They've been spying on the spies? How dare they!

There's a great big furore today over claims that private investigators working for a British newspaper illegally intercepted mobile phone messages of thousands of politicians and celebrities. Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is demanding that the Met step in and sort it all out. Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke is also throwing his weight into the argument, demanding answers to what's been going on.

The controversy has emerged in a report in The Guardian and is judged to be so important that it is the main news item on the BBC.

Poor politicians. Isn't it terrible that people might have been spying on them?

Oh, but hang on a minute... aren't these the same politicians who have no such worries about the public being spied on by countless agencies including local councils and their private investigators? For things like putting their rubbish out on the wrong day?

So, when the public are spied upon, that's fair and proportionate. When the political class are spied upon, the police get called in.

And one final thing. The ability to intercept mobile phone messages is something that private investigators have had for a number of years then, is it?

So, what security is there in mobile telephony, then?

Absolutely none, it appears.

However, please do not get intelligent enough to pause for three seconds and think of poor Princess Diana. Nobody was ever interested in her enough to want to intercept her telephone calls, were they? Nobody was ever interested in her enough to want to bug her private apartments. She was not intelligent enough to know what was going on. Oh no. She was suffering from the 'advanced stages of paranoia'... of course!

...or maybe the wonderful humanitarian who had the power to unite all the peoples of the world - Princess Diana - was right about people spying on her and was right in thinking that this was not being done in her best interests?

So, dear Mr. Prescott... when you've finished spitting feathers over people spying on you and your political pals, how about getting your Gormless ZaNuLiebour chums to stop spying on the British public and curtailing our civil liberties?

And then - when you've got ZaNuLiebour off the British people's backs - please can you demand another public inquiry into who exactly was spying on Diana, Princess of Wales and why they were doing that... let's have in public the questions that were not asked in the rather dubious inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales (which ended with the jury deciding she'd been unlawfully killed, anyway)...