29.03.09
Adult films?
Just back from my hols.
Found a very odd news story that seems to have blown up recently.
It’s the one about some minister asking for expenses to include a couple of movies on pay per view.
Now there’s a discussion to be had (maybe) about whether expenses can include such things but the story seems to have been reported really very oddly.
Here are some headlines from off of teh internetz:
“The Home Secretary’s husband apologises for embarrassing his wife over an adult films parliamentary expenses claim.” – BBC
“Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s husband has apologised for causing her embarrassment over an expenses claim which included adult films he watched” – Yahoo
“Blue movies on expenses: Jacqui Smith’s husband apologises for watching porn… paid for by the taxpayer” – Mail
Now it took me ages to figure out what on earth was going on here.
In all of the detail I saw it looked like there were 2 films of note. One being Ocean’s 13 and the other being “Surf’s Up” – the latter of which is PG rated in the UK. And Ocean’s 13 is a crime fillum nicht wahr?
So very very confused…
…for a while.
Talk about poor writing by the journalists involved. It took until the times website before I figured out it was 2 adult fillums plus these 2.
I think Charlie Brooker has it right when he talks about journalists getting worse as all they do is package up news wire copy and PR fluff nowadays.
But then it may also be that I’m tired.