MP Wants Official Email Address Kept Private

nk497 writes "An MP in the UK has had his official email address removed from the parliamentary website, because he's tired of getting 'nuisance' emails via online campaign websites. MP Dominic Raab's parliamentary.uk email is currently not listed on the House of Commons' website following a spat with online campaigners 38 Degrees. 'Just processing the emails from your website absorbs a disproportionate amount of time and effort, which we may wish to spend on higher priorities, such as helping constituents in real need or other local or Parliamentary business,' he said, threatening to report the group to the government's data and privacy watchdog if they didn't remove the details from their own website. 38 Degrees says Raab gave them his personal email address during the election: 'it's only since he became a member of parliament with a taxpayer funded email address that he's now said he doesn't want to hear from people,' unless they're willing to shell out for a stamp to write him a letter. The lobby group said Raab likely averaged fewer than two emails from their site each day."

Comments

Bayes

[ls671]

Maybe he would be better off using some type of Bayesian classifier similar to the one SpamAssassin uses.

http://linux.die.net/man/1/sa-learn

It should work as well at classifying 'nuisance' emails as it does for classifying plain Spam as long as one trains it accordingly. Then, check the 'nuisance' emails at a lowest priority. He could also have his email go through several Bayesian filters, one trained to identify 'nuisance' emails and one trained to identify plain Spam. All email types could be handled differently.

In my experience, it's already too late to remove your email address from a web site when already too many people know it so it is not that efficient. Anyways, it seems like this guy might need some technical advise ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem

http://spamassassin.apache.org/

Re:Bayes

[mwvdlee]

It's about 700 e-mails a year from a single website; I think a simple domain name filter would suffice and still allow other citizens to send e-mail.

Re:Bayes

[AVryhof]

Having run a mail server with a few hundred users, I have learned that people hate being told to run anti-spam software. They expect you to remove every piece of junk mail for them before it gets to their computer. Even with SpamAssassin, and subscriptions to most major spam and dnr databases in my configuration, people still complain, but refuse to run mail filters of their own.... and now you are dealing with someone who has a big enough ego to have gotten elected to public office, and will expect more done for him.... all I can say is good luck with that.

Re:Bayes

[ArmchairGeneral]

Better yet, filter all email addressed to @parliament.uk to the Spam folder. /fixed

lemme get this straight

[metalmaster]

a public official doesn't want to be contacted by the public? No one likes to hear the peasants out. Where's the story here?

Re:lemme get this straight

[RogueyWon]

To put this in a bit of context:

I have at times worked in a central policy department in the UK civil service. Dealing with correspondence from MPs to our Minister, usually passing along letters or concerns from the MP's constituent, is a large part of the work of many junior (and mid-level) officials. In my most recent post during a Parliamentary term, the relatively small team I managed would usually have in the region of 20 such letters needing replies, with a week to turn each one around (and our policy area isn't even a particularly high profile one). For MPs, dealing with correspondence is a pretty big part of their job; representing their constituent's concerns in Parliament is what they are there to do, and is one of the ways they can show they are "in touch" with their constituency. The degree to which the MP chooses to get involved in the issue varies; sometimes the constituent's letter (or e-mail) is passed along with little more than "can I have some information so I can respond", but in other cases, the MP might request a meeting with one of the Department's ministers to discuss the issue further, or if he feels he is not getting a satisfactory answer, might raise the issue on the floor of the House of Commons. While officials draft the responses in these cases, Ministers always check them before they are issued and sometimes make edits, or ask officials to take follow-up action.

In any event, writing to your MP is the most effective recourse for a UK citizen who has a problem with the political establishment and most MPs take their duty seriously. Obviously, you are more likely to get positive engagement from your MP if you are writing about a tangible issue that wouldn't otherwise have come to light (eg. your small business is having problems with the planning system, or you believe your employer is violating health and safety law but have been ignored, or something of that ilk) than about one of the large and controversial topics (such as the Iraq war, or the bank bailouts) and MPs are always going to be less likely to get involved in a case that is clearly motivated by an ideology they don't share. But the fact remains that writing to your MP is far more effective than writing directly to a Minister (or the Prime Minister), as the latter will usually just yield a response drafted by an official that has never been near a Minister.

