abuse took up, according to his estimates, 18% of screen time. The culture spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, Don Foster, criticised this idea, stating that it "threatened the very foundational principles of freedom and independence" of British media, arguing that such government interference in television programming would be "a very sad day for British broadcasting", and pointing out that regulatory mechanisms already exist to deal with issues such as this. On 29 October, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries called for the BBC to terminate the contracts of both Ross and Brand, and in the Commons David Hanson had criticised the comments for being inappropriate and not "in keeping with broadcasting". The conservative journalist Charles Moore announced he would not pay his television licence after the BBC's failure to sack Ross, a decision which eventually led to Moore's being fined in May 2010. Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw, writing in his local newspaper the Lancashire Telegraph on 30 October (see Straw in Further reading), became the first Cabinet Minister to call for the pair to be sacked, arguing that if both presenters had worked in commercial radio "they'd have been given their P45 before you could say 'Jack Robinson'." On the same day, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, Theresa May, called for a Commons debate on the BBC's handling of the affair. Reaction against censures and suspensions In the days following the suspensions, a number of celebrities, particularly from television and radio, came out in support of Brand and Ross. Many felt that, whilst the incident was unacceptable, it was not deserving of the strong criticism it received, especially when there were other issues troubling the United Kingdom. Rod McKenzie, the editor of BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat, observed on the BBC Editors' weblog (see Further reading) that audience reactions to Brand's and Ross' remarks had been polarised, noting that whilst his colleagues at Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, BBC television, and the World Service, had been saying one thing, the younger audiences of Radio 1 had been reacting quite differently, and were broadly supportive of Ross and Brand. Some were amazed at the comments of the Prime Minister, with one person observing that "[t]he financial markets are wrecked and all he can do is talk about a petty joke." Others stated that people should "calm down", "get a grip", and that the subject had been "blown out of