Who's More British...

[DanaC]

Politicians only represent the people when its election time.

As a politician I have people say that to me so often. Only yesterday morning I visted a constituent (who'd got in touch because come election time lots of people contact their councillors) to talk about an issue that's been ongoing for a number of years. I and my ward colleagues have spent the last three months working on this issue, sending letters and emails and making phonecalls to the housing association that's at the centre of the problem.

She actually said to me, "I find it interesting that you've only surfaced now there's an election."

Three months of fucking work, at the urging of a couple of the residents and because I haven't vistited this particular resident and kept her informed of everything we were doing (beyond three 'Dear Resident' update letters, hand delivered by yours fucking truly to 100 fucking houses on three separate sunday mornings).

But hey, that's me just surface at election time.

One thing that's really surprised me about being involved in politics, is how much unseen and unrecognised work politicians generally do. That goes for the local and the national politicians I've met. The public have very low confidence and assume everyone's on the make and doing bugger all, especially with MPs. The MPs I know routinely work 70 and 80 hour weeks when parliament is in session.

The people of my borough pay their councillors less than 10k a year before tax. I know very few councillors who put in less than a 25 hour week. Most of them are doing that around their full time jobs.

When it's election time you try and get to speak to/ write to as many constituents as you can. That takes huge amounts of time and energy. For that 4 week period the amount of other stuff (complex ward work, council meetings, admin) that gets done shrinks. You cannot keep up that level of activity (writing to or delivering leaflets to or knocking on doors of 8000+ people) all year round.