While yesterday was taken up with Irish printing presses, we had to hold back our view on the Iraq War Inquiry cover-up - as has been made public by inquiry chair, Sir John Chilcot.
The Evening Standard greeted an announcement by Chilcot yesterday by writing: "A cover-up row erupted when the official Iraq inquiry complained it had been banned from revealing records of the secret invasion talks between Tony Blair and George Bush."
The Independent gave a stunning account of how the refusal to make public communications between Blair and Bush Jr. came to pass, pointing the finger in their opening sentence when they wrote: "The head of the civil service has refused to allow the official inquiry into the Iraq War to publish notes sent by Tony Blair to former US president George Bush."
Meekly on the BBC, Sir Gus O'Donnell's justification is described as: "But Sir Gus said it would not be "in the public interest" to release them."
Really? Not in the public interest? Says who?
Who is Sir Gus O'Donnell? Have you met him? Have you spoken to him? Does he know your views? Has he ever canvassed them? Has he ever been elected to represent your views?
No, no, no, no and no are your answers, I'm guessing.
Yet he is meant to be a civil servant - a servant of you and I - we pay him.
And, I don't know about you, but I want to know what skulduggery our politicians may or may not have got up to.
After all, we pay them and they work for us, too.
Just like civil servants.
Who the hell is Sir Gus O'Donnell to now turn around and tell us what we can and cannot know, under the guise of whether it is "in the public interest"..?
Let the public decide what is in our interest. And, I'm guessing that almost to a man, the public want to know.
How do I know that? I've read the opinions of normal people on messageboards under every mainstream newspaper article on the topic.
The Independent is back for another bite of the cherry today and wants you to know more anyway - a journalistic two-fingers at Sir Gus O'Donnell.
The broadsheet writes: "The private memos sent between Tony Blair and President George Bush are understood to contain information about the promises Mr Blair made to Mr Bush about Britain's readiness to join any military action in Iraq. In one, the then prime minister is said to have assured Mr Bush that Britain would "be there" if an invasion became necessary. In June 2002, Mr Blair told MPs that "there are no decisions which have been taken about military action"."
I would suggest that, if Parliament has been misled - and it may have been - and if we were taken into an illegal war on the basis of manufactured lies and falsehoods - as we may have been - then that is clearly in the public interest.
So, if we do have a whitewash outcome from Chilcot - as many members of the public seem to think will be the case - then the first people to look to will not be the politicians, but the civil servants.
And it's not just on Iraq.
We've said it before and we'll say it again.
Wonder why the United Kingdom's relationship with the European Empire does not change no matter which Government we elect?
Part of that is down to the faceless 'Sir Humphrey' types... the civil servants who are unelected, who we cannot remove, who take huge salaries off the taxpayer...
...and all too often contrive to deny the will of the people.
It is the so-called 'civil servants' who are not in the public interest.
Somehow, they have to be made accountable to the will of the people.
At the moment, we haven't a clue who they're accountable to.
Time we started working that answer out.
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