Writing Letters in Anger

I have had cause lately to write to the Prime Minister about a matter of importance; Kingston Maurward College are proposing to build a housing estate at Lower Bockhampton in Dorset thus ruining a charming hamlet associated with Thomas Hardy.

Here is Lower Bockhampton - simply BEGGING  for 70 more houses to be built, as you can see.

I will here expound on the process involved in writing a letter when extremely cross.

First you should write a letter saying exactly what you really think. In my case the first draft is often not suitable for printing in public. Then try to do a toned-down version - this is what I wrote on my second attempt:

Cameron.

  I demand that you forbid immediately the building of houses which is proposed at Lower Bockhampton. Porlock is FULL of empty houses. So is the rest of the country. WE DO NOT NEED ANY MORE HOUSES. Fill up the empty ones, for CRYING OUT LOUD. Then get the population reduced. This can be achieved by ensuring that

                                                      n(l) > n(e)      

         where n(l) = number of people leaving eg via dying or moving abroad,

         and n(e) = number of people entering eg via being born or moving over here from elsewhere.

   It's tremendously simple! Even a MP could understand it! 

   If you don't do it the promises and undertakings you made in order to facilitate your trampling your way to the top of the metaphorical dungheap which is Westminster are exposed as void. If you wanted to be Prime Minister in order to further your own devices you should not have pretended it was because you cared for the good of the country. 

    Do NOT give my regards to SamCam.

                      Mel

This is still quite rude. It needs to be softened further. The Right Honourable Gentleman will not read an overtly hostile letter.

Here is a politer version which still makes your point, but can actually be sent. Having written the earlier, cross versions, makes you feel better though.

Dear Mr Cameron, (While noting that Mr Cameron is not your dear by any means, you must take account of the conventions and address him as such.)

I request (not "demand") you to use your influence as most powerful man in the land (bit of flattery. They like that), to put a stop to the proposed building of a housing development at Lower Bockhampton in Dorset. The Dorset County Council has a shocking record of allowing insensitive development and they need to be curbed. You hold the whip hand here (more flattery) and it is your duty to use it.

This housing development is a symptom and you need to deal with it and then with the root cause which is the unquestioning acceptance that we "need more housing". (Leave out the capital letters and italics; they can prevent the letter from being taken seriously.)

  

There are huge numbers of empty houses and another single house should not be built until every empty house has been occupied, and no more people should be allowed in to the country unless there is a house available for them to move in to. I realise that it is cheaper to build new houses on previously unused ground ("See? I'm very reasonable. I am not a loony"), but we have to stop pandering to people who want to make easy money. In the long run it will be better for everyone if we acknowledge that the pleasant bits of our country do have a value which, although it can not be quantified in money terms, is extremely important for our national well-being.

If you stand by and do nothing about this housing in Dorset you will be letting us all down. Please act immediately. (You can't put in that stuff about the Westminster Dungheap either. MPs are very superior and do not take kindly to that sort of talk.)

Thank you. (More perfunctory and meaningless politeness. But at least you have still not sent your regards to SamCam)

          Yours sincerely,

                             M. G-AHLK (Mrs)

The letter will certainly be ignored and the houses built. If there is a halfpenny to be made, someone will make it. At least they will be able to connect Hardy's revolving body parts in their disparate graves, to some magnets and generate some electricity for the National Grid.

P.S. I did get a reply. An underling wrote and told me Mr Cameron was quite THRILLED to hear from me and has passed on my comments to the Development and Buildings Directive. 

So much for being the most powerful man in the land.