The problem is that in recent years, the system has been somewhat under siege by various pressure groups. These groups do direct, regular and repetitive mail-shots to MPs, with many of them even providing tools to make it easy for users of their website to join in on the action simply by filling in a form. They operate on the principle of "if we say something often and loud enough, then MPs will conclude we are important or in the majority". In reality, all they tend to do is gunk up the system with spam, as MPs struggle to identify the letters and e-mails from their own constituents, asking for help with issues where the MP might actually be of some use.

The MP in this case was wrong to have his official e-mail address taken off the Parliamentary website. That's where I'd expect that many of his constituents would start looking for his details to contact him. However, the greater fault here lies with the self-righteous pressure groups who see nothing wrong with trampling over the system by substituting volume for reasoned argument and resorting to the tactics of the spammer.

Re:lemme get this straight

[iserlohn]

And your point is? Email from these pressure groups are in no way invalid if they are from his constituents. Just because a Tory politician doesn't agree with the stance taken by pressure groups such as 38 degrees, doesn't give him the right to withdraw a valuable communications channel to his constituents. You can be sure that if those emails are in support of the MPs pet project, he would be openly inviting more email correspondence.

Re:lemme get this straight

[metalmaster]

Lobbying just isnt lobbying unless there are huge sums of money being tossed around. Am I right?

Re:lemme get this straight

[mister_dave]

The MP in this case was wrong to have his official e-mail address taken off the Parliamentary website.

He seems to have been following advice on how to opt-out of spam:

The reason I stopped formally advertising my actual email address is that the Information Commissioner's Office advised me that, if I do, I am putting it in the public domain and then cannot ask for it to be removed from mass e-distribution lists or automated systems.

Re:lemme get this straight

[delinear]

Well firstly in the UK it's actually just over a "third" rather than a "quarter" to send the message first class (and if it's important or time sensitive you'll want to send it first class), and much more if you want it recorded to ensure it arrives. You then have to get an envelope, if you don't have a printer you need to find some way to print it out (add on the cost of the paper and printer ink), you have to take the time to go buy these items and then you then have to take more time out to go post your letter and again wait several days to see if you get a response (at least with an email you should get a pretty instant "Thanks for your email", with a letter it could be delayed, lost in the post or just filed in this guy's waste bin and you have no way of knowning). There are all kinds of reasons to send an email over a letter, cost is a minor one, convenience is a much bigger one, and then there are "green" considerations, paperless is much kinder to the environment. When we're meant to be aiming for "Broadband Britain" it seems this guy is actually going backwards. What's the point encouraging schemes to put broadband in the homes of every voter in the UK just to turn around and tell them not to use it for email?

Re:lemme get this straight

[eyrieowl]

Hear, hear! The MP is not elected solely to represent the constituents who are not intimidated by trying to craft reasoned arguments that might sway an MP. They're also elected to represent the views of their many constituents who, on a given issue, may find that an interest group has articulated their position better than they themselves could, as well as those constituents whose opinion on some issues may be as concise as "yay" or "nay". If the MP isn't providing a better way for those constituents to bring those views to the MP's attention, the MP bears the blame for alternate methods of communication with them which spring up.

An enlightened MP would realize that there is an opportunity to create a system which furthers the needs of democracy. A system that works for and with the constituents as well as managing the "pressure groups". I think that if the MPs had a website similar to those used by the "pressure groups", one where citizens and/or pressure groups could add issues they are concerned about on their own, and one where individual citizens could pick the statements they agree with, enter their contact info, and be added to a simple tally for their MP, that much of the "spam" could be eliminated. If citizens wanted to add comments in their own words when agreeing with a position statement, those comments would be made available to their MP; otherwise, they would just be added to the tally for the position statement. Special interests could be encouraged to post their own position statements to the site and direct their partisans to go "agree" with it, they'd still be able to make known to MPs that "lots of us feel strongly about this position". Added bonus for them--they may be able to reduce their IT spend, in the basic case being able to make do with a very simple site that just links to the issues they are supporting on the Parliamentary issue site.

Anyhow, that's what I think an enlightened MP would do. Which Mr. Raab appears not to be.

Re:lemme get this straight

[jimicus]

AIUI, his point is that there are always going to be pressure groups trying to change an MPs mind over an issue.

