The news I get is from you Richard, and like minded, I remember when the MSM was most widely read in the "outhouse" today, it is not even used as arsewipe.
It seems that Lord Whatshisname still has someone dig a hole in his garden !

Well said, sir!

There are two areas that spring to mind where we desperately need your cartel decay to reach critical mass. They are in politics and banking. Banking is a classic where once upon a time everything was done at a local level and on the whole people were careful with money and could get advice from someone they knew and who knew them. That all went when the Banks replaced people with technology without understanding the consequences. I have banked for 12 years now with an online bank, (having got feed up of 2 high street banks and their centralisation) where the relationship has been understood from the start and it has worked remarkably well. We should have dozens of these online banks, but regulation designed to "protect" we consumers does nothing of the kind and only guarantees the impossibility of staring a new small local bank. But I recon in 20 years if we get the 6 demands Banking will be changing due to Cartel Decay and we could have 20 to 30 online banks that share high street facilities for cash transactions and the like.

But if we look to our friends both across the channel and the pond they are doing the very opposite. In the EU with the Banking union they are only doing what they are doing because they need a mechanism to sweep all the small banks under carpet and to strengthen 2 or 3 large banks in each Euro Zone country. In the US they introduce Dodd-Frank which on the face of it is to prevent a Lehman type event and no more bailouts. Its sold as a way of an orderly default. This is what we all want but only there it only applies to the "too big to fail" and allows the government to step in at any time they think there is distress. Many think it makes the system more stressed because now people will try to second guess the government and this could have opposite effect to that intended.

And what is worse, he probably believes it.

What about cases such as Tommy Robinson, a man seemingly kept in solitary confinement on rather trivial charges? Nothing in the Main Stream Media not even the demonstration by his supporters outside Wandsworth Prison.
I followed the link after reading a post on Coffee House Wall.
Political prisoners in Britain? Held on charges that would normally result in bail? Held in solitary confinement “for his own protection”?
Keep the Web free.

Indeed. It is incredibly frustrating to see "under regulation" touted as a cause of the collapse, when in fact an excess of complex regulation increased market concentration to uncompetitive levels.

I'd definitely add law, accountancy and credit rating to your list though. Politics will probably come last.

They have done their best to corrupt blogs, with the proliferation of media blogs ... the so-called "clogs". But there are still the independents, and they will keep coming.