Friday, December 03, 2010

Odd oversight or obscurantism....


The News. Or not the News? MP Expenses in the millions. I guess it depends how it's written and what agenda the particular media have, especially if you're not keen on the Coalition: BBC and DT both have similar headlines: "MPs' expenses: £3.1m claimed in three months", or "MPs claiming £1m a month in expenses; MPs were paid £3.1 million in expenses in the first three and a half months after the General Election". Both the BBC and DT have details of various claims, explain the process with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, both have various articles about this news but neither, yesterday or today, in all their reporting - as far as I can see - mention one important fact:
"Expenses claimed by MPs have halved in the new Parliament, the first breakdown of payments since the general election has revealed."
That from Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor The Independent.

Update 12:45 CET: somewhat connected news: Tom Harris MP Tweets that IPSA's communications director Anne Power was named as source of leaks against MPs: in Hansard (Column 1029).

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2 comments:

Paul said...

Don't know if you saw the news that IPSA has a communications budget of £500,000 p.a - you couldn't make it up could you!

Span Ows said...

Yep, sounds incredible, you can just imagine the meeting as they set the budget! Still peeved at the way the news is twisted...both ways!