Jornal de Negocios writer shot in foot

A wonderful piece of journalism from Rui Peres Jorge yesterday: "Tobacco Tax Receipts Plunge." The increase in tax on tobacco is having the opposite effect to that expected, falling 39% in the first quarter of 2006.

This is the trivial result of reading the Treasury's report on budget execution for March, without bothering to do the research.

However, if you actually read the report, this shortfall is explained - "As referred to in prior months". So I went to the prior month reports and found, in January, that the fall compared with 2005 is due to extraordinary receipts in January 2005.

All of that research took me less time than preparing this post! But why bother researching, if your objectives are to arrange excuses to criticise the Government and fill column inches.

In on-line news, there is no need to write just for the sake of it.