Top of the list has to be the idea of half of all future Labour Cabinet members being women. Sod merit, let’s get the Sisters in there. Simple point, this one: I wouldn’t care if they were all women, if they were better than the men. This is gender Nazism, very little different from the very first post-1934 German law capping the number of Jews allowed to work in banking. Of course, it’s Hattie’s idea. And rather foolishly, Ed On-Message Miliband is supporting it.

In No 2 position (and not by a lot) was Chris Patten’s piece in the FT extolling the virtues of the EU. You might think this by definition the shortest article in history, but Chris managed to spin it out to four columns of pink gibberish. Scroll down the comments to read my spluttering. This is the end-result of Care in the (European) Community: a tragic case.

“Very few people expect it to work, but most people in the industry want it to work,” said Tim Luckhurst today on the subject of Big Roop’s Times & Sunday Times firewalls. For the first time in his life, Murdoch the Mastermind finds himself farting against the thunder of progress. The logic behind this ‘idea’ runs, “We can’t think of a model for online journalism, so we’re going to pretend it isn’t online at all”.

There is a model of interactive global-community journalism actually, and it’s called The Huffington Post, easily the best-written and most user-friendly newspaper on the net. Rupert should read it some time: although the Huff is very Americentric, it is far less so than physical products land-based in the States…or any of the main US TV networks for that matter. The reason why Ms Huffington positively discourages firewallism is because she’s put together a product offering debate and opinion as opposed to the repetitive drivel put out by Newscorp’s army of hacks. She and her sponsors are confident that her product adds value – so why worry if others crib it? It is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery.

Take a dozen key columnists out of Newscorp worldwide, and apart from these most of the others are drongoes. The Sunday Times is well worth the cover price, but almost entirely on the basis of Minette Marrin, Jeremy Clarkson and Simon Jenkins. Murdoch today is like those railroad companies who panicked when plane travel arrived. The Digger thinks he’s in the news business, but he’s not: he’s in the communication-deciphering business. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the Enigma Code. Rather like Hattie, really.