As My Melton, I always adopted the attitude of “I don’t care who you vote for, as long as you do so”. It’s a bloody difficult attitude to adopt especially when you see how certain governments have tackled issues across the last 5 and a half years (shout out to the 10pm rule during the COVID pandemic) but I still stand by it. I also believe that our local representatives should be visable and held to account where relevant. I think you can all see where this blog post is going.

For those of you who still don’t know who your MP is, his name is Edward Ager. He’s a Tory. We used to have Alicia Kearns who is also a Tory but she ended up going to Rutland when the boundary changed.

Regardless of what you thought of Alicia’s party politics, I think we can all agree that she was, at the very least, visible. She was at multiple events, had newsletters that were regularly sent out and was posting pretty much daily on the socials. Ed meanwhile… we got the obligatory monthly column in the Melton Times and a post on NEMM on the 5th August.

When they were elected both Alicia and Edward were new to the area. Alicia had never been a MP and Edward represented Syston, not Melton. Let’s be honest, the only reason he’s representing us now is due to the recent boundary changes. I highlight this because issues in Melton are consistently changing. We have just lost some of the town’s biggest employers and our 19+ education options are SMB or SMB (and even then half of the courses aren’t even in the borough so then you have to get there which due to Melton’s abysmal public transport options, is easier said that done) making it very difficult/borderline impossible for these ex-employees to reskill. We have a singular GP to serve a whole borough. First time buyers can’t get on the property ladder until somebody in the family dies. Businesses in the town centre are struggling (we’ll touch on that separately). These are all issues that a MP representing Melton, should not only care about, but help find solutions for.

Which leads to the car tax issue. There have been reports that claim Labour will be introducing a pay per mile car tax system. Regardless on your own personal opinions about this proposal, I think we can all agree that people who live in rural communities like Melton will be paying more tax per person than let’s say Leicester, simply due to the fact that Leicester has far better public transport options and thus one can quite easily commute without a car. Here is where Alicia and Edward differ, Alicia has recently released a survey asking her followers whether they support this proposal and why. She has since shared this data on her socials and will be using said data when opposing the plans in parliament. Edward meanwhile… do you know what he’s doing? You don’t, join the club because I’m just as clueless as you are.

Now, I am fully aware that not everyone is a serial poster like I am. I am still mindful that people don’t post on the socials because they didn’t have to do it back in their day so why should they do it now. Here’s the thing (and business owners reading this, this next bit applies to you also), we are now in 2024. We are at a stage in the internet timeline where people are using Insta and TikTok like Google. People are using these platforms to have even more conversations, not just about politics. It also, makes it easier for people to hold you accountable.

Now, I will be doing a completely separate post about accountability and how you can ensure your local representatives know how you feel about said issues. For now, you just need to know that you are perfectly entitled to hold your representatives to account, even if you didn’t vote for them to begin with. Now that’s not saying they are (insert your insult of choice here) but if they said they were going to help with a particular issue on the campaign trail and so far nothing has happened, you are perfectly entitled to ask what’s going on. By not being active on things like social media, because you’re worried that people can’t have sensible debates anymore (we’ll get to that as well), you eliminate that aspect of accountability.

So what does that look like in practice? Multiple posts from various locals asking the big question. Where has our MP gone? To which, I cannot answer the question because I don’t know. What I do know is that in the last year we’ve had 2 MPs from the same party represent us. One who is still visible, the other who is like the wind. Edward (or his team) if you are reading this, please start to make yourself known to the masses. We (mostly) don’t bite and we need to see that our MP is in our corner especially on the back of the recent winter fuel payment ruling.

Maybe I should do a post about why Kier Starmer is our lord and saviour* to see if it coax’s him out of hiding

Kelly

*Don’t panic non-centrist Labour/other party voters, I’m not actually going to do that.