Blog: A rather flushed Daniel Kawczynski burst into the Members’ Lobby in the House of Commons on Tuesday, explaining his ruddy visage on the fact that he had just cycled to Westminster on one of Boris’s bicycles.

The Shrewsbury & Atcham MP is an enthusiastic supporter of the scheme devised by London Mayor Boris Johnson, which allows subscribers to pick up a bike at one parking point and drop it off at another when they have completed their journey.

The scheme wasn’t without its teething problems in its infancy, as Mr Kawczynski found out one night when attempting to get to his London home after a late vote at the Commons.

“I tried three different stations but couldn’t find a parking place to secure the bike and ended up twice as far away as I wanted to be,” said the Conservative MP.

“I had to get a taxi to take me home ­ and the bike back to Westminster,” he added.

“I’m still a great fan of the scheme. It’s one of Boris’s best. I’d like to see it replicated on a smaller scale in Shrewsbury,” said Mr Kawczynski.

The Shropshire MP said he would be writing to the unitary authority and Shrewsbury Town Council to see if they were prepared to begin a pilot scheme in the county town.

If it ever comes off, as someone who used to cycle around Shrewsbury many moons ago, I would recommend the use of Town Walls rather than Wyle Cop.

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Whether it’s the cycling, his daily half-hour swimming sessions or his alcohol-free diet, Mr Kawczynski was jubilant this week to have just bought his first 36ins waist suit trousers in many a day.

“I’ve been 39ins for the last 10 years,” said the 6ft 9ins MP, who neverthless ruled out a return to his charitable modelling days for the High and Mighty catalogue.

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Anyone who watches extracts from Prime Minister’s Question Time on television will see how crowded the two front benches ­ Government and Opposition ­ can become on Wednesday lunchtimes.

One of Telford MP David Wright’s jobs as an Opposition whip is to ensure that Labour’s front bench doesn’t resemble a Mumbai commuter train.

He makes the rather practical point that if a shadow minister is due to ask questions or take part in a debate, he or she has to have somewhere to sit!

That means acting the policeman if the front bench becomes too crowded, and asking junior shadow ministers to move on.

This week, the usual suspects were in place in distinct pecking order with Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman on one side of Ed Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson on the other.

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Eric Ilsley, the former Labour MP now sitting as an Independent, has (before he was pushed) succumbed to pressure to quit his job as the Member for Barnsley Central.

Mr Ilsley admitted dishonestly claiming £14,500 in parliamentary expenses and allowances.

He had been urged to resign by parliamentarians including David Cameron and Ed Miliband, but there are quite a few Eric Ilsleys still sitting in the Commons whose expenses claims were dodgy to say the least.

Some of them were just better at playing a system which encouraged MPs to claim for everything they could at a time when their pay was being held down.

Mr Ilsley is right to resign, but MPs should be careful what they wish or call for.

Let he who hath no sin cast the first stone.

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David Cameron said last week that he was sad to have had to sack Lord Young, his unpaid enterprise czar, last November.

The former cabinet minister, whose job included ridding business of some of the countless regulations imposed upon it, had said something rather insensitive. It upset a few people and embarrassed the Tory leader.

B&Q yesterday refused to cut in half for me a 9mm piece of dowling because, the store claimed, such a dangerous act would breach health and safety regulations.

You should be sad, Prime Minister, BECAUSE you sacked a man who knows more about business than you will ever do and who might just have consigned some of these crazy rules to the rubbish bin.