Out Of Office Reply - Molly Bennett, Office Of Andrew Sinclair MP.

Thank you for contacting Molly Bennett, Senior Constituency Caseworker to Andrew Sinclair, MP for Northwick East.

Molly will be out of the office on jury service as from Monday 28 March 2011, and is scheduled to return to work on Monday 11 April 2011.

During her absence, her colleague, Gregory Duke, has reluctantly agreed to help with your enquiry if - and only if - it is genuinely urgent, and does not involve any or all of the following: an inability to ensure that brides and grooms are not rendered headless in wedding photographs taken at the behest of a client; deliberate mistreatment of a horse used to pull a cart, and/or the mowing down of a Policeman carrying a speed gun, whether or not he or she is wearing a high-visibility jacket.

Mr Duke will also refuse to recommend that Mr Sinclair sign shotgun licence applications on behalf of any constituents whom he deems to be unstable. This includes (but is not restricted to) those of you who claim to see little green men in various locations, or who remain convinced that your neighbours are stealing your electricity.

Should any of the above scenarios sound at all familiar, Mr Duke suggests that you should start taking your prescribed medication again.

For those constituents with a tendency to suffer from stress-related hypertension, Mr Duke would remind you of his standard advice: that you take steps to avoid exposure to all newspapers and TV news. He places special emphasis upon avoiding The Daily Mail. (And The Economist, if you are a Labour policy-maker.)

Last, but not least, Mr Duke asks that all owners of fatmobiles check that they do not leave home to visit the seaside without having first charged their batteries, as he will be unable to spare the time to rescue stranded scooter-users while the office is short-staffed. He would also draw your attention (yet again) to the section of the Highway Code that clarifies the upper speed limits for scooting on pavements.

If, as a result of the application of the above criteria, Mr Duke should choose to designate your enquiry as non-urgent, please rest assured that Molly will deal with it as quickly as possible upon her return to work.

In the meantime, she wishes to make clear that, should you be minded to turn up at Northwick County Court in an attempt to contact her to complain about her colleague's classification system, she will not, under any circumstances, be able to discuss this with you. Not even during lunch-breaks or lulls in the court's proceedings.

She also wishes to emphasise that, should she recognise any defendant, she will immediately declare a conflict of interest to the court - thus ensuring that nothing can be gained from attempts either to bribe or intimidate members of her family or, indeed, most of her colleagues.

Updated Out Of Office - Molly Bennett, Constituency Office of Andrew Sinclair MP.

Thank you for your email addressed to Molly Bennett, Senior Constituency Caseworker to Andrew Sinclair, MP for Northwick East.

Molly remains on leave, and will respond to your email upon her return to the office on Monday 21 February 2011. However, should your enquiry be urgent, please telephone her colleague, Gregory Duke, who will continue to pretend to be happy to help you.

Mr Duke wishes to re-emphasise that being short-staffed is leading to a delay in this office's usual ability to respond swiftly to enquiries, and therefore asks - yet again - that constituents take simple steps to minimise those problems which may lead them to feel that they have no option but to contact their MP.

The list below should hopefully serve as a reminder as to how this might be achieved, and includes some new suggestions:

1. Avoid reading newspapers, particularly The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Sun. 
2. Avoid watching Question Time; *PMQs, Panorama and Dispatches. 
3. Avoid reading LibDem campaign materials from the General Election 2010, especially those containing the word, "pledge".
4. Avoid unnecessary criminal activity.
5. If you are on prescribed medication, please take it - for once.
6. If you believe that your neighbours are stealing your electricity, please contact your supplier.
7. If you have replaced your vehicle with a horse and cart, remember to feed your horse and do not beat it in public.
8. Do not speed past the scenes of accidents, and keep a close eye out for policemen attending the scene, whether or not they are wearing high-visibility clothing.
9. If you wish to send us details showing how the world can be run using only water, please bear in mind that we already hold a large archive of such plans, none of which have yet been put into production.



*PMQs - Prime Ministers Questions. 

Out Of Office - Molly Bennett, Constituency Office of Andrew Sinclair MP.

Thank you for your email addressed to Molly Bennett, Senior Constituency Caseworker to Andrew Sinclair, MP for Northwick East.

Molly is currently on leave, and will respond to your email upon her return to the office on Monday 14 February 2011. However, should your enquiry be urgent, please telephone her colleague, Gregory Duke, who will be less than happy to help you.

Mr Duke wishes to point out that being short-staffed may lead to a delay in this office's usual ability to respond swiftly to enquiries, and therefore asks that constituents take simple steps to minimise those problems which may lead them to feel that they have no option but to contact their MP.

The list below gives several suggestions as to how this might be achieved, but is by no means exhaustive:

1. Avoid reading newspapers, particularly The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Sun. 
2. Avoid watching Question Time; *PMQs, Panorama and Dispatches.
3. Avoid reading LibDem campaign materials from the General Election 2010, especially those containing the word, "pledge."
4. Avoid unnecessary criminal activity.
5. If you are on prescribed medication, please take it - for once.

