Read Goodfellowe MP for Free Online

Editor on the Herald is one of the most prejudiced and poorly informed commentators I’ve ever encountered.’
    ‘Surely an exaggeration.’ He was smiling, as he did habitually, with expensively burnished teeth and lips that were a fraction too thick. But the smile never reached his eyes. They remained restless, in constant search of advantage. Di Burston offered none.
    ‘What else can you expect from a man with his background?’ she continued.
    ‘You. mean the BBC?’ Corsa offered, curious as to where this was leading.
    ‘Before that. Before the BBC.’
    Corsa’s puzzlement increased. He had no idea where his City Editor’s origins lay. The man was simply another of the phalanx of young, aggressive journalists brought in over the last three years to replace the older, perhaps more experienced but endlessly more expensive journalists he’d inherited from his father. ‘You’re telling me you didn’t know that until eight years ago he was a publicity director for Greenpeace?’ There was an edge of advantage in her voice. First blood to the girls.
    Corsa, unsure of his next line, turned to examine the view from the window. She was inspecting him, and under pressure he became uncomfortably aware of the genetic Corsa tendency for the waist to spread and the hair to retreat. Early stages, in his case, only a couple of pounds and a few strands, but enough to remind himself every time he looked in the mirror that there was so much more still to do, and so little time to do it.
    She came to join him, her voice dropping until it had reached a conspiratorial, almost seductive register. ‘You call yourself an entrepreneur, a man of free enterprise, yet you throw open your pages to every bunch of tree huggers who can plaster together a press release. Eco-warriors, New Age nonentities, the menopausal middle-class. Anyone who would rather crawl than drive, or choke on coal dust rather thanlive within a thousand miles of a nuclear power station. They shout, and you give them a front page. The bigger their lie, the better your coverage. It’s a war out there. Seems to me you’ve chosen the wrong side.’
    She had drawn near to him now, in the lee of the heavy sash window, close enough that he could smell her. She was playing with him. He didn’t object.
    ‘The public has a right to hear both sides,’ he offered, grasping at a cliché.
    ‘And businesses like yours and mine have a right to make a living. Do you really think we can all survive by selling air cake and nut burgers?’
    ‘So what are you suggesting should happen?’
    ‘In my case, what I’ve already decided is going to happen. As from next month I’m pulling all my advertising from your newspapers.’ She allowed the news to sink in. ‘You know, Mr Corsa, I spend tens of millions of pounds every year on building my company’s image. And all I get for it is hate mail – thanks to you and your limp organs.’
    ‘You’re taking this very personally,’ he replied, his manhood under attack.
    ‘But of course I am,’ she breathed softly. ‘Just as I took it personally when your City Editor attacked my pay and pension package, even though it’s still considerably less than yours. Touch of double standards, do you think?’
    Corsa made a mental note to find a new City Editor. The present incumbent was proving all too tiresome. His staff were there to serve their proprietorand paymaster, not to provide an excuse for giving him a public thrashing. He stood in silence, gazing out from the first-floor window across the broad expanse of Horse Guards. The bell above the arch chimed the hour.
    ‘What do you think that would be worth?’ she enquired, indicating the great gravelled parade ground which was used once a year to Troop the Colour and for the remainder as a car park for civil servants. ‘Move all the bureaucrats and retired admirals out and sell it for development?’
    ‘That’s outrageous.’
    She shrugged. ‘Look at it another way. That’s about