I just noticed today that the West Sussex County Times web site features a regular column from Francis Maude, the Horsham MP.   Just look at the URL for it: http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/francisHow very cosy and familiar.   The columns are full, as you would expect, of self-promotion and criticism of the government.  You can’t really knock that though, can you? What MP, given such a platform to regularly get a message out to their voters would not use it to lob grenades at their opponents and boost their own achievements?

But why is there not a similar column in the Crawley Observer (under the same ownership as the County Times) for the Crawley MP?  Is it because she has not asked?  Or was she offered the chance to get free publicity with some editorial control every week and turned it down?  Or maybe its not free, but Frankie pays to run his column? None of them seems likely, although I guess they are all possible.

I shall have to ask Laura about it.  I seem to recall, although I am probably mistaken, or perhaps it was relating to the News and not the Observer, complaints or objections when Laura did have an occasional parliamentary report in a local paper.  Something about it not being right that one candidate or party should have such a platform without some sort of balance.

But I must be mistaken, because there is no problem with doing the same thing in Horsham.

Or maybe, and this is a bit of a long shot I know, maybe it is just that Johnston Press view Tory MPs differently to those of other parties- although, to be fair, I don’t think that the Chichester, Mid Sussex and other local papers from the same company let their local MPs have such free rein so it could just be something offered to Maude on a purely personal basis.