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