The post thudded onto the doormat on Saturday. In amongst the white enveloped demands for money was a brown one; HMRC I thought, but no, House of Commons.
Bearing in mind the feedback and interest that I’ve had in some of my thoughts on the recent riots could DC have recognised my worth as an advisor and was summoning me over for a chat and to seek my help?
Unfortunately not. A few weeks ago I sent a briefing note to my MP in advance of a Commons debate in the hopes that it might have helped inform him on the subject. I got an Out of Office response to my email and nothing further. With recent events having, rightly, taken precedence over the subject that I had written to him about I had forgotten the matter, at least as far as Parliament was concerned.
But no. This was the subject of the letter, and so I sat down to read with interest. Having taken the trouble to write a carefully worded briefing for him I thought that there might be news of the debate. Once again, but no. The response expressed sympathy for me regarding the issue, and went on to suggest things that I could do to help myself in this matter.
Maybe fair enough on face value, but one of the central issues of the debate was the failure of a government appointed body to adequately deal with an issue in the area that it was suppsed to police, and to have also failed to follow up effcetively having allowed the problem to occur in the first place.
Part of my briefing covered this failure, so to recieve a piece of advice that included asking this agency to assist when it should have been clear that I already had done and that it had failed me (amongst others) is not impressive.
Quite frankly I would rather be ignored than patronised. And I voted for this bloke. Mea culpa?
The Voice of the Bloke at the Back 