In the past, they may have got together and drafted a letter saying "500 people in your constituency alone believe this...", put together a petition or asked their members to write letters themselves. The first two would have meant the MP has one letter to answer (and answer the letter he must, if only to ensure he doesn't develop a reputation of ignoring his constituents altogether). The last option would - with the possible exception of really controversial issues - almost never have resulted in a deluge of correspondence because while lots of people may feel strongly enough about something to sign a petition, relatively few are likely to feel strongly enough to write a letter, put a stamp on it and post it.

Today. however, anyone can throw together a website with an email form that sends directly to a particular email address, and the amount of effort involved for the end user (particularly if most of the email is pre-written as a template) is little more than signing the petition they might have done in the past. The end result is that it's quite easy to find an MP is deluged with emails from individual constituents all basically saying the same thing - ultimately, the MP may be faced with a stark choice:

• Ignore such emails. Not good - next thing you know there's a campaign of 500 people saying how Fred Bloggs MP didn't even have the good manners to acknowledge them.
• Reply to each email with a form letter. Not much better - form letters tend to stick out a mile and the MP knows it.
• Reply to each email individually. Except now your MP needs a 28 hour day to get everything done in.
• Have an assistant draft the replies and just sign them. Or, if feeling really smart, obtain the use of an autopen machine. This is the closest thing anyone's likely to find to a real answer, and I imagine is what most MPs do. But your MP still needs to drill through the correspondence and instruct his/her assistant - well and good if the morning's email contained 10 emails needing a reply, but never going to scale if it contained 200.

Re:lemme get this straight

[iserlohn]

And your point is? Democracy isn't cheap. There will always be low value communications, but and most people agree that that is a valid (but maybe not the most preferable) method of voicing support or disapproval of an issue to your MP. The issue here is that the MP stopped publishing his email so his other constituents would lose email access to their MP.

The previous reply hits the nail on the head. What MPs should be doing is to find ways of managing this, either by managing email in a much better fashion, or to divert such requests to a site in which meaningful data can be gathered. He or she can even arrange a short question session to address the concerns of all these people at once so that individual responses to form letters can be avoided.

Re:lemme get this straight

[nospam007]

"the views of their many constituents who, on a given issue, may find that an interest group has articulated their position better than they themselves could, ..."

You mean the goat has already told them how to work the garden?

gun related - ask only NRA
farm subsidy - ask only Farmer's Association ...

It's _because_ those groups swaying/paying off your man that people want to reach their representatives to tell them they will raise hell for any next vote if he misrepresents them.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Aceticon]

And your point is? Email from these pressure groups are in no way invalid if they are from his constituents. Just because a Tory politician doesn't agree with the stance taken by pressure groups such as 38 degrees, doesn't give him the right to withdraw a valuable communications channel to his constituents. You can be sure that if those emails are in support of the MPs pet project, he would be openly inviting more email correspondence.

Let me put this in perspective by giving you an easier to visualize methaphor:
- Imagine that an MP sets up an open session with his constituents, maybe in a local town hall which takes 200 people.
- His intention is to get questions from members of the public and answer the as best as he can, maybe picking up some of the cases he hears about and checking int them further.
- During the whole session, there is a group of 10 people which came in together and spend the whole time shouting out loud how they want something specific done, drowning everybody else during the whole session and pretty much not letting anybody else be heard.

Those 10 people represent only 5% of everybody in that hall and (due to self-selection, since they gathered and came together on purpose) represent a much smaller proportion of the overall voters in the constituency.

This is basically what some "pressure groups" do, only they do it via e-mail. While they do deserve a voice, they do not deserve to be heard above and over other constituents.

In my example above, if the 10 people disturbing the open session were not forcefully thrown out (probably by the other constituents that also came in to voice their problems), then the MP would simply stop it after a while. If this kept happening, he would never do one of those open sessions again.

That said, in the e-mail case the MP's solution for this should not have been to remove his e-mail address from the site. Instead he should set up a blacklist of abusers of the system (preferably automatic) which would simply send those e-mails to an alternative low priority queue (such as a different e-mail address) which would only be looked at when the normal queue was empty.

If he really wanted to be fair, people would be removed from the blacklist after not abusing the system for a while.

This would neatly turn e-mail spamming into a self-defeating technique if done frequently.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Malc]

It doesn't really matter whether these groups are valid or not. Their complaint that the loss of the recent addition of email contact is ridiculous. If they care about their cause, then why does it matter that it costs money? Stationary and stamps cost very little, unless they're in the business of bulking mailing or spamming, in which it's probably better all around that they can't use email for contact.

