than whether William Hague has a 'relationship' with his driver...

Some perspective please...

I wouldn't piss down his throat if his heart was on fire. That is all.

So hang on, are we to understand that the News of the World was in cahoots with Scotland Yard about tapping the phones of whoever they wanted?

And now the person who did that is now media adviser to the Prime Minister, and there is evidence that he lied to the Commons media committee?

How is the chuff is this not a huge story!

I suppose, if you were being cynical and/or had watched too many episodes of The Thick of It, you might suspect that the William Hague thing blew up specifically to mask this.

However it has taken the Americans to assemble the evidence that this tapping and hacking was sytematic. Plus that "several investigators said in interviews that Scotland Yard was reluctant to conduct a wider inquiry in part because of its close relationship with News of the World." And that the Yard colluded with the NotW to hide the evidence from their victims.

It makes dreadful reading :

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html?_r=1&ref=wor...

So far the reaction has either that they are dragging up an old story, all is already known, nothing new, blah blah, when in fact Coulson et al tried to make out the court case was an aberration and the miscreants had been punished. Or simply silence, and not just from the Murdoch press. Are the British press bricking themselves at the thought of taking on Andy Coulson, like they used to run scared of Alistair Campbell ?

We can be very rude about US newspapers for being dull, craven, money-driven, etc., but the NYT has played a blinder here. So far the British press are cowardly ones, or displaying their own self-interest.

The mainstream press is so closely managed, and the PTB only report what they want reported. This is just proof of that fact. As others have mentioned the Hague story conveniently covers it up, and then anyone who points this out is accused of "conspiracy theories" which is just the stock phrase used to ridicule those who want to get to the truth. The US media is just as bad, it just happens that this isn't on their turf so fair game; they wouldn't do it to Obama or whoever, they wouldnt be allowed to.

This is just odd now. It's been on the Today programme, but the BBC website isn't running it and the whole thing is just very, very strangely low key.

Now, I might be wrong, but what William Hague does with his Herman Gelmet is of less public interest than one of the Prime Minister's closest aides having (possibly, allegedly) lied in a criminal investigation, (possibly and allegedly) abetted by the Met.

WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK?