… why shouldn’t Dr Rachel von Simson go to David Cameron rather than waiting to see Mr H*nt at an inconvenient time?

It seems the fashion this summer will be for people to challenge the Conservative Government’s inconsistencies (hypocrisies?) with open letters, and this one is published to follow the missive published by This Blog on Tuesday by Tony Cartwright.

This Writer’s favourite parts are highlighted in bold.

Dear Mr Hunt,

I would like to come and see you this Saturday at 3am to discuss the issue of street lights in Hindhead. I know you run regular constituency clinics to discuss these matters and that there are other services I could contact in an emergency, but these are not convenient for me as I work on week days. And really Mr Hunt, this is the 21st century and people have questions for their MPs 24 hours a day, not just during office hours. If I can buy a Tesco sandwich at 3am, I should be able to see a politician.

If you won’t see me during the hours that I find convenient, I shall turn up at the Prime Minister with this question. I know it isn’t really part of his remit and he’s quite busy with lots of other emergencies, but much like when you said you go to A&E with your kids rather than wait for a GP appointment, I don’t really feel like I want to wait until Monday to talk to you about this.

I know that going to your clinic at 3am means in addition to you you will also have to have security turn up, and a receptionist and you don’t have money to pay for that but otherwise your building will just be sitting empty and that is a waste of money. I don’t care that you claim that you need the weekend to catch up on unpaid work or see your kids, I know that you are actually just playing golf and doing private consulting work instead even though you are grossly overpaid. I don’t think you should have got a pay raise recently to cope with rising of living, because this is austerity and I really can’t see a problem with you having to catch a bus for two hours in each direction after your working day to get home.

Even if you were to claim that public satisfaction was high in politicians and that you provided good value for money compared to the much more expensive systems in other countries, I’m just not interested. I want to see you at 3am to discuss street lighting and if you disagree that is because you are a lazy fat cat who doesn’t care about the public.

I would also like you to raise the issue of getting the Ukrainian Holodomor recognised as a genocide during upcoming parliamentary sessions. I know it is going on recess on July 21st for two months but I think it is outrageous that non-urgent matters should wait that long. I don’t care if a lack of recess would cause childcare problems or discourage women from being part of parliament. I don’t care if one of the reasons people went into politics was that despite it paying a lot less than the private sector, it left weekends and recesses free for family time. You should have anticipated that politics would become a 24/7 profession and if you won’t adapt, I’m going to just force your contract to change for no extra money.

If you cannot attend the session at 3am because you have already worked all week, but have managed to find another politician at short notice to step into to do this, I don’t want you to be paying them more than £10 an hour, because it is an outrage to waste public money and he should understand that being asked to work at the last minute during unsociable hours when he has already worked plenty this week is part of what he signed up for when he became a politician.

I’ve not actually consulted with any politicians about whether they think 24/7 politicians will work, and yes, I’ve never actually worked as a politician but I have a 1st in a totally unrelated subject from Oxford, so I don’t see why there is any problem with me telling you how politics works and how to do your job. I know you think with these suggestions and no extra money I will ruin public politics and that I and the people I work with have ties to private politicians that could come in and replace you, but this is all a fantasy. I’ve got the best interests of politicians at heart.

Yours sincerely

Rachel

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