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Scottish minister blames sons watching football for £11,000 iPad roaming bill
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Michael Matheson, Scotland’s embattled health secretary, has apologised “unreservedly” after admitting he failed to properly disclose that his sons had largely run up an £11,000 iPad bill which he had initially charged in full to taxpayers.
In a personal statement to MSPs on Thursday, Matheson said he had referred himself for possible investigation by parliament for breaching its code of conduct, as he fought against mounting calls to resign from opposition leaders.
During first minister’s questions on Thursday, Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, called on Matheson to quit, and came as close as parliamentary rules allowed to accuse the health secretary of lying to MSPs.
The scandal erupted last week after it emerged that he had racked up a £10,935 data bill on his parliamentary iPad during a week-long Christmas holiday in Morocco, and refused to explain why.
Matheson told MSPs he had learned from his wife the previous evening – the day the row first blew up – that his sons had used parliamentary data to watch football.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, said the saga raised “serious questions” about their judgment, in part because Matheson’s attention had been diverted from tackling NHS Scotland’s numerous crises.
The original article contains 620 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Why are politicans allowed to publicly spend while privately holidaying? God I would love a fucking real holiday like that
It's his business phone, not like he expensed his hotel or something.
would you prefer politicians have zero way to be contacted by the outside world for weeks at a time?
It's not a phone. It's an iPad. And we don't know who it belongs to.
Business devices for business. Business pay for them. Personal devices for personal stuff. You pay for them.
If you rack up an £11k bill on your business device, and you are expensing it from public funds, you have to justify it to the public. If you rack up an £11k bill on your personal devices nobody cares as its your bill.
It's not rocket science.
An iPad most likely associated with his business mobile plan. Companies generally cover the roaming charge for it's employees because it means that employee is reachable if shit hits the fan while they are abroad. Mine does, and it's silly to assume it would be any different for someone holding public office.
The only difference here is he went from a country where roaming is free (or like $1/GB), to a country where it is crazy expensive, racked up a ludicrous bill on his company plan, and then hoped no one would notice
I'm going to go ahead and ignore what you wrote. It's largely incorrect and screams 'I havent read the article'. My answer would be what I wrote previously so I'd be repeating myself
Just as a heads up, we use £ in Scotland. Not $.
Wow the article says the exact same thing I did, what are the odds
Most people can infer fundamental meaning from conversational context, sorry that is lost on you