(no subject)

Well, worst fears realised and all that - my pre-cold back of throat
feeling turned into the whole works. Difficulty swallowing on Wednesday
due to tonsils, lots of sneezing during other peoples conference
speeches, and so on. I'm still not doing great now, but better than I
was. It's mostly residual sore throat and sneezing now so I'll have to
get Ruth to do any raised voices required at Brownies this evening.

The dinner at Le Manoir was great in the food department again, but
going with a big corporate group you just don't get the same atmosphere.
I'm really glad I'd been with Dad first actually because it made me
realise how good it could be when your next-door neighbour isn't
constantly saying "Is that all? I'll need a kebab on the way home!" for
10 courses. I also skipped the cigar stage of the proceedings and went
straight on to the port. Bring on the smoking ban, that's what I say.
I think perhaps I'll try to go back with Alex or Dad some time (maybe my
30th?) and get the proper Le Manoir experience again. The rest of the
conference was OK but it got a bit samey for me. Once I'd got the hang
of the principles of the work going on, I felt like I didn't really need
the details for all the various different markets as well. We had 2
full lunches at the Randolph as well so god knows how much weight I've
put on!

I'm really looking forward to this long weekend we've got coming. I
plan to do almost nothing sociable (I am aided and abetted here by the
fact that a lot of folk will be out of town) and instead am going to
have another shot at getting the house into some kind of reasonable
order and weeding the front garden, which is getting a bit out of
control again. Also there may be mulching. Oh, and complaining to BT
who appear to have completely failed to set up my direct debit AGAIN! I
don't know what's wrong with them, but I forsee much time on the phone
to customer services. And possibly a change in service provider. If I
go to another phone company, do they sort out paying for the line rental
so that I don't have to deal with BT at all? Also on the list is buying
a printer and ogling laptops that I really don't need. And writing up
some Scrapbook training stuff. And I'd better stop there before I add
too much more to the list!
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He works for me?

Having been irritated again by someone going on about our wonderful
representitive democracy on the radio again this morning I thought I'd
go and have a look at my MP again on the jolly fab They Work For You site and see
how much my MP does represent me. This is from his voting record...

How Andrew Smith voted on key issues since 2001 (From Public Whip) :

Moderately for introducing a smoking ban.

Fair enough - I think you could describe me as the same. I have
reservations but am broadly in favour.

Very strongly for the reduction of parliamentary scrutiny.

I suspect that if anything we could be doing with a bit more
parlimentary scrutiny so no, not really.

Very strongly for introducing ID cards.

Nope, don't think so.

Very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.

I think the best you could say is that I'm ambivalent on that one.

Quite strongly for introducing student top-up fees.

Nope. I think that both the effects on cutting down university entrance
and the effect of having the 20somethings all in debt up to their
eyeballs already will be damaging.

Quite strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws.

90 days? I think not.

Quite strongly for the Iraq war.

Nope, although now that we are where we are, I do feel that we must take
responsibility for the mess we've created and not withdraw precipitatly.

Very strongly for the fox hunting ban.

I think I ended up on the side of this philosophically but it wasn't a
straightforward call and I wouldn't describe myself as strongly for.

Very strongly for equal gay rights.

Best thing I've seen so far. Absolutely agree.

Never rebels against their party in this parliament - 405th most
rebellious of 635 MPs.

Lame. Very very lame.

Well, I have to say, if he was working for me, I'd fire him. And I
can't see in what sense he can claim to represent me or my views. I
can't help but feel that PR could be less worse than this - I just don't
feel like I have a voice at all. I don't have money and I'm not in a
union so where can I go to get my voice heard?
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