In a very odd ruling following a complaint made by the Sunlight Centre about Lord Rennard to the House of Lords Clerk of the Parliaments’ Office, the Clerk has decided that in “the absence of any definition of main address in the current guidance to the House of Lords’ Members Expenses Scheme, I have come to the conclusion that I should not uphold the complaint.”

Guido takes this to mean that no peer will be found to have broken the rules regarding main residence.  This ruling will certainly will be grabbed by Baroness Uddin as a get out of jail free clause.  Stunning.

Nick Griffin, echoing off-the-record Labour minister’s attacks on military leaders, today attacks “Those Tory generals who today attacked the British National Party should remember that at the Nuremburg Trials, the politicians and generals accused of waging illegal aggressive wars were all charged — and hanged — together.”

“Sir Richard and Sir Mike fall squarely into this bracket, and they must not think that they will escape culpability for pursuing the illegal wars in Iran and Afghanistan… These two gentlemen are Tories who have seen the traditional Conservative vote in the army, from private level up to senior officers, dissolve away and turn into BNP votes”.

What Griffin doesn’t seem to get is that on Thursday he will be under the spotlight and he will, Guido suspects, fall apart, live on national TV. His biggest ever platform will fall away from under him…

Data released today showed that public sector net borrowing rose to £14.8 billion in September, the highest ever level of borrowing on record for the month, increasing from £8.7 billion a year ago. Gordon’s big and bloated government is overspending by £493 million a day or £20 million an hour, 24 hours a day, every day. More money is going out on the costs of failure – welfare payments – than is coming in from income tax.

John O’Donoghue, the Ceann Comhairle (speaker) of Dáil Éireann the lower house of the Oireachtas (parliament), was forced out of office last week in an expenses scandal arising from Freedom of Information requests exposing his troughing to the tune of €200,000.  He became the first Ceann Comhairle to be forced out of office in Irish history.  The picture of his robe of office draped over the chair is set to become iconic.

With the usual sense of exaggerated self-entitlement that is characteristic of politicians the world over, he tried in his resignation speech to justify his nights in Cannes hotels and trips to international horse race meetings as in the Irish national interest.  FoI revelations that he had taken a private Lear jet from Dublin to Cardiff for the Heineken Cup rugby match, before heading on to Cannes for the film festival and then to London for a Ryder Cup promotional event before returning home to Kerry in a trip that is estimated to have cost the taxpayer in the region of €32,450, did for him.

The Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen shares his fate with his British counterpart, Gordon Brown. Like the Prime Mentalist he is the former finance minister, like Gordon he is unelected and without a personal mandate, having succeeded his more politically skilled predecessor, Bertie Ahern.  Like the former Chancellor he can’t escape political responsibility for the state of the economy. The parallels across the Irish Sea are remarkable.

Perhaps Clegg could get Legg to look into Liz Barker’s home address?  The Baroness seems to be suffering from amnesia…