Another year, another crowd of venal, lying, cheating ‘honourable’ members bringing shame upon the Mother of Parliaments. There was much cause for celebration in November as the Standards and Privileges committee finally found that the disgraced invoice falsifier Denis MacShane was guilty of swindling tens of thousands of pounds worth taxpayers’ money. They described it as “the gravest case which has come to us for adjudication”, and MacShane’s career was over before this crooked, corrupt, gutter politician could say slush fund. Guido hazily remembers cracking open the seventh bottle of Chateau MacShane that fateful autumn afternoon. It’s now in the hands of the CPS...

Back in January Guido kicked off the year by launching a campaign against the MPs food and drink subsidy. This blog revealed that the taxpayer was subsidising their rib-eye steak and chips to the tune of £5.93 a pop, forking out £3.15 for each seared pigeon breast and chipping in £5.27 for each glazed belly of pork chowed down by our honourable members. John Bercow said there was nothing to see here. The old media didn’t agree…

As the year drew to a close another expenses scandal threatened to cost the jobs of several MPs at the next election. Guido caught a few rent-swappers of his own, it will be interesting to see how Stephen Dorrell, Linda Riordan, Meg Munn, Andy Burnham, Chris Bryant, Helen Grant, Bill Cash, John Whittingdale, Peter Luff, Jessica Lee, David Amess, Kevin Barron and Don Foster fare in 2015.

A review of this year’s expenses cheats would not be complete without a special mention for piggy-in-chief Margaret Moran. She received a two-year treatment order after she was found by a court to have committed 15 counts of false accounting.

And, lest we forget a politician who takes our money and laughs in our faces, wish a happy anniversary to Gordon Brown…