Our newspapers have been discussing Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s Upper Palaver. The Guardian uses a posh word to make this seem all right:

It has been the hottest topic of debate all week in the bars of the House of Commons, at the dining tables of SW1 and in the columns of the public prints, from broadsheet to red top.

No, not Gordon Brown's wobbly debut at prime minister's questions. Not his worthy constitutional reforms, either. Nor the latest terror threat. Or even the rain at Wimbledon.

I refer, of course, to the weighty matter of the cleavage - or décolletage, as we say in the middle market - of the new home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

It has, indeed, as we say in our trade, been a storm in a D-cup.

The late Willie Whitelaw used to say that a successful home secretary needed bottom. Well, now the new home secretary is being acclaimed for her top.

Stick it up your gravitas.

In America, they would never stoop so low. No, they would stand on a ladder to get a better view. The American press has been full to bursting with Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings. Or rather her assets. Notice again how The Times skirts over the tackiness of this by using a fancy word - discourse:

It's an issue at the forefront of American politic discourse this past week: Hillary Clinton's cleavage.

Robin Givhan, a fashion writer for the Washington Post, wrote about Clinton's appearance on C-SPAN2, a cable television network that airs government proceedings, as the presidential candidate talked about the cost of higher education. But the focus of the Post article wasn't schoolbooks; it was Clinton's pink jacket, black shirt with slight v-neck and what is evident at closer scrutiny, a shadowy bit of cleavage.

"It was startling to see that small acknowledgment of sexuality and femininity peeking out of the conservative," Givhan wrote, going on to compare it to catching a man with his fly unzipped. "To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d'oeuvres is a provocation," although the writer seemingly took issue not with the cleavage itself but that it wasn't as up-front and dramatic as that displayed by the new British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

Make your mind up. Still, neither Hillary nor Jacqui can complain that the the reporters have only one thing on their mind.