The Daily Telegraph, the right-wing newspaper that broke the salacious stories of MPs expenses a few weeks ago, today leads with “MP’s expenses: If you think this storm will pass, think again”. Of course this story will not pass, not with the Telegraph drip-feeding the public with such greasy, simple and addictive stories like a dealer stringing out a junkie.
I vehemently dislike the Press’ sanctimony on this whole issue. MP’s have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar and something needs to be done about this. But listening to the self-righteous blathering from journalists, one would assume that they themselves are whiter than white when, of course, nothing could not be further from the truth: journalists are legendary for fiddling their expenses. The righteous opprobrium that they have whipped up acting as ‘the nation’s conscience’ is breathtakingly arrogant, false and distasteful. For the Telegraph, this story is simply a way to revive circulation which was flagging horrendously leading to job cuts as well as whole-sale copy and pasting from Reuters, changing a word or two, inventing a journalist’s name to stick on the by-line (usually an amusing anagram) and printing it as their copy (see Private Eye 1236 ‘Ghost Story’). They just could not care less that their actions have precipitated a constitutional crisis in British politics, yet it is not this in and of itself that angers me so much, it is the level of double-standards which truly I just cannot abide by.