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..now George Osborne hits the headlines for travelling in Virgin First Class with a Standard class ticket.  You couldn't make it up!

From the  BBC. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20008342)


(more in the link.)

As much as I dislike this Chancellor this is non story this and is being hyped up out of proportion, the TM was approached by the PA and excess fare was paid without dispute.

Agree entirely.  As amended by the BBC last night , Virgin are being quoted as saying there was NO dispute at all:


A case of the ITV journalist reporting what she hoped had happened?   

Paul

I'm all for the use of social media in helping report the news but when you get a situation like this it just gives journalism a bad name.

Agree, not news

The reporter who tweeted the story was sitting a coach away in Standard class.  She overheard George Osborne's PA approach the train manager in that coach and ask if it was OK for her and GO to sit in First with a Standard class ticket.

Train manager rightly said no, the aide seems to have tried again and when the TM continued to say no, the aide paid the extra fare.

That's a story to me.  Any prominent politician in any party should expect to be splashed all over the papers if they try something like this.   Evidently GO had done this before (back in May).  I wonder how many times TMs have said yes.

With both a Treasury spokesperson and Virgin Trains saying essentially the same thing regarding this 'incident', in that there was no disagreement and the paying of upgrades was dealt with amicably, then this is indeed a non-story. I fear the tweets from the ITV journo were making a mountain out of a molehill.

Politician's are fair game when they, or their aides, make mistakes or try to use their position to garner favour, but this doesn't appear to be what happened here.

The Treasury weren't going to admit that the aide effectvely asked for a free upgrade and why would VT rock the boat either, given when the free upgrade idea was dismissed, the aide paid up.

I think the journo who tweeted this was just amazed that the aide had tried it on. 

I think he was travailing on Constituency business and not Government business which means the Treasury cannot comment, not they were likely to say very much anyway. If he was travelling on Government business then you and me foot the bill, if it was Constituency or Party HQ business then you and me don't foot the bill.

Nothing I have heard about this makes me think that anything happened other than George Osborne, having missed his earlier train with his standard class reservation, found himself without a seat on a crowded train, and paid the extra to sit in first. I have also heard a rumour that this all happened in May, making the fuss even more irrelevant. It astonishes me that the Chancellor, or any other senior politico, has to travel standard class, with the attendant risk of someone spotting something sensitive on his laptop if he tries to do some work, rather than reading the paper and gazing out of the window (like I do).

So the Chancellor, and the Prime Minister, should resign, now, and take that deputy PM with them. I'm not a fan.

*Hopes he does it on FC and gets referred for prosecution*

It's not as if Virgin need to remain on good terms with the government at the moment though is it?  ;)

;D

I have seen it posited that Andrew 'Pleb' Mitchell resigned to deflect some of the attention from this story.

I rather suspect that isn't true, but I was somewhat tickled to discover that Mitchell's replacement as Tory Chief Whip made a rather - as it happens - unfortunate appearance on this old BR leaflet: http://www.sirgeorgeyoung.org.uk/pages/images/ACF7232.jpg (http://www.sirgeorgeyoung.org.uk/pages/images/ACF7232.jpg)