The natural counter-argument to the "looking without seeing" point is, of course, what would the media have written about had the PR confusion story not appeared? It seemed there was little else to latch onto - and "one party leader attacks another" is not an eye-catching headline. Nevertheless, a reassuringly unsensationalist article by Steve Richards.

News story of the day for me has got to be a surprisingly coherent and sensible report by Boris Johnson, of all people, in the Guardian, of all places, on higher education funding. Perhaps the Liberals are closer to the Tories on some issues than Ming cares to admit?

I got quite excited when I saw someone had commented on me... I didn't realise it was you.
I know perfectly well that if a similar sort of briefing cock-up had occurred at Tory or Labour conference the media would have been all over that in a similar fashion. What riles me is that the journos would have found something else to comment on, would have dug around for all potential sticking points but it seems plain lazy that they all wrote the same story on the Lib Dems.
That said it seems to have picked up again today, what with the Telegraph sticking the knife right in there...

Let us not forget that Boris Johnson's researcher was madly scribbling notes at our higher education funding event last week!

I noticed that too, especially when he says "If I read my Guardian correctly, there has been a slow, dignified, Serengeti-style migration of vice-chancellors from a position of hostility to variable fees towards a more or less universal desire to lift the cap. But I am afraid that we are still a long way from converting that vice-chancellorial consensus into a political consensus". Obviously been paying very close attention.