One smokes crack, the other spends way too much on biscuits. We’re struggling to decide which of the accusations levelled at the respective politicians is worse…
By now nearly everyone is aware of the plight of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who is currently in the headlines for all the wrong reasons due to his somewhat dodgy personal life, having admitted smoking crack cocaine and having had to deny allegations of sexual harassment.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as scandals involving politicians are concerned, however, as Conservative MP Eric Pickles is taking flak in the UK today because his Department for Communities and Local Government allegedly spent £10,000 more on biscuits in 2012 than in 2011. Just take a minute to digest(ive) folks and try to calm down before reading on.
According to the Independent, Pickles’ department spent £40,000 on serving custard creams, ginger nuts and digestives at meetings in 2012, a figure that is a significant increase on the £30,000 spent on biscuits in 2011, when the lovely but pricey Chocolate Hob-Nobs, Viscounts and Chocolate Kimberleys mustn’t have been on the menu.
It will come as no crumb of comfort for Pickles but his lavish confectionary spending was enough to land him on the front page of the Brentwood Weekly News (fans of The Office will agree that the news is positively Brentian) this morning and if it doesn’t look ridiculous enough as it is, it looks even more so when compared with the scandal surrounding Rob Ford on the other side of the Atlantic, as was pointed out on Twitter by journalist Ally Fogg.
Politics, either side of the Atlantic pic.twitter.com/knRSo12I3I
— Ally Fogg (@AllyFogg) November 27, 2013
While we’re reluctant to dip into the debate, we’d just like to point out our surprise that the outrage seems to centre on the fact that Pickles allegedly spent an extra £10,000 on biscuits in 2012 than he did in 2011.
Because £30,000 is obviously a perfectly acceptable amount of money to spend on biccies in a year, of course; you’d be crackers to think otherwise.
