The Screws royal editor hit the jackpot last weekend. Busy Robert “Bob-a” Jobson revealed the astonishing news that a charitable foundation set up by the late Princess Diana had dropped in value, from c£1.4m to c£1.08m over the last year.

          This “25%” decrease was due, apparently, to the global stock market crash. To discover this, one can only surmise that his investigative skills took him as far as perusing the charities’ records open to anyone who cares to see them, as advised by the Charity Commission on their website. The money was left by Diana to her sons to “give to good causes”.

          This fatuous, insignificant non-story (for there can barely be any charitable foundation or indeed invest portfolio of any sort that hasn’t taken a hammering in the last year), was his only visible contribution to the great purveyor of truth – “Our motto is the truth; our practice is the fearless advocacy of the truth” – since September 17^th. This isn’t much for a week’s wage – maybe half an hour’s work, and another half an hour to churn out less than 100 words.

          No wonder the old paper’s profits have dwindled to bugger all. Added to that, the evil and highly mendacious Mazher Mahmood is still on the pay role – and he’s not bringing in much these days, due no doubt to Master James’ intention to see the tacky rag heave itself out of the quagmire of ridiculous grimy fantasies in which it has got immersed. The involuntary departure of Machiavellian Managing Editor, Stuart Kuttner in July (after Gordon Taylor was paid £700,000 out of court) may be the first clear indication of the changes young Murdoch wants to see.

          But the culture of untruth and fabrication is so rife at the News of the World that he’ll have a long, long task cleaning out that Augean Stable.

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There can be no doubt that editors at the News of the World knew exactly what they were doing when they illegally acquired and published a young army officer’s private and fairly mundane video record of his day-to-day experiences in the forces.

In it Prince Harry (who made the video) described one of his platoon, a friend and colleague, as “our little paki friend, Ahmed”, and the paper leapt at the chance to pile in and give him an almighty kicking – yet again.

Have a look at it on the Screws “family” website, if you can be bothered, and you’ll see it’s absolutely clear from the way the term is delivered that there is no malice, no implied racism, nothing to which the Pakistani soldier himself could or wanted to raise any objection.

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