I should point out that in Canada a stamp isn't required to contact one's MP. If it's such a big deal to this group, then perhaps they should lobby for a similar policy in the UK.

Re:lemme get this straight

[zippthorne]

Where do you live that a first class stamp is a quarter?

Or are you suggesting constituents should be sending postcards?

Re:lemme get this straight

[samjam]

Well said. And isn't the tory party also a pressure group? Aren't all political parties? Maybe he doesn't like the competition.

Re:lemme get this straight

[SteveFoerster]

Only on Slashdot would an explanation of how snail mail works be modded informative. :-)

Re:lemme get this straight

[dangitman]

It's the "squeaky wheel" principle, but with an amplifier.

Sorry, that patent is already held by Celine Dion.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mdwh2]

Yes - whilst I tend to agree with the various campaigns that 38 degrees has been doing, I tend to not be happy at sites that encourage people to send copy-and-paste letters. I think it's much better for people to take the time to write it in their own words, putting forward their own arguments and concerns.

So to be fair, I think what he's objecting to is not people emailing him in general, endless copies of the same thing.

And we must remember - for every 38 degrees that might be doing something we support, there are other lobby organisations promoting all sorts of nonsense, and several bad laws have been passed because they managed to stir up a campaign, getting thousands of people to either sign a petition, click a button or whatever, without these people actually having to consider the actual issues deeply. So in general, I think encouraging people to write in their own words is a good thing.

I also have some sympathy as this is an individual MP. Had the last Labour Government complained about this, I'd have none - Labour were keen to cite bulk copy/paste or petition responses as "evidence the public support this" when it agreed with whatever new law they were passing; but dismissed this as "an organised campaign" when the campaign disagreed (e.g., it did this with the ID cards consultation, ignoring thousands of responses that opposed the plans).

Just one comment though:

If 38 degress was given the time it demands from this MP

38 degrees isn't demanding any time. The time is demanded by constituents of that MP, who have as much right to email him as any other - even if we did rather they write in their own words.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mdwh2]

But I would say things are better now. When you consider:

In the past, they may have got together and drafted a letter saying "500 people in your constituency alone believe this...", put together a petition or asked their members to write letters themselves.

The problem with the first two is that things like group letters and petitions are very poor indicators of support. How do we know that 500 people really believe this? E.g., it's not uncommon for an organisation to cite the number of its members as support, but we have no idea what they all individually think. How was the petition worded? Petitions are often biasedly worded, and only present one side of the argument. They also don't encourage people to actually think about the issues. And we have no idea how strongly they really care about the issue - they could just be some random person they found to say, e.g., they don't like gay marriage, but this doesn't necessarily mean they really have much of a problem with it being allowed.

I dislike copy/paste emails to some extent to, but it's still a step up. And if people can easily write in their own views, then that's good.

Reply to each email with a form letter. Not much better - form letters tend to stick out a mile and the MP knows it.

I don't see a huge problem - the problem is when form letters don't even begin to address points that anyone has made. How is this worse than only sending one reply for those 500 constituents? He doesn't have to answer every single point that each person made - he just has to outline what his or his party's position on the matter is, and if they are going to do anything or not.

And you're also missing the bigger point. When thousands of people wrote in about the Digital Economy Bill when it was being "debated", they were more concerned with the Government giving it the proper debate time it deserved rather than rushing it through. I doubt people were that bothered as to whether they got a form reply from their MP, or if it was individually written to them in reply.

Re:lemme get this straight

[VJ42]

Yes - whilst I tend to agree with the various campaigns that 38 degrees has been doing, I tend to not be happy at sites that encourage people to send copy-and-paste letters.

I understand where you're coming from, but once he's recognised it as as a cut and paste email, he should be just reply with a cut and paste answer; not being stupid enough to try and hide his email address from his constituents.

Re:lemme get this straight

[tsm_sf]

Where do you live that a first class stamp is a quarter?

1996. The weather's nice and the politics less rabid.

Re:lemme get this straight

[sjames]

How important can his constituents be to him is an MP can't be bothered with 2 whole emails a day?

Will he be happier if the same website prints them out when the user clicks send and then they mail the lot to him weekly? That way he can proudly proclaim that he's doing his part to waste resources in a country that's overburdened with trees HEY! wait a minute...

