The prayer hacking scandal

“I don’t understand all this gossip about the prayer hacking scandal. What exactly happened?”

“Well, you’ve got God watching over mankind from heaven.”

“Nice place heaven.”

“A truly desirable residence, if the good book is to be believed. So you have God in heaven, and mankind down here on Earth.

“Now, although God is omnipresent, there is nevertheless a space between heaven and Earth. Let’s call it The Void. If you want to send a message to God, a prayer if you like, it has to travel through The Void. Likewise, when God sends a message to Earth, be it a vision, a burning bush, even an angel, they all have to go through The Void.”

“Okay, so The Void is like a heaven and Earth comms hub.”

“Exactly, and what Rupert Murdoch has been doing is hacking into The Void intercepting messages.”

“But why? These are private messages between an individual and God, what’s that got to do with Rupert Murdoch?”

“He wants to know everybody’s prayers, it’s all information that he can use. It can lead to news stories. Like the Sun headline last week: ‘Cowardly Cricket Captain Prayers for Rain’, which exposed that the new England captain Ali Cook was so nervous ahead of the deciding one day international against Sri Lanka he actually prayed for rain. That story came from hacking Ali’s prayers.”

“I did wonder how they knew.”

“Or the story in yesterday’s Times. ‘David Cameron prays for an end to famine in Africa, while Ed Milliband prays for his daughter to win egg and spoon race’, about Milliband's apparent attempts to get God to fix the school sports day.”

“A great story. What an abuse of his relationship with the almighty. Asking God to give you an advantageous spoon.”

And when Milly Dowler went missing, Murdoch intercepted her mother’s prayers, you remember the headline: ‘Please God, Let Milly be Alive’. Well, because he hacked in, God never received the message. Milly might be alive today if God had heard her pleas, but even God can’t answer a prayer he never received.”

“That’s terrible. And all for a news story! Why didn’t he just make it up? Surely he could have guessed that Milly’s mum would be praying for her missing child.”

“That’s not Murdoch’s way, he sticks to a code of sorts, he wouldn’t publish a story if there wasn’t evidence to back it up, even if he has to lie, steal or cheat to get that evidence.”

“I suppose that makes sense. You could say it’s good journalism if you look at it that way. But even so, hacking a mother’s prayers.”

“It get’s worse. He also hacked communications coming in the other direction, direct messages from God to mankind. Messages of hope, visions of joy, signposting the pathway to the glories of heaven. Without the gift of God’s wisdom, mankind have sunk into a faithless pit of despair and misery. Even his most important messages don’t reach us. The message God sent to every single person in Britain last year.”

“I don’t remember that, God never spoke to me last year, I’ve been keeping a diary, I’d have made a note of it.”

“Nobody got the message. It was God’s warning to mankind, sent a day before the election: ‘Don’t vote for Nick Clegg whatever you do’. Murdoch intercepted the message, nobody heard it, and now Clegg is Deputy Prime Minister.”

“Unbelievable.”

“It’s not just visions he’s intercepting. The Lord sent his favourite angel, Gabriel, to free mankind from their godless slumber. Murdochs got him gagged and bound in the Newcorp basement.”

“This is the most scandalous thing I’ve ever heard. What are we going to do with this information?”

“Well, as the two most senior, long-serving, eminent and respected police officers in her majesty’s service there’s only one thing we can do.”

“It is a great opportunity for us.”

“An opportunity to fill our boots. I’ve asked Murdoch for £1 million each to cover it up.”

“It’s what makes the Met the finest police force in the world.”