Hansard from the 12th October 2009 made Guido chuckle:

Mr. Jim Devine (Livingston) (Lab): Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Hamilton), I fully support the Scottish Justice Secretary’s decision to send al-Megrahi home. 

This crook didn’t even need a dodgy medical to get him out after four months…

Via @paulhutcheon

With bigger fish being fried, lots of stories are going under the radar this week. On Tuesday John Healey was ordered by the Committee on Standards and Privileges to apologise to the House. Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary sent unsolicited party-political letters to LibDem councillors about the Health and Social Care Bill using pre-paid Commons envelopes. First Healey tried to deny that he did anything wrong, then claimed he had no idea he had broken the rules, but the committee have called him out and told him to write a written letter of apology to the Commons and repay the money. Not the biggest crime in the world, but worth noting the dubious lengths that Labour went to in order to throw a spanner into Lansley’s works.

In shocking news, apparently IPSA “does not give enough importance to helping MPs spend in a cost-effective way.” Flicking through the National Audit Office report, just released, it seems there is still a long way to go to fix MPs expenses:

“They [MPs] are not required to make use of the few existing centralised procurement mechanisms. Moreover, IPSA does not normally provide advice to MPs, beyond the rules of the scheme, on what would represent cost-effective procurement, even following explicit requests. For understandable reasons, it has not done this to date because it is keen to avoid the recreation of the so-called ‘John Lewis list’. MPs say they are generally dissatisfied with many aspects of IPSA’s advice and guidance which is not consolidated nor easily searchable.”

Guido isn’t sure that thousands and thousands of pounds of NAO resources were required to point that out.

Jim Devine has ranted against Guido in a letter to the prisoners’ rag Converse. He claims that because of the internet he did not get  a fail trial as his reputation was “trashed”. Only one person trashed Jim Devine’s reputation and that was Jim Devine, not least with his car-crash TV confession.

Forging VAT numbers and invoices didn’t help either.

“Along with my parliamentary colleagues my public and private reputation was trashed on the internet… I know several senior MPs that are very concerned about the ability of an individual to receive a fair trial in the internet age.”

Devine also claimed that several senior MPs told him it was fine to fiddle his expenses. Something the judge branded him a liar for. Guido is proud of the role we played in bringing Devine to justice. This unedifying moaning only serves to trash his name further.

The Sports and Social Club on the parliamentary estate didn’t earn it’s nickname the Sports and Socialist for nothing. A regular haunt for Labour types, things have got out of hand in the past, but it has been particularly rowdy in recent weeks. One of the bar staff told Guido on Friday:

“Everyone’s noticed that the atmosphere in here has turned very nasty, especially on Thursdays and Fridays. The Labour kids are inviting down all their friends who are very young and get very drunk. The place is being treated like a Students’ Union Bar and things have to change. Black Rod is considering banning guests, he’s really unhappy.”

Tory bagcarriers who also use the bar for a cheap pint aren’t very happy either:

“A plea to Labour researchers, can you please stop inviting dozens of your friends down to get drunk and shout abuse at people. There are fights in there every week now. Its a disgrace…”

The fisticuffs and low tolerance has led to one researcher being hauled into the Serjeant at Arms office, and Black Rod has decreed that pass-holders may only bring two guests on a Thursday and Friday. Guido has a better idea – why not scrap the taxpayer subsidy and put the prices up to match anywhere else in Central London, then see if people still flock there. 

Guido has been amusing himself with a new toy this afternoon. The Commons Performance Cockpit is designed to introduce some business metrics to the Commons. Using expenses data and MPs attendance and performance information, you can rank Members on value for money.

One fact caught Guido’s attention:

“MP Dennis Skinner wins Commons voting record: He voted in 98.4% of all debates in 2010. Compare this with the member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath who managed to vote in only 33 (13%) of the debates. Relate this to their total costs per debate they voted in and we find Mr Skinner cost £321 whilst Mr Brown cost £3,164 each time they voted.”

Now there is a surprise.

Given he is the first and only MP to be investigated twice by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner for his curious expenses, it’s no surprise to see Bill Wiggin’s seat high on the list of constituencies likely to face the chop under the boundary review. Given his own association have tried de-selecting the arrogant old-Etonian in the past, it’s unlikely he will find open arms elsewhere…

Despite him being married to the Prime Minister’s ex-girlfriend, it looks like Cameron is finally living up to his word and ensuring that his old school chum went “out of the door”. In the most cowardly way possible…

IPSA have released the expenses figures for the last quarter and guess who managed to rack up an £8,870 bill? In the last three months Gordon Brown has not spoken in the House, nor has he voted in the House and it seems he only shows up to see Obama. In fact Gordon asked just two written questions back in March. So why exactly are we paying him four and half grand a pop?

The excuse that his constituency is a long way away, so he needs to claim more, doesn’t wash when he’s not actually doing any work for his constituents.

Meanwhile the former Prime Mentalist earned £70,000 for just one speech in Vegas…

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…

The seventy-year-old Tory peer racked up £14,000 of fake accommodation charges between March 2006 and May 2009. He wasn’t staying in town, but being chauffeured back to Essex instead. His claims that “they were all at it”, however true, did little to help his case. The prosecution closing statement was damning:

“There was no real honesty in making claims that way, because of four reasons – the written rules, the golden rule of ‘don’t make a claim for more than you spend’, there’s nothing to suggest this was the practice, and his behaviour. The way he filled out the forms does not suggest he really believed the rules allowed him to make false claims. It was a deliberate and dishonest decision on his part to fill in the forms in that way.”

He will be sentenced in three weeks time…