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Underground > Switchboard >

Do you write to your MP?

09:46 / 31.03.04

I love it. I love hassling them, perhaps it's because Alistair Darling is my MP and I despise him. I wrote to him about David Blunkett making victims of miscarriages of justice paying for their room and board in prison.

Just got my reply today "I don't think the position is quite as is implied. However I shall make some enquiries and then write to you again".
So I wrote to the journalist who wrote the article and asked him if he would like to help with Mr Darling's "enquiries".

I also recently wrote to an mouthy MSP Karen Gillon who said "If PR [proportional representation] is such a popular measure, why have I not had a single letter of support on this issue?" so I sent her a letter supporting proportional representation. Hehe.

Her reply was brusque: "Thank you for your email and I appreciate you taking the time to contact me although I fundamentally disagree with the points that you are making. I do note however you are not a constituent of mine." Meow! Hehehehe.

I'd thoroughly reccommend hassling MP's as a hobby. The most fantastic part of it is getting out all your bile (don't swear though, or they wont reply) and watching them try to weasle out of actually addressing the issue you raised.

10:03 / 31.03.04

To that end, why not fax your MP? - has a search by postcode facility to find out who your MP is. It seems that they can only really take comments from their own constituents.

10:16 / 31.03.04

I am, sadly, faxless. I find you'll usually get a reply if you actually write a letter. Plus you can send letters to the Houses of Parliament without a stamp. Fun and free.

10:58 / 31.03.04

FaxYourMP is run by some friends of mine and it is generally and genuinely extremely successful and well worth using if you have any concerns. As long as you write something specific and targetted you will get a response, usually by mail, and they will pay attention to it - although admittedly they will pay more attention to a letter than an e-mail or fax.

10:59 / 31.03.04

Oh and of course you don't need a fax to be able to use FaxYourMP - that's the whole point of the service. You just go to the site and write your letter and it turns it into a fax and deposits it on your MPs desk. More impressively, it'll check back a couple of weeks later to see if you've got a response and then names and shames the MPs who don't have good response rates.

12:35 / 31.03.04

Cool, thanks!

We're The Great Old Ones Now

12:08 / 01.04.04

I use the service to the point where I suspect Frank Dobson has a special waste basket with my name on it. It works very well, and many of the links are interesting, too - who gave your MP funding, how do they vote... (Or is that another site).

Anyway, I think it's good - although not as good as showing up at an MP's surgery time and eyeballing them. Which is something I look forward to the next time I get very honked off.

13:13 / 01.04.04

I've hassled my MP and MSP in surgery. Alistair Darling was, predictably, useless and uninterested. My MSP was apologetic and useless.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:01 / 01.04.04

I've faxed my MP enough times that he invited me to one of his special coffee mornings, sadly I was working so couldn't go. He's mostly useless though, being New labour and part of the London Friends of Israel means that he mostly ignores everything I ask of him, however at the moment he says he agrees with me that ID Cards are pointless (though I'm sure should there be a vote he'll fold) and he's 'making enquiries' about the American Ambassador accusing the British Guantanamo detainees via The Sun of being terrorists.