Interesting day on the Beeb with only a couple of weeks to go to polling in the Lib Dems leadership election.

As both Iain Dale and Guido are reporting on Chris Huhne getting a bit of a Crick – Michael Crick, that is – in his campaign this evening, courtesy of Newsnight, which apart from recycling the ‘storming the Student Union’ escapade also alleged that he’d used EU money to finance four local Lib Dem ‘newspapers’ over the two years before the last General Election in contravention of EU regulations.

Meanwhile the BBC website is running the following headline on a report in its UK politics section:

MPs petition for end to ‘sex tax’

The story itself is about as dull as it gets – seven MP’s have signed an early day motion calling for VAT on condoms to be cut to the legal minimum figure of 5% on the premise that a cut price packet of three which encourage more people to use condoms thereby preventing the spread of HIV – hardly the kind of stuff that gets mentioned in passing on the Parliament Channel, let alone a page to itself on the Beeb’s website…

…except that the Beeb have found themselves a ‘human interest’ angle on the story:

MPs – including Lib Dem leadership contender Simon Hughes – are calling for the price of condoms to be reduced to prevent the spread of HIV.

So what makes this particular story newsworthy is not MPs calling for tax cuts or showing concern on a public health issue but the fact that one of names on the EDM is Simon ‘not-long-out-of-the-closet’ Hughes.

It seems there’s one thing missing from this report and that, depending on your personal tastes, is either ‘Nudge. Nudge. Wink. Wink. Say no more!’ or ‘Fnarr”.