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Dear Mr Foot, I can only assume your deadline was fast approaching and you needed to fill your quota for the day...your article on Parliament Hill's £7000 trip to the seaside was so spectacularly poor you must have been under considerable pressure; either that or you're hoping that "The Star" will look at your piece and decide they don't quite have enough ill-informed, cheap hacks on their writing staff. To fully dissect the piece would take more time than I'm comfortable wasting on you but sufficed to say it seems as though you had 3 articles part-written and decided to lump them all together, toss the words around and hope it made sense. It didn't. Your sensationalist headline suggests a great cover-up or deceitful scam...and your opening paragraph sets out your (obviously unresearched) claim in a manner that I imagine even the Daily Mail wouldn't publish without some form of editing. Having set out your stall you then completely undermine your own argument by quoting from the Camden official who explained that the money for the trip was raised independently of the school's budget..."£7000 of money not taken from a school budget pays for a staff conference!" Also, your quotes regarding "luxury" and the rather random "upper dicker" chicken...well they're lifted straight from the hotel's website...so literally seconds of research went into that. Too intrigued not to check, however, I asked a friend who works at the school...they had lamb...top work Mr Foot, you really are quite the sleuth and if you consider asparagus to be "gourmet" i suggest you alter your diet and move swiftly away from your daily diet of Zinger Burgers and McMuffins. If you feel you're missing out however, asparagus is quite cheap in Tesco right now... So we have a teachers conference, voluntary (staff gave up their own time, suggesting quite clearly they were not paid to be there) and, lord have mercy, they ate "food". Having worked in many businesses in my time, conferences are generally held away from the workplace and in comfortable, aspirational surroundings as it provides a stimulus for contribution that one wouldn't find in a staff room or company conference room. There is nothing extraordinary about this. The money for the conference did not come from the school's budget, so there was no impact on the learning experience for the children. So what are we left with? Not a lot really, which is why your story strays drastically away from the headline with a poorly executed segue into government funding and quotes from the Camden NUT. So shame on the headteacher for trying to inspire her people! Shame on the school for anticipating the requirements of BSF funding in order to be not only prepared for the changes but to embrace them and make the most of the opportunity to improve the learning experience for hundreds of girls over the coming years! However, more than anything else here, shame on you Mr Foot for your inept, potentially harmful, poorly researched, appallingly-written "No News" story. One can only assume that all your friends from Journalism school managed to live out their dreams at the tabloids while you slum it in local news. I'm not sure that were I to describe you and your writing as "unjustifiably bitter" I wouldn't be inadvertently nominating myself for the "International Understatement Of the Year 2010" award... However, you are as hilarious as you are incompetent, so for the tremendous chuckle you have given me today, I salute you. Should I ever be commissioned to write a poor quality sitcom set in a newsroom, I'll be sure to track you down and offer you the position of "Chief Researcher"...I'm sure having never done any proper research during your career you'll find it a refreshing break from the norm. I wish you well and look forward to the next story you write for your "news" paper. Yours Sincerely, Simon Pennycross.