{"id":803,"date":"2008-02-02T02:59:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-02T08:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=803"},"modified":"2008-02-02T02:59:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-02T08:59:00","slug":"tiny-political-scandal-rocks-british-public-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/02\/tiny-political-scandal-rocks-british-public-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny political scandal rocks British public life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcaps\">T<\/span>his week a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">British MP<\/span> has <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/7212990.stm\">been in the spotlight<\/a> for employing his son as a \u201cresearcher,\u201d when it seems the young man did nothing for his money. But the issue of him not doing anything has been lost amid wider sniffing at familial employment.<\/p>\n<p>Even a mighty oak like <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Microsoft<\/span> trying to buy <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Yahoo<\/span> fell beneath this \u00a317k bonsai public scandal.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;\">Newsnight<\/span> ed Peter Barron <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/blogs\/theeditors\/2008\/02\/are_we_unfair_to_mps.html\">asks<\/a> if the Beeb gave too much time to it.<\/p>\n<p>Well, look at it another way.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know how many family members are employed at the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">BBC<\/span> but I wonder if there might be more than &#8211; say &#8211; a handful. I wonder too if BBC journalists would like to be filling in timesheets to account for their work. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Nick Robinson<\/span> discussed such sheets the other day, describing those who didn\u2019t want to use them as \u201cold-fashioned.\u201d Er, right Nick &#8211; and whose desk is your timesheet sitting on?<\/p>\n<p>The MP, at least, had a five-year accountability clause built in to his office, called an election. Voters could kick him out.<\/p>\n<p>But when someone negotiates <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Jonathan Ross<\/span>\u2019s next salary increase from the public purse, licence fee payers can only  hope that they get a ticking off at their appraisal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week a British MP has been in the spotlight for employing his son as a \u201cresearcher,\u201d when it seems the young man did nothing for his money. But the issue of him not doing anything has been lost amid wider sniffing at familial employment. Even a mighty oak like Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-bbc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}