UPDATED: The constituent, Gary Scott, to whom David Clelland MP wrote telling him to "stick" his vote, has been kind enough to comment on this blog posting (below) and has generously given a link to the full text of his letter (text below) and David Celland MP's reply (above - click to enlarge). I have to say that David Clelland MP is clearly out of order. The letter from Gary is "par for the course", as far as letters to MPs are concerned. For the constituent to be labelled "offensive" and "arrogant" (with no attempt to answer the thrust of his letter) by the MP is completely unjustified. An apology and proper reply is called for.
Dear David Clelland,
It is not often that I feel the need to write to my MP, in fact the last time I did so I was living across the river and it was a Lib Dem MP. He was kind enough to write a considerate reply and I hope you will do the same.
The reason I am writing this is not because of one specific issue, its because of the general direction of our authoritarian and frighteningly out of touch government. There is an old saying "Do not attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by stupidity" which frankly is exactly the view I took for a long time. Now however I can no longer ignore the blatant power grab that is going on, this government and you yourself are responsible for destroying civil liberties that have been hard won from tyrannical Monarchs over centuries.
When I look at your voting record, I see nothing but disappointment and disgust. You vote with your party on pretty much every single issue, it is not your constituents that you represent, its your party. I would be interested to know if you really do believe that it is right that we introduce biometric ID cards for example, could you make a case for the cards and the national identity register that goes with them?
Do you have any principals that you believe in other than blind loyalty to a supposedly socialist but increasingly fascist like party?
Mr Clelland, I am calling on you to start acting like an MP for your constituency and vote with your conscience instead. I know you were (maybe still are, hard to tell from wikipedia) a party whip and so you probably go along with this idea of voting with your party, but I want to tell you that it is wrong, its not right and you shouldn't be doing it. You should be asking your constituents what they think of draconian and useless 'terrorism legislation' and detention without charge for 42 days, not just blindly voting with your party. All these new laws are useless anyway, I don't believe for one second that they have had any impact other than allowing the police to think they can harass members of the public for taking photographs of buildings and other such nonsense.
Also just a note on that extreme pornography law, I want to say that is one of the worst bits of legislation I have ever heard of and if you voted for it, you voted for making millions of normal law abiding people criminals. In my opinion if any law makes a substantial chunk of the population criminals overnight then it is a bad law, after all how do you describe 'extreme' how do you define what constitutes 'damage to genitals' so if somebody videos a genital piercing they are now liable to be prosecuted? Not saying any of this is my bag, I don't have anything to fear from this law but I just do not understand why anybody should have the right to prohibit consensual sexual behaviour at all, least of all a bunch of old puritans in parliament.
So there is a bit of ranting and raving from one of your constituents, I hope you start to think for yourself at some point and I will keep an eye on your voting record. If you keep towing the party line on blatant incursions in to our civil liberties then you can kiss my vote goodbye and you can also count on the fact that I will be convincing everybody I know in Gateshead to do the same.
Yours sincerely,
G4Z
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David Clelland MP wrote to a constituent:
I accept your offer not to vote for me again. I do not want your vote so you can stick it wherever best pleases you.
This came at the end of a correspondence on civil liberties with constituent Gary Scott (who, judging from this story, ought to be "tapped up" to join the LibDems). The Times reports:
Mr Clelland, 64, offered this advice in response to a letter from Gary Scott, 27, an IT salesman with concerns over civil liberties.
Mr Scott had written to his MP once before, while living in a different part of the city, a constituency represented by a Liberal Democrat MP. “He was kind enough to write a considerate reply and I hope you will do the same,” Mr Scott wrote. He then detailed his concerns. The Government was authoritarian and out of touch. He could no longer ignore what he regarded as a “blatant power grab”.
Mr Clelland is regarded as a man of the Centre Left who votes broadly with the Labour mainstream: indeed, he was once a parliamentary whip. He voted in favour of identity cards and 42-day detention for terror suspects. He also voted for the hunting ban. He did stand up for civil liberties when it came to the smoking ban, perhaps because he is a pipe smoker.
Mr Scott was very disappointed with what he saw. “You vote with your party on pretty much every single issue,” he wrote. “It’s not your constituents you represent, it’s your party.”
He was sceptical of the usefulness of recent legislation, in particular the criminalisation of violent internet pornography, that was passed as part of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. “Not saying any of this is my bag,” he wrote. “I just do not understand why anybody should have the right to prohibit consensual sexual behaviour at all.”
In short, he held the Government and Mr Clelland himself “responsible for destroying civil liberties that have been hard won from tyrannical monarchs over centuries”.
Concluding what he described as “a bit of ranting and raving from one of your constituents”, he said that if Mr Clelland continued “toeing the party line”, he could “kiss my vote goodbye”.
I think I like the cut of Mr Scott's jib.
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