The Office of Communications (Welsh: Y Swyddfa Gyfathrebiadau), commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002 and received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003.

Ofcom has wide-ranging powers across the television, radio, internet, telecoms and postal sectors. It has a statutory duty to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the public from what might be considered harmful or offensive material. Some of the main areas Ofcom presides over are licensing, research, codes and policies, complaints, competition and protecting the radio spectrum from abuse.

The creation of Ofcom was announced in the Queen's Speech to the UK parliament in June 2001. The new body, which would replace several existing authorities, was conceived as a "super-regulator" to oversee media channels that were rapidly converging through digital transmission.

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author, journalist, and broadcaster, and the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West. He was previously an MP for the Labour Party, for Glasgow Hillhead and then its successor constituency Glasgow Kelvin from 1987 until 2005. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 because of his strident public opposition to the Iraq War. He subsequently became a founding member of the left-wing Respect Party, and was elected as the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005. In 2010, Galloway unsuccessfully contested the seat of Poplar and Limehouse, and in 2011 he unsuccessfully contested the Glasgow list for the Scottish Parliament, before being elected as an MP in the Bradford West by-election, 2012.

Galloway is well known for his campaigns in support of the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In the late-1980s Hansard records him delivering a ferocious assault on the Ba'ath regime, and Galloway opposed Saddam's regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991. Galloway is known for a visit to Iraq where he met Saddam Hussein, and delivered a speech, which ended in English with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." He has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech. Galloway testified to the United States Senate in 2005 over alleged illicit payments from the United Nations' Oil for Food Programme.

James Rupert Jacob Murdoch (born 13 December 1972) is the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation. He is the former chairman and chief executive of News Corp., Europe and Asia, overseeing assets such as News International (British newspapers), SKY Italia (satellite television in Italy), Sky Deutschland, and STAR TV (satellite television in Asia).

He sits on the News Corporation board of directors and is a member of the office of the chairman. He formerly held a non-executive chair at British Sky Broadcasting, in which News Corporation has a controlling minority stake.

He was formerly an executive vice president of News Corporation, the controlling shareholder of BSkyB, and served on the boards of directors of News Datacom and of News Corporation.

Murdoch is a British citizen by birth and a naturalised U.S. citizen. He lost Australian citizenship when his father became a U.S. citizen, but he is eligible to reclaim Australian citizenship.