I recently wrote about contacting my MP about food standards. I was extremely cynical about the likelihood of a reply but I must report that to a certain extent my suspicion has been proven wrong. I got a reply today. The sad thing is that the reply is still woefully short of a real response to the issues I raised.

Let’s start with the flow of events. 8th February I wrote to my MP via email. 8th February she wrote to the Minister of State for the relevant government department. So far, so good. The response from the Minister was date-stamped by the constituency office on 18th February. So, despite the fact that the letter’s actual date is illegible because for some reason it has been hand-written onto the letter rather than typed, the Minister can’t have received the letter from my MP before 9th at the earliest and he must have posted it on the 17th, a mere 8 day turnaround (again so far, so good although not as quick as my sister's mate). It then sat on the desk of my MP for ten days, had a short covering note attached, and was posted to me. Interestingly it would appear to have taken four days to be delivered from the town centre, up the hill to here. The point of this description of the flow of events is that the Minister was able to turn around a response in a considerably shorter time than the backbench MP.

Unfortunately the Minister failed completely to answer my concerns about the issue, focusing specifically on beef, which I have already said I don’t care one jot about other than this has to be the tip of a much bigger iceberg. I got a bunch of weaselly words. You know the sort of thing. We’re doing our best blah blah… We won’t tolerate blah blah… I suppose this is what I expected but it’s still disappointing. I am continually dismayed by the lack of guts of these people. They could actually stand up and be counted on some of these issues but I’d be prepared to bet they won’t. I suspect this has a lot to do with the strength of the food industry lobby but then that’s just my natural cynicism rearing its ugly head again.

My local MP also failed to read his response and reflect on whether or not he’d actually done anything more than issue a few platitudes. Had I been her, I’d have sent his letter straight back and told him that he needed to do better than that. But then I’m not her and after all, I’m only a constituent with a bee in her bonnet. I’m left wondering whether or not to bother following this through with another letter but I think I may just keep my powder dry for now.

I’m more than a bit shocked at the apparent protocol of this exchange. I emailed my MP, which is one of the ways we are invited to communicate with them. To me, that makes sense in the modern age. It’s fast and efficient and dare-I-say a bit more environmentally friendly. Yet my email was printed, then posted to Westminster. The reply was posted back to Cornwall, then forwarded on to me. It all seems a bit old-fashioned to put it mildly. Also, the odd precedent of hand-writing dates and salutations just adds to the air of a government that’s not managed to find its way into the 21st century.

I did, however, get a good smirk out of it because I googled the minister and it turns out he’s a posh bloke from a prep school and Oxford but he still can’t send out a letter that is written with proper grammar. Oh well, the price of a “good” education is obviously not high enough to turn out people who can write properly.

One of my University lecturers ‘fessed up to being a compulsive MP botherer – oops I mean letter-writer, perhaps I will follow his lead!