The post Expensegate updated “Green Book” of rules for MPs for expense claiming written essentially by MPs, for the benefit of MPs is front-paged on the Telegraph this morning.  Surprise, surprise they have upped the amount they can pocket in cash, tax free, without the need for receipts from £400 a month to £500 a month for “subsistence”. A benefit worth over £9,000-a-year if they paid tax on it. They of course don’t.  Troughers like Tom Watson and Alan Duncan all took the full amount available in the past for “subsistence”“. Will they dare do it again? Guido will be watching…

Why are MPs paid subsistence for just doing their jobs, they would presumably still have to eat if they were not MPs?  Families of four survive on less than the £125 a week the MPs claim they need to pig out on groceries. It is just a tax free bung to themselves.

Incidentally, they will spin that this was done before Expensegate and is all the fault of that idiot Speaker Martin. It was indeed initiated by Speaker Martin, but it was approved and finalised on the quiet by Speaker Bercow. So much for a new era…

*Dizzy updates in the comments that this was out earlier, just it got little coverage. The FT blog is keeping score. Worth bearing in mind that MPs still trouser more in tax free expenses alone than a person on minimum wage working a 40 hour week takes home:

This post has been re-written to reflect Dizzy’s  fact checking. Back to the rosé for Guido…