Well, politics seem to be taking up so much of the news in the last couple of weeks that I hear there’s been no room for the sports pages. The drip, drip, drip approach of the latest revelations concerning the dubious use of allowances by MPs has been such that I’ve been salivating, thinking what I could do with that sort of extra money on top of the basic salary of £65,000 a year.

Much of this has concerned the use of second homes and how the taxpayer has had to pay for long lists of furnishings and other services for the said dwellings. Given that all but inner London MPs are allowed money for a second home, the potential of the abuse by South East MPs in particular is obvious.

I would propose a simple solution: any MP who lives within commuting distance of Parliament should have their second home allowance removed and be given a cycling voucher instead.

As an example, Oxford East MP Andrew Smith apparently claimed nearly £74,000 in expenses for his second home in London over four years. With a claim that large, he could have bought a gold-plated deluxe Brompton folding bike to get to and from the station at either end, to use alongside an annual rail season ticket at a cost of £4,000 a year.

Even adding in a few weeks’ worth of hotel accommodation, this would still have resulted in a considerable saving to the tax-payer. Just as importantly, it would give a greater appreciation of what the average commuter has to go through each day, along with a higher level of fitness to improve stamina levels – something that all MPs need.

In fairness, there are some politicians who already champion cycling. David Cameron famously cycles in from his west London home – although his biking credentials were somewhat undermined when it was revealed that a car with a chauffeur makes the journey behind him, carrying his papers and spare clothes (hasn’t anyone told him about waterproof panniers? – duh) and Cameron’s colleague Boris Johnson, a former Oxfordshire MP but now mayor of London, also likes to be seen cycling. Possibly he could make some slightly more useful comments on the need to improve cycling facilities, though, than his recent statement that he would “never vote to abolish the free-born Englishman’s time-hallowed and immemorial custom, dating back as far as 1990 or so, of cycling while talking on a mobile”.

But perhaps the UK’s politicians should follow the lead of the more ambitious cycling pledge found in elections to the Danish parliament back in the 1990s.

Comedian Jacob Haugaard stood as an independent on a platform that included the need for better weather and a “permanent tailwind for cyclists”.

To the surprise of most observers, he received more than 23,000 votes and was duly elected.

Even more bizarrely, the overall result was evenly balanced between left- and right-wing parties, putting Jacob in the position where he had the deciding vote on important issues.

Of course, to the disappointment of cyclists. he didn’t implement the pledges he had made during the election – but who expects that from a politician..?