Of course if they didn’t keep it secret from us – the people who pay the bills – there wouldn’t be anything to sell.  So release the receipts now…

UPDATE : Newsnight just flashed a trailer for a claim that the receipts are being offered to newspapers for £300,000 – uncensored.

The averages:

• LibDems claim £140,217

• Labour MPs claim £136,116

• Tory MPs claim £131,275

This breakdown of the second home allowance graphically shows how MP’s milk the system. Over half of them claim within 10% of the maximum £23,083 allowed…funny that…

UPDATE : Jacqui Smith claimed £135 under the maximum £23,083.  Tsk, tsk.

Download them here [pdf]. See your how much your MP has fiddled..

UPDATE : Guido has now uploaded the expenses as a webpage.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has gone viral to promote their new report out today showing that the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy costs each household in Britain £400 a year.  Jamie Oliver is actually cooking for the G20 Summit.  Unfortunately this recipe for protectionist EU fudge sticks in the gullet…

Guido laughed when he saw the crack on Tory Bear about the shock of Iain Dale turning down a TV appearance.   Guido laughed even more when he saw that GMTV had found a substitute politician to take his place.  A nice younger politician called, errm, David Cameron…

Note that the anger MPs are feeling about the expenses revelations is directed not at those MPs who are abusing the system and bringing them all into disrepute, but at those who are exposing them. Labour MPs are convinced there is a “Tory mole”* in the fees office, others think that digitised versions of their soon to be released receipts are being shopped around the papers.

MPs are after blood – the blood of the whistle blowers rather than the blood of those robbing the public.

That is how morally compromised they are, no longer able to see that what they are doing is wrong.  They just want to stop the sunlight shining on their dodgy practises.

*Having been involved in a few of these expense fiddle stories coming to light, MPs should realise that the sources are often constituents, outraged staff, disgusted civil servants, sometimes rival politicians from the same party and often the result of plain old digging. Politicians are now widely despised as a class, don’t be surprised that your dirty secrets are becoming public knowledge.