Towards the end of August I received an annual update from one of my MEPs on the work she had carried out over the first year since her election. I wrote a blog pointing out that some of our MEPs take the time and trouble to explain what they have done and others seem unwilling to do anymore than contact me when they would like me to vote for them at the next election. A lot of nonsense is talked about how the ballot box is the mechanism by which electors can hold their representatives accountable. It is a bit like trying to tell an employer that they can hold their employees accountable by not appointing them for the job again. I reject that sort of nonsense so I contacted all of the MEPs I don’t hear from via twitter asking them to provide me with a report on their work so far. None of them responded. A fortnight ago I noticed that one of these silent MEPs, Daniel Hannan was busy tweeting on a matter that concerned him, so I sent him a tweet asking him why he ignored my earlier request. He responded quickly to suggest he did not use twitter to respond to constituency business and asked me to email him instead. The disadvantage of this is of course that whilst twitter is in the public domain, emails are not. Needless to say I followed his request and he continues to be silent on the issue. The other MEPs are also still silent. We only have one MP so we get used to what they do for us. Because we have several MEPs the failure to communicate by people like Daniel is all the more evident. Perhaps one day there will be a meaningful set of guidelines to help us know what is good practice and what is evidently not!