Comments on: Write to your MP

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:17:55 +0000

… it would be much easier if they’d just come out with the Privacy Stuff (Nasty) Bill (2005). Only one battle to fight….

By: nick

nick — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 12:42:59 +0000

Gawd, I completely forgot about RIPA, or at least my rapidly degenerating memory conflated all of that nasty privacy stuff into one blurry mess. Stef will have my guts, next time I see him.

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:31:24 +0000

Some brief comments and clarifications: “Although some of the guidance starts to seem rather grand. “District Councillors will ignore copied and pasted ‘identikit’ messages”? How many will they get?” —oh, not many, I expect, but the text is the same as for all the different levels of representative. I’d be surprised if nobody tries a copy-and-paste campaign about some local issue at some point, so we decided to put a blanket warning in. “Nick: Yeah, the keeping of stats is a good thing. However, what do you do with those stats? My own MP has a response rate that doesn’t rise above 50%. I doubt it’ll make much difference to his election prospects.” —I’d hate to drag this debate onto electoral systems (along with Europe and asylum seekers, one of the strange attractors of British political debate) but yes, MPs with safe seats probably don’t care all that much. (I haven’t checked this.) But I believe that statistics from FYMP have been quoted in election campaign materials already. “FaxYourMP was born out of the Stand.org.uk campaign against ID cards” —no, in 1998 it was opposition to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (IIRC); the ID cards idiocy wouldn’t be with us for another six years. But I wasn’t involved at that stage. See Stef for a very potted history.

By: nick

nick — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 10:11:48 +0000

Yes, I think you’re both probably right in that the popularity of the ID card issue with the people who are likely to make use of such a site, and the nature of the site itself, may have made it easier for MPs to ignore. There’s a historical reason, perhaps: FaxYourMP was born out of the Stand.org.uk campaign against ID cards, so MPs have been receiving faxes on that subject for much longer than other topics. What’s done with the response stats? Well, there’s a regular name-and-shame, since it’s good press-release fodder for lazy hacks. As for the US model: the size of the country, and of congressional districts, combined with DC lobby culture, means theres a very different relationship between congresscritters and their electorates. The weekend constituency surgery doesn’t really exist in the States; there’s also a much larger congressional staff to deal with. Chances are, if you’re writing to an old-school backbench MP, your message is seen by just a couple of people; though you’re right that things are getting more Americanised. For the record, I believe the worst case of FaxYourMP form-letter spam was done on behalf of the RSPCA, of all people, during the hunting ban debates.

By: Francis Irving

Francis Irving — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 09:37:39 +0000

Just to answer Jake McGuire’s point. You can’t compare US and UK on contacting elected representatives. In the US, as I understand it, it is common practice to spam congressmen with automatically copied messages, and they don’t complain much. Here they have always hated it, so FaxYourMP and WriteToThem both prevent copy and paste junk. The cultures are different. Hopefully politicians will pay particular attention to WriteToThem messages, because we have pre-vetted and filtered them in many ways. We watch carefully for abuse. It’s much better than using the service on the parliament.uk website, which does no checks and gets lots of junk.

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 07:58:45 +0000

Jasper/Jake: Yes, I think you’re both probably right in that the popularity of the ID card issue with the people who are likely to make use of such a site, and the nature of the site itself, may have made it easier for MPs to ignore. However, that doesn’t excuse their ignoring it. It’s really not their job to make value judgements about a persons ‘seriousness’ based on the method they used to send their message to the MP [as opposed to the actual content of the message]. Nick: Yeah, the keeping of stats is a good thing. However, what do you do with those stats? My own MP has a response rate that doesn’t rise above 50%. I doubt it’ll make much difference to his election prospects. That’s not to disparage the work of the people who produce the sites, of course.

By: nick

nick — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 04:33:05 +0000

The sites are a brilliant idea but they rely on having MPs who actually pay attention. But FYMP/WTT does keep stats of the MPs’ responses. Which is a useful check on the lazier buggers. Remember that FYMP was introduced to ‘hack’ democratic accountability, because MPs wouldn’t respond to emails. Some MPs even tried to weasel out of replying to FYMP faxes, saying that they needed a signature. Er, no. (Disclaimer: a fair few of the people behind FYMP, going right back to the days of stand.org.uk, are good friends of mine, and are the most cantankerous bastards when it comes to knocking politicians into shape.) The next stage is to create tools that make it easier for people to stand for election—say, ‘BecomeYourCouncillor’—which has been taken up by Howard Dean in the US.

By: Kieran

Kieran — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 01:56:19 +0000

JS: I warned you before not to leave off-topic comments consisting of essentially nothing but a link to your blog. That counts as spam.

By: Jake McGuire

Jake McGuire — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 01:44:29 +0000

I’d be surprised if any MP actually paid attention to letters they got from this site; after all if someone can’t be bothered to actually write a letter (or pick up the phone and call), they can’t care all that much. Or at least that seems to be the consensus whenever a congressional staffer over here talks about this kind of thing.

By: Jasper Milvain

Jasper Milvain — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 00:43:51 +0000

Ah, but the good thing about this version is the access to councillors: it lets you fail to get traffic lights installed at the top of your road, as well as fail to stop the war in Iraq. Although some of the guidance starts to seem rather grand. “District Councillors will ignore copied and pasted ‘identikit’ messages”? How many will they get? Matt McGrattan: Fax Your MP may well have had a disproportionate role in anti-ID card protests—it being a popular issue online—which would make it easier to ignore. Especially if they’re shoving back a form letter in the hope of rising in a rapid-response table. I’d write by hand (plain paper, dark blue ink). But I might do that anyway.

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 00:12:31 +0000

My own experience with the earlier FaxYourMP site and TheyWorkForYou.com has been overwhelmingly negative. The sites are a brilliant idea but they rely on having MPs who actually pay attention. My experience over the past 3 or 4 years is that of the 4 or 5 attempts I’ve made to contact two different MPs is that in only one case was there even a reply and the reply was clearly a ‘form letter for sending to ID card nutters who worry about old fashioned and out-moded concepts like civil liberties’ thing that made no effort at all to address any of the specific questions raised. I’m with Daniel on this one. Democracy as it stands in this country is basically screwed. My earlier experiences (in the late 80s), when my MP was the marvellous Dennis Canavan, were much better – with Canavan following up my letter several times over a period of many months, forwarding on replies from Ministers and continually agitating on my behalf – despite the fact that I wasn’t even old enough to vote at the time. Unfortunately, MPs of the Canavan breed are increasingly thin on the ground.

By: Daryl Cobranchi

Daryl Cobranchi — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 23:47:09 +0000

It’s still January where you live?

By: Andrew McManama-Smith

Andrew McManama-Smith — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 23:13:08 +0000

hmm… I wish someone would make a sort of community editable version that would allow for other countries, myself being a dual Aussie-US citizen, and since our politicians also seem to have a bad habit with wars, etc. Maybe I’ll have to do it myself if I ever get time. And I thought I was the only person who actually prefered internet expoler over the alternatives.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 22:52:40 +0000

Yeh. Got a problem with that? (actually, I have now got my finger out, opened a new Explorer window and sorted the link out)

By: taylor

taylor — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 22:14:45 +0000

“…a new Explorer window…” Do you mean Internet Explorer? That is sooo 2003.