I've just been tying up the loose ends before going on paternity leave. I did a handover with my partner Alex before popping off to meet my CLP's ward organisers on the European Elections.
Roz has been a saint. She's getting very tired now but has worked so hard to get everything ready for the baby - three days and counting.
But while I was looking online for one of those collapseable prams featured on the Apprentice - we were at that Baby Show when they were filming the episode but were too busy to pop over - I caught up on the latest developments on expenses.
Seems Nadine Dorries is getting a hell of a kicking for yesterday's comments. Now I'm not her biggest fan. I thought she over-egged her victim status over Smeargate and was pretty petty over Gordon's apology letter.
I also thought comparing Expensegate to McCarthyism is pretty spurious - McCarthyism persecuted people's political beliefs not their financial arrangements. Blaming the Fees Office is also nothing but buck passing too.
But I find it remarkable that her blog has been taken down just because it criticizes the Telegraph's owners, the Barclay Brothers. Dizzy has the scoop.
So it's fair to day I don't agree with anything Nadine says. But I absolutely defend her write to say it on the net.
Whether her theory is true or not, is not really relevant. It's an opinion.
What does matter, is that the owners of a paper that has paid £350,000 to a 'whistleblower,' should then silence someone who speaks out against them. That's hypocrisy.
Surely it would have been better just to have left a comment on, or email, Nad's blog. She could then have referred to it, admit she was wrong or carry a clarification.
Blogs might at times run round rings round the dead tree press, but two things are very clear today.
Firstly, papers like the Telegraph are more than happy to dish it out but not so keen to take it.
And secondly, the mainstream media will always have the deepest pockets.
By the way, I predict quite a few more exposes on John Wick and his company tomorrow.
By his own admission in today's Telegraph Wick says: "Several former commissioners of the Metropolitan Police have served on the boards of my companies."
In the light of this, there are legitimate questions to be asked as to why the Met Police decided not to prosecute those who leaked the expenses.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad MP expenses were going to be published. What get's my goat is that someone has earned a third of a million pounds after hawking these discs around Fleet Street for the last two months and then has the gall to spin themselves as a noble whistleblower.
I think once people realise these expense claims were all going to come out in July anyway, they might start to see this for what it really is.
Handling stolen goods.
1 comment:
Think you are wrong on this one David. Nadine specifically suggests that the Barclay Brothers are orchestrating the take down of Parliament in order to install a UKIP/BNP regime that suits them better. That is serious and that is defamatory.
They should sue her or let the blog go back up without the silliest post she's ever written, which is really saying something. Just taking it down and doing nothing is unfair and bullying.
If you're saying "stuff the libel laws" that would be one thing and we might even agree, with some qualifications perhaps, but meanwhile defending Nadine accusing serious people, with reputations to lose, of being supporters of the nearest thing on god's earth to the Nazi Party ...
What Nadine is saying is that "everybody's at it, leave little me alone", though whether she actually bought a doggy fashion drier is moot. Oooh, sounds a bit rude. "Bloody briliant!" as The Drapes might say.
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