The job for this week has been getting WriteToThem back up. We’ve now sorted out the Scottish boundary changes and the names of the new MPs, but we don’t have their contact details yet. Today, among sundry other bits and bobs, including debugging thorny Exim problems and other such uninteresting stuff, I’ve been sending faxes to the Parliamentary fax numbers we have for MPs who’ve been re-elected, asking them whether their details have changed. We’re doing that because we don’t know whether those MPs will be in the same offices in this Parliament as in the last, and obviously it would be a breach of trust to send constituents’ mail to the wrong offices. So, I’ve finally reached rock bottom: Chris Lightfoot, junk fax merchant. Sorry, everyone!

(Previous “rock bottom” moment: being telephoned early in the morning by a Labour MP with a rather cut-glass accent. She was calling to find out she had been receiving phone calls from our fax machine — we had the number wrong — at her office. But she didn’t tell me who she was, and, because over the phone she sounded uncannily like an old friend of mine, I assumed that it was my friend on the line. She must have assumed that she knew who I was too, and we exchanged several rounds of pleasantries before comprehension gradually dawned: “This is Mrs — —, MP; who am I speaking to?” Come to think of it, she may even have asked “to whom am I speaking?”.)