Republican Presidential hopeful Herman Cain just burst into rendition of “He Looked Beyond My Faults” at a press conference:

Nothing to do with the allegations swirling around his campaign today then…

No. 10 pours cold water the prospect of a Fox return:

“Well, he resigned only a few days ago.”

As the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill makes it way through Parliament, honorable Members are having fun tacking bits and bobs to the legislation. Tory MP Matthew Offord has inserted a new clause calling for mandatory sobriety for those involved in alcohol related criminality.

Presumably this will be applicable to those involved in scotch fuelled scuffles at Tory conference?

In their campaign against global greed the occupiers of St Paul’s have claimed another scalp – the Dean of the Cathedral Graham Knowles. Another victory against tyranny!

In other news the City remains unaffected by the eyesore…

Graphic via @MShapland

Prezza is trying to fight the allegations that he spent like a drunken sailor on shore leave with government credit cards. He has complained to the Cabinet Office that his spending under £500 has been released and denies that the spending was him. Could this upset be around the £400 spent at Hull’s Mr Chus Chinese in April 2004? Prezza denies it was him yet told the BBC in 2008 that it was his “favourite Chinese restaurant in the whole world.” So who was it then Prezza?

UPDATE: Some speculation that the Deputy Prime Minister was entertaining the Chinese Ambassador at Mr Chus. Classic Prescott. 

He was asked about it in Parliamentary Question in 2008, but refused to say how much was spent. There are also a large amount of restaurant bills that just scraped under the £500 limit such as the  £468.70 at posh champagne bar Kettners and the £493.08 of scoff at Le Volle Gas. Funny that…

On the day the German Finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble declared war on the City of London by announcing the EU will take “a global lead in introducing a financial transaction tax to curb speculative trading”, maybe the left will finally have something to get angry about in regard to the EU’s stranglehold over the UK’s sovereignty…

Emily Nomates, formerly of this parish, has got hold of Treasury documents over at CityAM that show “UK authorities are currently locked in fractious negotiations with Brussels” over the whether the plans set out in the Vickers Review are legal under new EU capital rules. The whole story is here but essentially the Treasury suggest their plans to reform the banking sector are being blocked from above.

Maybe the occupiers should target Brussels for letting the bankers off…

John Hemming said after his wife’s trial last week that the cat that she had stolen from the home of his mistress was “probably dead”, but good news: it’s alive! Mrs Hemming got a nine month suspended sentence and the fact that the cat was never found left a bitter after taste in this bizarre and surreal story.

Turns out we get a happy ending after all…