What I meant when I said ‘voting record’ is that as far as I’m concerned, an MP is someone who helps run the country, not fix my planning application, and I vote accordingly.

Another point of info re Galloway and race. As far as I know, he only made the response about ‘darker skins than Oona’s’ as a reply to a question along the lines of ‘Don’t you feel bad running against a black woman?’ He didn’t raise the issue of race – others (including Paxman) did, in a despicable fashion. Galloway’s a louse in many important respects, but not that one.

Harry’s Place is not anti-Leftist although Oliver Kamm is another matter. Paul Anderson’s ‘Gauche’ blog (libsoc.blogspot.com)is one of my favourite l/w blogs, another good one is Chris Brooke’s ‘The Virtual Stoa’ (http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/blogger.html) then there’s ‘Socialism in an Age of Waiting’ (http://marxist-org-uk.blogspot.com/), although that one might be described as far-left and you might think of them as anti-leftist leftists. Same goes for Norman Geras’s ‘Normblog’ (normblog.typepad.com), but both are well worth reading. ‘Shot by Both Sides’ (http://www.stalinism.com/shot-by-both-sides/) is also entertaining, even if the blogger does support the (boo hiss) Liberal Democrats.

It’s been a hectic couple of days; I voted on the way to a job which came up late; another job came up for today in the middle of that job which itself finished well after 11pm last night. So there was no question of staying up all night to see the r…

Or is my preferred model the late Jim Marshall, who spent most of his time propping up a bar in the (also late) Royal Mail, but at least voted against much of this state-level nastiness?

Not sure I’d vote for either, to be honest (never did for Jim), but I make my decisions on the basis of how they will vote, not their role as an ombudsman. If you need your MP’s help that badly, then the right thing to do is not to vote for the best ombudsperson regardless of their politics. Instead, set up a claimants’ union.

I suggest you think through that claim more carefully. I don’t know what a parliamentary secretary is paid, but an MP only gets £57k a year (this one paid his entire staff £75k in 2003-4), and I don’t think you’re going to get all that many competent housing officers for the price of a secretary (we’re not talking filing clerks here). In order to get through 20,000 complaints a year, between them they’d have to deal with at least 80 complaints per working day.

Let’s just say that I think there’s a teeny bit of exaggeration going on here.

Good riddance? The attempt to make him an Ulster Unionist ‘de Klerk’ was wildly optimistic, and onlt succeeded in continually feeding the jackass with enough rope to hang pro-Agreement politicians with.

If I understand you correctly, you fall into the area cited by (who’d have thunk it?) John Lennon, when he said, ‘There’s not enough of a gap between the two main parties, but a lot of people live in that gap.’ That is, the difference between the parties might not seem like much to some of us, but they’re pretty damn big to the people affected by the policy differences therein.

Whether you’re Labour, Tory or Lib Dem, policies really do matter, and those who dismiss the differences between parties (and the value of constituency MPs) are:
a) being facetious, and/or
b) flaunting their privilege – ie rejoicing in the fact that their lives are going to pretty damn fine no matter who’s in charge.

As far as I can tell, no one has contradicted GG’s kowtowing to SH, nor did your link actually address (at least not on the first page, maybe further in?) the issues Johann Hari raised in his column.

But as I said, that’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is that I think that King actually gave a shit about her constintuency on a day in day out basis, even though she was a complete buffoon to support the war. I think that GG, on the other hand, saw this constituency as a great place to score some bigtime politcal points, but isn’t actually going to do the work on a day to day basis.

And you can bet your ass I’d hold a Labour candidate to the same ‘work for your area day in day out’ standards. There’s a lot of high level Labour folks I wouldn’t have voted for no matter what. I want someone who’s good for Bethnal Green, not someone who I think is going to use it as a showpiece. And I genuinely don’t think GG is that man. Does that really count as ‘jingo stuff’ in your book?

And like I say, I hope Georgey boy proves me wrong. I’d hate to get all disgruntled and feel like I should move back to Lambeth.