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Wednesday Oct 31, 2007

Write to them, hear from them

The older I get, the more I find myself banging on about things that annoy me about my community. Working at TheSite.org and managing the Choose Action section makes me more than aware of all the ways you can get your voice heard by the movers and shakers who can actually make changes in the community. But have I ever bothered to speak up? No.

Well, not until this week anyway...

I live in a part of London that the underground forgot, so have to rely on the overground rail network to get around. It's generally quite good, but is always packed at peak times and could always do with a few extra trains every hour. So when I heard that there are plans to reduce the number of trains from my station I was naturally pretty peeved about it.

It wasn't going to be easy but I was going to have to get off my arse and tell my local MPs and councillors what I thought.

OK, that's a complete lie. It was, in fact, extremely easy and went something like this:

• Visit Write to Them
• Type in my postcode to get a list of MPs and councillors in my area
• Type my message and click 'send'
• Confirm I want to send my message via an email I'm sent
• Sit back and pat myself on the back for a job well done

Aah! Now I can forget all about it knowing I've done my bit...

Wrong again – within two hours I get a personal reply back from one of the three councillors I wrote to. He tells me how concerned he is about the issue and what his team are doing to raise awareness about it. I'm amazed – the most I expected was a standard reply saying, 'Thanks for your email, we'll read it and then ignore it until you forget you ever sent it'. An hour later, still trying to recover from the shock of my councillor's efficiency, I get another email from a different one! Again, it's personal and again, she agrees with my concerns.

What's the world coming to? Helpful web services, helpful councillors, the next thing I know they'll be more trains running from my station. I can dream...

Posted by Hannah ( 5:34 PM ) Link to this post  |  Comments[0]