Yes, someone said something foolish on Twitter. Yes, he then dug himself into a hole with an explanation that doesn’t stack up. Yes, he shouldn’t have done it.

But even for a Twitter-holic like me, you’ve got to wonder quite why this story is garnering so much online chatter in comparison with the news we may be deprived of the chance to find out the truth as to whether or not one of David Cameron’s top advisers headed up an organisation that carried out systematic and widespread criminal activity.

That is the sort of moral blindness and indifference to rule breaking which really matters. Deciding who to employ and keep employed is a considered process, which does not fall under any of the spur of the moment excuses that cover a tweet or two.

As The Guardian reported yesterday about Andy Coulson, for it is he, and the phone hacking which took place whilst he was editor of The News of the World:

The paper’s then royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, were jailed in January 2007 for intercepting the voicemail of a total of eight victims, including Max Clifford. Coulson and the paper said they knew nothing about the illegal activity by Goodman and Mulcaire. Coulson resigned on the grounds that he carried ultimate responsibility.

Since then it has emerged that other News of the World journalists were involved in handling illegally “hacked” voicemail messages and that there were numerous other victims…

The Clifford case threatened to bring important new material into the public domain. Two weeks ago, his lawyers won a court order for the disclosure of material which, the high court was told, would reveal widespread crime at the paper during Coulson’s time there. Today, however, there were signs at the high court that the case is being stalled or dropped.

So forgive me for opting out of the hoo hah over whether an MP made a stupidly over the top tribal comment about another party.

Myself, I’m more concerned about how widespread the phone hacking was, what Andy Coulson knew about it (and the more widespread it was, the harder it is to believe he didn’t know about it) and whether the truth will come out. After all, if Coulson was in charge whilst there was widespread breaking of the law, and repeated invasion of people’s privacy, what does it say about his suitability for such a powerful role in David Cameron’s set-up?