Tony Hirst, the independent developer who launched some of the first projects using the Guardian’s Open Platform, has again used the Data Store in an innovative way – leading to a new story about MPs’ expenses for the Guardian.

Hirst’s use of Google Maps shows that there are differences of up to £20,000 in neighbouring MPs’ travel expenses.

Hirst describes his work here which he developed after he discovered that the expenses data was being released via Data Store. Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur wrote about Hirst’s initial efforts and said “what we need now is a dataset which shows constituency distances from Westminster, so that we can compare that against travel…”

Hirst clearly couldn’t resist the challenge.