Railfuture member Malcolm Smith tried an experiment on the BBC news website on 4 March 2003.
He searched the site for the phrase blank cheques.
At the top of the list of items found was a headline from 4 March saying:
Brown offers war blank cheque
Underneath was a headline from December saying:
No blank cheques for railways
about an Alistair Darling speech
Underneath that was a headline:
No Blank Cheques
about NHS services in a speech by Gordon Brown.
Underneath that was a headline:
No Blank cheques for public services
again from a speech by Gordon Brown.
Malcolm comments: Nice to see the Government is getting it's priorities right.
The site address:
www.bbc.co.uk/news
Info from Malcolm Smith malcolmsmith at talk21.com