Obiter enjoys needling the establishment – it’s part of the journalist’s job. But he’s never attained the heights of iconoclasm achieved by Heather Brooke, who 12 months ago wrote a piece about her High Court freedom of information (FoI) victory over the publication of MPs’ expenses (see [2008] Gazette, 12 June, 10).

A year on, her campaign for transparency has led to sackings, resignations – and, some might say, extremist parties gaining seats in council and European elections. Last week Brooke told the Gazette that the House of Commons’ ‘stupid’ decision to fight her FoI request for three years had shown a ‘predilection to waste voters’ cash’.

Fortunately, her legal team, at Matrix Chambers and Simons, Muirhead & Burton, acted pro bono until the High Court appeal, when ‘we moved to a conditional fee agreement seeking full costs if we won’. Without after-the-event insurance it wouldn’t have been possible, she said.

Brooke had been expecting the Commons to soften the impact of the revelations and had begun planning how to challenge the expected ‘redactions’ when the Daily Telegraph obtained its unauthorised copy of the receipts and began publishing the full Monty. Brooke, meanwhile, is continuing her career as an investigative journalist. To someone, somewhere with something to hide: Brooke is on your case.