From our There are no good people or bad people series.
The story of the Right Honourable Mr. Cameron and the pig didn't seem particularly interesting. Re-tweeting photos of M.C. Escher artwork, or sharing some Hunter/Garcia lyrics is always more important. But curiosity won after we had worked our way through the self-imposed daily reading list and the inevitable meandering generated by it.
So, the PM and hazing involving a pig.
As usual with stories like this, there were lots of jokes, and there was lots of talk about the role of hazing in general and within "the elites" in particular. Discussions went on about being bought and groomed, being dropped by powerful peers, etc.
We didn't see any press coverage that took up the question of privacy, even privacy advocates - at least the ones we follow - stuck with the hazing and the power aspects.
Since these privacy advocates are smart people, we cannot exclude that they asked themselves a variant of the post's title Did #piggate drive home the value of privacy? and came up with no.
The notion that Mr. Cameron might, for a second, rethink the policies of his government relating to the privacy of citizens must be too romantic, too fundamentally naive.
If you have no problem burning a 50 pound note in front of a homeless man and performing the alleged pig related act, why would you not spy on the most private communication of your citizens if you have the technology to do it and can invoke some grave danger?
So, in the absence of an epiphany by the PM, or unwilling to risk a career for the privacy of others, piggate will not change anything.
Since the episode likely happened before 1990 - it's a guess, mind you - it is extremely unlikely that the alleged photographic evidence ever made it onto the internet to be sucked up by some patient data hoover.
Which means the blogster won't have to follow through with the bragging "hey, I'll show you my data if you show me yours" in the post Another age-old custom rebranded: Leading by Example.
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