Vain search for lazy MPs

Channel Four are planning a new expose about lazy MPs. It will not work. The Telegraph at the start of the recess asked all MPs about their holiday plans. I was one of the very few to reply. I did not have any plans to go away. The questions that  Channel Four are asking are:-

Do you hold regular surgeries throughout the year?

Where do you advertise your surgeries?  

How many surgeries do you hold during summer recess?

Do you personally attend all surgeries during the summer recess period?

Do you hold surgeries by appointment?

 

I told Channel Four that their  questions do not reflect the dwindling role of surgeries in MPs work. They were the main way of contacting  constituents 20 years  ago. The other main contact then was through letters. 

Now it's e-mails, phones calls, street surgeries, responses to adverts  and even public meetings. In the past 12 months or so I have had 'Time to Talk' public meetings on Drugs, Pensions, Jobs, MPs Expenses and, in two weeks time, one on Afghanistan. 

Most constituency cases are dealt with on the day they arrive by e-mail or by phone. This is immeasurably more efficient than surgeries. Surgeries delay a hearing of complaints for a week or longer. Constituents have the chore of turning up at a place and time convenient to the MP. Often their journeys are in vain, because their complaints should have been addressed by councillors, other MPs or help agencies. To answer Channel Four's questions as submitted would give a totally misleading impression. Surgeries are yesterday's slow way of dealing with constituents. Over-reliance on surgeries by an MP is evidence of inefficiency.

Of course, I do hold surgeries and see everyone who insists on a face to face interview. But a programme based on the answers to these questions would be thoroughly misleading.

Someone from Channel Four rang back this afternoon. He was reasonable and admitted that they were off target. Fairly he asked how can you find out which MPs are doing their work I don't know of one. But electors are usually good at making those judgements.

Double standards?

Amnesia rules in international morality.

Remember the howls of outrage about the results of the Iranian elections. Then the West did not like the results. There was little hard evidence but many Iranians were unhappy.

The West would like Karzai to be an overall winner. There is a wealth evidence of election cheating.

Will the West protest?

To shore up the collapsing myth of a terrorist threat from Aghanistan, all Government and Opposition spokespeople used the precise words, 'The 7-7 bombers were trained on the Afghanistan -Pakistan border.' Not true. They were trained in Pakistan. The Lucozade bombers were trained in Pakistan. Not difficult to work out where the terrorist threat comes from. Will they follow their logic and plan to invade Pakistan, and then Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the Yemen....?

Time to talk 

Afghanistan  - the future

Do we need a new strategy?

 Is there a military solution? 

  Is the UK paying too high a price?

 Which countries are terrorist threats? 

Can Afghanistan be pacified and reformed? 

Your views are invited for a discussion at 

 7.30pm Newport Civic Centre 24th September 2009

Comments

[J.J.]

Paul,

I am afraid it will have to be the Tory Party that will ,in time, reluctantly accept your logic.
Justin McCarthy MP 1886 wrote A History of our Times in a chapter entitled The Disasters of Cabul
It is doubtful whether the genius of a Napoleon and the forethought of a Wellington could have won any permanent success for an enterprise founded on so false and fatal a policy......
Our first error of principle was to go completely out of our way for the purpose of meeting mere speculative dangers:our next and far greater error was made when we attempted......... to force a sovereign Government upon a reluctant people.