MOVE ALONG PLEASE...

The picture shows ex-Second Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, being taken in for questioning following allegations that she was seen lurking outside a `sex shop` in London`s Soho.  

Ms. Smith or, more properly, Mrs. Timney, was you may recall forced to resign from the last Labour Government over the expenses scandal.  She is now allegedly claiming in a BBC documentary to hit the airwaves on Thursday evening that the reason she `fell from grace` was because she was a woman and people expecdted her to be at home looking after her husband and children, rather than strutting the stage of political power in one of the great offices of state.

She seems to forget the real reason for her demise was that she claimed on expenses some `adult` films rented and watched by her husband who was, incidentally, also on the public payroll as Jacqui`s `parliamentary aide.`  So cosy.   Then there was the question of her second home allowance, when she claimed that a bedroom in her sister`s flat was actually her main residence, rather than the family home in Redditch.   Quite properly, the voters of Redditch had had enough of this institutionalised fiddling and voted her out of Parliament.

Apart from the self-delusion that she was a victim in all this, it seems she is now keen to earn a few bob and where better to do so than from the left-leaning BBC, where Radio 5 Live will be airing her documentary about pornography on Thursday evening, hence her data gathering Soho lurking.

Now it`s one thing to go on about Jacqui Smith and her hopeless quest for redemption, but I suspect the real villains of this particular piece might well be the BBC themselves, who for some reason see fit to hand over licence-payers` money to this political has-been for a documentary that promises to be more about self-denial than informative.

If Jacqui Smith had any sense, she would just move along, keep her head down and melt into the background and if the BBC had any sense, they would be much more circumspect about how they spend our compulsory licence fees.