Graham

I'm sure that's exactly *why* they bandy around figures like fifteen million pounds, but the question that should be asked is *how* are such figures worked out?

For instance http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/663812.stm quotes the costs to the UK taxpayer for the Pinochet court case of fifteen million pounds, but that is *including* the entire security operation that was involved.

So how can the Maxine Carr case *also* come to that amount?

And, please note the expression "the sun-kissed Gold Coast", designed, surely, to evoke feelings of jealousy and increase the public's dislike (even though she turned the offer down to stay in Grimsby!)

So it seems this is just another "we can get away with slagging off Maxine Carr, so let's do it" story.