Originally Posted by Agent
I'd write one back, dissecting his points one by one, but keep it professional. Point out that if you voted for him or not is irrelevant, he is still representing you.
That is exactly what I was thinking.
Something along the lines of :
Dear Mr Clelland,
Thank you for taking the time to read my letter and reply, it is good to know that the Labour tradition of hypocrisy lives on with you, I really don't feel my letter to you was rude or offensive as you claim it was and I do think that your letter was rather obnoxious and rude.
I can understand you being angry about my letter given that I accused you of gross moral cowardice, but I am surprised that you decided to take that approach when dealing with somebody you are supposed to represent. There is a reason I accuse you of moral cowardice, its based on your voting record and your stance on certain political issues, I have thought about these issues a lot and I have listened to the governments justification and I find that justification to be without merit and the policy to be morally wrong. You stand with that policy, therefore you have either thought about them long and hard, or you have not. If you have thought about them long and hard and you agree with the direction we are taking then I find you an idiot, if you have not given it much thought then your letting your party (or at least a few individuals within the party) to do the thinking for you, in which case you are a moral coward. I could be entirely wrong here and you could have some amazing insight into these issues that will change my mind completely, you had the opportunity to share these in your last letter but instead you chose to attack me and ignore the thrust of my letter.
In your letter to me firstly you say it is your job to do what you believe to be in the best interests of constituents, I disagree I think it is your job to represent the views and the interests of
all your constituents not just the ones you agree with. I do not wish to get into a debate about your job description instead I want you to think about the idea that maybe you should vote with your conscience for a change instead of following the party line. I ask you to do this because I feel (me personally, not speaking for everybody as you accused me in your last letter) that our political system is broken and dominated by a distinctly authoritarian and fascist ideology. You may disagree with me about that and I would be interested to know how exactly you justify the national identity register to yourself for example, that way maybe I can put an alternate point of view to you on that.
Your next point seems remarkable, you say that you are an MP because you have a majority of votes but you neglect to mention the 9% swing against you at the last election and you must think I am stupid to not know that this is a Labour stronghold and a lot of people here are not interested in politics and only vote Labour because their parents do or because they think that Labour is for the working man. I am sure some of those peoples minds might have changed since the last budget.
You talk about Labour getting more than 50% of the popular vote and again you must think I am stupid, a quick google reveals that Labour won 413 seats at the last election and 40.7% of the vote. I don't want to discuss this much further other than to say that your party is on its way out and thanks to you the Tories are now going to charge to power with all of those wonderful bits of legislation you left behind, like RIPA, banning protest around parliment, SOCA and many more. Great, wonder where we will be in another 5 years.
Regarding the 42 days without charge law, finally you address something I asked you about. You say that it is 'regrettable' so clearly you can understand why such a law is against basic British decency however you voted for it anyway. When the IRA were setting off bombs and killing 1,800 people over a period of 20 years did we need this type of legislation? Why do we need it now? If the police have somebody, and they think they might be involved in something then they should charge them and they get all the time they need to quiz them. I do not understand how holding them without charge changes anything other than violating one of our fundamental rights and doing immeasurable damage to somebody who could subsequently be found to be innocent.
I also contest the idea that a majority of people are for this law, your presumably basing this on nothing more than one opinion poll. How many letters have you have in favour of this law, and how many have you had like mine? If you give me some numbers for that I might be more inclined to believe your statement that its what people want.
I do not intend to stand for election, I merely want you to represent my views, even if you disagree with them. Regardless of if I voted for you or not, you still represent me and I would like it if you thought a bit more about people who do not want to live in a database state when you are casting your vote.
By the way, given your rude and offensive manner I accept your offer to stick my vote somewhere unpleasant, I was thinking somewhere in your direction.
any suggestions?
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