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Season of mellow
mists and fruitfulness? I don’t think so.
At least we have had Obama and Merckel adding to the
gaiety of nations with their spat over phone-hacking. The Sunday Times produced
a wonderful cartoon of Angular in the shower and O peeping through the window.
Hollande also got out of his pram, threatening to
derail the FTA negotiations (typical!) but nobody was interested in listening
to him, especially when the Yanks said ‘And you’re another; you spy on us all
the time and have done for ever and a day.
Angular went off in a sulk, perhaps wondering why she
did not have an Obama-style spy-proof mobile phone, although so far the Germans
have not marched across the Oder/Neisse line.
The meeja has been conjuring up visions of armies of
clerks sifting through our e-mails and listening-in on our phone calls,
although the reality is that all this guff is crunched through the Billion
Dollar Brain to pick up trends and key-words and phrases. That’s how we keep
nicking men-with-beards
laden with bomb-making gear.
Then along comes National Security Agency boss General Alexander to
spoil the party. ‘Oi, Frau’ says the gallant gentleman, ‘It wasn’t us. We never
hacked your phones. It was your lot wot done it, and just sent it all to us, as
they have been doing for years!’
Collapse of stout party!
Dave kept well out of it. One explanation is that he
has nothing interesting to say, but the truth is that the NSA and MI6/ GCHQ
exchange all this stuff as a routine. This neatly gets round our own privacy
restrictions; if NSA collects it no law is infringed. It’s called ‘the special
relationship’. The US doesn’t extend this arrangement to anybody else; fancy
giving sensitive material to Johnny Frog!
Otherwise, it’s plus ca change, with the media
wallowing in the Murdoch phone-hacking trial revelations that the woman
with hair like an explosion in a mattress factory had been discussing Africa
with Dave’s late spinmeister for years.
You couldn’t make it up!
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