Former Downing St communications director Alastair Campbell was giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards today – although details of his testimony had already been leaked to a blogger.

Former Northern Ireland Secretary of State Peter Hain is the latest name to be added to the phone hacking scandal.

The trouble with the web — apart from it being home to all sorts of bigotry, hatred and aggression — is that you have to pan through a lot of tedious material to find the interesting nuggets. Anyone can blog, true enough, but the flipside of being free is being free to be boring. Who cares what anyone else had for breakfast?

OUR poor Taoiseach may feel he was recently stripped of all his aces but he can look forward to another powerful hand with the production of the first-ever deck of Dáil Top Trumps.

Politicians, journalists, bloggers and interested members of the public are set to gather at an event in Dublin examining what bloggers can do for politics in the next general election.