Misleading Headline of the week

[matgb]

BBC NEWS | Politics | MPs get four more days of holiday:

MPs will have an additional four days of holiday in 2008 compared with this year, it has been announced.

Right. Because they're not in Westminster at their offices or putting their bums on the green leather, they're "on holiday"?

I've met a number of MPs over the last ten years, and yes, the one I know best regularly wins awards for being "hardest working consituency MP" and similar, but still, MPs not at Westminster may mean holiday for the Lobby journalists, but it sure as hell doesn't mean holiday for the MPs—they're normally in their constuencies, working on polcies, dealing with the huge amounts of correspondence they get and doing the other (bigger) part of their role—that of glorified social worker come all-round local advocate.

Bloody Westminster bubble, the national media only cares about stories if they affect the big headlines—your average MP is worrying a lot more about big planning applications, hospital closures and police crime solving rates than they are about the number of days per year they're requested to turn up in the House. It's only when you get to the bottom bit that the story makes any of this mean anything. Last two paragraphs:

Variations in the number of Fridays when the Commons is open for business mean it is likely that MPs will sit for a greater number of days in 2007-8 than in the previous 12-month period.

MPs often respond to criticism of their lengthy spells away from Westminster by saying that they devote much of these periods to constituency work.

So what the story actually says is MPs will be at Wetminster more next year than this, and they say they do work elsewhere but we can't be arsed to actually check this so will write it up as if they're lying.

Is it any wonder people get disillusioned when even the BBC puts up this sort of half-baked sorry excuse for coverage?

Bah, stuff this, I'm off to the pub.

ETA: Nich already covered this and said roughly the same as me. Why do the press tell such lies about MP's salaries and holidays ?

Comments

[strictlytrue.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. This kind of thing really drives me nuts - but if I write about it, it obviously looks like I'm just defending my absurdly long holidays. I, however, am not an MP, and the vast majority of them spend a fair chunk of recesses doing constituency work, seeing their families who don't see them for most of the rest of the year etc. etc.

Why do the press tell such lies about MP's salaries and holidays ?

Of course, the answer to this question is, "So people don't notice how absurdly overpaid the press are for being parasites."

[matgb]

There are (and I've met) MPs that do just skive, or work a different job, or whatever. They're increasingly in the minority, and mostly in safe seats as well.

But yeah, the press need to keep the story away from them—I still shudder at what the editor of the Mail is paid. Nich's article above covers it fairly well—London centric press don't want to believe that politics is mostly local, which is why they always look amazed when weird events buck trends and similar. Ah well.