Fiddling expenses

Back in the good old/bad old days all trainee reporters were given advice on how to fiddle their expense claims. There was a kind of gentlemen's agreement between proprietors and employees: They knew our wages were rubbish and were prepared to turn a blind eye to moderate inflation of genuine expense claims.

Thus, a pie and a pint in the local boozer, where you might have exchanged a few words with a local beat bobby (off duty of course), would go down as a three-course meal "entertaining senior police contact" ; fictitious detours could be added to straight there-and-back journeys to bump up the mileage claim and so on.

The vital piece of advice was, if challenged, never reduce your claim. To do so would be tantamount to admitting that you had claimed falsely in the first place. Instead, you had to "recall" some expenditure you had accidentally "forgotten" to include on the original expenses form. A favourite with photographers was "hire of elevation" where they pretended they had slipped some householder money for the use of their step-ladder, to enable the snapper to get a clear view over the heads of the crowd at whatever event it was.

I've forgotten his name, but a photographer on a regional newspaper became a living legend in the 1970s when his original, genuine, claim for about £70-00 out of pocket expenses on a foreign trip was returned, repeatedly. Each time he remembered another taxi fare, another drink bought for some contact, another gratuity ... the management finally caved in when the total claimed reached £250-00, the final claim being for, yes, "hire of elevation."

For a scribbler like me, the easiest add-on would be the cost of phone calls from a public phone box. The onward march of technology would make such a claim laughable now ; how long before we'll need to explain what a public call box was?