A lot of people, myself included, signed the petition below to reform the Press Complaints Commission:

“Following the article in the Daily Mail on Friday 16th October by Jan Moir in relation to the death of Stephen Gately, the PCC received over 21,000 complaints; however the chairman the Code committee for the PCC is currently the editor of the Daily Mail Paul Dacre. As the formula one boss Max Mosley said when giving evidence to the culture, media and sport committee at the House of Commons “It’s like putting the mafia in charge of the local police station. You can’t let them regulate themselves.” The PCC was weakened by preferential treatment to the newspaper industry and it lacked sufficient powers to appropriately deal with cases. The government needs to abolish the current PCC and re launch the committee as a public body so the public can have faith in the PCC once again.”

The Office of the Prime Minister today gave this particularly half-arsed response:

“The Government strongly supports the freedom of speech and a free press as fundamental to our democracy.

Freedom of expression means that sometimes material may be written and published which some people may disapprove of.

However, the press must of course abide by the law. In addition they sign up to a Code of Practice, overseen by the Press Complaints Commission which imposes further restrictions on them.

We feel it is appropriate that there should be a system of self-regulation, rather than a statutory regulator.

For the public to have confidence in a system of self-regulation it must be effective and robust. The Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport has welcomed the recent Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s report, and has said he looks forward to the Press Complaints Commission implementing its recommendations.”

For further disappointments, go to Number10.gov.uk.