Thursday 18 March 2010

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO YOUR MP?


I was vaguely aware of a programme in the background last night about MPs and ...well, I wasn’t paying much attention, but I did look round when Nikki Winterton was asked about the flat that he bought on expenses, then put it in a trust for his children and started charging us rent ....... “I not going talk about that”, he snapped in a plumy voice that just smacked of “I’m better than you”.

Anyway. I got to thinking that very few of them understood just how low most of them had sunk in our esteem: how little we liked them.

I’m lucky. My MP, Stuart Hosie, is a good guy who works hard around the constituency and did nothing wrong in the expenses field. He’s approachable and attends his surgeries and takes part in local activities.

But in general I have little time for MPs. I think that many of them, especially those who have held or do hold ministerial office seem to think that they are, as my gran would say, “Erchie”, belonging to a ruling elite or sorts.

So I thought I’d take this opportunity (knowing that this article will be read by the great and the good) to say....

“You’re not!

“What you are is someone who works for us. You are like our dentist, or our mechanic, our doctor or our stock broker, except in all these cases the person concerned is a professional who has trained to do that job, He is, we hope, an expert in his field. With respect, you are not. You may be a professional elsewhere, but for this specific job, you need no qualifications, or experience. You simply need to be chosen by your party. We elect you to go to Westminster to look after our interests there.

“We sometimes hear MPs whine that they are glorified social workers. Well, it’s true but, if we appeal to you sometimes to try to sort out something out, it is because we have tried already with the DWP or the Council or the Revenue, and we have been fobbed off or just plain lied to. You can get things done. Your letters will go straight to the Area Manager; ours languish in a clerk's in-tray ignored. If we call up we will talk to a junior with no authority, whereas you will talk to the boss, You can get things done. Not because you are you, but because you have the authority of parliament behind you, the portcullis letterhead.

“So, if you hate us bothering you about trivia, go sort out the fact that ordinary people don’t have access to anyone who can make a decision anymore. Therein lies your problem.

“Apart from that remember you are an ordinary person too, and when you stop having “The Hon” in front of your name (whether you deserve it or not) and “MP” after your name, you will be back in the same situation as we are.

“It will take a long time for us to get over the fact that more than half your number have been on the fiddle because they thought that they would never get caught. If you are not one of them, then sorry, but people do tend to get judged en masse, rather like your parties have classed everyone who is unemployed and every single parent as a scrounger. It’s hard and it hurts if it's untrue in your case, but that’s how it goes.


“No hard feelings!”

I’d love to hear what you’d tell (or what you have told) an MP .....



.......................................

19 comments:

  1. Tris,

    There you have a great point a great post Sir.

    And in particular your observation about the word "Hon"..........yes indeed Honourable Member.

    Well there is nothing...NOTHING honourable about anyone of them at all.........but member OH YES !!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you LotF.

    It's actually one of the things that particularly irks me about the London parliament. They waste all this time with Hon, Rt Hon, Rt Hon and Learned, Rt Hon and Gallant; and then upstairs, they have Noble, Rt Hon and Noble...etc... and they are all kidding themselves becasue it's a bloody joke.

    The Hon member for Luton South, for example, is the incredibly dishonourable Margaret Moran, whom you will remember charged us £22,500 to treat the dry rot on her "boyfriend's" house.

    But people still refer to her in the House as The Hon Lady. No wonder everyone laughs at the Brits....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Titles are derived from the position or membership of a particular council.
    eg Right Honourable means a member of the privy council.

    However to simplify the title to Thieving Bastard would I feel cut through the red tape, make they system for the great unwashed like myself a bit easier to understand.

    eg Paul Holmes the Lib Dem Hon member for Chesterfield. Please read my blog and you may well se he is in fact The Thieving Bastard for Chesterfield.

    Just a thought !!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nixie Winto is just one particularly egregious example of the all too common out of touch, grasping politician and i agree with the thrust of this post.

    But "...our mechanic, our doctor or our stock broker..."? I'm no longer sure that this is the sort of thing i would wish my wife or my servants to read.

    ReplyDelete
  5. LOL Naldo... well, I do have a doctor and a mechanic... well, a boy that fixes my car... of course I don't have a stockbroker, but I know some people who do.... and they aren't posh either....

    I was trying to say, badly probably, that they are like other people we employ to do jobs for us... you know, the guy that fixes the boiler, or lays a driveway.... We pay them and they do stuff for us...

    BTW... I trust you don't allow your servants near the computer.... read stuff?... goodness, mine can't read!!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Right well. Noo there's a challenge. Whit wid ah say tae ma MP? Seriously like? Ah wid say this...

    "Hullo there. Ah'm no gaun tae gie ye ma vote Mr Larazowic, no cos ah dinnae like ye, an' no cos ye cannae get ma boiler fixed. It's no because o' yer fiddled expenses (ah've no seen yer name in the papers on account o' any duck ponds or dry rot treatment an' ye did pay back some o' whit ye took) an' it's no because o' yer votin' record. Ah'm no carin' that ye voted against the war, or that ye support me havin' ma foreheid micrachipped.

