Saturday, April 10, 2010

Mithering Manchester Central candidates...

It's barely worth being interested in the upcoming general election if you live in Manchester Central constituency. As Beloved Husband put it, Tony Lloyd could be “like that German bloke at Liverpool Airport and he'd still get elected.”
But being an interfering type, and various campaign groups having decided to make use of web form technology to persecute parliamentary candidates, I've been helping out.
First, there was the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's lobbying tool to contact MPs asking them to sign up to pledges on issues such as a ban on settlement goods and action on the Gaza blockade. When I did this on about Thursday only Green candidate Gayle O'Donovan and Liberal Democrat Marc Ramsbottom had made email addresses available, so only they got that message from me. Tony Lloyd's parliament.uk address won't work once purdah starts, so they didn't have one for him; I sent the PSC his personal website contact address which will no doubt have pleased him immensely (he always used to be very good at replying to the various human rights, environmental and Palestine-related postcards and email forms he had off me, but I think I've become too annoying and he's given up, or he's got a new admin person who isn't as on the ball as the previous one). They didn't have one for the Tory candidate, Suhail Rahuja, either. Having gone back for another look, the PSC have apparently managed to find an email for him too, so anyone using the form now will get all four of them. I haven't had a response from the two who should have had the initial message, though.
Secondly, there is the Refugee Council's Asylum Election Pledge, asking candidates to “reject racism and xenophobia, and to remember the importance of refugee protection in debates about immigration policy.” Again, the pledge organisers didn't seem to have been able to find Mr Rahuja's email address – 'Tory candidate not interested in constituent's view shocker'? - but had the other three listed.
Encouragingly, on this one I got an emailed reply from Marc Ramsbottom before 24 hours were up, and even more encouragingly he had this to say:

Dear Sarah
Thank you for your email about the campaign by the Refugee Council.
I have signed up to support this campaign at their website and in particular support the right of asylum seekers to be able to work and support themselves and their families.
Thank you for contacting me about this issue.

So, not only responsive but talking some much-needed sense on the subject, something rare in the generally racist, alarmist and repugnant political discourse on asylum in this country. So, one up to Mr Ramsbottom (although I believe OA may have less positive things to say about Manchester Lib Dems' new manifesto position on climate change in an upcoming issue of Manchester Climate Fortnightly. And I will be posting any more replies I get...

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