Thank you Victor Meldrews (From Swindon Advertiser)

Thank you Victor Meldrews

8:00am Sunday 28th June 2009

• Print
• Email
• Comments(1)

By Passing Shots »

THE comments section of the Swindon Advertiser always provides hugely interesting reading.

The website provides a platform for a diversity of comment. Much of it is well considered and reasoned, sometimes the posters are way off beam, occasionally bordering on the offensive.

It makes me laugh that the Adver gets so much jip from these armchair editors who seemed to loathe the Adver and all we stand for, yet still come back to the website for their news. They are suckers for punishment.

There is a predictable bunch of grumpy Victor Meldrews who would probably complain if their lottery ticket numbers came up.

What they sometimes cannot seem to understand is that the news agenda which I run in the Adver, does not conform to their own.

They believe their agenda is one held by the majority and hate to see anything which borders on the trivial or mildly entertaining in the Adver.

The saga over the MPs' expenses is one example. I received one outraged letter from a web-reader who was angered at our lack of coverage over MPs' expenses, yet admitted they didn't even buy the paper.

Here's the piece of prose:

Evening Sirs, I appreciate you are a local paper, but with reference to the expenses scandal I feel you have badly let yourselves down.

I have seen no mention of her expenses in the print version (which I no longer buy as the quality does not justify the cost) or online in the last 48 hrs since the info was made publicly available.

This is local news that the majority of your readership is more than interested in reading about and discussing.

I suppose Billie and the latest stolen bike story rehashed from the previous day is easier than a tad of journalism. All the information needed is available in the public domain.

In fact, let me help you.

I don't need any patronising help from someone whose credibiilty of argument is totally undermined by the fact that he doesn't even read the paper. Talk about being uninformed and blinkered.

I pointed out in my reply that if he had followed the website, never mind the Adver, he would have seen we have covered the expenses with a number of stories, and letters from all political persuasions offering comment.

Sadly for some, we haven't covered the saga as in great depth as the Daily Telegraph with 10 pages a day every day for the past month. But believe it or not, as good a story as it is, there is more news around than merely MPs' expenses - there's Billie Piper and stolen bikes, for example.

While some may argue the toss over what our two Swindon MPs claimed, they claimed what they were entitled to, they did nothing wrong, and their expenses did not reach the level of excess of some of their Commons' colleagues.

I'm not defending them, they can argue whether what they claimed was within the spirit of MPs' allowances, but they did not break any laws, and certainly on the Richter scale of expenses, their claims barely registered close to shock level.

Talk about agendas, I wondered what agendas some of our Victor Meldrew correspondents were carrying. They simply wanted our MPs hung, drawn and quartered.

Anyway, to end on, here is something which was e-mailed to me by a friend in America.....

Dear Mr. Darling,

Please find below my suggestion for fixing Britain's economy.

Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan:

There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force. - Pay them £1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Twenty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.

2) They MUST buy a new British CAR. Twenty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.

4) They must send their kids to school / college /university - Crime rate fixed 5) Buy £50 of alcohol / tobacco a week there's your money back in duty / tax etc It can't get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back there falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.