Originally posted by Mr Pee
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Originally posted by Mr Pee
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And Amateur, I don't know whether you have ever run a multinational media empire- I sincerely hope not 
- but if you had done, I wonder if you would be able to remember every detail of your activities from several years ago.
- but if you had done, I wonder if you would be able to remember every detail of your activities from several years ago.More importantly still, there can surely be no doubt that those being questioned will have "remembered" every detail of their past activities at the time that they were involved in them so, given the sheer gravity of the matters under investigation, the accusations of collective selective amnesia that have arisen from certain witnesses' more obviously evasive responses can hardly be deemed unreasonable or surprising.
Furthermore, the fact that these activities occurred at such high levels within so large a multinational empire surely suggests that there either was - or ought to have been - a sufficiently detailed audit trail of them as to overcome any need for such virtuosic feats of memory years later.
Lastly, since those activities were of such far-reaching significance and their consequences of such potential or actual gravity, it is reasonable to assume that those involved in them would indeed remember many if not all of their details, even years down the line, especially as those consequences continued apace until the revelations of those activities commenced.
It is therefore clear from all of the above that answers along the lines of "dunno, guv" simply won't do and it would not be reasonable for an inquiry such as this to accept such answers without due reservation; it will, of course, remain to be seen what conclusions are reached by Jay and Leveson from all of the answers provided to all of the questions placed during the inquiry, not least those responses which amount, shall be say, to rather less than "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth", a principle which must hold just as good at such an inquiry as it does a a court trial, otherwise the very purpose of the inquiry is undermined.
Your various remarks on this inquiry suggest that you harbour grave doubts as to whether it should even be taking place at all and that you seem somewhat loath to accept that major wrongdoing at the highest levels of a vast multinational corporation might have occurred in the first place; clearly, this is not a viewpoint shared by many, including Lord Leveson and those who have seen fit to arrange for his inquiry to take place, otherwise there would be no ongoing inquiry. It now seems perfectly possible that the Prime Minister may be called to the witness stand; unless it is considered that there be very good reason for this, he would surely not be called and, if there is good reason, that is surely indicative of the level of gravity of the matters that are the subject of this inquiry.
The heads of multinational empires such as Newscorp and senior government officials up to the respective levels of Rupert Murdoch and David Cameron and his predecessors are, by definition, in such positions of power as to be capable of affecting - and indeed do affect - the lives of many millions of people; this is why the matters under scrutiny at this inquiry are of such importance and why the inquiry itself is essential. Seeking and forming due conclusions on all of the relevant facts is vital and all efforts to do so must and will continue as long as is necessary (and I suspect that we've a long way yet to go with this); that is by no means a mere "left-wing" or "Guardian-reader" viewpoint (and, for the record, I am not in any case of leftist persuasion and do not read that newspaper regularly), for the outcome of the matters under investigation is of such significance as to be well above being confinable to the interests and agendas of this or that individual faction, as it will come to affect many of us, just as have the activities under investigation.
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