Easter assessment: Paul Clark’s failures in the past three months

It has been quite a while since I have posted anything about my invisible Labour MP, Paul Clark, so I thought I would analyse his profile and performance since Parliament returned after Christmas.

My first concern is his miserable failure as an elected representative not to respond to concerns from Constituents. Regardless of Political allegiance or the tone of the correspondance, it is the role of a Member of Parliament to respond to all his/her Constituents. Not doing so is a key characteristic of an underperforming MP.

Let me explain. In the past, I used the comments feature on Mr. Clark’s website to ask him questions. I had a long dialogue with him on the EMA scheme, then he abruptly stopped the dialogue, citing that I am not his only Constituent as his reason. That is fair enough, so I followed his advice and emailed him with my questions (and address as instructed) on the 25th January, expecting that his week or two extimated response time would be accurate.

I am still waiting for a response.

So, I got back onto Paul Clark’s contact page and posted the following comment:

Mr Clark. I can understand your concerns about queue jumping, which is why I emailed you with my concerns instead. However, since I emailed you on 25th January I have heard nothing back from you or your office. As I said, I can understand not wanting to put my concerns before anyone else who has contacted you before me, but I fail to see how you could have a backlog of over two months!

That was at 9:55 this morning. Talk about being apathetic towards bad publicity. Not only has his web moderator accepted the comment, but he is yet to respond to it! I think I have my first question for Mr. Clark when he comes into school. After all, I am not the only angry Constituent Mr. Clark has ignored!

Since I wrote about Mr. Clark’s failure to gain assurance over the future of St. Margaret’s Church in the House of Commons last month, I found that Mr. Clark had, in fact, spoken again in the House less than two weeks later. Blimey! I thought to myself. This must be a record!

But then I discovered the full quote. In Hansard it is listed as being:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what assessment he has made of the impact of the Sure Start programme on the early education, childcare, health and family support of disadvantaged children and their families.

This means that Mr. Clark, in fact, merely stood up in the House and used the immense amount of energy it takes to say “question number 13, Mr. Speaker.” How tiring life is for this waste-of-space Member of Parliament.

People on ConservativeHome have recognised that Mr. Clark is being attacked very often by local Conservative golden boy Councillor Rehman Chishti:

I can’t help wondering whether the delay with Gillingham & Rainham is … to give Reh Chishti a chance to establish himself locally within Tory ranks. He certainly seems to be going for the candidacy given that he is in the local rag almost every week attacking local Labour MP or highlighting some local issue or another.

Posted by: ChaunceyGardener | April 02, 2007 at 10:17

Chauncey and gardner you are right when you say Ray Chishti has a high profile in the constituency. I have seen him campaigning throughout the constituency in the rain and snow every weekend and most evenings. Recently Ray ran the Reading half marathon for local charities which shows his commitment and passion for Gillingham and rainham. In my opinion ray Chishti is the only one who has the local crudentials and poularity to defeat the local Labour MP Paul Clarke.

Posted by: Rainham Martin | April 03, 2007 at 22:29

Regardless of who is chosen to be our candidate (although there are no prizes for guessing who I’ll be rooting for!) one thing is for sure: we need to work to displace this useless, lazy MP for someone who can once again work hard to represent the people who voted for them, and respond to those who didn’t!