Sorry to revive a thread that's past it's sell-by date, but Gareth won't be able to sleep at night until I do. (For his information, I did log on to the internet quite often while in the Balkans, but unlike him I don't live my life in these threads and had other priorities.)

His three numbered points above don't seem to have any bearing at all on what I said earlier, in particular my remark that many MP expenses are claimed as fixed allowances for which receipts are not required. I made no reference at all to office and research costs which are a separate matter entirely.

To pick up on another point in his last post, I'm a bit puzzled as to why he would think I'm desperately trying to get into parliament. I've never expressed the slightest interest in this, and though I have often held office in the Labour party and trade-union movement, I've always made it clear that I did not want to represent the Labour party in any public arena. Skirting close to expulsion from Labour as I have done over the past ten years would not seem a sensible strategy for seeking nomination as a parliamentary candidate.

To go back to the point about Abbott failing to register her BBC earnings, which I did not have time to clear up before heading to Croatia, here is an extract from the "London Spy" column of the Daily Telegraph (5 November):

Since it was revealed that Labour MP Diane Abbott is sending her son to the posh City of London school, some have wondered how she will afford the annual fees of more than £10,000. After all, her entry in the most recent Register of Members' Interests mentions no additional income on top of the basic MP's salary of £56,538.

But Abbott's entry is incorrect. For Spy can reveal that she has failed to register the cash that BBC1 has been paying her - since January - to appear on its Thursday night political review, This Week.

"Any remunerated work taken on by an MP, unless completely unrelated to parliamentary matters, has to be registered within four weeks of that interest coming about if it amounts to more than £550," the official in charge of the register explained yesterday.

Abbott, it seems, has therefore broken Commons rules. Should a fellow MP wish to complain, she could expect a serious rap on the knuckles.

"It was an oversight," she said yesterday. "There was no attempt at concealment: I thought I had declared something, but it seems that's not the case."

As to how much Abbott has earned, her co-star Michael Portillo - who does register such interests - includes two separate payments of "between £5,000 and £10,000" for appearances on the programme between January and July this year.

I think this should clear things up for Gareth. I did check for myself and found the situation to be as reported; moreover the Daily Telegraph's education correspondent (who did not write the above item) tells me that she also had checked and had discovered the failure to register but decided not to include the fact in her own reports.

Gareth has been kind enough to suggest that I enter a complaint, but as the article makes clear, this would be for one of Abbott's fellow MPs to take up. I'd be happy to give Gareth some links that might help his understanding of the registration process if he would find that helpful.