Ellen Barnes

Has Nadine Dorries no shame?  Has she not been around long enough to realize that shooting the messenger does not make the problem go away?

On Friday’s Today programme, Ms Dorries launched an attack on the Daily Telegraph, accusing the paper of conducting a witchhunt,  for telling the rest of us how she and her fellow MPs use our money.

Ms Dorries asserts that members of the media knew how the expenses system was abused and are therefore as culpable as the perpetrators.

Does Ms Dorries consider members of the media who report on and acknowledge the existence of child abuse as therefore as culpable as the abusers?

The fact is that up to now journalists have not had the evidence to back up in print any unsubstantiated rumours circulating about financial abuse.

Unlike Ms Dorries’ blog which makes unsubstantiated allegations that no self respecting journalist would ever put forward in print, the Telegraph is giving tax payers verifiable information that has shocked and amazed us.

She may claim, as she did on the Today programme, that MPs are walking about Wesminster in a state of shock, awaiting the next revelation with undisguised terror.  Well, they would be wouldn’t they.  They’ve been found out.

Many have spent years thinking they were cocooned in their own secret world, protected from prying eyes by their own rules and regulations.  It took a journalist to call for clarity, citing the Freedom of Information Act.

Ms Dorries’ blog gives a flavor of the writer :

“What they (The Daily Telegraph) are doing by taking out a few MPs a day, from all parties,  not allowing them to defend their position, not printing what they say, shouting over them and doing this day after day after day amounts to a form of torture which any group of human beings would find difficult to bear.

"Treating a group of people in this almost sadistic way is as appalling and has to stop.”

Put more succinctly, MPs can behave appallingly and the Telegraph is evil to challenge them. She does not substantiate her allegations about journalists shouting over MPs or not allowing them to defend their position.

This, even though I have read with incredulity and fury the attempts at self justification which the Telegraph has printed daily after talking to many MPs.

On Radio 4, Ms Dorries speculated about the salary of the journalist interviewing her, saying that it was bound to be more than the £64,766 annual salary of a back bencher and implying this would be unjust.

I’m sorry Ms Dorries feels she is not paid at a level commensurate with her experience, qualifications and position.

Possibly the voters of Mid-Bedfordshire will right that situation at the next general election.

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