Whatever the Standards and Privileges Committee rule today (Guido has the whitewash removing solvents ready) Spelman should have to pay back the cash she fiddled from her parliamentary expenses to pay the nanny.

If, as Spelman has been spinning, the Lyon inquiry reports that there is no evidence of deliberate wrongdoing or a breach of Commons rules, this will infuriate many parents like Mr & Mrs Fawkes, who have to pay for childcare out of post-tax income. To pay a nanny costs middle-class parents some £40,000 a year in pre-tax income. We are expected to believe that Spelman’s nanny was actually her constituency secretary* thus paid for by the taxpayer and that in return for her childcare duties her only compensation was room and board. Who really believes that the money was not payment for her childcare duties? Unbelievable, it simply does not wash.

If anyone knows of a nanny willing to work for only room and board can you please let Mrs Fawkes know, because we have never heard of such a deal. This was a complete and utter p*ss-take out of the taxpayer. Here is the acid test – if it really was completely above board and as she claims – why did she stop the arrangement? This benefits fiddle was too much, Spelman should pay back the cash even if the Committee rules it was “not deliberate”.

Back in the autumn of last year, on the transatlantic flight back from his trip to New York and Washington, Gordon briefed the Lobby in the back of the plane (not that they would bother to tell you this) that there was no sub-prime problem in Britain. Not only did sub-prime start in America, it ended in America, according to the Prime Mentalist.

Now the Bank of England estimates that there are a million homeowners in negative equity, they forsee the possibility of that number reaching two-million. Gordon says he will bolt the lock now the Lloyds TSB horse has bolted and he is going to stop banks offering 100% mortgages.

Who offered 100% mortgages to low income-earners in the first place? Gordon did. He had a sub-prime lending scheme of his own called Home Buy Direct. No deposit was required, and it didn’t matter if you could not afford to repay the full cost of a mortgage for the property. Low-income earners were effectively encouraged by the government to buy over-priced new builds. Repossessions are now running higher than in the 1990s, with low income earners are trapped in negative equity as unemployment heads towards 1980s levels…

More hanging chad type issues in Glenrothes where surprisingly Labour, against trend, held the seat with a 6,737 majority against a strong SNP effort. Guido has previously reported on suspicious levels of postal ghost votes and the subsequent disappearance of the register despite the legal requirement to keep the register for a year.

Now the Electoral Commission is weighing in with a report :

“We do have some concerns that the count was not as transparent as it could have been, due to the layout of tables in the hall. One table where votes were being counted was not clearly within the view of candidates, agents or other observers.Also, the central tables where the votes for each candidate were collated were situated behind the returning officer’s platform and obscured from view.”

The report also said the first opening of returned postal votes were not opened until the day before polling day meaning a problem with the electronic scanning equipment used to adjudicate postal votes could not be resolved in good time. That by-election was very fishy.

Have just spoken with Alex Hilton (the blogger formally known as Recess Monkey). He seems to be optimistic he will be home for the weekend. Clearly Draper will have to smear him with something more lethal than bacterial meningitis.

Do not worry too much for him on his hospital sick-bed, at one point it was surrounded by his girlfriend, his mother and three ex-girlfriends. According to his updated Facebook status –

Alex Hilton wonders if inspiration can be drawn from drug and pain induced hallucinations.

Do you think perhaps the socialist simian will dream an opiate laden fantasy that Margaret Thatcher has died? Again.

Some say Prezza is over sensitive to criticism. Chris Mullins has mocked his ministerial career (Mullins was his junior minister) in his new book A View From The Foothills about the occasion he came to the office in mismatched shoes. Prezza swiftly jabs back on his blog:

That left hook is still swinging…

UPDATE : Lot of justified scepticism in the comments as to the veracity of Prezza’s account. Still funny.

Guido has said it before and he’ll say it again: Ashcroft should just publicly come clean on his status. If he wants to take a substantial role in public life that is the price he has to pay. Presumably the Electoral Commission thinks there is a possible case to answer. Thinking about the set-up – as Guido understands it – he could well be providing his support to the Tories in the way he does via Bearwood so as to avoid having to use taxed funds. Guido has a hunch that Ashcroft is paying some UK taxes on personal funds he remits into the UK, if however he wrote a personal cheque to the Tories it would have to be out of remitted and therefore taxed income, this way it is tax free. This is just a hunch which could go a long way to explaining the set-up.

Whilst they are at it, the Electoral Commission might want to also take a look at the non-domiciled backing for Labour from the likes of Lakshmi Mittal, Ronnie Cohen and Swaraj Paul – which totals nearly £10 million. Wonder if the complainant, John Mann MP, has thought this through..