Exchange of the week Osborne’s jobs

To The Daily Telegraph

Amid all the bogus outrage about George Osborne’s jobs outside Parliament, leading to an inquiry by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, no one seems to care that the MPS who really do have full-time jobs outside Parliament are senior ministers. Who queried whether Mr Osborne could represent his constituents properly when he was Chancellor for five years?

The only people who should decide whether an MP is fit to represent them are the voters. Michael Staples, Seaford, East Sussex

To The Times

Lloyd George would not have thought much of George Osborne becoming editor of the London Evening Standard. The Welsh wizard’s view was that if a leading politician went into journalism, his place was at the very top. In the last phase of his premiership in 1922, he told his mistress, Frances Stevenson, that he would not mind resigning if he could become editor of The Times at a decent salary.

Shortly afterwards, when the paper was put up for sale, he got a group of rich friends to bid for it so that he could have the editorship, but they were pipped by the Astors. Lord Lexden, House of Lords