Without wanting to suggest anything is wrong with MP's replying to letters from constituents, it seems incredible that Labour MP Shahid Malik should receive so many letters from his constituents that he should spend £21,000 on postage alone.
Working on the basis that it is roughly 25p for postage per letter, that means he sent out 84,000 letters last year. This means he could have sent a letter to each of the households in his constituency nearly three times.
This also works out at 1,700 letters a week or 350 a day. However many staff must he employ in order for them to write that many individual letters a day.
I think I could only write that many if I was sending out mass mailings, and I am sure he wouldn't be doing that, would he.
3 comments:
Shahid Malik doesn't answer constituents' letters. He is one of just five MPs (all Labour) who have recorded very low responsiveness for 2 years on the trot in this survey.
Let's face it - he doesn't have any activists probably to do street/estate letters - and why would you want to expend that much energy?
Seriously though there is a problem raised in that if I as a Local Councillor wanted to do the same for a whole estate the Local Council would tell me to get lost.
What is in effect happening is that those with money are using the system to `buy seats`.
I well remember the local Labour MP getting involved with the cutting back of rhododendrons - something which is a very local issue.
I, working full time and without staff, dealt with it on a weekend as best I could only for the complainants to be enthralled that she had `dealt with it`.
Every time I write to my MP I ask him to reply by email to save money and do his bit for the environment. Every time he replies on that heavy, expensive Commons paper.
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