Above is what arrived from John Redwood’s office. It's headed up an "appeal" but you might just as call it a begging letter. Basically, although the letter does set out some reasons why the Conservatives are best, its main purpose is to ask for cash to help forge a Conservative victory. And, that fact initiates some more thoughts in me, which I have to say are not positive. A few weeks ago, I felt deeply let down when it was revealed by the Daily Telegraph that Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind, two former cabinet ministers (one from Lab one from Con) were hawking their “consultancy” skills around for a few grand a day. They both cockily boasted to some bogus Chinese outfit how they had access to influential people, but they both also pointed out this access would cost a tidy sum for whoever fancied availing themselves of it. Actually, it’s me who refers to their prospective fees as “tidy”, because it should be noted that based on their own descriptions, the sums involved were trifling (tell that to my zero hours contracted son). Although they may have done nothing illegal, this seemed like shameless and cynical exploitation of their publically funded positions, and, by the way, this is just another item in a long list of things which MP’s have been doing for years now which have caused me to lose faith in them (the expenses scandal being a prime example). Anyway, when the Rifkind/Straw thing broke, several papers looked into what MPs declared external earnings were, i.e. the earnings which they had which were entirely separate to their MP’s salary. I should point out that there is nothing illegal or against the rules in MPs earning money outside of parliament and, in fact, some MPs maintain that doing this keeps them commercially sharp and better able to deal with their constituency business. It turns out (see Guardian 23 October) that in 2014, some 20 MPs earned in excess of £100k on top of their MP’s salary. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about that, which I’m not going to go into here, but just to note that my own MP, John Redwood, is well up there on the list (at no. 7) with reported external earnings of £215k. So, I think I’m right in saying that my MP is earning another three times his MP's salary, doing other stuff which is little or nothing to do with his constituents. I have to say that seeing my constituency's public servant picking up his public salary whilst simultaneously creaming it from other sources did not enhance my views of our parliamentary representatives, so when the same man suggests I might like to make my own contribution to his “fighting fund appeal”, as he calls it, my answer is, as St Toirdhealbhach might have said, “Póg Mo Thóin”, which for those who aren’t familiar with the tongue of the old country means “Kiss My Arse”.