In the first DCMS Select Committee Report on the Press (especially intrusion) back in the early noughties I said at the press conference to launch it that if a newspaper continually transgressed we should consider a yellow and a red card scenario.
A journalist from the Daily Mirror then asked me if a red card meant that a paper would be stopped from publishing and I said it would. Howls of protest went up and under pressure I withdrew my remarks.
That afternoon the Mirror (Editor: Piers Morgan) sent a journalist down to the village I lived in to see whether they could find any dirt on me. They interviewed our post mistress and others but came away empty handed but it didn't stop them publishing a piece claiming that I was the man that was going to stop them publishing their newspaper.
www.politicalscrapbook.net/2011/07/piers-morgan
Ten years on, the Press - well its well-heeled members - cannot believe that they were hijacked early on Monday morning. Never mind that they had had exclusive access to the PM.
It is right and proper for our citizens to be protected from the worst kinds of journalistic excesses. The PCC has been a laughing stock for too long. They failed to put their house in order and have now had it done for them by democratically elected MPs.
If they choose not belong to the new body that will not stop Joe Public from going to it to make complaints.