    Naw. Ah'm no votin' for ye Mr Lazarowic for this reason. You've worked hard for years at yer politics. Ye stood for the cooncil for years an' years an' got right tae the top. But then ye thought the next step up was tae go tae London toon an' rub shooders wi' aw' the ermines an' settle yer erse oan the green leather banquettes. Ye ran away wi' yersel."

    That's the nub o' whit ah wid say. Ah'm only really interested in electin' somebody that disnae want tae go tae Westminster. Ah'm only interested in electin' somebody that wants tae tear the hoose doon, rip up the Act o' Union, and let the British nations flourish. Aw' o' them, England included.

    Ah'll be happy tae vote for that nice big Calum Cashly, even if he thinks ma legs are shoogly an' ah'm gaun tae faw tits ower elbie ony minute noo. He's aye tellin' me tae mind how ah go. Mibbe he's seen the state o' the pavements doon Leith Walk.

    ReplyDelete
  7. LOL... That seems pretty reasonable Sophia. (Obviously not the bit about your shoogly legs... How rude Calum!)

    Let me at him....

    ReplyDelete
  8. I already said my final words to my MP when he voted against having a referendum on Lisbon. I simply told him (in a letter) he would not be getting my vote in any future election.
    He also voted strongly for 42 day detention and the smoking ban, he's a typical Labour clone.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Well QM, in the end that's the only thing we can do for, or against them. If enough of us do it... they are toast.....

    I wish more wold do that in this country, but they seem to have "must vote Labour" hardwired into their brains despite the fact that the get NOTHING in return for their vote.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm afraid my question would have to be in line with the Queen's "What do you do?" but then again my MP is a Lib.Dem. so I suppose it's understandable.

    Strangely enough, one of the MPs I had a lot of time for, and found to be approachable, interested and helpful, not just in his constituency, but also on the general subject of rough-sleepers and other unfortunates, was Mike Watson before his unfortunate incident with the curtains.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Well Brownlie, they tell us that have a heavy workload which drives them to drink and women and.... I wonder why they have to do any work at all to be addicted to that stuff....

    Some of them seem to find plenty of time for both anyway... like that wee nyaff from Edinburgh who was cavorting, as a newt, naked in his office in parliament with a tart on Remembrance Sunday a couple of years ago... Nigel something or other.....

    Hope he's biting the dust this time round.....

    ReplyDelete
  12. Marco Lazypeeper's my MP anaw.

    I met him at a sun drenched Leith Links Fair a coupla years ago and aksed what he thought of ID cards. His answer lasted at least 25 minutes during which time i drifted off to drink booze and jump about to the Messenger Soundsystem.

    So if i met him again i'd probably say, "Goany git tae the point or jeest shut yer pus, ya splaffin goat ye."

    ReplyDelete
  13. Did you wake up in time to find out what he thought about ID cards....?

    ....like it matters, seeing as it will be 2080 before we can afford any of that nonsense and we'll have been set free long beore 2018....

    I was just interested...sort of... a bit....

    ReplyDelete
  14. I wonder seriously that, because most of the UK's mew laws are basically rubber stamped from that sent down from Bruxelles, whether we need 660+ of the porkers.

    The Swiss do OK with each canton nominating or or two and the US has fewer also.

    So if they are really glorified social workers, or as I would call them, Peoples' Advocates why don't we do just that.

    Make Westminster 150 or so and redefine their remuneration and expenses package with complete public oversight and have 500+ Peoples' Advocates with powers to access services and force the bureaucracy to conform to our required standards.

    It would be cheaper and more effective as well as help to raise the public's confidence in MPs.

    Or is this too simple?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Bugger... I wish that we had the Swiss government here....

    As a Scot with a perfectly good government in Edinburgh, I'm not overly bothered about what they have in London. It almost seems like it is nothing to do with me.

    But 150 in one house with the wages of a voting drone/social worker sounds OK to me if I have to show some interest. The rest of them can go on calling themselves Lords or Dukes or for that matter Princes.... as long as they don't cost us anything... Good for a laugh I suppose.

    The achieve very little....they should be accorded very little of our money.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Tris

    I did not make myself clear.

    We should have 150 MPs and 500 plus Citizen Advocates with rights to hammer bureaucracy on behalf of us.

    A kind of localised Ombudsman without the MP's salary and expenses.

    A new level of democratic right.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hum... well, I think that's too many... and I don't see how you could hold them to account... or trust them.

    I've become very cynical... I trust no one...


    But Bugger , you did make yourself clear, I just read it wrong.... duh...:¬)

    ReplyDelete
  18. Aye, Tris, Marco was in favour of ID cards. What a dobber.

    As you say, by the time we get roontae that nonsense, we should be well shot o the UK and Lazypeeper'll be lookin fir his old job at the cooncil up toon.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I have my fingers crossed... for that great day Naldo matey.

    Oh yes, how sweet that will be....

    ReplyDelete