Fake Photo or Fake Politics? Purnell - predictably - criticised re faked photograph

After lecturing broadcasters last month, Culture Secretary James Purnell has become embroiled in a fakery row all of his own after his (non-)agreement to the merging of a PR photo of himself with an earlier one of other local MPs and executives outside a Tameside hospital (1,2). Elevating the event from being a mildly humourous postscript to a summer of deception revelations (and in what can only have been an effort to damage their own credibility), a number of Conservatives swiftly pronounced that Purnell's position had somehow become 'untenable'. That said, Purnell's lame response, (or was that here?) almost seemed to lend weight to the calls (see the Guardian for the faked photo itself.

The really big weekend deception story, of course, was that extras had been used on a bus in the filming of Nigella Lawson's latest series... devastating!!