No Expenses Spared

"It was chosen because I happened to be reading it. It is a great read, so I thought I’d stick it in. It’s the Telegraph’s account of the expenses scandal, and it’s a bit parti pris in places. Strip that away and it’s a very interesting account of what they did, having got hold of the disc. Partly because the revelations were spread out, it was easy to catch up on the details. Particularly for me – I was away on holiday for ten days during the expenses scandal, and the story was coming out when I left and was still going when I came back. And if I missed one, I would always get these strange text messages, about whatever the previous days’ stories were. I remember one of them just said: ‘Peter Viggers’ duck house.’ I’d never heard of a duck house and I remember staring at this text message for literally ten, 15 minutes, trying to work out what an earth that could mean. In the end, all I could think was that it was one of those typos you get in text messages. But, you know, when you read it in one go, like that, there’s something shocking about these expenses. And the expenses scandal had a huge impact on politics, and I think will for another five years, in different forms. So it’s quite good to have an account of how important it was."