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“WriteToThem” stats

You’ve just got to admire and love this project, the successor to “FaxYourMP”. Tom Steinberg has really created a wonderful and epoch-changing service here and it’s great to see ‘openness in action’ and some performance stats on our MPs…

WriteToThem.com – WriteToThem.com Zeitgeist 2005

Odd that it’s taken motivated, self-organising individuals to arrange this – and not the performance-table-mad government… Odd that.

Tom’s press release notes:

Highlights
————–

* A remarkable 29 MPs have reported response rates of 100% (ie
everyone who answered the survey said they had got a response).
mySociety director Tom Steinberg said:

“These 29 MPs are doing a truly top notch job of responding to their
constituents. We hope that such large numbers of MPs
doing so well will finally put to rest the myth that it is impossible
to cope with the email workloads most MPs face, and so will motivate
improved response rates at the bottom end of the scale.”

* 44% of people writing to their MP via WriteToThem had never written
to an elected representative before, strongly challenging the claim
that political internet tools are only of use to the politically
engaged.

* Overall MPs have better response rates than any other kind of
elected representative, such as councillors or MEPs or MSPs.

* There are still 6 MPs who don’t accept messages from WriteToThem.com at all

Interesting that dear Mr Galloway, my MP, hasn’t been doing as badly on the response front as you’d expect given that he’s mainly touring the UK, Egypt or in The House… (of Big Brother, not of Commons).