SHOOTING RIFLE BOLTS AT A TORNADO

I wrote to my MP today. I hate to say it but it was with a portion of hopelessness: the thing I wrote to him about can’t be changed. At least not by him, or indeed any individual politician.

I think you’re supposed to ask your member of parliament to do something when you write in, aren’t you? Like vote against a bill or champion a cause that matters to local people. Didn’t do that.

If you’re a nice person you might just write in and wish your MP well and let them know you’re thinking of them or something. I didn’t do that either.

Gosh, I didn’t even slash into his politics with a scythe! I can imagine some folks doing that vitriolic job very caustically. Not my style.

Nope. I just thanked him for some high profile work he’s done, and then explained why I think it so outrageous that huge oil and gas machines like Shell and BP make inordinate profits from shivering pensioners, who can’t afford to use their central heating.

I believe I exposed some naivity about how I understand the industry, and where the profits go, but I did want my MP to see how galling it is for ordinary people to see Shell (for example) announce profits of over £80 billion, when household energy bills have increased by £1000 per annum. If it’s not gone Shell’s way that increase has gone somewhere. And if they can pull oil and gas out of the ground and still make an eye-watering profit, it stands to reason that somebody somewhere is getting very rich indeed, off the poverty of ordinary people.

I know. The anti-capitalists throw their hands in the air at this point and suggest I am shooting rifle bolts at a tornado. It’s the system. Don’t waste your letter-writing; it’s the world we live in.

I tweeted…

“Seems so odd to think it:

That one man should starve on his farm 

When over the hill

Another man will

Have a mountain of food in his barn”

… and as if to prove a point, someone shot back with a comic book gif to remind me that, ‘That’s Capitalism!’ - which of course, it is.

I don’t expect a response. I don’t even fully know why I wrote it. I suppose it did me some good, and helped me feel as though I voiced concern. Flawed though it is, this is certainly one plus point of democracy - or at least it’s supposed to be - that someone like us, chosen by us, gets to speak up for us, in a parliament of equally selected representatives.

Like the gun-toting Americans who shoot at weather systems then, I might not make much headway, but hopefully I can show that I did at least something, however ineffective, to show the sky, the storm and the sorry old world how I feel. I have to believe that counts for something, right?