I have been watching the expenses debacle with interest and increasing astonishment over the past few days. As someone who does not enjoy either an MPs salary or MPs allowances, it has been a real eye opener to see what has been going out. I think the publication of these expense claims has been long overdue and I hope that it will lead to the whole system being scrapped.

I personally have been campaigning against the current expenses regime for a number of years, most recently highlighting the use by my opponent of taxpayers money to promote himself in the local press. Sadly, this is not a one off and has been a pattern of behaviour which he seems to consider appropriate and shows no sign of ending.

However, it is clear that this whole issue is engulfing MPs of all parties who have been party to what is clearly a broken system. All parties are implicated and whilst the claims may have been allowable under the rules, it is patently clear that the public do not accept them.

Long before these expenses were revealed I made a pledge that if elected I would not use the Communications Allowance, claim for first class rail travel or claim for driving around the constituency. My reason for that pledge was that personally I don't think taxpayers should pay for MPs' self promotion, nor do I believe that the taxpayer should foot the bill for first class rail travel. Likewise, I think an MP's salary is big enough to stand the cost of their travel around their constituencies.

The challenge to my opponent is to see whether he agrees with me that public money should not be used for these purposes, we shall see by his use of the Comms Allowance in the next few weeks and months.

In other news, I did some canvassing in Goole recently which was fantastic. One chap on the doorstep who has never voted anything but Labour gave me enthusiastic (sic) support by declaring that he would vote for me because the Conservatives couldn't do a worse job than the current lot!! Not quite as enthusiastic as I would like but it will do :)