Oh dear, our poor old Labour MP really should be more careful when jumping on a bandwagon. For sometime now Cllr Rob Waltham and I have been campaigning to try to win the return of the bus to Hilton Avenue in Gunness. In fairness Rob has worked like a trooper on the issue and so really deserves the credit.

Anyway, through the Burringham and Gunness Community Chest we agreed to fund a Friday shopper service ourselves to help pensioners get into town to do their shopping. The Council refused to help and in fact Labour Councillors actually criticised us for putting the service on! They would rather residents had no service at all.

Following huge pressure, the bus service will now return to the Hilton Avenue area, although we will continue to provide our shopper service too, which we have new plans for too.

Sadly, the local Labour MP thought he would try and jump on the bandwagon and claim credit for the service by putting a leaflet around the area. The leaflet was paid for by our taxes as it was funded by the communications allowance - another expense MPs claim and which you and I pay for.

Judging by the response we have received from local residents that was a very very bad idea. Many residents we spoke to today were furious with his claims which frankly do not hold up to scrutiny. Quite a few residents said that besides not knowing who he was they couldn't believe he was trying to claim credit for something which Rob has so visibly worked for. Rob was the one who organised the petitions when the service was cut, raised it at Council and who found a replacement Friday service for the pensioners.

I thought I would blog this incident because it does rather demonstrate what our MP is up to in various parts of the constituency. Just last week I had a phone conversation with somebody from Snaith who said they really felt our MP was making a bit of a fool of himself at the moment. I can't argue with that, the only problem is that he is using taxpayers money in the process.

We shall certainly be watching very closely to see just how much of your money our MP uses to promote himself in the coming months and years.