“Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green has been arrested and released on bail in connection with a series of leaks from the Home Office. Police say Mr Green was held on suspicion of ‘conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office’”.

Now, of course, there is information which the police have which us in the general public don’t have, which may be relevant to this story.

But looking at what we have been told, we have a Home Office whistleblower who apparently revealed:

• in November 2007 that the home secretary knew the Security Industry Authority had granted licences to 5,000 illegal workers, but decided not to publicise it,
• in February 2008 that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a cleaner in the House of Commons,
• a whips’ list of potential Labour rebels in the vote on plans to increase the pre-charge terror detention limit to 42 days, and
• a letter from the Home Secretary warning that a recession could lead to a rise in crime.

And Damian Green was the conduit through which this information was brought to the public knowledge.

Although technically the Official Secrets Act applies – as indeed it does to the information about what brand of tea is served in the Cabinet Office – the items which were leaked were far from being issues of National Security, and everything to do with being issues in the National Interest.

In this instance, Damian Green was clearly performing his public duty, a duty he was elected, as an Opposition MP to perform – to act on information received about areas where Government was clearly failing, to publicise it, and to oppose it.

The Government denies involvement in the arrest – during which, apparently, his home was turned over by eight anti-terrorism officers, presumably all donning riot shields, battering rams, and machine guns – although it did take place following a complaint made by the Cabinet Office. On the Today programme it was vehemently denied that ministers were aware of the arrest before it was on the news broadcasts, although it is a fact that the Tories themselves called an evening briefing in the House of Commons well before it hit the news.

The words ‘Orwellian’, ‘Stalinist’, and ‘Fascist State’ are of course well overused; usually when they’re used in the context of Western politics you’ll always find at least one apologist who will jump up and say “look at Zimbabwe! Look at North Korea! Look at Stalin!”.

But when we’re increasingly moving to a state of being where criticising the government becomes an arrestable offence, what other words can be used?

“Cows have regional accents like humans, language specialists have confirmed – they decided to examine the issue after dairy farmers noticed their cows had slightly different moos, depending on which herd they came from”.

The story is accompanied recordings of moos of different cows from different parts of the country, all of which sound different. Is this really surprising? Have you ever heard an individual cow, or any other animal for that matter, make the same moo twice?

There’s also a comment from a linguistics lecturer, who on the Today programme interview on the piece said yes, it was indeed possible that animals from one part of the country may indeed sound a bit like each other but slightly different from the same animals elsewhere in the country, because just like humans, animals learn how to make their noises from the other animals around them.

Does it take research to work this one out?

Every year that venerable institution, They, likes to make the complaint that ‘Christmas gets earlier every year’, and how wrong it is that you can buy your crackers in October from the supermarket.

I was drawn to this news item by John Humphries foaming at the mouth on the Today programme at how terrible it is that Harrods has opened its Christmas shelf in the middle of August, 138 days before Christmas. Boy, was he foaming.

The thing is, whereas I might vaguely acknowledge They have grounds to moan on the general point (although I do wonder why They seem to let it spoil their day so), I think the complaint against Harrods was just plain stupid.

Let’s examine the points, shall we?

• Harrods is, basically, a tourist shop, selling tat to tourists,
• The height of the tourist season in London is August,
• Tourists by and large like to buy presents for the folks back home,
• People generally like to buy Christmas presents for people,

So is it any surprise that Harrods launches its Christmas range in August?