Bereft of a battlebus, intrepid Newsnight correspondent Michael Crick has taken to the air in Newsnight's chopper. You may also have heard him lamenting last night that "Michael Howard's chopper is bigger than mine", leading one to wonder whether the Newsnight stunt is anything more than an appendage-waving exercise.
As part of the BBC's economy drive you might have expected "the Crickster" to take to a pushbike or maybe hang-glider. But just how much is it costing to charter a chopper? Quite a lot. Even though we are sure the Beeb gets great discount, the best we could do in trying to secure a GU blogcopter was £350 an hour – for the whole election that's £235,000, or thereabouts.
We're sure the BBC can tell us differently, but it would be interesting to know whether Newsnight's election budget is bigger or smaller than Charles Kennedy's (so to speak).
