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January 31, 2006
When is a lie not a lie?
When it is an untruth apparently!
BBC - In their report on Tuesday, MPs on the Commons standards and privileges committee said Mr Byers was not guilty of "contempt" of Parliament, despite being untruthful.
"We do not believe, on the evidence we have seen, that Mr Byers lied to the transport sub-committee as alleged," says the committee.
In fact it would appear that forgetting the reason for giving a misleading or dishonest answer is sufficient to make it an untruth rather than a lie.
The Guardian - The convoluted row centred on an answer given to the transport select committee in 2001 by Mr Byers, denying that he had made plans to pull the plug on Railtrack.
During a high court battle with Railtrack shareholders last year, Mr Byers was forced to admit in court that this was untrue, although he could not remember why he gave the answer.
This goes a long way to explaining why Blair doesn't believe he lied to the country over the reasons for going to war in Iraq; because all he was doing was being un-truthful. Or perhaps had conveniently forgotten his original reasons.
And our government has the temerity to wonder why we have so little respect for them.
Posted by Clive on January 31, 2006 3:23 PM in the category Politics