Well, whilst my appearance last night on 18 Doughty Street's End of the Day show was enjoyable it did leave me in a slight pickle this morning. Iain did ask me what I would be writing about today and I was a bit stuck as I'd just spent the evening talking about it. However, thank the lord they didn't have a copy of the Grauniad so I bought that this morning. Unsuprisingly I feel compelled to write about things now... funny that.
Whilst reading it on the Tube, it was not long before I found myself exclaiming, out loud, "disingenuous bastards!". You see, the front page carried a story on MPs' expenses (like the other papers) and it was carried with a picture of David Cameron riding his bicycle with the title "MPs' Expenses: It's 20p a mile for cycling (and 40p a mile for the car behind)". Pretty daming huh? You might even find yourself thinking "what a cheek! He's claiming for cycling and his following car".
The truth though, is buried in the small print as always. A quick turn to the story on page 8 and we find, at the bottom of the second paragraph, the words "[Cameron] did not claim mileage in his total expenses claim". This as you probably now realise, puts my Tube expletives in context.
3 comments:
20p a mile?
no wonder boris johnson is always riding a "bike"
How much do they get for an interior decorator?
Superp performance on Doughty Street last night. You didn't get the abuse I got on the news review.
On the subject of MPs and expenses the papers run the same stories every year. If they were funding huge salaries for researchers you could sympathise - but the fact is the parliamentary allowances barely meet the needs of a modern MPs office requirements.
Rant over.
I thought you were quite good Jonathon. Although Peter's Mr Blobby comment regarding your tie did make me chuckle :)
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