He actually reads those mails?

[wvmarle]

I always had the idea that politicians do not read the mails that are sent to them - the higher up the chain the less likely. I would expect them to have a bunch of aides who actually go through those mails, categorise them, and regularly hand summaries to the politician, or forward really important ones directly to his actual private e-mail.

A national politician reading all mails sent by constituents by himself is doing something wrong imho. He has better things to do than spending all day reading mails, as I expect that he will get lots of mails.

Re:He actually reads those mails?

[SwedishPenguin]

It depends on the politician and/or the body I suppose. As far as I can tell, our parliamentarians in Sweden don't have such aides. Not that they will necessarily respond to your emaisl, but they will answer the phone if you call them... (But then we're only 9 million people, and very few would ever bother sending an email, much less call an MP, I am however one of those few)

Re:He actually reads those mails?

[bigstrat2003]

I don't know. While it may be a hell of a lot of work, I think they also owe it to the people to be contactable, so the people can express their wishes. The only person I would really exempt is someone like the president of a country, where they represent every single person in the country (which can be an impossibly large number). However, pretty much anyone else should be making the effort, as their number of constituents will be more manageable.

Re:He actually reads those mails?

[jimicus]

The UK's political system is rather different from the US, however. We directly elect our representative (who becomes a Member of Parliament, or MP) by a simple majority - whoever has the most votes in an area is the MP for that area. (This can actually mean that a fairly unpopular person becomes MP, if the votes are split 30:28:28:14, the candidate with 30% of the vote becomes MP even though 70% of the people in the area didn't want him. We don't have a two-party system, so this can easily happen.)

The party with 50% or more of the elected MPs forms the government - the party leader becomes Prime Minister and s/he hands out positions within government to MPs. The most senior MPs form the cabinet - a sort of steering committee, if you like, given that it'd be pretty hard to have an intelligent group meeting of the 300 or so MPs a ruling party would have. This system ensures that the party in power can generally get legislation passed relatively easily - few MPs make a habit of voting against the party line, it's an extremely good way to find yourself kicked out of the party.

What's happened recently (though it's not directly related to this discussion) is that no single party has 50% of the elected MPs. So no single party commands a majority in Parliament. What happens then is that two parties whose votes together add up to more than 50% agree to form a coalition - a government comprised of MPs from two parties.

Re:He actually reads those mails?

[Mashiki]

Dunno in my neck of the woods my MP reads all of his mail, his email is handled by his secretary. He's been doing a pretty good job for the last 8 years we've had him(considering he was a very well liked police chief), who got what he stated, done.

two e-mails a day?!

[chichilalescu]

even "less than 2 a day on average", as they said... it's ridiculous. If I received that amount of e-mails from someone, it would mean I am spending at least half a day (each day) working on something that is a collaboration or something.

That would still irritate me

[DNS-and-BIND]

If I got two unsolicited emails a day from the same sender, day after day, it would really get on my nerves. Posts above say "boo hoo he gets two emails a day" when in fact it is from a single site. No sympathy for his "God damn ordinary people" attitude but still, how many times have you been unable to stop an email sender who doesn't care about your opinion? Spam filter would be the solution that seems to be lacking, but then the negative story would be "politician bins a pressure group's informative daily emails".

Re:That would still irritate me

[c0lo]

If I got two unsolicited emails a day from the same sender, day after day, it would really get on my nerves.

Maybe this is why you aren't getting elected? If you are not an MP, your "pissed-off of same person writing you twice a day" reaction is not relevant for the issue at hand, as legitimate as it is for the case of a private person and as much as I empathise with you (I really do, but this is also irrelevant)

For an MP (public person), the situation cannot be the same: I'm quite afraid that supporting the nuisance of receiving mails from a pressure group really does come with the position of MP. After all, a MP is supposed to represent the interest of the people that elected him or his party, I consider deliberately ignoring the email as a mission failure.

email address

[Phurge]

raabd@parliament.uk dominic.raab.mp@parliament.uk

Re:email address

[Phurge]

and dom.raab@yahoo.co.uk

I foresee a stark future for the MP

[gmhowell]

I foresee a stark future for the MP. One where his mailbox is filled to overflowing daily with links to wikipedia's page on the Streisand Effect.

