Britain has been seething with anger after Business Secretary Vincent Cable was taped expressing exactly the same opinion as anyone with opposable thumbs. The pressure for his resignation is bound to increase, especially as it is extremely cold on the pavement outside his house in Twickenham where 17 journalists are currently camped.
In a classic sting orchestrated by Daily Telegraph, Cable was clearly seen to imply that letting Rupert Murdoch take over the 10% of all the shite TV he isn't already controlling and enabling him to destroy the few remaining brain cells in this country may not be a very good idea. This, said furious Labour front benchers, makes him unfit for high office to an extent not seen since the days of Hazel Blears.
'I'm appalled,' said John Denham, Shadow Secretary for Something or Other. 'The way Cable talks, you'd almost think that News Corporation is the plaything of a sinister, power-crazed foreign billionaire thug who has been subverting British democracy for decades and has successfully ensured that a non-Tory party could only ever get in to power in this country by bending over and letting him do it to them up the arse with a red-hot two-pronged poker.'
'What?'
The BBC's political reporter Nick Robinson commented that the revelations were deeply embarrassing for the Liberal Democrats. 'It is vital that we maintain our tradition of impartiality. Mr Murdoch is fully entitled to pursue a takeover of the rest of BSkyB. Quite clearly this is a business transaction and has nothing whatsoever to do with any demented hatred of the BBC or any semblance of factual journalism on the part of the owner of Fox TV,' he said. 'Can I go home now?'
The crisis is now threatening to escalate to the point where a decision had to be made, unless of course Cheryl Cole put on a new frock or something else happened that was more important. Some analysts believe that the whole tradition of ministerial responsibility for saying nothing in particular all the time could be at risk.
'Make no mistake, this could bring the coalition down,' said some twat in a bow-tie from a think tank, while stroking a white cat. 'The very idea that a left-leaning politican who has been forced into alliance with a right-wing party might privately disagree with some of the policies of that right-wing party, especially when it comes to ensuring that only right-wing opinions ever get mass coverage, is deeply shocking.'