When is a secret not a secret?

There has been a spate recently of rich, famous, influential and politically powerful people being shown up as hypocrites and self-aggrandising idiots, by the likes of the undercover reporters of The Daily Telegraph, and Wikileaks.

The Telegraph upset Vince Cable, by pretending to be constituents and encouraging him to make grandstanding comments about being “at war” with Rupert Murdoch, which ultimately cost him a chunk of his job. And now he is bleating about complaining to the Press Complaints Commission. While I have absolutely no desire to see Rupert Murdoch's empire grow and prosper, the trick is, dear Vince, if you don’t want to be caught out saying one thing in private and something different in public, then don’t have a hypocritical two-faced stance where your beliefs and actions differ according to who it is you think you are talking to. Shimples, as any Meerkat would tell you.

Or to put it another way, if you are so embarrassed that your party is propping up the Tories as they continue in their revenge rape of the country, then don’t pretend apologetically to your constituents that you are at war with them – go to war with them, and vote with your feet. Pull out. As Si Kahn says, it’s not the fights you dreamed of, it’s those you really fought.

Wikileaks has done a similar thing to the Daily Telegraph, but on a much bigger scale of course. They have shown up almost every US diplomat as being a lying conniving two-faced shyster. Many of us already suspected this was the case, of course, but it’s good to have it confirmed at source.

This is why the CIA are so keen to lean on Norway – and indeed to lean on our own legal system – to make it difficult for Julian Assange. Whether or not he is guilty of the crimes for which he is currently going through the legal system, you can bet your sweet palookah that the US would dearly love to see him extradited, wearing a hood and orange overalls, and chained to a latrine in Guantanamo. To them, and to the UK politicians who bleat on about the necessity of being able to keep certain things secret from us, the great unwashed, I have really only one thing to say.

It is the same thing that you said to us, every time a piece of anti-libertarian legislation chipped away yet another fragment of our precious civil liberties.

“If you have got nothing to hide, you have got nothing to fear”.

Hello, boot, may I introduce you to the other foot?