Shell out for a stamp?

[MacTO]

I cannot speak for the UK, but you don't need to add postage to letters addressed to your MPs in Canada. Even if such a rule does not exist in the UK, I would imagine that the postal service would have an unwritten commitment to deliver mail addressed to MPs regardless of affixed postage.

So if you can't spend the pennies on a sheet of paper and envelope, and can't invest the five minutes to walk to a postal box, I really must ask if that essential comment to your MP is really essential or just another example of UBE.

Re:Shell out for a stamp?

[mister_dave]

In the UK, if you send an unstamped letter to someone, the recipient has to pay the postage.

One of my MEPs shot himself in the foot a couple of years ago, he sent out unstamped letters to his electors after the election, and they had to pay the postage (if they wanted the letter), only to discover it was junk mail! So we all got a follow up apology letter, with some unused stamps as compensation. :-)

Re:Shell out for a stamp?

[mister_dave]

Please don't! The taxpayers would have to pay that bill.

Completely agree

[Kupfernigk]

Any MP will tell you one well written letter in an envelope with a stamp is worth uncounted numbers of emails, because someone has bothered to communicate, and where one person takes action, many others think the same but cannot be bothered. In a democracy, we should express our views by voting, or demonstrating, not by spamming. Sites like 38degrees could easily be more responsible, but they suffer from a degree of self-righteousness that (to them) justifies encouraging annoying behaviour.

Where I live, we have a very effective resident's pressure group. We have one person who directly contacts councillors, one person who is a planning specialist, and access to legal and scientific information. The rest of us supply funds and do the office jobs. We also have a fund big enough to apply for legal injunctions. This is extremely effective; local Government gets one targeted message, and they know that it has considerable real support.

Re:Completely agree

[VJ42]

Any MP will tell you one well written letter in an envelope with a stamp is worth uncounted numbers of emails, because someone has bothered to communicate, and where one person takes action, many others think the same but cannot be bothered.

Really? My MP often replies to my emails (and I think about what I write) within hours.
I first emailed her (and the other candidates) during the election campaign to find out their views on issues important to me - my previous MP used to even reply to my tweets! Most MPs are getting as used to new technology as the rest of the public, they know that 99% of people don't use snail mail anymore. Just because it's email doesn't mean it's thoughtless or meaningless.
Of course, you're right that they used to think that way, but for the wrong reasons - Write to them appends a hash of your email address and words to the effect of "signed in accordance with digital communications act 19xx" because MPs didn't trust 'letters' without a signature. It's because they didn't understand the technology, not because they can be spammed, after all it's not hard to post a letter.

Re:Completely agree

[rapiddescent]

I am a community councillor in my town in Scotland (an unpaid elected voluntary position). I basically listen to the public of my town and then talk directly to the politicians. It works well; myself and my community councillor colleagues have a good working relationship with individuals in local government and the scottish government and we have solved a lot of issues.

I'd amend the GPP's post to say:
1. personal, cordial contact works best - usually through an elected rep, e.g. community councillor
2. a handwritten letter - (with evidence or citations attached)
3. newspaper story
4. through a "recognised" pressure group, e.g. Citizens Advice, RSPCA etc
...

34 written on the side of a cow
...

568. email campaign

popfile

[Monoecus]

Why not using a program like popfile (http://getpopfile.org/)?

Could be worse...

[AmonTheMetalhead]

In Belgium someone was tried & convicted for stalking a city office because he kept mailing them....


The guy dared send them 130 or so mails over a period of 5 years, the bloody criminal!

Dutch article
Google translated version

Re:I Disagree.

[samjam]

I disagree - "simply filling out a form and spamming" is not simple, nor is it spamming any more than "simply writing a letter and spamming" is simple or spamming.

Looking at your argument, there is an arms race, and you have to ask why voters are having to do this to be noticed? Clue: look at the response by the MP now he is noticing them as a group that had to coordinate - yes, before he could ignore them singly, now he chooses to ignore them in bulk.

Re:Junk Mail

[VJ42]

On the other hand, a personally written letter or phone call is given whatever miniscule attention the congressman's office usually gives to constituent contacts...i.e., very little unless you are a major contributor, but at least it's not automatically routed to trash.

My MP has replied every time I've emailed her, a couple of times within hours - then again, I put some thought into my emails to her and contact her about specific issues. Having said that, I don't see the problem with form emails - just send form replies.

