When leaking gets boring

I am bored of Wikileaks. I am bored of Julian Assange (who, I have to admit, for a long time I thought was called Julian Le Singe inducing images of Monsieur Lavisse trying to coax a monkey from a tree in Cours Illustré de Francais livre 1). I really don’t know what the organisation’s current campaign is all about or what it is trying to achieve. None of the revelations are actually that revealing. Today’s release of cables relating to the release of the Lockerbie bomber tell us nothing new, although they do underline that the American administration didn’t understand devolution which isn’t so terrible, most of the UK media don’t get it either. No big cover ups have been uncovered, no allegations of torture have been made, no plots have been made public. All we have learnt over the past couple of weeks is that American diplomats send back frank reports on all manner of meetings to the State Department. Well, I should hope so – it is part of the job. They should absolutely be free to report as they wish. What we don’t want to encourage is a culture of secrecy in which nothing is committed to paper and entered into the formal record and people rely instead on conversations. This does not make for good government - a goal I believe I share with Wikileaks and Mr Assange.