Auberon Waugh used to saythat people who go into politicsare all peculiar in one way oranother. Chris Huhne certainlyfits the bill. It might be thoughtthat a period of silence fromthe disgraced former Lib Demminister would not go amiss,but last week, taking a breakfrom the £100,000-a-year jobas a part-time energy adviserhe walked into, he turned up inThe Guardian with a columnsaying his downfall was largelyRupert Murdoch's fault.
What nonsense, said TerenceBlacker in The Independent.The bruising humiliationsHuhne has suffered "thespeeding points problem, the affairproblem, the 12-months-lying-to-the-public problem, followed by theeight-months-prison-sentence problem" should have been enough, one mightthink, "to bring a person down to earth.After all, a spell in chokey transformedJonathan Aitken from a strutting Torygrandee into a modest, slightly drearychap with a God hang-up."
But Huhne's peculiarity is morestubbornly ingrained. Brushing aside hisown responsibility in an "I'm no saint"manner, he argued that the real threatto our country is not lying politicians,but beastly journalists. His apologia,said Blacker, combined the weasellydeployment of statistics (300,000 peoplehave apparently swapped speedingpoints) with a touch of old-fashionednastiness (describing his ex-wife as"being groomed'" by The SundayTimes). Huhne's lack of contrition is"breathtaking", said Richard Littlejohnin the Daily Mail. "Prison is supposedto rehabilitate as well as punish, andperhaps instil a sense of humility... In thecase of Chris Huhne, it clearly failed."
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The Prince was right to be livid
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Dubai: a mega-Lego-set ofWestern decadence
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Tabloid money: Suzi Quattro's advice for the Bank of England
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"Former BBC director-general MarkThompson's assertion that his old mateMark Byford was given almost double hispay-off entitlement so he would focus properly on his jobduring the final months is as ridiculous as a builder asking formore money than agreed as an incentive for finishing off yourextension," says Jane Moore inThe Sun. "As for Thompson'sprevious claim that salaries were so high because, otherwise,they would all take their skill sets to the commercial sector, well,on [last week's] evidence to [the] Public Accounts Committee,most of them would struggle to run a whelk stall."
