Monday 25 February 2008

Wendy Alexander playing with her donor

Anyone reading the Sunday Times yesterday would have come across a story (unfortunately not online) about Wendy Alexander and one of her donors. The donor was a company called Spark of Genius which uses public money to provide some educational services.

When the company was giving evidence to a committee on which Wendy Alexander was sitting, she failed to note her interest, in breach of the rules, and asked how government policy should be changed to give the company more public money.

Here's a clip:

As an interesting aside, today's Herald carried a follow-up with 'a spokesman for Ms Alexander' claiming that the donation had been registered. Er, no it wasn't. I do hope Simon Pia isn't offering an alternate version of the truth already.

This kind of contempt for the actualite might be why some of the eminent scribes of the Scottish political press pack have been reminiscing about the good old days just after Wendy had mislaid a couple of spinners when she borrowed staff from other Labour MSPs and thus had Kezia Dugdale and Russell Gunson working for her. As it was put to me, "at least they had the decency to look embarrassed when they tried to sell you cheese" (OK, I'm paraphrasing when I say cheese). Journalists apparently found honesty and a bit of integrity refreshing in a Labour spinner. Take a bow Kez!

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