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 .....

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