Milton Keynes Election Special
On Saturday morning at around 10am
a slightly bleary eyed Simon, suffering from the effects of the
previous night (something I’m not going to go into here but which
mainly involved destroying a small pub with the cast and crew of the
touring production of Thoroughly
Modern Millie) got a phone call.
I don’t like being phoned by
people at 10am on Saturday mornings unless its because someone’s found
my wallet / girlfriend - but I can’t physically let a phone ring. Just
can’t do it, even if its not mine. So I stumbled downstairs and picked
it up, to be confronted by an Asian-sounding gentleman with a lisp.
“Hello, could I speak to Mr Edwards please”.
This is the worst thing a call centre can start a conversation with. It
immediately puts my back up because it immediately says two things: 1.
You don’t know me, but you think you have the right to phone me at 10am
on a Saturday, and 2. You don’t know my full name, which means
that not only don’t you know me, you don’t actually care.
I don’t like people not caring
about whether they know me or not...
“Speaking”.
“Mr
Edwards, I represent Brian White (your local Labour MP), and I was
wondering if I could talk to you for a moment about your vote”.
No. No, you can’t talk to me
about my vote. If you don’t know me and you don’t care that you don’t
know me, you can’t phone me at 10am on a Saturday morning to chat about
politics, not at 10am on a Saturday morning when anyone of sane body
and mind is trying to cajole their girlfriend into a blow job. It
doesn’t happen, not here, not now, not on my watch.
“No. Can
you put me through to your call centre manager please”.
“Er...
pardon?”
“I
understand that this is not your fault, put me through to your boss”.
“Well... he’s...” - there is a
muffled conversation and then the catalyst that sets this whole
adventure in motion happens.
<>The fucker hung up. Chew that for a
moment. Let's put this in perspective. This call centre calls ME on a
Saturday morning, ostensibly to TALK to
me, and when I don’t play it exactly as they want it, they hang up?
More to the point, this isn’t
some double glazing firm, or an insurance company, this is the fucking
Labour Party... aren’t they supposed to care about my vote?
Aren’t they supposed to do everything in their power to make me feel
like I’m important to them? Aren’t they supposed to bend, spread
and take it up the arse from me if it means I’ll vote for them?
Isn’t that their JOB!?!
Don’t get me wrong - had they
just put me through to the manager, that would probably have been the
end of it. I’d have asked them to take me off their books, he would
have apologised for disturbing me, and come the time of the election I
would have voted for them anyway. But hanging up on me hit a nerve.
Hanging up on me pissed the hell out of me.
By this time it was 10:30, and
Caroline had come downstairs to enquire why I hadn’t come back up to
continue pestering her about the blow job.
“The Labour
Party just hung up on me”.
“Oh... ".
To say Caroline is long
suffering is a bit like saying Nelson Mandela did a spell inside. She
knows full well that “The Labour
Party just hung up on me” wasn’t a description of recent events,
it was a declaration of war. It meant I was on a mission. Someone had
pissed me off. Someone was going to pay and, in all likelihood,
Saturday is about to get a little intense.
I pondered the next step.
“Okay...”, I theorised, “If the Labour Party can disturb me on a
Saturday morning, get me out of bed, and then hang up on me, surely I
have the right to contact the Labour Party, get IT out of bed and
demand an explanation as to why my vote meant so little to them they
felt they could treat me in such a shoddy manner. I mean that’s fair,
isn’t it? That’s reasonable!"
Brian White is the Labour MP
for Milton Keynes North East. It didn’t take too long to flick through
the Yellow Pages and find his office.
“Good
morning, Labour Party North East”
“Hello, I’d
like to speak to Brian White”
“Brian's
busy at the moment, can we take a message?”
“What do
you mean, busy? Is he in a meeting or something?”
“It’s a
Bank Holiday weekend... I think he’s spending today with his family”
“Fine, can
I have his home number please?”
“Er...”
“Let me
explain. My name’s Simon and I am a voter. I got called up by a Labour
Party call centre this morning and when I asked to speak to a manager
they hung up on me. I want to ask Mr.White if my vote is actually
important to him.”
“Well, of
course your vote is important to us, but...”
“Then you
can give me his number.”
“We don’t
give out home numbers, he will be in on Tuesday.”
