Quotes of the week

Former Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley in MediaGuardian responds to the Standard's "we're sorry" ad campaign: "London is laughing at this ludicrous campaign. It is utterly humiliating for the staff and contributors. They are in despair."

Veronica Wadley, also in MediaGuardian, on the Evening Standard's new editor: "As for Geordie Greig, well, Etonians have a history of collaborating with the KGB."

Campaigning FoI journalist Heather Brooke on MPs' expenses, the story she helped to break: "We cannot sit back and let MPs or politicians dictate the terms of this debate. They’ve proven time and again they can’t be trusted to do what is in the best interests of Parliament as a whole. Certain people in Parliament are content to stubbornly resist change and are willing to bring the whole institution of parliament into disrepute simply to maintain the lifestyle ‘to which they’ve become accustomed’."

Heather Brooke on the Labour MP who suggested she had a vested interest in her campaign to make MPs' expenses public: "It was not without a chuckle at his chutzpah that I saw my detractor was the Member for Feltham & Heston, Alan Keen. With his wife, Ann, the couple are known as ‘Mr and Mrs Expenses’ for using £175,000 of taxpayers’ money to help buy a flat near Parliament – while they already had a constituency home nine miles away. They claimed more than £300,000 between them last year alone."

Benjamin Franklin (as quoted in Word magazine subscribers' email): "Beware of the little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship"

Comedian Jimmy Carr in an East Anglian Daily Times video making fun of a VJ with small camera filming him after court appearance for speeding:"That's not a proper camera. You are not a proper journalist. That's from home."

~