Ofcom’s annual report and accounts for 2025/26 shows that its chief executive took home a whopping £478,784. Up from £455,324 the year before – her salary and allowances rose by an inflation-busting 4.87%…
Total staff costs jumped by 10% to £153.1 million which is two-thirds of all operating expenditure. Headcount rose to 1,665 from 1,557, driven almost entirely by the Online Safety department…
Consultancy expenditure more than doubled, £900,000 to £2.3 million. That is a 156% increase in one year attributed “Strategy, Policy, Corporate and Transformation.” In case you thought Labour was serious about culling the consultants…
The total regulator budget has hit £227.6 million, up by £14.1 million. Curiously Ofcom says UK pornography site visitors fell by a third since July, but admits it is still only “assessing how much of this has resulted in reduced childhood exposure.” They all got VPNs…
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”