"Brookmyre, Christopher - Boiling A Frog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brookmyre Christopher)

grudgingly admit, was best summed up by that snidey
wee shite Jack Parlabane. In a recent column, he had written
that: 'personal contrition is realising you're in the wrong
and consequently making amends; corporate contrition is
realising you're in the wrong and consequently hiring Ian
Beadie.'
There was more than a hint of sour grapes about the
remark. Beadie, in fact, was a keenly sought antidote to old-
school newshounds like Parlabane. No matter how much
information they could glean on your or your company's
alleged misdoings, when they presented it at their big
'Ha-ha!' moment, the hacks made the mistake of thinking
that was the end of the game. With Beadie at the table, it
was only the opening gambit. Whatever you came up with,
Beadie could neutralise, or at least dilute it with boundless
means of dissemblage and distraction, ensuring that any
objective onlooker could not possibly see the wood for the
trees. And if that didn't work, well. . . there were rumours
about what he did if that didn't work, rumours Elspeth
knew him well enough to believe. But the end result
was usually that what began the week as a major news
story would be, by Thursday, popularly regarded as 'a big
fuss over nothing'. Then on Friday, Beadie would take his
cheque to the bank.
One of the differences between the two of them was
that Beadie, with very few exceptions, was called in once
the horse had already bolted (hence Parlabane's cQntrition
gag), whereas a big part of Elspeth's job was making sure
nobody left the stable door gaping in the first place. In a time
when politicians' off-the-cuff, unscripted single sentences
could be dissected and scanned for any nuance that could
possibly be interpreted as even slightly diverging from the
views of a colleague ('mihisters in rift shocker'), or from
the party line ('minlster in gaffe shocker'), it didn't take
much of a gap for Dobbin to slip through. Such banana-skin
detection and clearance (or 'minesweeping' as she officially
called it) provided the mainstay of her spin responsibilities.
However, loath as she'd be to own up to it, she found
the task of containment far more exhilarating. Lassooing
Dobbin on the loose provided far greater excitement than
slamming his door shut, just as long as it was only once in
a while. And, of course, out-manoeuvring the would-be
horse-thieves was always satisfying, especially when both
sides knew they'd be back for more later.
They seldom got the better of her. In the whole of
the last year, the closest the SNP had come to scaring
up a gaffe story was over the SOL deal, and that was
only front-page news because it was summer and the
broadsheets couldn't lead with paparazzi shots of topless
soap stars on holiday. Scotia OnLine had won the contract