“You don’t
give out home numbers? So no one can contact Brian? Even in
an emergency? Can you
contact him?”
“Well, we can contact him, yes...”
“So you’re
saying that you are
more important than my vote?”
“Well...”
Suddenly it hit me...
“Look, I’m
a voter. I have a vote. If you want it, you will find a way to get me
in contact with Brian White. If I don’t contact Brian White TODAY
I’m going to vote for another party!”
It was a bolt of realisation.
Let me explain. The biggest complaint I hear about politics is that
people feel like they don’t have a voice; they feel politicians don’t
listen; that their opinions don’t matter; disenfranchised; that
politicians are some lofty unattainable creature that they were
powerless to influence... Suddenly I realised this was bullshit. It's
in politics' best interests to make us feel like that, that’s why I was
having such a hard time doing something as simple as talking to my
Labour Party MP. Sure, I could write him a letter, leave him a message,
even arrange a meeting, but I’m not supposed to just phone him up and
disturb his Saturday. Oh sure, he can do it to me, but If I want to do
it to him it has to be on his terms. We, the voters aren’t supposed to
act like this, we’re not supposed to do anything so presumptuous as
believe that we can treat them like they treat us.
But its bullshit. We do have
power, we have something they want, something they can’t survive
without. They’ve fooled us into thinking it's not important but it is.
It’s the most important thing in the world to them, and as soon as you
realise just how important your vote is, then the tables are turned,
the ball's in your court, you can call the shots.
“Look, I’m
a voter. I have a vote. If you want it, you will find a way to get me
in contact with Brian White. If I don’t contact Brian White TODAY
I’m going to vote for another party!”
“Well...
look, can I phone Brian and get him to call you back?”
“Of course,
but it needs to be in the next ten minutes, I’m going out." (lie )
Five minutes later the phone
rang.
“Hello is
this Simon?”
“Speaking.”
“This is
Brian White, I believe you’ve been trying to contact me?"
SUCCESS! This was
genius! My vote did
have power! I couldn’t disturb the highest ranking Labour MP in
Buckinghamshire as a member of the public, I couldn’t disturb his
family weekend as a journalist, I doubt he’d take a call from his
fellow MP’s but as a VOTE... As a vote he had to do exactly what I said.
“Brian, my
name is Simon and I am a voter. I got called up by a Labour Party
call centre this morning, and when I asked to speak to a manager they
hung up on me.”
“That’s
terrible, I’m very sorry.”
“Indeed.
More to the point, I don’t see why you have the right to call me and
disturb me on a Saturday anyway. I watch the news, I read the papers.
If you’d called for a chat about politics I wouldn’t have minded so
much, but being canvassed by a faceless call centre that is probably a
private firm and doesn’t actually care about my views AND THEN HANGS UP
ON ME is more than a little annoying.”
“I can
understand that! The call centre offered to help canvass and I
couldn’t refuse their generous offer to help, but what I will do is
call them for you, get them to wipe your name off their books and I’ll
look into the hanging up incident, can I call you back?”
“Sure.”
And that’s what happened. Five
minutes later he called me up, said that he’d talked to the call centre
who were very apologetic, they’d taken my name off the books and we
then proceeded to have a good 25 minute chat about MK and global
politics, after which I felt like I had genuinely discussed my local
issues with an actual reasonable intelligent human being.
I went back into the living
room and told Caroline what had happened. It was only 11:30, it had
only taken me an hour and a half to rid myself of the call centre
bugbear. Fine. It's over, we can get on with enjoying the day. She
looked relieved.
“....Hang on....”, I said. Her face dropped.
Suddenly a switch flicked in
my head. Suddenly I realised exactly what I’d done and why I couldn’t
let it end there.
“If...”, I reasoned, “...I can contact my Labour MP directly by
using my vote to get to them, surely I can do the same with the other
parties. I mean, surely its unfair on them that Brian White got
disturbed during a family holiday and had an opportunity to put his
political views to an actual voter, whilst they have to rely on call
centres and leaflets? Surely they would be dying for the
opportunity to speak directly to a voter? Why, they’d have to
jump at the chance, they’d have to relish the idea!”
