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How to keep tabs on your MP
Right at the base of our democracy is the idea of representation. We send our MPs to Westminster to vote on our behalf. How they vote is our business. Of course, once they get to Westminster they usually become ridiculous figures – and they quite soon join one of the two available categories. They’re either…
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Shall we fire this thing up again?
There’s an election coming. We can feel the electricity in the air. We haven’t posted here for seven months. We took a break and meanwhile, you may have noticed, the world got even more dark and weird. But Rishi Sunak says his ‘working assumption’ is that we’ll have a general election in the second half…
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Dowden steps up
For the Deputy Prime Minister, our MP, it’s time to become part of the story. You’re a successful politician, you’ve played the game, moved with the populist times, you’ve gone to America and come back an anti-woke crusader. You’ve picked your allies carefully. More to the point, you’ve measured out your support for the big…
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2023 Local elections in Hertsmere – the results
Okay, let’s face it, the local elections are not the most glamorous in the calendar but they are, in some ways, the most relevant to our everyday lives. (this post now updated with the results fron the 4 May local elections) Turnout in local elections rarely exceeds half that seen for national elections and the…
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What we do here is a public service
In the distant future, when archaeologists uncover this blog, buried under about forty feet of Thames silt, they’ll thank us. What we do is keep a fastidious eye on what our MP gets up to. It’s not personal, he’s a pretty good MP. He pays attention when we write him whingey letters and he makes…
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Waiting for Sue Gray… again
Oh God, Partygate is back in the news. It’s going to be like the torrid Summer of 2022 all over again. There’s great excitement in government this week, especially in the Cabinet Office. There can’t be anything more thrilling for a minister responsible for propriety and ethics than to get stuck into a case that…
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How to support refugees and asylum seekers in your area
It’s a tough time to be a refugee – especially when you have no recourse to public funds, when you’re not allowed to work and when the prices of basics are soaring For some years now we’ve been supporting a local charity called Watford and Three Rivers Refugee Partnership. A small, volunteer-run charity that’s been…
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Captain Dowden’s new national security role
There’s an intriguing detail in Rishi Sunak’s mini-reshuffle* It wasn’t announced at the time and it wasn’t in any of the newspaper coverage but, although he was overlooked for the big ministerial roles, Oliver Dowden has a new job. If you’ve been paying attention to his government web page you’ll already have noticed there’s a…