The inept effort by spin doctors to intimidate the Telegraph over the expenses story has shown the need for a free press
The government needs to go back to Dr Evil's School of Intimidation and Ruthlessness. As the Daily Telegraph investigated the culture secretary Maria Miller's expenses this week![ext]()
, her special adviser Jo Hindley made the Telegraph journalist Holly Watt![ext]()
an offer she couldn't refuse.
"Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors' meetings around Leveson at the moment," she said, "So I am just going to kind of flag up that connection for you to think about." (I know these people. They speak in flags.) Then she told Watt to discuss it with "people a little higher up your organisation". Then, because idiocy has its own momentum, Craig Oliver, the Downing Street director of communications, telephoned Tony Gallagher, the Telegraph's editor, to make him an offer he couldn't … OK, to say that Miller "is looking at Leveson at the moment"– as if Gallagher, the editor of a national newspaper and a journalist of some distinction, didn't know.
Counter-attacks and denials have been swift – that Leveson was only mentioned, or rather flagged, to demonstrate that Miller was busy is the most amusing – but is this anything other than a gauche attempt to intimidate a newspaper into not running a damaging story? An inquiry into Miller's expenses has been launched and the prime minister is giving Miller his full support, which is usually Cameron-speak for toast.
First, the expenses, which are miserably free of tampons, porn films and jolly cleaning ladies. Between 2005, when she entered parliament, and 2009, when the expenses scandal broke, Miller claimed £90,718 for the mortgage and other expenses on a house in Wimbledon, in which her parents have lived since 1996 with her children. To do this she designated it as her second home, even though it seems to contain an awful lot of people to be a second home. (Her designated first home was rented from a Tory donor at £6,000 a year below the rate at which it is currently advertised![ext]()
.) The claims include £477 for crockery, but never mind that – let us not deal in mindless trivia, as our enemies say we do.
Miller appeared in the London Evening Standard![ext]()
to deny all wrongdoing, and to say her arrangements withstood two sets of independent auditing, only one of which actually turned out to be independent; but the fact that her last claim was in April 2009, less than 10 days before the Telegraph published the first of its stories about MPs' expenses, may imply that she, at least, considered it dodgy – why not continue otherwise? Was it retrospective consideration for the delicacy of taxpayers, who persist in believing that £90,718 is a lot to spend on an MP's House Beautiful dreams when cuts – dare I even say it – bite? I would ask how much time Miller spends living in the same house as her parents, but her luckless special adviser is probably whispering down the telephone to my editor as I type, ideally in a Vito Corleone growl.
It is hard to damn MPs for behaviour in which so many are complicit; it is fair to say that parliament's reputation collapsed in 2009, a witch melting in a puddle, while we, the stupid munchkins, laughed derisively, to avoid the fact we were laughing mostly at ourselves. It is possible Miller will be cleared by the parliamentary standards commissioner – these ponds, with their duck houses, are fetid after all – that her parents will be classed as dependents, and the prime minister's confidence, for once, will be justified. He is ever an optimist, even if his "shirkers and scroungers" rhetoric wilts when you consider the requirements of his own MPs and his urgent need to claim, detailed in 2009, for a television licence, as if he never watched television before he entered politics. (It was a small thing, but telling.)
No, the scandal is the attempt, however useless, to intimidate a newspaper into not running a story damaging to the government and then, when exposed, to deny it. (Those are the rules – huff and puff then, if the house still stands, bluster.) Government sources have said, variously, that the Telegraph ran the story to distract from Miller's announcement on gay marriage, when they knew publication was delayed to give Miller a chance to respond; that the journalist who approached Miller's father did not identify herself until it was too late (to do what?); that Gallagher had apologised (and he did, but only for any upset caused, not for the story); that Oliver's call to Gallagher was only "reflecting concerns" included in a letter sent by Miller to the Telegraph after that telephone call. The very blizzard of explanation is troubling: all schoolchildren know too many excuses spoil a lie.
Is there any better argument for a robust press, free to question (or intrude, or harass, or stalk, as others call it) than this woeful tale? The Leveson inquiry was a response to disgust at abuses already legislated for, even if they were poorly enforced; it was a public spanking, stuffed principally with self-hatred. And yet, here again we learn how dangerous a meek media are, a comfort blanket for a dodgy politician. The Telegraph was right to publish and Jo Hindley, whatever hole she shakes in, should be proud. She may be the spad that saved journalism.
