Make your blog part of the solution, not part of the problem. This bit is important. Your already poking enough fun by running a blog on their behalf, riding google rankings and racking up page views when their site should be getting the traffic. And if you have some real deep-seated hatred for your MP, perhaps you ought to reconsider your motives for doing this. Part of the solution. Present information. Give comment. Invite comment. Encourage others to write, edit and post stories. Engage with your fellow constituent in the same manner you would like your MP to. If you worry its becoming an obcession, take a break, but catch up later.
Promote your blog. Draw attention to it. And no, I don’t mean achieving number 1 on Google. Get off-line. And I guess this kinda comes down to how much you give a shit about it. You’ve got to tell everyone you know locally about your blog. Put up posters about your blog. Hand out stickers on your High Street about your blog. (Or at least something with a TWFY link on, get ‘em think like.)
Participate. I had the recent pleasure of hearing my MP at the Mapesbury Residents Association Annual General Meeting. We met, and thought each other had met each other before. Which of course we haven’t. But it was her suggestion, and it worked, as I pissed off and let her and her colleague go home. Anyway. Get out there and meet them. Don’t become some kinda NIMBY pest, but do engage them on the issues you feel strongly about.
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That is, of course, just a suggestion.
Which has got me thinking about my own involvement in the movement to get our elected representatives online and accessable. Is ‘sarah teather is my mp’ part of the problem or part of the solution? You tell me. There is a comments button. That’s the point.
Am I promoting the blog? Yes. Slowly. One person at a time. I figure if I struggle to get my SO to read it then I’m not going to get very far! But yes, slowly, one person at a time. Having distributed ‘Will Blair Resign’ stickers outside of Parliament with Tim, demonstrated against Bush visiting the UK and marched against a war I didn’t want carried out in My Name - Sure, I can get down my local tube station and sticker bomb commuters. That’s the easy part.
Can you?
Participate. I know it can be a chore and a bore to stop watching Big Brother and go the your local Residents Association meeting, or to an open forum event or whatever meeting with the public event officialdom has for engaging with us. I got some form through the door from Brent Council, soliciting my thoughts on, well, anything!?! Give us your Top 3 they said. have I filled it in yet? No. Too busy blogging about how one should participate.
Right. Gotta go. Form to fill in.