The incredible stupidity of clever people

Vicky Pryce has learnt a valuable lesson: never talk to the press.

"While seeking revenge, dig two graves one for yourself." Never has this famous saying seemed more apt. As Allison Pearson says in The Sunday Telegraph, when Vicky Pryce whispered in a journalist's ear that her husband, Chris Huhne, had made her take speeding points in 2003, she not only began digging her own grave, she in effect threw "her whole family on to the funeral pyre in order to bring down the man she once loved".

It's not so hard to see why Huhne behaved badly. As Pearson says, he's a Don't you know I have a First from Oxford?' type, a champion of social equality "who believes everyone to be his inferior. Let's face it, very little in the way of tact and self-knowledge is to be expected from a Liberal Democrat who has personalised number plates and once claimed £85.35 expenses for the mounting, framing and inscription of a photo of Chris Huhne'."

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