Twitter: @TanyaGold1![ext]()
Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 days ago.
The government needs to go back to Dr Evil's School of Intimidation and Ruthlessness. As the Daily Telegraph investigated the culture secretary Maria Miller's expenses this week
, her special adviser Jo Hindley made the Telegraph journalist Holly Watt an offer she couldn't refuse."Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors' meetings around Leveson at the moment," she said, "So I am just going to kind of flag up that connection for you to think about." (I know these people. They speak in flags.) Then she told Watt to discuss it with "people a little higher up your organisation". Then, because idiocy has its own momentum, Craig Oliver, the Downing Street director of communications, telephoned Tony Gallagher, the Telegraph's editor, to make him an offer he couldn't … OK, to say that Miller "is looking at Leveson at the moment"– as if Gallagher, the editor of a national newspaper and a journalist of some distinction, didn't know.
Counter-attacks and denials have been swift – that Leveson was only mentioned, or rather flagged, to demonstrate that Miller was busy is the most amusing – but is this anything other than a gauche attempt to intimidate a newspaper into not running a damaging story? An inquiry into Miller's expenses has been launched and the prime minister is giving Miller his full support, which is usually Cameron-speak for toast.
First, the expenses, which are miserably free of tampons, porn films and jolly cleaning ladies. Between 2005, when she entered parliament, and 2009, when the expenses scandal broke, Miller claimed £90,718 for the mortgage and other expenses on a house in Wimbledon, in which her parents have lived since 1996 with her children. To do this she designated it as her second home, even though it seems to contain an awful lot of people to be a second home. (Her designated first home was rented from a Tory donor at £6,000 a year below the rate at which it is currently advertised
.) The claims include £477 for crockery, but never mind that – let us not deal in mindless trivia, as our enemies say we do.Miller appeared in the London Evening Standard
to deny all wrongdoing, and to say her arrangements withstood two sets of independent auditing, only one of which actually turned out to be independent; but the fact that her last claim was in April 2009, less than 10 days before the Telegraph published the first of its stories about MPs' expenses, may imply that she, at least, considered it dodgy – why not continue otherwise? Was it retrospective consideration for the delicacy of taxpayers, who persist in believing that £90,718 is a lot to spend on an MP's House Beautiful dreams when cuts – dare I even say it – bite? I would ask how much time Miller spends living in the same house as her parents, but her luckless special adviser is probably whispering down the telephone to my editor as I type, ideally in a Vito Corleone growl.It is hard to damn MPs for behaviour in which so many are complicit; it is fair to say that parliament's reputation collapsed in 2009, a witch melting in a puddle, while we, the stupid munchkins, laughed derisively, to avoid the fact we were laughing mostly at ourselves. It is possible Miller will be cleared by the parliamentary standards commissioner – these ponds, with their duck houses, are fetid after all – that her parents will be classed as dependents, and the prime minister's confidence, for once, will be justified. He is ever an optimist, even if his "shirkers and scroungers" rhetoric wilts when you consider the requirements of his own MPs and his urgent need to claim, detailed in 2009, for a television licence, as if he never watched television before he entered politics. (It was a small thing, but telling.)
No, the scandal is the attempt, however useless, to intimidate a newspaper into not running a story damaging to the government and then, when exposed, to deny it. (Those are the rules – huff and puff then, if the house still stands, bluster.) Government sources have said, variously, that the Telegraph ran the story to distract from Miller's announcement on gay marriage, when they knew publication was delayed to give Miller a chance to respond; that the journalist who approached Miller's father did not identify herself until it was too late (to do what?); that Gallagher had apologised (and he did, but only for any upset caused, not for the story); that Oliver's call to Gallagher was only "reflecting concerns" included in a letter sent by Miller to the Telegraph after that telephone call. The very blizzard of explanation is troubling: all schoolchildren know too many excuses spoil a lie.
Is there any better argument for a robust press, free to question (or intrude, or harass, or stalk, as others call it) than this woeful tale? The Leveson inquiry was a response to disgust at abuses already legislated for, even if they were poorly enforced; it was a public spanking, stuffed principally with self-hatred. And yet, here again we learn how dangerous a meek media are, a comfort blanket for a dodgy politician. The Telegraph was right to publish and Jo Hindley, whatever hole she shakes in, should be proud. She may be the spad that saved journalism.
Twitter: @TanyaGold1
Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 days ago.