Election fever

So, what am I up to right now? As you’ll probably know, the General Election has just been called; as those who aren’t obsessive political geeks will know (full disclosure: I had to look this up) that means that Parliament will be dissolved on Monday 11th April. One peculiarity of our Constitution is that, once Parliament is dissolved, there are no MPs any more (though ex-MPs still get paid, and government ministers retain their posts and their salaries). So my last ten minutes’ work were looking up what FaxYourMP.com said during the 2001 election, and then adding the following note to WriteToThem.com:

Important note about the General Election: there will be a General Election on Thursday 5th May 2005. That means that on Monday 11th April, Parliament will be dissolved. Once Parliament is dissolved, you do not have a Member of Parliament (though your ex-MP still gets paid — nice!). So if you’re going to write to your MP, be quick! Messages sent to MPs which have not been sent by 11th April will be returned to their senders.

We’ll be back as soon after the election as we can manage!

Now that’s done, and I’ve completed today’s service to posterity by writing the above, it’s back to adding the last few features to PledgeBank that we need before we launch. And look out for NotApathetic (coming to a domain name like that, real soon now), too.