August 4, 2010
The Fourth Estate, with its continuum line from radical Grub Street through investigatory Fleet Street to compliant Canary Wharf, has no formal constitutional role, but is popularly supposed to hold Parliament and the government to account. Journalists would tell you that they ‘speak truth unto power’. The Lobby pack, the 170 journalists who hold parliamentary [...]
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May 9, 2009
A provocative farce of unremitting horror, the finale can not come soon enough. The script is packed with devious manoeuvres and well-honed fiddles. 646 fine actors, under the parliamentary fees office inventive direction, execute slapstick accounts and deliver receipts with near-perfect timing. But the onslaught of escalating troughing seems to grow more desperate as the [...]
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