*PMQs - Prime Ministers Questions. 

Stones, Glass Houses, and Reckless Behaviour.

Get into work this morning to find The Boss has been in over the weekend, and has left his supermarket surgery "notes" on my desk. (It also looks as if he's searched all the drawers, but that's another story.) I wish he'd told me he was going to do this, as at least then I wouldn't have had to spend Sunday boiling to death at home, with all the windows and curtains closed.

I pass the notes straight to Greg, as it's his job to do this lot of surgery letters, now that he's finally started to take his turn to accompany Andrew to the damn things. He looks incredulous when he sees The Boss' notes.

"These aren't from Saturday's surgery," he says.

"How can you tell?" Surely there hasn't been enough time for him to decipher Andrew's handwriting yet.

"Says 'Asda' at the top," says Greg. "We were at f*cking Tesco, for Godsake."

"Read on." I can't really be bothered with this, as I am ploughing through the weekend's emails, and still have the crazed answer-phone messages to tackle.

"Oh, wait - yeah, I recognise some of these names. But look at this!" Greg shoves a handful of A5 sheets of paper at me. All bear the House of Commons crest, and are covered in hieroglyphics.

"What the f*ck?" The Boss has obviously lost his mind. He has decided to draft the follow-up letters himself, presumably because he has forgotten our long-standing - and very necessary - agreement that only Greg or I write letters. Not Andrew. Ever. The drafts make The Boss appear semi-literate, or as if he has absolutely no idea of what the constituents were talking about. This is emphasised further by the fact that they bear virtually no relation to Greg's comprehensive notes from the same surgery.

"Just ignore them, and write your own," I say. "It is our duty to stop him making an idiot of himself, after all." I refrain from mentioning that I will still have to check Greg's versions before they are posted. I might as well do everything myself!

The Boss phones shortly afterwards to check we've received his notes. Don't know why he'd think we hadn't, as he'd left them right on top of my keyboard, but I humour him.

"Yes, thanks," I say.

"Got the drafts, too?" Andrew is clearly bursting with pride at his achievement. "Cases were so straightforward, thought I'd help you guys out."

This is hardly an accurate reflection of the truth, but I let it pass.

"Hear about Mark Reckless? F*cking idiot." The Boss can hardly contain his delight. "So pissed he couldn't vote. Typical bloody Tory. Lightweights. I can vote no matter how much I've had."

"Yes, Andrew, but you have occasionally forgotten how you intended to vote," I say.

"Not 'cause I was drunk! The bastards change the wording of Bills and add amendments to catch you out. I can't always be expected to notice that."

"Well, the Press and the Whips don't appear to have any trouble keeping up with it," I say. "And I am really, really hoping that it wasn't you The Mail quoted bragging about old-timers being able to handle their drink?"

"Anything else you need me for?" he says. "No? Got to go then. My mobile will be off for a bit."

Can't help feeling that the whole thing with these drunken newbie MPs was an accident waiting to happen. Half of them haven't got round to appointing their staff yet, and those who have probably used the jobs as rewards for their keenest campaigners, or the most-fanciable members of their local parties. They'll live and learn. Even The Boss admitted that he realised quite quickly that he needed staff who would tell him the brutal truth - that's how I got my job. Mind you, he still doesn't seem to have worked out that he also needs a minder in Parliament. I spend half my life trying to get Carlotta and Marie-Louise to tell me exactly what interviews he's giving during the week, what else he's up to, and whether he's been properly briefed. Worryingly, they rarely know. That's when they actually answer the damned phone.

One good thing about a heatwave is that most of the usual suspects don't seem to have the energy to phone us today, despite all the ammunition they've been handed by the Sunday papers. Though that doesn't mean that I am spared from listening to demented moaning, as Greg spends the rest of the day ranting about his taxes funding the subsidised alcohol in the House of Commons bars. If his personal taxes stretch to single-handedly funding everything that he claims they do, he must be earning more than the bloody bankers. He wants us both to get blind drunk before work on Friday, and then challenge The Boss to fire us for gross misconduct when we are incapable of doing our jobs, and have to lie down in the Oprah room for the rest of the day.

He prints the Daily Mail article out and sticks it on the wall, then gets distracted by the comment in it about the Sloane Rangers that the Tories are alleged to have brought in as their Parliamentary researchers. He can't see how Sloane Rangers are any less qualified for the job than any of The Boss' long line of researchers have been. If you collated their photographs, it'd look like a line-up for Miss World, with almost every nation represented, if not every shape of leg.

Now I have to go home and decide whether I am speaking to Max or not. Shame he doesn't have a minder, as I am not at all convinced by that itinerary. The French looks positively schoolboy. Or schoolgirl.