Looting for scoops

Tripoli

Coming pretty much straight from the London riots to the Libyan revolution has made me more contemptuous than ever of Britain’s self-pitying, self-indulgent, social-security-claiming insurrectionaries. For all the fear and death, Tripoli’s uprising has been far more disciplined. Cool young rebels, in their bandanas and Free Libya T-shirts, guard the streets. Barely a shop has been looted, and trainers are still changing hands in the normal way. Only one group of people, in fact, is brazenly disregarding private property and disrespecting the law: western journalists.
In the continuing absence of Colonel Gaddafi, there is only one other thing that most hacks want to find: the definitive government document proving that, say, Tony Blair agreed to overlook the killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in return for a personal, lifetime supply of uranium yellowcake. Like Gaddafi himself, we feel, it must be out there somewhere, and no government building or politician’s residence is safe.