With Murdoch already in control of one third of UK newspaper readership, the general consensus was that control of the press was an issue. Colin Card agreed: "It's my experience that if you carefully control the press, you can get 32x fast forward over the adverts."
Finally, we asked if, in the light of the current revelations, Cable's position was still viable. Most respondents said they thought he should keep his government job. Colin Card said he felt Cable was better because you didn't need a dish. When we explained we meant Vince Cable, and if his role was untenable, Mr Card said he knew who we meant, and that no, he wasn't untenable. "I expect he'll score at least one ten when he dances on the Strictly Christmas Special," he told us.
