LDV subsidised

I have to admit to laughing like a drain over this:

The government on Tuesday night agreed a £5m bail-out of LDV, the struggling Midlands vanmaker, in a contentious move that marks a symbolic shift in Labour’s industrial policy for responding to the recession.

It doesn’t mark a symbolic shift in anything at all. Labour has always thrown the taxpayers’ money around just before an election. Especially to the car industry in the Midlands of course. Remember Rover?

But the real laugh comes here:

Peter Mandelson, the business secretary, has not been directly involved in the decisions on LDV because of political controversy surrounding his links to Mr Deripaska.

Yeah, right. Mr. Deripaska has billions and billions: but it’s the UK taxpayer who has to bail out the mate of the Business Secretary.

Of course, no one in this government has ever mislead us on anything at all. Nope, never. So we take them at their word, don’t we?