July 13th: The best £790 of tax payers money claimed on any MP's expenses

Scotland's very own village idiot, Lord George Foulkes, has submitted a complaint to the London Parliament's standards commisioner. His beef is about the £790 legal expenses claimed by Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, for his part in the public spirited and very honourable attempt to have Tony Blair impeached for misleading the House of Commons prior to the military attack on Iraq in 2003.

You gotta laugh. This will be the same Lord Foulkes who claimed £45,000 expenses whilst on House of Lords duty (in 2005 & 2006) to stay in a London flat he inherited from his mother! Then, between April 2007 and March 2008, Foulkes claimed a further £54,527 expenses for House of Lords duty. This was at time he was supposed to be representing those who elected him as an MSP to the Scottish Parliament in May 2007 (another huge salary, more expenses).

Lord Foulkes needed the tax payer to stump up right enough. He was skint. During 2005/2006 he only made £400,000 profit from wheeling and dealing on the property market. And with the loose change in his piggy bank His Lordship managed to invest a further £600,000 in two other properties (paid for in cash).

And as for the miserly £50,000 per annum salary he drew for being a director and "political consultant" with Carrick Court Associates? Pah, it was hardly worth getting out of bed for. The £500 per week he was paid for a weekly column in the Edinburgh Evening News writing about Heart of Midlothian? The man was dispensing his words of wisdom on the cheap.

Lest we forget Lord Foulkes is currently still an elected MSP at Holyrood while also serving in the House of Lords. How he finds time to fill in so many expenses forms remains a mystery. How he's got the brass neck to attack Alex Salmond's legitimate claim takes the Kit Kat.