Aaronovich meet the Mail

An amusing piece in the Times as David Aaronovich recalls his appearance on the BBC's politics show along with an unknown Daily Mail journalist.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article1336518.ece

The problems started when he mentioned that the Mail's LABOUR IN MELTDOWN headline was a bit over the top.He recounts

“”Labour spin!” retorts the Mail lady, and the red mist descends. I don’t do spin, I say, and — unlike Mail writers — I am not told by my editors what to write. On Lords reform I try and talk about the problems of second chambers and checks and balances, but the Mail lady isn’t having any of that. The taxpayer, she declaims, doesn’t want to pay for any more preening politicians. That’s the sum total of her thinking on the subject. I splutter.

And it continues

The final item concerns John Prescott who admits to being “demob happy”. Is Mail lady sorry to see him go? By now you can predict the contents of her next grab-bag of pronouncements. Prescott has never done anything good, has always been a waste of space, taking the pay and doing no work and so on. By now I am completely unhorsed by her adamantine negativity. To me she is like the thing from Alien, her structural perfection matched only by her hostility. I say so.