I heard him being interviewed about this yesterday

[Peet42]

First point, he hasn't "removed his address from the Parliamentary website", he's actually had to disable the address.

He says he'll re-enable it when the website he's complaining about remove it from a drop-down list they have on a form - people with too much time on their hands pick an issue from one drop-down, pick an MP from another, type in their name and postcode and hit "send", which means that for every "real" email he gets from someone who is capable of writing down their own complaint or issue he has to plough through 200-odd auto-generated from this site. (Figures are ballpark - I wasn't listening *that* closely...)

It's the "campaigning" equivalent of SPAM marketing, just as annoying and with a law of diminishing returns. He told the guy running the site on PM (UK news show) yesterday that he had no problem with them publishing his address on their site and asking people to get in touch if they had a problem, he just objects to the automated system that encourages bored people to nag an MP about "something".

How these pressure groups should work...

[awjr]

If a pressure group has a specific issue to address, rather than ask their members to spam their MPs, they should collect signatories and then submit one email to the MPs whose constituants have signed up. The email should also list the set of MPs to whom the email has been sent. It should also provide a respone email address which will distribute the response to the sigantories. If really clever, then the MPs in question come up with a reasoned response each or one official one for each party.

Instead we have this pressure group sending out 700 emails to each of the 600 odd MPs who then have to create an individual response and most need to respond in writing. The cost is enormous.

I can understand why this MP is asking his constituants to write to him. It takes effort. You really have to care about the issue. Sending off an email is easy. Writing a letter and putting in the post shows you actually care.

Letter from a Non Constituent

[R2.0]

Dear Mr. Raab;

Recently your request to have your official email addressed removed from the public directory. I suggest you look up the term "Streisand Effect" on Wikipedia (or rather, have one of your more internet literate staffers do so).

Sincerely
a_colonist

My MP - and just attention-seeking?

[Grumbleduke]

This guy is my (brand new) MP and so I've been keeping an eye out for him and it strikes me that this is partly him trying to get in the news. He's turned up in a couple of rather silly, but newsworthy debates so far. He's young, keen and probably after a ministerial job at some point - and what better way to get noticed by (and support from) the other conservative backbenchers than by complaining about these "evil, liberal lobby groups sending lots of emails to MPs through the Interwebs... It's also a little hypercritical of him as he was actively encouraging people to send him emails to discuss issues during his election campaign. So, given how important being able to write to an MP is, and the circumstances, I strongly disagree with him removing his email address from "the public HoC Internet".

That said, I think this is mainly 38 Degrees's fault, and I also disagree with what they (and the ORG) have been doing. Writing to one's MP is an important part of the system, however each MP may represent 100,000 people, so if each of them sent an email or letter each time they had a though, this system would break (which is almost what we are seeing here). As such, there is a useful check on this; the effort required to write a letter. Now, it may not seem like much, but when I ended up writing to his predecessor (over the Digital Economy Bill, now Act) it took the best part of a day to write the letter, make sure it was all properly worded, that I had a clear idea of what I wanted to say etc. and find out where to send it. This is a good thing, as it means that the only people contacting their MPs are those that are willing to spend the time and effort to do so. By setting up a mass-template-email system, you remove this check and make it as simple as clicking a button. This is great for us, but terrible for the MP who then has to manually go through all these emails and (unlike a ministerial office, or department) is unlikely to be able to set up a mass-response system - which is what is really needed. [When I wrote to my MP, he had obviously received many template emails/letters on the same issue, so he wrote one response and sent it out to everyone - after the Bill passed.] If anything, the mass-template-emails drown out the real responses, which is a bad thing.

Perhaps a more suitable way for 38 Degrees to act would be if they collect signatures, match them with their MP and send one email per issue (maybe after a week-long campaign) to each MP willing to take part in the system - so that MPs know how popular and important certain issues are, and get the details, but without being overloaded.

Anyways, finally in defence of my MP, it is worth noting that he is still emailable (he's set up a form here) and has explained his reasoning in detail on his blog (which includes his email address, sort of) - where he explains that he isn't against being emailed - he just doesn't want the mass-template emails from any lobby group, whether it is an industry or trade one.

[I wonder how different this story would have been if it was some big corporate website encouraging people to send template emails, rather than a civil liberties one...]