Priceless.

THERE'S nothing quite like the blindingly obvious to kick off an old-fashioned political scandal.

So the revelation that a seat at Dishface's personal marble-topped dinner table was available for £250,000 is firstly not a surprise, and secondly a meaty bit of news.

We don't like the idea of our politicians being bought and paid for by people who wish to sway official policy their way when we haven't voted for 'their way'.

But politics was ever thus. It's an expensive business, trading all that snake-oil, and it has to be funded somehow. Red, blue or yellow, the cash comes ultimately from working people who slave to give money to someone else who then spends it on the politician he chooses. It's never been fair.

And no-one signs a cheque without expecting to get something in return. None of us would. I wouldn't spend more than a tenner unless it improved my life in some way, whether by providing a bottle of sauvignon, a nice book or some new heels in the sale.

Even if I had £250,000 Dishface could not persuade me to give him it, not unless he offered to let me use his exoskeleton one day a week so I could masquerade as Prime Minister, meet the Queen and call her 'Betty', rearrange the pasty tax and leave him annoying notes to find on his return.

OF COURSE major political donors pay for access. OF COURSE politicians fall over themselves to suckle at the corporate teat. It may be a disgrace, we may wish it were different, but it's not. Not unless you want the taxpayer to start footing the bill.

Consider what the politicians are already doing with what we give them. They're planning to spend £500,000 on iPads, for a start; Dishface is splurging £20,000 on an app to help him run the country (I have often thought he thinks it's one big game of Angry Birds); and now the Parliamentary spending watchdog IPSA has decided it will not publish the kind of MPs' receipts which three years ago led to the expenses scandal.

There are three options: 1) Either these people fund themselves, and people will attempt to purchase MPs and ministers wholesale; 2) We give them the shirts off our backs too; 3) We get rid of politicians altogether, and have a system like jury service where anyone over 18 can get called up and has to do a year in Westminster on the national average wage. This last one would mean an end to political parties, which I don't think we'd miss much.

Whichever system we have, people like me will continue to poke our noses into it. It's been a sticky 12 months or so for the Press, under attack from all quarters regardless of whether we work for up, middle or downmarket papers. But the good news for us is that this latest scandal is the first to have struck Dishface without - as yet - producing immediate criticism of the journalists who uncovered it.

The normal technique of his PR machine is to blame the hacks concerned in off-the-record briefings, more often than not using the phrase 'tabloid techniques' as though it were an insult rather than a hallmark of popular and thorough journalism.

Just over a year ago a Cabinet minister was embarrassed almost to the point of resignation after being caught on camera having private conversations with journalists pretending to be someone else. Vince Cable threatened to bring down the government and discussed official policy on Rupert Murdoch's bid to take over BSkyB. Outrageously those journos and their paper were censured for using subterfuge by the Press Complaints Commission despite the obvious ethical and public interest value of their work.

This latest scandal has come from precisely the same kind of investigation - journalists using pretence to get unguarded answers from someone in power. They had hidden cameras and fake business cards, the kind of tricks which the News of the World (RIP) used so often, and for precisely the same reasons. Of course this time the journos work for a snoresheet, so perhaps that is why their 'tabloid techniques' haven't had the criticism they might if they worked for a red-top.

The fact is those techniques, and the work of all the journalists from different papers who use them, are absolutely priceless.

It's just a pity the same can't be said of our Prime Minister.

The tide always turns.

Good news for some.

A FREELANCE friend told me last week about trying to sell a story to a national newspaper. "I rang them up," he said, "and it was like talking to someone who'd just been in a car accident."

On the one hand, journos will always complain newsdesks aren't treating their stories with the Watergate-shattering respect they deserve. And on the other he had a point. The combination of phone-hacking and corruption scandals, a public inquiry and three police investigations are having a serious effect on even those of us who are not under suspicion.

If you open a national newspaper today, you'll have to look hard to find a story that hasn't come from a press office, showbiz agent or what's known as a 'buy-up' - when someone comes to us for a full sit-down chat and a cheque.

