MP EXPENSES TRIAL

What impresses me about the grubby little case of the Labour MPs and Conservative peer facing criminal trials for alleged expenses fraud is just what grubby little crooks they all too clearly are.

I mean, you only have to look at them

Or at least look at 'Lord' Hanningfield there on the right: talk about Exhibit A.

Blimey, did you ever see such an out-n-out slimer and ne'er-do-well?

In another time it'd've been 'Lord' Hanging Field, more like, and his tubby corpse would be swaying from some lonely gibbet.

So ... good for the judge chucking out their pathetic arse-covering efforts to claim parliamentary privilege.

I hope this last-ditch run for cover is noted as part of their form and used at the trial itself to ram home what despicable types these are.

(Not that I haven't myself spent a lifetime pocketing expenses and petty cash and paper clips and the odd bottle of Stolly, oh and reams of paper for all the novels I don't write, and then there's all the computer collaterals and the hire-cars on my personal company Avis card ... but that's neither here not there - particularly there if we're talking about clinky and the dock.")

Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield had argued that they could not be tried in court because of a 300-year-old law exempting MPs and Lords from prosecution over proceedings in parliament.

Well, they would, wouldn't they?

All the more bravos and props to Mr Justice Saunders for staring the wankers down and phrasing it so succinctly, that:

"I can see no logical, practical or moral justification for a claim for expenses being covered by privilege; and I can see no legal justification for it either. In my judgment, the conduct alleged against these defendants is not covered by Parliamentary privilege and is triable in the Crown Court. Unless this decision is reversed on appeal, it clears the way for what most people accused of criminal behaviour would wish for: a fair trial before an impartial jury."

No immunity