Details of MPs expense claims were finally published online today despite all the efforts they and Commons officials put into trying to stop publication.
Unfortunately the published claims have been so heavily censored that they are almost completely useless which may have been the intention. Even Sir Stuart Bell was forced to admit that some of the omissions were "pathetic", as was his attempt to shift the blame onto Commons officials by saying
"I think it's unfortunate and I think it's officialdom and no MP would have authorised that."
Add in the seemingly random way the documents are organised, the lack of a machine readable version and it begins to look much like the sort of 'snowjob' so beloved of American lawyers, where significant documents are buried within hundreds, often thousands of pages of utterly useless crap.
If this was indeed a deliberate attempt to make it difficult for anyone studying the material then it was a bloody silly thing to do with the Telegraph already in possession of the full, uncensored documents.
Where the chance to do a side-by-side comparison will undoubtedly be far too good an opportunity to miss.
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