George Osborne’s Treasury has wreaked revenge on high-earning hookers after a £1,000-a-night tart was jailed over a £120,000 tax fraud. Donna Asutaits will go down for 16 months after being found guilty of evading taxes over a two year period in which she earned over £300,000. UKuncut will be happy…

Osborne is responsible for the HMRC cracking down on high-earning tax evaders, demanding that high-class call girls pay a whopping 45% of their earnings, making him the harshest and most lucrative pimp in Britain. Guido can’t imagine how George ever got involved in such a sordid business…

The UK’s new FBI-style police force will be exempt from having to abide by Freedom of Information laws. The Yorkshire Post has the scoop, revealing that the National Crime Agency will refuse to answer questions from the public on spending and non-operational activities. Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles told the paper:

“For a Government supposedly committed to transparency, this is a calculated move that would shut the public out of holding the country’s most senior policing officials to account. At a time when the Home Office wants to give these officers access to details of who we email, call and send postcards to, it is remarkable to be proposing they should be able to do so behind a cloak of secrecy.”

First the snooper’s charter, now the removal of the ability to hold the police to account. How’s that whole openness and transparency thing going, Dave?

Guido has often taken the left-wing iPPR think-tank to task for some of its craziest policy ideas, the never ending hyper-Keynesian fallacies it pumps out and for flogging access for cash in the past. So when they come out with a good idea it is a noteworthy shock.

They are advocating the nationwide adoption of a crime-tracking app to enable victims in to follow their case through the criminal justice system.

• The courts, CPS and police should ensure that data is shared and that victims can follow their cases all the way from first report to sentencing.
• Crime maps should be made interactive and display real-time information to change them from being purely a tool of transparency and accountability to one that could help prevent and reduce crime.
• The courts should become more accessible and transparent by publishing details online of the progress of cases, transcripts, judgements and sentences.

The criminal justice system at times seems to be in near chaos, cases get lost, villains escape justice, victims get lost in the confusion. Transparency would increase the pressure on the “supply chain” management of the system. When things go wrong victims will become aware of where and when it went wrong and pressure can be applied to rectify the problem.

Guido understands that real-time crime mapping is already a Downing Street priority, this data sharing idea for the wider criminal justice system will chime with government thinking. No doubt the ludicrously inefficient Courts and cops will have objections…

Reports suggest that Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce will enter their pleas to charges of perverting the course of justice on June 1.

Meanwhile Chris Huhne’s bisexual lover – who is suing over invasion of privacy – admitted giving newspapers tips about the sex lives of Hollywood stars and senior politicians. Carina Trimingham confessed in the High Court last week to being the source of an article describing the ‘sexual antics’ of Oscar winner Russell Crowe with a BBC researcher at a bar. She also sold a diary story about the current Deputy Prime Minister, which she described as ‘Nick Clegg’s 18 shags story’. Carina also admitted that she had sent the infamous ‘Calamity Clegg’ email mocking Nick Clegg’s political skills while Chris Huhne’s press officer during the 2007 Lib Dem leadership contest. A bit rich of her to complain about invasions of privacy…

Metropolitan Police Press office statement:

Police have today (Tuesday, 13 March) arrested six people at addresses in London, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Hertfordshire.

The co-ordinated arrests were made between approximately 0500 and 0700 this morning by officers from Operation Weeting, the MPS inquiry into the phone-hacking of voicemail boxes.

All six – five men and one woman – were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977.

The two arrested in Oxfordshire are thought to be Charlie and Rebekah Brooks. The Met were not thought to be looking for the return of their horse…

It seems the Hacked Off lot are trying a new tactic in their campaign this morning, and this time they are on the money. They’re calling for the 17,000 dodgy invoices from over 300 journalists in the Operation Motorman Files to be released to the public. As the graph above shows, this was a Fleet Street-wide problem. Hacked Off chief Brian Cathcart is right to say:

“It names journalists who commissioned thousands of actions which they must or should have known were, on the face of it, illegal. It records dates and payments for these transactions. It identifies the members of the public who were targets of this activity – thousands of them, although only a handful have been told it happened. This secret has been secret too long, and the prevailing situation at the inquiry, of nudge-nudge-wink-wink exclusive knowledge, cannot be justified legally or morally. The only beneficiaries are journalists who have done wrong and their employers, and a public inquiry into press conduct has no business covering up wrongdoing by journalists.”

It sounds to Guido like Hacked Off are very familiar with the contents of the files. They could always leak them? Wink wink…

The commons crime wave hit some high-profile targets on Friday. The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour is down an iPad and PoliticsHome’s Paul Waugh has taken the loss of his laptop rather badly. Waugh has been pursuing the identity of the anonymous pranksters behind @SteveHiltonGuru with some vigour recently. Guido’s helpful suggestion that @SteveHiltonGuru‘s famed #DarkArts might be at play did not go down very well…

See also: Quote of the Day, May 17, 2011

Video via @LiarPoliticians

EDF Energy has been fined €1.5m for hiring someone to hack into a computer belonging to Greenpeace and spy on the swampies. Cheeky. It’s also probably also worth remembering that EDF Energy’s head of corporate communications is Andrew Brown, Gordon’s better looking and more cheerful brother. Guido is looking forward to another boisterous parliamentary performance by the former Prime Mentalist on this invasion of privacy…

Back in July, Trinity Mirror Group brought in City lawyers Herbert Smith “to help it in its dealings with the judge-led inquiry”. Guido has to wonder what this “help” really means and whether we will see some Harbottle & Lewis/ News International style “dealings”. Whether we will get a whitewash remains to be seen, but Mirror Group’s actions thus far don’t exactly inspire confidence. Either way their work load must be on the increase, especially given that the Mirror Group have already had the finger pointed at them…