Bad news

At the Economic Editors’ Conference a long-time attendee from Chennai complained that neither the minister of state nor the secretaries in the finance ministry took the trouble to visit his state, barring on one or two occasions, to understand the issues there. Finance Minister P Chidambaram replied that the job was being done by TV channels. The journalist, however, said the channels were feeding "all the wrong news", causing the conference hall to burst into peals of laughter. “For the record, I didn’t say that, you said that,” said the finance minister.