Spalpeen

The refusal to publish further information means that spending by MoD civil servants cannot be scrutinised.

Over the past four years, the MoD spent £986,041,110 on department credit cards, far more than any other government body. The disclosure will add to concerns over the management of the ministry, which is grappling with a multi-billion pound black hole in its finances.

Ministry of Defence spends £1 billion on staff credit cards - Telegraph

£1 Billion on credit cards, and you’re not allowed to see on what.

We can wave banners about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, but they tend to say, in smaller print, “Made in China”.

CON 35%, LAB 44%, LDEM 8%. A nine point lead is the biggest Labour lead in a YouGov poll since April (and follows two 8 point leads in the week, so is probably more than just margin of error). It suggests that the News of the World sage may indeed be damaging Conservative support.

M.B.A. graduating classes are actually a reliable contrary indicator: if they all want to go into investment banking, there’s going to be a financial crisis. If they want to go into tech, that means a bubble is forming.

Mrs Brooks, who is said to have been in tears as she announced the paper’s closure, was faced with a “lynch mob mentality” from staff

whether you call it “branding” or “reputation” or “trust”, you earn it through good work. In fact, I’d argue that it is impossible to build it without doing good work, in the same way that you can’t build a decent brand reputation as a company without making decent products. Perhaps even more so for journalists when, in an era of intense digital scrutiny, fact-checking, cross-linking and rebuttals can be done at lightning speed by a greater proportion of the audience than ever before.

How often have we heard critics of the media say that the “mainstream media” don’t fully deliver some “truth” about a particular topic? Yet the critics who are making that claim do not seem to have had any trouble themselves finding (and reporting) what they believe to be the “truth” about that topic. The critics appear to be immune from a problem that they assume is affecting everyone else. Indeed, a substantial part of this type of media criticism seems somewhat elitist in nature, as the critic claims knowledge about a subject that is implicitly superior than the knowledge of the same subject by the average person, and then proceeds to criticize the media for not transmitting the critic’s view of the subject to the average person.