So what's the big news of the day? The deaths of civilians in the wake of a US military strike in Afghanistan? The continuing gradual spread of swine flu? The results of stress tests on US banks? Hell, no. According to the Times, it's Culture Secretary Andy Burnham's demand that the "big 4" Premier League football clubs "share the wealth" with their less successful rivals. Yes, believe it or not, that's the main story on page 1 of the print edition for May 7.
Mysteriously, a quick trawl around fails to find the story anywhere else in the major media. Let's think now. The Times is owned by News International, which is also the parent company of BSkyB, which owns the rights to broadcast almost all of the live football seen in the UK. Murdoch's fingerprints are all over this one, though I can't quite figure out the angle. Maybe people are not signing up for Sky because of the dwindling competitiveness of the Premier League, and Andy Burnham has seized on this as a way for the government to re-ingratiate itself with Murdoch, who seems distinctly cooler towards Gordon Brown than he used to be towards his old poodle, Blair.
Mind you, it says it all about the state of this government that Burnham isn't even the headline-grabbing idiot of the week. That honour surely goes to Jacqui Smith for naming a list of individuals who have been banned from the UK on public order grounds. Many of them, it turns out, have never expressed any interest in coming here in the first place.
Footnote: you know my problem? I'm not subtle or devious enough. On May 8, just a day after running the Andy Burnham story as its front page lead, the Times ran an editorial telling him that football was none of the government's business! So there's a Murdoch angle here all right. The great man is trying to keep the government from messing with his cash cow.
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