A non-party political broadcast from Mythic Beasts

Here at Mythic Beasts it’s fair to say that our staff hold a wide spectrum of political beliefs, but I think one thing we can all agree on is that all the major political parties have at least some irredeemably stupid policies (and possibly also that some of the minor parties only have stupid policies).

This makes voting for a political party a pretty depressing prospect. So, what about voting for an elected representative who will look after our interests?

Our founders reside in two constituencies with notable MPs: Witney and Cambridge.

The MP for Witney is notable for being the Prime Minister. The MP for Cambridge, Julian Huppert, is notable for being a Liberal Democrat and yet still being highly regarded by a large number of his constituents.

Now, if you want good data on whether your MP is any good or not, you should head over to the excellent They Work For You and find out what they’ve been up to in Parliament on your behalf.

But who wants good data when you can have some anecdotes? Let’s look at two issues that have got us wound up recently.

Firstly, the EU VAT MESS, which causes us an administrative burden far in excess of the value of the affected revenue.

Julian Huppert was very active on behalf of the constituents who contacted him on this issue (Mythic only got as far as a tweet…), including submitting written questions in parliament, which received a predictably useless response.

On the other hand, Paul wrote to David Cameron twice (the first letter went AWOL), and received only a hopeless response which completely failed to address any of the issues raised.

Secondly, banning secure encryption. As a hosting company, the ability to undertake transactions securely online is quite important to our everyday business (see previous notes).

The appalling jeering by other MPs, and the pathetic response given by Theresa May, to Julian Huppert’s questions asked in Parliament demonstrated the he was clearly one of the few MPs who actually grasped the implications of the proposal, rather just resorting to rhetoric that fuels the fear that terrorism relies on.

As for David Cameron, well, it’s his idea.

So what can we conclude from this? Not a lot, except that we’d probably be in a far better place if parliament were full of representatives who listened to and understood their constituents, rather than those who get in on the strength of a party political vote.