Let him who casts the first stone…

Few sights are more stomach-churning than the British press in one of its perennial fits of moral outrage. Judging by the leader columns of the past few days, the whole of Fleet Street is shocked — shocked! — to discover that MPs have been fiddling their expenses.

Could these be the same professionals I have worked alongside for the past 25 years? Apparently not, because the journalists I know are past masters when it comes to creative accounting.

I’ll tell just one story, though I could bore you with at least a dozen. At the end of my first week as a News Trainee at the Times in 1986 I submitted my first ever expenses claim. I was worried it was a little extravagant — I’d claimed for three lunches and two cab rides — and my fears were confirmed when my then editor rejected it. “This won’t do,” he said, slamming the form down on my desk.