Last week we got a letter through the door. It looked official; well sort of. It didn’t have the brown-envelope look of the On Her Majesty’s Service or the green Parliamentary logo that a Member of Parliament would send with an official letter of some sort in it. No this one was in a white envelope but when opened, produced a letter that at first glance appeared to be from Keith Hill, MP for Streatham, and Minister of various sorts over the years in Tony Blair’s cabinet. [img_assist|nid=26|title=Labour letter|desc=|link=url,http://www.alley.me.uk/files/labour_letter.tif|align=right|width=108|height=150]

There were two odd things about this letter. The first was that the letter stated that a person from one of the four streets that make up the little “village” where we live complained that the street lighting, particularly by the bus garage nearby, was inadequate and asked what was being done about it. The answer was that the person writing the letter had contacted the local council and had learned that no money had been allocated to remedy the problem! Outrageous! Who could support such brigands who wasted public money that poured into the council from Streatham and put nothing back into the community?

. Who indeed. Trouble is that we in the area did an official “walk around” all four roads and the very first thing we brought to the MPs attention was the inadequate street lighting and the perception of insecurity when walking late at night around the bus garage. This was on the 10th of November 2001. I know this; I still have the notes on my phone. Of 25 complaints we made that day 5 are still outstanding (including the lighting issue), 20 have been, or are in the process of being, resolved and of these 20, 2 could be the result of the MPs influence but 18 have only happened since the Liberal Democrats and the Tories formed a majority coalition to take control of the council. This is noteworthy because of the second interesting thing about the letter I received.

As stated above the letter appeared to come from Keith Hill MP’s office. In fact it wasn’t until the second reading when I noticed it was signed by a Robert Hill. It was still written in a way that suggested it was done under the purview of the MP and there is the “Member of Parliament, Rt Hon Keith Hill MP at the upper left, both of which continued to confuse as to the letter’s origin and purpose.

Only after the third reading, and several conversations with local folk about the fact that we’ve brought these issue(s) to the MPs notice several times several years ago, did I realise the letter has little (although, not “nothing”) to do with Keith Hill. It seems his name is being used in vain. Sort of. You see it appears to be an endorsement letter from the local MP of the efforts of the the local Labour Party office. But it actually originated in the local Labour Party office, almost certainly by the fellow who hopes to be a Labour councillor after the next election.

Nice try, Robert, but please do your homework about the area next time before trying to be all caring about our local issues. We’ve been doing this round here a lot longer. Perhaps actually speaking to more than one person would be a good start before mailing out to all and sundry?