So Mr. Fox, you have a friend.....

I know I should be more diligent and read up on the latest political crisis. Unfortunately, I can't get much beyond the headlines of the Liam Fox saga.

Based on my limited and negligent reading, I gather that Mr Fox has a friend that has subsequently proved to be an embarrassment. I've also picked up that there is a security dimension to the scandal since Mr Fox is the U.K.'s Defence Minister. This is hard to believe, since successive Labour and Conservative governments had downsized UK military capacity to the point where it no longer offers any protection against any threat beyond a suicide bomber. I can't see why the fact that the Defence Minister has a male friend would make the UK more vulnerable that it has already become.

Part of my reluctance to delve deeper into this story is that there are so many more important issues floating around at the moment. There is, for example, the impending collapse of the Italian government. This could set in motion a sequence of events that could finally lead to the collapse of the euro, and unleash the greatest European economic downturn since the Black Death. The US is threatening sanctions against Iran for a despicable plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. A major European bank has just failed. Unemployment has risen sharply in the United Kingdom. The Federal Reserve is again thinking of printing cash in the vain hope that the US economy will begin to recover.

Perhaps there is something we're not being told. Maybe in a few days we might learn why this otherwise unforgivably dull story has dominated the newspapers.