Look at that! It was Saturday afternoon, about 4pm on 10 January. A huge bushfire was out of control about 10Km away but heading straight for us, blown by easterly winds. The house was as dark as in a winter storm.

I thought it best to evacuate, following the advice of the Dept of Fire and Emergency Services, so I arranged to stay overnight with friends (I still have one or two who haven’t deserted me) in Scarborough. There was probably no danger, as proved to be the case next day, but I wouldn’t have felt comfortable going to sleep with that heading toward me.

Next morning, Sunday, I drove north again and although the fire was still going, there was no smoke visible from my area.

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Dammit. My legs were going really, really well for skin breaks and ulceration. I was congratulating myself at how smooth and normal they were looking due to daily applications of Dermeze. But on Sunday morning there’s a big ugly break on the back of my lower left leg. Damn. It seemed to happen overnight between Saturday and Sunday, for no reason that I know of. So now it’s back to bandaging and antibiotic. Grrr.

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I’ve just finished the book Hack Attack, by Nick Davies, the story of the Murdoch London papers and how they hacked anyone’s phone to get what they wanted. And if they didn’t find anything, then they just made it up, invented stories. This is the mob who hacked Milly Dowler’s phone and got hauled before the Leveson Inquiry.

What the book shows is that what we read and heard here was just a fraction of what was going on. They just blatantly broke the law for years, aided by corrupt London police (how disappointing) and a totally complacent and incompetent top management at Scotland Yard. Even the commissioners and deputy commissioners turned a blind eye and lied about their lack of action. It was all down to fear of Rupert Murdoch. He dictated to everyone, even prime ministers (Blair and Cameron). He set British Government policy because he would “monster” anyone who dared to cross him, that is, his papers would start a campaign of any scandal they could find, and make up lies about what they couldn’t find, to ruin the life of anyone who dared to oppose the. Suicides resulted! Politicians and prominent people lived in fear of being monstered by Murdoch’s papers. he protested that he didn’t know what was going on. Of course he did!

The depressing thing is that they were humbled and put in their place for a while (the News of the World was closed down), but now the fear of the Murdoch press is back where it was, both in Britain and here. That man has a malign influence way beyond his position. An unelected person, he is applying subtle and not-so-subtle pressure on governments to get his way. His latest comment blaming all Muslims for terrorism is typical. The man is an out and out racist. But so is our government, so they’re a good match.