One of the UK's leading comic actors has dismissed the story making the most headlines in Britain - reports of sleaze involving top politicians including prime minister Gordon Brown.
Leaked expenses receipts published by the right-wing Daily Telegraph over the past week have revealed wide-spread fiddling by members of parliament totaling millions of pounds of taxpayers' money. The satirical magazine Private Eye's front page features a photo of a packed House of Commons and lampoons the greedy politicians it pictures with the headline "Swine Fever Hits Britain".
The pig flu epidemic is the bigger story globally.
Comedian Stephen Fry said to a BBC Newsnight television reporter: "It's a journalistic made up frenzy."
He added: "It's not that important, it really isn't."
"Anybody can talk about snouts in troughs and go on about it. For journalists to do so, it is beyond belief. I know more journalists than politicians and I've never met a more venal, disgusting crowd of people when it comes to expenses and allowances. Let's not confuse what politicians get really wrong - things like wars, things where people die - with the rather tedious, bourjeois obsession about whether or not they have charged for their wisteria."
Fry told Michael Crick: "This has been going on for years and suddenly because journalists have discovered (the story) it's the big issue."
Fry admitted that he too had "cheated things and fiddled things" and that the expenses revelations should not cause people to lose faith with politics and stop voting. See the full interview here:
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8045869.stm
Thomas L. Blair is a sociologist and political blogger on the Chronicleworld 'for creative renewal in Black Britain and Afro-Europe'. His work is honoured in the British Library's archive of "social, historic and culturally significant web-based material from the UK domain". He won top prize in the blogging competition on The-Latest.
Sumantra Maitra is a freelance journalist from Mumbai, India. He is a correspondent for All Sports magazine, and a foreign affairs blogger for the Washington Examiner. He has written articles for news website Merinews.com and other regional publications. Sumantra runs a blog at DailyWorldWatch.wordpress.com. He provided exclusive eyewitness reports for The-Latest on the Mumbai bombings of 2008.
Brian Usher is photography consultant for The-Latest.Com. He is a highly experienced editorial and commercial photographer whose work has been published throughout the world, appearing in many well known magazines and newspapers. Brian has featured in several books and has been a writer for the Royal Photographic Society magazine.
Heidi Kingstone has spent time in Afghanistan reporting for a number of publications. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Spectator, The Sunday Times and other international journals. She has also reported from places like Iraq, Rwanda, Lebanon, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Heidi is The-Latest's Editor at large.
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