I’ve never met Julian Assange; and those Guardian friends who have say I’ve had a lucky escape. He’s clearly a bit of pain to deal with. (Season with whatever further frailties you wish.) But the deluge of adjectives and animosity dumped at the embassy’s door after last week’s UN arbitrary detention decision seems over-ripe, going on rank. Of course you can roll Swedish allegations and deportation decisions together in best “rule of law” fashion: but the UN working group took all that into account.

Here on home turf, papers are fighting to protect Freedom of Information from anally retentive bureaucracies. Information, we say, sets us free. But who charts the boundaries between what may safely be deemed free and what must be wrenched from the jaws of officialdom? The plain fact is that free means really free: and Assange helped set that benchmark. The UN remembers as much. It remembers the imperatives of freedom we seem to forget.