Saturday, December 13, 2008

More non-answers on Brown's gift shop

Back in November I posted about the Downing Street Gift Shop. Francis Maude has continued to ask questions and continues to get no answers. The other day he asked "what the annual turnover of the Downing Street gift shop is", and was referred to Gordon Brown's response in October which simply said,
A small selection of unsubsidised gifts are available for staff to purchase on a not-for-profit basis.
What is it they are trying to hide about the gift shop I wonder?

6 comments:

Pogo said...

What is it they are trying to hide about the gift shop I wonder?

... That it's been subsidised to the tune of about half a million quid and the turnover so far has been about a "tenner and a bag o' marlies" mayhap?

................................. said...

My suspicion is that this may be a way of passing on official gifts in exchange for a token payment.

Anonymous said...

Fruit and Flowers

Shaun said...

More pertinently, has the gift shop passed on the *snigger* 2.5% VAT cut to its customers and has it therefore seen a lift in its sales *guffaw*

Anonymous said...

Sounds to me like the old days in Mother Russia when the Komisol shops were open to the chosen ones, those favoured members with US Dollars obtained at government "special" rates, selling goods that were unavailable to the proletariat. Maybe the No. 10 shop is simply selling goods for Euros or Dollars now that the regime has destroyed Sterling and imported luxuries are expensive or difficult to obtain. Stalin would approve.

Elby the Beserk said...

Brown? Gift?

Does not compute