Today The Scum splashed on a buy-up with the mum of a £45m lottery winner. The Daily Glimmer went with a story from the wires about a baby killed in an American tornado, the Wail with information from an FOI request, The Groaner's done Russia, The Tims did the opinion of a Falklands War vet and the Wellygraph led with a behind-the-scenes briefing from our beloved Chancellor Gideon.

They're are all perfectly reasonable stories, got in perfectly reasonable ways. On a Monday papers have less news in than the rest of the week because they were prepared on Sunday when there's very little going on, and without the Screws (RIP) setting the agenda there's less material for the dailies to mop up. But I've sat and read all of today's papers and I can't for the life of me see a story about crime, politics or health that hasn't been officially approved in some respect.

Critics will say this just goes to show that all such yarns were got via criminal means, and now the guilty parties are so scared of being caught they've cleaned up their act. But a more realistic person will wonder whether all newspapers would have had the budgets to pay a bung or hack a phone on every story, never mind the inclination. In my experience the vast majority of tales come from somebody telling someone else something for free, as a bit of gossip, sometimes with and sometimes without realising that information would be passed on to a journalist.

I've known celebrities who tell their friends things on the clear understanding it will end up in print, and I've known stories which came about because someone sat and gossipped to their hairdresser, who in turn repeated it to the next client who just happened to be the wife of a journo having her roots done. Coppers I've dealt with over the years generally tell you stuff for free, for exactly the same reasons that celebrities, politicians and showbiz PRs do - because it makes someone look good. A good journo takes such briefings with a pinch of salt, but listens to them all the same. Vanity works harder than money does.

The scrutiny the Press is under is fair enough. Criminals need to be investigated and held to account, whatever business they're in. But the timing of an inquiry being held before the criminal cases which sparked it, the investigations which are being dragged out over years, is leading to what can only be called a story crunch - just like an economic recession, only with a lack of public information.

Without a single criminal case being heard or conviction won, journalism has become a trade where the phone has stopped ringing. A copper on a case who thinks his superiors have screwed it up is not going to take the risk of a quiet word in a journo's ear. A soldier who has had to spend thousands of pounds buying his own kit isn't going to get his mum to ring a newspaper on his behalf. A teaching assistant, council clerk, librarian, prison officer, dustman or anyone else employed on a public wage is going to be terrified of losing their job if they flog a tip for £50 - and it's tips which are often the first step on the story ladder, which allow an investment of time and effort to build up to a really good scandal.

Do you think politicians have stopped lying? Do you believe prisoners are all being well-behaved, that celebrities have turned their backs on drugs and hookers, doctors have stopped making mistakes, or that the courts only jail the guilty and let the innocent walk free? Those stories are still happening. We just aren't hearing about it.

And if they're scared, then so are we. Hacks worry every phone call and email could be handed over to the police, that papers won't protect the sources we work hard to reassure, that so much as buying a pint for a CPS lawyer after court will see everyone involved collared by a police force under pressure to compensate for its previous mistakes. We err on the side of extreme caution rather than take a risk.

Which of course is good news for some. Particularly if you're in charge of a government overseeing controversial changes to the criminal justice and welfare systems, sacking thousands and cutting benefits. It's good news too if you are one of the top bods in the Met Police, and want to tell other people what is and is not in the public interest without letting them make up their own minds.

It's quite good if you're a publicist who can threaten cowed journalists, or a celebrity with a book or DVD to sell, and it's bloody brilliant if this time last year you were a Prime Minister facing difficult questions on how much you knew about the whole damn mess when you employed one of its central figures as your spin doctor.

And it's more marvellous still if you are a lawyer acting for one of the truly guilty individuals who not only corrupted others but became corrupt themselves, who twisted my trade and abused their position for their own gain. Because not only is there a bucketload of billable hours in this, when it finally comes to court your client will walk.

I do not want news that has been approved by a press officer, run past the police or checked against Hugh Grant's moral compass first. I want my news back - cleaned of criminality and paying off its debts but just as badly-behaved and mischievous as it ever was, kicking over the dustbins, cocking a snook and scribbling away frantically because it had a really, really good story to tell.

Maybe tomorrow?

Scrutiny stills the hand, even if it's not a guilty hand.