Season of mellow mists and frutifulness? 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!