Guido would like to express his support for the inaugural Labour Women’s Network Political Day held over the weekend. Aiming to stand up for downtrodden women in the party and, no doubt, all across the land. LWN 2012’s star speakers included the multi-millionairess Expenses queen Barbara Follett, three home owning multi-millionairess Polly Toynbee and our favourite feminist comedienne and Harriet Harman’s adviser Ayesha Hazarika also turned up. It was no laughing matter…

Malcolm Rifkind was less than impressed by Ed comparing himself to Maggie:

“He has as much claim to mantle of Margaret Thatcher as Silvio Berlusconi had to that of Julius Caesar.”

This evening’s Dispatches will blow the lid on five more troughing rent-swapper MPs. Throughout October Guido revealed names of several of the MPs who were billing the taxpayer for the rent for their London accommodation despite owning properties in the capital that they themselves were renting out. Tonight’s programme alleges:

• John Denham has the nerve to charge the taxpayer for rent even though he has receives income from a London property he rents out. When Guido asked greedy expenses-guzzler Denham why he had decided to become a rent-swapper at the height of the scandal he sobbed that: “I was forced to vacate the property (and rent a flat) directly and solely as a consequence of changes in IPSA rules. For the avoidance of doubt, I would strongly prefer to be living in this property and not a rented flat”.

• Tory DCMS select committee chairman and rent-swapper John Whittingdale has started claiming rent for a considerably more expensive property than the London flat the he owns, used to live in and now receives rental income for.

• Mark Pritchard is billing the taxpayer for the rent for a London property despite the fact that he also owns a flat in the capital.

• Labour’s Michael Meacher has pulled the same trick in Oldham.

• While Pat McFadden has done the same in Wolverhampton.

Here is the list of MPs claiming for rent in full:

There are some very interesting names on that list. It would seem that Peter Luff is renting off a Frank Lampard. According to the chants, there is only one Frank Lampard, so it must be the Chelsea footballer. Keith Simpson rents off Tory peer Howard Flight. Stephen Williams rents off disgraced LibDem peer Jenny Tonge while Julian Huppert rents from Channel Four’s much loved old political editor Elinor Goodman. Jessica Morden rents off Madeleine Moon. They’re both Labour MPs.

Every single one of these MPs is relaying the same old sob story word for word to try to excuse their rent-swap troughing. 

They can blame the rules all they like, the fact is they are profiting thanks to the taxpayer…

UPDATE:

Michael Dugher MP, in charge of Labour's defence procurement review, rents off a Defence lobbyist.

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) November 19, 2012

An early winner this week, as Sun sage Trevor Kavanagh slaps down scatter-gun inquisitor Tom Watson:

@tom_watson I wouldn't tell you the time of day, Tom.

— Trevor Kavanagh (@trevor_kavanagh) November 19, 2012

That’s him told…

Questions about what former BBC Director General Mark Thompson knew about Savile, and when, are piling up on both sides of the pond. Even the New York Times is gunning for their new boss. Thompson left his £834,000 BBC gig on 16 September and started the $4M NYT job on 12 November. On 23 October – five weeks after quitting the BBC – Thompson wrote a letter to Tory MP Rob Wilson stating:

“During my time as director general of the BBC, I never heard any allegations or received any complaints about Jimmy Savile.”

Yet, it is now clear, thanks to freelance journalist Miles Goslett who has been investigating the Savile/BBC story for almost a year, and the Sunday Times, that on 6 September – 10 days before he quit the BBC – Thompson engaged lawyers Mills & Reeve to write a letter threatening to sue the Sunday Times if it published certain allegations about Thompson’s knowledge of the Savile scandal dating back to December 2011. This letter was published on the Sunday Times website yesterday.

Thompson now claims that he did not know exactly what Mills & Reeve’s letter contained and was not shown a copy of it before it was sent. This woeful explanation – the latest in a long line of laughable excuses – has been met with mockery in New York. The New Yorker’s  John Cassidy wrote over the weekend:

“For his sake, I hope that Mark Thompson, the former BBC bigwig who recently took over as chief executive of the New York Times Company, rented an apartment rather than buying one. The way things are going, he could well be back in London pretty soon.”

Thompson – and the New York Times’ owners – must be getting worried. How long can they maintain their position when their own reporters are covering this story prominently in the newsroom just a couple of floors below Thompson’s own office? Meanwhile, there is only silence on this story from the place that likes to consider itself the newspaper industry’s noticeboard: Media Guardian. Odd…

If you’re at your wits’ end come eight o’clock this evening then why not tune into Radio 4 to hear Ed Miliband in conversation with the Indy’s Steve Richards. Apparently not joking in his attempt to relaunch himself as a conviction politician, Ed tells Richards that he’s just like Maggie:

“She was a conviction politician and conviction really matters. In the 1970s, it was a similar moment, in the sense that an old order was crumbling and it wasn’t 100 per cent clear what was going to replace it. The challenge of the future is who can rise to the scale of challenge that the country faces and who can create a project for how this country’s going to be run that is genuinely going to make our economy work, not just for a few people but much more widely.”

A frightening thought…