Lord Taylor would not be going to prison for a year without a combination of bloggers and Jonathan Calvert of the Sunday Times. Taylor, a former barrister, dishonestly claimed £11,277. For background on the case see Pesky Bloggers Do It Again (Nov, 2009). Amusingly he claimed to a co-conspirator on the Lords of the Blog not long before being charged that:

“For your information, the police have examined my expenses. The police are satisfied that there has been no impropriety or any other cause for concern. They have thanked me for my cooperation, and will not be taking the matter further.”

Alas that turned out to be untrue when it was challenged by a co-conspirator, that very claim on his blog set in course a chain of events that led to him going down today. He would have got away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky bloggers…