Monday 28 December 2009

I Come and Stand at your Door

I really should just ignore people who send me snide tweets about MPs being on holiday...

I've just spent an hour looking at emails, on a range of issues from funding for the local PCT's End of Life Strategy (not ringfenced, therefore a constituent is querying whether it will be spent as it should be) to trying to stop a bunch of asylum seekers arbitrarily being removed from Bristol to Cardiff. Also slowly ploughing my way through all the emails in the 'New Media' folder, of which there are many. And last night we - me and my adorable and easily-bribed nephews, Man and Jem - were stuffing envelopes till nearly midnight, sending out my parliamentary report to constituents. (The snow scuppered our chances of hand-delivering them all in the run-up to Christmas and they have to go out before the New Year because the parliamentary authorities have decreed so).

I also worked from the Bristol office till Christmas Eve, although Parliament broke up the week before, and I'll be back in the Westminster office on 4th January, to catch up on things before Parliament returns on the 5th. Oh, and I'll be working seven days a week from then until the General Election, and I know that because we've already got all the dates in the diary for campaigning.

I spent a few hours before Christmas turning the Bristol East Labour Party office, which is in the same building as my constituency office, above the St George Labour club, into a "war room" for the election. The life size cut-out of Michael Howard, which I was somehow lumbered with at the end of the 2005 campaign - surprisingly no-one else wanted it - has pride of place, holding a Vote Labour sign. Compared to 2005 when I was selected with only a couple of months to go, we're very well-organised this time... Only time will tell if that makes a difference.

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