‘I will write to Jack Straw to tell him he’s a cretin’
Jack Straw yesterday launched an outspoken attack on TheyWorkForYou.com, claiming that it is distorting they way MPs conduct their business. See.
This is patent nonsense. MPs are responsible for their own actions. TheyWorkForYou is a valuable contribution to our civil society, allowing us access to debates and MP’s questions in a useable format that Parliament itself has been unwilling to provide itself.
What I’m asking people to do is to write to Jack Straw to (politely) tell him he’s tilting at the wrong windmill here, and to insist that he takes part in the consultation exercise that theyworkforyou have already initiated on how to improve the way they measure MPs work. In particular, call for him to attend their public meeting on 7 November to discuss precisely this issue, rather than making potshots from his position of safety behind the despatch box.
Posted on July 23rd, 2006 at 12:13 pm
| See also • Let’s have a heated debate • Inversion • How politics works |
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Filed under Activism, Chicken Nuggets, UK politics |
Finally, while I am casting myself in the role of the online myrmidon of poor ickle conspiracy theorists, I would point out that I would be amazed if Jack Straw did not see the response he will be getting from online democracy activists as being very similar indeed to what conspiracists do. We’re all nutters about our own personal hobbyhorses.
So what are you saying? ‘Can’t win, don’t try’? Or that our participatory role in our democracy is to merely turn out every four years to ratify a given manisfesto? Should we write to Straw rather than email? Ignore him in the hope he goes away?
No, quite the opposite; I’m saying don’t be so harsh on conspiracy nutters because they do good work and their occasional tendency to fly off the handle and call people names should be seen in that context (and the context of the provocation they usually recieve).
Ah, but what do you mean by provocation? Some of these guys have got thin skins. Rachel North - with who my concern for the behaviour of ‘conspiracy theorists’ (for want of a better term) largely begins and ends - endured much more provocation from them than any she ever doled out herself.
An occasional tendency to fly off the handle is rather soft-soaping what both you and I have read on *some* of the 7/7 sites.