It's grim up North. At least, if you've been a Conservative in recent years.

The next stop on my tour of marginal constituencies taking the pulse of the electorate is Pendle, a seat that the Tories have not won for 23 years.

Yesterday, in Cardiff, I asked voters whether they wanted five more years of Labour. The answer was expressed with quite a lot of anger.

Today's question for the voters is: Do Conservatives understand people like you? The emotion this time was uncertainty.

Some electors here in the North insist that the Conservatives have never understood what they call "working people". Others can't forgive what they think Margaret Thatcher did to the North. Still others liked their fellow Northerner William Hague, and would vote for him if he were leader, but don't warm to David Cameron.

We've also been speaking to voters who do think the Tories are changing - and beginning, in fact, to understand the working class.

One theme came up with women we spoke to, including, tellingly, a single mother. They liked what Mr Cameron has had to say about the family. The same goes for some of those among the nearly one-in-seven voters in this constituency who are Asians and mainly Muslims. Equally tellingly, though, many say it is all they really know about what the Tories stand for.

As in Cardiff, electoral statistics tell a story of Labour decline and of Tory failure to take advantage. Between 1997 and 2005, Labour's vote-share here fell from 53% to 30%. However, the Conservatives lost votes: 165 of them in those eight years - though, thanks to a low turnout, their vote-share did creep up.

What gives Tories hope here is that they gained control of Lancashire County Council for the first time in almost three decades.

The message I detect on this part of my tour is that it is simply not enough for voters not to want five more years of Labour; the Tories have to do a great deal more to convince voters that they stand for something better instead.

Our next stop is Dudley, and the question: Do you favour spending cuts, and do you favour them now?

You can also see my film from Pendle on tonight's Six and Ten O'Clock News and we will add the video to this post.

PS. Thanks to those who pointed out that my figures for city councillors in the Cardiff North constituency were out of date. The current figure is 13 Conservatives, five Lib Dems and three Independents. And sorry for the error on the Pendle dates - now corrected.

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I've escaped. I've left the sound and fury of the Westminster village - though only for a week - to take the pulse of the electorate.

First stop: Cardiff, home of one of five Welsh constituencies [see note below] which the Tories need to win from Labour to have a chance of forming a workable majority in the House of Commons.

Since New Labour came to power, the electorate of Cardiff North - the residential and in places leafy parts of the Welsh capital - have mirrored the behaviour of the country as a whole.

Labour's support here slumped from over 50% of the vote in 1997 to 39% at the last election when, it's worth remembering, Labour won a third term with the lowest-ever vote share obtained by a governing party.

However, the Tories failed to gain from this decline, picking up just 227 votes in those eight years. Thanks to a lower turnout, their vote share crept up from 33.7% to 36.5%.

The reason? Voters who deserted Labour switched, in the main, to the Lib Dems - even though they are outsiders in this seat with just under 19% of the vote.

The Tories are hopeful of winning the seat, having topped the Euro poll not just here but in Wales as a whole. They have 12 councillors in this constituency as against Labour's three and the Lib Dems' six - even though in Cardiff as a whole, the Lib Dems control the city council.

Labour hopes depend on stressing the independence and hard work of the local MP - Julie (wife of Rhodri) Morgan - and persuading those Lib Dems not to switch to the Tories.

On each of my stops on this entirely unscientific test of public opinion, I'm posing a different question to get voters talking. Today it's the one Gordon Brown knows is the hardest his party faces after 13 years in power: "Do you want five more years of Labour?"

It's clear how much trouble Labour will be in if that is what the election is seen to be about. While we were filming in a Cardiff gym, young, old and very sweaty circuit trainers lined up to answer in the negative and to express their anger about expenses, the economy, Afghanistan and/or immigration - which came up again and again, despite being barely mentioned in Westminster.

However, as the prime minister always points out, elections are choices and not referenda. One or two dared to say "yes", expressing their fears about what the Tories might do to public services.

With Bosch having announced the loss of 900 jobs here and Cardiff council a further 300, minds are still on the recession. Gordon Brown would be cheered by the voices of young workers I heard in a growing Cardiff business, UPL. They expressed their fears about making a change when economic recovery was so uncertain, particularly as they had little idea what the Conservatives actually stood for - another theme that keeps recurring on this trip.

Tomorrow, it's the Tories' turn to face a tough question in another marginal they need to win: Pendle in Lancashire. You can also see my film from Cardiff on tonight's Six and Ten O'Clock News and we will add the video to this post.

Update 9 Feb: Here's the Cardiff package.

Note: The Conservatives currently have three Welsh seats: Monmouth, Preseli Pembrokeshire and Clwyd West. Election experts calculate they need five more to gain a majority: Cardiff North, Vale of Glamorgan, Aberconwy, Carmarthen West and Pembrokeshire South, Brecon and Radnorshire. They also have hopes of gaining Bridgend and Delyn and Montgomery - if a political asteroid hits the Lib Dem Lembit Opik. [Return to post]

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Are you bewildered by the latest developments in the MP expenses scandal?

You needn't be. It's all really very simple.

Sir Thomas has asked around half of MPs to give money back - because, even if they followed the rules, the rules were wrong.

But Sir Paul says that Sir Thomas is being too harsh and that the rules were the rules.

Neither Sir Thomas nor Sir Paul writes the rules for MPs; that's the job of Sir Christopher - except, actually, Sir Ian is the man who really writes them.

Now Sir Ian is consulting on new rules that are different from the new rules which Sir Christopher wrote.

Sir Christopher has written to Sir Ian to say that he doesn't agree with the rules, but has no complaint about the way Sir Ian has done his job.

Meanwhile, Sir Stuart hints that Sir Ian and Sir Paul are right and that Sir Thomas and Sir Christopher are wrong.

Anyway, all you need to know - according to Sir Stuart - is that the Commons is putting its house in order.

I hope that's now clear. And it might be funny if it were not so serious. The expenses scandal has undermined the standing of Parliament, it has devastated the reputations of many individual politicians, and it has led to the largest number of retirements from the Commons since World War II - and still counting.

Today should have been a day when people could say "at least they are sorting out the mess". I fear that, as on so many other similar days, that is not how it will feel.

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