May 2009 Archives

You can't deny the Daily Telegraph the fact it has delivered arguably the political scoop of the decade, if not longer.

As a journalist, I can only begin to imagine how great it must feel to know that you've the rest of the media just waiting for your story to drop, knowing full well it will change their news agenda for the next 24 hours.

But as we enter the third week of its revelations, I'm increasingly beginning to wonder what the Telegraph is hoping to get out of its continued investigation.

IT seems like an eternity ago, but three weeks ago Hazel Blears was apparently shocked and stunned when her 'Youtube if you want to' was construed by those pesky political correspondents as an attack on Gordon Brown's leadership.

So perhaps it wasn't a surprise that Brown has taken the chance to get his own, using Blears's avoidance of capital gains tax on a home support via the second home allowans and describing it as unacceptable.

In many ways, he is right. Blears, because she was named and shamed early on, has become a bit of a poster girl for the expenses culture.

SO there we have it. The man who last week was more angry at the Daily Telegraph for printing details of lavish expense claims rather than the fact the claims had been made in the first place has once again defied public outrage.

Michael Martin wants to get all the party leaders together to thrash out a new system. It's rather like Augustus Gloop coming up with a diet plan in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, or Louis Walsh saying record producers need to work together to make sure bland, Irish boyband ballads are a thing of the past.

FOR nine days now, the Daily Telegraph has controlled the political agenda. Thanks to Nadine Dorries' rather peculiar rant, we now know how each day works.

With its team of 25 staff working through one million digitized receipts and claims forms, each morning the Daily Telegraph contacts the MPs it intends to highlight the next day, asking them a series of questions, via letter, which it seeks the answers to.

That MP presumably spends the day sweating, trying behind the scenes to control the story, and then, I suspect, doesn't sleep well that night, just waiting for the phone to ring.

In some cases, they come out fighting. Shahid Malik spent several hours yesterday insisting he'd done nothing wrong in claiming £2,000 for an entertainment system in his second home, only to resign from his post as justice minister when it came to light his rent was being subsidised.

In other cases, the apologies have been quick and fast. In the case of David Chaytor, another Labour MP who claimed a 'phantom mortgage' in the Telegraph's eyes, the apology was on the front page of the Manchester Evening News alongside the allegations on the front of the Telegraph this morning.

WITH friends like this, speaker Michael Martin really doesn't need enemies.

Lord Foulkes strode into the BBC News Channel with a bee in his bonnet. Sadly for him, the bee happened to represent the general thinking of much of the British public.

Lord Foulkes clearly has a lot of time for the speaker Michael Martin, so I think we can put to bed the issue of why Lord Foulkes thought going on to the News Channel was a good idea. He would appear to suffer from poor judgement.

What's worse? Saying something you did was 'within the rules' in the face of public opposition or saying that a system you've benefitted from needs correcting, but refusing to apologise for indulging while you could?

Over the past few days, we've seen some incredible reports about MPs expenses. the largesse of the Tories and their claims for repairs to pipes under tennis courts and for fixing a moat and equally matched by the petty claims made by Labour, which have ranged from Christmas decorations to kitkats.

It's taken the best part of a week of revelations on the pages of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph for the party leaders to apologise. Ironically, David Cameron apologised before he knew what his party was to be accused of, while Gordon Brown only got round to it after the Telegraph had turned fire to the opposition. Likewise, Nick Clegg from the Lib Dems has been repenting, and the Torygraph won't be getting to them for a couple of days yet.

THERE are sadistic few who enjoy watching a wounded animal staggering around and lashing out while its tormentors hold back from going in for the kill.

Which is probably what makes Prime Ministers' Questions such a sad spectacle at the moment.

Gordon Brown is on the ropes, but no-one seems prepared - or capable - of delivering that knock-out blow that would put him out of his misery.

Tormentor-in-chief, David Cameron, seems happy just to thrust political gossip - such the rumour that Brown's been throwing printers around - back at the prime minister, while mocking the PM's attempts to hit back with a quick one-liner.

AS MPs struggle to get their heads around the idea that those of us out in the real world don't think it's acceptable to treat the second home allowance as a third or fourth income, here's another one for them to ponder:

What if government jobs were handed out based on who scored most against a set job description? In other words, a ministerial job handed out based not on whether you supported the PM in his battle to become leader or because you'll keep his rivals quiet, but on your qualification to do the job?

Gordon Brown tried it with Digby Jones as a business minister, and a former armed forces senior officer in at the Ministry of Defence. But they failed the first test - they hadn't actually been elected so they certainly shouldn't be holding ministerial office.

The 50p top rate on tax, announced by the chancellor in his budget last week, has been seized upon as a final nail in the coffin of New Labour, and as such, has been presented as a bad thing.

But is it? While political commentators left, right and centre have used the 50p top-rate for those earning over £150,000 to be proof that Gordon Brown will for certain lose the next election, a poll in one of the most unlikely places painted a different picture.

The Sunday People threw in a question about the next tax in a YouGov survey it published on Sunday - and found two thirds of people supported it.