Diary

• Offshore Fleet Street press lords, whose tax affairs make the average MP look like Snow White, are lashing the political class again after the expenses watchdog, Ipsa , revealed new frailties, like a 50p bottle of milk charged to taxpayers. But all is not lost for Ipsa as David Cameron promises to clip its priggish wings. Sharp-eyed readers of its latest bulletin detect collusion with MPs who want to use their underspent staff allowances on staff bonuses. Bonuses and "temporary" pay rises are illegal, says Ipsa. On the other hand, "applications for any temporary increase in salary will need to be accompanied by a declaration that it does not constitute a bonus payment ... and is within the rules". So that's OK. Ker-ching. • Nobody's perfect. The diligent Hendon Times spotted that Barnet's "easyJet" council had redacted a £287,000 payment in its latest accounts. Why? Because in trying to protect individual privacy it failed to recognise that May Gurney is not a Barnet widow but a very large refuse contractor. • Oscar-winner and super-cool OAP Helen Mirren has taken a shine to uncool infant comic Russell Brand, with whom she stars in the new remake of Dudley Moore's 1981 classic, Arthur. Mirren plays our hero's nanny, the butler role that won John Gielgud his own Oscar, while Brand tries to be Dud. Why the shine? Because they both come from Essex – Brand from Tilbury ("Russell just loves to hear the sound of Essex English"), Mirren from Southend, she tells Time Out magazine. "Sometimes the running away from it is what makes you who you are. I certainly didn't want to live the rest of my life in Southend." And the coalition, Helen? "I haven't really been around with the Cameron-Osborne thing. No, Osborne's the chancellor, isn't he? Nick Thingy. Clegg, yes." Exactly. Thingy, that's him. • Ukip MEPs like the preposterous Godfrey Bloom and Marta Andreasen are always banging on about their "Defend the City" campaign to protect London's financial services from Euro-luddite wreckers' plans to cripple them with red tape and taxes. But when the European parliament split 21-21 this week on the EU's proposed financial transaction tax, unloved by the City, the two MEPs were nowhere to be seen. • Commons Speaker John Bercow has problems enough with Tory ex-colleagues, what with being called a "stupid sanctimonious dwarf" (copyright Simon Burns MP) and a leftie turncoat. On top of which he has his publicity addicted, Labour-wannabe wife, Sally. What's she done now? Been photographed in a Big Ben photoshoot wearing only a sheet and rabbiting on about how "incredibly sexy" Speaker's House is in the moonlight. And to think ex-Speaker Boothroyd frets about John not wearing his trad wig and tights. • All this angst about politics, BBC comedy and venture capital being too posh has not fazed award-winning Hampshire gel Miranda Hart. If she and fellow middle-class comics like David Mitchell, Alexander Armstrong and Sue Perkins are forced on the dole by proletarian rivals, "we're going to set up a comedians farmers' market. Sue's doing vegetables, I'm doing £15 pies, Alexander and David are doing artisan wheelbarrows or something," she says. George Orwell would understand. • London mayor, biker and Lothario Boris Johnson surprises aides during an interview with the Docklands local paper by suggesting they build an airborne cycle monorail on the Olympic site. "I call it The Fly." So do we all, Boris. • Australia is a wonderful country, mate. But were the original inhabitants who arrived 50,000 years ago right to stick to hunter-gathering? Europeans turned up in the early 17th century (after the Chinese?) and settled 200 years later – reluctantly. The ancient continent is home to a range of lethal snakes, spiders, saltwater crocs, jellyfish, sharks and spiders, not to mention 'roos, Shane Warne, terrifying droughts and forest fires, midsummer snow and appalling floods followed this week by cyclones. Lovely chardonnay, but is Oz a long-term bet for humans?