Szok i Choror: Phone Hacking in the UK.

Like most of my countrymen I've been following the events in the UK with a mixture of horror and fascination ever since the revelations of illegal and indefensible phone hacking of murder victims, terrorist victims and just about every other person you can think of,  has emerged.

This, I believe, will be the defining political event of David Cameron's premiership. The defining economic one, whether a recovery in jobs and the economy has taken place, will matter a lot more when the election comes a-calling.

The phone hacking scandal has gone beyond a Tony-Blair-Bernie-Ecclestone crisis into a tectonic plate shifting drama with plenty more to come. What seems to me to be the most critical element of it is not the hacking itself although it's been illegal, dishonest and utterly immoral, but the advertant or inadvertantly weak initial investigation of the Police. Who leant on who to make sure bodies remained buried? Where will the paper trail lead?

There is so much more to come out that, for anyone interested in UK politics, this really is a fascinating period. For the best analysis of the game-playing going on at the very top level read this blogpost over at Bell Pottinger's Dispatch Box.

One of the most interesting elements of this story for me, is that it's clear just how difficult it is for Cameron, Clegg and Miliband to hit the right notes on this one. We know, or we think we probably know, really quite a lot more about this story than is usual.  The stakes are so huge, but, rarely, the factors on which they are based are quite clear. One thing about politics that annoys me is how the average punter slates a politician for game-playing - something we all do in our lives but rarely have any scrutiny applied to us in the process - when decisions are taken in very complex environments and when the nexus of who needs who and who owes who is not always clear.  Sunlight is the best disinfectant, it's also the best ingredient for a fascinating period of political chess-play.

Meanwhile the drama and level of detail and manouvering emerging on an hour-by-hour basis continues to distract me. I am assuming everyone else is out enjoying the weather's sudden improvement anyway as I checked and saw my hit count was quite down recently. What's the matter, don't you like re-heated soup recipes? Are you crazy or what?!