Instead of seeing an MP's job as public service, our MPs appear to think it is self-service; instead of helping their voters, they just seem to help themselves. Instead of spending our money wisely, they waste it on worthless schemes promoting their own dubious "legacy" – the Olympics £14bn, the NHS IT system £12bn, identity cards £5bn, MPs' new offices and so on.

As I have to live on the average salary, I believe that what concerns many taxpayers is that we are governed by a new elite of MPs and their subservient bureaucrats who are overpaid, out of touch and waste billions of pounds of our money when the cost of living is spiralling out of control.

There are three main areas on which I will campaign. Firstly, our Government needs to respond to the concerns of the general public by such actions as holding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, refusing to pass any more power to Brussels, bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and setting clear annual limits on immigration.

Secondly, as we move into difficult economic times, our leaders need to demonstrate that they are using our money wisely. They should deal with a few expensive white elephants. For example, they could scrap identity cards, saving about £5bn, cancel the failing NHS computer system – another £10bn – and halve the 2012 Olympics budget, saving more than £6bn. They should reduce waste in the public sector.

Cutting the number of managers in the NHS could save over £2bn, halving the amount the public sector spends on management consultants would save about £3bn and cutting spending on pointless administrative quangos should save more than £5bn. Action also needs to be taken to curb the runaway costs of senior civil servants' salaries and pensions.

The Government should impose a three-year salary freeze on all public sector staff earning over £70,000 a year, tax the hitherto tax-free lump sum paid to retiring top civil servants and impose a special pensions tax on all public sector employees earning over £50,000 to make their pensions self-financing rather than paid for out of our future taxes.

Thirdly, I would campaign to stop politicians shamelessly filling their pockets at taxpayers' expense. When this Government swept to power in May 1997, less than half our legislation was initiated and authored in the EU.

By 2001 this had reached 55 per cent and, according to an answer given in 2007 in the German parliament (the UK Government has refused to provide the same information), 84 per cent of their legislation now comes directly from the EU.

If you owned a corner shop and you lost more than half of your customers, you might reduce your staff and even pay yourself slightly less. Yet, our leaders have never considered cutting their numbers or their remuneration to match their greatly reduced workload.

In the last five years alone, the amount of money our MPs have taken in salaries and expenses has gone up by a satisfying (for them) 64 per cent.

So I would oppose MPs getting the pay rise they want, I would fight to make MPs submit receipts for all expenses as is normal practice in any other business and I would support moves preventing MPs from employing their own family members with taxpayers' money.

The gap between our rulers and the electorate widens by the day, while the gap between our main political parties becomes ever narrower. The way our politicians club together to protect their own when the media exposes how they have misused their expenses clearly demonstrates their contempt for those who have elected them. It's time for a "people's revolt" against our wasteful and self-serving rulers. I hope my book and candidature will be the first steps.

As for David Davis, while I agree that the "Big Bother" state is getting out of control, it seems to me that his claims that this by-election is about protecting our freedoms don't stack up. He was Shadow Home Secretary. If he'd waited a couple of years, he probably would have become Home Secretary and then could have thrown out all the laws he disliked. Instead, he's chucked everything away, lost his place as a future government minister and forced a by-election that nobody wants.

As this is an unnecessary by-election caused by David Davis, I suggest he personally pays the costs of £80,000 to £100,000 himself, instead of expecting taxpayers to pick up the tab for his political grandstanding.

David Craig, author of Squandered: How Gordon Brown is wasting over one million pounds of our money, is an independent candidate in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election.