For the last I can't remember how many days Britain's domestic news (and our newspapers - of all sorts, tabloid and otherwise) have been leading with the story of the Conservative Cabinet Minister, Andrew Mitchell, who allegedly lost his temper at a policeman at the gates of 10 Downing Street.

Mitchell was wanting to leave via the main gate on his bicycle. The cop on duty said words to the effect of, 'Sorry, sir. But you and your bike need to go out by that side gate, the one over there, do you see?' To this Mitchell, who'd had a trying day, we're asked not to forget, said something like, 'Don't talk to me like that, you pleb. You should know your effing place!'

Since then, Mitchell has apologised to the police, both in general (good all round chaps, the police, who deserve our respect all the time) and to the slighted individual, who we are assured accepted the apology. When he was pressed over what, exactly, he had said, Mitchell would only say he had not used the words attributed to him, but didn't say which of  those attributed words were the ones he hadn't used.

But it's not good enough. The Police Federation says there has to be an enquiry to look into the details of the Minister's offence, while the Prime Minister is anxiously insisting that surely now there's been an apology that ought to be sufficient.

The trouble isn't the 'effing place' so much as the use of 'pleb'. Andrew Mitchell typifies the toffs that the Conservatives have been so energetically trying to prove they no longer represent (or no longer ONLY represent). But only toffs, it's argued, would dream of calling a serving policeman a pleb...even if the toff in question had had a trying day. And all this in the week when two young policewomen were shot down by a gangland gunman while they were responding to a call-out about a burglary - the police at their unarmed best.

It may be that government cuts to the police are irritating the Police Federation, and there is now anyway a stand-off between the government and the police. His word against the other guy's word. How does it stand? A Minister's word against a policeman's notebook? Who wins? In a court room, what price anyone's word against a policeman's notebook? Added to this, the story has been playing particularly well in the tabloid newspaper The Sun (Rupert Murdoch's favourite print baby), which says it has had a leak of what the Minister really said. But the Sun currently has a number of journalists being arrested for having corrupt links with...the police. So...erm...

And don't forget that although The Sun backed the Conservatives against Labour in the last elections, it was under the Conservatives that the Leveson enquiry into murky dealings at News International (Murdoch's print empire) was set up - an enquiry that has given a kicking to The Sun and the now closed  News of the World. So is the Sun just telling a story, or getting back at the Government at a time when public sympathy lies with the police because of the shooting of the two policewmen last week?

Whatever. None of this explains why the tale of the Minister, his bicycle and the policeman at the gate still sits, motionless, as our top news story, while Syrians are killing one another in large numbers...for example. 

Meanwhile, in China, in the Taiwanese-run factory where Apple have their i-stuff made (under poor conditions, apparently), there's been a riot. Some 79,000 people are employed there. But last night about 2000 of them got into a shindig with the police after a security guard questioned a worker returning late to his dormitory. The worker didn't have the right ID about his person - or some such misdemeanour. Did this worker accuse the security guard of being a pleb who should know his effing place? We don't know. But we do know, which is the most horrible, that production of Apple's iPhone 5 has been halted. Now that IS a world story. Isn't it?