So I phoned Conservative Head
Office in London and said the phrase that would be repeated many many
times in the subsequent hours:
“My name is
Simon and I am a voter. I have decided to vote this year for the MP I
can contact the most easily. I’ve already spoken to the Labour Party MP
Brian White, could you give me a direct line to Mr Mark Lancaster,
Conservative MP for Milton Keynes North East?”
I’m not going to go into all
the conversations I had that day; secretaries, call centres, PA’s,
answering machines. What I will say is I went all around the houses,
ran up a nice phone bill but by five thirty I had indeed spoken to all
three major party MP’s for MK North East.
Brian was, it turned out, the
easiest to get hold of. I had the advantage of knowing where he was, so
it was easier to tie him down and he was indeed a very nice chap. Mark
Lancaster (Conservative) was a slimeball who kept trying to deviate the
conversation onto travellers, and frankly came across like a man who
really could use an enema, something Susan Brown (Lib Dem’s) actually
agreed with. She was the hardest to get hold of, but I can forgive her
because she was (as I was repeatedly informed) on a walking holiday in
the Peak District. I finally tracked her down on her mobile halfway up
some hill or other and it's my firm belief that our thirty minute
conversation about the rate of expansion in Bletchley in no way broke
her stride. Indeed, I’m sure she relished the opportunity to talk to a
voter, my vote's important to her. Important enough, that is, to take a
call from me halfway up a mountain.
She likes The White Stripes by
the way and frequently attends Glastonbury (although she’s also partial
to Wham!)
“WHAM!
?!?!!”
“Well, I
like most popular music.”
“Well you
would, you’re a politician!”
“Yeah
okay... but I really do like The White Stripes.”
So, what does this all
mean? If you’ve read this far, I think you deserve some sort of a
conclusion, so here goes.
In these days of Blair, Bush,
Big Business, Wars, Tsunamis, Terrorist Threats, it's easy to start
thinking you don’t matter. And, more scarily, it's easy for politicians
to forget who they work for and to start treating you as if you don’t matter, even
though you obviously do.
Sometimes politicians need to
be reminded who’s boss. When Labour announce they’re going to spend an
extra five billion pounds on the NHS, remember that’s money, not
theirs. You gave it to them, they are responsible to YOU for
how it's spent. If you gave someone five billion pounds don’t you think
you have the right to talk directly to the person spending it?
Sure you do - you should be able to contact your MP in the middle of
the night for any goddamn reason you like because HE WORKS FOR
YOU. You are the boss of this great big company, and sometimes
the company gets so big and powerful it forgets who’s boss and starts
to ignore you. Screw that. You can remind them who’s boss any time you
like, and that’s what I want you all to do.
Next Saturday, pick up your
phone, call YOUR
office (yes, you paid for their headquarters too) and use this simple
phrase:
“My name is
(your name) and I am a
voter. I have decided to vote this year for the MP I can contact the
most easily. Can you put me through to
(your MP )?”
Don’t take no for an answer.
Don’t get fobbed off. It's your vote they’re bargaining with. They
don’t know who you are, for all they know you’re a reporter and not
getting through to your MP is going to result in “Labour tells voter vote isn’t important”
on the front of the Guardian three weeks before a general election,
they can’t risk that. Your vote is that powerful.
Can you imagine it? Can
you imagine next Saturday all the MP’s in your area forced into a
situation where they have to take your call? Wouldn’t that show
them who’s boss? Wouldn’t that tell them who’s in control?
For the first time ever, I’m
going to suggest you send this to your friends, to your families. I
mean, can you imagine it? Can you imagine if next Saturday every
politician in the country had to take personal telephone calls from
actual voters? Your vote is
important. Hell, phone Blair, phone Brown, phone Michael
Howard! These guys work for you, If they won’t take five minutes
to talk directly to you, then they obviously don’t want your vote, so
maybe come election you should think twice about giving it to them.
And maybe, by doing this, by
spending a day reminding these people who their boss really is, we can
lose some of that political apathy, that feeling of disenfranchisement.
Maybe we could remind them, and us, that the most powerful person in
politics isn’t George Bush, it's not Tony Blair, and it's not Charles
Kennedy. It’s the voter writing this article, and it’s the voter
reading it. And they will recognise our authority.
Simon Edwards.
