Journalistic jewel of the week

This Grauniad article is full of gems...

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Such as this mildly naive Lib Dem Councillor:

Councillor: "People who go into politics and get to high office are not, on the whole, what you might call normal people... You have never seen such a collection of geeks and oddballs."

Grauniad: "Doesn't that also apply to the Lib Dems?"

Councillor: "Not quite so much. With one or two exceptions, most of them come across as far more normal human beings"

[Evidently a lady whose never been to a party conference... but as a self-declared geek and oddball myself, I think it's a wonderful thing - safety in numbers and all that... and whoever put 'no one shall be enslaved by... conformity' in the preamble was just asking for it]

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Craig Card runs a printing business in Farnborough... he also sees to an organisation called Liberal Image, which supplies the Liberal Democrats with a range of T-shirts, clipboards, umbrellas and [posters of Charles Kennedy which he's now probably stopped selling. I always wondered who bought the things - do the Lib Dems really have party members (or even local parties) who want a picture of their leader stuck to the wall a la Mao?!]

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He [Huhne] has New Labourish behavioural tics: a fondness for accompanying his speeches with gestures that look like a polite form of kung-fu and Alan Milburn's habit of asking himself his own questions if the interviewer's don't quite suit. Outwardly, he would fit snugly into the Blair cabinet; indeed, he had a youthful spell as a student Labour activist.

Because anyone who was a Labour activist as a student (which for Mr Huhne was more than 25 years ago) must have a latent affinity with the Labour party, esp. behavioural tics.

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[The Grauniad] ask[s] him [Menzies] if he buys CDs.

"Ah, no. I listen a lot to music. Not very highbrow, I'm afraid. Classic FM."

Yes, that well-known low-brow radio station, Classic FM... Listened to by reality TV contestants everywhere. Had the Grauniad been doing their investigative journalism correctly, their next question would have been: "So Menzies, what do you think is high-brow these days?"