By Stephen Tall
| Thu 18th February 2010 - 3:53 pm
Nick Clegg has just tweeted his reaction to Sir Nicholas Winterton’s railing against moves to reduce first-class train travel by MPs – the Tory MP said he needed “peace and quiet” while travelling, and that standard class carriages are occupied by “a totally different type of people.”
The Lib Dem leader’s having none of it, slamming Sir Nicholas’s plea with an exasperated one-liner:
“Sadly some MPs still just don’t get it …”
Well quite. The Tories have been quick to disown Sir Nicholas, acidly dismissing “the out-of-touch views of a soon-to-retire backbench MP”.
The trouble is the Tory party does have a bit of form. As Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson reminds us, the Tory chairman Eric Pickles hardly covered himself in glory on the BBC’s Question Time last year when he defended his second home on the more-than-dubious grounds that as an MP he has to be in work on time. Let’s remind ourselves once again of that perfect moment of car-crash telly:
The House of Commons has confirmed the appointment of Jackie Ballard, Lib Dem MP for Taunton from 1997-2001 – and who stood to be leader in 1999 – to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the new independent body which will now run the MPs’ expenses system. Jackie is currently Chief Executive of the RNID.
Her appointment was not without its controversy, though, as the BBC reports:
… some Tory MPs were unhappy at the choice of Jackie Ballard saying she had not been an MP for long enough. … Sir Nicholas Winterton and Christopher Chope … tried to introduce an
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