According to a good friend who lives in Dorset Oliver Letwin is an excellent MP. His public persona is one of a blustering eccentric, but rather like Boris Johnson, he has a sharp political mind. That's the reason David Cameron appointed him his chief policy advisor.
That said, I'm astonished at his recent strange behaviour of dumping constituents' correspondence in park dustbins. Dictating his responses during early morning walks in St James's Park sounds rather irregular, but if that's Mr Letwin's choice of venue for dealing with his constituency work, I see no problem.
What his actions have brought to light is that he doesn't keep his constituency correspondence on file. Surely any MP worth their salary does that. I'm sure, apart from the Data Protection issues involved, some of Mr Letwin's constituents won't be too happy this weekend knowing that he discards their missives so casually. When people take the time and trouble to write to MPs it's usually because they're greatly concerned about a subject.
This begs the question - how many other MPs dispose of constituents' mail once a response has been given? Surely constituents correspondence should be given the same respect as that of classified government papers? Obviously Mr Letwin thinks not.
Liam Fox has resigned and not before time. The results of the poll are above with only 18% thinking he wouldn't be in his post next week. One fact of the Fox/Werrity issue which stands out for me is how ineffectual so many of our political representatives appear to be. Once upon a time we had altruistic MPs who had a commitment to serve the people of these islands to the best of their ability. Nowadays it appears, as in the Fox case, many are far more egotistical and happy to be used as puppets by their billionaire paymasters.
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