More words upon words

Esther McVey is a liar. She is the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who apologised to the House of Commons today for as she put it 'inadvertently misleading' MPs two days ago about what the National Audit Office (NAO) said about Universal Credit (UC). Anyone who watched her statements, conveniently relayed here could hardly have mistaken them for some confused use of language - she was very definite in her misrepresentation of the NAO's assessment of UC. Her apology can only be considered genuine if she was genuinely confused by the NAO report - which rather suggests she's not up to the job. But she's got the backing of her boss, so she must be very good at it. Which leaves only one other option. She lied.

​A side aspect of this affair is the BBC's coverage of it on the PM programme tonight, when confirming an observed right-wing bias more airtime was given to a back bench Tory MP to comment on the affair than was given to Labour, who challenged the liar in the first place. Skwawkbox is doing an excellent job exposing the BBC's bias. Is it time for the redoubtable OFCOM to investigate? Methinks not! They would have to take staff off the RT job. No way! Not least in the run-up to an England-Russia World Cup final, when RT are bound to be biased towards Russia.